When compared with other means of describing personality or behavior, alignment is just 5 words: good, evil, lawful, chaotic, and neutral.
Even for simple monsters, you could just list 2 or 3 words that best describe them. Sure, sometimes some of those words will include some of the above 5, but you have the whole English language, and no reason to limit yourself. Maybe a monster is "hungry, methodical" or "territorial, fierce, honest" or "talkative, cowardly, murderous." That way, if something really is "chaotic, evil" I know what those mean, because the infinite variety of behavior has not been reduced to two crappy, low-resolution axes that I have to interpret.
You could also just do one sentence explaining their alignment. Or say in the monster description why they are that way, and bring up and explain some of those other adjectives that make sense or helps explain their alignment.
What purpose would "explaining their alignment" serve, independent of just describing their behavior? If I don't think the good/evil axis is relevant to a monster, for example, why would I care about labeling them "neutral"?
I'm sorry, I got confused about what you were trying to say. I thought you were saying that alignment is to simple and doesn't explain how a monster works well enough, but I think I read your post a little to fast last time and that's why I came off confused.
To your original post: just include those other words in their description. You can still include alignment and also write about those adjectives in the monster description. This is how The Monster Manual and other books do it. (For example, it says in the yeti description that they're "Driven by hunger," but it also has their alignment as well.)
Alignment works with those adjectives to determine a creatures actions, it also works to help you create those adjectives if you're creating the monster. But alignment works together with descriptions of the monsters motivations, etc., (in the yet's case hunger), to determine their actions.
To your other post: You don't have to label a creature neutral if you don't feel alignment is relevant to the monster. Just say that where alignment is and don't do alignment if you wan't. Alignment is usually relevant, in the rare cases when someone doesn't feel it is, they don't have to use it.
PS- Sorry if something's I say here are really confusing, I had to make this post in a rush.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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 & explainHERE.
It's not confusing, BB. What you're missing is that while you find alignment to be super helpful and flavorful and informative and essential to being a good DM, many other people find that alignment gets in their way. People say "if you don't like alignment then just don't use it, but Wizards should leave it in for the people who like it" without acknowledging that if the alignment is there you're expected to use it. You'll have to fight players on the idea that the alignments in the books don't exist at your table, and for as long as Wizards puts alignments in stat blocks, players will keep assuming "ALL (X) HAVE TO BE ALIGNMENT (Y), THE BOOK SAID SO, DON'T CHANGE WHAT THE BOOK SAYS".
Keeping alignment is nice for the traditionalists who see it as an essential, definitional trapping of D&D. Part of D&D's aesthetic and ethos, and an indispensable tool for moral-absolutist stories. Ditching it is good for those who want deeper, more nuanced stories and those who wish to see the game grow and evolve past its archaic roots. There's some intermingle there, but you're never going to convince those strongly in the latter camp that "no, really, alignment is super neat and flavorful and useful and interesting if you just use it right!"
We know how to use it. It's not hard. In fact, that's the point - alignment is such an oversimplification that to someone who wants more than mindless cannon fodder it becomes a superfluous nuisance distraction. My players deserve more from me than "okay, suddenly a bunch of NE goblins attack you because we haven't had an encounter in a little while. Roll initiative." And I expect more from my DMs than that. Alignment simply has no place in the kind of games I want to run and play.
Something that I feel often gets ignored in conversations about alignment - alignment has two different meanings in the game, which are not necessarily the same: individual alignment and racial alignment.
1. Individual alignment is the alignment of a specific character or NPC. It is not something that defines their character, but something that describes their character. By way of example, let's look at Myers-Briggs, something I expect some folks might be experienced with (even if it is a pretty crappy evaluative tool, it makes a better example due to general knowledge). A person is not an introverted, sensing, thinking, and judgmental person because they are an ISTJ--they are an ISTJ because they already exhibited those traits. Like any psychological tool, alignment provides an imperfect snapshot into the average of a given individual's personality. It does not mean that the Lawful Good character will always act lawful or good, it just means that, more likely than not, they will respond to a given situation in a lawful good manner.
This can be a really helpful tool, especially for DMs or players who are new, who struggle with roleplaying, or who are not the most emotionally intelligent of individuals (one need not look to hard in nerdy communities to see folks with little experience outside their insular perspectives). Alignment provides the person playing the character or NPC a baseline "here is how you might respond if you are having struggles stepping into your character's specific mindset", allowing them to make decisions that are generally in-character. It also provides DMs who are not great at reading or judging their individual party with an average they can use--"this player is lawful good, so I can expect he will do something lawful good if I put him in this situation--I can prepare for that option, while still being open to ad libing if he goes down another path."
Individual alignment has sufficient utility--particularly in groups that need it--without having an easy replacement governed by the game itself. There is no manual for how "Ragnar Strongdwarf" should act because Ragnar Strongdwarf was made up by the DM or the player. Alignment gives a bit of a manual for folks who need that kind of manual, making it a fairly worthwhile tool (even if it is one I and other more advanced players might see more as a curiosity than a tool we regularly use).
2. Racial alignment is the average alignment of an entire race. "Orcs are more likely to be X than they are Y." It is generally justified along the lines of "different creatures have different biological makeups--take cats and dogs, they would have clearly different average alignments."
