User:Average/Alignment

Alignment is your characters disposition to the universe. The current universe itself tags NPCs with certain dispositions (evil or good) and you get to choose a path that either goes for or against that alignment. Your alignment is first assigned by the DM depending on the needs and balance of the universe. unless you start from age 1 or less, where it starts neutral.

A player-character who chooses only to kill negatively-aligned creatures will have a perfectly clean XP chain, with no karma. What this may give a character will have to be discovered. The realities of most gameplay means that characters may have to kill an animal, for example, for food. A player must offer something to the gods of those animals, for that XP not to count against his or her alignment. Perhaps they give up all the XP for the kill. That covers about half of the negative karma. And then they may offer it to other creatures or make a ceremonial offering directly. That may settle the remainder.

There is at least one good advantage to keeping a squeaky-clean alignment -- one can stack a cleric class without losing any XP. Of course, whether that new class levels at the rate of your deeds, is going to be completely dependent on the value of those future behaviors.

Alignment is different than attitude which can be chaotic or lawful.