Post/Author/DateTime	Post
StormKnight 01-27-05, 12:38 PM	Just a set of ideas... First, some concepts: "Good" is the force of positive energy, and ties into life force and life energy. "Evil" is the force of negative energy, and ties into death. "Chaos" is energy patterns that tend to discord and entropy. "Law" is energy patterns that stabilize and work in consistent ways. Good and Evil energy have NOTHING to do with philosophical good and evil. All magic and supernatural abilities derive from a source of power - which can be any of these sources of energy. A character with no spells or supernatural abilities is neutral. They are unaligned - they don't draw power from anywhere. As soon as a character gains spells or supernatural abilities (level 4 monk, for example) they MUST choose an alignment, defining where their powers come from. Any creature with spells, spell like abilities or supernatural abilities has an alignment. Detect, protection, and all that stuff works based on alignment. Note that alignment still has NOTHING to do with philosophical good and evil or law and chaos - beyond that people may be more inclined to learn about the energy that suits them. If you cherish life, good energy will appeal to you more than evil. That psychotic fighter who's murdering people is still just neutral and won't show up with detect evil. Detect evil WILL however help greatly determining who might have used the "evil" spell, or spotting a vampire, or spotting a fiend in disguise. Can a person learn to use evil magic for good reasons? Sure. Might people distrust them for it? Yes, entirely possible. By way of example, if a guy seems to know all about criminal activity you might be a bit suspicious...unless you know he's an undercover cop. Aligned spells are aligned because they draw on that energy. A good aligned cleric can't use evil spells not because "they're bad to use" but because they draw an energy that is just too different for them to use. If you can use "evil" spells, using them doesn't make you "philosophically" evil. Now, if you want a mechanic for personality, have characters choose between one and three 'traits' for their character. These can be anything, but a quick list of options might include: Honorable, treacherous, brave, cowardly, greedy, generous, caring, callous, flirtatious, curious, reckless, honest, deceitful, bloodthirsty, ect, ect. Base roleplaying on these traits, rewarding and penalizing appropriately to your style as you would have for alignment.
MikeTheAmazingMuskrat 01-28-05, 12:34 PM	Cool. -mike the amazing muskrat
Lord_Anthrax 01-28-05, 01:33 PM	Interesting idea, but I think the core concept of alignment works because alignment doesn't drive personality, personality drives alignment. If a person commits atrocities, such as genocidal destruction against a region, creed or race, then it doesn't matter what they think they're doing. It is an Evil act. It doesn't matter if they think they're doing the work of a purportedly Good entity. They are Evil and when they die they will go to the Lower Planes. Law, Chaos, Good and Evil are more than just ideas or ways of thinking about forces of energy. They are primal ur-entities, the very forces of all reality, and without any one of them, the universe would collapse. It is the conflict between these primal forces that drives the Wheel of the Planes, that keeps reality moving forward, that keeps space and time stable, that keeps the universe from transforming into a place of madness and unreality.
Telas 02-05-05, 04:16 AM	Law, Chaos, Good and Evil are more than just ideas or ways of thinking about forces of energy. They are primal ur-entities, the very forces of all reality, and without any one of them, the universe would collapse. It is the conflict between these primal forces that drives the Wheel of the Planes, that keeps reality moving forward, that keeps space and time stable, that keeps the universe from transforming into a place of madness and unreality. Who says that hasn't already happened? :D Anyway, for my 2CP: Alignment is an entirely subjective description of the actions and intentions of the characters in the game. Since it is subjective, someone has to decide what's what, and where to draw the lines. That person is the DM, and regardless of your own assumption of what's what, his opinion is the only one that matters. (Although I do think that Detect Alignment is one of the most DM-thwarting spells/abilities out there.) Telas
Lord_Anthrax 02-05-05, 09:05 AM	Take a look at the Manual of the Planes and read about the Far Realms. That is madness and unreality. Even the deepest horrors of the Abyss look like Sunnybrook Farm by comparison.
