In my interpretation, alignment directly corresponds to what the cosmic forces of the universe believe is just. As a result, their rigid interpretation of someone’s actions does not necessarily represent intent (perhaps it shouldn’t, given that the road to hell is paved with good intentions). Murdering an unarmed enemy, regardless of their potential to do future harm, may be judged as evil by the higher powers whereas destroying a peaceful undead who has done no harm whatsoever would be considered a good deed by them regardless.
That’s how I run it at least. Alignment is not an indicator of your personality, but an indicator of how your personality is perceived by the heavens and hells pre-existing laws.
I use alignment to describe players, not tell them what they can and can't do(And I don't force my players to use it). I use it for monsters mostly because I like the RPG vibes from it, but also because it's easier for me to decide how monsters will act depending on the state of the battle. For instance, not many good creatures will kill an unconscious enemy, and not many evil creatures will let one live(provided they don't have a master or objective requiring they stay alive).
As for the individual ones, I count the Law/Chaos row as where you get your morals from. If it's an external source, like a code or a law, the creature is lawful. If the morals come from the creature's own feelings and ethics, the creature is Chaotic. Good/Evil is more nuanced, but I count Good as wanting to do good to others, and Evil as wanting to do evil to others. Neutral means you borrow from either of the others, depending on the situation. I do realize that this means that in my view, many paladins are Chaotic, but that doesn't bother me. And in many of the worlds I make, most Paladins swear a collective Oath to a god or religion, and therefore an external source(being the god or religion).
Hosted a battle between the Cult of Sedge and the Forum Countershere(Done now). I_Love_Tarrasques has won the fight, scoring a victory for the fiendish Moderators.
I use it (or would if I ran anything more than one-shots so far) as a measure of which spiritual forces a person’s soul has the strongest tie to. When a person dies, they aren’t “sent” to any of the afterlife planes, but are simply drawn there by their soul’s natural “gravity”.
Most people are True Neutral, even most adventurers. To be Good, Evil, Lawful, or Chaotic one must go well out of their way. This might create some theological concerns like “can a person bedridden from birth go to the upper planes”, but it makes designating alignments easier for me, if it’s not obvious with full knowledge of the person, they’re probably neutral.
these two points lead to a third: in a campaign focusing primarily on material/earthly matters, alignment doesn’t really need to come up. If, say, fiend encounters are just there for some spice and not a major motif of the campaign, then wether your of a similar alignment isn’t important. But if they, celestials, or any other outsiders are playing major roles, I’ll keep an accounting of which ones will like you best.
So, basically, if I use alignment for a campaign it’d be to set the mood. A slice of the frankly rather weird things I think of when planning potential campaigns.
P.S.: I am not saying alignment is necessary for any of this, it’s just a familiar enough tool.
I think alignment is a useful tool for the player to determine how to play their character - and I think that's all it should be used for. So I just made a tiefling sorcerer, and she's CN, and writing that down helps me remember that part of her personality, and how to roleplay that. I hope the DM and other players will look at her and think 'oh, well, she's impulsive and emotional - she's propably CN', but it doesn't really matter because it's for me, not for them.
I have a particular view on alignment/morals: You cannot have an alignment based on how you think or feel - only actions count for anything. As such, most everyone everywhere everywhen defaults to Neutral. Because mostly, everyone just minds their own business, doing little good or ill for anyone else. No matter how much you fantazise about strangling your neighbor in his sleep, or building an orphanage, until you do so, you remain boring, grey neutral.
Where alignments becomes tricky is that it's all opt-in: You're actively chosing to be on team Black Hat (or White Hat, but that choice is more sort of reasonable), and it only get's worse that I feel Black Hat types think they're good - they think they (and typically they alone) are strong enough and brave enough to make the hard choices that this harsh world requires. 'Only I am willing to finally free us all from the halfling menace!'
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
In my interpretation, alignment directly corresponds to what the cosmic forces of the universe believe is just. As a result, their rigid interpretation of someone’s actions does not necessarily represent intent (perhaps it shouldn’t, given that the road to hell is paved with good intentions). Murdering an unarmed enemy, regardless of their potential to do future harm, may be judged as evil by the higher powers whereas destroying a peaceful undead who has done no harm whatsoever would be considered a good deed by them regardless.
That’s how I run it at least. Alignment is not an indicator of your personality, but an indicator of how your personality is perceived by the heavens and hells pre-existing laws.
