Because if you're not actively working toward their goals, they have no reason to give you power.
Hence why effectively removing Alignment makes no sense whatsoever to a setting where the gods are absolutely 100% real and Good/Evil are definable forces.
Okay, with everyone saying "You can't be a cleric to a god that doesn't have the same alignment as you [even though that restriction has never existed in D&D 5e]", what about all of these scenarios?
The gods are lazy, don't have any real agendas, and don't really care who worships them. Really, gods are powerful. In D&D, they only need people worshipping them in order to exist, so why would all of them care about who is worshipping them as long as there are people worshipping them in order to maintain their existence? Is it really too much to contemplate a chaotic evil necromancer that worships Vecna as the god of undeath, but doesn't really want to do anything evil to help him kill the rest of the gods or whatever his goals are, and that Vecna would grant them spells in return for the power they're giving him by worshipping him? It's already a "quid pro quo" (power from worship in exchange for power from cleric-ness), so why would all gods always require that everyone that worships them must share their same alignment?
Eberron or Ravnica, where the gods may or may not actually exist, and the forces of good and evil are far less black and white than in the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk. The gods in Eberron are associated with different alignments, but they don't actually choose who worships them, they just grant clerical powers to anyone with enough faith to become a cleric to them. Ravnica has a similar situation, where there are "old gods" that are not clearly defined, and clerics can get powers from worshipping them, but there's not actually any guidance as to whether or not they're real and if they are picky-choosy about who worships them if they are real. In these worlds, it's more hinted at that "faith grants the power, not the gods", which actually makes sense for how gods that have more worshippers are more powerful in D&D worlds. If Faith/Worship = Divine Power, who is to say that the gods actually have any control over who gets power from worshipping them? It might just be a biproduct from the act of worshipping in the first place, not even up to the gods to choose.
The god is greedy, and will just grant clerical powers to anyone that worships them, no matter what their alignment/agenda is. Sure, it doesn't really make sense for the Raven Queen to grant powers to someone that wants to allow for cheating death to be more easy, but there may be other gods that don't really care about that. Why do you care who is giving you food and water as long as it tastes good, sustains you, and they're not actively trying to murder you? It doesn't matter if their view of the world is different, you pay the person for their service and eat/drink whatever they brought you.
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
It might work differently in Eberron or Ravnica, but in Forgotten Realms Gods do grant power, not the faith itself. Divine Magic is just regular magic channel through a divine being (sort of like warlock magic works but on a bigger and more divine scale).
And as far as faith is concerned, yeah I don't think it's required. If a God wants to grant power to random guy #5, the God can just do regardless - at least I think so, maybe Ao as put some rules in regards to that. But as I see it, divine power are granted as a reward for faith, why would Gods give out power to anyone of just pays lip service to them?
Yeah the Gods do feed on the faith of their worshippers, but it's not that one sided, if only Gods received something from that relationship, most faith would have died centuries ago. And you have to remember that the bulk of a faith isn't made of cleric and paladin, and that most worshipper of a God don't get any divine power from them.
And you have to remember that the bulk of a faith isn't made of cleric and paladin, and that most worshipper of a God don't get any divine power from them.
Except for the fact the Cleric is literally doing the god's bidding on the Prime Material. Not sure where people ever got the idea of Paladin's powers being divinely granted.
Divine Magic, by definition, comes from the Gods. Paladin wield Divine Magic, where do you think it comes from?
I know in 5E they don't mention the Gods with speaking about Paladin, only their Oath, but every Paladin Order you can find in lore are bound to a God (or several with the same goal). I think the major difference between a Cleric and Paladin is that the latter are less bound to a specific and more to an ideal exemplified by one or several Gods.
Clerics specifically are singular members of clergy, which is a general term for priests, rabbis, imams, shamans, or any other religion-specific term for the people who teach other people about their faith and otherwise act as leaders, guides, and authorities of said collective faith. In the worlds of D&D those clerics, at least those with levels in the actual the cleric class, have literal and explicitly god given supernatural powers. In these same worlds, good and evil are very real and can be clearly defined and identified. Yes there is still a lot of moral gray area and situations, but to quote one of my favorite streamer DMs, there are also cases such as "That demon is made of evil. Substantively." If a god is classified as good or evil, then a priest who follows close enough to their ideals for said god to deem them worthy of granting them part of their power, then their actions, beliefs, motivations, and/or way of thinking would definitely put them in the same moral category.
