Aside from a few spells and items, alignment doesn't have a lot of rules or mechanics around it. It is more of a narrative tool, a shorthand for understanding a creature's outlook on the world. It is not a hard and fast category. Monsters can be any alignment you choose. Alignment can change without penalty. A chaotic evil creature might be given a bit of authority and suddenly see the value of law in the world. You need a narrative solution. If this is what you call "dungeon master hackery" you should not be afraid to use it.
Alignment doesn't decide how a creature acts, how a creature acts decides its alignment. If a good creature starts doing evil things, it is not good anymore. Likewise an evil creature can redeem itself.
Depends entirely on the creature, and for some creatures (fiends and celestials) it just can't happen. Devils would cease to be devils if they stopped being the embodiment of Lawful Evil, likewise demons are Chaotic Evil to their core, and Yugoloths are literally bound by an in-universe book which defines them as a neutral (evil) party.
Depends entirely on the creature, and for some creatures (fiends and celestials) it just can't happen. Devils would cease to be devils if they stopped being the embodiment of Lawful Evil, likewise demons are Chaotic Evil to their core, and Yugoloths are literally bound by an in-universe book which defines them as a neutral (evil) party.
Under normal circumstances, you are correct, but then again, the alignment on the monster block is just its normal alignment. An angel can be made to fall. The aforementioned fiends might have their alignments magically altered (possibly via contract). Whether or not that makes them, by definition, a different type of creature, I'm not sure.
Alignment is an essential part of the nature of celestials and fiends. A devil does not choose to be lawful evil, and it doesn’t tend toward lawful evil, but rather it is lawful evil in its essence. If it somehow ceased to be lawful evil, it would cease to be a devil.
Alignment is an essential part of the nature of celestials and fiends. A devil does not choose to be lawful evil, and it doesn’t tend toward lawful evil, but rather it is lawful evil in its essence. If it somehow ceased to be lawful evil, it would cease to be a devil.
Ok. That's fair. I still maintain that they can be magically influenced to change their alignment (such as a magic contract or a spell using the creature's true name), it is just more difficult and a much bigger deal for those creature types.
Zariel, the current ruler of the First Layer of Hell, used to be an angel that fell by prolonged exposure to the energies of the Nine Hells. 5th edition's Grazz't is said to be a former devil that shifted to the Abyss. These are both examples of extraplanar alignment shifts, and do note that Zariel is now a devil and Grazz't is a demon; they lost their previous types. So, you cannot have a LE angel, but you can have an angel that falls and because a LE devil.
So, you cannot have a LE angel, but you can have an angel that falls and because a LE devil.
There is an official Lawful Evil angel though. Possible spoilers for Curse of Strahd:
The abbot is a deva that was corrupted by the people and places around him. He now performs evil and depraved acts while thinking himself righteous and noble.
While not an angel, the Pegasus is a celestial that is chaotic good. And the Empyrean is unaligned.
There are also Lawful Evil, Lawful Neutral, and Chaotic Good angels in Ravnica.
Writers will always break their own rules for the sake of story. I know some game developers simply tell their writers to ignore everything that previous writers and rules established and to just go hog wild with ideas. Can be great for creativity, and breaking rules can be great for messing with player assumptions here, but is terrible for consistency. Other times, some writers just forget the rules, and forge ahead with whatever makes the best sense for the story, and isn't caught for various reasons. Or maybe there's a loophole they're exploring (in the midst of falling, or the Dread Powers intervening).
The Curse of Strahd is technically breaking the official rules on how celestials work (see spoiler for spoil-filled details). In general, pushing the boundaries of rules can be a good thing, since rules should never get in the way of a good story. That said, if you break the rules too often or too flagrantly, you end up creating dissonance in your readers (well, players in the case of TTRPGs, but same applies).
