Heartbreaker
In the dark future of Pat Benatar, there are only in-jokes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Benatar_discography
What is this document?
It is a D&D hack, consisting at present of >90% mind caulk. At some point, if I am pleased with the result, I will need to fill it in with the relevant materials such that someone who isn’t intimately familiar with 3rd edition D&D (as I played it) could actually play it. For now, it’s a diff dump, and I’m probably failing to express various house rules we played with.
Where do the hacks come in (on top of whatever AD&D 3 houserules I favored but don't even remember):
All task resolution is by rolling 3D6. http://anydice.com/
This means a difficulty of 11 has a 50% chance of success (as it does on a D20), that the RNG is smaller than it is in 3rd edition D&D but also that smaller bonuses are quite a bit bigger, so you care more.
3D6+1 changes your chance of success from 50% to 62.5% (instead of 50% to 55%).
Assuming +1 or better wins an opposed roll, 3D6-3D6+1 wins 54.6% of the time (instead of 45.36% of the time at +0), while D20-D20+1 wins 52.5% instead of 47.5%)
That is to say, at ~50/50 odds, a +1 is about twice as big in this system as it is in a D20, but a +14 (equivalent, in some sense, to a +28 on a D20) doesn’t quite technically push you off the RNG. So you can have 14 bonuses each of which would be +10% if you only had one of them, instead of 9 such bonuses.
There will be some simplification and moving around of furniture. The math for skill ranks and savings throws is gone/different: the attacker rolls to beat defenses, most of the time (one of the few good things about 4th edition D&D), you generally just use your level instead of keeping track of individual skill bonuses (one of the few good things about 5th edition D&D.)
Everyone gets spell slots (which I’m calling techniques) and level-appropriate abilities to put in those slots. I’m using Frank and K’s big feats – but most things that would have been a 3rd edition feat go in technique slots instead. In order to avoid confusion, although I’ll be handing them out at 1st 3rd 6th etc., I’m calling them kits instead of feats, because they are selectable pallets of class features.
Technique slots are used for most fungible accounting and limited resources. This means that Necromancers don’t primarily care about necro energy and the sun champion doesn’t spend most of his time worrying about solstice points – if you want a ghoul to follow you around, that takes up a 4th level technique slot which you can’t otherwise occupy.
There are other resource-management schemes (like necro energy and solstice points), but they are defined for individual techniques. Likewise some techniques can be used as reactions, and “used on a trigger” is, of course, a resource management scheme in its own right.
Does this make multi-classing balanced? No, it does not. But it should make different classes and builds mutually playable, even if the Alchemist/Ninja is the best because you can put a mix of persistent potion powers and reaction abilities in your technique slots. I think we’ve learned from D&D that the bar on this is actually rather low: even if the Alchemist 3 / Ninja 4 is quite a bit better than the Samurai 7, as long as the Samurai 7 gets legitimately 7th level heroism to do on his turn, that will contribute towards overcoming 7th level opposition, the Samurai 7 will not feel too cheated.
Since no edition of D&D has managed this (3rd edition came closest and 3.5 was a step backwards), I’d feel pretty good about it if I succeeded.
Pat Benetar RPG
Moderator: Moderators
Pat Benetar RPG
Chaosium rules are made of unicorn pubic hair and cancer. --AncientH
When you talk, all I can hear is "DunningKruger" over and over again like you were a god damn Pokemon. --Username17
Fuck off with the pony murder shit. --Grek
When you talk, all I can hear is "DunningKruger" over and over again like you were a god damn Pokemon. --Username17
Fuck off with the pony murder shit. --Grek
I need a lover
Spare the man in the rabbit suit; he amuses me. - Josef Stalin
What is, in D&D and similar games, a level appropriate concept? In order to make this explicit, we will follow the development of five sample characters, discussing their conceptual development at levels 2, 6 and 10 (at level 10, they are focused on developing exalted-level concepts which will only be teased in this module). I generally suggest starting at level 2. Now, you ask, what sort of character concepts should a 2nd level D&D character support? The following are temporary names/placeholders.
Pat Benetar is a human bard, and the narrator of the character generation process. She is teasing the Chosen kit, which she will take at 6th level. She is Bard 2; her kits are (Culture) Central, Inspire and Radiant Affiliation. She is good.
