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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 2661812" data-attributes="member: 2067">I don't think alignment should ever be a significant limitation on what you can excel at. I don't think alignment should dictate flavor or mechanics, and when is must (as it must, the theory goes, in the core rules), it should be as unobtrusive as possible (good heals, evil harms, in general terms, is quite unobtrusive). This is because alignment is a highly subjective rule, and it should be. Alignment isn't a constant force in the game the way Electricity is. Every DM rules differently on alignment, but we all use Electricity pretty much the same way. And one of the benefits of the alignment system as it is in the core is that it is flexible, multivalent, and subject to interpretaion. It has to be, to retain any meaning.Basically, I wouldn't be happy with alignments having any more bearing on mechanics than they already do (which I'm not entirely happy with, but accept as something the core rules must do). Any power available to one alignment should be available to every alignment equally. A menu would definately solve some of the problems of MoI. For instance, it would allow characters of the same alignment to have different things to contribute ot the party. But it would still limit archetypes. Which I'm MORE okay with, but still not entirely okay with.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> 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. I imagine a Trickery and Lightning cleric who used a dagger and specialized in illusions and deceptions with a shocking twist would be an entirely viable character, and should be. There's no reason for Thor to have some exclusive dominance on thunder and lightning. A dominance, yes. A popularity, yes. A world structured with that in mind. An exclusivity, no.However, we also run into the problem I mentioned above: every DM uses thunder and lightning in roughly the same way. No DM uses alignment in the same way as another DM. This is a feature of alignment that I feel is valuable, that should be preserved. You can "file the serial numbrs off" of alignment very easily. That is as it should be. It's also one of the problems with MoI. An armored knight can have a million and one variations on the theme. Proud paladin, repentant paladin, ranger/paladin, struggling paladin, paladin of peace, celestial paladin, local farmboy done well, rogue/paladin assassins of evil....there's hundreds of different ways to be a mounted knight. It's a solid archetype you can hang a million character ideas on.The Soulborn is not a very strong archetype. The flavor is muddled and the flexibility actually makes the problem worse, not better. And yet it's too inflexible to tolerate other alignments. It's flexible where it should be strongly defined (powers and archetype) and it's strongly defined where it should be most flexible (alignment). It feels entirely backwards to me, choosing an alignment and forcing that to become the archetype. And it's not just because I refuse to consider alignments as archetypes. I think using alignments as archetypes is directly harmful to D&D at the table in a way that it really isn't to the minis game. I've got no problem with the minis factions. But it doesn't fit well in the D&D game, where alignments are an add-on to the mechanics, not deeply ingrained in them. And that is a benefit of alignments as they work in D&D. The SHOULDN'T be deeply ingrained (unless an individual DM makes that choice).</blockquote>

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