This is kind of a loophole-based situation that highlights the fallacies of the Alignment system; the poor Abbot is insane and outright doesn't understand the difference between good and evil anymore. He's following what he believes to be the Morninglord's will, and thinks he's saving the world and redeeming people. Any threats are painted in the light of divine judgement. His Bonds and Ideals are actually very much Good-aligned aspects.
The entire thing is a situation designed to have the Abbot still be very much a D&D angel in outlook, while justifying him being an antagonist here. Basically, what is happening here is "we need an angel villain, so lets just redefine Good and Evil." Alignment really depends on objective good/evil, but that's not possible with someone who's legally insane. This isn't a selfish character that's manipulating the rules for their own benefit, but someone who's mentally broken and doesn't realize they're doing bad things.
So, we have a character who, by their own internal view, is acting Lawful Good. There's not a single doubt in the mind of the Abbot that he's trying to save the people here. From the outside perspective, the Abbot is doing some nasty things, clearly a danger. Which triggers a fall from Celestial to Fiend? Even in reality, we don't hold people like the Abbot responsible or guilty for their actions (though we still lock them up as dangers to the people). These aren't bad people, just insanely dangerous. And that moral grey area is where our "evil angel" is justified. He's called LE, so technically its breaking the rules, but when you get into the details, things aren't so clear cut.
Now, if you had some way to restore the angel's faculties (say, a successful Divine Intervention roll), that could very well change everything. Would the angel fall all the way into fiend-dom? Repent? Be recalled out of the area? The entire situation is based on insanity. Restore that, and...
In the case of Ravnica... do keep in mind that Ravnica is a Magic the Gathering setting and follows different conventions than the default D&D ones. Alignments are based on five colors, where White includes fascism and oppression alongside fortitude, elegance, and purity. Angels can be both White aligned and Evil aligned.
In the case of Empyreans? They're the children of Upper Plane gods, which run the gamut from LG to CG (and possibly touches of LN/CN as well, depending on the god and Upper Plane in question). So, even the default Empyreans have a variety of alignments they represent, just like humans, and thus the Unaligned tag. Heracles, the demi-god inspiration behind Empyreans, would be Chaotic Good, whereas a demi-god of Torm or Tyr would be Lawful Good. The stat block is showing the general trend of the empyreans and the majority are celestial beings tied to the Upper Planes, and thus Good.
Maybe try to use a wish spell. However, this comes with the DM's latitude in whether this succeeds or not. Also, there is a 33 percent chance that you are unable to cast wish ever again if you use the wish spell for purposes that are beyond the scope of mentioned possibilities in the spell's description.
Otherwise you could try to persuade the creature if it is not inherently CE to change its outlook to LE. I would give you a high DC. Maybe get a Diviner wizard with a nat20 portent dice roll (that day) to give you that nat20 edge for your roll effectively making you succeed. If the DC is really high (as it should be), also make sure to have a high Charisma stat with the character that is doing the persuading and also be sure to have proficiency and or skill boosting effects to the persuasion skill for that character.
In the real world no one defines themselves as evil. If you decide a group of people are the enemy, then it is right to oppress / kill them.
I will point out there is a difference between feeling someone is your enemy and considering someone evil. It's perfectly possible to have enemies you don't consider evil.
Looking to force a monster from CE to LE. Has to happen in game, so no dungeon master hackery. Maybe an artifact or spell. Give me some ideas please.
This is changing the foundational emotional and psychological structure of the creature. That is not trivial at all. Mundane methods would probably involve months of conditioning and brainwashing, and would certainly cross ethical lines for a lot of creatures.
Magical methods would need to be very powerful. 8th or highter spells, for certain.
If you are wanting the creature to act as an alignment different from its current one, a powerful spell like geas could do it. If you are wanting it to actually change to LE, one way would be for the creature to be banished to the 9 Hells for a time...the optional rules in the DMG can cause a creatures alignment to change to LE if they spend enough time there (the mechanic is long rest + failed DC 10 Wis save + 1d4 additional days in the plane for it to become permanent)
Leaving out the evil part since it's a constant in this scenario - what is the in-game goal you're wanting to achieve with a switch from Chaotic to Lawful? What's the actual change in behavior you want to create? The alignment is just an after-the-fact descriptor, so it doesn't really tell us anything.
