Replacing "good" and "evil" [3.5]

[Godskook]

Ok, the champion of balance thread got me thinking about the alignment issues again, and how they kinda 'fizzle' when you try to apply aristotle-style 'balance' philosophy to it. The main problem being that "good" and "evil" are loaded words, and carry pre-prescribed ideas of who is right and wrong with them. So, first idea is to replace both with similar terms that would still, to the simple, rally similar messages, but present more debatable right/wrong scenarios when the situation becomes convoluted. One possibility would be Preservation(for what we now call Good) and Destruction(for Evil). Would that work?

[Halae]

not quite. The main focus on the moral alignments (good and evil) is wether you are selfish or selfless. You can be a pyromaniac sorcerer who is buddy-buddy with the building destroying Half-Ogre barbarian, both of whose greatest ambition is to kill every monster they can, and still be good. Yet, that is incredibly destructive. Or, you can be evil, while still trying to conserve what the world is. sure, you're trying to dominate it, but you don't want to be the ruler of nothing

...Wait, this sounds familiar...

[Godskook]

not quite. The main focus on the moral alignments (good and evil) is wether you are selfish or selfless. You can be a pyromaniac sorcerer who is buddy-buddy with the building destroying Half-Ogre barbarian, both of whose greatest ambition is to kill every monster they can, and still be good. Yet, that is incredibly destructive. Or, you can be evil, while still trying to conserve what the world is. sure, you're trying to dominate it, but you don't want to be the ruler of nothing

...Wait, this sounds familiar...

But the people you're describing sound like Belkar, Miko, Thog and Dan(from AGC). People who don't really find themselves on the good side of the alignment spectrum.

Besides, for "selfless", truly preserving person would want to preserve all others too, not just themselves. As for "selfish", to quote someone's sig: "Looking out for number 1 is a neutral attitude. Looking out for number 1 while crushing number 2 is evil" In D&D, ""Evil" implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others." (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/description.htm)

[Reluctance]

The GvE alignment axis is there solely to create a black and white morality for people who see reality's shades of gray as one of the reasons they want escapist fantasy. It's simplistic morality by design. Trying to add depth and complexity misses the point, when the best way to add those elements involves wholesale replacement/removal of the alignment system.

[Halae]

*sigh* and that is exactly where alignment arguments come in.

Alright, I'll give, save us about 7 angry posts and a moderators warning. Frankly, Preservation and Destruction might make pretty good alternatives, but keep in mind that this might make the players view them with NEW prejudices, depending on how the player interprets your words. flavor change can be just as catastrophic as mechanics change.

However, I would like to know how this turns out. you have my thumbs up.

[Lord_Gareth]

Check out the Color Wheel alignment replacement in my siggy and call it a day.

[Tiki Snakes]

Check out the Color Wheel alignment replacement in my siggy and call it a day.

You know what, it may mention 3.5 by name, but I think it's probably flexible and interesting enough that you could hang most editions, and probably a good range of other game systems altogether on the idea.

Very interesting stuff.

[Lord Raziere]

Or you can just replace "Good" with "Light" and "Evil" with "Darkness" and then just invoke "Light is not Good" and "Dark is not evil" whenever you feel like it.

In fact, why doesn't everyone just do that? You would still keep the "objective escapist" feeling without the alignment arguments, since Light and Dark are less about selfishness and selflessness and more about competing ways to see the world like idealism vs. cyncism.

[Lord_Gareth]

You know what, it may mention 3.5 by name, but I think it's probably flexible and interesting enough that you could hang most editions, and probably a good range of other game systems altogether on the idea.

Very interesting stuff.

My siggy link now goes to a new thread where you can actually post without necro!

[JonestheSpy]

The GvE alignment axis is there solely to create a black and white morality for people who see reality's shades of gray as one of the reasons they want escapist fantasy. It's simplistic morality by design. Trying to add depth and complexity misses the point, when the best way to add those elements involves wholesale replacement/removal of the alignment system.

Sorry, must disagree. Fantasy that involves capital G Good and Eeeeevil does not precludes shades of gray and moral complexity, that's an unfortunately common misconception. Look at Tolkien, for example. He's often labeled as simplistic by those who don't comprehend him at all, but reading the books gives us all these examples of elements that don't fit neatly into good/bad categories: Tom Bombabil, the Ents, Denethor, Boromir, the entire chapter 'The Scouring of the Shire', and of course above all others, Gollum.

