You have in fact already conceded my point by stating that “morality is [only] part of personality.”
Creatures and NPCs should definitely have moral standards as part of their personality. The problem is that alignment does a lousy job of telling me what a creature's moral standards actually are, and thus I have no reason to list alignment as a part of personality.
Shrug. There are volumes and volumes of canon that specify many gods' alignments. Any Cleric or Paladin in my games must follow their god's alignment. Sure it can get hazy and messy, but alignments mean something.
But what does following their god's alignment even mean? Waukeen, Gond, Silvanus, and Kossuth are all True Neutral alignment and have radically different goals and outlooks.
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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.
Shrug. There are volumes and volumes of canon that specify many gods' alignments. Any Cleric or Paladin in my games must follow their god's alignment. Sure it can get hazy and messy, but alignments mean something.
But what does following their god's alignment even mean? Waukeen, Gond, Silvanus, and Kossuth are all True Neutral alignment and have radically different goals and outlooks.
I'm not sure if I understand your point. Why shouldn't they? The alignments aren't specific viewpoints or goals.
In older editions I would have said “no,” but alignment is pretty much useless this edition. It would be nice if they made it more relevant again next iteration.
Alignment has been in the game since the beginning. There is zero reason to remove it.
The reasons are subjective, but I think a lot of us feel like things that don't serve much purpose and can get in the way should be removed. Look at how virtually no other game system has kept their equivalent of it over time.
Shrug. There are volumes and volumes of canon that specify many gods' alignments. Any Cleric or Paladin in my games must follow their god's alignment. Sure it can get hazy and messy, but alignments mean something.
But what does following their god's alignment even mean? Waukeen, Gond, Silvanus, and Kossuth are all True Neutral alignment and have radically different goals and outlooks.
I'm not sure if I understand your point. Why shouldn't they? The alignments aren't specific viewpoints or goals.
The point is that what good is it if it's so vague?
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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.
Alignment is a Sacred Cow for D&D, and like all of D&D's Sacred Cows, it's very divisive. In this case, I think both sides are more-or-less right. It doesn't generally hurt, in the abstract, to have 'Alignment' in the game. If Wizards were froggy enough to take it out people would just put it back in anyways, and a lot of folks feel like alignment is an intrinsic and necessary part of The D&D Experience. The Internet has enshrined alignment as an inexorable part of Nerd Life; like it or not, we're stuck with it so why ruffle the feathers of folks who swear by it?
Alignment is also f#$%ing useless as a means of determining anything whatsoever about a critter's motivations, desires, fears, personality, or in fact anything meaningful about how to use/run a character/monster. It's so broad as to be mostly just noise, providing nothing in the way of real guidance, arguments about alignment can get table-ruining vicious, and it's a tool prone to wild misuse by moron DMs. Most everybody here knows that a DM saying "You can't do that, you're Lawful Good" is a DM who's also saying "I have no business being behind this screen, please take my DMing privileges away", but sadly they're still going to wreck games and sour people on the hobby.
Is bad DMing a core rulebooks problem? No, not really. Bad DMs are gonna be bad DMs no matter what the books say. But man...alignment is one of the easiest 'Bad DM' buttons a bad DM can press, isn't it? I can absolutely see why some folks might feel some kind of way about it and want that button taken away. Combined with the fact that alignment is so broad and nondescriptive as to be pointless, and yeah. I don't use it in my games, and if a DM I ended up playing with did want to use it I'd tell them to let me know what my alignment was once they'd seen me play for a month or two. The only person with any business knowing alignments is the DM.
At its core, alignment is nothing more than a seed. A kernel of a personality. Some people like to build out from alignment - they pick an alignment as a starting point and fill in from there, so without that seed they don't know where to start and they get upset. Other people build out from different seeds, be they desire/fear/moviation, quirk/ideal/bond/flaw, or something else entirely, and telling those people they need to cram alignment into the whole thing after the fact or they're No True D&D Player can make them upset. These threads will continue for the lifetime of tabletop roleplaying, and nobody will ever be convinced to move their stance.
Blugh.
I think it is a piece of information that better helps you understand a character, of course no good DM should say, "This is your alignment, you cant do anything against it."
