Alignment Introduction

With a quick read over the rules and attempting to digest everything in the core rulebook, alignment was not even a topic I was thinking of. With the creation of a couple of characters I have used alignment, but have never really connected what the purpose of alignment was. So, as I was reading over the message boards on Paizo the other day I saw alignment come up several times. The thread I read about alignment progressed through a long debate about what alignment a person thought his character was, and why they thought the character was of a certain alignment. My next thought was, I must write about this, and here I am.

Here is the background about the character in question. The character had pledged himself to serve another because he wanted to repay for something the other character had done for his family. The pledge was for life and to do anything his new master commanded. He also stated his character wouldn't even flinch about being ordered to kill a child if ordered to do so.

This is what created all of the arguments in the thread. Some said that he was lawful evil and others claimed lawful neutral. The character described seemed like a robot to me, because the poster kept referring to this character will do whatever his "Lord" commands, but he never really delves into the emotions of his character and when asked, only goes back to "does anything he is commanded and would even kill a child," which makes me think he was probably trolling. This still created the thoughts that I need to understand this better, and through subsequent reading it became apparently obvious to me that the main thing people need to remember related to alignment is that it is meant to be a tool to help with your character development. This person totally misunderstands the use of alignment. He was trying to use it to run his character instead of developing the concept of his character. Maybe it's because his GM is trying to railroad him into things, or maybe like I stated before, he is a troll. Alignment can have influence later in the game, but please remember the main purpose is to help you develop, DEVELOP, your character. If you wonder where this concept of development comes from check out the third paragraph and first sentence in the additional rules chapter of the Core Rule Book.

Alignment Chart

There are two sets that combine to make 9 different categorizations of alignment.You have good versus evil and law versus Chaos. Each of these have neutral in between them. For Good versus Evil there is Good, Neutral, and Evil. For Law versus Chaos there is Law, Neutral, and Chaos. Combining these two sets gives you Lawful Good, Neutral Good, Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, Neutral, Chaotic Neutral, Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil, and Chaotic Evil. There are the 9 categories. Each of these are meant to be a broad guide.

I will break down each of these in subsequent posts and my last post will wrap it up with my "ULTIMATE" summary and wrap up of alignment.