this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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Baldur's Gate 3
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Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power. (Website)
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That's one of the reasons the alignments are misunderstood. People separate each of two pieces forming every alignment and think about them separately. It leads to a confusion. Too bad Arenson & Gygax didn't go with "Paladin/Judge/Madman" and similar descriptive names.
I'd want to disagree too, but I can't. That's not how human mind works. The gist of it is that while we can change PLENTY about our characters, the underlying pattern, let's call it "a nervous system" is pretty much immutable. A choleric may learn some self-control, but he won't become a phlegmatic.
Alignments are more forgiving in this department, they allow for a total switch, but hell, we're talking about reality where magic exists, not the real world.
A person isn't a still, but a process, more like a movie. No single frame defines him or her. People misunderstanding the alignments often summon some improper, ridiculously exaggerated case of "and then the Paladin Falls" scenario, but they forget that actions forced upon a character, that leave him with only "wrong" options do not shape his alignment.
The gist of it is that you absolutely do not shift alignment every time when you act "contrary" to your nature.
By heaven's no! It's fun to play a selected role, trying to uphold your internal, selected coherency and creed in spite of dire situations and against the fate. That's part of the experience and by taking it away, Role-Playing Games suffer severe limitation and evolve in "too easy" direction.
Fun fact: caster's supremacy is the direct result of people complaining that spell-required resource tracking is too much of a bother. Fast forward a few iterations of D&D and suddenly everyone's a caster. Of sorts. Because why would you be pure martial if every spellcaster will mop the floor with your character?
I... am growing somewhat confused as to what is being argued, here.
Alignment as an axes system is flawed (but people liked it better this way, other systems have been experimented with in other editions), yeah, because the axes correlate by nature, and things like good and law have different meanings based on how much you value the other. But... categories aren't better? Because morality and ethics do exist on a spectrum, as much as the spectrum used is a poor representation. I get the sense (no intent to put words in your mouth, correct me if I'm wrong) you see alignments as broad character archetypes, more so than descriptions of their ethics and morality? Which is fine if you want to treat them that way, just liable to get confusing.
Again, fairly fundemental philosophical differences. This isn't the forum for writing essays about the nature of self and of minds, and the capacity for change, so I'm not going to do that here.
As for actions; this is actually what I was getting at. Nature and action can be in opposition, but as outside observers, we determine nature from action. Is a change in action a change in nature, or a facet of complex circumstance? Can nature change without a correlating change in action? The NPCs and other characters shouldn't have access to the writing on your character sheet. They should judge you by the information they have available.
I think, again, I have managed to put my foot into my mouth, but I also think this is maybe reaching the root of the disagreement (although, as mentioned, I am a little confused about that :P). To my mind, alignment is something determined from character, not a in-depth descriptor of character. Your character, their role in the story and their personality, matters to the whole table. But your alignment is an (incomplete and over-generalized) aspect of that, not the whole of it, nowhere close.
They are easier to grasp. Your example of thinking about alignments as pairs of qualities is the proof for that. Again: there are 9 distinctive alignments. They absolutely shouldn't be broken into pairs of qualities, each analyzed separately as people do it.
For example, for me there's no such thing as Lawful + Good, where Law forces the character to do this, while Good - that. It's "Lawfulgood" and it's the expression of a struggle to be as close to archetypal paladin or warrior-saint as possible. Fight, fail, get up, fight again. Struggle.
Way I see it, if the discussion requires it, then it absolutely is. If the discussion can't be resolved because the arguments can't be brought up, then what's the point of even starting the discussion?
No single action is enough to determine the nature of man.
Yes. I can chain a person to a wall, pump enough chemicals into her bloodstream that it remakes her into a violent monster, or perform full frontal lobotomy (Jekyll & Hyde scenario) and leave her like that. It will be impossible for her to commit any action, but her nature will change radically.
That's how alignments are described and were described since the beginning, yes. The idea that an alignment limits the actions and choices of a character is entirely wrong and stems from the lack of proper understanding of how they should be applied to a game.