However, they can make a guess at what a character might do based off their alignment and other factors.
Having a guess is better than not having one at all. Also, as a DM, it helps you play monsters better, because, if you cant flesh out their personality as much, you'll have less factors to calculate with, and having an alignment could be one fo the few (still not only) factors you have to help RP monsters that briefly show up.
PS. Just in case someone asks, when would you need to guess your players actions? During session prep, when you creating interesting hooks (they can still refuse and you can just create another one, but the more likely they are to accept, the less work you have to do in that regard). Also, when you design morality challenges for your players, or decide who an NPC's would like best, alignment is gonna be useful.
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\I think it is a piece of information that better helps you understand a character, of course no good DM should say, "This is your alignment, you cant do anything against it."
However, they can make a guess at what a character might do based off their alignment and other factors.
You can also make a guess about what a character might do based on those other factors, ignoring alignment, and for any creature whose description isn't uselessly vague, come up with the same answers.
\I think it is a piece of information that better helps you understand a character, of course no good DM should say, "This is your alignment, you cant do anything against it."
However, they can make a guess at what a character might do based off their alignment and other factors.
You can also make a guess about what a character might do based on those other factors, ignoring alignment, and for any creature whose description isn't uselessly vague, come up with the same answers.
Still, this way it's easier to get those answers.
Also, the more factors, the more accurate the results.
Also, the more factors, the more accurate the results.
No, it's really not easier, nor does it even make things more accurate (the vast majority of the time you look at alignment and go "duh", the minority of the time you spend some time scratching your head trying to figure out why the author chose that alignment before deciding to ignore it).
Alignment helps you DM better and have more fun, if you don't have it in your campaign, then I think your missing out.
Genuinely curious. Qualify this. How? Why?
For the, how is it "fun" for the DM part: As a DM, I find it fun to see how my players have different traits and how they interact with alignment. For example, I enjoy watching (this never happened in a campaign I ran but I'm just making an example up) a lawful good paladin who's flaw is "Goblins raided my town and burned it down. I cant stand in the presence of them without getting angry.", interact with goblins and see whether the good/heroic part of them (shown via alignment and personality traits) struggle versus the character and their past trauma that has given them this flaw.
Without alignment, a DM could never be able to have the fun and their players would never have the this signifigant experience and challenge that I get to see and be rewarded by my players enjoying conquering it.
The other part (about it helping you as a DM) is explained in the rest of the post (above that part of it).
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Also, the more factors, the more accurate the results.
No, it's really not easier, nor does it even make things more accurate (the vast majority of the time you look at alignment and go "duh", the minority of the time you spend some time scratching your head trying to figure out why the author chose that alignment before deciding to ignore it).
It's just like writing an essay, and finding a new source that backs up what your other ones say.
The more you have to go off, the easier it will be to make an accurate conclusion.
Also, the more factors, the more accurate the results.
No, it's really not easier, nor does it even make things more accurate (the vast majority of the time you look at alignment and go "duh", the minority of the time you spend some time scratching your head trying to figure out why the author chose that alignment before deciding to ignore it).
Yes, it does make it easier, quicker, and more accurate. You can take a Lawful Good Cleric, plop in a situation and guess what he's going to do and be correct 90% of the time. If that Cleric is instead Lawful Evil, you can still guess what he's going to do and be correct 90% of the time. If you don't know their alignment, you might still be able to figure it out but now you're going to have to read their entire backstory or play several sessions with them so that you can get to know them before you can have any reasonable idea of how they might act.
Alignment isn't a rule. You don't have to play to your alignment; it simply describes a character's general tendencies. It's a tool, nothing more. You don't have to use it if you don't want to, but don't just come in and tell people here that do use it that it isn't actually doing anything for us. We're not stupid. Of course you go "duh" when you look at the alignment for a character that you already know. It's just a general descriptor for that character. If you have no interest in judging or tracking a player's actions on a cosmic scale then just don't use it, but the rest of us want that form of measurement. If a character routinely acts "outside" of their alignment, then their alignment might shift. That may have consequences and can serve as a reminder for the DM that other characters in the campaign may react to that change as well as the disposition of any cosmic entities. Without that constant metric, now you have to note, remember, and consider the totality of every PC's entire history when interacting with any NPC.
