Alignments play a key role in many pen & paper RPGs, including Pathfinder, so it’s only fitting that Pathfinder Online makes use of alignments as well. Alignments help to establish the personality of many players and the roles of many classes, and in Pathfinder Online, they’ll also have an important role to play.

This week Goblinworks’ Rich Baker delved more into alignments in Pathfinder Online and how following a certain path can provide benefits to a character. Likewise, characters that play in a way against their alignment will suffer penalties for doing so. Even settlements will have alignments.

Players can select their core alignment at character and will have several opportunities to act according to their alignment throughout the game. Acting against your alignment can cause it to slowly change and eventually lead to more dire consequences such as the loss of abilities & alignment-specific feats and other things.

“Active alignment represents your character's actual, objective alignment, as determined by the measurable and observable choices he or she makes in play. If your character aspires to be good but you murder someone for no reason, your character's active alignment takes a hard swerve toward neutral (hey, maybe it was an honest mistake). Make a pattern of that behavior, and your character's active alignment soon turns full-on evil. Killing people is almost never a *good* act, but there are plenty of times when it's justified and therefore doesn't automatically shift you toward evil—for example, if you're defending yourself against an attacker, fighting in a war, battling evil monsters, or putting a stop to another character's heinous behavior.”

The blog also explains how alignment points will work, events that can sway them, and how you can get back to your chosen alignment if you lose it and end up massacring a small village as a Lawful Good paladin.

Source: Pathfinder Online Alignments