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Pathfinder: Video Game/Wrath of the Righteous/Table Top Alignment Discussion

Janus

Janus

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Hulrun, a Lawful Neutral Inquisitor from the Church of Iomedae, a goddess of Golarion is guilty for executing (well, murdering) many innocent people in a demon ridden city for being the "wrong" race, out of suspicion. Not to mention he had Ember, a natural born witch with the temperament of an innocent child BURNED AT THE STAKE. When confronted on this, he doesn't even apologize, and has no remorse. He suspects the clergy/allies of their Church, the Desnans, of being in league with the demons as well. Desna is another goddess, and one of the good ones, according to lore.

Okay, so there's something wrong with the alignment system. Hulrun has murdered what seems to be dozens of people for no good reason during a demonic invasion of the city, tries to slaughter allied clergy, and is, in fact, guilty of a terrifying act of abuse on what is a child. She was 95, but in Elven years that's just right before reaching maturity. (Which is just a little bit beside the point, she was still innocent.) All these things scream of some kind of evil to me. But his label has him listed as "Lawful Neutral". I tried to argue about this label with someone on the steam forums, but the thread with the discussion was moved, or deleted.

I'm just curious, what are your opinions on this?
 
Oh, good, an alignment discussion!

So, first thing, someone's alignment doesn't dictate their actions - a Neutral person can still perform 'Good' or 'Evil' acts, or an Evil person perform Good ones, without changing their alignment. Even a particularly horrific or beatific single event is unlikely to change someone's alignment. It normally takes sustained action and intent to change, and while 'karma meter' type shenanigans don't really come into play in most "realities," there is some sway: an evil being doesn't have to be evil to everyone, even over the course of their life, and can have as loving and emotional relationship as a good being can. So if Hulrun's actions occur over a short period of time, rather than being the sort of thing that he does on a weekly basis, it's entirely possible for him to not immediately light up every Paladin's Smite-dar.

Second, intent matters to a degree. If Hulrun's actions were pursued with a nobler intent than just wanting to cause suffering, then it isn't necessarily going to ping as hard an evil reaction as someone who spikes babies in the touchdown zone just for the hell of it. Zealotry - which seems to be what's going on here, based on your description - is a cause for concern, but it's not fundamentally incompatible with non-evil actions. Moreover, people are allowed to be wrong - again, most settings don't have actual karma meters where you get pinged for a hundred Evil Points because you did something that seemed to be the right choice at the time.

Third, to what degree do you actually get inside Hulrun's head? You say he doesn't apologize and has no remorse. Is this from his perspective, or could he just be putting on a front? Combining the two points above, a Hard Man Decision won't immediately turn someone to Evil, but it does present a concerning precedent.

Fourth, while Lawful Neutral in extreme situations can defend 'just following orders/laws' positions (see Modrons and Inevitables), in most mortal situations it's going to revolve around trying to protect or improve (organized) society. Murdering actually-innocent people because you believe them to be guilty is defensible under a LN mindset.


For me, I'd say to look most at his motivations. Is he killing people because he enjoys it? Probably evil. Because he thinks it's the right thing to do? More likely neutral (murder is generally abhorrent to actual good alignments in almost all cases, although it's possible to carve out exceptions based on definitions a al Speaker for the Dead). In general, I'd say that pointing at a single instance of someone's behavior is generally not a good way to describe their actual alignment, because alignment is as much about tendencies as it is about boundaries. Or, to put it another way: He's described as LN, so that's what the developers intend for the player to think about when considering why he would do something like that.
 
Hulrun's sort of an idealic "bad example" for alignment discussions because his direct subordinates in-game will tell you pretty straight up "We stick with him deliberately to keep him in check, because of all his indiscriminate inquisitional executions."
 

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrwkLE5U4yc

23:00 onward until they stop discussing Ember. It's uh, not clear that Hulrun was totally depraved in his mind set, but very morally wicked to me. Ember was an Elven child at the time of her burning, even though the video is not quite as indicting as I remember.
 
for my actual contribution to discussion:

Alignment cannot describe a person, and the more people want it to do that the less good it is at doing it. Alignment is a fucked up legacy system written by lunatics, and the more you move away from leaning on it the better off you'll be.

IMO, its best use-case scenarios are to: give a very loose guideline on someone's outlook, or to stridently enforce it when using outsiders in order to illustrate they are utterly alien and generally hostile (deliberately or not) to mortal life.
 