Alignment is simply a measurement of a character actions. Like any other measurement, it's simply a tool. If I go into a shoe store without knowing how long my foot is, I'm going to have to try on a lot of shoes before I find a pair that fits. Measuring my foot beforehand makes that process a lot quicker. If I know an NPC is going to react in a certain way toward extreme alignments, then I can be more prepared for that interaction more easily.
Also, the more factors, the more accurate the results.
No, it's really not easier, nor does it even make things more accurate (the vast majority of the time you look at alignment and go "duh", the minority of the time you spend some time scratching your head trying to figure out why the author chose that alignment before deciding to ignore it).
Yes, it does make it easier, quicker, and more accurate. You can take a Lawful Good Cleric, plop in a situation and guess what he's going to do and be correct 90% of the time. If that Cleric is instead Lawful Evil, you can still guess what he's going to do and be correct 90% of the time. If you don't know their alignment, you might still be able to figure it out but now you're going to have to read their entire backstory or play several sessions with them so that you can get to know them before you can have any reasonable idea of how they might act.
Alignment isn't a rule. You don't have to play to your alignment; it simply describes a character's general tendencies. It's a tool, nothing more. You don't have to use it if you don't want to, but don't just come in and tell people here that do use it that it isn't actually doing anything for us. We're not stupid. Of course you go "duh" when you look at the alignment for a character that you already know. It's just a general descriptor for that character. If you have no interest in judging or tracking a player's actions on a cosmic scale then just don't use it, but the rest of us want that form of measurement. If a character routinely acts "outside" of their alignment, then their alignment might shift. That may have consequences and can serve as a reminder for the DM that other characters in the campaign may react to that change as well as the disposition of any cosmic entities. Without that constant metric, now you have to note, remember, and consider the totality of every PC's entire history when interacting with any NPC.
Alignment is simply a measurement of a character actions. Like any other measurement, it's simply a tool. If I go into a shoe store without knowing how long my foot is, I'm going to have to try on a lot of shoes before I find a pair that fits. Measuring my foot beforehand makes that process a lot quicker. If I know an NPC is going to react in a certain way toward extreme alignments, then I can be more prepared for that interaction more easily.
Exactly! As I said in this post (below), you can utilize alignment to make basic assumptions about your players future actions. Nothing is 100% accurate, but making predictions off alignment + personality traits, ideals, etc, is easier than fumbling around on your players character sheet to find something to make a basic prediction off.
Earlier, people said that alignment forces you into black and white idealogy, however, removing alignment would mean you only have one set of things to really go off (the personality traits, ideals, flaws, bonds group describing how the characters act). This would mean, instead of having two different sets of things and seeing how they combine, your just basing everything your doing off one group of factors.
In other words, removing alignment removes one element of your characters, making them more two dimensional.
Also, the more factors, the more accurate the results.
No, it's really not easier, nor does it even make things more accurate (the vast majority of the time you look at alignment and go "duh", the minority of the time you spend some time scratching your head trying to figure out why the author chose that alignment before deciding to ignore it).
It's just like writing an essay, and finding a new source that backs up what your other ones say.
The more you have to go off, the easier it will be to make an accurate conclusion.
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Yes, it does make it easier, quicker, and more accurate. You can take a Lawful Good Cleric, plop in a situation and guess what he's going to do and be correct 90% of the time. If that Cleric is instead Lawful Evil, you can still guess what he's going to do and be correct 90% of the time.
Really? You think a cleric of Loviatar and a cleric of Kurtulmak are going to behave the same 90% of the time?
For me in particular, if I hear someone say that two clerics of the same alignment but with different gods are likely to act the same way 90 percent of the time, I'm going to ask they not play a cleric.
It's a guideline for players who have difficulty roleplaying. Why do people keep wanting to remove guidelines that make things easier? It is in no way black an white. They are points on a 2D spectrum (3D if you include intensity or something). You can be anywhere on that spectrum. The point you're closest to us your alignment.
It's a guideline for players who have difficulty roleplaying. Why do people keep wanting to remove guidelines that make things easier?
