Alignment in this game is awful.

[Lukas]

I started the game as Lawful Good because that's how I usually play: a law abiding hero who tries do do the right things.
Then the game hit me with its bureaucratic alignment system.
Lawful means you are some kind of nazi prick who is perfectly fine with insulting people and exterminating any non-human, as long as it's legal. Which surprisingly is.
Good means you are so stupid you could never say anything that isn't exactly good, not even if by saying it you could save a life.
The alignment system on the whole is very shortsighted because as Lawful Good I can usually choose Chaotic Evil responses in dialogue, save for when it matters, because then I'm locked out of anything that isn't Lawful Good. I can choose Chaotic Evil just for kicks when chatting with companions and vendors, but God forbid I choose a Neutral respons to avoid a totally unnecessary conflict, which by the way looks to me as a Lawful Good action.
I could understand, for a Lawful Good character, being locked out from, I don't know, mass murders, impulse homicides, rape in the first degree, but being locked out from very reasonable choices that, by chance, would also help me avoid one or more of said crimes is a terrible design decision in my opinion.

I think the Awful Goof alignment in this game is my biggest complaint. I didn't like the Idea of everything being tied to the kingdom timeline, and the times quests, but with a couple of mods I stopped worrying about it. Now I'm really put off by the alignment system.

[InEffect]

LG kinda IS being a nazi for the greater good. Pretty much a crusader. Exterminate heretics, kill all evil. No redemption, no questions, no guilty conscience. Ends justify the means and all that. If you want to do what you want and damn the laws it's CN. If you are doing what you feel is good and damn the rules it's CG. If you are just a kind-hearted person - you are NG.

Also, monsters are evil. They do evil. To uphold the good and law as the name suggests you shouldn't have the qualms with killing those. CG/NG might believe in redemption for anyone. LG wouldn't risk lives of the citizens for the off-chance man-eating monsters will have a change of heart or that evil people will suddenly turn saints.

[Lukas]

Originally posted by InEffect:

LG kinda IS being a nazi for the greater good. Pretty much a crusader. Exterminate heretics, kill all evil. No redemption, no questions, no guilty conscience. Ends justify the means and all that. If you want to do what you want and damn the laws it's CN. If you are doing what you feel is good and damn the rules it's CG. If you are just a kind-hearted person - you are NG.

But even CG and NG don't cut it, because then you won't be able to abide any law, which will ruin your game when some deecision which is good in itself, and thus in character for you, happens to also be good because the law says so, thus being impossible to perform foe a non Lawful character.
I understand what you are saying but the system is too rigid in certain places and too lax in certain others. Why the heck, as a LG character, can I say "[Chaotic Evil] Kill her, it will be such fun" to a companion and not "[Neutral] Do what you must, but could you please let me enter your kingdom?" to an NPC?
It would be better the other way around, that you could use Neutral, which is nearer to your alignment, and not CE, which is on the opposite side of the board.
Also, I must admit I would have prefered some sort of consequence system for alignment, something that blocked or opened up certain choices as you made your decisions organically, not arbitrary restrictions based on what you pick at character creation. Unless you are a paladin, those are fantasy nazis so it's ok for them.

[InEffect]

NG does abide the laws... for the most part. but that one cares more about good than the law. most people are on a neutral axis. "Corner" alignments are the extremes

think of it that way. Let's say you mother did a crime.
LG would drag her to court
NG would evaluate the severeness of a crime and if the law is just to decide
CG would probably say 'F the law, it's my mom' and cover her up cause he feels that's a good thing to do. Or kill her on the spot. Either way, he's not about the law at all.

edit. And that's not my defense of PK alignment system or alignment in general. Both are rather bad and most tables either ignore them completely or homebrew something better. I just think there is a confusion you have about alignments to begin with and had the wrong expectations. Patron saint is NG, not LG. The angel of vengeance would be LG.

[Mooew]

https://imgur.com/qe8mPOc

Now, the roleplay should work as follows. You invent the character and do how that character would do, not how you personally would do. Or alternatively, take some already established character that is not too complicated. Like for LG take Obi-Wan (hello there!) and think in terms of what he would do here or there. The [Aligment] options are meant to represent steering of aligment, not to be guidelines to follow. Technically, these [...] are not supposed to be shown, so you'd just choose according to what your character would choose and maybe you'll end up with aligment shift.

If you, instead, use self-imposed limitation of choosing only options matching to aligment if available, then it may indeed end up being awkward. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes so to say.

That's how I think it is supposed to work.

[Tuidjy]

I also think that alignment in this game is poorly implemented. It is both too forgiving, and too restrictive, depending on the occasion.

It is too permissive, because as a paladin you can casually indulge in acts of pure Evil, like slaughtering vassals of yours, whom by the way you are sworn to protect, or murdering innocent civilized races for profit. Even one of these acts should make the paladin's deity strip him of all power. Balancing slaughter and lawbreaking with being nice to someone in your party is nuts.

