For me, alignment works better as a large-scale storytelling tool. Concepts like order versus chaos on a macro scale make for good plot points and story arcs. Using alignment on the micro scale to inform the personality of a creature is pretty much completely useless to me.
For me, alignment works better as a large-scale storytelling tool. Concepts like order versus chaos on a macro scale make for good plot points and story arcs. Using alignment on the micro scale to inform the personality of a creature is pretty much completely useless to me.
I don't use alignment prescriptively, telling my players how they should act, except in the rare case of something like the [Tooltip Not Found] that causes an alignment shift. And even then, I contextualise it in how they describe themselves.
Is the [Tooltip Not Found] a homebrew item? Which sourcebook is it in if not a homebrew item? It sounds interesting. :P
Silly me, it's the Eye and Hand, not Hand and Eye
There's something about the ordering syntax of D&D that trips me up; Eye and Hand, Evil and Good.
For me, alignment works better as a large-scale storytelling tool. Concepts like order versus chaos on a macro scale make for good plot points and story arcs. Using alignment on the micro scale to inform the personality of a creature is pretty much completely useless to me.
I couldn't agree more. Alignment in my games is only important when the story says its important. Devils are lawful, and protect the multiverse from the chaotic demons, but that doesn't make them good. This is a point that has come up multiple times in my Descent into Avernus campaign. Most of the characters express their alignment in the campaign in their interactions with the devils. A chaotic good character hates devils a whole lot more than a lawful good character would, but this isn't expressed through any mechanics, merely roleplaying.
I personally use alignment, but probably just because there's a space for it on Character Sheets. If 6e removes this, I may ignore alignment in most of my games. It's not all that important anymore.
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Not very important. To me, alignment exists as a kind of metric for what quests I can and can't give my characters as a DM. If they're Lawful, they might not want a heist adventure, if they're not all Good, I'll have to make clear that they get paid for heroic deeds, etc. But as far as personality, it's meaningless.
So, for those of us who have played 25+ years, alignment is basically the character orientation in the type of disposition a character has towards their reality. It is the base for decision-making styles, drives and motivations that lead a character to tell the truth vs. lie, or trust vs. distrust.
The following thoughts are kind of an old school take as a DM who has seen hundreds of players build characters over the years, and is a synthesis that is mostly personal, and per the current rules in the 5e player handbook (p122), goes a bit more in depth to the two line explanations provided if you are interested in including alignment as a key component of character development.
Alignment in my playing career has always been the skeleton of how to build character motivation, what drives them to act and be how they are, how they feel the world treats them is based on the core principles they guide themselves with. In essence, for us old-skoolers, it's the bones of the character's take on the world, whether they see it as a good or a bad place. Naturally over the course of a characters life, their alignment could changes as situations can dramatically impact their world view and therefore their decision making process as well as their personal values. Jedis go to the dark side too....
So to look at these simply in character creation when I'm thinking of building a character (not considering alignments for countries and such) this is kind of the quick cheatsheet I guide myself with (based in my experience as a DM):
Lawful - as a principle the character with a lawful tendency is predisposed towards a code to which they adhere because there is an innate respect for some form or order and structure (could be a god, could be an order, could be their mom's recommendations on how to behave and treat others) - it doesn't really matter what composes the code, the code is the inner tradition that they give loyalty to, the thing which gives a structure to the purpose their outlook on life (good, neutral, evil)
Pros - they have principles of some sort that they value over the sudden impulse that says slay that thing, take that shiny, and they can work towards a higher goal beyond themselves, because they have a principle, even if the greater goal is their own power, it's a structured strategy, and a coded approach
Cons - oh the things that can be done in the name of those principles (DM evil laugh)
Chaotic - as a principle the character with chaotic tendency is predisposed towards acting based on whatever their conscience dictates, which is an egocentric posture (with plenty of spontaneity) often with accompanied by highly subjective meanings and values (which IS the chaotic code) which drive them to act. This can translate to some stubborn willfulness, impulse control issues, or lack of regard for tradition and expectations of others somewhere in the persona. This type of character doesn't necessarily have a structured approach to its reality, rather an instinctive one. Even if good, they might mean well, but their interest in doing good can be impulsive, or based in some subjectively set self-imposed expectations built out of subjective experiences, and not necessarily structured in a code, or tradition, or out of loyalty to any principle outside themselves, or towards someone else's welfare for its own sake, rather it's steeped in their own need/expectation to feel good by valuing the preservation of life (good) for wholly subjective reasons.