This can be helpful to folks coming up with NPCs or deciding how a group of that race act as a collective unit. Unlike individual alignment, which is very DM/Player driven (and thus having a standard "here is something you can use to help" has utility), races and monsters are Wizards driven. Wizards does not need to have a standardized metric for describing these creatures to themselves, like an individual character or NPC might, they can go ahead and write out an actual description, devoid of alignment.
I will admit, racial alignments leave a bad taste in my mouth for two reasons. Whereas individual alignment is more like psychology, reading an individual person and deriving results from that individual, racial alignment is a lot more like sociology. Speaking from the perspective of someone where one of his degrees is in sociology (though more accidently than intentionally), psychology has a lot of merit and has been proven time and again to be useful in evaluating and treating individuals.... sociology borders a LOT on pseudoscience, and usually is more informed by stereotyping and anecdotes than actual, useful data.
Which brings me to my second issue--while individual alignments have their roots in helping individual players address their individual characters, racial alignments have a much, much, much darker history in this game. Gary Gygax, one of the game's creators, was a big fan of "biological determinism"--the idea that your chromosomes decide your personality. This often manifested itself in problematic and stereotypical ways (some of the early rulebooks discussing tribal races and such are... painful to read), including Gygax's using racial alignment as a tool of promulgating some fairly problematic ideas on race.
-----
TL;DR: It is important to remember that alignment can refer to two different systems in the game, and it is possible to think that alignment is a useful tool in one of those systems, but not in the other. Wizards of the Coast seems to agree with this - there is no indication that they are going to be removing individual alignment as a tool, but they have been steadily excising the much less useful (and with much more problematic origins) racial alignment system from the game. I think this is probably the right decision--it keeps alignment where it is actually a useful, while downplaying or removing it in areas where it might be of more limited utility.
It's not confusing, BB. What you're missing is that while you find alignment to be super helpful and flavorful and informative and essential to being a good DM, many other people find that alignment gets in their way. People say "if you don't like alignment then just don't use it, but Wizards should leave it in for the people who like it" without acknowledging that if the alignment is there you're expected to use it. You'll have to fight players on the idea that the alignments in the books don't exist at your table, and for as long as Wizards puts alignments in stat blocks, players will keep assuming "ALL (X) HAVE TO BE ALIGNMENT (Y), THE BOOK SAID SO, DON'T CHANGE WHAT THE BOOK SAYS".
Keeping alignment is nice for the traditionalists who see it as an essential, definitional trapping of D&D. Part of D&D's aesthetic and ethos, and an indispensable tool for moral-absolutist stories. Ditching it is good for those who want deeper, more nuanced stories and those who wish to see the game grow and evolve past its archaic roots. There's some intermingle there, but you're never going to convince those strongly in the latter camp that "no, really, alignment is super neat and flavorful and useful and interesting if you just use it right!"
We know how to use it. It's not hard. In fact, that's the point - alignment is such an oversimplification that to someone who wants more than mindless cannon fodder it becomes a superfluous nuisance distraction. My players deserve more from me than "okay, suddenly a bunch of NE goblins attack you because we haven't had an encounter in a little while. Roll initiative." And I expect more from my DMs than that. Alignment simply has no place in the kind of games I want to run and play.
If any player says "IT SAYS IN THE BOOK ALIGNMENT FOR GENERAL GROUPS DOES NOT APPLY TO EVERY MEMBER OF THE GROUP, SO CLEARLY IT MUST APPLY TO EVERY MEMBER OF THAT GROUP WITH NO EXCEPTIONS AND I REFUSE TO SEE IT ANY OTHER WAY." Then that player is the problem, not the system.
If you don't think alignment is good, then again, don't use it. But the examples you're giving, such as one DM saying that some creatures have an NE alignment and them using that as an excuse to spring combat on their party for no reason, is not how alignment works. That is one DM being crazy and using an actually helpful tool to justify terrible DMing.
Something that I feel often gets ignored in conversations about alignment - alignment has two different meanings in the game, which are not necessarily the same: individual alignment and racial alignment.
1. Individual alignment is the alignment of a specific character or NPC. It is not something that defines their character, but something that describes their character. By way of example, let's look at Myers-Briggs, something I expect some folks might be experienced with (even if it is a pretty crappy evaluative tool, it makes a better example due to general knowledge). A person is not an introverted, sensing, thinking, and judgmental person because they are an ISTJ--they are an ISTJ because they already exhibited those traits. Like any psychological tool, alignment provides an imperfect snapshot into the average of a given individual's personality. It does not mean that the Lawful Good character will always act lawful or good, it just means that, more likely than not, they will respond to a given situation in a lawful good manner.
This can be a really helpful tool, especially for DMs or players who are new, who struggle with roleplaying, or who are not the most emotionally intelligent of individuals (one need not look to hard in nerdy communities to see folks with little experience outside their insular perspectives). Alignment provides the person playing the character or NPC a baseline "here is how you might respond if you are having struggles stepping into your character's specific mindset", allowing them to make decisions that are generally in-character. It also provides DMs who are not great at reading or judging their individual party with an average they can use--"this player is lawful good, so I can expect he will do something lawful good if I put him in this situation--I can prepare for that option, while still being open to ad libing if he goes down another path."