Cypress is a prince (therefore human-sized) of the Jogah, which are Western Fey. He is Shaman 2; his kits are (Culture) Western, (Background) Fair Folk, Power in Names (bonus kit at Shaman 2), and Thunderstruck. He is good, and also starts with affiliation: Nature.
Malak appears human, but he is teasing the (Background) Risen kit that he plans to pick at some later level, becoming a Lich. He is Reaver 1/Priest 1(of the Evil religion); he delivers purple energy blasts with his spear; kits are (Culture) Northern, Hold the Line, and Reanimator. He is evil.
Prak Anima is a Phraint, who shoots chaos-flavored energy zots with all four manipulative limbs. He is Soublade 1/Witch 1; kits are (Culture) Eastern, (Background) Touched, and Whirlwind. He is unaffiliated.
Arran is an Emere, which are Southern Stout Folk. He is Nganga 2, which gives him illusion/charm spells, enchanted talismans and some general competency / swashbuckling derring do; his kits are (Culture) Southern, (Background) Stout Folk, and Combat Trickster. He is unaffiliated.
To reiterate, “is a bard” is a 2nd level concept, but so are “is a phraint with glowing claws”, “is a necromancer with a spear”, “is a shaman who turns into a bird to spy on people and also has thunder arrows that gets a bonus if he knows your true name”, and “magically confuses people while stabbing them with a rapier he enchants himself”. None of these are things you can expect people to wait until 6th level to do, by 6th level and certainly by 10th level these will need to be scaled into more impressive things.
By 6th level:
Pat Benetar claims to be the chosen one, and this provides oomph to her magical lute playing (as much as if you opened combat with a level-equivalent action such as casting Stinking Cloud, or a social challenge with Suggestion);
Cypress fires lightning arrows like Kagome in Inu Yasha, that take out buildings or stun entire squads of tiny men, has bound spirits which provide situational defenses, he turns into a Treant if the enemy manages to close with him, and he can still spy as a sparrow very effectively;
Malak is a Lich, and he leads a unit of undead knights who can both buy him time in combat to set up negative energy combos and do useful things like fan out to search the city, etc. Malak and his goons are scary and can win social challenges through intimidation alone;
Prak Anima summons an insectoid demon steed, with which he can either close easily with/flank enemy cloth wearers or kite against slow moving enemies, and dishes out just tons of single-target damage, plus he is scary and this stacks with Malak being scary;
Arran can both begin combat undetected and drop mind-bending / illusion spells during combat while also magically heart-stabbing enemy cloth wearers, if the party is sneaking they sneak better because he is using magic and stunts to help them stay un-noticed, and he is charming which stacks with Pat.
By 10th level:
Pat Benetar is definitely the chosen one, but is a pretty girl with a magic lute is expired as a character concept, so as of 11th level she will be a Yazata, with angel wings and level-appropriate holy blasts as well as inspiration powers of a city-wide scale. It’s an open system, however, and if she decided to just take Archmage and have some mighty white spells of vast power she could do that instead.
Cypress is a guy with a bow, which even with shapeshifting and magic arrows, doesn’t quite age to 11th level either. First, he does get a title upgrade to fae king. Storm Lord might make sense, but on the Power in Names theme, he goes Guardian, giving him personal charge of some ancient evils whose true names he guards, but he releases some of their power at level-appropriate opposition (at what risk!).
Malak is a lich with a posse, and that concept upgrades naturally to Deathlord, who is a Lich with a much better posse, but that’s not a requirement. Malak’s player could have him become a Demon Vizier or Archmage or Yazata (which would be weird) or Titan or whatever, it’s an open selection. But, given Malak spent his lower levels aspiring to be a Lich, he’s going Deathlord.
Prak Anima is a bug with glowing claws, which has basically run its course. He could become a Titan (a giant bug with glowing claws), but he decides instead to be a Swarm, which means he is personally an entire legion of killer insects, and this builds on his core competency of being-badass-in-the-hex-next-to-you because he can form himself a body out of insects pretty much anywhere he wants.