Fun Fact - Hulrun is Lawful Good.

Though in this case it's more that Owlcat has a particularly fucked up view of alignment, especially "Lawful Good".

The example I go back to is from their previous pathfinder game, Kingmaker. In the second major arc/chapter of the book, your fledgling kingdom comes under assault by an alliance of trolls and kobolds. They attack your people, waylay your caravans, terrorise your cities. It is eventually revealed that they are doing this as part of an attempt to become a "civilised" and settled nation, they're carving out territory for themselves in an ironic reversal of the "taming the monster-haunted wilderness" arc that many games go through, including the first arc of Kingmaker.

At the climax of the arc, you find their capital/chief lair and invade, fighting the Troll King and the Kobold Chief. The Kobold asks you why you are doing this, why have you invaded their home, why are you slaughtering their people.

The Lawful Neutral response is "I am Baron of these lands, you have attacked my subjects and I have an obligation to protect them. If peace is possible I will pursue it, but I have seen no evidence that it is so."

The Lawful Good response is "Because you are monsters, not people, and no matter how civilised you may appear a monster ever lurks within your blackened heart. You must be slain, one and all, before you inevitably reveal your true nature and harm innocents."

Alignment discussions are all well and good but Owlcat Games are very clearly of the opinion that Lawful Good means racially-motivated genocide. Which is why they see no issue with making Hulrun a Lawful Good fanatic who burns children at the stake without trial.
 
Maugan Ra said:
Fun Fact - Hulrun is Lawful Good.

Though in this case it's more that Owlcat has a particularly fucked up view of alignment, especially "Lawful Good".

The example I go back to is from their previous pathfinder game, Kingmaker. In the second major arc/chapter of the book, your fledgling kingdom comes under assault by an alliance of trolls and kobolds. They attack your people, waylay your caravans, terrorise your cities. It is eventually revealed that they are doing this as part of an attempt to become a "civilised" and settled nation, they're carving out territory for themselves in an ironic reversal of the "taming the monster-haunted wilderness" arc that many games go through, including the first arc of Kingmaker.

At the climax of the arc, you find their capital/chief lair and invade, fighting the Troll King and the Kobold Chief. The Kobold asks you why you are doing this, why have you invaded their home, why are you slaughtering their people.

The Lawful Neutral response is "I am Baron of these lands, you have attacked my subjects and I have an obligation to protect them. If peace is possible I will pursue it, but I have seen no evidence that it is so."

The Lawful Good response is "Because you are monsters, not people, and no matter how civilised you may appear a monster ever lurks within your blackened heart. You must be slain, one and all, before you inevitably reveal your true nature and harm innocents."

Alignment discussions are all well and good but Owlcat Games are very clearly of the opinion that Lawful Good means racially-motivated genocide. Which is why they see no issue with making Hulrun a Lawful Good fanatic who burns children at the stake without trial.
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Ah I see, there is a Final Solution to the demi human problem. YIKES!! on Spikes!!! Eegad that's crazy. That's not Lawful Good in D&D as far as I know. I take it it's just Owlcat and not necessarily Golarion?
 
Maugan Ra said:
Fun Fact - Hulrun is Lawful Good.

Though in this case it's more that Owlcat has a particularly fucked up view of alignment, especially "Lawful Good".

The example I go back to is from their previous pathfinder game, Kingmaker. In the second major arc/chapter of the book, your fledgling kingdom comes under assault by an alliance of trolls and kobolds. They attack your people, waylay your caravans, terrorise your cities. It is eventually revealed that they are doing this as part of an attempt to become a "civilised" and settled nation, they're carving out territory for themselves in an ironic reversal of the "taming the monster-haunted wilderness" arc that many games go through, including the first arc of Kingmaker.

At the climax of the arc, you find their capital/chief lair and invade, fighting the Troll King and the Kobold Chief. The Kobold asks you why you are doing this, why have you invaded their home, why are you slaughtering their people.

The Lawful Neutral response is "I am Baron of these lands, you have attacked my subjects and I have an obligation to protect them. If peace is possible I will pursue it, but I have seen no evidence that it is so."

The Lawful Good response is "Because you are monsters, not people, and no matter how civilised you may appear a monster ever lurks within your blackened heart. You must be slain, one and all, before you inevitably reveal your true nature and harm innocents."

