I am curious as to what most peoples Alignment is, Chaotic Neutral/Neutral Evil is my go to personally but i want to see where others prefer for a little fun.
I tend to play Neutral or Chaotic Neutral. But it depends on the character.
Chaotic is more because my chars often don't follow the law, working to their own ends. This may be Neutral or Chaotic depending on how far into this they go. And in Good/Evil I very often lean into Neutral because good and evil are not "set" things - they're very subjective and confining morality to just these perspectives is incredibly unrealistic and a roleplay trap. Choosing to save yourself at the cost of another's life who is otherwise innocent - is that evil? You made the choice to kill somebody else, but, self-preservation is an inherent good and perfectly natural.
Vampires are automatically evil because they feed on people. But, they do that to survive so are we saying the desire to survive is evil even though self-preservation is an inherent good? I mean, people kill plants and animals to sustain themselves so are all people evil? The lion eats the zebra, are all lions evil? No? Then why is a vampire evil just getting food for itself?
The moral system on D&D is far too simplistic and incredibly flawed for my tastes so I will define it loosely and then basically ignore it for the rest of the game - letting my actions and decisions be what they are and letting others label it on their own terms as they need - it's of no consequence to me.
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True Neutral for me almost always. I personally find morality tends to get in the way a lot and I just take everything on a case-by-case basis.
That is actually a viewpoint that supports Chaotic Neutral. Neutral - morality gets in the way (I do what is necessary), and Chaotic- Taking everything on a case-by-case basis resists the ordering of the world and using Laws and other guideposts to establish behavior.
True Neutral for me almost always. I personally find morality tends to get in the way a lot and I just take everything on a case-by-case basis.
That is actually a viewpoint that supports Chaotic Neutral. Neutral - morality gets in the way (I do what is necessary), and Chaotic- Taking everything on a case-by-case basis resists the ordering of the world and using Laws and other guideposts to establish behavior.
Ah but I don't ignore laws because doing so can lead you in a whole bunch of trouble. So they always have to be taken into account.
I tend to play Neutral or Chaotic Neutral. But it depends on the character.
Chaotic is more because my chars often don't follow the law, working to their own ends. This may be Neutral or Chaotic depending on how far into this they go. And in Good/Evil I very often lean into Neutral because good and evil are not "set" things - they're very subjective and confining morality to just these perspectives is incredibly unrealistic and a roleplay trap. Choosing to save yourself at the cost of another's life who is otherwise innocent - is that evil? You made the choice to kill somebody else, but, self-preservation is an inherent good and perfectly natural.
Vampires are automatically evil because they feed on people. But, they do that to survive so are we saying the desire to survive is evil even though self-preservation is an inherent good? I mean, people kill plants and animals to sustain themselves so are all people evil? The lion eats the zebra, are all lions evil? No? Then why is a vampire evil just getting food for itself?
The moral system on D&D is far too simplistic and incredibly flawed for my tastes so I will define it loosely and then basically ignore it for the rest of the game - letting my actions and decisions be what they are and letting others label it on their own terms as they need - it's of no consequence to me.
Choosing to save oneself, over the life of another, is not an evil act. It is a neutral act. A woman saving their child from endangerment is neutral, she has an active interest in that child. The same woman risking her life to save a stranger or even an enemy is a good act, because the woman had to act in a selfless way.
Dungeons and Dragons is, as stated many times, the only system that uses alignment. Other games might have good/evil or Law/Chaos mechanics but none are so ingrained and so misunderstood as D&D's Alignment system. Alignment exists in D&D because in D&D you can go to places and meet beings that represent and are defined Alignment. Modrons ARE Lawful Neutral and represent absolute order. Demons are wanton destruction epitomized and represent chaos and evil. Because of this fundamental fact of D&D Alignment is not abstract it is a real thing in D&D, as real as Red Dragons, Wizards throwing Fireballs, or an IT support guy that becomes Cronis the Battlemaster fighter lvl 9 on Thursday nights.
To understand Alignment, you -the player- have to actually grasp what the tenets are of each. What does it mean to be Chaotic? Lawful? Good? or Evil? How do they intersect? Is Darth Vader what you would consider to be Lawful Evil? Break down his actions and cast them against what you have examined and determined to be Lawful and Evil. In your example, you use Vampires and Humans to question if simply eating sentient people makes a vampire evil. In other games, Vampire the Masquerade from White Wolf/Onyx Path, we already have that answer provided: yes, by the way. In D&D we have to look at two things: What are you feeding on, and why are you doing it.
Humans eat nearly anything...even each other. Most of us, okay the vast majority of us find it morally repugnant and dare I say it evil to eat something with a mind and a family. Take elephant poaching, we know that elephants are very smart and have families. It is heart rending to see one tending to the corpse of another. So, we could state that killing elephants is evil. If I, and my family were starving, and I had the capacity to kill an elephant or face death of not only myself and my loved ones, I would kill that elephant. I would also die a little on the inside for having to have killed it.
