A creature’s general moral and personal attitudes are represented by its alignment: Lawful Good, Neutral Good, Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, (true) Neutral, Chaotic Neutral, Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil, and Chaotic Evil. Choose an alignment for your character, using his or her race and class as a guide. Most player characters are good or neutral rather than evil. In general, evil alignments are for villains and monsters.

Alignment is a tool for developing your character’s identity. Each alignment represents a broad range of personality types or personal philosophies, so two lawful good characters can still be quite different from each other. Choosing an alignment for your character means stating your intent to play that character a certain way.

Good characters and creatures protect innocent life. Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit. People who are Neutral with respect to Good and Evil have compunctions against killing the innocent but lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others. Neutral people are committed to others by personal relationships. A Neutral person may sacrifice himself to protect his family or even his homeland, but he would not do so for strangers who are not related to him.

Lawful characters tell the truth, keep their word, respect authority, honor tradition, and judge those who fall short of their duties. Chaotic characters follow their consciences, resent being told what to do, favor new ideas over tradition, and do what they promise if they feel like it. Neutrality on the Lawful–Chaotic axis is usually simply a middle state, a state of not feeling compelled toward one side or the other. However, “True” Neutrals are either focused on keeping a balance between the forces of Law/Chaos and Good/Evil while seeing the need for all. Otherwise, animals and other creatures incapable of moral action are always listed as Neutral.

• Lawful Neutral (LN)—"The rules are the rules and must be followed"

• Lawful Good (LG)—"Everyone pitches in to help each other, according to the rules"

• Lawful Evil (LE)—"The strong rule the weak and the hierarchy has value"

• Neutral Good (NG)—"Life, happiness, and prosperity to all deserving"

• Neutral—"Balance is the steady state of nature; Divisiveness seeks to corrupt balance"

• Neutral Evil (NE)—"Efficiency (for my gain) has no morals"

• Chaotic Good (CG)—"Freedom for each person to achieve their goals how they want, as long as it does no harm"

• Chaotic Neutral (CN)—"Do what you want, how you want and change your mind whenever"

• Chaotic Evil (CE)—"Rules are made to be broken and lives are made to be taken"

ALIGNMENT, CHARACTER RATING, AND CHANGING ALIGNMENT

A PC that does not follow their stated alignment in actions, will gain a penalty to Character Rating used to determine the time and cost to gain levels. The GM will notify the character when this occurs the first time, but will keep track of further instances. At any point the Game Master deems the character has gone beyond simple transgressions, they will inform the character that they have changed alignment. This event causes the character to lose experience points to the beginning of the level previous to their current (i.e. loss of a character level that cannot be restored by magic).

Some classes, Paladins, rangers, and monks must be especially careful in their adherence to their alignment as a transgression or a change could cause a loss of class abilities. A cleric that changes alignment not supported by their deity will lose all clerical ability until they find another deity (and they will have lost a level). A cleric that attempts to change deities more than once will be cursed (no class abilities ever) and must roll a System Save or be struck permanently dead.

Magic Items Causing a Change in Alignment. Some magic items will cause the wearer or wielder to change alignment. If this is due to a magical curse, and the curse is removed within 7 days, the player will suffer no ill effects (note that such characters will NOT want to change alignment in any case). A paladin becoming non-good or monk becoming non-lawful both require atonement to fully gain back their powers. Some items are so powerful that the alignment change is not due to a curse and cannot be removed. In this case, experience points are not lost (unless the afflicted was a cleric) but the alignment change is permanent (with consequences for classes requiring a certain alignment).