"Good? Evil? It's all about reputation. I want stuff without paying for it. That's supposedly evil, but if they think I'm good, they're more inclined to just let me have it."
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I guess I like having shades of grey in my game (fifty of them? lol). Speaking of which, I can’t wait for Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft. The villains in Ravenloft are really nuanced and tragic and the heroes can be too if you play it right. I guess I’m just afraid that alignment kind of restricts you from having a real sense of tragedy and romance in your game.
There is a group of players where their actions are deciding how others view them rather than that blank spot where alignment is supposed to go on their character sheets. Deities, magic devices, planes, and the like with alignment effects are being determined by the entities' opinions of the characters.
Good-aligned intelligent swords will balk at the fact that they killed an old man to get him to stop telling them his sad backstory of why he tried to kill one of them for the gold - and the DM made sure that they wanted to do it by making the death prolonged and arduous.
Yet in an isolated wasteland, their reputation for really bad decisions is unknown there and the locals see them as heroes which, in turn, influence the locals' deities' opinions.
I say, let the DM decide how the entities view the alignments of the players by what the entities know of the players' actions.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
By artificially preventing you from acting on your feelings for someone who’s the opposite alignment as you.
And how would it do that?
Mechanically, there's nothing preventing this. Emotionally (for lack of a better term), this isn't really different from having feelings in real life for someone on the opposite side of the political spectrum, or a "good girl" being infatuated with a "bad boy" (or vice versa), or a ruthless, amoral person being attracted to an innocent or idealistic one. A good person might squash their affection for an evil one, a lawful person might feel they couldn't share their life with a chaotic one, and so on, but that's because of the personalities involved - not because of the label - and personalities don't stop existing if you remove the label. A disciplined ascetic will find it challenging to relate to a happy-go-lucky hedonist not because one is lawful and the other chaotic, but because their lifestyles and ideals diverge so much; and yet, if they really want it to they might be able to make it work.
edit: to make another analogy, it's like astrology signs (I don't believe in astrology, but it's a real life example of personality being labeled). Some people say stuff like "they're such a Scorpio, and I'm a real Taurus, we could never be together"; while other people repeat the old adage that opposites attract and a Scorpio and a Taurus have the makings of a passionate relationship or whatever. The point is, all of that is based not on your birth date and the sign that comes with it but on the characteristics that sign supposedly imparts.
By artificially preventing you from acting on your feelings for someone who’s the opposite alignment as you.
Alignment isn't something the characters necessarily know they have, kind of like HP. Or any mechanical piece of the game that would be considered meta-knowledge. Like, you shoot an arrow at a monk and the monk doesn't in-character know that they can use a reaction to catch it and spend a ki point to throw it back, they just act. Your character doesn't know they have an Alignment, they just act in a way in accordance with their values, and know that other people do as well.
Alignment is more of a useful shorthand to fall back on to aid in more nuanced roleplaying, rather than a hindrance to it. The basic concepts can really help players play characters that are not like themselves, and if you are ever stumped to think of how such a character might react in a given situation you can always think along the lines of 'ok, remember; Lawful Good-- values law and values good, how would that factor in here?'
It doesn't dictate how you *must* react, it just helps you determine how you might react.
Another thing Allignment is not, is set in stone. Alignment can change over time in response to character development. Alignment can become more prominent or less prominent as time goes on and either the character's worldview changes or you as a player grow more confident in roleplaying a more complex worldview. Characters of different alignments can still form close relationships; maybe the lawful paladin is one of the few people the evil rogue does actually have affection for due to past shared experiences (and finds even their naive worldview (from their perspective) endearing), while the paladin would be lying if they said they hadn't developed a kind of grudging respect for the selfish b*stard.
I think you're imagining alignment to be more restrictive than it is because it *seems* like a mechanic telling you how to act, when really it's mostly just there to help you act as much or as little as you need it to.
It largely is in 5E anyway isn't it? Even things I find that seem to reference it like 'protection from good and evil' actual in practice target creature types rather than actual alignment.
I don't mind it as a sort of short hand here and there, but agree that it is pretty limiting as a system, but 5E doesn't really seem to enforce it mechanically so it's easy to ignore as is.
I think it should stay. It doesn't need to be at the forefront and it doesn't limit my play but I sometimes use it to measure up my characters actions in the game versus my own as a player; a way to ground them without meta-gaming. Here's how I look at it when I play. Good, neutral and evil are based on knee jerk reactions that affect the player personally. If you are being attacked by a bear: Good defends people, strangers or friends, no matter the outcome; Neutral will defend friends until its hopeless or they will be greatly affected; Evil will runaway at the first chance and might trip someone along the way so the bear will attack them first.
Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic are like social contracts and norms. The laws are set by the values of the social structure of where the character comes from. So that's where the subjective natural of this comes from. A Lawful Good paladin in this region, may be a Lawful evil paladin somewhere else, but they are following a set of rules that they are concerned with. While a Chaotic good Ranger may find he can do more good being an outlaw (ie. Robin Hood). Neutral is the gray area, you follow the law most the time until it clashes with something you need or want.
It's just guidelines anyway, because its a game, plus if you are trying to be as realistic as possible, for color, everyone does things that are good or bad and some of the most interesting stories are when people start out one thing and evolve into something else. Also, its a game so do what's fun!
Almost no one uses them, so it doesn't matter if they remove them or leave them. In past editions they did make sense, and it was something characteristic of the game and defined the way you played your character. But in 5e they have no mechanics, nor do they influence any aspect of the game. It is something vestigial, which at most can have a "cosmetic" use.
It continues to factor into the Great Wheel planar cosmology and little else, but it's fine as a roleplay measuring stick for comparison of a player's actions while keeping in mind that it's highly subjective (if the philosophical discussions found all over the Internet are any indication).
Remove it altogether officially? They'll need to rethink an important bit of Forgotten Realms lore.
Lessen its importance so tables can easily ignore it if they wish? They've already done that.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
It continues to factor into the Great Wheel planar cosmology and little else, but it's fine as a roleplay measuring stick for comparison of a player's actions while keeping in mind that it's highly subjective (if the philosophical discussions found all over the Internet are any indication).
Remove it altogether officially? They'll need to rethink an important bit of Forgotten Realms lore.
Lessen its importance so tables can easily ignore it if they wish? They've already done that.
I’m thinking maybe they should.It’s very restrictive and forces your PCs into a black and white morality mold with no real shades of grey.Maybe replace it with like a Character Nature and Demeanor system like in White Wolf’s World of Darkness games.
If I may, I would like to offer a counterpoint to your premise.
Alignment shouldn’t dictate a PC’s actions, rather the inverse. A PC’s actions dictate their alignment. A player is free to play their character however they like regardless of whatever is listed in the alignment box on their character sheet, and shouldn’t feel restricted. If the alignment box lists L/G, and the player wants their character to beat up shopkeepers and steal their wares then they are free to do so. Their alignment would simply shift over time towards C/E. If they only beat up shopkeepers who cheat their customers and then give their stolen goods to the shopkeepers victims, their alignment would instead shift over time towards C/G instead. If they were to instead get the laws of the land changed to where it is legal to beat up evil shopkeepers and redistribute their I’ll-gotten wealth to their victims, then their alignment would remain L/G. You see, alignment should be mutable, and adjust to fit whatever actions the PC chooses to take, not restrict PC actions. And alignments can shift both ways, forth and back again, depending on what the PC does.
In truth, all alignment truly does is provide a codified representation of a PC’s moral code. A PC’s moral code is set by their player. If the moral code changes, the representative of that code, the PC’s alignment, should simply shift to match. Alignment in no way restricts a PC, it reflects them.
I don't think there's ever really been a situation where characters were boxed in by alignment - rather the opposite, as several others above have already pointed out. Sure there were (/are?) adventures where certain actions could only be performed by characters of a certain alignment - but that wasn't really a boxing in - but rather a proxy for your role play and general behaviour towards the rest of the world.
I completely get that it is not black and white, and people generally don't like being fitted into a box- hence why it is useful to look at alignments as gradients instead. I've seen people suggest they are truly neutral, but still carrying the expectations of there being city guards who will keep the peace and prevent robbing in broad daylight (hint - that's more of a lawful thing). But overall, it's more of a societal and moral compass that points in the direction of how you roleplay your character, rather than a confine to pre-determine your behaviour.
As a DM it is incredibly useful to have a way of portraying the different between lawful evil and chaotic evil. Could it be done without alignments? Sure - if i write a small dissertation on the inner turmoil on every opponent or NPC in the game - but alignment is a shorthand for that, that actually opens up for quick improvisation.
I would hope that we don't lose it - mostly for that shorthand pointer rationale. It might be that characters feel that they should be able to swap reactions and actions in a universe completely without recourse, and that might be the case in some homebrewed worlds. But being able to lay out and align deities in a world setting is incredible useful if you ever need to pass your material on to someone else, or simply keep an element of consistency in a setting.
