Alignment change penalties?

[Templarkommando]

After reading through some of the 3.5 rules, I can't really find any penalties for alignment change. I'm pretty sure there were some as of 2nd ed, but they may have been eliminated.

As best as I can tell unless the character is an alignment specific class, nothing really happens except they become vulnerable to spells that oppose their new alignment (protection from good/evil/law/chaos etc.)

What do you do about alignment changes in your campaign world?

[Ravens_cry]

Unless you are using a class that derives some or all of its power from maintaining a certain moral and ethical stance, role play works just fine for any "penalties" that might happen.
People can't, unless they can, magically detect your alignment, but if you are truly that alignment, your actions will reflect it.
A drift to one side, even before any change, could have NPC tell you they feel and/or have received word you have been acting different lately, and they may be more or less inclined to associated and/or assist and/or do business with you.
A bolt from the blue DM handed penalty of some nature is hardly necessary in my opinion, just follow the natural reaction and progression within the game world, both good and bad.

[MlleRouge]

In my campaigns, alignment is a generalization of a character's behavior and tendencies, nothing more...Therefore, I don't have alignment change penalties aside from any IC consequences that might come as a natural part of...whatever the player did that changed their alignment


I don't really support the idea in general. I don't like 'well, you're CG, so you can't do that action' type of stuff, which is what tends to happen when alignments are taken too seriously. A penalty for changing seems like it would discourage character development for some folks. All in all, I like alignment to just be a helpful tag that says 'Hey, this person usually shows these kinds of tendencies!' that will change if the character's behavior changes.

[gkathellar]

Nothing. Why would I? Characters change over time, and in D&D they often change because the player doesn't really know what sort of personality they want to roleplay until they get down to it. Penalizing a player for that is silly.

[Reluctance]

Let's say that the fighter decides to convert from worshiping Heironeous to Pelor. There might be in-universe repercussions (if nothing else, Heironeous' church will stop giving him preferential treatment), but what mechanical penalties are there? Should there be any?

Now let's say that as part of the process, said fighter starts to feel that he was a bit too much of a stickler for the rules, and decides to loosen up a little. What mechanical penalties would you impose? Should there be any?

[Templarkommando]

Maybe I'm being a little to harsh. I was really hoping for my campaign to be sort of goodish in alignment, but there is at least one party member that really wants to push the envelope where alignment is concerned.

So, what I'm looking at is in-game repercussions as opposed to mechanical repercussions. If I recall correctly (which may not be the case) in 2nd ed you could get experience penalties for an alignment change, and while that doesn't make as much sense as "you've developed a bad reputation, so I'm not going to deal with you," mostly I was just curious.

[Havelock]

In my world, alignment isn't so much about behavior, as it is about acts promoting the cause of good, evil, chaos and law.

So Paladins can be *******s. And the Wizard that binds fiends to his will, trades in souls and so on can still donate generously to charity because he's a nice person that cares about those not quite as fortunate as him.

Not all good-aligned persons are nice people, and evil persons can be nice people.

[Ravens_cry]

Yeah, that makes Good and Evil too much of a badge in my opinion, and not really who your character is. For a game about a civil war*, where civil blood makes civil hands unclean, the Badge system of alignment can work and even be preferable.
It adds a layer of moral quandary that fits such a setting.
But in more heroic games, I prefer alignment to mean what your ideals are and how well you put them into practise.
I am not saying that evil has to be card carrying, puppy kicking, baby eating evil , Evil, EVIL,nor does good have to be Shining Goodness and Light that makes birds sing and butterflies flutter and cutesy, doe-eyed animals frolic wherever they appear, but I like Good and Evil to mean more than what team you are on, more than just a matter of Shirts verses Skins.
*Or potentially any war.

[Reluctance]

Here's the thing. In 2e, your first alignment change halved your XP until you leveled up. Any more changes until that happened wiped your XP down to the minimum for your level. But step back from that for a second, and ask yourself how you'd feel if your character were set back due to your DM and you disagreeing on certain ethical points. If search worked, I'd show you some of the threads it's caused when the only incentive was that someone on the internet had an opinion that disagreed with yours.