Arran is a gnome with mind-bending powers and a rapier talisman, which doesn’t shake the pillars of creation either. He could become a Transcend (which basically makes you Professor X), but wants to be more hands-on and Prak Anima is already omnipresent, so he takes Fuguemaster, which enables him to replicate himself through short distance time travel, pulling his weight while conserving concept.
Probably, I should add a 6th example character who goes to level 5 as just a fighter, because that’s a harder character concept to sustain. But, really, if you let people play a fighter with a glowing sword from first level, I think most people will do so.
You start with (that is, at 1st level you get) three kits, one of which must be a culture and the second of which may be a background. By default, that is if you don’t take a background, you (appear to be) of 100% mundane human stock. Within each culture, there are civilized and barbarian varieties.
You can take a background later on (that is, on rising in level) if you want to discover that your father was an elf. If you plan on doing this later, there will be a tease mechanic by which you can tell the DM that you plan to take fair folk at some point (and some other kits also have tease rules).
You can take a second culture if you want. This enables you to take additional class choices and lets you play integrated expies. If you want to play a wandering foreigner, languages are 0th level techniques but you have an accent, don’t know that sushi is raw fish, and so on.
That is to say: if you want to play a half-alfar Viking who knows magic kung fu (and is thus a Monk), your kits would be Fair Folk, Northerner and Easterner, and you would have native-level familiarity with all things chinese-expy with pointed ears, blue eyes, blonde hair, and axe proficiency or whatever exactly I decide to give Northerners. Thus any playing of yellow-face implies a character who is just as into tea ceremony as the ninja who is actually from the east, which I regard as a genre emulation feature and not a bug.
Magic, in so far as it is distinguished from those culturally-approved practices whereby it blends into religion, is everywhere seen as foreign. Thus Northerners view alchemy as a Central mystery and so on. In general, magical classes are associated with the culture where the magic is practiced and not with the culture where a given form of magic is thought to be from.
There are alignments, and you may have one if you wish! There are some other (likewise, purely optional) affiliations that you can have. I even found something to like about D20 modern! You do not have to pick an alignment, and if you don’t this makes you unaffliated which is not “neutral”: few things, however, check if you are unaffiliated, in general there are rules for what happens to people with certain alignments, and if you are unaffiliated none of those special things apply. The exception will be some lists (this happens if you are chaotic, this happens if you are good, this... and if you are unaffiliated the default is...).
For cultures, you may be:
Central South asian expies. If you are from a city you are sorta Persian and also sorta Indian, if you are from the wilderness you are both Naga and Kurdish, which bothered me at first but now I think it’s going to be a pretty cool mashup.
Western Native-american expies. If your are from a city you are a mashup of Aztecs and Incas, if you are from the wilderness you are Seminole or Sioux.
Northern European expies. If you are from a city you are sorta Roman, but there are also knights and castles involved, the wilderness is full of Basque Welsh Scottish Vikings.
Eastern Chinese, Japanese and/or Korean expires. Sensing a pattern, you can predict that the barbarians are mongols – but also, some of them will be pirates.
Southern A mash-up of Aksum(Ethiopian) and the Oyo/Yoruba because those are my favorite African civilizations; they have early modern African iron working though because that stuff looks awesome. The barbarians are bedouins who blend into Bantu in wetter regions who don’t wear the robes.
Ancient This only comes up if you are undead, but the Ancients are a mashup of Sumerians, Egyptians and Greeks. Because this is an adventure game and we know you may want to do this, they had a high-magic global empire and left some awesome ruins for you to go spelunking in.
http://fantasy-faction.com/2016/the-cre ... est-africa
For background, you can choose:
Fair folk You are an elf or half-elf, or thematically similar being such as a Djinn. Your type is Humanoid at 1st level, but as the kit advances you get features of the Fae type, and may lose the humanoid type (there are options within the kit as you rise in level).
Stout folk Showing that this is an AD&D hack, you can be a dwarf, gnome or halfling. There are fokloric equivalents, which I will use unless they are cringe-inducing. Your type just stays humanoid, but you are -1 size.
