Quote from: S'mon;1133232That sounds like Tomas de Torquemada, the Jewish 'Converso' to Catholicism who became a fanatical Inquisitor for the Spanish Inquisition.

Torquemada was never himself a convert. He was born into Catholicism. On his father's side, he was descended from Jewish converts but four generations earlier.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1135067Torquemada was never himself a convert. He was born into Catholicism. On his father's side, he was descended from Jewish converts but four generations earlier.

   And much of his reputation, as I understand it, has been exaggerated and warped by the Black Legend.

What if you just don't have alignment at all? What if you don't have spells that can detect good and evil, because if you did, you could detect evil and simply arrest anyone who was detected as evil. No need for trials, just have clerics go around looking for evil, and if they find any, call the city watch and have them arrested!

Quote from: Tom Kalbfus;1135105What if you just don't have alignment at all? What if you don't have spells that can detect good and evil, because if you did, you could detect evil and simply arrest anyone who was detected as evil. No need for trials, just have clerics go around looking for evil, and if they find any, call the city watch and have them arrested!

My answer to that has been, anyone can cast a cantrip and then claim they "detected evil". You're basically taking one person's word for the results of the spell.
Also, on a principled standpoint, a person should be arrested for a crime, not their thoughts.

In practice, I usually run Detect Evil/Good as detecting supernatural good and evil. Just to nip that in the bud. Because it can short curcit a lot of investigative adventures, and giving everyone amulets or shielding spells against Detect Alignment to prevent that gets silly.

Quote from: Tom Kalbfus;1135105What if you just don't have alignment at all?

Works fine in my game, I don't miss it at all.

Alignment is fine as description of, say, a monster's expected behavior though I find specific motivations much more useful in the game.

Alignment used to proscribe player-character behavior is something I don't particularly enjoy. In essence, it tells a player that they have to emulate one of 3 (or 9) different moral outlooks, and if they don't, they'll be punished. If you're aiming for a sort of Noh play where the goal is embody a predetermined set of characteristics I suppose alignment could work well for that, but it's not the sort of roleplaying that makes me happiest.

Alignment, ultimately, describes behavior -- it's why we say that a player character can "change" alignment. But this notion of "change" presupposes that characters "have" an alignment that is somehow separate and apart from their behavior to begin with. And that "having" is nothing but a mechanic to punish players that deviate from their elected pre-set role. I have never felt that enforcing PC alignment added anything fun to the games I play.

Personally, I prefer the simpler maxim of "actions have consequences". Because I enjoy "the local baron got wind of your thieving exploits and has sent out a posse to capture you" much more than "Nuh-uh, it doesn't matter if you tithed, stealing is still Evil so subtract some numbers from your character sheet."

Quote from: Tom Kalbfus;1135105What if you just don't have alignment at all? What if you don't have spells that can detect good and evil, because if you did, you could detect evil and simply arrest anyone who was detected as evil. No need for trials, just have clerics go around looking for evil, and if they find any, call the city watch and have them arrested!

I pretty much replaced Alignment with the Mutants & Masterminds concept of Allegiances... these might be to principles like Law or Chaos, Good or Evil, but might also include a State, Religion, Family or even an individual. You can hold up to three allegiances and when they come into conflict its up to you to rank them (Do you hold Law above Good or Good above Law? Do you hold your family above or beneath either or both?).

You get bonuses to your reaction rolls based on the number of allegiances you share and penalties for each opposed allegiance you have. If two soldiers from opposing sides both had allegiances to Good, Law and their respective countries, they'd probably get along rather well (net reaction bonus) and probably be looking for any excuse to not have to kill each other ("Lets both go back to our respective camps" and a better respect for the line soldiers of the other side not wanting to be there any more than you do being a viable option if no one else is around to screw it up).

As to detection spells... the only ones I have in my game detect origins, not allegiances. A spell could detect creatures with the Abyssal origin (demons and those invested with sufficient demonic power), Astral origin (astral servitors, gods and most divine spellcasters), Primal origin (primal spirits and most primal spellcasters) or Shadow origin (undead and wielders of necromancy)... but wouldn't tell you whether the creature was helpful or harmful to you (though to be fair, in-universe demons and undead* are always irredeemably evil).

* Ancestor spirits who have passed on naturally have the Primal origin, only those who willingly choose to Embrace the Shadow rather than pass on become undead).