If the player seems like they'll be going dark, it's your responsibility to outline what you want your campaign to be like. In turn, it's their responsibility to play a character who fits in. People have tried saying things like No Evils; that's where CN gets its reputation from. What works best is everybody being upfront before the first mark is made on a character sheet. And understanding that player disagreements are not to be worked out by hiding behind the rules.

[Ravens_cry]

Definitely. It is part of the DMs job to set the tone for the game. XP penalties for your character evolving as a person is way, way too harsh in my opinion.
I also agree that if you feel one player might create an issue, you should nip it in the bud and discuss this with them right now, before it creates an issue in game.

[Lord Il Palazzo]

To be frank, I'd encourage my players to have their alignments change over the course of the game if it makes sense with the character and the story. Forcing a character's general philosophy (or worldview, or however you want to describe alignment in-universe) to stay constant seems like it would hinder role playing without any real benefit.

That said, I would be significantly less encouraging if the alignment change came completely out of nowhere with no character development tied to it. I'd certainly speak to the player to try to come up with some in-story explanation if one could be made to work, but I still don't think an XP penalty would necessarily be appropriate.

[Zeru the Dark]

It really depends; if the character is naturally progressing towards a different alignment, let them, and have fun with it. Let the world react to whatever their doing; a formally kind trickster becoming an assassin for hire will mean that most folks like him less if they know what he's up to...while a formally cruel raider turned guardian can redeem his reputation. This is, of course, assuming that your campaign's deities aren't particularly interested in the character's actions anyways.
If a player is changing their alignment in an entirely out of game kind of way, then you deal with that differently. I might only be saying this because I have a problem player in this regard, but if your player is routinely doing evil things(stealing from folks constantly, killing whomever they feel like, betraying their friends and allies regularly)entirely for out of game reasons and you can't seem to get them to understand why this makes their character a bad person, then make them feel it where it hurts; on their character sheet. The Gods can handily bestow a few debuffs to the offending character, and hopefully the player will get the message.
That being said, if you are running a campaign where you as the DM wanted to stick with a bunch of good-aligned heroes, either role with this new challenge and enjoy what a proper antihero or even out and out villain can do for your campaign, or ask the player to rethink their character in a less evil way. It is about everyone's fun, yours' included, after all.

[Xuc Xac]

I think alignment (when it's used at all) should be descriptive rather than prescriptive. It should be "your alignment is X because you do Y" and not "you can't do Y because your alignment is X". Penalties for changing alignment were a stupid idea among many stupid ideas. Remember alignment languages? Or the rules for dual classing (ie if you're a fighter with a strength of 10 and an intelligence of 18, you can't stop being a fighter and start being a wizard because you're not a good enough fighter to quit)?

[Ravens_cry]

I actually started a thread about alignment languages, they mystified me so much.
"Yeah, I can't talk to you now, my moral and ethical stance has shifted."
*shakes head in confusion*
Not really making with the sense making.

[hamishspence]

In my world, alignment isn't so much about behavior, as it is about acts promoting the cause of good, evil, chaos and law.

So Paladins can be *******s. And the Wizard that binds fiends to his will, trades in souls and so on can still donate generously to charity because he's a nice person that cares about those not quite as fortunate as him.

Not all good-aligned persons are nice people, and evil persons can be nice people.

But in more heroic games, I prefer alignment to mean what your ideals are and how well you put them into practise.
I am not saying that evil has to be card carrying, puppy kicking, baby eating evil , Evil, EVIL,nor does good have to be Shining Goodness and Light that makes birds sing and butterflies flutter and cutesy, doe-eyed animals frolic wherever they appear, but I like Good and Evil to mean more than what team you are on, more than just a matter of Shirts verses Skins.
*Or potentially any war.

There's room for a bit of both- "aligned acts" (ones that further a particular cause) might differ from a person's "General attitude to the world".

If acts matter a bit more, than "attitude"- that is, if "he murders and tortures people he thinks deserve it" is more important than "he is kind, altruistic and self-sacrificing to everyone else"- then you can have an Evil character who is "nice" quite well.

It's harder to have a Good character who is "nasty" since a lot of "nasty" acts are also Evil-aligned acts- murder, torture and so forth (at least in the splatbooks).

You could have a paladin who has slight jerk-tendencies (Miko is a good example) but they'd have to be pretty slight- they couldn't do Evil acts and stay a paladin.

[cattoy]

In any game system I would design, I would not penalize character development.