The Touched The legacy of AD&D is that people want to be orcs, or at least half-monster types. So, of course, we should support that. The Orcs are the Orcs from Ultima (or these guys: http://unbeliever.wikia.com/wiki/Demondim), which were magically created by the ancients (but now breed true). So you may have hangups about being a Trolloc, half-Trolloc, low-rent vampire, Warforged, Tiefling, Phraint, or warhammer-style mutant. The Touched are favored by team chaos, but have free will and we are to understand that stabbing them on sight is not okay. As you advance, you can drop your humanoid type in favor of Aberration, Construct, Outsider or Undead.
The Risen “Is a bad-ass talking skeleton warrior” is totally a 1st level concept, therefore you get to play one at first level. If you want to be a warm corpse you are actually Touched, Risen are obviously undead and do not seem alive. You get the Undead type right at the start.
Or, if you don’t take one of those, you can take some other kit of your choice (thus, indirectly, the bonus for being human is that you get an extra kit.)
Spare the man in the rabbit suit; he amuses me. - Josef Stalin
What is, in D&D and similar games, a level appropriate concept? In order to make this explicit, we will follow the development of five sample characters, discussing their conceptual development at levels 2, 6 and 10 (at level 10, they are focused on developing exalted-level concepts which will only be teased in this module). I generally suggest starting at level 2. Now, you ask, what sort of character concepts should a 2nd level D&D character support? The following are temporary names/placeholders.
Pat Benetar is a human bard, and the narrator of the character generation process. She is teasing the Chosen kit, which she will take at 6th level. She is Bard 2; her kits are (Culture) Central, Inspire and Radiant Affiliation. She is good.
Cypress is a prince (therefore human-sized) of the Jogah, which are Western Fey. He is Shaman 2; his kits are (Culture) Western, (Background) Fair Folk, Power in Names (bonus kit at Shaman 2), and Thunderstruck. He is good, and also starts with affiliation: Nature.
Malak appears human, but he is teasing the (Background) Risen kit that he plans to pick at some later level, becoming a Lich. He is Reaver 1/Priest 1(of the Evil religion); he delivers purple energy blasts with his spear; kits are (Culture) Northern, Hold the Line, and Reanimator. He is evil.
Prak Anima is a Phraint, who shoots chaos-flavored energy zots with all four manipulative limbs. He is Soublade 1/Witch 1; kits are (Culture) Eastern, (Background) Touched, and Whirlwind. He is unaffiliated.
Arran is an Emere, which are Southern Stout Folk. He is Nganga 2, which gives him illusion/charm spells, enchanted talismans and some general competency / swashbuckling derring do; his kits are (Culture) Southern, (Background) Stout Folk, and Combat Trickster. He is unaffiliated.
To reiterate, “is a bard” is a 2nd level concept, but so are “is a phraint with glowing claws”, “is a necromancer with a spear”, “is a shaman who turns into a bird to spy on people and also has thunder arrows that gets a bonus if he knows your true name”, and “magically confuses people while stabbing them with a rapier he enchants himself”. None of these are things you can expect people to wait until 6th level to do, by 6th level and certainly by 10th level these will need to be scaled into more impressive things.
By 6th level:
Pat Benetar claims to be the chosen one, and this provides oomph to her magical lute playing (as much as if you opened combat with a level-equivalent action such as casting Stinking Cloud, or a social challenge with Suggestion);
Cypress fires lightning arrows like Kagome in Inu Yasha, that take out buildings or stun entire squads of tiny men, has bound spirits which provide situational defenses, he turns into a Treant if the enemy manages to close with him, and he can still spy as a sparrow very effectively;
Malak is a Lich, and he leads a unit of undead knights who can both buy him time in combat to set up negative energy combos and do useful things like fan out to search the city, etc. Malak and his goons are scary and can win social challenges through intimidation alone;
Prak Anima summons an insectoid demon steed, with which he can either close easily with/flank enemy cloth wearers or kite against slow moving enemies, and dishes out just tons of single-target damage, plus he is scary and this stacks with Malak being scary;
Arran can both begin combat undetected and drop mind-bending / illusion spells during combat while also magically heart-stabbing enemy cloth wearers, if the party is sneaking they sneak better because he is using magic and stunts to help them stay un-noticed, and he is charming which stacks with Pat.
