Sad D&D Fact: your brain and your character's brain are the same brain. Your character cannot think without using your brain to do it. Your character will always be "you, but through the lens of this different mindset". If you refuse to make snap decisions in the moment without instead spending twenty minutes hemming and hawing and searching up references for "what my character would do", then there's gonna be a lot of tables you don't get to play D&D at.
None of that means you can't portray someone different than yourself, or someone with traits that diverge wildly from your own. It does mean you will have to accept that you'll never be consistent in your portrayal of someone else. There's always going to be slips, weird decisions, or things you do that you smack yourself for later. Pro tip: welcome to being good at roleplaying. Try to make your character a flawessly consistent icon of their alignment, the truest and most perfect embodiment of Lawful Good there ever was that never does anything the least bit un-Lawful and the least bit un-Good? Congrats: your character is a boring and/or frustrating caricature of a person that has no depth or verisimilitude. Real people are inconsistent ****-ups that do shit in the heat of the moment they have to try and justify to themselves later all the time. Especially if they're put in life-threatening danger, and doubly especially in a D&D game where they can be corrupted in mind and soul if they step a foot wrong.
Real people are not smoothly uniform. They are built on inconsistencies, conflicts of nature, and fragile assemblages of experience and assumption that make up their identities. Embrace it. Revel in it. Discard the idea that your every move must be carefully calculated to display exactly the correct amount of Lawfulness and Goodness so as to be perfectly consistent with the characterization you decided on before ever once stepping into this person's shoes and join the rest of us down here in the mud and shit of Real Persondom. It's more fun, and so much less stressful.
Congratulations, you just described exactly why many people find it helpful to give themselves an alignment. "I'm this. My character is a little more that way, so I'll shift my responses in that direction."
"Trying to make yourself a flawlessly..." Nobody here is advocating you do that. But even so, that would not necessarily make your character boring. Playing yourself as every character, though? That would be boring and old pretty quickly. Especially if you're the "I'm right, you're wrong" type of person...
Sad D&D Fact: your brain and your character's brain are the same brain. Your character cannot think without using your brain to do it. Your character will always be "you, but through the lens of this different mindset". If you refuse to make snap decisions in the moment without instead spending twenty minutes hemming and hawing and searching up references for "what my character would do", then there's gonna be a lot of tables you don't get to play D&D at.
None of that means you can't portray someone different than yourself, or someone with traits that diverge wildly from your own. It does mean you will have to accept that you'll never be consistent in your portrayal of someone else. There's always going to be slips, weird decisions, or things you do that you smack yourself for later. Pro tip: welcome to being good at roleplaying. Try to make your character a flawessly consistent icon of their alignment, the truest and most perfect embodiment of Lawful Good there ever was that never does anything the least bit un-Lawful and the least bit un-Good? Congrats: your character is a boring and/or frustrating caricature of a person that has no depth or verisimilitude. Real people are inconsistent ****-ups that do shit in the heat of the moment they have to try and justify to themselves later all the time. Especially if they're put in life-threatening danger, and doubly especially in a D&D game where they can be corrupted in mind and soul if they step a foot wrong.
Real people are not smoothly uniform. They are built on inconsistencies, conflicts of nature, and fragile assemblages of experience and assumption that make up their identities. Embrace it. Revel in it. Discard the idea that your every move must be carefully calculated to display exactly the correct amount of Lawfulness and Goodness so as to be perfectly consistent with the characterization you decided on before ever once stepping into this person's shoes and join the rest of us down here in the mud and shit of Real Persondom. It's more fun, and so much less stressful.
This is just dripping with “my experiences point to one thing; therefore ALL experiences must be the same.” It’s aggressive, unhelpful, ignores the obvious reality that other groups may be different…. And seems to be arguing against a point that no one is actually saying.
In my experience, there are plenty of players who can perfectly, believably, and, consistently step into another alignment. Sometimes that takes to form of someone with sufficient empathetical intelligence that they can seamlessly step into another’s shoes (admittedly, most of my players who can do this seamlessly are professional actors or lawyers, so individuals predisposed toward thinking like other people and considering different facets of situations).
Other times it means a character who thinks for a couple seconds about what they want their character to be, what their character might do, and then makes a decision. Outside of your hyperbole, no one should be taking 20 minutes to make a decision; it’s usually a brief interlude just to give some consideration. Nor is the decision generally “how do I play the most pure form of my alignment” it’s “how would my character, who is generally lawful evil, respond in this particular situation?”
Alignment is helpful for that second group - it provides them a baseline of what their character might do, while also allowing for deviation therefrom based on the specific circumstances. As it seems most people on this thread realise, it’s a pretty darn nifty tool for a lot of people who want to explore the fantasy of being someone completely different, but need a little bit of help to get in character.
Lemme give you an example from my own recent play, something I've directly experienced this year.
One of my current active characters is Mistletoe, an Umbragen paladin of Eberron. Before I sat down for Session 1, I had every intention of making Misty a gregarious, outgoing chatty-Cathy who enjoyed the company of others and actively sought companionship and merriment. I'd selected her Q/I/B/F based on that idea, and even talked it over with the DM a bit.
Then I sat down, waited for my turn at character intros, opened my mouth to speak for/as Misty...and what came out of my mouth was a painfully shy, reserved, quietly wary battle-haunted waif. Absolutely nothing like my original projections for her, and yet there she was in my brain, telling me I was doing perfectly fine and she wasn't at all interested in all that party-gal shit I'd had in my brain before sitting down in her shoes.
The Alignment Police would tell me to double down, shut her up, and wrench her back into place - "you picked a personality alignment, you have to stick to it! You HAVE to!" But instead I let Mistletoe have her head and asked myself the whole while "huh. Where did you come from, and why are you a wallflower instead of this cool 'bubbly drow' thing I've been wanting to play for literal years?"
The answers surprised me. And they made Misty much more intriguing and engaging for me to play, even as she was a wild departure from my normal persona. Where Yurei is an assertive, opinionated shit that is perfectly willing to go to the mat with people and argue her bloody head off, Misty is a shy sort who'd rather keep her head down and simply go with the flow, letting the more flamboyant personalities in her party lead. Even though she wasn't supposed to be. Misty is a whole lot less "just play yourself in a skinsuit" than she was originally intended to be, but allowing her to make those decisions in the moment and then seeking to understand them afterwards led me to a new appreciation for the character and the game. Also led to me deleting her Q/I/B/F (or at least her quirks) and vowing not to write new ones until she was level 5. Or until the DM told me to.
