Factions as alignments?

[LoA]

So basically I was playing Fallout: New Vegas, and I really liked how you had standings with factions rather than an outright karma meter in Fallout: 3. Is it possible to replace alignments with factional allegiance, and making good/evil/law/chaos traits that merely add and detract bonuses to certain situations?

Sorry kind of a short question, but I thought this could fan the flames of the add to the healthy PF discussions

[sparkletwist]

I don't want to get into yet another discussion about the nature and the value of the alignment system as it stands in D&D, so I'll just say that a lot of the time, in the way it's actually presented in the game, alignments are more of a "factional" thing than a moral code, anyway. So, you have a good idea. Making it more overt and removing some of the stuff people argue about all the time would probably not be the worst thing for the game at all.

[Kindling]

A slight aside - it's weird how much sense alignment can make for a setting with a slight tweak away from the DnD standard. I never was into the two-axis good-evil/law-chaos thing, but by cutting out one of the axes and making it much more absolute it suddenly worked perfectly for Dark Silver - all humans are lawful, all demons are chaotic, anything else is neutral. Makes it more of an "essence of being" thing than a moral choice. Your mileage may vary, of course, and different changes may work better for different settings.

[Hibou]

A slight aside - it's weird how much sense alignment can make for a setting with a slight tweak away from the DnD standard. I never was into the two-axis good-evil/law-chaos thing, but by cutting out one of the axes and making it much more absolute it suddenly worked perfectly for Dark Silver - all humans are lawful, all demons are chaotic, anything else is neutral. Makes it more of an "essence of being" thing than a moral choice. Your mileage may vary, of course, and different changes may work better for different settings.

I am doing this with Haveneast, except I'm using the good-evil axis, under the assumption that really most people and a lot of supernatural beings are neutral - it's only a rare few that qualify for the extremes. I thought I had read somewhere once that in the Diablo universe it was essentially treated as if it was law vs chaos (although the angels such as Tyrael certainly use good and evil as labels fairly often), where the Prime Evils and their minions were chaotic, and all of the angels + humans were lawful (except the Necromancers, who I believe were neutral). I could be wrong about this, though.

LoA, I think this is a pretty good idea, but if you're using Pathfinder you have to be careful not to leave the new questions that arise unanswered. For example, you'll have to do something about any abilities, spells, or magic items that target alignments. This is easiest to deal with by just removing them, but you might want to keep certain things anyway (e.g. re-defining the conditions under which certain spells work, or keeping demons in essentially the same role they're in because there's no real reason you still can't have murderous, unpredictable beings in a world without alignment). Depending on how many factions you choose to use, you might have to resort to some sort of minor bonuses to distinguish them from each other (probably either a couple of skill ranks, or a very minor bonus to combat actions against an opposing faction).

[LoA]

LoA, I think this is a pretty good idea, but if you're using Pathfinder you have to be careful not to leave the new questions that arise unanswered. For example, you'll have to do something about any abilities, spells, or magic items that target alignments. This is easiest to deal with by just removing them, but you might want to keep certain things anyway (e.g. re-defining the conditions under which certain spells work, or keeping demons in essentially the same role they're in because there's no real reason you still can't have murderous, unpredictable beings in a world without alignment). Depending on how many factions you choose to use, you might have to resort to some sort of minor bonuses to distinguish them from each other (probably either a couple of skill ranks, or a very minor bonus to combat actions against an opposing faction).

This is a really good point. My solution would just be to make certain spells faction exclusive and re flavor some of the spells. Detect Evil becomes Detect Demons (or something). Maybe there are just some factions that are more "good" than others, but no single faction is completely squeaky clean and perfect. This way player allegiances would have to be based a lot on player goals and who is going to assist them with those goals.

For the record I'm working on a couple of things, and I'll post them when I'm finished. However I just didn't feel like the Alignments in traditional Dnd/PF really work to my design goals. Also I may use this idea in Eberron if I ever run it.

[O Senhor Leetz]

If you're wanting to reconcile alignments with factions definitely check out the old Planescape setting if you're not familiar with it.