By 10th level:
Pat Benetar is definitely the chosen one, but is a pretty girl with a magic lute is expired as a character concept, so as of 11th level she will be a Yazata, with angel wings and level-appropriate holy blasts as well as inspiration powers of a city-wide scale. It’s an open system, however, and if she decided to just take Archmage and have some mighty white spells of vast power she could do that instead.
Cypress is a guy with a bow, which even with shapeshifting and magic arrows, doesn’t quite age to 11th level either. First, he does get a title upgrade to fae king. Storm Lord might make sense, but on the Power in Names theme, he goes Guardian, giving him personal charge of some ancient evils whose true names he guards, but he releases some of their power at level-appropriate opposition (at what risk!).
Malak is a lich with a posse, and that concept upgrades naturally to Deathlord, who is a Lich with a much better posse, but that’s not a requirement. Malak’s player could have him become a Demon Vizier or Archmage or Yazata (which would be weird) or Titan or whatever, it’s an open selection. But, given Malak spent his lower levels aspiring to be a Lich, he’s going Deathlord.
Prak Anima is a bug with glowing claws, which has basically run its course. He could become a Titan (a giant bug with glowing claws), but he decides instead to be a Swarm, which means he is personally an entire legion of killer insects, and this builds on his core competency of being-badass-in-the-hex-next-to-you because he can form himself a body out of insects pretty much anywhere he wants.
Arran is a gnome with mind-bending powers and a rapier talisman, which doesn’t shake the pillars of creation either. He could become a Transcend (which basically makes you Professor X), but wants to be more hands-on and Prak Anima is already omnipresent, so he takes Fuguemaster, which enables him to replicate himself through short distance time travel, pulling his weight while conserving concept.
Probably, I should add a 6th example character who goes to level 5 as just a fighter, because that’s a harder character concept to sustain. But, really, if you let people play a fighter with a glowing sword from first level, I think most people will do so.
You start with (that is, at 1st level you get) three kits, one of which must be a culture and the second of which may be a background. By default, that is if you don’t take a background, you (appear to be) of 100% mundane human stock. Within each culture, there are civilized and barbarian varieties.
You can take a background later on (that is, on rising in level) if you want to discover that your father was an elf. If you plan on doing this later, there will be a tease mechanic by which you can tell the DM that you plan to take fair folk at some point (and some other kits also have tease rules).
You can take a second culture if you want. This enables you to take additional class choices and lets you play integrated expies. If you want to play a wandering foreigner, languages are 0th level techniques but you have an accent, don’t know that sushi is raw fish, and so on.
That is to say: if you want to play a half-alfar Viking who knows magic kung fu (and is thus a Monk), your kits would be Fair Folk, Northerner and Easterner, and you would have native-level familiarity with all things chinese-expy with pointed ears, blue eyes, blonde hair, and axe proficiency or whatever exactly I decide to give Northerners. Thus any playing of yellow-face implies a character who is just as into tea ceremony as the ninja who is actually from the east, which I regard as a genre emulation feature and not a bug.
Magic, in so far as it is distinguished from those culturally-approved practices whereby it blends into religion, is everywhere seen as foreign. Thus Northerners view alchemy as a Central mystery and so on. In general, magical classes are associated with the culture where the magic is practiced and not with the culture where a given form of magic is thought to be from.
There are alignments, and you may have one if you wish! There are some other (likewise, purely optional) affiliations that you can have. I even found something to like about D20 modern! You do not have to pick an alignment, and if you don’t this makes you unaffliated which is not “neutral”: few things, however, check if you are unaffiliated, in general there are rules for what happens to people with certain alignments, and if you are unaffiliated none of those special things apply. The exception will be some lists (this happens if you are chaotic, this happens if you are good, this... and if you are unaffiliated the default is...).
For cultures, you may be:
Central South asian expies. If you are from a city you are sorta Persian and also sorta Indian, if you are from the wilderness you are both Naga and Kurdish, which bothered me at first but now I think it’s going to be a pretty cool mashup.
Western Native-american expies. If your are from a city you are a mashup of Aztecs and Incas, if you are from the wilderness you are Seminole or Sioux.
