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Alignments and Alignment appropriate Gods and Goddesses
azaziel35
Member Posts: 33 Arc User
Who here would like to see Alignment choices during charachter creation and Alignment and Class appropriate Gods and Goddesses and Infernal Powers Choices?
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Somewhere within this interview one of the members asks R.A. Salvatore what he felt about the changes that removed alignments from game mechanics and his answer is my answer although I'll paraphrase: who cares?
He basically goes on to say the alignment system is a fundamentally flawed system that really is not able to accurately define a character. People are complex and they don't fit into those predefined roles. His character Jarlaxle is likely best described as Chaotic Neutral but there are examples of him being every alignment throughout the series. The alignment system is a crutch people fall on and use too literally more often than not and Salvatore says outright he doesn't even consider it when writing the novels.
Just look up those fan-made alignment charts. I mean you can find people assigning Jack Sparrow to every non-lawful alignment and there are valid reasons why he should be each and every one of them.
Everybody has their flaws and their vices. Building characters with this good vs evil system is oversimplifying characters. The thing to remember is evil people in real life and the characters in the lore don't do evil things because they like being evil. As twisted as they are in their opinion they are doing the right thing or are just dealing the cards they felt they were dealt. People who rely on that system as a crutch forget that good and evil is fundamentally a perspective and this is why the system stopped being used by the mechanics in Fourth Edition.
Even chaotic vs lawful is tenuous. To use the example Salvatore used Jarlaxle is lawful because he follows the orders he is paid to follow despite being a person who will go out of his way to incite chaos in the world every chance he gets. Even the chaotic world of the drow is very lawful within familial rankings. Batman is often considered chaotic because he operates outside of the government's law but he has his own moral code (personal laws) which he follows at all costs. You really could argue him to be either one and not be able to prove it either way.
The blatant example of good and evil being a poor mechanic is that assassin's were limited to evil alignments only. Why can't an assassin be the hand of justice? Look at Assassin's Creed in which the main character is most definitely an assassin and most definitely not evil.
As for gods...I want there to be an option to choose every single FR god. Quite honestly the only god on there I have really ever used in earnest is Moradin. Most of my characters worship gods not on this extremely limited pantheon.
Bring on the gods! However if you want to roleplay your character and find the alignment system helpful to define your character then use it but it shouldn't be included in the mechanics here or in Pen and Paper. As such use it to help you define your character by keeping it in the only place it is needed: in mind when roleplaying.
EDIT - Link to Alignment Answer. You have to love the 'so what?' face and arm wave.
As for gods, it would be nice to have a lot more of them, though I suppose the idea was to keep it simple in having them so limited here. I am under the impression (mistaken though I may be) that Cryptic's agreement in using the IP was that NW would be a game in which players are canonically heroes, with no in-game support for creating a villain, thus eliminating a large swath of gods as inappropriate to follow.
If you're into roleplay, then really, your character can be anything you can imagine within the setting, even if you have to annotate it into your biography yourself.
Neverwinter Census 2017
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Neverwinter's system infringes on my fictional character's freedom of belief! It's rigged to channel prayers to the 1% of gods! Give me liberty or give me a lightning bolt!
I don't think most gods define who you are any more than alignments do.
I can definitely concede that it is hard (likely impossible) to spin beign heroic when following the creed of Asmodeus but most gods are not that black and white.
My favorite god, Mask, has dominion over evil, darkness and trickery despite the god actually being chaotic neutral. Actions define a person as you said and Erevis Cale was quite heroic despite being a Chosen of Mask.
Most gods have ways to spin it to be a hero and would have nothing against being heroic. But alas there are plenty of good and neutral aligned gods not represented in any way. It's kind of silly that wizard's can't worship Ohgma or that halfling's can't worship Yondalla.
I don't mean that worshipping an evil god means you're evil, but that I'm under the impression that one of the limiting factors in choosing which gods would be on NW's short list was just how stereotypically good/heroic their dominion is. It's oversimplified, but oversimplification is already how they were rolling with character backgrounds.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
They have more or less actually responded in the past saying they don't think it is worth the time to add any gods to the choice list. I can't really explain why but being forced to choose one of the limited deity options irks me more than having no option at all. It's a roleplayer thing I think.