Can you do that with alignment? Discover that your character doesn't at all conform to your initial plan and simply change it on the fly? I mean, obviously someone can, the same way I deleted character quirks that didn't at all fit what my character turned out to be. But if ALignment is a core, fundamental rule everybody has to use the way so many people are arguing here, can you really allow yourself to be surprised by your own character that way?
Or will you punch her in her disobedient little mind-mouth, tell her to get back in her box, and force her to be something she isn't because that's what you settled on before ever meeting this person?
Lemme give you an example from my own recent play, something I've directly experienced this year.
One of my current active characters is Mistletoe, an Umbragen paladin of Eberron. Before I sat down for Session 1, I had every intention of making Misty a gregarious, outgoing chatty-Cathy who enjoyed the company of others and actively sought companionship and merriment. I'd selected her Q/I/B/F based on that idea, and even talked it over with the DM a bit.
Then I sat down, waited for my turn at character intros, opened my mouth to speak for/as Misty...and what came out of my mouth was a painfully shy, reserved, quietly wary battle-haunted waif. Absolutely nothing like my original projections for her, and yet there she was in my brain, telling me I was doing perfectly fine and she wasn't at all interested in all that party-gal shit I'd had in my brain before sitting down in her shoes.
The Alignment Police would tell me to double down, shut her up, and wrench her back into place - "you picked a personality alignment, you have to stick to it! You HAVE to!" But instead I let Mistletoe have her head and asked myself the whole while "huh. Where did you come from, and why are you a wallflower instead of this cool 'bubbly drow' thing I've been wanting to play for literal years?"
The answers surprised me. And they made Misty much more intriguing and engaging for me to play, even as she was a wild departure from my normal persona. Where Yurei is an assertive, opinionated shit that is perfectly willing to go to the mat with people and argue her bloody head off, Misty is a shy sort who'd rather keep her head down and simply go with the flow, letting the more flamboyant personalities in her party lead. Even though she wasn't supposed to be. Misty is a whole lot less "just play yourself in a skinsuit" than she was originally intended to be, but allowing her to make those decisions in the moment and then seeking to understand them afterwards led me to a new appreciation for the character and the game. Also led to me deleting her Q/I/B/F (or at least her quirks) and vowing not to write new ones until she was level 5. Or until the DM told me to.
Can you do that with alignment? Discover that your character doesn't at all conform to your initial plan and simply change it on the fly? I mean, obviously someone can, the same way I deleted character quirks that didn't at all fit what my character turned out to be. But if ALignment is a core, fundamental rule everybody has to use the way so many people are arguing here, can you really allow yourself to be surprised by your own character that way?
Or will you punch her in her disobedient little mind-mouth, tell her to get back in her box, and force her to be something she isn't because that's what you settled on before ever meeting this person?
They should adopt a a Vice & Virtue system based loosely on the Seven Deadly Sins (Avarice, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Pride, Sloth, Wrath) and Transcendentals (Beauty, Truth, Goodness) that's a separate part of Character Creation.
Players would have a number of points to buy Sins such as Sloth, Gluttony, or Wrath or Virtues such as Beauty, Truth, or Goodness.
Each Sin or Virtue would have a number of Traits, one of which can be chosen per each Sin or Virtue. These would all have positive and negative modifiers.
Sloth might have a Trait such as Restful, which treats each Short Rest as a Long Rest, but always places the character last in Initiative order.
Gluttony might have a Trait called Obese, which grants additional Armor Class points and advantage on Constitution saving throws, but at the cost of disadvantage on Acrobatics, Athletics, and Seduction (new) skill checks, and lowered movement.
Truth might have Traits such as Honesty and Curiosity. Honesty would gives a negative modifier and disadvantage on Deception, but a bonus to Wisdom. Curiosity would give a bonus to Investigation but a negative modifier to Intuition (being more open-minded and therefore credulous).
Goodness might have a Trait such as Faith, which gives expertise on Religion checks and access to one of the Supernatural Gifts, but has lowered Perception (having their focus on things not of this world).
Lemme give you an example from my own recent play, something I've directly experienced this year.
One of my current active characters is Mistletoe, an Umbragen paladin of Eberron. Before I sat down for Session 1, I had every intention of making Misty a gregarious, outgoing chatty-Cathy who enjoyed the company of others and actively sought companionship and merriment. I'd selected her Q/I/B/F based on that idea, and even talked it over with the DM a bit.
Then I sat down, waited for my turn at character intros, opened my mouth to speak for/as Misty...and what came out of my mouth was a painfully shy, reserved, quietly wary battle-haunted waif. Absolutely nothing like my original projections for her, and yet there she was in my brain, telling me I was doing perfectly fine and she wasn't at all interested in all that party-gal shit I'd had in my brain before sitting down in her shoes.
The Alignment Police would tell me to double down, shut her up, and wrench her back into place - "you picked a personality alignment, you have to stick to it! You HAVE to!" But instead I let Mistletoe have her head and asked myself the whole while "huh. Where did you come from, and why are you a wallflower instead of this cool 'bubbly drow' thing I've been wanting to play for literal years?"
The answers surprised me. And they made Misty much more intriguing and engaging for me to play, even as she was a wild departure from my normal persona. Where Yurei is an assertive, opinionated shit that is perfectly willing to go to the mat with people and argue her bloody head off, Misty is a shy sort who'd rather keep her head down and simply go with the flow, letting the more flamboyant personalities in her party lead. Even though she wasn't supposed to be. Misty is a whole lot less "just play yourself in a skinsuit" than she was originally intended to be, but allowing her to make those decisions in the moment and then seeking to understand them afterwards led me to a new appreciation for the character and the game. Also led to me deleting her Q/I/B/F (or at least her quirks) and vowing not to write new ones until she was level 5. Or until the DM told me to.
Can you do that with alignment? Discover that your character doesn't at all conform to your initial plan and simply change it on the fly? I mean, obviously someone can, the same way I deleted character quirks that didn't at all fit what my character turned out to be. But if ALignment is a core, fundamental rule everybody has to use the way so many people are arguing here, can you really allow yourself to be surprised by your own character that way?