Not having a go at OP - but seeing a lot of posts that wishes for elements of the game to be stripped out - alignment, encumbrance, light, etc. I think it's important for people to realise how broad the player base is, and how many and wonderfully varied play styles there are. Tables/groups are free to dispense with certain rules at their table - that is the very core of playing D&D. But arguing for shedding a lot of rules will not by definition make the game easier or more unified - in fact, people will now just argue in different ways with less structure - so I am all for keeping the rules in, and leaving it to the individual groups to discard what they don't want to work with rather than lots of people building back in lots of things in wildly different way.
It continues to factor into the Great Wheel planar cosmology and little else
Well, badly. Something like half the outer planes are unconvincing in their placement:
Elysium is the plane of Bliss, which is pleasant enough but not particularly a 'good' concept.
The Beastlands are the plane of Beasts and Hunters, which is... neither particularly good nor particularly chaotic.
Arborea is.. basically redundant with the Feywild, and has no shortage of creatures that will smite you if you step astray. Seems mostly chaotic, not a lot of 'good' there.
Ysgard is... the plane of giants, and of warriors engaging in perpetual combat. Seems mostly chaotic, not a lot of 'good' there.
Pandemonium is... the plane of madness. Just chaotic, not a lot of 'evil' there, and kinda redundant with the Far Realm.
Carceri is... a prison, which is most certainly a symbol of law. What is it doing on the 'chaotic' side of things?
Hades is... basically the plane of despair, opposite to Elysium and redundant with the Shadowfell. Despair isn't really 'evil', though.
Gehenna is... about inability to cooperate. What is 'lawful' about that?
Acheron is... the plane of soldiers. It's logically opposite to Ysgard, but not seeing the 'evil' there.
I loved the system in 2nd edition, but as it now stands, doing away with it, altogether, would be the best choice. Newer players don't like the restrictions it imposes and WoTc has downplayed to downright gutted the importance of it anyway compared to past editions.
It continues to factor into the Great Wheel planar cosmology and little else
Well, badly. Something like half the outer planes are unconvincing in their placement:
Elysium is the plane of Bliss, which is pleasant enough but not particularly a 'good' concept.
The Beastlands are the plane of Beasts and Hunters, which is... neither particularly good nor particularly chaotic.
Arborea is.. basically redundant with the Feywild, and has no shortage of creatures that will smite you if you step astray. Seems mostly chaotic, not a lot of 'good' there.
Ysgard is... the plane of giants, and of warriors engaging in perpetual combat. Seems mostly chaotic, not a lot of 'good' there.
Pandemonium is... the plane of madness. Just chaotic, not a lot of 'evil' there, and kinda redundant with the Far Realm.
Carceri is... a prison, which is most certainly a symbol of law. What is it doing on the 'chaotic' side of things?
Hades is... basically the plane of despair, opposite to Elysium and redundant with the Shadowfell. Despair isn't really 'evil', though.
Gehenna is... about inability to cooperate. What is 'lawful' about that?
Acheron is... the plane of soldiers. It's logically opposite to Ysgard, but not seeing the 'evil' there.
That's because 5E chucked out the literal books worth of lore about the Planes in favor of one to two sentence blurbs. Also, The Feywild and and Far Realms are the redundant ones, since the Great Wheel predates them significantly.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Since the rules clearly say that you get to decide what to use and what not to use, it does not seem nescessary to get rid of the alignment system, or any other system. You could even change the way it works or add new options.
In any case, I actually kind of like the alignment system, but maybe that is mainly because I was introduced to D&D quite some time ago with the second edition.
In the 5th edition, it does not seem to have significant importance. I mean, you could even create a paladin that is not lawful good. It seems to me that it works kind of like the personality traits. More like guidelines for the players to role play their characters, than a restriction.
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I guess I like having shades of grey in my game (fifty of them? lol). Speaking of which, I can’t wait for Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft. The villains in Ravenloft are really nuanced and tragic and the heroes can be too if you play it right. I guess I’m just afraid that alignment kind of restricts you from having a real sense of tragedy and romance in your game.
What if you did it so that alignment only has power on the Outer Planes and not on the Prime Plane?
There is a group of players where their actions are deciding how others view them rather than that blank spot where alignment is supposed to go on their character sheets. Deities, magic devices, planes, and the like with alignment effects are being determined by the entities' opinions of the characters.
Good-aligned intelligent swords will balk at the fact that they killed an old man to get him to stop telling them his sad backstory of why he tried to kill one of them for the gold - and the DM made sure that they wanted to do it by making the death prolonged and arduous.