It is too restrictive, because sometimes you are railroaded into having to choose between a number of options, and each and every one of them will pull you away from Lawful Good. Basically, the game thinks that by choosing an option that is simply good (neutral good) you are becoming less lawful. And of course, there are at least two cases when you have exactly two options - Chaotic Good and Lawful Evil, and both will seriously impact you alignment.

Does it really matter, mechanistically speaking? No. It is trivially easy to game the system so that you keep your alignment what it is supposed to, and while it is a pain in the аss that you sometimes cannot choose an option because you are not 'neutral' enough, it's not the end of the world. Most people complain that a paladin can't work to broker peace between Mites and Kobolds, but that would be like a Royalist trying to broker peace between Danton and Robespierre.

What it does is upset people, hinder role-playing, and generate threads like this one.

What would I do?
1) Hide all labels. I do not need to know what is good and what is neutral. I will choose based on what my character believes.
2) When a decision conflicts with the character's alignment, he just can't pull it off, or at least has to pass a serious skill check. So a king with a reputation for chaotic behavior will not be trusted by his subjects, someone with a history of obeying the letter of the law will not be able to get people to surrender, etc.
3) Neutral acts will not pull the alignment toward neutral, at least when there is no relevant lawful/chaotic, good/evil options. So, if an action is simply good, without a lawful or chaotic leaning, a chaotic good character alignment will be pulled toward good, but not toward lawful.
4) Gross violations of character alignment will have serious consequences. A paladin kills an innocent for sнiтs and giggles? Fall from grace, no ifs no buts.

[Lukas]

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

I also think that alignment in this game is poorly implemented. It is both too forgiving, and too restrictive, depending on the occasion.

What would I do?
1) Hide all labels. I do not need to know what is good and what is neutral. I will choose based on what my character believes.
2) When a decision conflicts with the character's alignment, he just can't pull it off, or at least has to pass a serious skill check. So a king with a reputation for chaotic behavior will not be trusted by his subjects, someone with a history of obeying the letter of the law will not be able to get people to surrender, etc.
3) Neutral acts will not pull the alignment toward neutral, at least when there is no relevant lawful/chaotic, good/evil options. So, if an action is simply good, without a lawful or chaotic leaning, a chaotic good character alignment will be pulled toward good, but not toward lawful.
4) Gross violations of character alignment will have serious consequences. A paladin kills an innocent for sнiтs and giggles? Fall from grace, no ifs no buts.

Yeah, I'd like something like that. Expecially the fall from grace idea. How come you can be cruel most of the time and still not have big repercussions?

Also, responding to InEffect: I know what you mean, and I know how the alignment concept works, it's just that in this game it's not well implemented. You said a NG would ponder about dragging his mother to prison or not, then decide. That's what I think you should be able to do, yet in this game you are either LG and locked with drag her to prison or NG/CG and locked with protecting her. Also, a LG character would drag her to prison, but would also probably defend her in court. In this game there are no follow ups like that.

Mooew, I invented a character and do as he would do, but we happen to be very like-minded so he would so exactly what I wouls do most of the times. Obi-Wan is LG but he confuses law officers on his way to the spaceport. In this videogame Obi-Wan would be locked with "[Lawful Good] *surrender Luke and the droid to the Stormtroopers*".
You are right about the [Alignment] tags in dialogue options, but that's not my complaint. My complaint is your alignment gets shifted for doing things that look like they shouldn't shift it, and sometimes you are locked out from doing things that, if you turned off the [Alignment] tags, would look very in-character.

[InEffect]

Originally posted by Lukas:

in this game you are either LG and locked with drag her to prison or NG/CG and locked with protecting her. Also, a LG character would drag her to prison, but would also probably defend her in court. In this game there are no follow ups like that.

for a NG person that would still be a LG deed. The problem is not prescribing alignment to actions, but the incremental nature of it, really. Another real big problem is what actually makes alignment. The game jumps between what others think of you vs what motivates you. For literally everyone, but yourself it's the latter, but for PC it's the former somehow. Now that's bull.

[foxpwnsyou]

Um... welcome to lore accurate pathfinders, "non humans"...you mean the incredibly evil races like Goblins? Trolls? Kobolds? ya im sorry maybe this just isn't the game for you lol, this region in general is pro core races period but they aren't "against all non humans" but the ones present are literally enemies/evil af...and lol "nazi"? guess anything bringing law and order is a Nazi these days, nah you just dont understand what being Lawful Good means and it shows.

[Master Spark]

Hah, nice 5 years necro. But yeah, this thread is zoomers finding out what Law means is hilarious. Nazi were pretty lawful btw.,

[Steve]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.