Or will you punch her in her disobedient little mind-mouth, tell her to get back in her box, and force her to be something she isn't because that's what you settled on before ever meeting this person?
Yurei, you know that I use alignment. How many times has Toots surprise me in Wysp’s game? If it turned out her actions didn’t fit the C/G her alignment says, do you think I would hesitate to change her alignment? Or if Wysp decided Toots actions didn’t fit her listed C/G and decided to discuss changing her alignment with me, do you think I wouldn’t at least hear them out and either change the alignment or change Toots’ behaviors?
And you know Toots has a dark side and it worries her. Alignment should be mutable, or else it doesn’t work. The problem lies not with the alignment system, but with how some people perceive it to function. Some folks think it is something that should be set in stone and dictate a character’s every single action and it’s just not feasible or fair to treat it that way. It should be something that instead reflects a character’s overall outlook based on their accumulated actions, and it should potentially shift to more accurately reflect those actions as the character grows and evolves.
So, to answer your question: “yes.” Yes, one can certainly discover their character diverges from their initial concept in conjunction with the alignment system. At least, one can if one views alignment properly, as something that can change and reflects what a character does and not as something fixed that governs what a character does.
Note that actors - the people trained for years to convincingly step into a persona wildly different from their own - don't ever talk about/deal with alignment. Nobody has ever meme'd an actor saying "what's my character's alignment?" They instead meme the oft-repeated theater class dweeb phrase "what is my character's motivation?"
Some motivations dovetail neatly into alignments - "champion justice" is an easy shoe-in for Lawful Good. Same with "protect the weak" or "help the unfortunate". other perfectly valid character motivations aren't nearly so clear-cut, though. What immutable, soul-defining, completely and utterly unbreakable Alignment Box does one assign the motivation "seek glory" to? 'Glory' is inherently selfish, so most people would assign it to Neutral or even Evil classifications (and thus also ban it from their tables), but 'Glory' is also only something you can really have when the masses adore you. They won't do so unless you do stuff they feel is worthy of adoration, and I haven't met many 'The Masses' who'll adore someone for being selfish. 'Seek Glory' is the motivation of a person who does selfless things for selfish reasons, and it defies the entire idea of alignment.
And yet, 'Seek Glory' is one of the most common Adventuring Motivations there is.
Unlike alignment, where there's nine four choices and nine four choices alone, constructed of words that may or may not have any meaning whatsoever to any given character, you can assign a two-word* motivation to a character and have a much better idea of how to play them without ever having to have a week-long fight over 'Alignment' at your table. Here, let's put together a list of Motivations in two* words (allowing for conjunctives, i.e. 'protect the weak') that are so much more useful, specific, and descriptive that the nine four Alignment options the books try and insist everybody conform to:
Seek Glory
Champion Justice
Gain Wealth
Fulfill Duty
Attain Knowledge
Acquire Power
Uncover Lost History
Slay Evil
Stave Off Boredom
Experience New Pleasures
Seek Vengeance
Escape Tragedy
Build Legacy
Dethrone the Unjust
Build Family
Hone Talents
Honor Oath
Reclaim Pride
Return Home
Get Laid
Look at that - a d20 list's worth of possible motivations (or at least 19 decent options and one "you're always gonna get this guy at the table anyways, best be ready for him" meme), in two* words per choice. A single sentence taking the place of Ideal or Bond that describes a character's motivation is even better, but not strictly necessary.
Alignment will always be in D&D because at this point the 5e version of alignment can be put back into the game as easily as it can be taken out. People can assign one of nine four alignments to their character as easily as writing two words on their sheet somewhere, and DMs can assign one of nine three alignments to their monsters and NPC stat blocks. Alignment isn't going anywhere so long as people want to use it, and everybody knows it.
Doesn't mean I can't see it as meaningless noise for me and mine, or get irritated with people who tell me to Use Alignment More(C) instead of seeking to learn/know things about my cxharacter that actually matter. I could not tell you Misty's alignment, I have no idea which over-rigid memelulzy box my paladin's supposed to occupy - but I can absolutely tell you about her morality, in terms exhaustive enough nobody wants to hear it.
Why is that so much worse, if I may be so bold as to ask?
You keep saying that C/N is one of the verboten alignments, but let’s go back to my example of Toots. Her alignment is listed as C/G, but she has a distinct dark side. If Wysp brought it to my attention that her dark side is pulling her away from Good towards Neutrality, and would therefore make her alignment C/N, why should it be a problem? I’m obviously not playing her as #chaosforthesakeofchaos, so why is an alignment of C/N such a problem?
Note that actors - the people trained for years to convincingly step into a persona wildly different from their own - don't ever talk about/deal with alignment. Nobody has ever meme'd an actor saying "what's my character's alignment?" They instead meme the oft-repeated theater class dweeb phrase "what is my character's motivation?"
Huh. I’ll have to inform the actors I play with that they’re apparently playing the game—and representing their profession—wrong, simply because they find alignment to be an interesting tool for what it is.
It is rather hard to engage with you when you are making statements in the form of absolutes and trying to talk for others. It is extra hard when those others you try to talk for are the other individuals with whom you are having the conversation.
Once again, the people you are arguing against are NOT saying that you have to strictly play to alignment. They are NOT saying that you have to follow one of the nine options strictly. People are NOT saying your alignment can’t change over the course of the game. People are NOT saying that individuals can’t make choices against their noted alignment and having it still be in character. People are NOT saying that you need to use alignment if you do not want to.
People ARE saying that alignment is a useful tool to help inform decisions for those who need the help - but are NOT saying it is scripture that must define decisions. People ARE saying that they recognise characters are more complicated than nine alignments can ever capture (just as people are more complicated than sixteen MBTI categories can ever capture), and this ARE saying alignment should not be treated as the only metric of understanding a character.
I do get where you are coming from - the alignment police are frustrating… but your posts seem to be attempts to argue with alignment police, rather than attempts to debate the individuals posting… who are themselves not alignment police and who have, in multiple posts, decried that kind of policing.
"Alignment", as traditionally used by the majority of fans of the system - to the best of my current understanding - is chosen at character creation. If someone strays from their alignment, that alignment doesn't change. Instead, the character suffers increasingly severe penalties up to and including loss of class levels until they undergo atonement for their breach of alignment and correct their behavior back to accordance with the alignment they chose at character creation.