The god choice has no mechanical purpose in the game at all but as one of those people who creates characters with backgrounds (even though I do not roleplay in NW) it sets off all sorts of alarm bells when my character has to pick some random god my characters are not a patron to.
Honestly even adding the "other" option would make me a happy camper.
Imagine if the game had an alignment system but only allowed people to choose between good and neutral alignments. It has no mechanical purpose but on your character sheet it still says your character is Good or Neutral when you wanted the character to be an evil character. By not having a fill in the blank option you are still free to say the character is whatever alignment because there is no contradictory information on the character sheet but if you have to fill in a fake value the choice, even though you can always pretend it is not on the character sheet, is really only half a choice.
It's a weird niche issue to be sure. If you don't care about the lore then the choice of deity is the first and last time you think of it but to those who care I would wager putting a fake choice is worse than not choosing a god at all regardless of the fact it has no impact within the game.
As for the gods OP, Cryptic has said all players are heroes, which is probably why there are no evil gods players can choose.
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They were added back in Fourth Edition after their complete removal to calm players who couldn't fathom what they could possibly do without an alignment system such as the person who asked Salvatore that question. They still have virtually no impact on the mechanics.
There's no assassin in the Fifth Edition Player's Handbook but there is a paladin. That age old "Thou must be-ist Lawful Good" went away in Fourth Edition and it did not come back.
As guardians against the forces of wickedness paladins are rarely of any evil alignment. Most walk the paths of charity and justice. Consider how your alignment colors the way you pursue your holy quest and the manner in which you conduct yourself before gods and mortals. Your oath and alignment might be in harmony, or your oath might represent the standards of behavior that you have not yet attained.
There is also no alignment requirements mentioned for druids whatsoever.
Secondly Detect Evil and Good and Protection from Evil and Good are no longer tied to alignments.
For the duration, you know if there is an abberation, celestial, elemental, fey, fiend, or undead within 30 feet of you, as well as where the creature is located. Similarly you know if there is a place or object within 30 feet of you which has been magically consecrated or desecrated.
The only use of Alignment as a mechanic in Fifth Edition that I have found is with the attunement of the Robes of the Archmagi in which it says you may not attune to the robe if robe was not made for a person of your alignment, the Talisman's of pure Good and Ultimate Evil, The sword of Answering and perhaps a couple of extremely select items. Everything else is very hands off.
There are a lot of players here that do not role play they are in it for the sake of the pure grind and that is OK but there are many many more that are here for the role play and the camaraderie. This is D&D this is Neverwinter even the devs promote role play in the games design. That being said we should at least have appropriate God choices. For example how can a Tiefling warlock or a warlock period be a follower of any good or neutral God or Goddess? They make pacts with the 9 for power. No God or Goddess would stand for that unless of course they were an evil God or Goddess and that served their motives and desires. Kelemvore is no fan of the 9 but as a warlock character I am forced to choose this as the closest option.
And for ambisinister, yes it does have impact in the game you can but are not required to invoke. Invoking gives you lots of boons from your chosen Deity. So the devs apparently meant it to have an impact in the game.
While I agree with the logic of the "anti-alignment" people here....we have to remember that you are applying that logic to a fantasy world.....a world people go to for escape from the real world..
Yes...alignments are over simplified and unrealistic.... But I think that was the biggest draw of it back in the day for DnD....an easy to grasp good vs evil idea that makes you feel righteous or malevolent on a Saturday night with your friends
No one cared if it made sense...it was fun and simpler
My examples were all fictional. Fictional characters are only interesting if they are complex. As becky put it "doing X because you are Y" is not interesting. Fiction doesn't mean logic is thrown away.
Stories still need that logic. Right and wrongs still tend to be very obvious regardless of the stories or even real life but it's important to remember people don't do evil actions for the sake of being evil. When that type of "because fantasy" logic is thrown into stories it really does not work out.