By which I mean - demon lords are "chaotic evil", but they're also intelligent enough that they could easily *act* in a lawful fashion if doing so would help achieve their otherwise chaotic and inscrutable goals.
Take kobolds, goblins, and gnolls. All low level, but running from lawful (kobolds) to chaotic (gnolls). The alignment is a descriptor of behaviors: Kobolds know they're weak, and quickly suck up to more powerful entities like dragons. They're perfect toadies, so they're lawful - they know their place in a hierarchy and act that way. Goblins follow orders if it suits them, but they're just as likely to say "sod off, yobbo!" if they don't like the orders. So, they're neutral. Gnolls are impulsive pack creatures, they don't naturally act as part of any sort of a hierarchy, so they're chaotic.
"Changing alignment from chaotic to lawful" would just be a way to describe what happens if, for instance, gnolls were either magically compelled or trained to act as part of a hierarchy. (Like training them to fight like a Roman Legion rather than a pack.) But the alignment is just the description of that.
Alignment is an essential part of the nature of celestials and fiends. A devil does not choose to be lawful evil, and it doesn’t tend toward lawful evil, but rather it is lawful evil in its essence. If it somehow ceased to be lawful evil, it would cease to be a devil.
It would cease to be a DEVIL. That's the important thing. They're still a fiend presumably, but they are either stripped of the devil subtype or are not considered devils by they're species. is it species? Race? Kin?
Also, if you let alignment dictate the way an NPC behaves, rather than alignment resulting from actual in-game behavior, I feel like you are really limiting the depth the NPC can have within the story.
If you are wanting it to actually change to LE, one way would be for the creature to be banished to the 9 Hells for a time...the optional rules in the DMG can cause a creatures alignment to change to LE if they spend enough time there (the mechanic is long rest + failed DC 10 Wis save + 1d4 additional days in the plane for it to become permanent)
The plane of Bytopia also has an optional rule where after a long rest, a creature thats isn't LG or NG must make a Dc 10 wisdom save or have it's alignment changed to whichever is closer.
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No, warlocks do not need more spell slots, put them back how they were. if you want more spell slots, play a sorcerer
Don't make every stat block from a class (find steed, pact familiar), custom, wotc. Just give us a choice between 4-6 creatures and give them a buff.
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Aside from certain cursed items and dimensions that by their nature cause alignment changes, any way to do so without breaking the rulez?
Looking to force a monster from CE to LE. Has to happen in game, so no dungeon master hackery. Maybe an artifact or spell. Give me some ideas please.
Aside from a few spells and items, alignment doesn't have a lot of rules or mechanics around it. It is more of a narrative tool, a shorthand for understanding a creature's outlook on the world. It is not a hard and fast category. Monsters can be any alignment you choose. Alignment can change without penalty. A chaotic evil creature might be given a bit of authority and suddenly see the value of law in the world. You need a narrative solution. If this is what you call "dungeon master hackery" you should not be afraid to use it.
Alignment doesn't decide how a creature acts, how a creature acts decides its alignment. If a good creature starts doing evil things, it is not good anymore. Likewise an evil creature can redeem itself.
Depends entirely on the creature, and for some creatures (fiends and celestials) it just can't happen. Devils would cease to be devils if they stopped being the embodiment of Lawful Evil, likewise demons are Chaotic Evil to their core, and Yugoloths are literally bound by an in-universe book which defines them as a neutral (evil) party.
I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.
Under normal circumstances, you are correct, but then again, the alignment on the monster block is just its normal alignment. An angel can be made to fall. The aforementioned fiends might have their alignments magically altered (possibly via contract). Whether or not that makes them, by definition, a different type of creature, I'm not sure.
