Alignment Ideas

[Promethean]

Made an earlier thread about trying to change the alignment system for a campaign, thread ended up falling down the rabbit hole of what moral/ethical alignments mean and if there were any that weren't arbitrary to some extent.

Here's a new solution I think would work based on a system presented on PG. 30 of the Fiendish Codex 2. long story short, Alignment effectively becomes a popularity contest. Each axis represents how much the cosmic beings on the opposing sides of the alignment spectrum "favor" your character and their actions.

Each alignment is given a set of actions they "like" and doing those actions earns you (alignment type) "Points", your character's favor being tied to how many points they have. Point types are Corruption, Redemption, Obeisance, and Dissonance, all representing Evil, Good, Law, and Chaos Respectively. For easier book-keeping, doing an action that earns you one kind of points when you have a supply of the opposing side's points just looses you your original points(Example: A Lawful good cleric with 5 redemption points gets drunk one night and gets into a bar brawl. He takes it a bit too far and seriously injures a commoner. As he'd normally gain 3 corruption points at 0, but he looses 3 from his redemption point total and ends up at 2 redemption points).

After gaining 10 of any type of points you automatically move one spot in it's alignment direction and are reset to 0 points on that axis(example: player A has a true neutral character with 10 obeisance points and 5 redemption points, character's alignment is automatically changed to Lawful Neutral with 0 Obeisance points and 5 redemption points)

People/Races start Neutral with 0 points modified by class, this has nothing to do with any character's personal motivations.(Example:a monk starts lawful neutral because that actions taken to become a monk earned him law's favor, it does not imply the monk care one way or the other about the structures of society vs personal freedom).

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Since alignments can now be ignored by everyone but divine-caster types, I'm thinking of giving them a bonus for maintaining a high alignment score with their god's favored alignment. Like giving a Lawful Good paladin who also maintains a high Redemption score, beyond just what's necessary to be in the "Good" alignment, extra turn attempts or something.

[frogglesmash]

If the intention is to use assignments to track favor with divine beings, you could instead track actions that work for/against any given deity's portfolio, that way you wouldn't have to worry too much about moral philosophy.

[Climowitz]

Use magic color wheels. Dismiss good and evil in the Wheel. This would get you a significant good solution

[Promethean]

If the intention is to use assignments to track favor with divine beings, you could instead track actions that work for/against any given deity's portfolio, that way you wouldn't have to worry too much about moral philosophy.

Aren't there 30+ domains split among just the listed deities divine portfolio's though? Wouldn't you have to keep track of every action that each individual character has taken throughout the campaign and measure it against how those actions would be in line vs against each domains "ideal"? With how god's will have multiple domains with possibly conflicting ideals, Keeping track of all those individual deities approval and irritation with the characters seems like a lot more book keeping.

I may be overthinking that though.

[frogglesmash]

Aren't there 30+ domains split among just the listed deities divine portfolio's though? Wouldn't you have to keep track of every action that each individual character has taken throughout the campaign and measure it against how those actions would be in line vs against each domains "ideal"? With how god's will have multiple domains with possibly conflicting ideals, Keeping track of all those individual deities approval and irritation with the characters seems like a lot more book keeping.

I may be overthinking that though.

If system is intended to track a divine caster's relationship with their god, you'd only have to pay attention to one portfolio per divine casting character.

[JeenLeen]

Since alignments can now be ignored by everyone but divine-caster types, I'm thinking of giving them a bonus for maintaining a high alignment score with their god's favored alignment. Like giving a Lawful Good paladin who also maintains a high Redemption score, beyond just what's necessary to be in the "Good" alignment, extra turn attempts or something.

One built-in feature is the ability to do something contrary to one's alignment without risking 'falling'. For example, an extra-high Redemption-rank person winds up killing an innocent on purpose. (We can concoct any number of reasons it could make sense to, but let's say it was an easy way to prevent some evil or protect the PCs such that they could do more good later.) That would be enough to make some people become categorized as Evil, but this person remains Good. You could interpret it as pre-earned forgiveness.

On the other hand, something like that has a screw-up many morality systems have of letting folk 'stockpile' Good points to do something Evil when convenient. I'm thinking of some video game where you could do evil all day, then give coins to the poor to balance it out.

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But if you want to avoid that whole mess of potential loopholes, I think something like bonus turn attempts could work. To make it more general, something like a free reroll 1/day seems potentially better: it can apply to any class, and you don't have to spend time figuring out what's fair. (For example, that Extra Turn Attempts probably isn't great for a paladin with mediocre Charisma anyhow.)