Individual alignment has sufficient utility--particularly in groups that need it--without having an easy replacement governed by the game itself. There is no manual for how "Ragnar Strongdwarf" should act because Ragnar Strongdwarf was made up by the DM or the player. Alignment gives a bit of a manual for folks who need that kind of manual, making it a fairly worthwhile tool (even if it is one I and other more advanced players might see more as a curiosity than a tool we regularly use).
2. Racial alignment is the average alignment of an entire race. "Orcs are more likely to be X than they are Y." It is generally justified along the lines of "different creatures have different biological makeups--take cats and dogs, they would have clearly different average alignments."
This can be helpful to folks coming up with NPCs or deciding how a group of that race act as a collective unit. Unlike individual alignment, which is very DM/Player driven (and thus having a standard "here is something you can use to help" has utility), races and monsters are Wizards driven. Wizards does not need to have a standardized metric for describing these creatures to themselves, like an individual character or NPC might, they can go ahead and write out an actual description, devoid of alignment.
I will admit, racial alignments leave a bad taste in my mouth for two reasons. Whereas individual alignment is more like psychology, reading an individual person and deriving results from that individual, racial alignment is a lot more like sociology. Speaking from the perspective of someone where one of his degrees is in sociology (though more accidently than intentionally), psychology has a lot of merit and has been proven time and again to be useful in evaluating and treating individuals.... sociology borders a LOT on pseudoscience, and usually is more informed by stereotyping and anecdotes than actual, useful data.
Which brings me to my second issue--while individual alignments have their roots in helping individual players address their individual characters, racial alignments have a much, much, much darker history in this game. Gary Gygax, one of the game's creators, was a big fan of "biological determinism"--the idea that your chromosomes decide your personality. This often manifested itself in problematic and stereotypical ways (some of the early rulebooks discussing tribal races and such are... painful to read), including Gygax's using racial alignment as a tool of promulgating some fairly problematic ideas on race.
-----
TL;DR: It is important to remember that alignment can refer to two different systems in the game, and it is possible to think that alignment is a useful tool in one of those systems, but not in the other. Wizards of the Coast seems to agree with this - there is no indication that they are going to be removing individual alignment as a tool, but they have been steadily excising the much less useful (and with much more problematic origins) racial alignment system from the game. I think this is probably the right decision--it keeps alignment where it is actually a useful, while downplaying or removing it in areas where it might be of more limited utility.
The more I think about it, the more I start to agree with you. I think alignment can be massively helpful with individual NPC's, characters, or creatures. But maybe, if you're applying it to one type of monster, just say that it's more likely for them to be that type of alignment, and that there are MANY exceptions. I feel like that would help clear up a lot of issues where people believe that "Anyone in X group is always this and will always be this as well."
Also, if a group of creatures doesn't have reasons for them to be pushed towards a certain alignment. Then there's no need to give it.
But in general, I see what you mean about alignment being problematic in these circumstances. And if the solutions I tried to give above won't work. Then I understand eliminating it for large and diverse groups.
The more I think about it, the more I start to agree with you. I think alignment can be massively helpful with individual NPC's, characters, or creatures. But maybe, if you're applying it to one type of monster, just say that it's more likely for them to be that type of alignment, and that there are MANY exceptions. I feel like that would help clear up a lot of issues where people believe that "Anyone in X group is always this and will always be this as well."
Also, if a group of creatures doesn't have reasons for them to be pushed towards a certain alignment. Then there's no need to give it.
But in general, I see what you mean about alignment being problematic in these circumstances. And if the solutions I tried to give above won't work. Then I understand eliminating it for large and diverse groups.
The game already says that. it has said that since 2014.
Everybody ignores it.
Even the people who don't want to end up browbeaten by all the Traditionalists who believe alignment is an absolute requirement, set by birth and fixed by Divine Decree, into dealing with it. See the three hundred thousand threads in Tasha's wake about how all orcs everywhere MUST BE EVIL because that's just how they are, and all the various responses on how people trying to de-emphasize that in their games are Ruining D&D Forever.
The solution you gave above was baked into the original release of the books in 2014. It has manifestly not worked. Therefore we should eliminate it for large and diverse groups, yes? By your own word? And if we're eliminating it for large and diverse groups, why should individual PCs be shackled and beholden to a system we've all agreed doesn't work properly? Why is it that an individual PC must - must must MUST - be assigned to one of nine and only nine pre-written modes of behavior to which every last living creature in the entire universe must be sorted into?
Don't look at alignment as a barrier but as a guide line.
For example:
If we were just introduced to dragons, forget everything you think you know about from any source, dragons in all their varied forms. How would you play each one?
Without the alignment description you would have no idea if gold ones were good or bad.
Now expand that thought out to all the worlds of D&D. We need something to keep the overall idea of Gold Dragons being good equal across everyone's worlds.
Alignment does not mean someone or a creature would never do something others might see as non alignment, against their listed alignment, but its a general guide to start from. That gold dragon could be attacking the castle not because it just wants to but because the people in the castle took something from it.
And the use of alignment for an intelligent creature is far different than the use for an non intelligent creature.
Alignment for a PC is mostly for the PC. The PC should be using it help them create a new personality to play instead of just playing the very same personality across all the players characters.