Yet in an isolated wasteland, their reputation for really bad decisions is unknown there and the locals see them as heroes which, in turn, influence the locals' deities' opinions.
I say, let the DM decide how the entities view the alignments of the players by what the entities know of the players' actions.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Why? How would it do that?
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
By artificially preventing you from acting on your feelings for someone who’s the opposite alignment as you.
And how would it do that?
Mechanically, there's nothing preventing this. Emotionally (for lack of a better term), this isn't really different from having feelings in real life for someone on the opposite side of the political spectrum, or a "good girl" being infatuated with a "bad boy" (or vice versa), or a ruthless, amoral person being attracted to an innocent or idealistic one. A good person might squash their affection for an evil one, a lawful person might feel they couldn't share their life with a chaotic one, and so on, but that's because of the personalities involved - not because of the label - and personalities don't stop existing if you remove the label. A disciplined ascetic will find it challenging to relate to a happy-go-lucky hedonist not because one is lawful and the other chaotic, but because their lifestyles and ideals diverge so much; and yet, if they really want it to they might be able to make it work.
edit: to make another analogy, it's like astrology signs (I don't believe in astrology, but it's a real life example of personality being labeled). Some people say stuff like "they're such a Scorpio, and I'm a real Taurus, we could never be together"; while other people repeat the old adage that opposites attract and a Scorpio and a Taurus have the makings of a passionate relationship or whatever. The point is, all of that is based not on your birth date and the sign that comes with it but on the characteristics that sign supposedly imparts.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Alignment isn't something the characters necessarily know they have, kind of like HP. Or any mechanical piece of the game that would be considered meta-knowledge. Like, you shoot an arrow at a monk and the monk doesn't in-character know that they can use a reaction to catch it and spend a ki point to throw it back, they just act. Your character doesn't know they have an Alignment, they just act in a way in accordance with their values, and know that other people do as well.
Alignment is more of a useful shorthand to fall back on to aid in more nuanced roleplaying, rather than a hindrance to it. The basic concepts can really help players play characters that are not like themselves, and if you are ever stumped to think of how such a character might react in a given situation you can always think along the lines of 'ok, remember; Lawful Good-- values law and values good, how would that factor in here?'
It doesn't dictate how you *must* react, it just helps you determine how you might react.
Another thing Allignment is not, is set in stone. Alignment can change over time in response to character development. Alignment can become more prominent or less prominent as time goes on and either the character's worldview changes or you as a player grow more confident in roleplaying a more complex worldview. Characters of different alignments can still form close relationships; maybe the lawful paladin is one of the few people the evil rogue does actually have affection for due to past shared experiences (and finds even their naive worldview (from their perspective) endearing), while the paladin would be lying if they said they hadn't developed a kind of grudging respect for the selfish b*stard.
I think you're imagining alignment to be more restrictive than it is because it *seems* like a mechanic telling you how to act, when really it's mostly just there to help you act as much or as little as you need it to.
That makes a lot of sense! Thanks guys.
It largely is in 5E anyway isn't it? Even things I find that seem to reference it like 'protection from good and evil' actual in practice target creature types rather than actual alignment.
I don't mind it as a sort of short hand here and there, but agree that it is pretty limiting as a system, but 5E doesn't really seem to enforce it mechanically so it's easy to ignore as is.
I think it should stay. It doesn't need to be at the forefront and it doesn't limit my play but I sometimes use it to measure up my characters actions in the game versus my own as a player; a way to ground them without meta-gaming. Here's how I look at it when I play. Good, neutral and evil are based on knee jerk reactions that affect the player personally. If you are being attacked by a bear: Good defends people, strangers or friends, no matter the outcome; Neutral will defend friends until its hopeless or they will be greatly affected; Evil will runaway at the first chance and might trip someone along the way so the bear will attack them first.
Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic are like social contracts and norms. The laws are set by the values of the social structure of where the character comes from. So that's where the subjective natural of this comes from. A Lawful Good paladin in this region, may be a Lawful evil paladin somewhere else, but they are following a set of rules that they are concerned with. While a Chaotic good Ranger may find he can do more good being an outlaw (ie. Robin Hood). Neutral is the gray area, you follow the law most the time until it clashes with something you need or want.
It's just guidelines anyway, because its a game, plus if you are trying to be as realistic as possible, for color, everyone does things that are good or bad and some of the most interesting stories are when people start out one thing and evolve into something else. Also, its a game so do what's fun!
Delete
Almost no one uses them, so it doesn't matter if they remove them or leave them.