To quote from the rules:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/compendium/rules/basic-rules/personality-and-background#Alignment
I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.
Ok. That's fair. I still maintain that they can be magically influenced to change their alignment (such as a magic contract or a spell using the creature's true name), it is just more difficult and a much bigger deal for those creature types.
Zariel, the current ruler of the First Layer of Hell, used to be an angel that fell by prolonged exposure to the energies of the Nine Hells. 5th edition's Grazz't is said to be a former devil that shifted to the Abyss. These are both examples of extraplanar alignment shifts, and do note that Zariel is now a devil and Grazz't is a demon; they lost their previous types. So, you cannot have a LE angel, but you can have an angel that falls and because a LE devil.
This was all very good. Also I enjoyed the devil lore. Thank you all for the assistance.
There is an official Lawful Evil angel though. Possible spoilers for Curse of Strahd:
The abbot is a deva that was corrupted by the people and places around him. He now performs evil and depraved acts while thinking himself righteous and noble.
While not an angel, the Pegasus is a celestial that is chaotic good. And the Empyrean is unaligned.
There are also Lawful Evil, Lawful Neutral, and Chaotic Good angels in Ravnica.
Writers will always break their own rules for the sake of story. I know some game developers simply tell their writers to ignore everything that previous writers and rules established and to just go hog wild with ideas. Can be great for creativity, and breaking rules can be great for messing with player assumptions here, but is terrible for consistency. Other times, some writers just forget the rules, and forge ahead with whatever makes the best sense for the story, and isn't caught for various reasons. Or maybe there's a loophole they're exploring (in the midst of falling, or the Dread Powers intervening).
The Curse of Strahd is technically breaking the official rules on how celestials work (see spoiler for spoil-filled details). In general, pushing the boundaries of rules can be a good thing, since rules should never get in the way of a good story. That said, if you break the rules too often or too flagrantly, you end up creating dissonance in your readers (well, players in the case of TTRPGs, but same applies).
This is kind of a loophole-based situation that highlights the fallacies of the Alignment system; the poor Abbot is insane and outright doesn't understand the difference between good and evil anymore. He's following what he believes to be the Morninglord's will, and thinks he's saving the world and redeeming people. Any threats are painted in the light of divine judgement. His Bonds and Ideals are actually very much Good-aligned aspects.
The entire thing is a situation designed to have the Abbot still be very much a D&D angel in outlook, while justifying him being an antagonist here. Basically, what is happening here is "we need an angel villain, so lets just redefine Good and Evil." Alignment really depends on objective good/evil, but that's not possible with someone who's legally insane. This isn't a selfish character that's manipulating the rules for their own benefit, but someone who's mentally broken and doesn't realize they're doing bad things.
So, we have a character who, by their own internal view, is acting Lawful Good. There's not a single doubt in the mind of the Abbot that he's trying to save the people here. From the outside perspective, the Abbot is doing some nasty things, clearly a danger. Which triggers a fall from Celestial to Fiend? Even in reality, we don't hold people like the Abbot responsible or guilty for their actions (though we still lock them up as dangers to the people). These aren't bad people, just insanely dangerous. And that moral grey area is where our "evil angel" is justified. He's called LE, so technically its breaking the rules, but when you get into the details, things aren't so clear cut.
Now, if you had some way to restore the angel's faculties (say, a successful Divine Intervention roll), that could very well change everything. Would the angel fall all the way into fiend-dom? Repent? Be recalled out of the area? The entire situation is based on insanity. Restore that, and...
In the case of Ravnica... do keep in mind that Ravnica is a Magic the Gathering setting and follows different conventions than the default D&D ones. Alignments are based on five colors, where White includes fascism and oppression alongside fortitude, elegance, and purity. Angels can be both White aligned and Evil aligned.