Pros - they have instinct and conscience with meanings they value over the lofty powers that be, and expectations that say don't slay that thing, don't take that shiny, and they can flex most situations to benefit themselves, because they have impulses, even if the impulse is to do good, it's an anarchist kind of agenda and a spontaneous approach to interpreting meanings and events
Cons - their hesitation to trust tradition or structured order often opens them up to impulsive moves that have excellent DM karma in paying consequences for acting on subjective values
Neutral - as a principle the character with neutral tendency is predisposed to not ascribe judgments or morality to any given scenario for the sake of a code or for their self-satisfaction, unless said judgment arbitrarily serves the situation at hand, which is really decided by the character's sense of what balance is (colored by outlook, good/evil/neutral). They may have a code but it's more of a guideline than a law, as they can make exceptions knowing the code is made for people and not people for the code. Or they may have some opportunity to gain some personal interest in a situation and still decide to not indulge it if the situation doesn't call for it in their outlook (good, neutral, evil). They can manifest in a whole range of dispositions from uninvolved (as taking no sides) to all-involved but disinterested (taking all sides - like in the case of good negotiators).
Pros - These are the Solomons, the negotiators, the ultimate Devil's Advocates, the arbiters of situations. They can navigate without their own morality bogging them down, and don't get stressed by actions that appear like altruism or selfishness if it suits the situation as they assess it (according to their outlook- good, evil, neutral).
Cons - Their own neutrality can also be used to cause them problems in either direction with consequences for themselves by their approach seeming to be indecisive when partied with Lawful and Chaotic characters. If they are dealing with bigotry, their neutrality can seem standoffish, if dealing with organized crime types of characters, they seem to lack loyalty, or they might bite off more than they can chew in a negotiation.
Good/Neutral/Evil as outlooks that follow Lawful/Chaotic/Neutral dispositions can be interpreted as outlooks that drive the character's decision-making style:
Good - an outlook that values life and preserving the values that foster life and goodness. Good will always favor saving life and reducing suffering over self gain, or even balance.
Neutral - an outlook that values balance so does not necessarily take on morality as a value, because the approach acknowledges the necessity for life and death, as well as sometimes sacrificing life or defeating evil for the sake of balance. Neutral will always favor the balance of things for the sake of arbitrary balance, but will adapt actions according to outlook variations.
Evil - an outlook that values furthering its agenda (in whatever form of personal gain) no matter the cost to life, or balance. Evil will always favor gaining something for its agenda in any situation, depending on its orientation towards lawful, neutrality or chaos. Violence is arbitrary according to gain and efficiency to get to that gain. Often in lower intelligence brutish behavior makes sense, and in higher intelligence creatures manipulation may be most most efficient as the scope of intelligence defines the creature's perception of "reach".
Note the character can really play with the person's attributes of intelligence and wisdom and charisma here to shape a logic for the character. For example...A low intelligence chaotic good creature may highly dislike the smell of blood and seeing a living being dying or hearing it scream upsets it. So they don't like to kill. They value life because killing feels upsetting and mostly gross (the subjective self interest is they don't like to be upset by the horror, not necessarily that they have any morality toward killing in principle. They avoid killing and maybe if it happens they're not upset by the killing because of some moral principle, rather they feel sorry that the bad thing happened to the killed victim, because what if it was them). Altruism with an angle of self-interest is still altruism when it does good... On the other side of the spectrum, a chaotic evil has itself and its whims as primal priorities, so this can translate to all sorts of playing madness, from being disguised as sweet-talking manipulations and lies to psychopathic frenzies with zero impulse control/conscience.