This is how I run it in one of my games, the real world is shades of grey but the Gods, who all ascended thousands and thousands of years ago and sit beyond a divine barrier, have not evolved in the same way so there representatives on the material plane have to learn some ethical and moral gymnastics to stay within the strict tenants of the religious faith while living in the realities of a world of grey.
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In my interpretation, alignment directly corresponds to what the cosmic forces of the universe believe is just. As a result, their rigid interpretation of someone’s actions does not necessarily represent intent (perhaps it shouldn’t, given that the road to hell is paved with good intentions). Murdering an unarmed enemy, regardless of their potential to do future harm, may be judged as evil by the higher powers whereas destroying a peaceful undead who has done no harm whatsoever would be considered a good deed by them regardless.
That’s how I run it at least. Alignment is not an indicator of your personality, but an indicator of how your personality is perceived by the heavens and hells pre-existing laws.
I use alignment to describe players, not tell them what they can and can't do(And I don't force my players to use it). I use it for monsters mostly because I like the RPG vibes from it, but also because it's easier for me to decide how monsters will act depending on the state of the battle. For instance, not many good creatures will kill an unconscious enemy, and not many evil creatures will let one live(provided they don't have a master or objective requiring they stay alive).
As for the individual ones, I count the Law/Chaos row as where you get your morals from. If it's an external source, like a code or a law, the creature is lawful. If the morals come from the creature's own feelings and ethics, the creature is Chaotic. Good/Evil is more nuanced, but I count Good as wanting to do good to others, and Evil as wanting to do evil to others. Neutral means you borrow from either of the others, depending on the situation. I do realize that this means that in my view, many paladins are Chaotic, but that doesn't bother me. And in many of the worlds I make, most Paladins swear a collective Oath to a god or religion, and therefore an external source(being the god or religion).
Hope this helped!
Subclass Evaluations So Far:
Sorcerer
Warlock
My statblock. Fear me!
Hosted a battle between the Cult of Sedge and the Forum Counters here(Done now). I_Love_Tarrasques has won the fight, scoring a victory for the fiendish Moderators.
I use it (or would if I ran anything more than one-shots so far) as a measure of which spiritual forces a person’s soul has the strongest tie to. When a person dies, they aren’t “sent” to any of the afterlife planes, but are simply drawn there by their soul’s natural “gravity”.
Most people are True Neutral, even most adventurers. To be Good, Evil, Lawful, or Chaotic one must go well out of their way. This might create some theological concerns like “can a person bedridden from birth go to the upper planes”, but it makes designating alignments easier for me, if it’s not obvious with full knowledge of the person, they’re probably neutral.
these two points lead to a third: in a campaign focusing primarily on material/earthly matters, alignment doesn’t really need to come up. If, say, fiend encounters are just there for some spice and not a major motif of the campaign, then wether your of a similar alignment isn’t important. But if they, celestials, or any other outsiders are playing major roles, I’ll keep an accounting of which ones will like you best.
So, basically, if I use alignment for a campaign it’d be to set the mood. A slice of the frankly rather weird things I think of when planning potential campaigns.
P.S.: I am not saying alignment is necessary for any of this, it’s just a familiar enough tool.
I ignore alignment in favor of traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws...
I think alignment is a useful tool for the player to determine how to play their character - and I think that's all it should be used for. So I just made a tiefling sorcerer, and she's CN, and writing that down helps me remember that part of her personality, and how to roleplay that. I hope the DM and other players will look at her and think 'oh, well, she's impulsive and emotional - she's propably CN', but it doesn't really matter because it's for me, not for them.
I have a particular view on alignment/morals: You cannot have an alignment based on how you think or feel - only actions count for anything. As such, most everyone everywhere everywhen defaults to Neutral. Because mostly, everyone just minds their own business, doing little good or ill for anyone else. No matter how much you fantazise about strangling your neighbor in his sleep, or building an orphanage, until you do so, you remain boring, grey neutral.
Where alignments becomes tricky is that it's all opt-in: You're actively chosing to be on team Black Hat (or White Hat, but that choice is more sort of reasonable), and it only get's worse that I feel Black Hat types think they're good - they think they (and typically they alone) are strong enough and brave enough to make the hard choices that this harsh world requires. 'Only I am willing to finally free us all from the halfling menace!'
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
This is how I run it in one of my games, the real world is shades of grey but the Gods, who all ascended thousands and thousands of years ago and sit beyond a divine barrier, have not evolved in the same way so there representatives on the material plane have to learn some ethical and moral gymnastics to stay within the strict tenants of the religious faith while living in the realities of a world of grey.