Alignment discussions are all well and good but Owlcat Games are very clearly of the opinion that Lawful Good means racially-motivated genocide. Which is why they see no issue with making Hulrun a Lawful Good fanatic who burns children at the stake without trial.
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I'm fairly sure Hulrun is LN (he certainly was in the original, and I don't believe they explicitly changed it in the game), but all the rest is correct. Owlcat's Pathfinder games have had nuts interpretations of morality.

Other examples from Kingmaker

A sidequest where you find a jerk who has been dropping cursed items all over your kingdom in an attempt to fuck with his boss' reputation. Your options are
CN: "Whatever, I don't care"
LE: "You're going to jail for cursing my citizens"
CE: "(Just attack them)"
NE: "Hey, I play along. I'll even have you take over from your boss."
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The Lawful Good Paladins of a Good goddess are portrayed as crazy fanatics who accuse your companion (who left them of their own free will) of blasphemy, duel your companion , who (win or lose the duel) will slander you, your kingdom and your companion and eventually call your companion before an inquisition where the best case (and fewest death) scenario involves your companion getting vindicated and a bunch of supposedly LG Paladins completely losing it and attacking your party and their own priests because they insist that they're in the right and the priests must have step this up and faked the results. Otherwise, you have to kill everyone, priests and paladins, when you can't argue well enough and they try to kill you.
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The whole Hellknight-Pirate mess
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You find a troll being held a slave and tortured by a mad wizard seeking to learn how trolls regen to become immortal
LN: "Well, it isn't against the law per say so I guess we can't do anything about it"
Fucker, it's my land and I write the laws. My character 1000% wouldn't put a "whoops slavery is legal" law into practice, so why the fuck isn't it illegal? The River Freedoms explicitly ban slavery, so it isn't even a case of slavery being legal before my kingdom appeared, it was always legal.
 
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Lawful Neutral honestly sounds about right on the condition that the story is cynical about the universe it's set in. If it's cynical, then Lawful Neutral can totally get away with having that alignment while purging followers of literal good gods in the name of other good gods. If it isn't cynical then no, that's fucking wack. He should be Lawful Evil.

The reason I say that is that there is a lot of writing in the game that takes a cynical stance towards the Lawful Good power structures you deal with. Daeran is cynical about Mendev, it's politics, and the crusade and how it warps the country's culture. Ember is cynical about religion and the god's ability to actually help people. And the game isn't shy about portraying the Lawful Good crusaders as heavily flawed.

The big issue here is that the game's writing is really uneven. On one hand you have some actual genuinely good and clever writing that seems to understand how questionable the concepts of alignments and black and white morality are. On the other hand you have really 1 dimensional stuff directly ported from the tabletop alongside just plain bad writing on Owlcat's part.
 
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When it comes to Hulrun specifically, and not broader stuff to do with Alignment generally or Owlcat's approach to it, there's a big thing to note.

Hulrun was really really good...at his old job. Which was a battlefield inquisitor. Leading charges, rallying troops, holding ground, dealing with demon infiltrators. He was essentially a Commissar, and he was genuinely great at it, well-liked and successful.

And then he got promoted to a job that required absolutely none of those skills, and instead required subtle social skills, a grasp on politics, careful observation skills, calm investigation of complex matters without jumping to conclusions.

He is, unsurprisingly, completely and utterly crap at it, and is going at the screws with the hammer he's equipped with and knows how to use.

All the horrible shit he does isn't done out of malice, it's done because he really genuinely thinks that's the way to perform his role. He's wrong, obviously, but that doesn't invalidate his intent. Couple that with him being more on the extreme fringe of Iomedae worshippers who rather than acknowledging a pantheon tend to consider worshipping anyone other than Iomedae heresy, you can see the issues this causes.

Shinji117 said:
Fucker, it's my land and I write the laws. My character 1000% wouldn't put a "whoops slavery is legal" law into practice, so why the fuck isn't it illegal? The River Freedoms explicitly ban slavery, so it isn't even a case of slavery being legal before my kingdom appeared, it was always legal.
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The River Kingdoms have no common law at all, the River Freedoms being the closest there it, and one of those is explicitly that the ruler is the final authority. 'Courts are for Kings', which makes that entire bit egregious.
 
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