What alignment should I set my character?

[captainducko]

TLDR: Does playing as neutral give you the most options or do you actually get locked out of stuff in Pathfinder?

So I like to play a somewhat good character. I want to save the world, not exploit people too badly. But I really like stealing from rich people, lying, getting good items nefariously and doing stuff because it's funny.

Like stealing some gold from someone's house but justifying it as "payment for saving the world"

I also prefer killing a villain myself rather than handing them over to the authorities, and certainly have an anarchic streak.

I like the sound of chaotic evil, but I don't want to go around murdering people for fun and causing chaos and misery. I guess that leaves neutral, is that just bland. or can I do what I want as neutral?

When I learned that Lae zel from BG3 was on the evil side of things I did realize the "evil" in CRPG games means more "ruthless" rather than Jeffery Dhamer evil

I've never liked alignment, even in Pen and Paper D and D, JUST LET ME DO WHAT I WANT IN THE MOMENT

[Metallicus]

You sound like you want Chaotic Neutral or Neutral Evil.

[Frostfeather]

I've always liked Chaotic Neutral the best in this game, it definitely has some good dialogue options and quest options. And it's generally the "let me do what I want" alignment.

[mike_hanna211]

Agree with the previous two posts; Chaotic Neutral sounds like what you want.

From Baldur's Gate:

"Chaotic neutral characters believe that there is no order to anything, including their own actions. With this as a guiding principle, they tend to follow whatever whim strikes them at the moment. Good and evil are irrelevant when making a decision. Chaotic neutral characters are extremely difficult to deal with. Such characters have been known to cheerfully and for no apparent purpose gamble away everything they have on the roll of a single die. They are extremely unreliable. In fact, the only reliable thing about them is that they cannot be relied upon! This alignment is perhaps the most difficult to play. Lunatics and madmen tend toward chaotic neutral behavior."

[KaykaysNL]

i would recomment you stay far away from lawful good neutral or evil. chaotic is what you want

[forkofspite]

Originally posted by captainducko:

TLDR: Does playing as neutral give you the most options or do you actually get locked out of stuff in Pathfinder?

All alignments will lock you out of something (presuming no mods). For alignment-restricted dialogue choices, true neutral will lock you of the most (good, evil, lawful, chaotic). If you want the neutral choices, you can also open up one other set by choosing the appropriate neutral (i.e., CN gives access to neutral and chaotic restricted choices).

For quests, there are some alignment-restricted quests. I can't easily find a list though, so I don't know for certain if any alignment choices would be more restrictive than others.

Plus, building options (kingdom management). N, CN, NE, and CE probably give the most options (due to buildings requiring a non-good, non-lawful alignment), but the general consensus among those that provide kingdom management advice indicate that a lawful choice is best for access to the bulletin board.

In other words ...
Just go with what you think would appeal to you the most. Don't worry about missing content because you are always going to miss content. If you enjoy the game (and have the time), you can try multiple runs and make different choices.

[Radiac]

When you make a character, you pick an alignment, and then, during the game, there will be interactions with monsters and NPCs which have alignment labels associated with them.
In SOME cases, you cannot do certain things if you are not of the correct alignment. In OTHER cases, it lets you do whatever you want to do, but if you do something that's out of character for your current alignment, this act will nudge your current alignment a slight distance in the direction of the alignment you just used. This is tracked on a 2-dimensional alignment map in the character screen. I have no idea why it works this way, but it does.

So if you make a Paladin, you have to be Lawful Good, and you have to maintain that alignment throughout the game if you want to keep taking levels in Paladin. As such, you need to try to keep yourself in the Lawful Good quadrant of the alignment map, and since there are often interactions that do not have a Lawful Good choice, you may have to occasionally do something Lawful Evil or Lawful Neutral just to push your current alignment position to the lawful side, if you get too close to chaotic. Monks and Druids can have similar problems given their alignment requirements, I believe.

I think the game devs more or less intended for players to be Lawful Good in order to get the happiest ending possible, though other options exist. There is at least one place where being good will allow you to possibly save somebody's life, and another place where somebody will die if you're not lawful, because the dialogue options that ultimately lead to saving those people are alignment gated. That said, if you were playing a chaotic evil character, you probably wouldn't care about those people and their stupid peon lives anyway, if you were roleplaying yourself accurately.

[Chronocide]

Originally posted by captainducko:

TLDR: Does playing as neutral give you the most options or do you actually get locked out of stuff in Pathfinder?

In theory, your actions (usually dialogue options) determine your alignment, so you can start neutral and just let the game put you where you should be.

That said, certain classes are restricted by their alignments. For example, clerics need to match their alignment to pretty close to their deity's alignment, since the cleric is gain their powers from their deity. But even being neutral will restrict you, and there's just buckets of content in this game, so "restricted" sure, but you'll still have access to an overwhelming amount of things.

And then some people, such as myself, go deliberately into a specific alignment focus for the entire play-through, and then play again on the other alignment.