D&D 3.5 vs. Pathfinder - Why did they change alignment?

[atemu1234]

I noticed going through pathfinder content that they stopped listing things as 'always', 'usually' or 'occasionally', why is that?

[legomaster00156]

A good variety of reasons, including but not limited to:


"Always evil" is a stupid concept, for anything except possibly fiends.
Racist origins behind the concepts of some races caused them to reconsider whether making entire species evil was really a good idea.
Nobody really played according to those listings, anyway.

[digiman619]

Because most "Always CE/LG/Whatever"-type races were due to cultural reasons rather than inherent ones; the whole Nature vs Nurture ideal. Generally, beings that don't have a choice (i.e, outsiders made of aligned material like Angels or Inevitables) don't have this qualifier, and beings that lack the intelligence to make moral decisions (i.e. animals) are TN.

[Psyren]

I noticed going through pathfinder content that they stopped listing things as 'always', 'usually' or 'occasionally', why is that?

Because it's unnecessary. "Typically" serves the same function - lets you know at a glance how a given creature will likely act or react towards the PCs - but it's less of a straitjacket this way.

To turn this around - do you think it's needed, and if so, why?

[Necroticplague]

Because they served no real purpose, and were somewhat dubious besides. Since any creature with free will to make moral choices can make choices to be however they want, they can be of any alignment. And things that lack the ability to make moral choices, don't make sense to apply alignment to. So assigning an alignment to a whole race is either pointless because they can run the whole gammut, or pointless because the concept doesn't really apply. Either way, it's pointless. Even 'always' only ever indicated 'most', and even demons could rise.