Daeran Arendae and alignment math
Apr. 5th, 2025 03:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethFor entirely spoilery to the last act reasons I was looking up the rules on alignment in Pathfinder Ultimate Campaign p46 https://legacy.aonprd.com/ultimateCampaign/characterBackground/backgroundGenerator.html see Conflicts, and seeing how to apply them to Daeran in Wrath of the Righteous.
On the whole I am not enamored of the mathematical approach taken to deciding how lawful or evil you are.
It seems to take Lawful Good as a default position you can fall from by doing bad things. Rather than, for instance, starting at neutrality, as it is elsewhere stated all babies and the majority of adults do. You do not have to random roll Good things to see where on a table your Good is, you just roll Conflict and set off away from Lawful Good. Theologically speaking this is A Choice.
But: Ultimate Campaign makes it possible to random roll you alignment in 3 parts, or four if you count the extra conflict point you can get by doing any of the conflicts to a child. You roll Conflict, Subject, and Motivation, then choose Resolution, and you add up Conflict Points, and use them on a table. Lawful is 1 to 3 points, Good is 1 to 3 points, and neutral is 4 to 6, so Evil or Chaotic is 7 to 9. To be plain Neutral needs at least 8 and at most 12 points. You can get 8 points just from doing something for Pleasure Amusement or Entertainment (5) and deciding even afterwards that You Enjoyed It (3), but you'd have to roll a 9 or 10 on a d10 to do it. Does leave you with everything up to rolling an 11 on Conflicts as leaving you potentially Neutral, and if you aren't playing evil characters you roll a d12 anyway. If you might be playing evil you roll a d20.
That same 8 to 12 could also make you any other alignment except Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil.
Neutral Evil needs at least 11.
So, say your motivation was Amusement and you actually still reckon you Enjoyed It. That's 8. To get an 11 you'd only need Seducer (3). "You tempted or manipulated someone to act in accordance with your whim, careless of whether it was in their own best interests."
Which is Daeran as we meet him at the party, as he will happily tell you in some detail.
Seen from the other end of his story we know it's not actually that simple.
Arguably his Conflict was as little as Malign Influence (4), "you allied with a destructive creature".
If he did it for Amusement and experienced as little as No Guilt he could still be an 11, but Amusement doesn't fit what we see.
Daeran was Pressured or Manipulated (2), which doesn't get you to Neutral Evil on No Guilt or even Enjoyed It without going above a 12 on the dice rolls.
Corrupted an Innocent (6), Pressured (2), Enjoyed It (3), and you just get your 11 for Neutral Evil.
But that isn't what we see him do.
If you want to hold him maximally responsible for consequences? Welcome to
Mass Murder (12).
Now the hilarious thing about the alignment math is if you do Mass Murder for Justice or Love and then do Regret and Penance afterwards 12+1-3 isn't even going to get you to Neutral Evil. Lawful Evil yes, but not Neutral You can land on Chaotic Good with that combo. Like sure you did a spot of slaughter, but your motives were pure and you publicly admitted it and served your time, so hey, welcome back to the Robin Hood zone.
... Murder for Justice followed by public penance can leave you being Lawful Good. Unless the murdered person was a child, and then you are Neutral on one and only one alignment. Which I feel underplays the badness of murder rather a lot. But hey, characters can murder their way through whole games without it counting against their alignment, so it is at least consistent.
Thing is though, if Daeran did Mass Murder because he was Pressured or Manipulated, we're up to a 14 even before his reaction. If he felt No Guilt we'd be on 16 and into 9/7 or 8/8 split, hence Chaotic Evil with no alternatives.
So it's possible we've mathematically proven that he feels at least a little bad about it.
(though I have mentioned this math is nuts.)
Since no one else knows what happened, his potential range of Resolutions is therefore Denial (+1), Mixed Feelings (0), or Secret Regret (-1).
With a point range for Neutral Evil of 11 to 15, all of the above are possible from Mass Murder and Pressured.
With Mass Murder and Secret Regret you can even argue his motive up to anything short of Enjoyment, for instance Malice, Hatred or Jealousy (4), Family (3), or Religion (2).
... Religion giving you a lower push towards Evil is frankly messed up, but I'll admit the appeal to external authority can be argued to be lower on Chaos.