I see having absolute/divine/incarnated/ etc Good and Evil in fantasy as additive, not reductionist. It brings in another layer to reality, one that doesn't exist at all in the real world; that doesn't mean it's just "escapist", it's about operating in the realm of myth and legend, hyper-reality, if you will. Now obviously in bad fantasy it is just a shortcut, so you can identify one team as the ones to root for while they slaughter anyone who gets in their way with no real "goodness" being demonstrated, and that's true for science fiction, westerns and any other genre. But we should be holding up the good stuff as the example to emulate, shouldn't we?

[Jolly]

In my campaigns I usually keep GvE, and just make those the extremes. Almost everyone is Neutral (for game mechanical effects like Magic Circle) and the two letters on their sheet is their self-perception. Being truly Good or Evil requires an informed, conscious choice. The informed part imho restricted it mostly to high level casters and outsiders ie beings who can see the planes as they are instead of being limited to the Prime Material. Of course I also didn't run with the standard "elventy billion poorly conceived planes" model.

[Godless_Paladin]

Ok, the champion of balance thread got me thinking about the alignment issues again, and how they kinda 'fizzle' when you try to apply aristotle-style 'balance' philosophy to it. The main problem being that "good" and "evil" are loaded words, and carry pre-prescribed ideas of who is right and wrong with them. So, first idea is to replace both with similar terms that would still, to the simple, rally similar messages, but present more debatable right/wrong scenarios when the situation becomes convoluted. One possibility would be Preservation(for what we now call Good) and Destruction(for Evil). Would that work?

Your alignment axis should be fitting to the setting you're operating in.
What "works" depends on what would click with and play off of the larger whole.

[hamishspence]

In D&D, ""Evil" implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others." (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/description.htm)

There's a separate category though:

"Evil characters debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit"

The question is whether a character who falls into the first category, and absolutely delights in hurting, oppressing, and killing not-innocent life, but doesn't fall into the second category, can be Evil.

I'd say if they are sadistic and psychopathic enough, even if they never harm the innocent, they can be Evil.

[Prime32]

Or you can just replace "Good" with "Light" and "Evil" with "Darkness" and then just invoke "Light is not Good" and "Dark is not evil" whenever you feel like it.

In fact, why doesn't everyone just do that? You would still keep the "objective escapist" feeling without the alignment arguments, since Light and Dark are less about selfishness and selflessness and more about competing ways to see the world like idealism vs. cyncism.This is what I do. An angel or a cleric of a good deity will register as Good even if they're a Complete Monster. Likewise paladins can smite necromancers even if they use their powers only to help people.

[jpreem]

I have a campaign world when I ruled that regular mortals are of Neutral alignment (for effects from spells and the like - they can still be serial killers or humanitarian workers).
There are only two other "alignments" Celestial and Infernal that are applied to outsiders, magical creatures and high level clerics (and/or the ones who have made pacts/fallen onto the influence of said outsiders).
While an encountered infernal creatures will probably be quite Evil in the DnD sense you can't be so sure about Celestials either (main thing for both of them is to stomp each other - with Celestials sometimes having some guilt about "collateral damage" but Infernals probably not)

[hamishspence]

I have a campaign world when I ruled that regular mortals are of Neutral alignment (for effects from spells and the like - they can still be serial killers or humanitarian workers).
There are only two other "alignments" Celestial and Infernal that are applied to outsiders, magical creatures and high level clerics (and/or the ones who have made pacts/fallen onto the influence of said outsiders).

The third party splatbook Quintessenial Paladin 2 mentioned several types of levels of "what creatures detect as Evil".

This was the third- "only creatures with Evil subtype, and blackguards/evil clerics of evil gods"

The first two was "evil everywhere" (roughly 1/3 of population detect as evil) and "evil is rare" (most beings that detect as evil are "either a criminal, a terrible and wilful sinner, or both").

And only in the last of the three, was "killing beings that detect as evil on sight" considered justified.

[dsmiles]

I did away with the effectiveness of alignment-based spells and such, except for outsiders and a few other creatuers. I use a 'shades of gray' morality system. Still based on the nine-point alignment scale, but lots of good vs. good, and stuff like that. The paladin's smite evil and detect evil work differently. Detect evil = detect evil intent, simte evil = smite evil or heretic (heretics being anyone with one/both components of their alignment reversed when compared to the paladin's example: the Paladin of Justice (LG Paladin) could smite anyone who is: CG, CN, CE, NE, LE but not N, LN, NG or LG).