Fiction is only good if there is a suspension of disbelief. You can add magic to a word and sell it as a believable world. That doesn't mean we believe it could happen in our world but that we believe that world follows some set of rules which, while different from are world, would still function as rules. Look at how people try to explain how everything in Star Wars works. There's detailed information about how everything from lightsabers work to how communications are sent across the galaxy like our phone calls. There is basically an entire made up science to rival our own which still has laws on what can and can't happen based on fictional yet believable rules.
In the case of character development though, we as human beings can smell fake from a mile away. I would argue the alignment system falls right in the uncanny valley because it's human-like but to be one and only one alignment is about as robotic as you can get. There was a scene from the Matrix in which Agent Smith explains that the first Matrix was a Utopia but the concept was rejected and the people revolted against it. It's just not the way humans are and we can not suspend our disbelief when people are emotionally flat.
Please, do take a step back and look at everything which is fictional...aka EVERY movie of all time as there are few which don't try to spice up true stories... The movies you like or the books you like are most often due to characters with layered behavior because we are layered ourselves. Nothing is more unbelievable than a person who does no wrong or a person that doesn't have even a single shred of humanity. We can drop the belief in the laws of science to an extent but we really can't suspend the disbelief in human nature...
And to drive that point home utopia's are always portrayed as flawed. There is always a Big Brother element oppressing people and/or the desire to disband the utopia because it involved the sacrifice of precious aspects of our human nature such as the ability to love.
You have to remember this is just a game. It's just another descriptor to help roleplay characters.
If some people wanted to play more complex characters, that is cool, if some people wanted to play strictly within their alignment descriptor, that was cool too.
To me and my friends, we used DnD rulebooks as guidelines to have fun. Not as bibles to be followed word-for-word.
My arguments have only been against people needing to see an alignment icon on their character sheet. If it helps you then by all means do feel free to use the flawed alignment system.
But there is no reason for it to have a mechanical value and as long as it doesn't serve any mechanical purpose then there is no reason to include it in the game. That goes for PnP and for Neverwinter. If it helps you as a guideline then use it in the only place it can possibly help you: in your mind when roleplaying.
"Well no, your character WOULDN'T do that. Lawful Neutral...."
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as in our actions determine whether we are good or evil but either way we still walk the champions path, either way we must save neverwinter and the world.
As far as gods and goddesses there should be race specific gods or goddesses
1) Drow should have the option to worship Lolth
2) Moradin should be a dwarven specific god no other race can worship
3) Half-orcs have the option to worship gruumsh
4) Humans have the option to worship helm
As mentioned many times the gods have no bearing on the game , its just an icon for invoke and your own story so why not have certain gods and goddesses for certain races.
Let the drow have lolth , it doesnt mean they are evil just who they worship, let the half orcs have gruumsh doesnt mean they have to do evil things.
It would also be typical of a heros journey , to come from someplace youd never expect , such as a drow who worships lolth saves neverwinter and the world, or a half orc follower of gruumsh takes the heros journey to rise above the stigma of being a follower of gruumsh.
well you get the idea
Kirk : My god bones...her head is gone :eek:
Mccoy : DAMNIT JIM!! im a doctor not a game developer
My Character is from the old EMPT http://tekumel.com/world_gods.html and his god is Karakán...
But in this world I had to pick another one...
Could make it hard to go home
1) It's a good idea. The only thing I could see wrong with it is Drow worshipping Lolth makes more sense if they haven't fled the Underdark seeking a new life; Lolth would still have a hold over them and their actions would be focussed around pleasing her, not fighting for those who would keep her followers weak. Further, from the way Lolth is portrayed in the (FR) lore, she wouldn't help a drow who was doing good because he or she would be going against what Lolth wants for the Drow (to be her slaves and to never trust anyone ever).
2) I agree. I've seen elves, humans and even half-orcs who list Moradin as their god. It doesn't really make sense but then maybe there's an element to that character's backstory that I'm not aware of.