All 'Evil' alignments are forbidden to players outright. Most DMs will also forbid Chaotic Neutral because CN is basically CE Lite; people don't do 'Neutral' well, and CN is also well known as the "I'm going to troll the group until they throw me out" alignment like I mentioned pages ago. True neutral is forbidden because "nobody likes a fence-sitter"; most DMs who make heavy use of Alignment will not permit someont to, effectively, not choose one and will instead demand that a player not camp the middle.
Ergo, there are four valid alignments - the three variations of Good, and LN as Lawful aNal because 'Lawfulness' is considered inherently superior to 'Chaotic' despite tremendous evidence to the contrary. Once an alignment has been selected, it is immutable. That is the alignment you belong to, and if you stray from it the universe scourges you until you repent. If your alignment does change, the severe penalties to your character become permanent and cannot ever be undone, unless the change is moving closer to 'Lawful Good'. As one of the biggest, most egregious weaknesses in the entire alignment system is that it is written from the perspective of a 'Lawful Good' character, with all other alignments being seen as 'Lesser' the more steps removed they are from LG.
Some folks use alignment differently, but to the best of my knowledge that is how alignment worked in older editions of D&D, and thus how alignment is 'supposed' to work. I do not believe it makes for compelling games, no. There are times and cases where such rules do not actively hinder play, if someone is fortunate enough to be able to easily color inside the lines they assigned themselves and remain true to their original alignment, but I find it incredibly difficult to understand how such a system could ever actively help gameplay.
"Alignment", as traditionally used by the majority of fans of the system - to the best of my current understanding - is chosen at character creation. If someone strays from their alignment, that alignment doesn't change. Instead, the character suffers increasingly severe penalties up to and including loss of class levels until they undergo atonement for their breach of alignment and correct their behavior back to accordance with the alignment they chose at character creation.
All 'Evil' alignments are forbidden to players outright. Most DMs will also forbid Chaotic Neutral because CN is basically CE Lite; people don't do 'Neutral' well, and CN is also well known as the "I'm going to troll the group until they throw me out" alignment like I mentioned pages ago. True neutral is forbidden because "nobody likes a fence-sitter"; most DMs who make heavy use of Alignment will not permit someont to, effectively, not choose one and will instead demand that a player not camp the middle.
Ergo, there are four valid alignments - the three variations of Good, and LN as Lawful aNal because 'Lawfulness' is considered inherently superior to 'Chaotic' despite tremendous evidence to the contrary. Once an alignment has been selected, it is immutable. That is the alignment you belong to, and if you stray from it the universe scourges you until you repent. If your alignment does change, the severe penalties to your character become permanent and cannot ever be undone, unless the change is moving closer to 'Lawful Good'. As one of the biggest, most egregious weaknesses in the entire alignment system is that it is written from the perspective of a 'Lawful Good' character, with all other alignments being seen as 'Lesser' the more steps removed they are from LG.
Some folks use alignment differently, but to the best of my knowledge that is how alignment worked in older editions of D&D, and thus how alignment is 'supposed' to work. I do not believe it makes for compelling games, no. There are times and cases where such rules do not actively hinder play, if someone is fortunate enough to be able to easily color inside the lines they assigned themselves and remain true to their original alignment, but I find it incredibly difficult to understand how such a system could ever actively help gameplay.
In all fairness, I have never seen the game played this way. Changing alignment is a major RP step, but it can be done, and most DMs I’ve played with don’t impose penalties as long as the change is not arbitrary or capricious. That being said, I feel that alignment is an artificial constraint that has no place outside of the Outer Planes, but at the same time I don’t feel that it’s as damaging to RP as you seem to think it is.
In the end, my issue with alignment is that it's a colossal waste of time that might distract players and DMs from answering the questions about their character that actually matter.
Suppose I came up with a list of twenty questions that could be used to reveal a character's true alignment (20 is pretty small; the Myers-Briggs test is 93). Which is more useful:
I note down the resulting alignment and discard the questions.
I note down the answers to the questions and discard the alignment.
That's not a close call; the only advantage of the first is that it takes up less space on the page.
"Alignment", as traditionally used by the majority of fans of the system - to the best of my current understanding - is chosen at character creation. If someone strays from their alignment, that alignment doesn't change. Instead, the character suffers increasingly severe penalties up to and including loss of class levels until they undergo atonement for their breach of alignment and correct their behavior back to accordance with the alignment they chose at character creation.
That's where you're wrong, an important part of alignment is the developement of your character. Just as in real life, D&D characters will change and evolve. Your alignment can change with your character, and any DM who punishes you for that is doing a TERRIBLE job.
Alignment is not permanently set in place, it is a part of your characters identity and as they evolve and grow, it can change with them.
Say, a NE rogue is forced to watch while held captive as their friend dies. That will scar the rogue, and could potentialy effect them so much that they change and stray from their alignment.
Humans are not going to remain the same their whole life, and nor will people in D&D.
If you are playing alignment in this way then you are not playing alignment right.
"Alignment", as traditionally used by the majority of fans of the system - to the best of my current understanding - is chosen at character creation. If someone strays from their alignment, that alignment doesn't change. Instead, the character suffers increasingly severe penalties up to and including loss of class levels until they undergo atonement for their breach of alignment and correct their behavior back to accordance with the alignment they chose at character creation.
All 'Evil' alignments are forbidden to players outright. Most DMs will also forbid Chaotic Neutral because CN is basically CE Lite; people don't do 'Neutral' well, and CN is also well known as the "I'm going to troll the group until they throw me out" alignment like I mentioned pages ago. True neutral is forbidden because "nobody likes a fence-sitter"; most DMs who make heavy use of Alignment will not permit someont to, effectively, not choose one and will instead demand that a player not camp the middle.
Ergo, there are four valid alignments - the three variations of Good, and LN as Lawful aNal because 'Lawfulness' is considered inherently superior to 'Chaotic' despite tremendous evidence to the contrary. Once an alignment has been selected, it is immutable. That is the alignment you belong to, and if you stray from it the universe scourges you until you repent. If your alignment does change, the severe penalties to your character become permanent and cannot ever be undone, unless the change is moving closer to 'Lawful Good'. As one of the biggest, most egregious weaknesses in the entire alignment system is that it is written from the perspective of a 'Lawful Good' character, with all other alignments being seen as 'Lesser' the more steps removed they are from LG.