In the case of Empyreans? They're the children of Upper Plane gods, which run the gamut from LG to CG (and possibly touches of LN/CN as well, depending on the god and Upper Plane in question). So, even the default Empyreans have a variety of alignments they represent, just like humans, and thus the Unaligned tag. Heracles, the demi-god inspiration behind Empyreans, would be Chaotic Good, whereas a demi-god of Torm or Tyr would be Lawful Good. The stat block is showing the general trend of the empyreans and the majority are celestial beings tied to the Upper Planes, and thus Good.
In the real world no one defines themselves as evil. If you decide a group of people are the enemy, then it is right to oppress / kill them.
Maybe try to use a wish spell. However, this comes with the DM's latitude in whether this succeeds or not. Also, there is a 33 percent chance that you are unable to cast wish ever again if you use the wish spell for purposes that are beyond the scope of mentioned possibilities in the spell's description.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/wish
Otherwise you could try to persuade the creature if it is not inherently CE to change its outlook to LE. I would give you a high DC. Maybe get a Diviner wizard with a nat20 portent dice roll (that day) to give you that nat20 edge for your roll effectively making you succeed. If the DC is really high (as it should be), also make sure to have a high Charisma stat with the character that is doing the persuading and also be sure to have proficiency and or skill boosting effects to the persuasion skill for that character.
I will point out there is a difference between feeling someone is your enemy and considering someone evil. It's perfectly possible to have enemies you don't consider evil.
This is changing the foundational emotional and psychological structure of the creature. That is not trivial at all. Mundane methods would probably involve months of conditioning and brainwashing, and would certainly cross ethical lines for a lot of creatures.
Magical methods would need to be very powerful. 8th or highter spells, for certain.
If you are wanting the creature to act as an alignment different from its current one, a powerful spell like geas could do it. If you are wanting it to actually change to LE, one way would be for the creature to be banished to the 9 Hells for a time...the optional rules in the DMG can cause a creatures alignment to change to LE if they spend enough time there (the mechanic is long rest + failed DC 10 Wis save + 1d4 additional days in the plane for it to become permanent)
Leaving out the evil part since it's a constant in this scenario - what is the in-game goal you're wanting to achieve with a switch from Chaotic to Lawful? What's the actual change in behavior you want to create? The alignment is just an after-the-fact descriptor, so it doesn't really tell us anything.
By which I mean - demon lords are "chaotic evil", but they're also intelligent enough that they could easily *act* in a lawful fashion if doing so would help achieve their otherwise chaotic and inscrutable goals.
Take kobolds, goblins, and gnolls. All low level, but running from lawful (kobolds) to chaotic (gnolls). The alignment is a descriptor of behaviors:
Kobolds know they're weak, and quickly suck up to more powerful entities like dragons. They're perfect toadies, so they're lawful - they know their place in a hierarchy and act that way.
Goblins follow orders if it suits them, but they're just as likely to say "sod off, yobbo!" if they don't like the orders. So, they're neutral.
Gnolls are impulsive pack creatures, they don't naturally act as part of any sort of a hierarchy, so they're chaotic.
"Changing alignment from chaotic to lawful" would just be a way to describe what happens if, for instance, gnolls were either magically compelled or trained to act as part of a hierarchy. (Like training them to fight like a Roman Legion rather than a pack.) But the alignment is just the description of that.
It would cease to be a DEVIL. That's the important thing. They're still a fiend presumably, but they are either stripped of the devil subtype or are not considered devils by they're species. is it species? Race? Kin?
Blast from the past!
Also, if you let alignment dictate the way an NPC behaves, rather than alignment resulting from actual in-game behavior, I feel like you are really limiting the depth the NPC can have within the story.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
The plane of Bytopia also has an optional rule where after a long rest, a creature thats isn't LG or NG must make a Dc 10 wisdom save or have it's alignment changed to whichever is closer.
No, warlocks do not need more spell slots, put them back how they were. if you want more spell slots, play a sorcerer
Don't make every stat block from a class (find steed, pact familiar), custom, wotc. Just give us a choice between 4-6 creatures and give them a buff.