The DM only needs it if the character has a god and might stray from the deities alignment requirement.
Don't look at alignment as a barrier but as a guide line.
For example:
If we were just introduced to dragons, forget everything you think you know about from any source, dragons in all their varied forms. How would you play each one?
Without the alignment description you would have no idea if gold ones were good or bad.
Um...
'dragons are color-coded for your convenience' is kinda dumb.
Tell me what they do and I can figure out for myself if they're good or bad. Which, incidentally, existing rules are bad at. I really have no idea what sort of actions it's expected a 'good' dragon will engage in (I presume 'evil' dragons engage in traditional dragonish behavior, though the difference between LE and CE dragons is... not obvious).
Now expand that thought out to all the worlds of D&D. We need something to keep the overall idea of Gold Dragons being good equal across everyone's worlds.
Counterpoint: No. We don’t need that. Why do I get to decide how the dragons in your world behave?
I said forget everything you already know about dragons. This includes the idea of color coding.
Color coding isn't something I did, it's something the Monster Manual did by assigning alignments. And it's dumb and removing it would make the monster manual better.
I am talking about the published worlds. Not you table top skits.
1. Not all published worlds handle things the same way. Tell me, what alignment are the dragons in Eberron? How about Theros? Ravinca? Wildemount? Are there even dragons in Ravenloft?
2. I've been running in homebrew since the early 80's; it's the only way I know how to play. Published worlds are boring (I should say, they are boring to me. If you like them, you do you. I'm sure you're having fun. Just don't try and force me to play in it.) Not sure what skits you're talking about since, well, you've never once played with me.
Don't look at alignment as a barrier but as a guide line.
Ok sure, it works that way for people who have been looking at it and discussing it for years, but for a newcomer the explanations from various sources are similar enough that it sounds like there is a consensus on how it works, but just different enough that, taken en masse they actually end up being more confusing than actually helpful. Alignment has never been clearly enough explained for it to be a useful tool. It only becomes useful for experienced D&D-ers who have grappled with it enough to some to an internal understanding.
What that means is that alignment is a barrier to entry for this game and would probably make the game healthier if it disappeared. As it is, I think they probably only keep it because 5E is the nostalgia edition and they wanted to hold on to those sacred cows.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Even when I was a brand new player back in the early ‘90s we never treated alignment as something that was intended to dictate PC behavior, but instead viewed it as something that represented a PC’s behavior. “If your PC does good things, your PC’s alignment is Good, if your PC does chaotic things, your PC’s alignment is Chaotic.” That kind of thing. We never viewed it as “your PC’s alignment is good so therefore must only do good things.” If your good PC starts doing evil things, their alignment should slowly shift through Neutral towards eventually being Evil if the behavior persists long enough. And vice versa. Alignment has never been intended to be some binding, immutable thing chosen at creation. Why should it be true now?
Even when I was a brand new player back in the early ‘90s we never treated alignment as something that was intended to dictate PC behavior, but instead viewed it as something that represented a PC’s behavior. “If your PC does good things, your PC’s alignment is Good, if your PC does chaotic things, your PC’s alignment is Chaotic.” That kind of thing. We never viewed it as “your PC’s alignment is good so therefore must only do good things.” If your good PC starts doing evil things, their alignment should slowly shift through Neutral towards eventually being Evil if the behavior persists long enough. And vice versa. Alignment has never been intended to be some binding, immutable thing chosen at creation. Why should it be true now?
That sounds more like some sort of score-keeping mechanism. An ongoing personality test, so you know where you "fit" within some moral absolutist cartesian coordinate system.
Even when I was a brand new player back in the early ‘90s we never treated alignment as something that was intended to dictate PC behavior, but instead viewed it as something that represented a PC’s behavior. “If your PC does good things, your PC’s alignment is Good, if your PC does chaotic things, your PC’s alignment is Chaotic.” That kind of thing. We never viewed it as “your PC’s alignment is good so therefore must only do good things.” If your good PC starts doing evil things, their alignment should slowly shift through Neutral towards eventually being Evil if the behavior persists long enough. And vice versa. Alignment has never been intended to be some binding, immutable thing chosen at creation. Why should it be true now?
That sounds more like some sort of score-keeping mechanism. An ongoing personality test, so you know where you "fit" within some moral absolutist cartesian coordinate system.
Why would I want that, either?
Because if you've established a consistent pattern about how your character has acted in the past. Then they are more likely to act in a similar manner in the future.
Because if you've established a consistent pattern about how your character has acted in the past. Then they are more likely to act that way in the future.
I can do that without alignment, though. In fact, alignment (specifically the part where I need to guess at how "evil" or "lawful" or whatever some behavior is) would just slow that process down, and make it inherently less consistent --- because it's less precise than just describing my character in normal terms.
Even when I was a brand new player back in the early ‘90s we never treated alignment as something that was intended to dictate PC behavior, but instead viewed it as something that represented a PC’s behavior. “If your PC does good things, your PC’s alignment is Good, if your PC does chaotic things, your PC’s alignment is Chaotic.” That kind of thing. We never viewed it as “your PC’s alignment is good so therefore must only do good things.” If your good PC starts doing evil things, their alignment should slowly shift through Neutral towards eventually being Evil if the behavior persists long enough. And vice versa. Alignment has never been intended to be some binding, immutable thing chosen at creation. Why should it be true now?