Quote from: Tom Kalbfus;1135105No need for trials, just have clerics go around looking for evil, and if they find any, call the city watch and have them arrested!

Ah, but you can only cast them on one person at a time, and while you're busy detecting evil on Anna, well her hubby Bob decides to go for a walk. And it'd take rather a long time to go through a city of 10,000 people, and in the time you're doing that some people have left the city, and some others come in, and who the hell is going to remember if they tested this guy or not before after they've tested 1,000 people?

So you could only really do it if you insisted everyone carry personal identification, if you kept strict records of who'd been tested, and if you strictly controlled who entered and left your city. Basically, a magical fantasy DPRK. Would a good cleric be willing to participate in a magical DPRK?

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1135218Ah, but you can only cast them on one person at a time, and while you're busy detecting evil on Anna, well her hubby Bob decides to go for a walk. And it'd take rather a long time to go through a city of 10,000 people, and in the time you're doing that some people have left the city, and some others come in, and who the hell is going to remember if they tested this guy or not before after they've tested 1,000 people?

So you could only really do it if you insisted everyone carry personal identification, if you kept strict records of who'd been tested, and if you strictly controlled who entered and left your city. Basically, a magical fantasy DPRK. Would a good cleric be willing to participate in a magical DPRK?

Not to mention all of the other ways that you can mask your alignment.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1133009As I only use L/N/C, Neutral exists in a dual role. First, its for players who really want "Unaligned", aka no alignment, perhaps no strong moral convictions. Second, it exists in the setting for cults and gods whose focus isn't about civilization.




You may.




Is Evil a choice or innate in your campaign? AKA, can that Red Dragon change its alignment?

In my game, those players just invited a time bomb into their midst. The scorpion will be true to itself.

Funny enough, we had the same thing in my campaign with a Black Hatchling.  

I've decided to re-evaluate... they're starting to get hints that maybe color-coded for your convenience is more than just a funny crack from D&D nerds.  I'm hinting that dragon's might be more akin to the player character in Star Wars CRPG - maybe there's only five kinds of dragons, and they fall into Tiamat's sway or rise to Bahumut's heights.

...or it could be me fucking with them again.

I use alignment for cultural shorthand, it's more likely to be on my planning map, than on a character sheet.

Quote from: Tom Kalbfus;1135105What if you just don't have alignment at all? What if you don't have spells that can detect good and evil, because if you did, you could detect evil and simply arrest anyone who was detected as evil. No need for trials, just have clerics go around looking for evil, and if they find any, call the city watch and have them arrested!

FWIW, Basic D&D only had Law/Chaos alignments, but still had the Detect Evil spell.  It only worked to identify evilly enchanted objects, or creatures that might want to harm the spell-caster.  You can easily dispense with alignment but still return Detect Evil/Good.

Anyway... my main experiences with alignment is either that; (a) players typically pick an alignment, and then pretty much forget about it, or (b) explicitly use alignment as an excuse to be an asshat.  As a GM, it had some minor value in reading through the monster manual to basically figure out whether a monster was a potential enemy or foe when it wasn't otherwise obvious.  But nothing that couldn't have been handled in the description.

Quote from: Tom Kalbfus;1135105What if you just don't have alignment at all? What if you don't have spells that can detect good and evil, because if you did, you could detect evil and simply arrest anyone who was detected as evil. No need for trials, just have clerics go around looking for evil, and if they find any, call the city watch and have them arrested!

That's why Detect Evil was a 1st level spell, not a cantrip. The old school Cleric can't detect evil at will (a Paladin could in AD&D) and since it was a spell, it was obvious the cleric was casting magic. As spells are more precious in old school and high level clerics more rare, clerics had to be more tactical about their castings.

A Paladin walking through town noting evil dudes works for me...but I like to ping back. AKA, now the evil dudes know the Paladin knows and now its about to go all Tarantino! Also, I like visual and audio signs of magic. When Paladins in my games activate detect evil, the Paladin glows with obvious angelic energy.

Many DMs back in the ancient time limited Detect Evil to supernatural monsters which brought it into line with Protection from Evil which makes total sense. That's how it works in my OD&D campaign. As I use only 3 alignments - Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic - you won't get Capital-E evil vibes off a mortal creature. That's the energy from demons, undead and truly vile enchantments.

Also, RuneQuest which has no alignment had Detect Enemies as a spell, aka is there someone in the area with intent to do immediate harm? Monsters stalking, assassins waiting, etc.