Alignmentless Pathfinder game

[Man on Fire]

Preparing for my first time DMing in Pathfinder I decided that one of the rules in my games will be removal of alignment. I need a full list of mechanics that require change in order for it to work.

What I have so far:

- Detect X - Detect unnatural infulences on person, that are of specific nature. aasimars automatically trigger Detect good for example.
- Protection from X, magic Circle Against X, Smite X - all now works against what person making them would define as X. Paladin's Smite Evil works on enemies who Paladin considers Evil, Cleric casting Protection from Chaos protects him from people he considers chaotic.
- Conceal Alignment - now lets you hide any traces of unnatural infulence, say having made deal with devil

Anything else that needs fixing?

[Crustypeanut]

Hmmm.. this would be difficult to impliment properly, as D&D basically uses Alignment as a definitive force in the that can be detected and manipulated.

Having spells affect people 'the caster thinks has done evil things or w/e' is a bit wierd.. as what if two Paladins smite Evil on each other, as they believe the other is evil?

I would probably just do a way with alignment based spells and change it to be generic, as for example:


Protection from Enemy - The usual bonuses are against anyone that the caster or castee considers hostile, or even someone who considers the person with the spell hostile or an enemy.

Detect Enemy - Detects if anyone in the influenced area considers the caster an enemy.

Smite Enemy - As per the ability, but only if the SMITEE considers the SMITER an actual enemy. This way, it won't be "Smite Evil" accidently smiting someone thats not evil, it'll simply be them smiting an enemy. Plus, this way, the Smiter won't accidently smite someone who doesn't deserve to be smited, because that person doesn't consider the smiter an enemy.

And so on and so forth for all alignment based spells.

Thoughts?

[sdream]

I also find alignment an unnatural albatross on proper roleplaying.

I'm about 10 sessions into a game I'm running without it and have not missed it at all.

My players have chosen to be plenty heroic and honorable on their own.

My players are thinking before judging others based solely on race.

The paranoid paladin still uses detect evil a lot.

I decided unlike your unnatural influence measure, detect evil should reveal if a creature has opposing goals and how much it would care about the wellbeing of the caster.

Anything that will oppose you and doesn't at all if you die is evil, as far as you are concerned. Sometimes your neighbor is more evil than the demon who shares an enemy with you.

[Man on Fire]

Those suggestions sounds interesting. Is there anything else aside spells that I need to change?

[Crustypeanut]

Alignment-based Damage Reduction.

However, you can keep Holy and Unholy despite this, as Holy doesn't necessarily mean Good. Instead it could be thought of as 'pure and unpure' axis - thematically very similar to good and evil, but not alignment based.

So, instead of DR/Good it would be DR/Holy, instead of DR/Evil it would be DR/Unholy.

For Law/Chaos.. I'm not sure how you'd go about that.

[sdream]

I would convert alignment based DR to Positive/Negative energy, and turn Law/chaos into "psuedo-elementals" as well:

Stasis and entropy sound about right, or order and corruption if you prefer.

Angels can be quite ruthless, and the positive energy plane can be quite deadly.

[Blue Lantern]

@Crustypeanut
I personally consider this borderline sentient spell weird at best; I mean if those spells can distinguish friend from foe to the precision to know if the target consider the caster an enemy, which also presume the victim knows who the caster is, why don't spells like fireball make this distinction as well.

I personally will just make those kind of spells effective only against outsiders or creatures with the correct subtype, much like spells like sunburst are mostly effective only against undead, solution witch, i believe, has already been suggested before.

[sdream]

Spells like fireball use all their "complexity" transferring a great deal of energy a great distance rapidly, and then applying it to great destruction.

Detect spells literally ONLY allow you to judge the mind of another.

It's like detect thoughts, only without stealing actual thoughts, just inclinations... Like you are pressing your mind up against theirs and seeing how well they match, and sensing their reaction to you.

EDIT - Oops I see you meant the alignment damage spells.

Well, think of it like fireball - that spell is automatically useless against Fire immune creatures.

An alignment specific attack works by slamming your traits into them... if they have no issue with you, this is annoying perhaps, but harmless. On the other hand if they are different from you (wether they are actually a foe or just a frenemy) this could be damaging.

As belkar demonstrated a few comics ago - sometimes alignment spells hit your party too, or miss your "foe".