3) I agree with this: half-breeds should have the option of going one way or the other with their bloodlines. More race specific gods would help that.
4) Restricting Helm worship to only humans doesn't make sense in light of the fact his last living priest is a dwarf. If you want to make him specific to one or two classes (e.g. guardian fighers and clerics) then I could totally see that. I think the player should even have the option of changing their deity affiliation throughout the game. Or even on a one-off basis after they get to the Helmite cathedral in RR and speak to the dwarven priest who then tells the player that Helm has returned; and the player can then change their worship to Helm. Whether that's through a quest, interacting with NPCs or objects, or changing it on the character's history, I think it should be possible.
Adding chaotic/evil deities as options would only make sense if the player had the option of defecting to an evil faction like the Cult of the Dragon or the Thayans and wasn't forced to play through the main 'good' storyline based around opposing these factions.
I like to think of it most vampires might be driven to become predators but not all are evil just a lot can't control themselves and become former shadows of themselves when blood drives them and nothing else. Thus they will turn against everything they were in life or embrace it and with the predatory nature it makes them act like evil beings and work for evil causes more.
But you don't have to restrict your character to be evil which I refuse to do now because its my character and I play the way i want with her. Also they changed it so the alignment system is not important anymore because its harder with a restrictive system.
Yeah the gods in this lore are like the gods of greece in mythology, they care more about themselves and there ideals then the people that worship them and they demand to be worshiped. Which one day might cost them big, some gods can't die, and will remain dormant till they reform. Others have cheated death and resurrected themselves. I think sooner or later as time goes on the gods will die off, because the people will refuse to follow them, because of growth in technology and science and then the fact people might be sick of the gods and want change. Sooner or later the gods will dwindle down till theres only a few. As people forget about them they will disappear all together.
Ao wants the wall, not Kelemvor. If people turned atheist then the gods would eventually vanish; however because the gods are also the embodiment of a certain quality or phenomenon of the universe, if a god vanishes, that part of the universe would vanish. If nobody believes in the sun, it will go dark. If nobody believes in magic, spells cease to work. That's why the wall exists, not as punishment, but as an incentive to not go rogue on the universe.
Also no deity "cheated death". A concept can't die. For example, Bane might have been slain once, but that doesn't make the concept of tyranny vanish from the universe, that's why he could come back. Mystra got killed many times and whoever took over always ended up being Mystra.
The gods do not "control" reality, they are part of it. In so far they are much more like Hindu gods than the greek pantheon. (Ao playing the part of Vishnu then)
As for your character, she cannot be "good" in the grand scheme of things, because as an undead she is bound to negative energy. If she ever gets destroyed, she better worships a deity that likes the undead, or her soul will go to the wall. That has nothing to do with Kelemvor either, he has to send the souls of destroyed undead to the realm of their deities if they were faithful too, no matter what he personally thinks of the undead.
And that is the reason why I don't think evil characters or deities or even atheists would work for this game... Or D&D games in general. It's about the good guys fighting the monsters. I'm really glad this game doesn't go the WoW route where all the evil guys turn out to be "misunderstood" and they ended up with zombies, warlocks, death knights, demon hunters etc. in the ranks of the heroes...
The problem with the afterlife for a good vampire is that no deity will take them, the good deities dislike undead and the evil deities dislike good deeds. So it is very likely the wall for them. The alternative is for an undead that gains control to destroy themselves. That is actually the "good" thing to do. If you continue on then the good deities will see you as a mistake. Maybe Mystra or Corellon would take a good Lich, but as for vampires, I really am doubtful. (How can you even survive without feeding?)
Pwent actually created more vampires, which is definitely an evil act, no matter the intention. (speaking in universe) The next cleric/paladin of Kelemvor, Torm, Bahamut etc. that comes along might just destroy him without even discussing the matter.
And that is my point, the story relies on good npcs helping the players and letting them come along. Having evil or monstrous players would screw with that story.
http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Baelnorn_lich