Vampires on the other hand actively prey on us, which is not only frightening, it is evil because we feel fear, suffering, and pain of loss when our friends and family fall to the fangs of the vampires. Vampires are also doing it, feeding on us, because of their unnatural undead state. Taking our lifeforce in an unnatural way sustains them. Undeath is D&D is mostly considered an evil condition, only a rare few things such as Baelnorns are undead and not tainted by undeath. In older editions, the Undead explicitly drew their power from a connection to the Negative Energy Plane, a place of cold pure evil that ennervated and destroyed life. Again, a process that makes them evil.
If nuance is your goal, that is fine. Nuance is not orthogonal with the Alignment system, in fact it provides a place to make that conversation happen. Drizzit is an example of changing one thing about a Drow: alignment and seeing what happens. What if a Beholder dreams up a flawed copy of itself that is good? That Beholder will likely lack the Xenophobia of its kin because such a trait is not amicable with the concept of Goodness. Throwing out Alignment is an option, but it is not the best one.
As a regular Lawful Good player, Lawful to me doesn't mean always following the law. It means you default to following it, you'll feel conflicted when you don't, and you'll try to change it rather than destroy it. And it's not just laws: Lawful Good characters have a set of rules they follow for themselves: mostly good ones, but rules, that are more important to them than whatever local law. Think Catholic. Plus, Lawful is as focused around social expectations as well as laws. Any character primarily guided by a "code of honor" is Lawful. King Arthur and his knights are Lawful Good. Boba Fett is Lawful Evil. And so on.
The most important thing is, Lawful is still human. Alignment reflects the beliefs they want to follow and default to, not the ones they always embody. They can "act Chaotic" sometimes, they'll just question themselves afterwards.
Also, I think the Lawful/Chaotic axis needs to go in future D&D editions. I know it's classic, but the problems are (a) discussions like this that expose how stupidly subjective it is, (b) people who use they Chaotic alignments to justify LOLrandom play, and (c) people who use the Lawful alignments to justify being jerks.
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Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
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I am curious as to what most peoples Alignment is, Chaotic Neutral/Neutral Evil is my go to personally but i want to see where others prefer for a little fun.
My Spells, My Races, My Magic Items, My Monsters, My Subclasses,
LN for me.
Chaotic Neutral. Should have taken a pole for this :)
Neutral Good or Lawful Good.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
It's game night and you haven't chosen your alignment. That's okay, you can just go with your favorite...but what is it?
To clarify, please fill out the second two as a "breakdown" of whatever you picked for your first one.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
I do have a go to per se, but I guess I tend toward NG.
I avoid Chaotic alignments.
i overall prefer Neutral Evil
My Spells, My Races, My Magic Items, My Monsters, My Subclasses,
In 5e, alignment doesn't really matter for anything, but in 3.5 / Pathfinder usually CN.
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I tend to play Neutral or Chaotic Neutral. But it depends on the character.
Chaotic is more because my chars often don't follow the law, working to their own ends. This may be Neutral or Chaotic depending on how far into this they go. And in Good/Evil I very often lean into Neutral because good and evil are not "set" things - they're very subjective and confining morality to just these perspectives is incredibly unrealistic and a roleplay trap. Choosing to save yourself at the cost of another's life who is otherwise innocent - is that evil? You made the choice to kill somebody else, but, self-preservation is an inherent good and perfectly natural.
Vampires are automatically evil because they feed on people. But, they do that to survive so are we saying the desire to survive is evil even though self-preservation is an inherent good? I mean, people kill plants and animals to sustain themselves so are all people evil? The lion eats the zebra, are all lions evil? No? Then why is a vampire evil just getting food for itself?
The moral system on D&D is far too simplistic and incredibly flawed for my tastes so I will define it loosely and then basically ignore it for the rest of the game - letting my actions and decisions be what they are and letting others label it on their own terms as they need - it's of no consequence to me.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
I would have to say Chaotic Neutral. The good type, not the evils disguising themselves as CN just so they can get away with whatever.
True Neutral for me almost always. I personally find morality tends to get in the way a lot and I just take everything on a case-by-case basis.
Mega Yahtzee Thread:
Highest 41: brocker2001 (#11,285).
Yahtzee of 2's: Emmber (#36,161).
Lowest 9: JoeltheWalrus (#312), Emmber (#12,505) and Dertinus (#20,953).
I like the challenge of really doing Lawful Good right.
I would consider that too tough a mantle to wear. There are too many times when doing the right thing isn't the lawful thing.