Some folks use alignment differently, but to the best of my knowledge that is how alignment worked in older editions of D&D, and thus how alignment is 'supposed' to work. I do not believe it makes for compelling games, no. There are times and cases where such rules do not actively hinder play, if someone is fortunate enough to be able to easily color inside the lines they assigned themselves and remain true to their original alignment, but I find it incredibly difficult to understand how such a system could ever actively help gameplay.
Your understanding is flawed then, I have never not once seen Alignment used that way in 30 years of D&D.
In fact, in older editions, there were ramifications for certain classes that only occurred if your alignment changed.
In the end, my issue with alignment is that it's a colossal waste of time that might distract players and DMs from answering the questions about their character that actually matter.
Suppose I came up with a list of twenty questions that could be used to reveal a character's true alignment (20 is pretty small; the Myers-Briggs test is 93). Which is more useful:
I note down the resulting alignment and discard the questions.
I note down the answers to the questions and discard the alignment.
That's not a close call; the only advantage of the first is that it takes up less space on the page.
False dilemma.
3. You note down the resulting alignment and remember try to internalize the answers to the question. Note the answers if you think you'll forget them. Use whatever combination of the two is appropriate for the situation.
The advantage you gave also isn't the only advantage of the first. How quickly are you going to go through those 20 answers and triangulate the current situation amongst those answers?
Personally I don't find much use in alignment. It's harmless when used to describe a character's actions and you're willing to let alignment shift rather than trying to force someone to stay in one box of a three by three grid. But I ultimately have little use for it compared to going into a character's motivations. What do they want, and what are they willing and not willing to do to accomplish that goal?
If someone wants to just say 'my character is lawful neutral' and they want to stick to that box, more power to you. So long as you're having fun and your table is having fun, you're not doing it wrong. I just personally find that those two words do very little in terms of building a character. Or defining a culture, or monster behavior even.
3. You note down the resulting alignment and remember try to internalize the answers to the question. Note the answers if you think you'll forget them. Use whatever combination of the two is appropriate for the situation.
Experiment for you, Zub.
Take a look at this really neat video from a couple of years ago by Ginny Di:
Once you've done so, pull up the fifty-question quiz she links to in that video. Bring up a character of yours
Now, when you're answering it, answer every last single question with that character's alignment. Put the same two-word response down as the answer to every last one of Ginny's questions.
Once you're done, show the questionaire to someone else, then ask them to tell you what they think your character's personality is like.
"Alignment", as traditionally used by the majority of fans of the system - to the best of my current understanding - is chosen at character creation. If someone strays from their alignment, that alignment doesn't change. Instead, the character suffers increasingly severe penalties up to and including loss of class levels until they undergo atonement for their breach of alignment and correct their behavior back to accordance with the alignment they chose at character creation.
All 'Evil' alignments are forbidden to players outright. Most DMs will also forbid Chaotic Neutral because CN is basically CE Lite; people don't do 'Neutral' well, and CN is also well known as the "I'm going to troll the group until they throw me out" alignment like I mentioned pages ago. True neutral is forbidden because "nobody likes a fence-sitter"; most DMs who make heavy use of Alignment will not permit someont to, effectively, not choose one and will instead demand that a player not camp the middle.
Ergo, there are four valid alignments - the three variations of Good, and LN as Lawful aNal because 'Lawfulness' is considered inherently superior to 'Chaotic' despite tremendous evidence to the contrary. Once an alignment has been selected, it is immutable. That is the alignment you belong to, and if you stray from it the universe scourges you until you repent. If your alignment does change, the severe penalties to your character become permanent and cannot ever be undone, unless the change is moving closer to 'Lawful Good'. As one of the biggest, most egregious weaknesses in the entire alignment system is that it is written from the perspective of a 'Lawful Good' character, with all other alignments being seen as 'Lesser' the more steps removed they are from LG.
Some folks use alignment differently, but to the best of my knowledge that is how alignment worked in older editions of D&D, and thus how alignment is 'supposed' to work. I do not believe it makes for compelling games, no. There are times and cases where such rules do not actively hinder play, if someone is fortunate enough to be able to easily color inside the lines they assigned themselves and remain true to their original alignment, but I find it incredibly difficult to understand how such a system could ever actively help gameplay.
On some of the other points you said: There is no right alignment, there is no right way to play or act as your character. As long as everybody at the table is having fun then everything is fine.
But what you're saying about alignment being restricted in your campaigns, and no one being able to change (as I discussed in my previous post): this is not the way alignment is "supposed" to be played. It's the way that people are misusing it as a "Know all, be all" part of your character. STOP blaming the system and saying it is useless or only messes with gameplay just because it doesn't work when it's limited, and effectively not used as anything aside from a roadblock in your campaign.
This is not alignment, this is something else entirely, to use alignment in this way is much worse than to not even use it at all.
"Alignment", as traditionally used by the majority of fans of the system - to the best of my current understanding - is chosen at character creation. If someone strays from their alignment, that alignment doesn't change. Instead, the character suffers increasingly severe penalties up to and including loss of class levels until they undergo atonement for their breach of alignment and correct their behavior back to accordance with the alignment they chose at character creation.
That's where you're wrong, an important part of alignment is the developement of your character. Just as in real life, D&D characters will change and evolve. Your alignment can change with your character, and any DM who punishes you for that is doing a TERRIBLE job.
Alignment is not permanently set in place, it is a part of your characters identity and as they evolve and grow, it can change with them.
Say, a NE rogue is forced to watch while held captive as their friend dies. That will scar the rogue, and could potentialy effect them so much that they change and stray from their alignment.
Humans are not going to remain the same their whole life, and nor will people in D&D.
If you are playing alignment in this way then you are not playing alignment right.
"Alignment", as traditionally used by the majority of fans of the system - to the best of my current understanding - is chosen at character creation. If someone strays from their alignment, that alignment doesn't change. Instead, the character suffers increasingly severe penalties up to and including loss of class levels until they undergo atonement for their breach of alignment and correct their behavior back to accordance with the alignment they chose at character creation.