Thing is whatever his defining feelings at the start, by the time of the trial they can and to a degree must change. Because he can no longer stick in the Denial through Secret Regret range. Since his actions are known, and he knows they are known, his options are at the extremes of the chart, No Guilt or Regret and Penance. No Guilt and he mathematically tips into Chaotic Evil, which as far as I have read is also what he does in the game if he decides to say screw it and eliminate the Inquisitor. But allowing the trial to go ahead and the Inquisition to judge him is Regret and Penance time. Now for a new -3. Unfortunately for my hopes for Daeran's eternity, that is still 12-3+2 at least, so, 11 for Neutral Evil still achieved.
But 11 is the bare minimum for NE. You have to be one point off Neutral into Evil, but also one point off Law into Neutrality. Makes sense to an extent, the only change is letting the Law do the thing.
But the same points can be rearranged into Neutrality. Or Chaotic Neutral. Or Chaotic Good. But only by adding more Chaos to the assessment, which apparently no.
Of course he has done a lot of other things in his life and the formal rules on pursuing Redemption are potentially applicable if he wants them, but, I thought it was interesting applying the character creation UC math, because you get pretty much what happened.
If you start with Malign Associates you have to go No Guilt+Entertainment or Enjoyed It+Malice before you can get as far as Neutral Evil and it doesn't add up to change to CE at the end, there's no more extreme reaction left in the math.
But Pressured into Mass Murder and feeling one of the secret reactions in Denial through Secret Regret range, well, then you get the alignment shift at the end, potentially, just from changing attitude to that one day.
... though alignment shift rules are later in the book and don't precisely work that way.
Of course Camellia has different maths. "You killed several sentient beings" is still Mass Murder even if she did that one at a time. You could argue it was from Religion with early information, so that's 12+2. Mixed Feelings could give you a 7/7 Chaotic Evil but also a 9/5 Chaotic Neutral or Neutral Evil. Sincere Regret is still a secret but sort of heavily implies you *stop* since if effects your behaviour, so, not that one. Secret Regret is... vaguely possible but once again the repetition is tricky. So you're not getting her out of the edgy corner. Though of note the argument that it is to save the world is maaaaaaybe covered by Justice and otherwise just... doesn't count as a Conflict??
But then if you get to observe her the motive looks quite a lot like Pleasure and the reaction is well away into Enjoyed It. That's 12+5+3=20. That's... that's actually too much for the table. Camellia blows past Chaotic *and* Evil with more than maximum points.
... why did they make a table where you can get more than maximum points?
Even if it was only a single murder for pleasure and she still enjoys it she's on a 16 and still Chaotic Evil, no alternatives.
So it really makes a difference to alignment if she actually means it about blaming religious motives or if she's really in it for funsies.
But turning her current reaction around can change her aligment even if her motive at the time was enjoyment. 12+5-3 is a 14, so Chaotic Evil is still a possibility, but so is Chaotic Neutral. Or Neutral Evil.
If you want to get her out of the edgy zone even after killing lots of people for funsies? She'd need the same path as Arue, deliberately seeking redemption. Simply changing her mind about her reaction to the murders and stopping doing them wouldn't be enough.
... I am *deeply* unconvinced by this method of calculating good and evil, law and chaos. It's pretty messed up. I mean, it's there as a guide to roleplaying your character after you've random rolled their defining moment, so, okay, someone who did their worst monent for fun and still enjoys the memory is not going to be motivated to change their behaviour and now you've got a guide to the kind of things they would do. But. Really???
It also very probably has very little to do with how Wrath of the Righteous calculates changes. I have wandered Knights Commander all over the non evil parts of the alignment map one choice at a time, sometimes by saying sentences in a conversation. ... the sentences thing usually works more because it only once I can remember gives you a chance to be *lying*, every other conversational choice is apparently taken to be an expression of who you actually are, even the ones where you're trying to manipulate a demon with words. Imperfect system.
Okay I went to look up online references and proof read what I'd written and now if I had any further conclusion I forgot it.
But having even a strange and annoying math for alignment gives you a place to start the arguments.
... I have seen so many alignment arguments on the internet. I have seen so many people arguing so and so isn't actually evil. I do not want to have those arguments.
Yet I just typed up so much alignment math.
