Why is it wrong to make alignment matter?

[The Druid Merlin]

This doesn't have to be the case, though.

Let's consider a Chaotic Good character. He loves freedom, independance, long walks on the beach, etc. Have the player list out a number of these things. Whenever one of these things applies to the current situation, he gets his "Chaotic bonus". So Mr. Freedom might get a bonus to Diplomacy to convince the guards not to lock him up. Or a bonus to attack slavers. Or a bonus against Enchantment spells.

If he acts in a different manner, he doesn't get his bonus. No harm, no foul - since the player is choosing to play that way.

Now to keep the player from being straightjacketed into his alignment, allow him to change alignment at the end of each session if he wants.

And to really make alignment matter, only give him XP for those situations where he is able to use one of his alignment traits.

Or just play The Riddle of Steel.

I like this idea. Giving a bonus to an action based on alignment makes perfect sense to me.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I disagree with this statement absolutely.


Of course, I realize that my disagreement might be due more to flavour and philosophy than anything else. To me, law and chaos, good and evil, are intended to be polar opposites. The forces of good do not grant the same powers as the forces of evil. The forces of chaos increase individual freedom, while the forces of law increase order and tradition.

Mobility is as much a tool of order and tradition as it is a tool of freedom, for instance. Accuracy in combat is as much a tool of freedom as it is a tool of order and tratidion. Just like a fireball doesn't care who cast it, a +10 ft. bonus to your speed shouldn't care who gets it. If you're going to say that Chaos gives you mobility, you might as well say Evil gives you Fireball, or Good gives you Create Water, or Law gives you Magic Stone, or Chaos gives you Wall of Wind.

I do think we may just have to agree to disagree on it, but the fact that there's no direct relationship between order and tradition and a bonus to hit is a VERY good thing for the game, IMHO. Because tying the alignments too closely to game mechanics makes it much harder for DM's and players to have their individual interpretations of what those alignments mean. If Law gives you a bonus to hit, you won't be the most accurate archer in 12 kingdoms and be Chaotic. No matter how much you philosophically oppose cruel law and order, you just can't ever be as accurate as a kingdom's loyal archer of equal level. You can't love personal freedoms and hit anything you swing for. Heck, it's not hard to describe accuracy in terms of Chaos: "Your attacks are wild and unpredictable, not fitting into the comfortable pattern of fighting styles, and thus they catch many people off guard, enabling you to hit them more easily." It's similarly easy to describe mobility in terms of Law: "Your footsteps are so perfectly placed at such precise angles that you manage to use the machine of your body to it's top capacity, giving you a faster speed." But if you're Chaotic, you can forget about splitting your foe's arrow, and if you're Lawful you can forget about being able to run around the battlefield unfettered. And there's no logical reason, as far as I can see, to forbid it. Only "I want to make alignments more important," which can happen completely independant of limiting certain powers to certain alignments.

Good characters and creatures protect innocent life. "Good" implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.

Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit. "Evil" implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.

This implies that good gods are more likely to protect you than evil gods. It means that a good god is more likely to give of itself to ensure your life and dignity. It further implies that evil gods are more likely to give you "active" powers so that you can cause harm for their amusement than "passive" powers to help keep you safe.

But by giving alignments concrete bonuses, you make a move from "implies and suggests," (which I've got no huge problem with) to "limits and defines" (which I do). I have no problem with the implied setting of D&D having more defensive good characters than defensive evil characters. What I have a problem with is saying Evil will always be better at causing damage than Good. No matter how hard Good tries, the bonuses are just limited to Evil. You have to have a black heart to land effective blows, the rule implies. If you're Good, you'll never be able to hurt that demon or that necromancer the way any darkhearted creature could.

In the core rules, the choices are obviously flavor considerations. Good doesn't heal more than Evil because Good is better at healing in D&D, but because the designers wanted to suggest a link between Good and Life and Evil and Death in the core rules. File the serial numbers off and any Evil cleric can channel Life as easily as any Good cleric. Or don't, and the abilities are still VERY comprable.

