Neutral Alignment for dummies

[LeannaJJorg]

okay i have a rouge with neutral alignment and i feel lost,, if i say or do something it's either lawful, chaotic, good or evil i can't stay at i in the middle i'm new to nw2 i have the first one i always play good characters
ohh can a warlock have good alignment any advice or suggestions

Thanks!!!

[sort-vampyr]

Just play your character as you like... Don't worry about alignment! If you have to stay at some specific alignment just do a little of everything... Kill somebody and then save someone... Steal something and then uphold law and order... Keeping alignment from moving is impossible since everything you do changes it -almost-. Just remember to balance good and evil, lawful and chaotic!... You still have to be quite evil to move down to neutral evil and even then you'll be right on the border to true neutral(unless of cause you keep being a "badie")

[JackOfClubs]

What sort-vampyr said. But there are some biases in the game. You will find it easier, for instance, to move in the good direction than evil and much easier to move lawful versus chaotic. So keeping your character neutral is often a conscious choice of avoiding things that sound lawful or good, since they will be harder to undo.

You can play a good Warlock but he must be chaotic good. (This is how I found out about the lawful bias.)

I don't want to give the impression that this balancing act is particularly difficult. You just need to have a clear idea in your head about what kinds of things your character would do or say.

[Snipercon]

I didn't have a problem playing neutral, chaotic, or evil. or lawful or good for that matter. Being neutral means being somewhat random in your actions. For example healing the Durgon brothers but killing the wounded orcs, but most of the time you avoid being a goody-goody or the devil incarnate and its not much of a problem.

However, I have an idea for an alignment system that would be vastly improved and not hard to implement. It involves your standard good/evil lawful/chaotic choices, but also neutral(good vs evil) and neutral(law vs chaos) choices as well. As the game is now, I could be a paladin and not really care about helping people or upholding the law. As long as I don't murder people or steal stuff I will stay lawful good. I can even murder and steal as often I help people and respect officials. What kind of paladin is that? Here's how my system works.

Lets use a 100 point scale for simplicity.

67-100 = Good or Lawful
34-66 = Neutral(L/C) or Neutral(G/E)
0-33 = Evil or Chaos

If you do something Good or Lawful and you are 50 points or higher you move up the normal amount. If you are below 50 points you move up a double amount.
Similarly if you do something Evil of Chaotic and you are 50 points or lower you move down the normal amount, and if you are above 50 points you move down a double amount.
If you something Neutral(L/C) or Neutral(G/E) you move a normal amount towards 50. If you are at 50 you don't move.

Why this is better: If you are Neutral you can be Good (or Evil) half the time and Neutral half the time and you will remain Neutral. You can also be Good, Evil, and Neutral and you probably won't shift very much.
However, if you are Good you have to do good things at least as much as you do neutral things, and if you do anything evil you have to offset that with twice as many good things to stay good. Furthermore, you can't be good for a long time and start cashing in your credit while you go on a rampage, because you can't get better than 100 good.