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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8489122" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>Hahahaha well isn't that a much, much bigger question that you're seeming to think?</p><p></p><p>There is a huge question in D&D as to whether alignment is "sum total of actions" or "how you think right now".</p><p></p><p>In older editions, there was strong evidence for "how you think right now" with stuff like the "Helm of Opposite Alignment". If alignment of the sum of actions, then, how could that work? How could you instantly become the opposite?</p><p></p><p>But it's not the sum of actions, you can repent on the spot and potentially have a "Road to Damascus" moment and change utterly, yet, if you did an awful lot of bad things, does that wipe the karmic debt? Do you instantly get on a path to the Upper Planes the moment you renounce Evil? Gary Gygax seemed to think so, because he said that if you murdered a bunch of Evil humanoids who had converted to LG on the spot they'd go to the Upper Planes (of course this begs huge questions about the impact on your own alignment, but he dismissed those).</p><p></p><p>Most people today aren't very comfortable with the notion that alignment can "turn on a dime", or that you're instantly not an alignment. You seem to agree - for you, did lots of Evil, now doing Good = Neutral, not Good. But that doesn't entirely make sense either, unless you see a sort of imaginary karmic slider.</p><p></p><p>Or yes, as [USER=7020832]@FrozenNorth[/USER] points out there's the 2E and earlier take where "Neutral" = "Does horribly Evil and amazingly Good things to 'balance out' stuff" which is absolutely bonkers (it makes some limited sense for Law/Chaos in a Moorcockian paradigm).</p><p></p><p>Computer games even have struggled with this. Mass Effect had Renegade and Paragon, which don't quite map to Evil and Good (more like John McClaine in a bad mood and Captain Picard), but they decided you could have both and both were separately tracked. Other games have tried to have straight morality-meters with just one linear axis and they're usually a disaster.</p><p></p><p>4E had an odd take too, where it kind of put alignment on a single axis but not quite. It was dumb anyway, except it had one genius thing - you didn't have to have an alignment. You could be "unaligned". That wasn't the same as committing to Neutrality or whatever, it was just saying "I'm not aiming to push any of these agendas, only my own". 5E retained unaligned but only for animals, changing its meaning.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 8489122, member: 18"] Hahahaha well isn't that a much, much bigger question that you're seeming to think? There is a huge question in D&D as to whether alignment is "sum total of actions" or "how you think right now". In older editions, there was strong evidence for "how you think right now" with stuff like the "Helm of Opposite Alignment". If alignment of the sum of actions, then, how could that work? How could you instantly become the opposite? But it's not the sum of actions, you can repent on the spot and potentially have a "Road to Damascus" moment and change utterly, yet, if you did an awful lot of bad things, does that wipe the karmic debt? Do you instantly get on a path to the Upper Planes the moment you renounce Evil? Gary Gygax seemed to think so, because he said that if you murdered a bunch of Evil humanoids who had converted to LG on the spot they'd go to the Upper Planes (of course this begs huge questions about the impact on your own alignment, but he dismissed those). Most people today aren't very comfortable with the notion that alignment can "turn on a dime", or that you're instantly not an alignment. You seem to agree - for you, did lots of Evil, now doing Good = Neutral, not Good. But that doesn't entirely make sense either, unless you see a sort of imaginary karmic slider. Or yes, as [USER=7020832]@FrozenNorth[/USER] points out there's the 2E and earlier take where "Neutral" = "Does horribly Evil and amazingly Good things to 'balance out' stuff" which is absolutely bonkers (it makes some limited sense for Law/Chaos in a Moorcockian paradigm). Computer games even have struggled with this. Mass Effect had Renegade and Paragon, which don't quite map to Evil and Good (more like John McClaine in a bad mood and Captain Picard), but they decided you could have both and both were separately tracked. Other games have tried to have straight morality-meters with just one linear axis and they're usually a disaster. 4E had an odd take too, where it kind of put alignment on a single axis but not quite. It was dumb anyway, except it had one genius thing - you didn't have to have an alignment. You could be "unaligned". That wasn't the same as committing to Neutrality or whatever, it was just saying "I'm not aiming to push any of these agendas, only my own". 5E retained unaligned but only for animals, changing its meaning. [/QUOTE]
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