So does this mean that my lawful evil Tiefling character will never do something good? Of course she might do something good, any number of good deeds can be done as long as the base interest towards her own gain is met (status, power, the mere satisfaction she upheld her inner code because it was right and aligned to the principles that drive her agenda) and if given a choice the quicker of the paths is chosen. For example, kill the children at the orphanage to get the shiny (and then risk the entire village coming after her) or play nice and save the children to get the shiny (and the village will give her rewards in addition, which she can use to then overthrow the next town over that has a bigger shiny).
In the outlook (good, evil, neutral) the character has a sense of the world, in an evil outlook reality could be seen as "the world is ruthless place, and those children could be spared a lifetime of misery by a quick ending, they'll die no matter what, what difference does it make if now instead of later." Whatever most fits, and doesn't break her code is fine. IF the character is sure the chances are low the village will find out and killing the children doesn't go against the no-no list in the code, the LE character will tend towards what most benefits their agenda, and yes, they might annihilate the orphanage. Or, if the consequence is too costly to their agenda, they will accommodate their actions to suit what best promotes their self-interest (in accordance to a lawful code - which could be, power before all, and power is worth any sacrifice... including an orphanage).
For chaotic good, for example, the character has some level of self-interest in whatever good is done, but also a great value for life. The outlook could be "The world is random and there's more good and plenty get out of it, so might as well get mine and avoid the unpleasantness of death and violence." They might save the children from the orphanage because they want to feel altruistic or even get praise because that's what their conscience dictates, they saw a child burn to death and hated what they felt, so for them to not feel that, they prefer to help creatures stay alive.
The variations are infinite really, and up to your imagination. For some it may not be an important part of playing, and that's ok, this post is certainly not for you. For the rest of us, this is just some extra color into how alignment can be used still as DMs, as 5e kind of did away with the whole thing in the rule book. For many of us alignment was always a rich building block for making the color of the character's personality itself and lent a great tool for the role play part of the game, and I know for me personally, I'm not getting rid of its use any time soon.
"Good? Evil? It's all about reputation. I want stuff without paying for it. That's supposedly evil, but if they think I'm good, they're more inclined to just let me have it." "I do not like how much sense this is making." (I go to the nearest tavern and drink until it stops making sense or until I pass out.)
With the right amount of logic leaping, one can be any alignment regardless what one does. Even the DM cannot always know the player character's intentions. I know of a DM who essentially replaced the alignment system with a reputation system. (EDIT: Not intending to discuss replacing the alignment system as there's another thread all about that. Just an example when the alignment system meant zip-all.)
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Put me in the camp of Alignment being as important or as unimportant as you and your group want it to be. Nothing wrong with using it, nothing wrong with not using it.
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"Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
Put me in the camp of Alignment being as important or as unimportant as you and your group want it to be. Nothing wrong with using it, nothing wrong with not using it.
Kind of depends on what the question is about. It lacks a lot of mechanical significance, in that there are very game mechanics that actually care what your alignment is (you could completely leave it off your character sheet and unless you ran into something like the Book of Vile Darkness you'll probably never notice; likewise newer monsters don't have it on their stat blocks but that's hardly going to prevent PCs from realizing a Bodytaker Plant is a problem that needs to dealt with), but the cosmology of the Great Wheel is still there, and LE vs CE is as useful a description as any to distinguish between the bureaucratic evil of the Nine Hells and the rampaging evils of the Abyss.
+1 to old school camp re alignment. Sure, its a fantasy game - so I can see how some people like to imagine a world where alignment is less than a significant motivating factor for people. But for me, its every bit as important in the game as in real life. Giving players a free hand to play willy nilly on a whim, one moment saving the baby, the next minute eating it, is just silly imo. There is good and evil in the world, as well as shades in between. Ditto law/chaos. While there are some people who are amoral, its rare and usually tied to mental illness.
Lack of alignment does not mean everyone is chaotic stupid. Strong adherence to alignment-based behavior is, in fact, the thing that really leads to people being chaotic stupid because "that's how my alignment says to act."