All 'Evil' alignments are forbidden to players outright. Most DMs will also forbid Chaotic Neutral because CN is basically CE Lite; people don't do 'Neutral' well, and CN is also well known as the "I'm going to troll the group until they throw me out" alignment like I mentioned pages ago. True neutral is forbidden because "nobody likes a fence-sitter"; most DMs who make heavy use of Alignment will not permit someont to, effectively, not choose one and will instead demand that a player not camp the middle.
Ergo, there are four valid alignments - the three variations of Good, and LN as Lawful aNal because 'Lawfulness' is considered inherently superior to 'Chaotic' despite tremendous evidence to the contrary. Once an alignment has been selected, it is immutable. That is the alignment you belong to, and if you stray from it the universe scourges you until you repent. If your alignment does change, the severe penalties to your character become permanent and cannot ever be undone, unless the change is moving closer to 'Lawful Good'. As one of the biggest, most egregious weaknesses in the entire alignment system is that it is written from the perspective of a 'Lawful Good' character, with all other alignments being seen as 'Lesser' the more steps removed they are from LG.
Some folks use alignment differently, but to the best of my knowledge that is how alignment worked in older editions of D&D, and thus how alignment is 'supposed' to work. I do not believe it makes for compelling games, no. There are times and cases where such rules do not actively hinder play, if someone is fortunate enough to be able to easily color inside the lines they assigned themselves and remain true to their original alignment, but I find it incredibly difficult to understand how such a system could ever actively help gameplay.
On some of the other points you said: Their is no right alignment, their is no right way to play your character or act as. As long as everybody at the table is having fun then everything is fine.
But what you're saying about alignment being restricted in your campaigns, and no one being able to change (as I discussed in my previous post). This is not the way alignment is "supposed" to be played, it's the way that people are misusing it as a "Know all be all" part of your character. STOP blaming the system and saying it is useless or only messes with gameplay just because it doesn't work when it's limited, and effectively not used as anything aside from a roadblock in your campaign.
This is not alignment, this is something else entirely, to use alignment in this way is much worse than to not even use it at all.
For some strange reason I keep getting an error message every time I try to upvote/like/thank a post, but I wanted to agree with both of these posts so i’ma do it this way.
(Just a reminder that this type of thread has probably been done many times before, and to not devolve into yelling. I realize it hasn't gotten to that point, but as I saw from another comment on my own thread, these types of discussions can easily turn into pointless arguments).
Overall, I've always used alignment as descriptive, not prescriptive. I always let a player change alignment if it better reflects their actions. I don't even require alignment, but I totally allow my players to use it, and I use it for NPCs and monsters as a reminder for how to act in and out of combat, since I'm really bad at making descriptive notes.
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Congratulations, you just described exactly why many people find it helpful to give themselves an alignment. "I'm this. My character is a little more that way, so I'll shift my responses in that direction."
"Trying to make yourself a flawlessly..." Nobody here is advocating you do that. But even so, that would not necessarily make your character boring. Playing yourself as every character, though? That would be boring and old pretty quickly. Especially if you're the "I'm right, you're wrong" type of person...
This is just dripping with “my experiences point to one thing; therefore ALL experiences must be the same.” It’s aggressive, unhelpful, ignores the obvious reality that other groups may be different…. And seems to be arguing against a point that no one is actually saying.
In my experience, there are plenty of players who can perfectly, believably, and, consistently step into another alignment. Sometimes that takes to form of someone with sufficient empathetical intelligence that they can seamlessly step into another’s shoes (admittedly, most of my players who can do this seamlessly are professional actors or lawyers, so individuals predisposed toward thinking like other people and considering different facets of situations).
Other times it means a character who thinks for a couple seconds about what they want their character to be, what their character might do, and then makes a decision. Outside of your hyperbole, no one should be taking 20 minutes to make a decision; it’s usually a brief interlude just to give some consideration. Nor is the decision generally “how do I play the most pure form of my alignment” it’s “how would my character, who is generally lawful evil, respond in this particular situation?”
Alignment is helpful for that second group - it provides them a baseline of what their character might do, while also allowing for deviation therefrom based on the specific circumstances. As it seems most people on this thread realise, it’s a pretty darn nifty tool for a lot of people who want to explore the fantasy of being someone completely different, but need a little bit of help to get in character.
Lemme give you an example from my own recent play, something I've directly experienced this year.
One of my current active characters is Mistletoe, an Umbragen paladin of Eberron. Before I sat down for Session 1, I had every intention of making Misty a gregarious, outgoing chatty-Cathy who enjoyed the company of others and actively sought companionship and merriment. I'd selected her Q/I/B/F based on that idea, and even talked it over with the DM a bit.
Then I sat down, waited for my turn at character intros, opened my mouth to speak for/as Misty...and what came out of my mouth was a painfully shy, reserved, quietly wary battle-haunted waif. Absolutely nothing like my original projections for her, and yet there she was in my brain, telling me I was doing perfectly fine and she wasn't at all interested in all that party-gal shit I'd had in my brain before sitting down in her shoes.
The Alignment Police would tell me to double down, shut her up, and wrench her back into place - "you picked a
personalityalignment, you have to stick to it! You HAVE to!" But instead I let Mistletoe have her head and asked myself the whole while "huh. Where did you come from, and why are you a wallflower instead of this cool 'bubbly drow' thing I've been wanting to play for literal years?"The answers surprised me. And they made Misty much more intriguing and engaging for me to play, even as she was a wild departure from my normal persona. Where Yurei is an assertive, opinionated shit that is perfectly willing to go to the mat with people and argue her bloody head off, Misty is a shy sort who'd rather keep her head down and simply go with the flow, letting the more flamboyant personalities in her party lead. Even though she wasn't supposed to be. Misty is a whole lot less "just play yourself in a skinsuit" than she was originally intended to be, but allowing her to make those decisions in the moment and then seeking to understand them afterwards led me to a new appreciation for the character and the game. Also led to me deleting her Q/I/B/F (or at least her quirks) and vowing not to write new ones until she was level 5. Or until the DM told me to.
Can you do that with alignment? Discover that your character doesn't at all conform to your initial plan and simply change it on the fly? I mean, obviously someone can, the same way I deleted character quirks that didn't at all fit what my character turned out to be. But if ALignment is a core, fundamental rule everybody has to use the way so many people are arguing here, can you really allow yourself to be surprised by your own character that way?