Because they don't actually make things easier. Alignment has never been well enough defined to actually help. The main use for alignment is for people who don't want to roleplay, they just want to classify creatures as "kill" or "don't kill".
It's a guideline for players who have difficulty roleplaying. Why do people keep wanting to remove guidelines that make things easier?
Because they don't actually make things easier. Alignment has never been well enough defined to actually help. The main use for alignment is for people who don't want to roleplay, they just want to classify creatures as "kill" or "don't kill".
I have to second that. It's largely a barrier to rp.
It's a guideline for players who have difficulty roleplaying. Why do people keep wanting to remove guidelines that make things easier?
Because they don't actually make things easier. Alignment has never been well enough defined to actually help. The main use for alignment is for people who don't want to roleplay, they just want to classify creatures as "kill" or "don't kill".
I have to second that. It's largely a barrier to rp.
I disagree, it's another element that helps you know what your character might do. If you see a shady looking thief who offers to make an illegal deal with you, and you're lawful good, alignment should help in determining your course of action.
If you dont want alignment in your campaigns, you dont have to put it their. But alignment is only "a barrier to rp" because you make it out to be one.
If you use alignment, like any other feature on your character sheet, in conjuction with other elements (personality traits, bonds, ideals, flaws), then it should help you get a better sense of your character, and you should be able to RP them better.
However, if you use alignment and only alignment to dictate your characters actions, or describe what someones personality MUSTbe with no exeptions, then yes, it will be barrier to RP. But as I have said, alignment is their to be a part of your character, and not everything about it.
If you play alignment in a way that messes with roleplaying, then that's because your not playing alignment right. You cant blame the mechanic for not working in a way it's not intended to work for. If you don't like alignment, take it out of your campaigns, your fun doesn't hurt mine.
Creatures and NPCs should definitely have moral standards as part of their personality. The problem is that alignment does a lousy job of telling me what a creature's moral standards actually are, and thus I have no reason to list alignment as a part of personality.
But what does following their god's alignment even mean? Waukeen, Gond, Silvanus, and Kossuth are all True Neutral alignment and have radically different goals and outlooks.
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.
I'm not sure if I understand your point. Why shouldn't they? The alignments aren't specific viewpoints or goals.
In older editions I would have said “no,” but alignment is pretty much useless this edition. It would be nice if they made it more relevant again next iteration.
The reasons are subjective, but I think a lot of us feel like things that don't serve much purpose and can get in the way should be removed. Look at how virtually no other game system has kept their equivalent of it over time.
The point is that what good is it if it's so vague?
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.
I think it is a piece of information that better helps you understand a character, of course no good DM should say, "This is your alignment, you cant do anything against it."
However, they can make a guess at what a character might do based off their alignment and other factors.
Having a guess is better than not having one at all. Also, as a DM, it helps you play monsters better, because, if you cant flesh out their personality as much, you'll have less factors to calculate with, and having an alignment could be one fo the few (still not only) factors you have to help RP monsters that briefly show up.
PS. Just in case someone asks, when would you need to guess your players actions? During session prep, when you creating interesting hooks (they can still refuse and you can just create another one, but the more likely they are to accept, the less work you have to do in that regard). Also, when you design morality challenges for your players, or decide who an NPC's would like best, alignment is gonna be useful.
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.You can also make a guess about what a character might do based on those other factors, ignoring alignment, and for any creature whose description isn't uselessly vague, come up with the same answers.
Still, this way it's easier to get those answers.
Also, the more factors, the more accurate the results.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.No, it's really not easier, nor does it even make things more accurate (the vast majority of the time you look at alignment and go "duh", the minority of the time you spend some time scratching your head trying to figure out why the author chose that alignment before deciding to ignore it).
For the, how is it "fun" for the DM part: As a DM, I find it fun to see how my players have different traits and how they interact with alignment. For example, I enjoy watching (this never happened in a campaign I ran but I'm just making an example up) a lawful good paladin who's flaw is "Goblins raided my town and burned it down. I cant stand in the presence of them without getting angry.", interact with goblins and see whether the good/heroic part of them (shown via alignment and personality traits) struggle versus the character and their past trauma that has given them this flaw.