Chaotic Good for me. I'll do the right thing, but don't tell me how to do it =)
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Polls were a good idea. I'm surprised how popular chaotic is.
and then theres me, the 1 vote on N'Evil XD
My Spells, My Races, My Magic Items, My Monsters, My Subclasses,
That is actually a viewpoint that supports Chaotic Neutral. Neutral - morality gets in the way (I do what is necessary), and Chaotic- Taking everything on a case-by-case basis resists the ordering of the world and using Laws and other guideposts to establish behavior.
Ah but I don't ignore laws because doing so can lead you in a whole bunch of trouble. So they always have to be taken into account.
Mega Yahtzee Thread:
Highest 41: brocker2001 (#11,285).
Yahtzee of 2's: Emmber (#36,161).
Lowest 9: JoeltheWalrus (#312), Emmber (#12,505) and Dertinus (#20,953).
Choosing to save oneself, over the life of another, is not an evil act. It is a neutral act. A woman saving their child from endangerment is neutral, she has an active interest in that child. The same woman risking her life to save a stranger or even an enemy is a good act, because the woman had to act in a selfless way.
Dungeons and Dragons is, as stated many times, the only system that uses alignment. Other games might have good/evil or Law/Chaos mechanics but none are so ingrained and so misunderstood as D&D's Alignment system. Alignment exists in D&D because in D&D you can go to places and meet beings that represent and are defined Alignment. Modrons ARE Lawful Neutral and represent absolute order. Demons are wanton destruction epitomized and represent chaos and evil. Because of this fundamental fact of D&D Alignment is not abstract it is a real thing in D&D, as real as Red Dragons, Wizards throwing Fireballs, or an IT support guy that becomes Cronis the Battlemaster fighter lvl 9 on Thursday nights.
To understand Alignment, you -the player- have to actually grasp what the tenets are of each. What does it mean to be Chaotic? Lawful? Good? or Evil? How do they intersect? Is Darth Vader what you would consider to be Lawful Evil? Break down his actions and cast them against what you have examined and determined to be Lawful and Evil. In your example, you use Vampires and Humans to question if simply eating sentient people makes a vampire evil. In other games, Vampire the Masquerade from White Wolf/Onyx Path, we already have that answer provided: yes, by the way. In D&D we have to look at two things: What are you feeding on, and why are you doing it.
Humans eat nearly anything...even each other. Most of us, okay the vast majority of us find it morally repugnant and dare I say it evil to eat something with a mind and a family. Take elephant poaching, we know that elephants are very smart and have families. It is heart rending to see one tending to the corpse of another. So, we could state that killing elephants is evil. If I, and my family were starving, and I had the capacity to kill an elephant or face death of not only myself and my loved ones, I would kill that elephant. I would also die a little on the inside for having to have killed it.
Vampires on the other hand actively prey on us, which is not only frightening, it is evil because we feel fear, suffering, and pain of loss when our friends and family fall to the fangs of the vampires. Vampires are also doing it, feeding on us, because of their unnatural undead state. Taking our lifeforce in an unnatural way sustains them. Undeath is D&D is mostly considered an evil condition, only a rare few things such as Baelnorns are undead and not tainted by undeath. In older editions, the Undead explicitly drew their power from a connection to the Negative Energy Plane, a place of cold pure evil that ennervated and destroyed life. Again, a process that makes them evil.
If nuance is your goal, that is fine. Nuance is not orthogonal with the Alignment system, in fact it provides a place to make that conversation happen. Drizzit is an example of changing one thing about a Drow: alignment and seeing what happens. What if a Beholder dreams up a flawed copy of itself that is good? That Beholder will likely lack the Xenophobia of its kin because such a trait is not amicable with the concept of Goodness. Throwing out Alignment is an option, but it is not the best one.
That's exactly the same reason I usually end up playing chaotic good.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
As a regular Lawful Good player, Lawful to me doesn't mean always following the law. It means you default to following it, you'll feel conflicted when you don't, and you'll try to change it rather than destroy it. And it's not just laws: Lawful Good characters have a set of rules they follow for themselves: mostly good ones, but rules, that are more important to them than whatever local law. Think Catholic. Plus, Lawful is as focused around social expectations as well as laws. Any character primarily guided by a "code of honor" is Lawful. King Arthur and his knights are Lawful Good. Boba Fett is Lawful Evil. And so on.
The most important thing is, Lawful is still human. Alignment reflects the beliefs they want to follow and default to, not the ones they always embody. They can "act Chaotic" sometimes, they'll just question themselves afterwards.
Also, I think the Lawful/Chaotic axis needs to go in future D&D editions. I know it's classic, but the problems are (a) discussions like this that expose how stupidly subjective it is, (b) people who use they Chaotic alignments to justify LOLrandom play, and (c) people who use the Lawful alignments to justify being jerks.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club