My world mirrors our own. Terrorists are chaotic evil. Certain current and past dictators are lawful evil. My nation is lawful good, though recently tending to lawful neutral. Most thieves are chaotic evil or chaotic neutral, but Robin Hood is Chaotic Good. Do people ever act outside their alignment? Sure - but within limits. At my table, characters who want to act outside their alignment (and who don't have a relevant mental illness) need to justify it, temper the speed of their alignment switch, and bear the consequences (including potential conflict within their party). This limitation does not infringe on the player's agency, but rather it confirms and plays out the agency they used when they selected their alignment at character creation. A player can whine all they want about not getting to act far enough outside of their existing alignment - to me its the same as a dude that made a fighter whining about not getting to cast spells. Sure he can change that build, but its not gonna happen overnight:)
The thing is, the real world isn't nearly so simple that things can easily be broken down into a simple 3X3 alignment chart. Robin Hood (who was not actually a real person) was fighting against the lawful government. By your own statement that would make him a terrorist and consequently chaotic evil rather than chaotic neutral. Your statement here is conflating alignment with personality- you don't need a hard-coded alignment dictating your actions to have a personality. And the idea that changing your alignment has specific penalties is just silly. If someone slides from chaotic good to neutral good, why do there need to be consequences? How would most people even notice and if they did notice, why would they care?
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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.
+1 to old school camp re alignment. Sure, its a fantasy game - so I can see how some people like to imagine a world where alignment is less than a significant motivating factor for people. But for me, its every bit as important in the game as in real life. Giving players a free hand to play willy nilly on a whim, one moment saving the baby, the next minute eating it, is just silly imo.
So, no-one should be allowed to play a chaotic neutral character? I can live with that. Anyway, you don't need alignment to prevent that, you just need characters with actual personalities.
Alignment is becoming more important in my campaign. If a player doesn't specify an alignment, I treat him as neutral, but I'll adjust over time based on his behavior. I'm more concerned with law vs. chaos than good vs. evil (both because it ties in with the metaphysics of my setting and I personally find that axis more interesting and "workable"). Law/chaos is important to most of the faiths of my world, so how the PCs rate in that will have an impact on how society views them.
I think alignment is great but it's up to the DM to decide how to use it.
Killing babies vs saving babies is more a good-evil thing than a chaotic-lawful. When I said "acting willy-nilly," I meant not staying consistently within your alignment. A chaotic character who stays within his alignment is fine.
The typical interpretation of chaotic neutral winds up being 'acting willy-nilly'.
Even when we were playing AD&D I didn't think alignment should ever be a consideration except for Clerics and Paladins. For everyone else it shouldn't be a "you must behave this way"
Now Basic D&D, which came before AD&D did not have anything other than Lawful, Chaotic and Neural as alignments. Good and Evil were just a matter of perspective.
Why would you expect a player to know everything there is about their character before spending one single session playing that character?
You say "a player picks their alignment prior to starting the game and they're expected to stay within that alignment or they'll suffer punishments". What if the player discovers their character doesn't act the way they thought it would and in play they discover they like a different interpretation of the character better? Do they have to suffer the punitive Alignment Shift mechanic in your games even though they were never really of the alignment listed on their sheet at all?
What happens when your insistence that every single PC in your game sticks strictly and exclusively to the one specific box on the 3x3 grid or Pay The Penalty ends up netting you an entire partyful of Lawful Stupid/Chaotic Stupid because the players are so concerned with being True To Their Alignment that they forget to be characters?
How do your players feel when you, as a DM, step in and override their decisions about what their characters do, say, think or feel because they're outside their alignment and they're only allowed to take [X] number of outside-alignment actions and have [Y] number of outside-alignment thoughts per adventuring day?
The only - I repeat, THE ONLY - way alignment works for PCs is for the player to play their character as they wish and for the DM to keep track of the character's alignment without bothering to inform the player. If alignment ever matters, then it can come up. Until then? The idea "You said you were Lawful Good during Session Zero, that decision is going to override and overrule any other decision you ever make in the actual game, and there is one AND ONLY ONE 'correct' way for Lawful Good to behave in my game" is actively repugnant to a great many people and will always be.