Or will you punch her in her disobedient little mind-mouth, tell her to get back in her box, and force her to be something she isn't because that's what you settled on before ever meeting this person?
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I agree. I’ve had similar experiences.
They should adopt a a Vice & Virtue system based loosely on the Seven Deadly Sins (Avarice, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Pride, Sloth, Wrath) and Transcendentals (Beauty, Truth, Goodness) that's a separate part of Character Creation.
Players would have a number of points to buy Sins such as Sloth, Gluttony, or Wrath or Virtues such as Beauty, Truth, or Goodness.
Each Sin or Virtue would have a number of Traits, one of which can be chosen per each Sin or Virtue. These would all have positive and negative modifiers.
Sloth might have a Trait such as Restful, which treats each Short Rest as a Long Rest, but always places the character last in Initiative order.
Gluttony might have a Trait called Obese, which grants additional Armor Class points and advantage on Constitution saving throws, but at the cost of disadvantage on Acrobatics, Athletics, and Seduction (new) skill checks, and lowered movement.
Truth might have Traits such as Honesty and Curiosity. Honesty would gives a negative modifier and disadvantage on Deception, but a bonus to Wisdom. Curiosity would give a bonus to Investigation but a negative modifier to Intuition (being more open-minded and therefore credulous).
Goodness might have a Trait such as Faith, which gives expertise on Religion checks and access to one of the Supernatural Gifts, but has lowered Perception (having their focus on things not of this world).
Yurei, you know that I use alignment. How many times has Toots surprise me in Wysp’s game? If it turned out her actions didn’t fit the C/G her alignment says, do you think I would hesitate to change her alignment? Or if Wysp decided Toots actions didn’t fit her listed C/G and decided to discuss changing her alignment with me, do you think I wouldn’t at least hear them out and either change the alignment or change Toots’ behaviors?
And you know Toots has a dark side and it worries her. Alignment should be mutable, or else it doesn’t work. The problem lies not with the alignment system, but with how some people perceive it to function. Some folks think it is something that should be set in stone and dictate a character’s every single action and it’s just not feasible or fair to treat it that way. It should be something that instead reflects a character’s overall outlook based on their accumulated actions, and it should potentially shift to more accurately reflect those actions as the character grows and evolves.
So, to answer your question: “yes.” Yes, one can certainly discover their character diverges from their initial concept in conjunction with the alignment system. At least, one can if one views alignment properly, as something that can change and reflects what a character does and not as something fixed that governs what a character does.
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Note that actors - the people trained for years to convincingly step into a persona wildly different from their own - don't ever talk about/deal with alignment. Nobody has ever meme'd an actor saying "what's my character's alignment?" They instead meme the oft-repeated theater class dweeb phrase "what is my character's motivation?"
Some motivations dovetail neatly into alignments - "champion justice" is an easy shoe-in for Lawful Good. Same with "protect the weak" or "help the unfortunate". other perfectly valid character motivations aren't nearly so clear-cut, though. What immutable, soul-defining, completely and utterly unbreakable Alignment Box does one assign the motivation "seek glory" to? 'Glory' is inherently selfish, so most people would assign it to Neutral or even Evil classifications (and thus also ban it from their tables), but 'Glory' is also only something you can really have when the masses adore you. They won't do so unless you do stuff they feel is worthy of adoration, and I haven't met many 'The Masses' who'll adore someone for being selfish. 'Seek Glory' is the motivation of a person who does selfless things for selfish reasons, and it defies the entire idea of alignment.
And yet, 'Seek Glory' is one of the most common Adventuring Motivations there is.
Unlike alignment, where there's
ninefour choices andninefour choices alone, constructed of words that may or may not have any meaning whatsoever to any given character, you can assign a two-word* motivation to a character and have a much better idea of how to play them without ever having to have a week-long fight over 'Alignment' at your table. Here, let's put together a list of Motivations in two* words (allowing for conjunctives, i.e. 'protect the weak') that are so much more useful, specific, and descriptive that theninefour Alignment options the books try and insist everybody conform to:Look at that - a d20 list's worth of possible motivations (or at least 19 decent options and one "you're always gonna get this guy at the table anyways, best be ready for him" meme), in two* words per choice. A single sentence taking the place of Ideal or Bond that describes a character's motivation is even better, but not strictly necessary.
Alignment will always be in D&D because at this point the 5e version of alignment can be put back into the game as easily as it can be taken out. People can assign one of
ninefour alignments to their character as easily as writing two words on their sheet somewhere, and DMs can assign one ofninethree alignments to their monsters and NPC stat blocks. Alignment isn't going anywhere so long as people want to use it, and everybody knows it.Doesn't mean I can't see it as meaningless noise for me and mine, or get irritated with people who tell me to Use Alignment More(C) instead of seeking to learn/know things about my cxharacter that actually matter. I could not tell you Misty's alignment, I have no idea which over-rigid memelulzy box my paladin's supposed to occupy - but I can absolutely tell you about her morality, in terms exhaustive enough nobody wants to hear it.
Why is that so much worse, if I may be so bold as to ask?
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Yurei,
You keep saying that C/N is one of the verboten alignments, but let’s go back to my example of Toots. Her alignment is listed as C/G, but she has a distinct dark side. If Wysp brought it to my attention that her dark side is pulling her away from Good towards Neutrality, and would therefore make her alignment C/N, why should it be a problem? I’m obviously not playing her as #chaosforthesakeofchaos, so why is an alignment of C/N such a problem?
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Huh. I’ll have to inform the actors I play with that they’re apparently playing the game—and representing their profession—wrong, simply because they find alignment to be an interesting tool for what it is.
It is rather hard to engage with you when you are making statements in the form of absolutes and trying to talk for others. It is extra hard when those others you try to talk for are the other individuals with whom you are having the conversation.
Once again, the people you are arguing against are NOT saying that you have to strictly play to alignment. They are NOT saying that you have to follow one of the nine options strictly. People are NOT saying your alignment can’t change over the course of the game. People are NOT saying that individuals can’t make choices against their noted alignment and having it still be in character. People are NOT saying that you need to use alignment if you do not want to.