Northern European expies. If you are from a city you are sorta Roman, but there are also knights and castles involved, the wilderness is full of Basque Welsh Scottish Vikings.
Eastern Chinese, Japanese and/or Korean expires. Sensing a pattern, you can predict that the barbarians are mongols – but also, some of them will be pirates.
Southern A mash-up of Aksum(Ethiopian) and the Oyo/Yoruba because those are my favorite African civilizations; they have early modern African iron working though because that stuff looks awesome. The barbarians are bedouins who blend into Bantu in wetter regions who don’t wear the robes.
Ancient This only comes up if you are undead, but the Ancients are a mashup of Sumerians, Egyptians and Greeks. Because this is an adventure game and we know you may want to do this, they had a high-magic global empire and left some awesome ruins for you to go spelunking in.
http://fantasy-faction.com/2016/the-cre ... est-africa
For background, you can choose:
Fair folk You are an elf or half-elf, or thematically similar being such as a Djinn. Your type is Humanoid at 1st level, but as the kit advances you get features of the Fae type, and may lose the humanoid type (there are options within the kit as you rise in level).
Stout folk Showing that this is an AD&D hack, you can be a dwarf, gnome or halfling. There are fokloric equivalents, which I will use unless they are cringe-inducing. Your type just stays humanoid, but you are -1 size.
The Touched The legacy of AD&D is that people want to be orcs, or at least half-monster types. So, of course, we should support that. The Orcs are the Orcs from Ultima (or these guys: http://unbeliever.wikia.com/wiki/Demondim), which were magically created by the ancients (but now breed true). So you may have hangups about being a Trolloc, half-Trolloc, low-rent vampire, Warforged, Tiefling, Phraint, or warhammer-style mutant. The Touched are favored by team chaos, but have free will and we are to understand that stabbing them on sight is not okay. As you advance, you can drop your humanoid type in favor of Aberration, Construct, Outsider or Undead.
The Risen “Is a bad-ass talking skeleton warrior” is totally a 1st level concept, therefore you get to play one at first level. If you want to be a warm corpse you are actually Touched, Risen are obviously undead and do not seem alive. You get the Undead type right at the start.
Or, if you don’t take one of those, you can take some other kit of your choice (thus, indirectly, the bonus for being human is that you get an extra kit.)
Chaosium rules are made of unicorn pubic hair and cancer. --AncientH
When you talk, all I can hear is "DunningKruger" over and over again like you were a god damn Pokemon. --Username17
Fuck off with the pony murder shit. --Grek
When you talk, all I can hear is "DunningKruger" over and over again like you were a god damn Pokemon. --Username17
Fuck off with the pony murder shit. --Grek
You better run
What is it: is man only a blunder of God, or God only a blunder of man? -- Friedrich Nietzsche
Independent of the kits above, you may choose an alignment-affiliation if you wish. The assumption in most games is that you would choose to be good, but the game shouldn’t fall apart if players want to be evil. You can have multiple affiliations, but only one may be an alignment:
Lawful If you are lawful, you care more about following the rules than you do about other concerns. It takes active effort to be and stay lawful, and if you violate the rules (which vary somewhat from culture to culture, but always include opposing chaos) too often, you will lose your Lawful affiliation until you atone. On the plus side, you get carrots of various kinds for actively promoting whatever cultural code.
Good If you are good, you care about mercy and heroism and so forth. It takes active effort to stay good, and if you don’t do the right thing (is a situation morally ambiguous? Then you can resolve it however and still be good), or in fact fail to actively pursue good ends, you will lose your Good affiliation until you atone. Again, you get carrots. The default playstyle assumption is that the characters will be mostly good, and occasionally Lawful or unaffiliated.
Evil Evil is an affiliation that happens to you if you do evil things, and you have to Atone in order to get rid of it. Maybe you don’t care, maybe you assert that you have transcended our slave morality. Evil characters are sociopaths, but do not have to be completely self-interested, so for example an Assassin may be Evil but still a team player, either by personal loyalty to some (but not most) people, or because the Assassin desires the respect of his team-mates or whatever motivation. Also, Demons, although they are Of Chaos, actually have an Evil affiliation, because they are malevolent but capable of both self-preservation and comprehension of the motivations of other beings.