It's harder to do that with MoI, or with a setting where you have to be Evil to be good at hurting things. Being good at hurting things should not depend on your alignment, but on your own skill and choice. If I'm a purehearted farmboy, I should be able to deal as much damage as the town bully -- I should have the same options available. As NPC's, so PC's. Damage can be described in terms of the Compassionate and Good: "You strike the vulrnerable areas, to end the creature's suffering sooner and draw this unfortunate battle to a close before others get hurt." Defense can be desribed in terms of Wicked and Evil: "Your vile nature repulses those who think to come near you with a weapon, and seems to repulse the weapons themselves." There's no reason for evil to be always better (everything else being equal) at hurting than Good. Evil should have no exclusive claim to it.

The position of good vs. evil was put succinctly by Casanova Frankenstein in Mystery Men: "It's so easy to get the best of people when they care about eachother. Which is why evil will always have the edge. You good guys are always so bound by the rules. You see, I kill my own men. And lucky me...I get the girl." (Note that in this case, the "rules" are, apparently, altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings....the Mystery Men are certainly not lawful in the D&D sense of the word. If in any sense, anywhere.)

Put bluntly, good powers care about you while evil powers could care less. For Joe Fighter this doesn't matter so much, but for anyone gaining powers through divine intervention it ought to matter exceedingly. Good has motive to grant you powers that allow you to protect yourself, protect others, and fight the forces of evil. Evil has motive to grant you the power to do as much harm as possible before being mown down. Good cares about all of the pieces it has in play on the board. Evil sees all of its pieces as something less than pawns.

This is your interepretation, but evil can be as compassionate in it's own selfish way as good. It can be as defensive, as helpful. You help others for the greater evil. You prop up the puppet king so you can rule behind the throne. You join forces with other evil people and help them out because they'll help you out. Evil gods help their evil clerics live as long as possible to help them continue their evil on earth. Life can be evil. Trust can be evil. Love can be evil. Help can be evil. Just as death, destruction, demolition, and ruthelessness can be good.

That is an advantage of the alignment system as it stands now, and I'm not about to let WotC say that my evil villain will never be as good at defending his evil troops than my good PC's of the same level. The tactics are for the players (including myself, for the NPC's) to choose, not for their alignments to dictate.

You can say, "Evil can give power to nurture and protect." I say, "Then it is not evil." I will however, grant that evil would be more than happy to grant an ability to subvert the nurturing and protective instincts of good creatures.

And that's fine for your campaign. It's not fine for everyone's campaign, and by forcing a universal on everyone, MoI harms those games that aren't like yours. Not everyone's evil is incapable of nurturing and protecting. Not everyone's law is incapable of flexibility. Not everyone's Chaos in incapable of accuracy. Not everyone's Neutrality is just sitting there doing nothing. Not everyone's Good is defensive and protective. These concepts are VERY multifaceted by their nature, and they should not ne codified any more solidly than they already are by rulebooks, with tendancies and flavor, not with mechanics. I have no problem with evil in your campaign being incapable of nurturing and protecting. I do have a problem if you (or WotC in this case) tell me that Evil Has To Be Like This Because It Is Evil in mechanical terms. Because quite obviously, that's not true. That's up to each group to determine. That's up for each villain to determine. That's up for each DM's campaign to determine. The alignments are flexible and open to interpretation, and that is a Good Thing.

I prefer my fantasy worlds to make sense using the "logic" of an animistic universe within which symbolism has meaning, and magic is derived from that symbolism and meaning. Others prefer a universe in which "magic" is actually some form of undiscovered physics. If I was a member of the "undiscovered physics" crowd, I'm sure I would side with Kamikaze Midget on this one.

I don't have a verisimlitude problem with MoI. It makes as much logical sense as anything else in D&D (though it's vague meanings and two definitions for single terms do hurt that). I have a problem with MoI's definitions being an assumed logic in every campaign. They're not. They shouldn't be. And for MoI to center on defining the alignments in their powerful components, MoI hurts the concept of alignment as it exists in the D&D game in general. And by doing that, it hurts the current D&D game in general, too. It says "Evil likes to hurt things." If your evil draws from Shub-Niggurath and likes to heal things and spread life (including harmful life) everyplace, suddenly, MoI is entirely useless to your evil, and if you use MoI, you have to do extensive work in "filing off the serial numbers" or risk hurting verisimilitude because your evil likes to protect and defend, but your Good Incarnate is doing that. Which means, hey presto, if you have a different definition of the alignments than MoI does (and rest assured, almost every DM has a slightly different definition of the alignments), MoI becomes instantly useless.

