Shattered Kingdoms

It pretty much ended the threads usefulness/awesomeness for me too.

Ahem.

To address the initial post. A dagger is not good nor evil. Killing in and of itself is not good nor evil (in the realm of SK, where we have crusaders/warriors of light etc.) It's all in the intention of the character.

Then again, the road to hell is paved with good intention so the whole thing goes in a handbasket.

Clear as mud.

Like they say a gun doesn't kill people

But it damn well sure helps.

While Thuban has a point about morality, our alignment system isn't about morality. The procedure is to match which of the nine alignments best predicts your character's actions. The idea is that this presents useful and true information about your character, to those who can see it.

Since principled people avoid violence as long as they think there's another option, they're safe for most characters to be around. On the other hand, diabolic characters aren't safe to be around, even if you've known them for years. In between we have all sorts of variations - who's safe to trust under what circumstances.

No alignment can be a perfect match to any character. If you have a firm feel for what your character would do, do it. But one should consider a character's weaknesses when choosing an alignment. Run through a few test cases in your mind, especially before picking a restrictive alignment.

I has a thought!

Casting know alignment tells you something of the person's upbringing, yes?

It tells you the true nature of their heart. It always should (including through a certain other spell that remains nameless).

What about if your actions were reflected in your aura? Your alignment can never change. No matter how you start, that will always be a part of you, how you are remembered.

But what if a darkie doing a kind act had it reflected in their aura. He gives coins to a little kid, does a quest that really is a 'lightie quest'. Things like that.

A gray aura who starts to do a bunch of good deeds, repenting the selfishness for selflessness.

And prayers of course will affect the aura. Which means...if a paladin or hellion falls out of their favored alignment, their prayers go bye-bye. It means priests could have more of a role. Priests would be detect auras and seeing how the actions of the flock are affecting them. It means people who fall from grace through their actions are found and will have to atone for them.

Oooo look...a combination of static and reflective of action.

Okay, really, I need to stop posting at a quarter to 4 in the morning but the idea sounded interesting.

...that might actually be something wortwhile.

I dunno how in the heck you'd code that though.

You know, a good way would be a faction system sort of like EverQuest had when I played so many years ago. This is pretty much just an idea.

For example, dang near every NPC in the game had a "faction" associated with it and depending on what you done is how NPCs would react to you. For example.

Wood Elves of Keledron (think that was the name) had a faction named the same as them. (Wood elves of keledron, you get the idea) and they hated the Orcs of Crushbone, again with a similarly named faction. Now, if you were hated by the orcs, but not the wood elves, you could literally go out and destroy hundreds or so of the wood elves and be able to walk freely among orcs, but the wood elves would begin to attack you on sight.

That's just a very small sample. It got more extravegant as things mixed in Alliances. Deep elves of Neriak for example were allied with Crushbone Orcs, so if you killed enough crushbone orcs, then your standing in Neriak also went down, and you'd be kill on sight there as well. Where as the opposite you'd be kill on sight to wood elves, but not deep elves or orcs of those factions.

I know this doesn't have much to do with allignments or anything, but I think it'd be a good idea and make wars seem a bit more realistic. Like say Nerina or someone attacks the Empire alot, eventually they'll get their "faction" so low that they'll become kill on sight to the guards, regardless of crimes present or not. This would make the "wars" seem more real in my opinion. Of course , you could always raise your faction with the empire by doing repeatable quests etc. I'm sure there's some way to code somoething into it.

With eggs and cheese, on a biscuit.

Sounds like Liri's been playing too much KotOR