This seems about how I tend to view it as well; alignment for me has always been about helping to inform your character or NPC behaviour, and then being a reflection of it.
I don't mind a DM pointing out when a player does something that doesn't seem to fit their alignment, so long as it's just a reminder that this could mean an alignment change if it keeps happening (or if that one time keeps getting more and more extreme).
Even a lawful good paladin may be forced to do something terrible if they believe that the alternative will be much worse. The example I like to use is a village infiltrated by a cult where you know a ritual will soon be completed that threatens the entire country/continent/world/multiverse; a chaotic good dragon wouldn't give a second thought to razing the entire village, but a lawful good character shouldn't want to, or should do it as the option of last resort (no longer confident about stopping the ritual in time), and they should feel bad about it afterwards.
I also like to keep in mind that the distinction in alignments is pretty vague at the best of times; if you go by the descriptions in the Player's Handbook then it's not that clear which is the correct alignment. I tend to think of good as selfless, evil as selfish, chaotic as favouring freedom and lawful as favouring order/rules, and try to go from there. This means that most alignments encompass a pretty broad range of what you can and cannot justify doing.
Also characters can just be pushed too far and snap, or a myriad of other things that don't "fit" with the alignment 100% of the time. Alignment change isn't about the exceptions, it's about the trend; if a lawful good character is an habitual liar and/or trying to steal from everyone they meet, then it might be time to consider chaotic good (if they're stealing to give to the poor) or chaotic neutral. If your "good" characters are frequently torturing information out of people then something has to change (as happened in a campaign I'm in, because seriously, shocking unarmed prisoners to death is not the action of a "good" character), and so-on.
I've been playing a neutral evil character in another of my current campaigns, and that's been a lot of fun; he's callous but not cruel, self-obsessed but not above helping allies (as it helps his long-term goals), he's blunt to the point of rudeness, but technically never lies (though he's very economical with the truth, and very good at deflection). If someone is between him and what he wants, he'll warn them once, then kill them without a second thought if they refuse to get out of the way (in his mind this is an act of suicide on their part, not murder on his).
Maybe I just particularly enjoy playing with the limits of alignments; I like good characters struggling to stand firm, or in a rapid downward spiral, I like "evil" characters that are more ruthless than cackling madman, and I like neutral characters that still do the right thing most of the time, but can be a total asshat when it suits me etc. All part of the fun. 😉
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
And herein lies the problem for every alignment thread - most arguments against individual alignment boil down to “why would I want that?” I have my theories on that - specifically that many alignment detractors either see it as black and white or say “everybody else sees it as black and white”, both of which suggest the poster sees the world in black and white and might assume if something is not useful to them, it must not be useful to anyone else (or everyone else must be wrong, because, if everything I black and white, if they are correct, that would make me wrong).
And, sure, maybe you do not want it this kind of emotional test - but guess what, there are lots of players who find it helpful, as is apparent from the myriad responses on this thread which specifically say why they find it helpful.
Let’s look at the alignment personality test. As I have already said on this thread, as a DM who usually has someone just trying out roleplaying for the first time, I - and my new players - find it helpful as a way of evaluating either who their character is at the start of the campaign or helping create their backstory.
Just yesterday I used it to help a player who will be joining for a single session, but has never roleplayed anything, to make a character. They were overwhelmed by their class options and the idea their backstory could be anything, sp we came up with what alignment they wanted and created a character who would have that personality type if they took an alignment personality test.
I have had players who made up the concept of their character and their character’s background, but did not know how to actually roleplay that character in-game. So we applied the alignment personality test to their backstory and they used that as a starting point for their roleplaying (while having sufficient emotional intelligence to realise characters are complex and any personality index is a guideline, not an absolute).
So, just because you do not find it useful, doesn’t mean it is not useful. I do not tend to really use alignment for my characters either, except as just a fun little curiosity that does not influence my playstyle… but I also am not so unempathetic as to suggest that, because I do not really use it, it is not worth using.
Even when I was a brand new player back in the early ‘90s we never treated alignment as something that was intended to dictate PC behavior, but instead viewed it as something that represented a PC’s behavior. “If your PC does good things, your PC’s alignment is Good, if your PC does chaotic things, your PC’s alignment is Chaotic.” That kind of thing. We never viewed it as “your PC’s alignment is good so therefore must only do good things.” If your good PC starts doing evil things, their alignment should slowly shift through Neutral towards eventually being Evil if the behavior persists long enough. And vice versa. Alignment has never been intended to be some binding, immutable thing chosen at creation. Why should it be true now?
That sounds more like some sort of score-keeping mechanism. An ongoing personality test, so you know where you "fit" within some moral absolutist cartesian coordinate system.
Why would I want that, either?
That’s not what it was for. It was to give the DM an idea about how certain NPCs and intelligent Monsters might react to that PC based on behavior and reputation. Nothing more.
I'm sorry, I got confused about what you were trying to say. I thought you were saying that alignment is to simple and doesn't explain how a monster works well enough, but I think I read your post a little to fast last time and that's why I came off confused.