That's how you get to the 'True Stupid" meme caricatures of alignment, and is a great way overall to sabotage your entire game.
As an example of the use of alignment at my table, say a group of bugbears (CE) come up to a PC group of bugnears (LG). The alignments of our two groups will manifest in a lot of ways - mannerisms, gestures, topics of conversation, actions etc.
The alignment will manifest in actions. The rest of those things are not part of alignment. There is also no reason the PCs would want to pretend to be CE, because 'same alignment' does not mean 'friendly'.
Now lets say Bob doesn't want to be bound by his LG and says he wants to be evil. I will tell him to come up with a plausible way of making that transition, and will ask if he wants my help in that endeavor (maybe he hears news of a human raid of lawful good pallys against his village). But he can't just flip a switch according to the whim of himself as a player, nor will I just let him do whatever he wants alignment-wise without doing the work of creating a story/plan for the transition.
Bob is okay with you telling him he can't take a course of action that he wants to, because it's against his alignment?
I would find myself un-DMed so fast it would leave a vapor trail if I tried something like that. Not that I'd want to -- as far as I'm concerned alignment shifts in response to player/PC choice. It doesn't constrain it.
What's happening here is that a table which is generally uninterested in characters is using alignment as a handy way of boiling persona, ethos, history, drive, and motivation - all that soft, squishy 'Personality' junk - down to something mechanically enforceable and actionable that can easily be adjudicated and rolled for in a couple of minutes, to avoid in-character conversations or having to nail down specifics. Bob the paladin isn't a character so much as he is a 'toon' - a mindless skinsuit that Bill the player pilots around the game sphere. Bob's history, motivations, and persona aren't really important beyond 'Lawful Good'; all the nuance many other players crave and which drives them to reject alignment is seen as annoying thespian frippery getting in the way of throwing some dice. Characters at this table must designate an alignment because anything beyond their alignment is ignored in favor of navigating to the next combat more quickly.
Right. Fair enough. I would absolutely detest that game and be gone from that table so fast my wake would rattle the windows, but that's fine. Players at that table would equally detest and Rapidly Vacate games at my table where half of every session is in-character chatter and exploring character's motivations and growth is one of the primary reasons we play. It's another case of 'swordfights, not storytime' and a DM defending a tool for turning the soft, squishy emotional shit he ain't there for into a simple mechanical switch.
If that's what someone wants alignment for? A'ight. Just make sure that's super clear before you start a game, I imagine.
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For me, alignment works better as a large-scale storytelling tool. Concepts like order versus chaos on a macro scale make for good plot points and story arcs. Using alignment on the micro scale to inform the personality of a creature is pretty much completely useless to me.
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Silly me, it's the Eye and Hand, not Hand and Eye
There's something about the ordering syntax of D&D that trips me up; Eye and Hand, Evil and Good.
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I couldn't agree more. Alignment in my games is only important when the story says its important. Devils are lawful, and protect the multiverse from the chaotic demons, but that doesn't make them good. This is a point that has come up multiple times in my Descent into Avernus campaign. Most of the characters express their alignment in the campaign in their interactions with the devils. A chaotic good character hates devils a whole lot more than a lawful good character would, but this isn't expressed through any mechanics, merely roleplaying.
I personally use alignment, but probably just because there's a space for it on Character Sheets. If 6e removes this, I may ignore alignment in most of my games. It's not all that important anymore.
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Not very important. To me, alignment exists as a kind of metric for what quests I can and can't give my characters as a DM. If they're Lawful, they might not want a heist adventure, if they're not all Good, I'll have to make clear that they get paid for heroic deeds, etc. But as far as personality, it's meaningless.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
Yeah, alignment really only works towards NPCs now.
as Wizards continue to make away from labeling races and genders, moving from this seems like the next step.
So, for those of us who have played 25+ years, alignment is basically the character orientation in the type of disposition a character has towards their reality. It is the base for decision-making styles, drives and motivations that lead a character to tell the truth vs. lie, or trust vs. distrust.
