Since I recently started doing my Alignment Deep Dives series, I've been thinking a lot more about alignment as a concept. Because while it doesn't exist in all games, and it's been mostly de-fanged in the 5th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons, it still has quite a lot of teeth in my preferred game of choice, Pathfinder. And while I've seen a lot of people saying they want to remove alignment from their games entirely because it, "just gets in the way," I thought I'd take a moment to go down that rabbit hole. Because I've found the roots go a lot deeper than we tend to think... both mechanically, and otherwise.
So, if you're someone who is serious about yanking alignment out by its roots, here are some things you're going to have to change, re-write, or re-conceptualize.
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Trust me, in the end it's just not worth the effort.
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First, The Obvious Stuff
There are a lot of obvious parts of the game that rely on character alignment to determine certain effects or limitations. Paladins must maintain their lawful good alignment, barbarians cannot be lawful, clerics must remain within a step of their deity in order to maintain their connection to their powers, druids must remain neutral, etc. This is the most obvious thing alignment is used for, and honestly I think it's about as far as a lot of players and DMs think of it; it's just an impediment that stops them from playing certain characters, or which restricts the actions they can take in-game without dealing with consequences.
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No, Geoff, you cannot play a barbarian/monk with Way of The Great Ax.
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And sure, alignment does do that. It also stops players from claiming to be good characters on one hand, and then casting spells with the Evil descriptor on the other hand. It makes it clear that certain actions, use of certain items, and even certain classes require you to maintain a certain philosophy and behavior. If you're going to be an antipaladin, a bloody jake, etc., then you've got to devote yourself to that.
To be very clear, alignment doesn't actually stop players from taking in-game actions. However, if you are a character that requires a certain alignment to maintain your powers, then altering too far in any particular direction might mean you face consequences for those actions. And if your character doesn't depend on alignment at all? Well, they might consider their actions necessary for the greater good, or they might think of good and evil as philosophical concepts rather than anything physical. The character may not even think in terms of good and evil, but only in terms of what is expedient and efficient. That doesn't stop them from being good or evil, but it means they themselves are not concerned with those labels since it doesn't affect their life in any meaningful way. And unless there's a local spellcaster, they'll probably go their whole life without ever having someone use a spell to check and see what their alignment actually is.
Another consideration is that eliminating alignment either removes or severely undercuts many abilities in the game. From smite, to domain powers, to specific spells and magic weapons, alignment is one of the major guiding forces that underwrites them, or makes them useful at all. So if you get rid of it, you either get rid of these things, or you need to re-write them. From the holy avenger, to holy/unholy weapons, to spells like holy smite and chaos hammer, they cease to function without alignment to determine their effects.
But alignment affects far more than just the party. It is a huge part of the cosmos at-large. Without it, entire aspects of the game just fall... the hell... apart.
When Heaven and Hell Are Real
In the Golarion setting (as in a majority of other settings I've seen for fantasy RPGs), there is a planar multiverse. And without fail there are planes that are attached entirely to certain alignments. So there are planes that are wholly good or wholly evil, wholly lawful and wholly chaotic. Most games have at least one heaven, and at least one hell, though Golarion has the hells and the abyss, as well as heaven and the celestial realms, among other places.
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Go then... there are other worlds than these.
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Alignment is predicated on the idea that there are places, beings, actions, and things that are wholly good, or wholly evil (wholly lawful or wholly chaotic as well, but that tends to get less play in most games). Good and evil are facts in these settings, not philosophies, or opinions. Because if that were not the case, how could demons and devils exist? How could angels, celestials, and other beings that are wholly determined by the aligned energies that spawned them? How could the realms they are from (and even the gods who command them) be truly good or truly evil if good and evil were up for debate, rather than cosmic facts of the universe? And if we get rid of these places, and the creatures that live in them, then what becomes of their results on the world? With no angels or devils we have no aasimar or tieflings. We lose the celestial and infernal bloodlines, and all the things that draw power from them. Because the alignment of these outsiders is their main, defining attribute... without it, their reason for being sort of fades away.
Perhaps the biggest example of why alignment is often necessary is the idea of divine judgment. When characters die, they go to the afterlife they've earned/deserve based on their actions... but what determines whether those actions were good, evil, lawful, chaotic, or otherwise? What determines whether they were proper adherents to their particular faith, or people who just said the words and never followed the dictates of their deity? The very idea means there must be actions that are good or evil, and that the gods have a checklist they can use to grade someone to determine where they end up.
For divine judgment to function, good and evil must be facts. If you remove alignment, it throws that aspect into chaos, and removes that basic building block.
You May As Well Go Back To The Drawing Board
This rabbit hole goes a lot deeper when you stop and ask just how many creatures, outsiders, antagonists, and even nations (in the core setting, at least) are resting on a foundation of alignment. From Cheliax's obsession with devils, to Nidal's embrace of dark powers, to the Worldwound itself, so many of these things rest on good and evil being real, tangible facts in the setting. While some of these aspects might still function without alignment, others are going to topple right over like dominoes that hit an unfortunate breeze. And as anyone who's ever tinkered with a mechanically complex game knows, the more things that fall over, the more you're going to have to do to back fill what you changed... which could come with its own unexpected consequences.
Do you need alignment to play fantasy RPGs in general, and Pathfinder in particular? Absolutely not! Just because it's a traditional element doesn't make it required to play in the slightest. But if you want to rip alignment out of a game where it already exists, actually has a function, and is sewn into the fabric of the setting, all you're going to do is rip the lining out of your blanket, and drop all the fluff on the floor.
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And that isn't going to get you anywhere. Trust me.
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I say this as someone who writes and tinkers with RPGs as a living... you are just going to make a colossal amount of work for yourself if you try to remove a functional alignment system. Instead, if it is such a problem for your table, consider playing a game that doesn't use alignment at all, or where it's a completely vestigial thing that will have no effect on the game. Or, if your only issue is a relatively minor component of how alignment works in your Pathfinder game (the aforementioned barbarian/paladin multiclass), dig through the rulebooks and ask questions on the forums... chances are good there's actually a way to do what you want without changing a single aspect of the rules as they're written.
It might be obscure, and it might be in the reams of optional rules that have been written for the game, but I can practically guarantee you that it's out there, and it's an option. Don't go in to remove an organ that's connected to so much stuff if there's a way to do what you want without elective surgery.
Also, before we go, I wanted to let everyone know I've got a new novel out from Eric Flint's Ring of Fire Press! If you've got a soft spot for cats, and you'd love a hard-hitting noir mystery set on the mean streets of New York City, then Leo's adventure in
Marked Territory is definitely one that you don't want to miss.
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