Dunelord 02-05-05, 11:07 AM	I have been working on this myself, except I just threw them out. Only thing that I had took me a minutie to do was the spells with alignement. Really though their aren't that many lawful has I think dictum and shield of law, chaos has cloak of choas, good has bless watter, holy aura, holy smite, holy sword, and holy word, evil has the most animate dead blasphamy, catagien, create greater undead, create undead, curse water, death knell, death watch, desecrate, eye bite, symbol of pain. I think these and the spells on the domain lists for each alignement are it. Most of them can stay in the game and just loose the aligenment descriptor. As for classes, they where easy. Paladins still have a code, Druids are expected to defend nature, barbarains hating been an issue, neither have bards although even when useing alignments I never saw why their would be much of a issues with them being lawful.
11d7 02-05-05, 12:33 PM	They are Evil and when they die they will go to the Lower Planes. Hate to nitpick lord_anthrax but in core D&D when someone dies they go to whatever plane their god is on. That means if a follower of Pelor is evil and is doing these evil things in the name of Pelor and kills millions of people for no reason, they still go the the plane Pelor resides on.
Telas 02-05-05, 12:48 PM	...in core D&D when someone dies they go to whatever plane their god is on. That means if a follower of Pelor is evil and is doing these evil things in the name of Pelor and kills millions of people for no reason, they still go the the plane Pelor resides on. But does Pelor have to let them in? I doubt it. (By your logic, the entire Spanish Inquisition would be in heaven right now. I can see St. Peter: "I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.") Telas
Lord_Anthrax 02-05-05, 03:18 PM	Apply a little common sense. No Good-aligned god could truly have an Evil follower. Oh, the Evil follower's probably convinced he's in Pelor's favor, but he's not. Now, St. Cuthbert on the other hand, that's a possibility. Not a very strong one, but there.
HailSpork 02-05-05, 08:24 PM	There's a decent article about this on Rich Burlew's website: http://www.giantitp.com/frm0007.html
James Wildspell 02-06-05, 03:20 AM	Small point #1: Entropy always increases in real-life. (That is RL physics) Small point #2: "Chaos" that tends toward Good is usually defined by terms such as freedom, individuality and liberty. Keep that in mind. (This defines Chaotic Good to a certain extent, and helps expain why a Lawful Good PC has more in common with a CG character than with a LE one) Small point #3: Death is not evil, destruction is. Death is the natural end-result of life, destruction is the willful hastening of entropy. ( One of the aims of Lawful Evil is the destruction of free-will, an evil concept, and helps explain why a LE PC has more in common with a Chaotic Evil character than with a LG one) :twocents:
StormKnight 02-07-05, 11:10 AM	Small point #1: Entropy always increases in real-life. (That is RL physics) First, RL physics do not neccessarily apply to magical energy :) Second the idea here is stable versus change; even though things tend toward entropy, some things have a higher tendency and higher amount of randomness than others. Some things are considerable more enduring and stable than others. Small point #2: "Chaos" that tends toward Good is usually defined by terms such as freedom, individuality and liberty. Keep that in mind. (This defines Chaotic Good to a certain extent, and helps expain why a Lawful Good PC has more in common with a CG character than with a LE one) This would be irrelevant in this system, since Chaos/Law just define natural forces and are not philosophical inclinations, beyond the attraction they may hold to people with that outlook - a person who strongly values freedom and change might be more inclined to Chaos, but its not inherently a personality identifier. Small point #3: Death is not evil, destruction is. Death is the natural end-result of life, destruction is the willful hastening of entropy. ( One of the aims of Lawful Evil is the destruction of free-will, an evil concept, and helps explain why a LE PC has more in common with a Chaotic Evil character than with a LG one) :twocents: What is 'evil' or not is quite a subjective view; and is also irrelevant here. Evil is not a philosophical term in this case; it is a force of magic that is fueled by death, as opposed to good, which is fueled by life. Being as people generally fear death rather than regard in it a neutrally philosophical circle existence manner, it gets the label of "evil". At any rate, the real point here is that the idea of this system is NOT to attempt to define a philosophy; the description of magical forces is essentially just flavor to cover the real goal. This is for people who do not like having characters directly tied to the rather abstract concepts of "good" and "evil". It then addresses the problem that numerous spells, effects and abilities are directly tied into alignment, so one cannot simply remove alignment without accounting for all of those spells and abilities. This attempts to do both with as minimal an impact as possible on the game system.