Chaos Chaos is an affiliation that happens to you if you are a danger to yourself as well as to other people, probably because you are incapable of understanding the consequences of your own actions. Chaos, as a force, causes a social problem by incapacitating people in this way, and most chaos beings (such as elemental spirits; basically, anything which is Of Chaos but not together enough to be a Demon) are Chaos because their relationship to the world is completely alien, like an insane person. Players will not willingly take the Chaos affiliation but you may be cursed or something and pick this up; in general, you do not need to atone to get rid of this affiliation rather you need to be cured – some people pick up this affiliation by choice but it is not generally suitable for player characters.
The pantheon of major deities is common among different cultures, and goes back to the world-empire of the ancients. Minor deities are culture specific, or even strictly local. The alignments also correspond to religions, which are trans-cultural affairs because magic totally works in this setting:
Lawful The Lawful religion doesn’t have a pantheon of deities, but promulgates Law as a philosophy. Lawful churches do venerate ancestors and saints, who are effectively minor deities. Adherents will think their cultural flavor is better but recognize the legitimacy, priests and institutions in the other cultures. The gods are Of Chaos and are a malevolent influence to be ignored if possible, although a few are respected for their teachings. Priests are expected to be Lawful but there is no real mechanism to test this. The Lawful church is the state religion in the Central and Eastern civilizations, but has a presence in all civilized areas.
Good The Good religion serves the good deities, who charge their followers to do and to be good. The Good church is a trans-national multi-confessional (in so far as there are a number of good deities in various culture-specific pantheons) affair that provides social services. Priests of the good church are generally understood to be holy and are allowed to tend to the wounded on both sides in wars, that sort of thing; the Lawful church teaches that all the deities are actually Of Chaos and has poor relations with this religion. Priests are expected to be good. Followers of Good expect a certain amount of persecution, but they anticipate that the cosmic order will be overthrown in their favor by a messiah / matraya / sayoshant who will usher in the renovation of the world. The Good church is national only among the western and southern barbarians, but has representatives everywhere.
Evil The Evil religion is not malevolent in and of itself, but acts to appease malevolent or capricious deities in order to defend the populace; the common pantheon is rather like the Olympian or (especially) Aztec gods except they’re real and people are terrified. These deities are generally evil if not chaotic. Occasionally they offer gifts and patronage but these are often harmful. Priests are not expected to be evil but they certainly can be; evil priests of the evil religion demand extravagant payments to avert the malevolent attention of their gods, as a matter of course. The Lawful and Evil churches do not see eye to eye but are mutually tolerant, at least most of the time. The evil religion is the national church in the civilized parts of the North, West and South, and among the Northern and Eastern barbarians; it was also the state religion of the Ancients.
Chaotic The chaotic religion actually is malevolent, in the sense that rather than trying to appease the evil pantheon, practitioners do what these deities tell them (which is Chaotic even if the deity is merely Evil.) They tend to deliberately draw the attention of such beings, actively supplicate them to intervene in mortal affairs, and other highly unwise things. These religions are tiny and dangerous cults, if they succeed in their plans they may find themselves wealthy enough to become temples of the Evil religion in which case they generally adopt practices to avert the attention of their patrons rather than summoning them.
What is it: is man only a blunder of God, or God only a blunder of man? -- Friedrich Nietzsche
Independent of the kits above, you may choose an alignment-affiliation if you wish. The assumption in most games is that you would choose to be good, but the game shouldn’t fall apart if players want to be evil. You can have multiple affiliations, but only one may be an alignment:
Lawful If you are lawful, you care more about following the rules than you do about other concerns. It takes active effort to be and stay lawful, and if you violate the rules (which vary somewhat from culture to culture, but always include opposing chaos) too often, you will lose your Lawful affiliation until you atone. On the plus side, you get carrots of various kinds for actively promoting whatever cultural code.
Good If you are good, you care about mercy and heroism and so forth. It takes active effort to stay good, and if you don’t do the right thing (is a situation morally ambiguous? Then you can resolve it however and still be good), or in fact fail to actively pursue good ends, you will lose your Good affiliation until you atone. Again, you get carrots. The default playstyle assumption is that the characters will be mostly good, and occasionally Lawful or unaffiliated.