The following thoughts are kind of an old school take as a DM who has seen hundreds of players build characters over the years, and is a synthesis that is mostly personal, and per the current rules in the 5e player handbook (p122), goes a bit more in depth to the two line explanations provided if you are interested in including alignment as a key component of character development.
Alignment in my playing career has always been the skeleton of how to build character motivation, what drives them to act and be how they are, how they feel the world treats them is based on the core principles they guide themselves with. In essence, for us old-skoolers, it's the bones of the character's take on the world, whether they see it as a good or a bad place. Naturally over the course of a characters life, their alignment could changes as situations can dramatically impact their world view and therefore their decision making process as well as their personal values. Jedis go to the dark side too....
So to look at these simply in character creation when I'm thinking of building a character (not considering alignments for countries and such) this is kind of the quick cheatsheet I guide myself with (based in my experience as a DM):
Lawful - as a principle the character with a lawful tendency is predisposed towards a code to which they adhere because there is an innate respect for some form or order and structure (could be a god, could be an order, could be their mom's recommendations on how to behave and treat others) - it doesn't really matter what composes the code, the code is the inner tradition that they give loyalty to, the thing which gives a structure to the purpose their outlook on life (good, neutral, evil)
Chaotic - as a principle the character with chaotic tendency is predisposed towards acting based on whatever their conscience dictates, which is an egocentric posture (with plenty of spontaneity) often with accompanied by highly subjective meanings and values (which IS the chaotic code) which drive them to act. This can translate to some stubborn willfulness, impulse control issues, or lack of regard for tradition and expectations of others somewhere in the persona. This type of character doesn't necessarily have a structured approach to its reality, rather an instinctive one. Even if good, they might mean well, but their interest in doing good can be impulsive, or based in some subjectively set self-imposed expectations built out of subjective experiences, and not necessarily structured in a code, or tradition, or out of loyalty to any principle outside themselves, or towards someone else's welfare for its own sake, rather it's steeped in their own need/expectation to feel good by valuing the preservation of life (good) for wholly subjective reasons.
Neutral - as a principle the character with neutral tendency is predisposed to not ascribe judgments or morality to any given scenario for the sake of a code or for their self-satisfaction, unless said judgment arbitrarily serves the situation at hand, which is really decided by the character's sense of what balance is (colored by outlook, good/evil/neutral). They may have a code but it's more of a guideline than a law, as they can make exceptions knowing the code is made for people and not people for the code. Or they may have some opportunity to gain some personal interest in a situation and still decide to not indulge it if the situation doesn't call for it in their outlook (good, neutral, evil). They can manifest in a whole range of dispositions from uninvolved (as taking no sides) to all-involved but disinterested (taking all sides - like in the case of good negotiators).
Good/Neutral/Evil as outlooks that follow Lawful/Chaotic/Neutral dispositions can be interpreted as outlooks that drive the character's decision-making style:
Note the character can really play with the person's attributes of intelligence and wisdom and charisma here to shape a logic for the character. For example...A low intelligence chaotic good creature may highly dislike the smell of blood and seeing a living being dying or hearing it scream upsets it. So they don't like to kill. They value life because killing feels upsetting and mostly gross (the subjective self interest is they don't like to be upset by the horror, not necessarily that they have any morality toward killing in principle. They avoid killing and maybe if it happens they're not upset by the killing because of some moral principle, rather they feel sorry that the bad thing happened to the killed victim, because what if it was them). Altruism with an angle of self-interest is still altruism when it does good... On the other side of the spectrum, a chaotic evil has itself and its whims as primal priorities, so this can translate to all sorts of playing madness, from being disguised as sweet-talking manipulations and lies to psychopathic frenzies with zero impulse control/conscience.