It's odd, in the D&D continuum. The core rules themselves are made to be fairly flexible and adaptable to different styles of campaign, to different interpretations. They are made to be tinkered and toyed with to find what makes your group happy. But if you do that with MoI, the book quickly ceases to be useful. MoI is far too specific when it need to be vague (to be adaptable), but it's far too vague where it needs to be specific (to present a multifaceted archetype).

 

[Raven Crowking]

Kamikaze,

I never said that good creatures cannot do evil acts, or that evil creatures cannot do good ones. However, I cannot accept that "evil can be as compassionate in it's own selfish way as good" because, imho, lack of compassion is the defining characteristic of evil.


RC

 

[Knight Otu]

I think this is a feature, not a flaw. A cleric of Loki can have 1,001 possible reasons for harnassing thunder and lightning. Whatever his motive, he should be able to make the same choices and come out with the same power.

Except, in all likelyhood, he won't, since that elusive Lightning domain won't be part of his portfolio. Neither will Trickery be part of Thor's portfolio. As a more transparent example, in core D&D, the best healer will be a follower of Pelor.

Let's forget MoI for a moment, and just look at the option of abilities based on alignment. Let's say we have a class called the crusader. Part of the class description says:

"... An evil crusader gains a +2 enhancement bonus to damage rolls."

And then we have, say, a feat that says:

"You gain a +2 enhancement bonus to damage rolls."

One critizism was that there is no way to catch up for non-evil characters. In this set-up, though, a dedicated character could catch up. In this set-up, you could be the strongest hitter without being evil, the most accurate striker without being lawful, the fastest runner without being chaotic, etc. Is that setup that bad?

 

[Voadam]

In the core rules, the choices are obviously flavor considerations. Good doesn't heal more than Evil because Good is better at healing in D&D, but because the designers wanted to suggest a link between Good and Life and Evil and Death in the core rules. File the serial numbers off and any Evil cleric can channel Life as easily as any Good cleric. Or don't, and the abilities are still VERY comprable.

It's harder to do that with MoI, or with a setting where you have to be Evil to be good at hurting things. Being good at hurting things should not depend on your alignment, but on your own skill and choice. If I'm a purehearted farmboy, I should be able to deal as much damage as the town bully -- I should have the same options available. As NPC's, so PC's. Damage can be described in terms of the Compassionate and Good: "You strike the vulrnerable areas, to end the creature's suffering sooner and draw this unfortunate battle to a close before others get hurt." Defense can be desribed in terms of Wicked and Evil: "Your vile nature repulses those who think to come near you with a weapon, and seems to repulse the weapons themselves." There's no reason for evil to be always better (everything else being equal) at hurting than Good. Evil should have no exclusive claim to it.

Is it really significantly harder to file off alignment from MoI than say from the paladin core class or the evil and good cleric powers?

Why is that? I don't own MoI but the alignment powers seem as much flavor text as the link between good alignments and positive energy channeling.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I never said that good creatures cannot do evil acts, or that evil creatures cannot do good ones. However, I cannot accept that "evil can be as compassionate in it's own selfish way as good" because, imho, lack of compassion is the defining characteristic of evil.

And there's nothing wrong with that in your own campaign. Feel free to design and use rules with that in mind. However, it certainly isn't a universal fact. It is open to interpretation. It should be. MoI attempts to define it more. If you like their definition, by all means, use the book, but that doesn't mean that they did the right thing by defining alignments more, either by the usefulness of the book itself or by how that book contributes to the D&D game as a whole.

Maybe it will make your campaign better, and that's good. But that doesn't mean that it's good for the book to exist, anymore than it's good for the Book of Erotic Fantasy to exist just because it helps some people's campaigns. Which, btw, falls into the same trap of "defining things that should be left indefinate."

You don't need to accept that evil can be compassionate. All you need to do is accept that some DM's define evil slightly differently, and we can agree that MoI won't be very useful at all to a DM that doesn't agree with their definition of alignment. Along with which, I'd argue that most DM's don't use the same definitions of alignment, so MoI will mesh up only with the handful of DM's that do.