In past editions they did make sense, and it was something characteristic of the game and defined the way you played your character. But in 5e they have no mechanics, nor do they influence any aspect of the game. It is something vestigial, which at most can have a "cosmetic" use.
It continues to factor into the Great Wheel planar cosmology and little else, but it's fine as a roleplay measuring stick for comparison of a player's actions while keeping in mind that it's highly subjective (if the philosophical discussions found all over the Internet are any indication).
Remove it altogether officially? They'll need to rethink an important bit of Forgotten Realms lore.
Lessen its importance so tables can easily ignore it if they wish? They've already done that.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
What bit of FR lore?
If I may, I would like to offer a counterpoint to your premise.
Alignment shouldn’t dictate a PC’s actions, rather the inverse. A PC’s actions dictate their alignment. A player is free to play their character however they like regardless of whatever is listed in the alignment box on their character sheet, and shouldn’t feel restricted. If the alignment box lists L/G, and the player wants their character to beat up shopkeepers and steal their wares then they are free to do so. Their alignment would simply shift over time towards C/E. If they only beat up shopkeepers who cheat their customers and then give their stolen goods to the shopkeepers victims, their alignment would instead shift over time towards C/G instead. If they were to instead get the laws of the land changed to where it is legal to beat up evil shopkeepers and redistribute their I’ll-gotten wealth to their victims, then their alignment would remain L/G. You see, alignment should be mutable, and adjust to fit whatever actions the PC chooses to take, not restrict PC actions. And alignments can shift both ways, forth and back again, depending on what the PC does.
In truth, all alignment truly does is provide a codified representation of a PC’s moral code. A PC’s moral code is set by their player. If the moral code changes, the representative of that code, the PC’s alignment, should simply shift to match. Alignment in no way restricts a PC, it reflects them.
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I don't think there's ever really been a situation where characters were boxed in by alignment - rather the opposite, as several others above have already pointed out. Sure there were (/are?) adventures where certain actions could only be performed by characters of a certain alignment - but that wasn't really a boxing in - but rather a proxy for your role play and general behaviour towards the rest of the world.
I completely get that it is not black and white, and people generally don't like being fitted into a box- hence why it is useful to look at alignments as gradients instead. I've seen people suggest they are truly neutral, but still carrying the expectations of there being city guards who will keep the peace and prevent robbing in broad daylight (hint - that's more of a lawful thing). But overall, it's more of a societal and moral compass that points in the direction of how you roleplay your character, rather than a confine to pre-determine your behaviour.
As a DM it is incredibly useful to have a way of portraying the different between lawful evil and chaotic evil. Could it be done without alignments? Sure - if i write a small dissertation on the inner turmoil on every opponent or NPC in the game - but alignment is a shorthand for that, that actually opens up for quick improvisation.
I would hope that we don't lose it - mostly for that shorthand pointer rationale. It might be that characters feel that they should be able to swap reactions and actions in a universe completely without recourse, and that might be the case in some homebrewed worlds. But being able to lay out and align deities in a world setting is incredible useful if you ever need to pass your material on to someone else, or simply keep an element of consistency in a setting.
Not having a go at OP - but seeing a lot of posts that wishes for elements of the game to be stripped out - alignment, encumbrance, light, etc. I think it's important for people to realise how broad the player base is, and how many and wonderfully varied play styles there are. Tables/groups are free to dispense with certain rules at their table - that is the very core of playing D&D. But arguing for shedding a lot of rules will not by definition make the game easier or more unified - in fact, people will now just argue in different ways with less structure - so I am all for keeping the rules in, and leaving it to the individual groups to discard what they don't want to work with rather than lots of people building back in lots of things in wildly different way.
Well, badly. Something like half the outer planes are unconvincing in their placement:
I loved the system in 2nd edition, but as it now stands, doing away with it, altogether, would be the best choice. Newer players don't like the restrictions it imposes and WoTc has downplayed to downright gutted the importance of it anyway compared to past editions.
That's because 5E chucked out the literal books worth of lore about the Planes in favor of one to two sentence blurbs. Also, The Feywild and and Far Realms are the redundant ones, since the Great Wheel predates them significantly.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Since the rules clearly say that you get to decide what to use and what not to use, it does not seem nescessary to get rid of the alignment system, or any other system. You could even change the way it works or add new options.
In any case, I actually kind of like the alignment system, but maybe that is mainly because I was introduced to D&D quite some time ago with the second edition.
In the 5th edition, it does not seem to have significant importance. I mean, you could even create a paladin that is not lawful good. It seems to me that it works kind of like the personality traits. More like guidelines for the players to role play their characters, than a restriction.