Randomly decided to check in after years and see talk of Doordie and Amel. Lots of fun memories! Arguably my first long time character, Narwyn, ended up closely aligned with Amel as his protege.
Doordie was one of the best RP's I ever played with. His stories, with his character Amel, were amazing. Rich, deep, complex. I hope Doordie is doing well! You have a really great Uncle!
Registered Member #1244
Joined: 2:10:27 am GMT 01/23/08
Posts: 1028
Jandari wrote ... So....what alignment would the Punsher be? He left law enforcment and became a killer of bad guys. He could be considered lawful evil....Tom Jane played alot of that type of attitude...but he could also be considered chaotic good....cause he's a good guy driven outside the law by extreme environmental forces. Is he a nuetral type....?? Is he truly a "good guy" or an "anti hero"??? He isn't an antagonist....but he's very dark and quite willing to cut off a finger to save the hand.....what is he???
He operates outside the law, I think he'd have to be Chaotic.
The people who raise his ire are bad guys, not lawbreakers. Often, that's the same thing, but not always. The Punisher takes action against Evil, be it Chaotic Evil, Neutral Evil or Lawful Evil.
It's not your L-C alignment, it's your G-E one that he cares about.
But he does do bad things in the name of Good, so I'd probably put him somewhere around CN, ish.
Registered Member #1244
Joined: 2:10:27 am GMT 01/23/08
Posts: 1028
Cleric of Mystra wrote ... Goes to show one can't determine alignments for real people (well, fictional character, but still!) accurately. Personality is much more than that.
Registered Member #742
Joined: 4:17:12 pm GMT 04/16/06
Posts: 538
Yay! An alignment debate thread!
Personal opinion follows, just this once...promise!
Do our characters go around saying: 'Hi, I'm Bob the fighter, and I'm chaotic good' ? No. Why? Because it's as irrelevant in RP as it is in RL. We are who we are, and are not defined by 'alignment'. Neither are our characters. Sure, there are mechanical limitations for some classes, but these need to be taken with a grain of salt, and I see those as a guide to RP, not a hard and fast, actually measured force.
I also hardly think that we need to treat Sourcebooks for PnP as the bible...for anything. This is Thain, and I'd like to see one alignment be set for all, once and for all: Respectful Good.
A player interprets Lawful differently than I do? Alright, I can respect that, and maybe work with that player to augment my own opinion, or at least make pleasant RP for everyone involved. If not, I can respectfully move off and RP with someone else.
We're all here to have fun together. Do we need to let silly alignment tags minimize that?
To respond to the original question before this got derailed: I'd see Detect Evil more as an RP tool for certain situations, like determining the nature of a Demonic sword or the like. *Casts Detect Evil*. " Oh my....This rather plain looking sword is giving off an aura...one I have only seen once before, in the forges of the abyss" Casting Detect Evil on an evil PC would be expedient, but it'd ruin RP possibilities.
Always Preceding Miggen Registered Member #136
Joined: 4:31:27 am GMT 06/13/04
Posts: 16130
I will be so bold as to make an Official Statement
"You use the English language, so you need the sourcebook for it, which is a dictionary. On Thain, you use D&DNWN so you need the D&DNWN & Thain sourcebooks"
1) The NWN sourcebook is the game manual.
2) The Thain sourcebook is Thain's FAQ, which has precedence over the manual in any conflict.
3) Anything not covered by one of those two sources is something for you to work out with the individuals involved on a case-by-case basis. If it comes up frequently and the Staff think it's beneficial to the majority, a case ruling that is consistently questioned and consistently answered may go into the FAQ.
The Thain FAQ has a passing mention to alignment in the 3rd paragraph here. It says how the Staff will try to treat alignment... but it's largely a judgment call and implies nothing about how Players will treat alignment, that's up to each Player.
The topic of this thread is about legitimate in-character means to determine another PCs alignment; not about whether alignment matters or not or what alignment is or how it should be played. Please open a separate thread if you wish to discuss something off-topic as future off-topic posts in this thread are subject to deletion.
Original question, please. Maybe rephrase it as: 'Your character has the opportunity to automatically discover and reveal a secret about another character. How should such a situation be handled?' With Smite Evil, the secret can be 'Character X is actually Evil'. But it applies to other things, too.
*lurks from behind the screen* Registered Member #682
Joined: 11:18:25 pm GMT 01/09/06
Posts: 2836
To bring this thread back on topic, I think that determining alignment, especially by means not convered in the mechanics should be by player consent.
The school has such rules as to what alignments we allow within our institution and have developed a test to do so. When it comes time for this test there is a fair amount of ooc talk in tells before the test is given; mostly to let the player know we are moving outside the mechanics and "this is what we would like to do."
Using this method, I have never yet had anyone go against it. I think this is because there is the mutual belief that either they will pass the test or they will fail and there will be rp developed from either path. And there has been some great rp from those that failed the test.
Occasionally there has been a bit of dm involvement when the test has been administered, which can add some eye candy and pop to the event. But in the end, the discovery of alignment has always been done with consent and always to further rp.
All this said, the big thing is consent between players. If a character is just going to run around and Detect/Smite Evil/Good with no real rp need other than to learn whom is on their side or could be a future foe, this character themself may find their actions disfavorable to even those that would normally be a friend to them.
*hairflip* Registered Member #232
Joined: 11:20:46 am GMT 08/30/04
Posts: 5359
I had someone send me an ingame tell once asking me if their paladin could "detect evil" on one of my characters. I said sure, but the player wanted to put a bit more chance into it and decided that we could do some sort of counter rolls against each other to figure out if it would the outcome would be. I cannot remember what we rolled, but it seemed fair at the time.
Ended up my character was not detected, but the person had a strong suspicion against her. I found the whole thing to be quite fun and risky! It was sort of like gambling... will you roll the right number?!
I'm not sure discovering someone's paper alignment would always matter much. Some people are currently trying very hard to have their alignment switched. They may be playing TN but their character sheet says NE. In a case like that, I would consider them to be the TN and figure the DM staff has not caught up on their rp yet. (which I would also like to mention you can gently nudge me by sending a PM if you are one of those people.)
Registered Member #1029
Joined: 11:45:04 am GMT 04/18/07
Posts: 732
Stormkitten wrote ... Original question, please. Maybe rephrase it as: 'Your character has the opportunity to automatically discover and reveal a secret about another character. How should such a situation be handled?' With Smite Evil, the secret can be 'Character X is actually Evil'. But it applies to other things, too.
Yes, thanks, it's the using mechanics to determine a secret and the issues around doing so that's the interesting issue. The alignment thing is just a feasible example to help illustrate it.
And maybe I should add, I'm really not intending for people to go around smiting evil just on the off chance
Registered Member #1099
Joined: 5:26:33 pm GMT 07/11/07
Posts: 933
also, it's probably worth mentioning again that if anyone does "cast" Detect Evil or Detect Motive (with appropriate permission, natch) that counts as a prepared spell / cast per day which should be accounted for when continuing to cast spells from the same level..
ie. you can't RP yourself extra spells [ Edited 05:13:33 PM 12/04/08 ]
[ The Island of Thain ]
Determining a character's alignment
