Man i hope alignment gets taken seirously again.
Im sick of the murky grey blob or moral relativism.
Alignments are a good thing. In a fantasy world, good and evil can be clearly defined things. Im tired of the game of thrones school of "its like... relative maaaaan".
DnD do have a full alignment spectrum, majority of them being some part of the grey area, ranging from neutral good, to neutral evil. The only "clean" alignments are Lawful good, True Neutral and Chaotic Evil.
Me for example, tends to play chaotic neutral archetypes in anygame, and in retrospect seem to prefer characters of that type too.
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When it comes to alignments in the games, you'd first need to deconstruct how they work in the old games and what worked and what didn't, then that needs to be translated into how it could be iterated upon to be made better, with clear and tangible suggestions as to what could be done differently to the things that didn't work, how, and what that means for the rest of the game.
I, for example, would suggest that it could be done similarly to the old KoTOR games, that you don't select this yourself, and that rather your actions in the game and dialogue choices, and political influences affects your character's alignment bar. I enjoyed that back then and thought it worked well, as it wasn't just some label that was arbitrarily chosen, but part of the actual gameplay and helped make it feel like choices and actions mattered a bit more by being that way.
I embrace moral relativism in the real world, but in the D&D world, it is not the case. Good, Evil, chaos, and Law are forces of nature itself. Real forces, like the laws of physics. Gods are aligned to them. Creatures are bounded to it. When you change your alignment you change a part of yourself, the part that is imprinted in your character sheet. Your moral standpoint could determine your profession and class, or even the spells allowed to you. If you are a paladin you lose your powers. There are spells that target alignments, for protection or to harm creatures.
In the real world, you cannot develop a missile that targets only unlawful husbands and evil dictators and leave innocent people unharmed, but in Faerun you can.
From a game perspective, alignment is an RP choice but also a game mechanic, so in D&D is as real and tangible as gravity.
What would be interesting is that you could change the alignment of your characters, like in NWN or P: K games because of your actions, but you have to choose a alignment to start with because spells and class choices depend on it.
The problem with the alignment in BG2 was in part because it was static, unchangeable for the most part of the game (you can only change it in hell). You had the "reputation mechanic" but it has its flaws and does not reflect all the alignment variations.( BG logic: So, you are a merchant and cames a man with a terrible reputation, wearing armor of silver dragon scales drenched in fresh blood, a cape made by dead dryads, widely known as a man who eats babies for breakfast and kills grannies that look at him funny. His eyes glint with hate while he instinctively touches the hilt of his infamous weapon The Blackrazor, eager to put it to work. So the merchant decides to charge him a double prize for his goods. What could go wrong?).
There were characters that can change the alignment due to personal choices and character development, like Anomen or Viconia. It would be great to see that in BG3
In the Kotor games, already mentioned, you can influence some of your companions to slowly change their views to align with yours. In the end, you have a party with similar goals. Of course in Kotor2 it requires work and patience, and not all companions can or will change (Kreia for instance). There is even a prestige class that inspires your followers to turn into the dark/light side in a more extreme way: the ones that like your views of the world became more attuned to it, the ones that oppose that became more extreme against them.
Nah.
You just need to stop thinking about Roleplaying games the way you do.
Alignments are fine as they are, tho CN should be defined better, as it is i ban it on my tables because its just a justificaiton to go "its what my character would do".
Playing PAladins without a strong enforcement of alignment is literaly pointless.
@Sordak, I also take care when a player came with a CN character, as well as most GM, unless is a known veteran player. They tend to behave erratically, like start dancing in the middle of a fight, try to woo the zombie who tries to kill you, insult the lord of the city, etc... which is not bad itself if you do it once or twice, but if you constantly hamper the progress of your party it could be tiresome, for the players and the GM. And as you said, more times than a dozen, that happens because the character is CN and "does as he pleases". Bonus if it is a CN bard. And you do not really have to play it that way. Many people do it right, but when they do not, they usually ruin your game.
And about paladins, I agree. The Paizo devs addressed this in the pathfinder 2.0 Paladin makeover (now champions). You are still a good character, but also you are forced to follow the Tenets of your class and your god or the DM could strip your powers. It is similar to the "fallen paladin" but they created specific tenets instead of general ones so it is not as obscure as before.
All champions of good alignment follow these tenets.
-You must never perform acts anathema to your deity or willingly commit an evil act, such as murder, torture, or the casting of an evil spell.
-You must never knowingly harm an innocent, or allow immediate harm to one through inaction when you know you could reasonably prevent it. This tenet doesn’t force you to take action against possible harm to innocents at an indefinite time in the future or to sacrifice your life to protect them.
And also every god has tenets of their own: Torag’s champions can’t show mercy to enemies of their people, so you will never be a Redemeer, etc.
