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vonklaude 07-30-07, 06:04 AM

A summary of some current thinking on alignment - by no means universally accepted - but supportable in RAW. You will have to decide for yourself whether material under Changing Alignment is meant to extend to having alignment, and whether by nature should be taken to mean born with. Maven alert! This isn't a thread for a debate: it is merely a service to the community. ------------------------------- 1) Alignment is an energy that entities have in varying measure. 2) That energy is associated with tendencies, actions, or compulsions, of a certain sort with respect to Good and Evil, Law and Chaos, and Neutrality. 3) The presence of alignment and the things it makes an entity prone to do are objective, not subjective. It doesn't matter how an entitity feels about tendencies bestowed by alignment, nor whether it is capable of acting upon them, nor even how it feels about actions ultimately taken. 4) Despite that, an entity's experience of actions, even those that are accidental or that it does not perform itself, can cause its alignment to change. Rarely, alignment can change as a result of a change of heart, but typically change follows actions. (Internal events are not deemed actions, in this context.) The implication is that alignment energy can shift polarity, or be replaced by another energy; but the true mechanism remains mysterious. Some mages are able to create machines for changing alignment. 5) Any tendencies induced by alignment are flexible. In expression they can fluctuate without affecting detectable alignment, although if they do so consistently then alignment may alter as noted. An entity can come into conflict with the alignment that typically motivates it, suggesting some separation between alignment and will, but any such dynamic remains inscrutable: A succubus might be able to fight her alignment; a paladin might have lapses that threaten her standing. Individuals vary in their response to alignment energy. 6) Alignment can be detected or warded against, or at times instantly bestowed. These features likely arise out of its workings as an energy. Some entities are so motivated by the energy, or so filled with it, that their alignment can change only on a one-in-a-million chance. No matter what actions they experience. ------------------------------- So here we don't demand action, and yet we don't say that you can't demand it in cases that suit you. We do say that actions can change your alignment, as can a change of heart. A sophisticated model of alignment will place it as a compelling force - an energy - that exists in tension with a being's will. Sometimes matching and sometimes going against it. That will incline me to allow a paladin who has her alignment switched by a Helm of Opposite Alignment to fight her newfound compulsion to do evil. A good opportunity for RP. OTOH, as an inscrutable force, such a switch might equally be embraced: she may become an anti-paladin. The wish to go one way or another would come from the player, while the DM would arbitrate the objective resolution: i.e. whether they Detect as Evil or can be warded against as Chaotic, etc. One reason some DMs will not to want too many Neutrals is that the game is more flavourful in the presence of NPCs and creatures with more will to do one thing or another. In many respects having non-Neutral alignment is a game-rules disadvantage, and it is noticeable that munchkins often go for Neutral (by which they mean Neutral-selfish). The alignment of exploit. A mage who makes a Helm of OA has somehow isolated and tamed the energy that is alignment, and made a device for switching it. Remarkable! -vk