Evil Evil is an affiliation that happens to you if you do evil things, and you have to Atone in order to get rid of it. Maybe you don’t care, maybe you assert that you have transcended our slave morality. Evil characters are sociopaths, but do not have to be completely self-interested, so for example an Assassin may be Evil but still a team player, either by personal loyalty to some (but not most) people, or because the Assassin desires the respect of his team-mates or whatever motivation. Also, Demons, although they are Of Chaos, actually have an Evil affiliation, because they are malevolent but capable of both self-preservation and comprehension of the motivations of other beings.
Chaos Chaos is an affiliation that happens to you if you are a danger to yourself as well as to other people, probably because you are incapable of understanding the consequences of your own actions. Chaos, as a force, causes a social problem by incapacitating people in this way, and most chaos beings (such as elemental spirits; basically, anything which is Of Chaos but not together enough to be a Demon) are Chaos because their relationship to the world is completely alien, like an insane person. Players will not willingly take the Chaos affiliation but you may be cursed or something and pick this up; in general, you do not need to atone to get rid of this affiliation rather you need to be cured – some people pick up this affiliation by choice but it is not generally suitable for player characters.
The pantheon of major deities is common among different cultures, and goes back to the world-empire of the ancients. Minor deities are culture specific, or even strictly local. The alignments also correspond to religions, which are trans-cultural affairs because magic totally works in this setting:
Lawful The Lawful religion doesn’t have a pantheon of deities, but promulgates Law as a philosophy. Lawful churches do venerate ancestors and saints, who are effectively minor deities. Adherents will think their cultural flavor is better but recognize the legitimacy, priests and institutions in the other cultures. The gods are Of Chaos and are a malevolent influence to be ignored if possible, although a few are respected for their teachings. Priests are expected to be Lawful but there is no real mechanism to test this. The Lawful church is the state religion in the Central and Eastern civilizations, but has a presence in all civilized areas.
Good The Good religion serves the good deities, who charge their followers to do and to be good. The Good church is a trans-national multi-confessional (in so far as there are a number of good deities in various culture-specific pantheons) affair that provides social services. Priests of the good church are generally understood to be holy and are allowed to tend to the wounded on both sides in wars, that sort of thing; the Lawful church teaches that all the deities are actually Of Chaos and has poor relations with this religion. Priests are expected to be good. Followers of Good expect a certain amount of persecution, but they anticipate that the cosmic order will be overthrown in their favor by a messiah / matraya / sayoshant who will usher in the renovation of the world. The Good church is national only among the western and southern barbarians, but has representatives everywhere.
Evil The Evil religion is not malevolent in and of itself, but acts to appease malevolent or capricious deities in order to defend the populace; the common pantheon is rather like the Olympian or (especially) Aztec gods except they’re real and people are terrified. These deities are generally evil if not chaotic. Occasionally they offer gifts and patronage but these are often harmful. Priests are not expected to be evil but they certainly can be; evil priests of the evil religion demand extravagant payments to avert the malevolent attention of their gods, as a matter of course. The Lawful and Evil churches do not see eye to eye but are mutually tolerant, at least most of the time. The evil religion is the national church in the civilized parts of the North, West and South, and among the Northern and Eastern barbarians; it was also the state religion of the Ancients.
Chaotic The chaotic religion actually is malevolent, in the sense that rather than trying to appease the evil pantheon, practitioners do what these deities tell them (which is Chaotic even if the deity is merely Evil.) They tend to deliberately draw the attention of such beings, actively supplicate them to intervene in mortal affairs, and other highly unwise things. These religions are tiny and dangerous cults, if they succeed in their plans they may find themselves wealthy enough to become temples of the Evil religion in which case they generally adopt practices to avert the attention of their patrons rather than summoning them.
Chaosium rules are made of unicorn pubic hair and cancer. --AncientH
When you talk, all I can hear is "DunningKruger" over and over again like you were a god damn Pokemon. --Username17
Fuck off with the pony murder shit. --Grek
When you talk, all I can hear is "DunningKruger" over and over again like you were a god damn Pokemon. --Username17
Fuck off with the pony murder shit. --Grek