One of my players suggested something regarding good/evil and law/chaos... thoughts?

[AnonymousPepper]

First off, this is very much a non-serious, metagame-y sort of campaign, so that's something that needs to be stated before I go on.

Anyway, he suggested - in light of his hypothetically doing something absolutely awful that he ultimately did not do - that there should be a proper score system for good/evil and law/chaos. Something akin to the karma meter for good/neutral/evil characters in Fallout, perhaps, wherein the DM would assign actions that would affect alignment a score that would shift the player along on the scale. Naturally, there'd be cutoff points for being within a certain alignment. Thinking this through further, my immediate thought was maybe +/-1500, with +/-500 being neutral, and Vile/Exalted being special as always.

The immediate benefit for me as a DM would be having this function as somewhat of a reputation system for the PCs, who will be interacting with a lot of important people and figures, and where reputation will prove extremely important for the players for the next, oh, say, eight or so levels (an important part of the current campaign arc will be negotiating alliances with varying nations of Golarion).

What does the Playground think about this?

[Vhaidara]

Well, I would do 2 meters: Reputation and Karma.

Karma is just what you do, similar to Fallout. Reputation is what people know about/can prove.

For an example of when they are different: Stealing something and not getting caught would shift Karma, but not Reputation.

[Crake]

First off, this is very much a non-serious, metagame-y sort of campaign, so that's something that needs to be stated before I go on.

Anyway, he suggested - in light of his hypothetically doing something absolutely awful that he ultimately did not do - that there should be a proper score system for good/evil and law/chaos. Something akin to the karma meter for good/neutral/evil characters in Fallout, perhaps, wherein the DM would assign actions that would affect alignment a score that would shift the player along on the scale. Naturally, there'd be cutoff points for being within a certain alignment. Thinking this through further, my immediate thought was maybe +/-1500, with +/-500 being neutral, and Vile/Exalted being special as always.

The immediate benefit for me as a DM would be having this function as somewhat of a reputation system for the PCs, who will be interacting with a lot of important people and figures, and where reputation will prove extremely important for the players for the next, oh, say, eight or so levels (an important part of the current campaign arc will be negotiating alliances with varying nations of Golarion).

What does the Playground think about this?

I think something like this would be a pain to keep track of, just run it touch and go, no need to assign numeric values to things

[AnonymousPepper]

Y'know, you're probably right, Crake. Quick and to the point.

[P.F.]

Y'know, you're probably right, Crake. Quick and to the point.

That said though, the umm, Nine Hells book? Blanking on the name as it was stolen form me couple years back, had the nice red cloth endpaper, anyhow, it had a system for corrupting characters, with numeric point values. For things like administering lawfully ordered executions, and so on. IIRC the point was to try to turn chaotic or neutral evil characters to lawful evil, and if they did too many lawful things, BAM! they go to Hell instead of the Abyss when they die.

This is specifically for the gradual, incremental corruption of characters who are not aware of the supernatural import of their alignment actions. Also because it's easy to tell what is an unspeakably evil act (for must of us) but judging what is "severely lawful" or "egregiously neutral" is sometimes harder.

[Oracle_of_Void]

I wouldn't like a numeric system like that because it assigns cold, hard math into something as natural as morality. It works in video games because there's no better way to do it. In a tabletop, I think its better to play it by ear.

[ZamielVanWeber]

That said though, the umm, Nine Hells book?.

Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells. And yes, I love that score keeping system for lawful/evil acts. Pacts Insidious are dangerous even to adventurers.