But the interesting part is how many ways you can end up in how many parts of the alignment grid. It makes it hard to argue so and so isn't such and such when the math is this mobile.
... it makes it easy to argue alignment math is a bad tool with weird outcomes tho...
On the whole I am not enamored of the mathematical approach taken to deciding how lawful or evil you are.
It seems to take Lawful Good as a default position you can fall from by doing bad things. Rather than, for instance, starting at neutrality, as it is elsewhere stated all babies and the majority of adults do. You do not have to random roll Good things to see where on a table your Good is, you just roll Conflict and set off away from Lawful Good. Theologically speaking this is A Choice.
But: Ultimate Campaign makes it possible to random roll you alignment in 3 parts, or four if you count the extra conflict point you can get by doing any of the conflicts to a child. You roll Conflict, Subject, and Motivation, then choose Resolution, and you add up Conflict Points, and use them on a table. Lawful is 1 to 3 points, Good is 1 to 3 points, and neutral is 4 to 6, so Evil or Chaotic is 7 to 9. To be plain Neutral needs at least 8 and at most 12 points. You can get 8 points just from doing something for Pleasure Amusement or Entertainment (5) and deciding even afterwards that You Enjoyed It (3), but you'd have to roll a 9 or 10 on a d10 to do it. Does leave you with everything up to rolling an 11 on Conflicts as leaving you potentially Neutral, and if you aren't playing evil characters you roll a d12 anyway. If you might be playing evil you roll a d20.
That same 8 to 12 could also make you any other alignment except Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil.
Neutral Evil needs at least 11.
So, say your motivation was Amusement and you actually still reckon you Enjoyed It. That's 8. To get an 11 you'd only need Seducer (3). "You tempted or manipulated someone to act in accordance with your whim, careless of whether it was in their own best interests."
Which is Daeran as we meet him at the party, as he will happily tell you in some detail.
Seen from the other end of his story we know it's not actually that simple.
Arguably his Conflict was as little as Malign Influence (4), "you allied with a destructive creature".
If he did it for Amusement and experienced as little as No Guilt he could still be an 11, but Amusement doesn't fit what we see.
Daeran was Pressured or Manipulated (2), which doesn't get you to Neutral Evil on No Guilt or even Enjoyed It without going above a 12 on the dice rolls.
Corrupted an Innocent (6), Pressured (2), Enjoyed It (3), and you just get your 11 for Neutral Evil.
But that isn't what we see him do.
If you want to hold him maximally responsible for consequences? Welcome to
Mass Murder (12).
Now the hilarious thing about the alignment math is if you do Mass Murder for Justice or Love and then do Regret and Penance afterwards 12+1-3 isn't even going to get you to Neutral Evil. Lawful Evil yes, but not Neutral You can land on Chaotic Good with that combo. Like sure you did a spot of slaughter, but your motives were pure and you publicly admitted it and served your time, so hey, welcome back to the Robin Hood zone.
... Murder for Justice followed by public penance can leave you being Lawful Good. Unless the murdered person was a child, and then you are Neutral on one and only one alignment. Which I feel underplays the badness of murder rather a lot. But hey, characters can murder their way through whole games without it counting against their alignment, so it is at least consistent.
Thing is though, if Daeran did Mass Murder because he was Pressured or Manipulated, we're up to a 14 even before his reaction. If he felt No Guilt we'd be on 16 and into 9/7 or 8/8 split, hence Chaotic Evil with no alternatives.
So it's possible we've mathematically proven that he feels at least a little bad about it.
(though I have mentioned this math is nuts.)
Since no one else knows what happened, his potential range of Resolutions is therefore Denial (+1), Mixed Feelings (0), or Secret Regret (-1).
With a point range for Neutral Evil of 11 to 15, all of the above are possible from Mass Murder and Pressured.
With Mass Murder and Secret Regret you can even argue his motive up to anything short of Enjoyment, for instance Malice, Hatred or Jealousy (4), Family (3), or Religion (2).
... Religion giving you a lower push towards Evil is frankly messed up, but I'll admit the appeal to external authority can be argued to be lower on Chaos.