[Yora]

I like the idea of the Open Palm and Closed Fist alignments from Jade Empire.
Open Palm believes that the best way to influence events and people is giving light incentives and offering support and guidance. Closed Fist is the philosophy of taking control and forcing things to become as it is neccessary. The Open Palm is kind and friendly and takes care of the needy, but may be ineffective in times of urgency and could allow the wrong people too much free reign, while Closed Fist takes immediate action and supports strong and efficient organization, but may also be cruel and uncaring.

Too bad the game completely forgot about it after the first half hour and made them just Light Side/Dark Side.

[Calmar]

Check out the Color Wheel alignment replacement in my siggy and call it a day.

That's really cool. :smallsmile:

[Korias]

Too bad the game completely forgot about it after the first half hour and made them just Light Side/Dark Side.

Well, said game was also made by the same guys that made KoToR, so I'm not exactly surprised that it ended up that way.

OT: With every alignment discussion, there needs to be a realization that the purpose of the alignment system isn't to give you a hardcoded morality. Specifically, it's to enable certain abilities (Protection from Good, Magic Circle against Evil, Word of Law, ect.) and then provide a loose guideline for you to RP off of.

[hamishspence]

Yup- sometimes the "good guys" could actually be in a position where:

there are Neutral people who have done things the good guys feel obliged to punish them for, and there are Evil people who haven't done these things.

D&D isn't all Good vs Evil.

[Zeofar]

Yeah, good and evil are loaded words, but I assume that you can get past that, and everyone you play with if solid definitions of what they mean in D&D are laid down. Good people implicitly or explicitly respect the rights of others. Evil people implicitly or explicitly disrespect or ignore the rights of others. Done. If you don't like my definitions, just come up with something else, but the bottom line is that things go better if you just set down concrete definitions rather than try to find words that "capture the meaning." Furthermore, setting down concrete meanings doesn't mean that there isn't room for debate, it just means that the players are debating about the same thing.

[hamishspence]

When it comes to the alignment system- I like to work with what the books (PHB, DMG, and splatbooks) say, and see if some quite interesting and complex characters can be created that still follow what some of the books state.

This example, with a LN Villain, a LE Antihero, and a LG Hero, may illustrate my point:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9674233&postcount=154

[Zeofar]

When it comes to the alignment system- I like to work with what the books (PHB, DMG, and splatbooks) say, and see if some quite interesting and complex characters can be created that still follow what some of the books state.

This example, with a LN Villain, a LE Antihero, and a LG Hero, may illustrate my point:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9674233&postcount=154

Buuuuuut... The alignment system literally has nothing to do with that interaction. You have some properly aligned characters who act within their alignment, but they are still nothing more than a good guy, a functionally neutral guy, and a bad guy. You don't have to bring alignment into it to handle that.

P.S. What exactly does "innocents" denote in this exchange, by the way?

[Godless_Paladin]

I like the idea of the Open Palm and Closed Fist alignments from Jade Empire.
Open Palm believes that the best way to influence events and people is giving light incentives and offering support and guidance. Closed Fist is the philosophy of taking control and forcing things to become as it is neccessary. The Open Palm is kind and friendly and takes care of the needy, but may be ineffective in times of urgency and could allow the wrong people too much free reign, while Closed Fist takes immediate action and supports strong and efficient organization, but may also be cruel and uncaring.


Too bad the game completely forgot about it after the first half hour and made them just Light Side/Dark Side.

Yeah, that sucked. It had potential and they just tossed it out the window. I think there was only like one mission where they played the Closed Fist as something more substantial than "lol, evulz."

In any case, it's a perfect example of what I was saying earlier (or it would be, if it didn't degenerate into Light/Dark side in the actual game). You should custom-fit your alignment axis to your setting. What your alignment axis should look like depends entirely on what kind of story you're trying to tell and what your world is like.

[hamishspence]

Buuuuuut... The alignment system literally has nothing to do with that interaction. You have some properly aligned characters who act within their alignment, but they are still nothing more than a good guy, a functionally neutral guy, and a bad guy. You don't have to bring alignment into it to handle that.

P.S. What exactly does "innocents" denote in this exchange, by the way?

From the point of view of the LE antihero, "innocents" means, in general, those who haven't done a certain subset of acts, specifically:

"harming others for profit or pleasure, who have done nothing to warrant being harmed"

He also considers that people who harm the innocent without exceptionally good reason, even if they never harm others for profit or pleasure, lose "innocent" status.

These are the "innocents" he is unwilling to harm.
But, he is willing to do horrible, horrible things to those who are not "the innocent"- and he enjoys it, enormously.

Think of him as someone who has the traits "hatred" and "compassion" both in immense quantities.

Hatred, drives him to punish with extreme cruelty, those who harm the innocent, and especially, those who do so for profit or pleasure.

Compassion, drives him to never harm the innocent, and protect them where possible.

He will do evil deeds- but only to those he sees as harmers of the innocent.

He was once an innocent victim of evildoers- and this has led to to become someone of great hatred and sadism, who enacts horrible revenge on those who harm the innocent. But also, someone who has great compassion for victims of such harm.


You don't have to bring alignment into it to handle that.

The issue about alignment, is that:

"a person who does evil deeds to the not-innocent, for pleasure" could possibly be evil without ever being willing to harm the innocent.

But, a paladin's code only demands that they "punish those who harm or threaten innocents".

A paladin couldn't use Smite Evil on the neutral villain, who has harmed the innocent (and who their code obliges them to punish)

But they could use Smite Evil on the evil antihero (though their code wouldn't actually oblige them to punish the antihero for their "evil deeds").

So, you can break the normal assumption that evil-aligned characters are people your Good character is going to have to fight.

[Callista]

You're going to have to replace the alignment system entirely. Alignment has to be absolute if it has real effects in the setting.

If alignment is not absolute, then it doesn't exist in any mechanical way--it's merely a matter of opinion, a philosophical concept, and the terms "good" and "evil" can be replaced at will with the terms "socially acceptable" and "socially unacceptable". Since the meaning of those terms changes depending on the society, absolute game mechanics wouldn't work with them. What would be (non-absolute) good for a Drow might be (non-absolute) evil for a human; so you can't ever say that a character is "good" or "evil", and that means you can't determine whether a character is going to be affected by that Detect Evil or whether that Unholy weapon gets extra damage on him. (And no, you can't just say that society is whatever society they come from--what do you do about outcasts and people from multiple cultures, like half-orcs or half-elves?)

If you want to dump alignment and replace it with a similar system that doesn't have anything to do with morality, you could try replacing it with something like this:
1. Everyone has a patron deity. They choose the deity; or else they default to their racial or class deity. This includes non-devout and even atheist characters (atheism is quite possible if the gods are distant).
2. Your alignment system is now a single axis of Devotion. Your character is either Devoted, Neutral, or Infidel. These are judged depending on how well your character conforms to the ideals of his deity. Switching deities means your Devotion also changes.
3. Changing the mechanics: Law and Good are re-named Devotion; Chaos and Evil are re-named Infidel. And yes, that means that your Devoted cleric of Gruumsh (CE orc deity) is now affected by what used to be Smite Good. Paladins and clerics now have to remain Devoted to their deity or their deity's ideals. Explicit devotion to the deity is not necessary to remain Devoted, but devotion to the deity's ideals is. Infidel characters are highly likely to switch patron deities.

I don't recommend this idea to any group running epic-level games where the PCs may well interact with their deities. D&D gods are changeable; and if they change, the PC's Devotion may change without any action on his part, risking his class powers if they depend on alignment.

[Callista]

Wrong. Is a polygraph test absolute? Does it have real effects? Does it measure actual forces that exist in the world?What?... What do polygraphs have to do with it? All they do is measure how anxious you are.

If you were to use an alignment system based on how right YOU thought you were, then Good would just be a matter of self-esteem. People would show up as "evil" just because they felt guilty about not saving a hundred orphans instead of ninety-nine, and show up as "good" just because they felt they were completely justified in committing genocide to protect their hometowns.

How would you solve this under a subjective alignment system?
Assume that each person is acting in accordance with their own beliefs.
Alice has just killed someone. She believes that it was the right thing to kill this person.
Bob sees her do it and believes it was wrong to kill this person, so he aims a Holy Smite at Alice.

Whose subjective belief system wins? Does the Holy Smite do maximum damage because Bob believes Alice is Evil? Or does it fail to do damage, because Alice believes she is Good? And what happens if Alice aims a Holy Smite of her own at Bob, for trying to stop her from doing what she believes is Good?

There has to be an impartial reference that applies to both equally before you can answer that question.

[Godless_Paladin]

What?... What do polygraphs have to do with it? All they do is measure how anxious you are. That's "Detect Lies." The point is that you don't need an absolute omniscient measure of honesty in order for "Detect Lies" to exist in a meaningful mechanical way.

The same goes for alignment. There does not have to be clear-cut absolute morality in order to have a mechanically relevant alignment system.


If you were to use an alignment system based on how right YOU thought you were

Why do you automatically assume just one way to do it? I can think of many, and "how right you thought you were" wasn't actually on my list.

[Callista]

You can use many different absolute reference points. You could say that alignment is based on a certain set of philosophical ideas, or on a different set. You could say that there's an overdeity who defines alignment. You could say that alignment is based on how closely you're associated with alignment-related planes, and that certain actions associate you more or less closely. You can use many different reference points--but any given world has to use only one such reference point. It has to be an absolute reference point; otherwise you get internal contradictions and alignment loses its meaning.

The reference point for "Detect Lies" is the person it's being cast on. The spell will, for example, mark a statement as a lie if you think it is false but it's actually true. "Detect Lies" doesn't detect absolute truth; it detects a person's belief about the truth of what he's saying--if it detected absolute truth, you could just cast it on your buddy and get answers to any question you liked. An alignment-detecting spell similar to that would be a spell that measured whether someone thought he was doing the right thing, whether or not he actually was.

[John Campbell]

How would you solve this under a subjective alignment system?
Assume that each person is acting in accordance with their own beliefs.
Alice has just killed someone. She believes that it was the right thing to kill this person.
Bob sees her do it and believes it was wrong to kill this person, so he aims a Holy Smite at Alice.

Whose subjective belief system wins? Does the Holy Smite do maximum damage because Bob believes Alice is Evil? Or does it fail to do damage, because Alice believes she is Good? And what happens if Alice aims a Holy Smite of her own at Bob, for trying to stop her from doing what she believes is Good?

In my alignment-free system, both Smites work, but both Alice and Bob are in danger of falling if whatever power is granting them the ability to Smite doesn't agree that using it was justified. If they're not followers of the same power (and possibly even if they are, though plausible circumstances for it are likely to be rare... maybe if they both follow a god of war who doesn't much care who's getting smited, as long as someone is), and their respective powers both support their actions, they can quite easily have a Smite fight until one of them goes down.

[Callista]

So you're replacing alignment with a system of how devoted you are to your deity? OK, that I can get. You're basically just moving alignment based powers to devotion-based powers. But this doesn't necessarily introduce relative morality into the game; it just allows morality to be independent of the game mechanics. (If you go into the philosophy of it, of course, even in the real world, Evil and Good are meaningless as concepts if they are not independent of people's opinions; so you're not removing Good and Evil from the game; you're just removing them from the mechanics.) All I can say is: You'd better define exactly how the system works, because if you don't, your homebrew rules are going to make this ridiculously confusing.

[dsmiles]

How would you solve this under a subjective alignment system?
Assume that each person is acting in accordance with their own beliefs.
Alice has just killed someone. She believes that it was the right thing to kill this person.
Bob sees her do it and believes it was wrong to kill this person, so he aims a Holy Smite at Alice.

Whose subjective belief system wins? Does the Holy Smite do maximum damage because Bob believes Alice is Evil? Or does it fail to do damage, because Alice believes she is Good? And what happens if Alice aims a Holy Smite of her own at Bob, for trying to stop her from doing what she believes is Good?

There has to be an impartial reference that applies to both equally before you can answer that question.

In the subjective alignment system I use , only outsiders, intelligent undead and really powerful monsters (i.e. Dragons, some abberrations, Fey, etc) have absolute alignements. You can't just go around casting Holy Smite at people. It just doesn't work. I mean, sure, the spell goes off, but she would only take half damage (a quarter on a save). Under this system, most humanoids, animals, giants, etc. aren't strongly aligned enough to be affected by holy smite and similar spells. Now, if Alice was really a succubus in disguise...