[Promethean]

One built-in feature is the ability to do something contrary to one's alignment without risking 'falling'. For example, an extra-high Redemption-rank person winds up killing an innocent on purpose. (We can concoct any number of reasons it could make sense to, but let's say it was an easy way to prevent some evil or protect the PCs such that they could do more good later.) That would be enough to make some people become categorized as Evil, but this person remains Good. You could interpret it as pre-earned forgiveness.

Regardless of the system, someone will find a way to "Game" it. That would be meta-gaming though, how the heck is the character supposed to know how many "Good-guy points" they have? Besides, it sort of helps with some of the restricted nature of playing a paladin when situations where being the good guy breaks the law and vise versa.

I mostly made this system as a way to keep the D&D cosmology(which has Alignment baked into many of it's mechanics) without forcing people to play a stereotype. If you character's personal thought no longer correspond with alignment you can literally play anything and still have things like aligned planes and conjuration restrictions make sense. After all celestials not answering your summons if you burn orphanages regularly makes sense.

What I hated about alignment is how being lawful didn't just mean you kept your word and were willing to give up certain freedoms for a safer environment for your family, it also meant you had OCD, hated people who liked freedom, and were unable to learn how to cast spells using music. The system as-is limited you to playing 9 pre-selected personalities like the classes update in Star Wars Galaxies



But if you want to avoid that whole mess of potential loopholes, I think something like bonus turn attempts could work. To make it more general, something like a free reroll 1/day seems potentially better: it can apply to any class, and you don't have to spend time figuring out what's fair. (For example, that Extra Turn Attempts probably isn't great for a paladin with mediocre Charisma anyhow.)

I was more thinking of giving the bonus to divine casters as the system matters more for them than anyone else(you can't ignore loosing favor with your god the way a wizard can). Also, maybe change turn attempts to extra uses of smite for paladins? I don't really know, I don't play paladins enough to understand what would be worth going the extra mile for.

[jdizzlean]

if there were any that weren't arbitrary to some extent.

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they're all arbitrary to some point. about the only place it matters is spell selection, otherwise w/o 500x more attention paid to than neccessary, everyone is all alignments at some point in the game.

[Bohandas]

If the intention is to use assignments to track favor with divine beings, you could instead track actions that work for/against any given deity's portfolio, that way you wouldn't have to worry too much about moral philosophy.

I agree. For deities that definitely makes more sense

[Promethean]

If the intention is to use assignments to track favor with divine beings, you could instead track actions that work for/against any given deity's portfolio, that way you wouldn't have to worry too much about moral philosophy.

I agree. For deities that definitely makes more sense

(Sorry for late reply)The point of the system isn't to track alignment with specific deities, it's to track alignment in relation to the D&D verse at large.

D&D has a lot of mechanics the specifically rely on alignment such as planar alignment penalties, conjuration restrictions, alignment restricted spells, and aligned magic items. I'm not a particularly imaginative DM and tend to rely on adventure paths when possible, so these things can spring up a lot in many campaigns. I can't really scrap alignment entirely without restructuring large sections of the adventure paths I use and reworking the cosmology to fit, but I also don't want to force player into what I see as a system that limits characters and story elements by restricting them to specific personality archetypes.

For example: a character or NPC of the evil alignment is always represented as an almost cartoonish caricature of a real personality. D&D evil can't just be a respectable but unflinchingly cut throat business man or a rogue character who believes in a cause enough to think that any end justifies the means. No they also have to be cripplingly insane, hate all living things, addicted to some kind of drugs, and/or consumed by an ego larger than the total collected their scripts for their monologues. IT robs character depth from what could be amazing villains.

Not to even touch the fact that many a D&D setting will try to have their cake and eat it too, by setting up balance as the only way to keep the universe in good condition while blatantly favoring the "Good" alignment. It erks me to no end that many stories will try to preach philosophical depth while simultaneously having designated "Good guy" and "bad guy" factions with one dimensional black/white morality.

I Apologize for the preachy ramble, I'm off my soap box now. I love D&D's mechanics and setting. I feel it's story mechanics are sub-par, yet simultaneously could be fantastic with some tweaking

[StevenC21]

I think it's good that the alignment system is mostly divorced from gameplay.

That allows you to, more or less, rip it out and replace it without ruining core game mechanics, unlike a lot of things.

I had a DM who tried to completely revamp spellcasting once... It did not go well.