Thing is whatever his defining feelings at the start, by the time of the trial they can and to a degree must change. Because he can no longer stick in the Denial through Secret Regret range. Since his actions are known, and he knows they are known, his options are at the extremes of the chart, No Guilt or Regret and Penance. No Guilt and he mathematically tips into Chaotic Evil, which as far as I have read is also what he does in the game if he decides to say screw it and eliminate the Inquisitor. But allowing the trial to go ahead and the Inquisition to judge him is Regret and Penance time. Now for a new -3. Unfortunately for my hopes for Daeran's eternity, that is still 12-3+2 at least, so, 11 for Neutral Evil still achieved.
But 11 is the bare minimum for NE. You have to be one point off Neutral into Evil, but also one point off Law into Neutrality. Makes sense to an extent, the only change is letting the Law do the thing.
But the same points can be rearranged into Neutrality. Or Chaotic Neutral. Or Chaotic Good. But only by adding more Chaos to the assessment, which apparently no.
Of course he has done a lot of other things in his life and the formal rules on pursuing Redemption are potentially applicable if he wants them, but, I thought it was interesting applying the character creation UC math, because you get pretty much what happened.
If you start with Malign Associates you have to go No Guilt+Entertainment or Enjoyed It+Malice before you can get as far as Neutral Evil and it doesn't add up to change to CE at the end, there's no more extreme reaction left in the math.
But Pressured into Mass Murder and feeling one of the secret reactions in Denial through Secret Regret range, well, then you get the alignment shift at the end, potentially, just from changing attitude to that one day.
... though alignment shift rules are later in the book and don't precisely work that way.
Of course Camellia has different maths. "You killed several sentient beings" is still Mass Murder even if she did that one at a time. You could argue it was from Religion with early information, so that's 12+2. Mixed Feelings could give you a 7/7 Chaotic Evil but also a 9/5 Chaotic Neutral or Neutral Evil. Sincere Regret is still a secret but sort of heavily implies you *stop* since if effects your behaviour, so, not that one. Secret Regret is... vaguely possible but once again the repetition is tricky. So you're not getting her out of the edgy corner. Though of note the argument that it is to save the world is maaaaaaybe covered by Justice and otherwise just... doesn't count as a Conflict??
But then if you get to observe her the motive looks quite a lot like Pleasure and the reaction is well away into Enjoyed It. That's 12+5+3=20. That's... that's actually too much for the table. Camellia blows past Chaotic *and* Evil with more than maximum points.
... why did they make a table where you can get more than maximum points?
Even if it was only a single murder for pleasure and she still enjoys it she's on a 16 and still Chaotic Evil, no alternatives.
So it really makes a difference to alignment if she actually means it about blaming religious motives or if she's really in it for funsies.
But turning her current reaction around can change her aligment even if her motive at the time was enjoyment. 12+5-3 is a 14, so Chaotic Evil is still a possibility, but so is Chaotic Neutral. Or Neutral Evil.
If you want to get her out of the edgy zone even after killing lots of people for funsies? She'd need the same path as Arue, deliberately seeking redemption. Simply changing her mind about her reaction to the murders and stopping doing them wouldn't be enough.
... I am *deeply* unconvinced by this method of calculating good and evil, law and chaos. It's pretty messed up. I mean, it's there as a guide to roleplaying your character after you've random rolled their defining moment, so, okay, someone who did their worst monent for fun and still enjoys the memory is not going to be motivated to change their behaviour and now you've got a guide to the kind of things they would do. But. Really???
It also very probably has very little to do with how Wrath of the Righteous calculates changes. I have wandered Knights Commander all over the non evil parts of the alignment map one choice at a time, sometimes by saying sentences in a conversation. ... the sentences thing usually works more because it only once I can remember gives you a chance to be *lying*, every other conversational choice is apparently taken to be an expression of who you actually are, even the ones where you're trying to manipulate a demon with words. Imperfect system.
Okay I went to look up online references and proof read what I'd written and now if I had any further conclusion I forgot it.
But having even a strange and annoying math for alignment gives you a place to start the arguments.
... I have seen so many alignment arguments on the internet. I have seen so many people arguing so and so isn't actually evil. I do not want to have those arguments.
Yet I just typed up so much alignment math.
But the interesting part is how many ways you can end up in how many parts of the alignment grid. It makes it hard to argue so and so isn't such and such when the math is this mobile.
... it makes it easy to argue alignment math is a bad tool with weird outcomes tho...