To your original post: just include those other words in their description. You can still include alignment and also write about those adjectives in the monster description. This is how The Monster Manual and other books do it. (For example, it says in the yeti description that they're "Driven by hunger," but it also has their alignment as well.)
Alignment works with those adjectives to determine a creatures actions, it also works to help you create those adjectives if you're creating the monster. But alignment works together with descriptions of the monsters motivations, etc., (in the yet's case hunger), to determine their actions.
To your other post: You don't have to label a creature neutral if you don't feel alignment is relevant to the monster. Just say that where alignment is and don't do alignment if you wan't. Alignment is usually relevant, in the rare cases when someone doesn't feel it is, they don't have to use it.
PS- Sorry if something's I say here are really confusing, I had to make this post in a rush.
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.It's not confusing, BB. What you're missing is that while you find alignment to be super helpful and flavorful and informative and essential to being a good DM, many other people find that alignment gets in their way. People say "if you don't like alignment then just don't use it, but Wizards should leave it in for the people who like it" without acknowledging that if the alignment is there you're expected to use it. You'll have to fight players on the idea that the alignments in the books don't exist at your table, and for as long as Wizards puts alignments in stat blocks, players will keep assuming "ALL (X) HAVE TO BE ALIGNMENT (Y), THE BOOK SAID SO, DON'T CHANGE WHAT THE BOOK SAYS".
Keeping alignment is nice for the traditionalists who see it as an essential, definitional trapping of D&D. Part of D&D's aesthetic and ethos, and an indispensable tool for moral-absolutist stories. Ditching it is good for those who want deeper, more nuanced stories and those who wish to see the game grow and evolve past its archaic roots. There's some intermingle there, but you're never going to convince those strongly in the latter camp that "no, really, alignment is super neat and flavorful and useful and interesting if you just use it right!"
We know how to use it. It's not hard. In fact, that's the point - alignment is such an oversimplification that to someone who wants more than mindless cannon fodder it becomes a superfluous nuisance distraction. My players deserve more from me than "okay, suddenly a bunch of NE goblins attack you because we haven't had an encounter in a little while. Roll initiative." And I expect more from my DMs than that. Alignment simply has no place in the kind of games I want to run and play.
Please do not contact or message me.
Something that I feel often gets ignored in conversations about alignment - alignment has two different meanings in the game, which are not necessarily the same: individual alignment and racial alignment.
1. Individual alignment is the alignment of a specific character or NPC. It is not something that defines their character, but something that describes their character. By way of example, let's look at Myers-Briggs, something I expect some folks might be experienced with (even if it is a pretty crappy evaluative tool, it makes a better example due to general knowledge). A person is not an introverted, sensing, thinking, and judgmental person because they are an ISTJ--they are an ISTJ because they already exhibited those traits. Like any psychological tool, alignment provides an imperfect snapshot into the average of a given individual's personality. It does not mean that the Lawful Good character will always act lawful or good, it just means that, more likely than not, they will respond to a given situation in a lawful good manner.
This can be a really helpful tool, especially for DMs or players who are new, who struggle with roleplaying, or who are not the most emotionally intelligent of individuals (one need not look to hard in nerdy communities to see folks with little experience outside their insular perspectives). Alignment provides the person playing the character or NPC a baseline "here is how you might respond if you are having struggles stepping into your character's specific mindset", allowing them to make decisions that are generally in-character. It also provides DMs who are not great at reading or judging their individual party with an average they can use--"this player is lawful good, so I can expect he will do something lawful good if I put him in this situation--I can prepare for that option, while still being open to ad libing if he goes down another path."
Individual alignment has sufficient utility--particularly in groups that need it--without having an easy replacement governed by the game itself. There is no manual for how "Ragnar Strongdwarf" should act because Ragnar Strongdwarf was made up by the DM or the player. Alignment gives a bit of a manual for folks who need that kind of manual, making it a fairly worthwhile tool (even if it is one I and other more advanced players might see more as a curiosity than a tool we regularly use).
2. Racial alignment is the average alignment of an entire race. "Orcs are more likely to be X than they are Y." It is generally justified along the lines of "different creatures have different biological makeups--take cats and dogs, they would have clearly different average alignments."
This can be helpful to folks coming up with NPCs or deciding how a group of that race act as a collective unit. Unlike individual alignment, which is very DM/Player driven (and thus having a standard "here is something you can use to help" has utility), races and monsters are Wizards driven. Wizards does not need to have a standardized metric for describing these creatures to themselves, like an individual character or NPC might, they can go ahead and write out an actual description, devoid of alignment.
I will admit, racial alignments leave a bad taste in my mouth for two reasons. Whereas individual alignment is more like psychology, reading an individual person and deriving results from that individual, racial alignment is a lot more like sociology. Speaking from the perspective of someone where one of his degrees is in sociology (though more accidently than intentionally), psychology has a lot of merit and has been proven time and again to be useful in evaluating and treating individuals.... sociology borders a LOT on pseudoscience, and usually is more informed by stereotyping and anecdotes than actual, useful data.