One critizism was that there is no way to catch up for non-evil characters. In this set-up, though, a dedicated character could catch up. In this set-up, you could be the strongest hitter without being evil, the most accurate striker without being lawful, the fastest runner without being chaotic, etc. Is that setup that bad?

Not so much. Because in that scenario it's pretty obvious how, if it suited your campaign's needs, to change the Crusader so that a Good one got a +2 bonus to damage rolls. Or a Neutral one. Or whatever. How that ability fits in, power-wise, with the system is very clear and only tangentially linked to the alignment, not exclusively. Anyone can get that +2 enhancement bonus to damage, there's just a flavor reason why an evil Crusader would be encouraged to get it. You could replace it with a Bonus Feat, or some spell-like ability of equal power, and be on the same page.

Effectively, in that case, it's easy to file off "evil" and just say "a crusader gets this bonus feat at this level," if the DM wants. I don't have a big problem with it.

Except, in all likelyhood, he won't, since that elusive Lightning domain won't be part of his portfolio. Neither will Trickery be part of Thor's portfolio. As a more transparent example, in core D&D, the best healer will be a follower of Pelor.

Not so much. The best healer in D&D might be a follower of Pelor (just using the Core). The best healer might also be a follower of Hextor who gains power from worshiping the concept of healing (and uses it to power evil). Or a nature cleric who worships the forces of life. Or whatever. The flavor is in place, and it's easy to change depending upon what kind of campaign you'd like and is limited only by your imagination. He probably won't be a follower of Nerull, but he could be (Playing a priest of Nerull cursed with antithetical domains would make for an interesting character, and an even more interesting villain; playing a neutral priest of "life and healing" is also a valid choice). It turns out that the "best healer" could be anyone who really cares to be come the best healer, because healing was balanced with the rest of the game without considering who would be using it for what ends. It's part of 3e's "don't give mechanical adjustments for RP effects." And it's one of the many, many reasons that the alignments should stay vague.

Is it really significantly harder to file off alignment from MoI than say from the paladin core class or the evil and good cleric powers?

Why is that? I don't own MoI but the alignment powers seem as much flavor text as the link between good alignments and positive energy channeling.

The alignment powers are more of their abilities. From the description of the Incarnate: "How you engage in combat is almost directly a function of your alignment." And that's not the only time that they are pretty much defined by alignment. Soulborns recieve immunity based on their alignment (though they are less defined by it than incarnates, by virtue of them not using as many soulmelds). Thus, you run into possible balance problems by allowing mixing and matching of powers (which doesn't happen in the core rules). You have to carefully adjudicate how you allow them to choose powers. You could still do it with "four different paths," but then why they can't choose to mix and match isn't very clear, from a verisimiltude standpoint.

It's more difficult becuase being Good gives you benefits that being Evil doesn't, and vice versa. Thus, unless you can think of a reason to forbid certain paths, allowing them to mix and match may be like allowing a Psion to use every exclusive power for free -- it gives them too much access to too many powerful abilities. In principle, like allowing a rogue to turn undead for free.

 

[Raven Crowking]

And there's nothing wrong with that in your own campaign. Feel free to design and use rules with that in mind. However, it certainly isn't a universal fact. It is open to interpretation. It should be. MoI attempts to define it more. If you like their definition, by all means, use the book, but that doesn't mean that they did the right thing by defining alignments more, either by the usefulness of the book itself or by how that book contributes to the D&D game as a whole.

Maybe it will make your campaign better, and that's good. But that doesn't mean that it's good for the book to exist, anymore than it's good for the Book of Erotic Fantasy to exist just because it helps some people's campaigns. Which, btw, falls into the same trap of "defining things that should be left indefinate."

You don't need to accept that evil can be compassionate. All you need to do is accept that some DM's define evil slightly differently, and we can agree that MoI won't be very useful at all to a DM that doesn't agree with their definition of alignment. Along with which, I'd argue that most DM's don't use the same definitions of alignment, so MoI will mesh up only with the handful of DM's that do.

The problem with this argument is that it applies to everything. Some DM's define ranger slightly differently. There are lots of ranger re-designs to demonstrate this. Some DM's define Speak With Dead slightly differently. I can point you to the thread. Do the combat rules define things that should be indefinate? Again, I can point you to threads that include arguments that they do (the claim being, invariably, that some DMs see this aspect of combat or that aspect of combat slightly differently).