So does this mean that my lawful evil Tiefling character will never do something good? Of course she might do something good, any number of good deeds can be done as long as the base interest towards her own gain is met (status, power, the mere satisfaction she upheld her inner code because it was right and aligned to the principles that drive her agenda) and if given a choice the quicker of the paths is chosen. For example, kill the children at the orphanage to get the shiny (and then risk the entire village coming after her) or play nice and save the children to get the shiny (and the village will give her rewards in addition, which she can use to then overthrow the next town over that has a bigger shiny).
In the outlook (good, evil, neutral) the character has a sense of the world, in an evil outlook reality could be seen as "the world is ruthless place, and those children could be spared a lifetime of misery by a quick ending, they'll die no matter what, what difference does it make if now instead of later." Whatever most fits, and doesn't break her code is fine. IF the character is sure the chances are low the village will find out and killing the children doesn't go against the no-no list in the code, the LE character will tend towards what most benefits their agenda, and yes, they might annihilate the orphanage. Or, if the consequence is too costly to their agenda, they will accommodate their actions to suit what best promotes their self-interest (in accordance to a lawful code - which could be, power before all, and power is worth any sacrifice... including an orphanage).
For chaotic good, for example, the character has some level of self-interest in whatever good is done, but also a great value for life. The outlook could be "The world is random and there's more good and plenty get out of it, so might as well get mine and avoid the unpleasantness of death and violence." They might save the children from the orphanage because they want to feel altruistic or even get praise because that's what their conscience dictates, they saw a child burn to death and hated what they felt, so for them to not feel that, they prefer to help creatures stay alive.
The variations are infinite really, and up to your imagination. For some it may not be an important part of playing, and that's ok, this post is certainly not for you. For the rest of us, this is just some extra color into how alignment can be used still as DMs, as 5e kind of did away with the whole thing in the rule book. For many of us alignment was always a rich building block for making the color of the character's personality itself and lent a great tool for the role play part of the game, and I know for me personally, I'm not getting rid of its use any time soon.
I still like the idea of a device called [Tooltip Not Found] that can change alignment.
With the right amount of logic leaping, one can be any alignment regardless what one does. Even the DM cannot always know the player character's intentions. I know of a DM who essentially replaced the alignment system with a reputation system. (EDIT: Not intending to discuss replacing the alignment system as there's another thread all about that. Just an example when the alignment system meant zip-all.)
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
its important to my campaigns on a cosmological level, with devils being the seence of lawful evil, demons chaotic evil etc.
Put me in the camp of Alignment being as important or as unimportant as you and your group want it to be. Nothing wrong with using it, nothing wrong with not using it.
"Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
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RoughCoronet's Greater Wills
Kind of depends on what the question is about. It lacks a lot of mechanical significance, in that there are very game mechanics that actually care what your alignment is (you could completely leave it off your character sheet and unless you ran into something like the Book of Vile Darkness you'll probably never notice; likewise newer monsters don't have it on their stat blocks but that's hardly going to prevent PCs from realizing a Bodytaker Plant is a problem that needs to dealt with), but the cosmology of the Great Wheel is still there, and LE vs CE is as useful a description as any to distinguish between the bureaucratic evil of the Nine Hells and the rampaging evils of the Abyss.
Lack of alignment does not mean everyone is chaotic stupid. Strong adherence to alignment-based behavior is, in fact, the thing that really leads to people being chaotic stupid because "that's how my alignment says to act."
The thing is, the real world isn't nearly so simple that things can easily be broken down into a simple 3X3 alignment chart. Robin Hood (who was not actually a real person) was fighting against the lawful government. By your own statement that would make him a terrorist and consequently chaotic evil rather than chaotic neutral. Your statement here is conflating alignment with personality- you don't need a hard-coded alignment dictating your actions to have a personality. And the idea that changing your alignment has specific penalties is just silly. If someone slides from chaotic good to neutral good, why do there need to be consequences? How would most people even notice and if they did notice, why would they care?
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.
So, no-one should be allowed to play a chaotic neutral character? I can live with that. Anyway, you don't need alignment to prevent that, you just need characters with actual personalities.