Which brings me to my second issue--while individual alignments have their roots in helping individual players address their individual characters, racial alignments have a much, much, much darker history in this game. Gary Gygax, one of the game's creators, was a big fan of "biological determinism"--the idea that your chromosomes decide your personality. This often manifested itself in problematic and stereotypical ways (some of the early rulebooks discussing tribal races and such are... painful to read), including Gygax's using racial alignment as a tool of promulgating some fairly problematic ideas on race.
-----
TL;DR: It is important to remember that alignment can refer to two different systems in the game, and it is possible to think that alignment is a useful tool in one of those systems, but not in the other. Wizards of the Coast seems to agree with this - there is no indication that they are going to be removing individual alignment as a tool, but they have been steadily excising the much less useful (and with much more problematic origins) racial alignment system from the game. I think this is probably the right decision--it keeps alignment where it is actually a useful, while downplaying or removing it in areas where it might be of more limited utility.
If any player says "IT SAYS IN THE BOOK ALIGNMENT FOR GENERAL GROUPS DOES NOT APPLY TO EVERY MEMBER OF THE GROUP, SO CLEARLY IT MUST APPLY TO EVERY MEMBER OF THAT GROUP WITH NO EXCEPTIONS AND I REFUSE TO SEE IT ANY OTHER WAY." Then that player is the problem, not the system.
If you don't think alignment is good, then again, don't use it. But the examples you're giving, such as one DM saying that some creatures have an NE alignment and them using that as an excuse to spring combat on their party for no reason, is not how alignment works. That is one DM being crazy and using an actually helpful tool to justify terrible DMing.
The more I think about it, the more I start to agree with you. I think alignment can be massively helpful with individual NPC's, characters, or creatures. But maybe, if you're applying it to one type of monster, just say that it's more likely for them to be that type of alignment, and that there are MANY exceptions. I feel like that would help clear up a lot of issues where people believe that "Anyone in X group is always this and will always be this as well."
Also, if a group of creatures doesn't have reasons for them to be pushed towards a certain alignment. Then there's no need to give it.
But in general, I see what you mean about alignment being problematic in these circumstances. And if the solutions I tried to give above won't work. Then I understand eliminating it for large and diverse groups.
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.The game already says that. it has said that since 2014.
Everybody ignores it.
Even the people who don't want to end up browbeaten by all the Traditionalists who believe alignment is an absolute requirement, set by birth and fixed by Divine Decree, into dealing with it. See the three hundred thousand threads in Tasha's wake about how all orcs everywhere MUST BE EVIL because that's just how they are, and all the various responses on how people trying to de-emphasize that in their games are Ruining D&D Forever.
The solution you gave above was baked into the original release of the books in 2014. It has manifestly not worked. Therefore we should eliminate it for large and diverse groups, yes? By your own word? And if we're eliminating it for large and diverse groups, why should individual PCs be shackled and beholden to a system we've all agreed doesn't work properly? Why is it that an individual PC must - must must MUST - be assigned to one of nine and only nine pre-written modes of behavior to which every last living creature in the entire universe must be sorted into?
Please do not contact or message me.
Don't look at alignment as a barrier but as a guide line.
For example:
If we were just introduced to dragons, forget everything you think you know about from any source, dragons in all their varied forms. How would you play each one?
Without the alignment description you would have no idea if gold ones were good or bad.
Now expand that thought out to all the worlds of D&D. We need something to keep the overall idea of Gold Dragons being good equal across everyone's worlds.
Alignment does not mean someone or a creature would never do something others might see as non alignment, against their listed alignment, but its a general guide to start from. That gold dragon could be attacking the castle not because it just wants to but because the people in the castle took something from it.
And the use of alignment for an intelligent creature is far different than the use for an non intelligent creature.
Alignment for a PC is mostly for the PC. The PC should be using it help them create a new personality to play instead of just playing the very same personality across all the players characters.
The DM only needs it if the character has a god and might stray from the deities alignment requirement.
Um...
I said forget everything you already know about dragons. This includes the idea of color coding.
Start fresh and clean.
And as for tell me what they do...
Are you asking what a single individual dragon is doing or the whole group?
Counterpoint: No. We don’t need that.
Why do I get to decide how the dragons in your world behave?
Why do you care how they behave in mine?
I am talking about the published worlds. Not you table top skits.
Color coding isn't something I did, it's something the Monster Manual did by assigning alignments. And it's dumb and removing it would make the monster manual better.
1. Not all published worlds handle things the same way. Tell me, what alignment are the dragons in Eberron? How about Theros? Ravinca? Wildemount? Are there even dragons in Ravenloft?
2. I've been running in homebrew since the early 80's; it's the only way I know how to play. Published worlds are boring (I should say, they are boring to me. If you like them, you do you. I'm sure you're having fun. Just don't try and force me to play in it.) Not sure what skits you're talking about since, well, you've never once played with me.
Ok sure, it works that way for people who have been looking at it and discussing it for years, but for a newcomer the explanations from various sources are similar enough that it sounds like there is a consensus on how it works, but just different enough that, taken en masse they actually end up being more confusing than actually helpful. Alignment has never been clearly enough explained for it to be a useful tool. It only becomes useful for experienced D&D-ers who have grappled with it enough to some to an internal understanding.