There is nothing in the game to which your general argument does not apply.

When WotC overhauled AD&D 2nd Ed to create 3.0, they didn't say some rule X "won't be very useful at all to a DM that doesn't agree with their definition" of Y. They said instead, "Here is our definition of Y. Here is our rule X. You are allowed to change it if you like."

Go back to the 1st Ed ranger. What should a ranger be like? There's very little defined, so you're pretty open to interpret the rules however you like. 3.X is a lot more codified. Things are far better defined. In fact, where 3.X is weakest as a ruleset is where the authors have avoided strict definition. This definately includes the alignments.

Whether you like the idea of a tighter alignment description linked to mechanical benefits or not, surely you can see that the more clearly laid out a ruleset (or portion thereof) is, the easier it is to modify to your individual needs....or, at least, the easier it is to modify well.

A more codified, better integrated alignment system would also lower the need for the DM to make judgment calls, right?

Of course, once alignment was codified as well as everything else, tinkering and tweaking the alignment rules might be seen by some as a vanity, not a nessecity, and players may be reluctant to sign up for something that they may hate just because some guy really likes his own little defintions of good and evil. If you have someone who thinks lack of compassionate as a defining characteristic of evil is unrealistic and you show them a game using the All Alignments Are Exactly Equal system, they might be intrigued. But for the majority of players, if it ain't broke...


*****


It is interesting that you bring up the Book of Erotic Fantasy as a defense for your position. As I am sure is obvious, the reason that the BoEF is controversial at all is because it deals with subject matter that makes some people uncomfortable. It is almost as though you are suggesting that alignment definitions be dropped from the game because it makes some people uncomfortable.

Again, this is an argument that can be applied, to varying degrees, to anything in the game. Violence (i.e., combat) is offensive to some. A whole whack of people exist to whom anything resembling magic or a spellcasting system is abhorent. Or the suggestion of even fantasy "gods".

"Some people don't like it" is, once more, simply not a compelling argument against anything, because it applies to everything.


RC

 

[Shemeska]

Honestly unless you're on the outer planes where the very ground you walk on is composed of an abstract alignment made material, there shouldn't be much of a mechanical link to alignment. Except in those cases where alignment matters because you're literally walking around on it, and interacting with beings that exemplify it in its various flavors, there shouldn't be a mechanical link between alignment and stats/game mechanics.

I want a player to create an interesting character with personality, goals, and history whose actions and motivations flesh out an alignment for them; not their alignment dictating the character because they want a +2 bonus to AC.

Outside of very selective cases where it matters due to flavor inherent in the game (such as fiends, celestials, etc) I don't care to have alignment having much of a mechanical componant (Monks being Lawful for instance, I can see non lawful monks, even chaotic ones such as githzerai monks).

 

[Raven Crowking]

Honestly unless you're on the outer planes where the very ground you walk on is composed of an abstract alignment made material, there shouldn't be much of a mechanical link to alignment. Except in those cases where alignment matters because you're literally walking around on it, and interacting with beings that exemplify it in its various flavors, there shouldn't be a mechanical link between alignment and stats/game mechanics.

Of course, it also depends very much on what you want from your game. As an example, if you were devising a game world designed to replicate the feel of LotR (book, not movie) or Narnia (books, not movies/BBC TV series), alignment would definitely matter in a mechanical sense. Because Bilbo began his ownership of the Ring with an act of pity, he was spared much of its evil. Evil creatures in Narnia do not have magical healing powers, period...they have power to harm.

The question really is, where should the game world represent "magical logic" (which includes principles which may be of dubious value in the real world, such as "like produces like" [ex., most spell components, clerical spontaneous casting] and "shared identity through symbolism creates shared power" [ex., divine spellcasting, divine aspects, turn undead, familiars]) and where should it represent "real world logic" (including principles of dubious value in the game world, such as moral relativism)?


RC

 

[MerricB]

Interestingly, adding a mechanical bonus to an alignment choice doesn't imply that roleplaying is likewise improved or degraded. It makes the choice of alignment more significant, however. That's something I like.

Cheers!