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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 2662953" data-attributes="member: 2067">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.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.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. 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 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).</blockquote>

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