People ARE saying that alignment is a useful tool to help inform decisions for those who need the help - but are NOT saying it is scripture that must define decisions. People ARE saying that they recognise characters are more complicated than nine alignments can ever capture (just as people are more complicated than sixteen MBTI categories can ever capture), and this ARE saying alignment should not be treated as the only metric of understanding a character.
I do get where you are coming from - the alignment police are frustrating… but your posts seem to be attempts to argue with alignment police, rather than attempts to debate the individuals posting… who are themselves not alignment police and who have, in multiple posts, decried that kind of policing.
"Alignment", as traditionally used by the majority of fans of the system - to the best of my current understanding - is chosen at character creation. If someone strays from their alignment, that alignment doesn't change. Instead, the character suffers increasingly severe penalties up to and including loss of class levels until they undergo atonement for their breach of alignment and correct their behavior back to accordance with the alignment they chose at character creation.
All 'Evil' alignments are forbidden to players outright. Most DMs will also forbid Chaotic Neutral because CN is basically CE Lite; people don't do 'Neutral' well, and CN is also well known as the "I'm going to troll the group until they throw me out" alignment like I mentioned pages ago. True neutral is forbidden because "nobody likes a fence-sitter"; most DMs who make heavy use of Alignment will not permit someont to, effectively, not choose one and will instead demand that a player not camp the middle.
Ergo, there are four valid alignments - the three variations of Good, and LN as Lawful aNal because 'Lawfulness' is considered inherently superior to 'Chaotic' despite tremendous evidence to the contrary. Once an alignment has been selected, it is immutable. That is the alignment you belong to, and if you stray from it the universe scourges you until you repent. If your alignment does change, the severe penalties to your character become permanent and cannot ever be undone, unless the change is moving closer to 'Lawful Good'. As one of the biggest, most egregious weaknesses in the entire alignment system is that it is written from the perspective of a 'Lawful Good' character, with all other alignments being seen as 'Lesser' the more steps removed they are from LG.
Some folks use alignment differently, but to the best of my knowledge that is how alignment worked in older editions of D&D, and thus how alignment is 'supposed' to work. I do not believe it makes for compelling games, no. There are times and cases where such rules do not actively hinder play, if someone is fortunate enough to be able to easily color inside the lines they assigned themselves and remain true to their original alignment, but I find it incredibly difficult to understand how such a system could ever actively help gameplay.
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In all fairness, I have never seen the game played this way. Changing alignment is a major RP step, but it can be done, and most DMs I’ve played with don’t impose penalties as long as the change is not arbitrary or capricious. That being said, I feel that alignment is an artificial constraint that has no place outside of the Outer Planes, but at the same time I don’t feel that it’s as damaging to RP as you seem to think it is.
In the end, my issue with alignment is that it's a colossal waste of time that might distract players and DMs from answering the questions about their character that actually matter.
Suppose I came up with a list of twenty questions that could be used to reveal a character's true alignment (20 is pretty small; the Myers-Briggs test is 93). Which is more useful:
That's not a close call; the only advantage of the first is that it takes up less space on the page.
That's where you're wrong, an important part of alignment is the developement of your character. Just as in real life, D&D characters will change and evolve. Your alignment can change with your character, and any DM who punishes you for that is doing a TERRIBLE job.
Alignment is not permanently set in place, it is a part of your characters identity and as they evolve and grow, it can change with them.
Say, a NE rogue is forced to watch while held captive as their friend dies. That will scar the rogue, and could potentialy effect them so much that they change and stray from their alignment.
Humans are not going to remain the same their whole life, and nor will people in D&D.
If you are playing alignment in this way then you are not playing alignment right.
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HERE.Your understanding is flawed then, I have never not once seen Alignment used that way in 30 years of D&D.
In fact, in older editions, there were ramifications for certain classes that only occurred if your alignment changed.
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False dilemma.
3. You note down the resulting alignment and remember try to internalize the answers to the question. Note the answers if you think you'll forget them. Use whatever combination of the two is appropriate for the situation.
The advantage you gave also isn't the only advantage of the first. How quickly are you going to go through those 20 answers and triangulate the current situation amongst those answers?
Personally I don't find much use in alignment. It's harmless when used to describe a character's actions and you're willing to let alignment shift rather than trying to force someone to stay in one box of a three by three grid. But I ultimately have little use for it compared to going into a character's motivations. What do they want, and what are they willing and not willing to do to accomplish that goal?
If someone wants to just say 'my character is lawful neutral' and they want to stick to that box, more power to you. So long as you're having fun and your table is having fun, you're not doing it wrong. I just personally find that those two words do very little in terms of building a character. Or defining a culture, or monster behavior even.
Experiment for you, Zub.
Take a look at this really neat video from a couple of years ago by Ginny Di:
Once you've done so, pull up the fifty-question quiz she links to in that video. Bring up a character of yours
Now, when you're answering it, answer every last single question with that character's alignment. Put the same two-word response down as the answer to every last one of Ginny's questions.
Once you're done, show the questionaire to someone else, then ask them to tell you what they think your character's personality is like.
Let us know what the results are.
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On some of the other points you said: There is no right alignment, there is no right way to play or act as your character. As long as everybody at the table is having fun then everything is fine.
But what you're saying about alignment being restricted in your campaigns, and no one being able to change (as I discussed in my previous post): this is not the way alignment is "supposed" to be played. It's the way that people are misusing it as a "Know all, be all" part of your character.
STOP blaming the system and saying it is useless or only messes with gameplay just because it doesn't work when it's limited, and effectively not used as anything aside from a roadblock in your campaign.This is not alignment, this is something else entirely, to use alignment in this way is much worse than to not even use it at all.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
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HERE.For some strange reason I keep getting an error message every time I try to upvote/like/thank a post, but I wanted to agree with both of these posts so i’ma do it this way.
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(Just a reminder that this type of thread has probably been done many times before, and to not devolve into yelling. I realize it hasn't gotten to that point, but as I saw from another comment on my own thread, these types of discussions can easily turn into pointless arguments).
Overall, I've always used alignment as descriptive, not prescriptive. I always let a player change alignment if it better reflects their actions. I don't even require alignment, but I totally allow my players to use it, and I use it for NPCs and monsters as a reminder for how to act in and out of combat, since I'm really bad at making descriptive notes.
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