Without alignment, a DM could never be able to have the fun and their players would never have the this signifigant experience and challenge that I get to see and be rewarded by my players enjoying conquering it.
The other part (about it helping you as a DM) is explained in the rest of the post (above that part of it).
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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Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.It's just like writing an essay, and finding a new source that backs up what your other ones say.
The more you have to go off, the easier it will be to make an accurate conclusion.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.Yes, it does make it easier, quicker, and more accurate. You can take a Lawful Good Cleric, plop in a situation and guess what he's going to do and be correct 90% of the time. If that Cleric is instead Lawful Evil, you can still guess what he's going to do and be correct 90% of the time. If you don't know their alignment, you might still be able to figure it out but now you're going to have to read their entire backstory or play several sessions with them so that you can get to know them before you can have any reasonable idea of how they might act.
Alignment isn't a rule. You don't have to play to your alignment; it simply describes a character's general tendencies. It's a tool, nothing more. You don't have to use it if you don't want to, but don't just come in and tell people here that do use it that it isn't actually doing anything for us. We're not stupid. Of course you go "duh" when you look at the alignment for a character that you already know. It's just a general descriptor for that character. If you have no interest in judging or tracking a player's actions on a cosmic scale then just don't use it, but the rest of us want that form of measurement. If a character routinely acts "outside" of their alignment, then their alignment might shift. That may have consequences and can serve as a reminder for the DM that other characters in the campaign may react to that change as well as the disposition of any cosmic entities. Without that constant metric, now you have to note, remember, and consider the totality of every PC's entire history when interacting with any NPC.
Alignment is simply a measurement of a character actions. Like any other measurement, it's simply a tool. If I go into a shoe store without knowing how long my foot is, I'm going to have to try on a lot of shoes before I find a pair that fits. Measuring my foot beforehand makes that process a lot quicker. If I know an NPC is going to react in a certain way toward extreme alignments, then I can be more prepared for that interaction more easily.
Exactly! As I said in this post (below), you can utilize alignment to make basic assumptions about your players future actions. Nothing is 100% accurate, but making predictions off alignment + personality traits, ideals, etc, is easier than fumbling around on your players character sheet to find something to make a basic prediction off.
Earlier, people said that alignment forces you into black and white idealogy, however, removing alignment would mean you only have one set of things to really go off (the personality traits, ideals, flaws, bonds group describing how the characters act). This would mean, instead of having two different sets of things and seeing how they combine, your just basing everything your doing off one group of factors.
In other words, removing alignment removes one element of your characters, making them more two dimensional.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.Really? You think a cleric of Loviatar and a cleric of Kurtulmak are going to behave the same 90% of the time?
For me in particular, if I hear someone say that two clerics of the same alignment but with different gods are likely to act the same way 90 percent of the time, I'm going to ask they not play a cleric.
It's a guideline for players who have difficulty roleplaying. Why do people keep wanting to remove guidelines that make things easier? It is in no way black an white. They are points on a 2D spectrum (3D if you include intensity or something). You can be anywhere on that spectrum. The point you're closest to us your alignment.
Because they don't actually make things easier. Alignment has never been well enough defined to actually help. The main use for alignment is for people who don't want to roleplay, they just want to classify creatures as "kill" or "don't kill".
I have to second that. It's largely a barrier to rp.
I disagree, it's another element that helps you know what your character might do. If you see a shady looking thief who offers to make an illegal deal with you, and you're lawful good, alignment should help in determining your course of action.
If you dont want alignment in your campaigns, you dont have to put it their. But alignment is only "a barrier to rp" because you make it out to be one.
If you use alignment, like any other feature on your character sheet, in conjuction with other elements (personality traits, bonds, ideals, flaws), then it should help you get a better sense of your character, and you should be able to RP them better.
However, if you use alignment and only alignment to dictate your characters actions, or describe what someones personality MUST be with no exeptions, then yes, it will be barrier to RP. But as I have said, alignment is their to be a part of your character, and not everything about it.
If you play alignment in a way that messes with roleplaying, then that's because your not playing alignment right. You cant blame the mechanic for not working in a way it's not intended to work for. If you don't like alignment, take it out of your campaigns, your fun doesn't hurt mine.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.