What that means is that alignment is a barrier to entry for this game and would probably make the game healthier if it disappeared. As it is, I think they probably only keep it because 5E is the nostalgia edition and they wanted to hold on to those sacred cows.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Even when I was a brand new player back in the early ‘90s we never treated alignment as something that was intended to dictate PC behavior, but instead viewed it as something that represented a PC’s behavior. “If your PC does good things, your PC’s alignment is Good, if your PC does chaotic things, your PC’s alignment is Chaotic.” That kind of thing. We never viewed it as “your PC’s alignment is good so therefore must only do good things.” If your good PC starts doing evil things, their alignment should slowly shift through Neutral towards eventually being Evil if the behavior persists long enough. And vice versa. Alignment has never been intended to be some binding, immutable thing chosen at creation. Why should it be true now?
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
That sounds more like some sort of score-keeping mechanism. An ongoing personality test, so you know where you "fit" within some moral absolutist cartesian coordinate system.
Why would I want that, either?
Because if you've established a consistent pattern about how your character has acted in the past. Then they are more likely to act in a similar manner in the future.
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.I can do that without alignment, though. In fact, alignment (specifically the part where I need to guess at how "evil" or "lawful" or whatever some behavior is) would just slow that process down, and make it inherently less consistent --- because it's less precise than just describing my character in normal terms.
This seems about how I tend to view it as well; alignment for me has always been about helping to inform your character or NPC behaviour, and then being a reflection of it.
I don't mind a DM pointing out when a player does something that doesn't seem to fit their alignment, so long as it's just a reminder that this could mean an alignment change if it keeps happening (or if that one time keeps getting more and more extreme).
Even a lawful good paladin may be forced to do something terrible if they believe that the alternative will be much worse. The example I like to use is a village infiltrated by a cult where you know a ritual will soon be completed that threatens the entire country/continent/world/multiverse; a chaotic good dragon wouldn't give a second thought to razing the entire village, but a lawful good character shouldn't want to, or should do it as the option of last resort (no longer confident about stopping the ritual in time), and they should feel bad about it afterwards.
I also like to keep in mind that the distinction in alignments is pretty vague at the best of times; if you go by the descriptions in the Player's Handbook then it's not that clear which is the correct alignment. I tend to think of good as selfless, evil as selfish, chaotic as favouring freedom and lawful as favouring order/rules, and try to go from there. This means that most alignments encompass a pretty broad range of what you can and cannot justify doing.
Also characters can just be pushed too far and snap, or a myriad of other things that don't "fit" with the alignment 100% of the time. Alignment change isn't about the exceptions, it's about the trend; if a lawful good character is an habitual liar and/or trying to steal from everyone they meet, then it might be time to consider chaotic good (if they're stealing to give to the poor) or chaotic neutral. If your "good" characters are frequently torturing information out of people then something has to change (as happened in a campaign I'm in, because seriously, shocking unarmed prisoners to death is not the action of a "good" character), and so-on.
I've been playing a neutral evil character in another of my current campaigns, and that's been a lot of fun; he's callous but not cruel, self-obsessed but not above helping allies (as it helps his long-term goals), he's blunt to the point of rudeness, but technically never lies (though he's very economical with the truth, and very good at deflection). If someone is between him and what he wants, he'll warn them once, then kill them without a second thought if they refuse to get out of the way (in his mind this is an act of suicide on their part, not murder on his).
Maybe I just particularly enjoy playing with the limits of alignments; I like good characters struggling to stand firm, or in a rapid downward spiral, I like "evil" characters that are more ruthless than cackling madman, and I like neutral characters that still do the right thing most of the time, but can be a total asshat when it suits me etc. All part of the fun. 😉
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
And herein lies the problem for every alignment thread - most arguments against individual alignment boil down to “why would I want that?” I have my theories on that - specifically that many alignment detractors either see it as black and white or say “everybody else sees it as black and white”, both of which suggest the poster sees the world in black and white and might assume if something is not useful to them, it must not be useful to anyone else (or everyone else must be wrong, because, if everything I black and white, if they are correct, that would make me wrong).
And, sure, maybe you do not want it this kind of emotional test - but guess what, there are lots of players who find it helpful, as is apparent from the myriad responses on this thread which specifically say why they find it helpful.
Let’s look at the alignment personality test. As I have already said on this thread, as a DM who usually has someone just trying out roleplaying for the first time, I - and my new players - find it helpful as a way of evaluating either who their character is at the start of the campaign or helping create their backstory.
Just yesterday I used it to help a player who will be joining for a single session, but has never roleplayed anything, to make a character. They were overwhelmed by their class options and the idea their backstory could be anything, sp we came up with what alignment they wanted and created a character who would have that personality type if they took an alignment personality test.
I have had players who made up the concept of their character and their character’s background, but did not know how to actually roleplay that character in-game. So we applied the alignment personality test to their backstory and they used that as a starting point for their roleplaying (while having sufficient emotional intelligence to realise characters are complex and any personality index is a guideline, not an absolute).
So, just because you do not find it useful, doesn’t mean it is not useful. I do not tend to really use alignment for my characters either, except as just a fun little curiosity that does not influence my playstyle… but I also am not so unempathetic as to suggest that, because I do not really use it, it is not worth using.
That’s not what it was for. It was to give the DM an idea about how certain NPCs and intelligent Monsters might react to that PC based on behavior and reputation. Nothing more.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting