Dynamic Alignment System [3.5]

[LaughingRogue]

I'm looking to build a dynamic alignment system based around points where certain actions either add or subtract from each side of the alignment axis...

Was hoping this would be a fun topic for the playground to help out with,

Any ideas?

Laughing Rogue

[Kojiro]

Sounds sort of like a karma meter from a video game; not that that's a bad thing, just a way of explaining it or something to compare it too. [Edit: Warning, extreme lack of brevity ahead.]

Well, let's see. For one, you should probably "penalize" evil actions more than you reward most good ones; as an example, killing an innocent person for his stuff is not immediately offset by saving another group of people for no reward; this is an area where the video game karma meters fail, as you could murder an entire village and stay "good" because you did a lot of other things. On that topic, killing bad things shouldn't be inherently good, since there could be non-good reasons (like bloodlust and enjoying causing pain) to go around killing things. Not that this should be a slippery slope into Evil for everyone; I'm just saying that someone who goes and deliberately ruins a bunch of peoples' lives is rather obviously not Good, and shouldn't be able to buy themselves into the alignment with a lot of small things. Also, if any player tries to argue you declaring him evil with something like, "But I only sacrificed one orphan, this isn't fair!" you may want to give him time to think about exactly what he said. If he still doesn't get it... Well, that's up to you I guess. Hitting him is probably not a good idea, satisfying though it may be, though.

The way I would imagine this, sort of, is... Well, first, take the alignment grid. Then, make it go from 2D to 3D, with it indenting over True Neutral, forming a sort of bowl; it's easier to go from Good (or Lawful or Chaotic, or even Evil if you're not that bad) to Neutral than it is from Neutral to Good (and so on). While people can start in a non-Neutral alignment, they're not necessarily going to stay there. The average person is, allegedly, True Neutral, and rather than just being bland, most people tend to be rather inconsistent (and not in the Chaotic way), sometimes acting based on one thing, sometimes doing the opposite. Also, almost everyone prefers good to evil, as the Player's Handbook says, but that doesn't make them themselves Good (another reason why what I said in the previous paragraph is important). DnD Good goes beyond simply disliking Evil and into things like altruism and such.

Now, going back into something related to where I started this, you could have some "alignment locks", so to speak, where, due to some majorly evil/unlawful/unchaotic/whatever action, or just being consistently against the alleged alignment, a person is "barred" from that alignment, regardless of the "points" they have. Becoming Good (or whatever else) again would take more than just getting enough points, they have to actually adopt the right behavior and change and such, and possibly repent for whatever they did depending on exactly why they're locked out. Sort of like re-becoming a paladin I guess, except you're not really barred from class features (presumably) and probably don't need a spell to help fix it. I mean, slaughtering the aforementioned village is pretty evil, and even if you act as a good person after that, unless you regret doing that and know that it was wrong (or at least terrible, since someone is probably thinking of a situation that would force you into that somehow), you're probably still not Good.

Note that, for obvious reasons, the above doesn't really apply to Evil, at least not on the higher levels of it. Sure, you can do good things sometimes, but if you still go on serial killing sprees and such I don't think people can ask, "But is he really evil?" Likewise, it's hard to apply this to Chaotic, although not as hard as it is Evil; depending on how you look at it, even Lawful doesn't fall under this, with only Good being the thing you can act like without truly being such, due to... Well, I think I've already explain that, really.

One last thing, if you wanted, you could have certain things only available to people within a certain alignment range; for example, someone just a few points over Neutral wouldn't qualify for every Good spell/ability/item, and so on. There could even be things that required one to be especially Neutral, for some reason. It's not necessary, but it's possible, and the system already deals with things in terms of points anyway.

So, yeah. That's... Well, that's a way to do it, at least. I know I typed a lot, but it's not really that complex. Feel free to use or ignore the ideas presented here as you see fit.

[Cerlis]

yea i'd imagine you'd have a moderate area that was good a huge area that was neutral, then evil, then really evil (the difference between a corrupt businessman who ruins the lives of lesser businessmen, and a murderer)

[Lord_Gareth]

I'm not sure any point-based system would really work out for 3.5's already weary and savaged alignment system; what are you hoping to get out of such a project? Knowing might help us advise you better.

Obligatory color wheel (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=174163) plug!

[LaughingRogue]

I'm not sure any point-based system would really work out for 3.5's already weary and savaged alignment system; what are you hoping to get out of such a project? Knowing might help us advise you better.

Obligatory color wheel (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=174163) plug!

I was hoping to make Barbarian's Alignment mean more than what is written on his character sheet and I don't want to just trust that the player will play it correctly

I want to be able to enforce the Barbarian Alignment restriction with more than just "well I don't think you've been playing it correctly, so you lose all of your abilities" --- I would like a tangible system to be able to point to when making such judgements and changing alignments.

[Kefkafreak]

Neverwinter Nights 2 used a system like this.

[Divide by Zero]

I was hoping to make Barbarian's Alignment mean more than what is written on his character sheet and I don't want to just trust that the player will play it correctly

If you don't think the barbarian is playing his alignment correctly, then change his alignment. That's how the system already works. Trying to assign arbitrary point values to every single action is far more trouble than it's worth.

[Lord_Gareth]

I was hoping to make Barbarian's Alignment mean more than what is written on his character sheet and I don't want to just trust that the player will play it correctly

I want to be able to enforce the Barbarian Alignment restriction with more than just "well I don't think you've been playing it correctly, so you lose all of your abilities" --- I would like a tangible system to be able to point to when making such judgements and changing alignments.

I'd deeply appreciate more details as to your specific problem; I've often debated alignment both on these boards and in the real world, so I like to think I may be qualified to help you navigate through the (admittedly flawed) system.

[hamishspence]

This site:

http://easydamus.com/alignmenttracking.html

has an example of alignment tracking- and in the individual alignment descriptions elsewhere, there are lists of acts for DMs to assign ratings to.

[Taelas]

This is a huge undertaking. Tracking every action a player does to find out his current alignment is a monumental task.

It is much easier to simply make a rough estimate of the alignment as you go along, since most of those actions will depend on your personal view on the matter anyway.

Kojiro, it is not possible to have a Good character who slays an entire village, even in 'video game' karma systems (especially since those systems generally have limits on how 'Good' or 'Evil' you can be). What you are describing is a character who becomes Evil, then becomes Good, then becomes Evil, etc. Not the most stable of character concepts, but possible.

[NNescio]

This is a huge undertaking. Tracking every action a player does to find out his current alignment is a monumental task.

It is much easier to simply make a rough estimate of the alignment as you go along, since most of those actions will depend on your personal view on the matter anyway.

Kojiro, it is not possible to have a Good character who slays an entire village, even in 'video game' karma systems (especially since those systems generally have limits on how 'Good' or 'Evil' you can be). What you are describing is a character who becomes Evil, then becomes Good, then becomes Evil, etc. Not the most stable of character concepts, but possible.

Most video game "karma meters" work exactly the way Kojiro describes it. Or as the way Tvtropes puts it:


Except for the Golden Snitch event, typically no act is more than three or five times more evil or good than any other. This leads to the odd situation where a character with a perfect record of finding lost pets and helping old ladies with their groceries can bludgeon a school bus of Girl Scouts to death and pour napalm on their corpses while singing hymns to Satan and scarfing down a stack of Kitten Burgers and at worst go from "saintly" to "very good" on the Karma Meter. And unless the Karma changes are limited to plot events, go right back to "saintly" by killing some monsters or giving money to beggars.

[Taelas]

Yeah, no. Killing "an entire school bus full of Girl Scouts" isn't one act, it's an entire school bus full of 'em. I must not have played these games, but the karma systems I am aware of treat each killing act as separate.

[Kojiro]

Actually, if it's an event for the plot or a mission or something, such a thing could in fact be considered one event by the game's system, and thus deal a preset sum of points.

And, well, yes, it is entirely possible to have a Good serial killer in quite a few video games, for the little sense this makes; heck, I specifically used the town-destroyer example because of Fallout 3, and how you can detonate an unexploded nuke in the center of a town, and later with some mild grinding against regular enemies, have your karma represented by Jesus. Which, obviously, is a bad thing, hence why I wrote about how a system you make should not allow for it. Also why I warned against making killing normal enemies worth good points; some games, you have to actively work to be considered evil, because everything you're killing for the plot pushes you towards good, the Fable series being a prime example (it also allows for the other thing mentioned here). Brought both of these things up for the express purpose of making sure they're avoided here.

[hamishspence]

Fiendish Codex 2 treats afterlife destination (at least in the case of Baator) as something different from alignment.

"level grinding" or for that matter "a total, genuine repentance and change of outlook"- might change the character's alignment- but it doesn't change afterlife destination- to do that, the character has to atone specifically for the acts that caused their being condemned to Baator in the first place.

That said, a character who dies genuinely repentant but not (yet) having atoned- does get a second chance- as a Hellbred.

The DMG points out that if the player says "My character is now (another alignment)" the DM should be asking them to prove it- to cite actions that are indicative of an alignment change- and that actions are more important than intentions.

So- the outlook change may not be enough on its own- actions may need to be done as well.

[LansXero]

Perhaps this would help?

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2739526/D%26D/Algiment.jpg

[big teej]

unless the player is playing an exalted barbarian...

the only part of his alignment you have to really get hung up on class wise is "lawful"

if he is non-lawful, he's in the clear as a barbarian, he can have ANY other alignment.

and in all honesty, if someone is having that much trouble NOT being lawful... maybe stick them in a class that requires lawful, they'll likely thrive.