Alignment is becoming more important in my campaign. If a player doesn't specify an alignment, I treat him as neutral, but I'll adjust over time based on his behavior. I'm more concerned with law vs. chaos than good vs. evil (both because it ties in with the metaphysics of my setting and I personally find that axis more interesting and "workable"). Law/chaos is important to most of the faiths of my world, so how the PCs rate in that will have an impact on how society views them.
I think alignment is great but it's up to the DM to decide how to use it.
The typical interpretation of chaotic neutral winds up being 'acting willy-nilly'.
So if you have a personality, alignment is unnecessary, since you just admitted that a personality covers everything alignment does and more.
Even when we were playing AD&D I didn't think alignment should ever be a consideration except for Clerics and Paladins. For everyone else it shouldn't be a "you must behave this way"
Now Basic D&D, which came before AD&D did not have anything other than Lawful, Chaotic and Neural as alignments. Good and Evil were just a matter of perspective.
A few questions, Shoak.
Why would you expect a player to know everything there is about their character before spending one single session playing that character?
You say "a player picks their alignment prior to starting the game and they're expected to stay within that alignment or they'll suffer punishments". What if the player discovers their character doesn't act the way they thought it would and in play they discover they like a different interpretation of the character better? Do they have to suffer the punitive Alignment Shift mechanic in your games even though they were never really of the alignment listed on their sheet at all?
What happens when your insistence that every single PC in your game sticks strictly and exclusively to the one specific box on the 3x3 grid or Pay The Penalty ends up netting you an entire partyful of Lawful Stupid/Chaotic Stupid because the players are so concerned with being True To Their Alignment that they forget to be characters?
How do your players feel when you, as a DM, step in and override their decisions about what their characters do, say, think or feel because they're outside their alignment and they're only allowed to take [X] number of outside-alignment actions and have [Y] number of outside-alignment thoughts per adventuring day?
The only - I repeat, THE ONLY - way alignment works for PCs is for the player to play their character as they wish and for the DM to keep track of the character's alignment without bothering to inform the player. If alignment ever matters, then it can come up. Until then? The idea "You said you were Lawful Good during Session Zero, that decision is going to override and overrule any other decision you ever make in the actual game, and there is one AND ONLY ONE 'correct' way for Lawful Good to behave in my game" is actively repugnant to a great many people and will always be.
That's how you get to the 'True Stupid" meme caricatures of alignment, and is a great way overall to sabotage your entire game.
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The alignment will manifest in actions. The rest of those things are not part of alignment. There is also no reason the PCs would want to pretend to be CE, because 'same alignment' does not mean 'friendly'.
Bob is okay with you telling him he can't take a course of action that he wants to, because it's against his alignment?
I would find myself un-DMed so fast it would leave a vapor trail if I tried something like that. Not that I'd want to -- as far as I'm concerned alignment shifts in response to player/PC choice. It doesn't constrain it.
Okay. So.
What's happening here is that a table which is generally uninterested in characters is using alignment as a handy way of boiling persona, ethos, history, drive, and motivation - all that soft, squishy 'Personality' junk - down to something mechanically enforceable and actionable that can easily be adjudicated and rolled for in a couple of minutes, to avoid in-character conversations or having to nail down specifics. Bob the paladin isn't a character so much as he is a 'toon' - a mindless skinsuit that Bill the player pilots around the game sphere. Bob's history, motivations, and persona aren't really important beyond 'Lawful Good'; all the nuance many other players crave and which drives them to reject alignment is seen as annoying thespian frippery getting in the way of throwing some dice. Characters at this table must designate an alignment because anything beyond their alignment is ignored in favor of navigating to the next combat more quickly.
Right. Fair enough. I would absolutely detest that game and be gone from that table so fast my wake would rattle the windows, but that's fine. Players at that table would equally detest and Rapidly Vacate games at my table where half of every session is in-character chatter and exploring character's motivations and growth is one of the primary reasons we play. It's another case of 'swordfights, not storytime' and a DM defending a tool for turning the soft, squishy emotional shit he ain't there for into a simple mechanical switch.
If that's what someone wants alignment for? A'ight. Just make sure that's super clear before you start a game, I imagine.
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