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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Haltherrion" data-source="post: 5249759" data-attributes="member: 18253"> I think there is a lot of merit to the concept. The example I always used for this was a member of an assassins guild. Within it the members may act very lawfully and to some extent might even be considered neutral or even good in terms of the sacrifices they are willing to make for others in the order. To the outside world, they might seem chaotic and evil. Is the character L/E? L/N? C/E? A case could be made for many if you have to go with one alignment system. But alignment serves multiple purposes: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A short hand description of certain aspects of how a character may act. Lawful people will tend to follow the rules. An evil person will tend to act out of self interest. Alignment has been bashed a lot over the years, but I've always liked that short hand label. It has its utility. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">In some D&D editions, alignment manifests itself in the game mechanics (e.g., a lawful caster cannot summon chaotic creatures) and therefore seems to represent some fundamental nature of the creature.</li> </ul>In the first use, as with any model, you can extend and refine it to allow for more cases. While the examples you and I have used exist, they in the end were always rare enough that it never seemed worth it to me extending the alignment system. Rather, the character or NPC description can go into the necessary detail.  In the second case, one could argue more refinement is needed but instead, I would argue that all our example characters could still be pigeonholed for "alignment affinity" with a single alignment. The assassin for instance strikes me as lawful with respect to how he would interact with law/chaos magic. He clearly is a very regimented individual to have thrived in the assassins guild and chaos magic should not have much affinity for him. That said, I'm not a super fan of D&D 3.5 aligned spell affects and am perfectly happy without them. I was a little disappointed with 4E's alignment system; I like the first use I listed for alignment and find it a useful shorthand. Naturally, more complex characters require more than an alignment to describe them but it has its place. On that note, however, I have for a long time defined alignment as:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Law/chaos: does the character value custom and expected behavior when deciding his actions? </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Good/evil: does the character value the well being of others when deciding his actions?</li> </ul>This puts alignment in "observable" terms and makes it useful, as a ref, when determining NPC actions. You could get into whether alignment is based only on observed behavior or what goes on in a character's head. I prefer the latter since in the end, this is a tool I used for ref’ing and it helps me decide what the actor will do but you could go with the former. In that case, it raises the question, if an "evil" character acts "good" for the rest of his life, is he really evil? </blockquote>

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