Settings like Eberron and Ravnica where gods either don't exist for certain, are dead, or are absent for other reasons flat out do not apply to this conversation as it is explicitly about clearly defined deities who do canonically exist. The respective sourcebooks for those settings explain how divine magic works/originates there, usually by some variety of zeitgeist or collective will paradigm that influences reality itself or somesuch.
You might believably suggest that a trickster/chaos god could randomly decide to bestow their gifts upon some random schmuck, but they would also be just as likely to revoke those powers unexpectedly for the same reasons.
Any suggestion that gods with specific alignments would not care about doling out divine power to people who have nothing to do with their ideals other than perhaps donning the appropriate vestments and waving the right holy symbol is just bad writing and a lame excuse for lazy worldbuilding.
This isn't about alignment, really. Like by doing what the god wants to receive their power, you will be aligning yourself with them. And so you will end up with a similar overall alignment, but this isn't about whether your sheet says lawful good or neutral evil. This is about the player character carrying out actions in game that align them with the will of the god they claim to serve and from whom they derive their power. If you do not actively serve them, they can stop giving you power. So at the end of the day, you will be aligned with the god or you will not be getting power.
Again, maybe you're neutral evil while the god is chaotic evil, but it really isn't material. You can ignore the written alignment. A person doing the work of a god will be identifiable by that work.
Yes, I feel this. Thank you for putting it into such specific words and for your examples.
I don't think I understand how the reply function works. After I've posted I'm not sure how to see to whom I'm replying...that should be in the top block.
This isn't about alignment, really. Like by doing what the god wants to receive their power, you will be aligning yourself with them. And so you will end up with a similar overall alignment, but this isn't about whether your sheet says lawful good or neutral evil. This is about the player character carrying out actions in game that align them with the will of the god they claim to serve and from whom they derive their power. If you do not actively serve them, they can stop giving you power. So at the end of the day, you will be aligned with the god or you will not be getting power.
That's why I understand the PC's alignment a reflective of your choice as the character rather than a choice at creation. In my opinion, even if you start Lawful Good, if you constantly act chaotically you'll end up Chaotic Good eventually.
I don't think I understand how the reply function works. After I've posted I'm not sure how to see to whom I'm replying...that should be in the top block.
Same. That's why I use Quote, at least it's clear what and who your answering to.
Okay, with everyone saying "You can't be a cleric to a god that doesn't have the same alignment as you [even though that restriction has never existed in D&D 5e]", what about all of these scenarios?
The gods are lazy, don't have any real agendas, and don't really care who worships them. Really, gods are powerful. In D&D, they only need people worshipping them in order to exist, so why would all of them care about who is worshipping them as long as there are people worshipping them in order to maintain their existence? Is it really too much to contemplate a chaotic evil necromancer that worships Vecna as the god of undeath, but doesn't really want to do anything evil to help him kill the rest of the gods or whatever his goals are, and that Vecna would grant them spells in return for the power they're giving him by worshipping him? It's already a "quid pro quo" (power from worship in exchange for power from cleric-ness), so why would all gods always require that everyone that worships them must share their same alignment?
Eberron or Ravnica, where the gods may or may not actually exist, and the forces of good and evil are far less black and white than in the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk. The gods in Eberron are associated with different alignments, but they don't actually choose who worships them, they just grant clerical powers to anyone with enough faith to become a cleric to them. Ravnica has a similar situation, where there are "old gods" that are not clearly defined, and clerics can get powers from worshipping them, but there's not actually any guidance as to whether or not they're real and if they are picky-choosy about who worships them if they are real. In these worlds, it's more hinted at that "faith grants the power, not the gods", which actually makes sense for how gods that have more worshippers are more powerful in D&D worlds. If Faith/Worship = Divine Power, who is to say that the gods actually have any control over who gets power from worshipping them? It might just be a biproduct from the act of worshipping in the first place, not even up to the gods to choose.
The god is greedy, and will just grant clerical powers to anyone that worships them, no matter what their alignment/agenda is. Sure, it doesn't really make sense for the Raven Queen to grant powers to someone that wants to allow for cheating death to be more easy, but there may be other gods that don't really care about that. Why do you care who is giving you food and water as long as it tastes good, sustains you, and they're not actively trying to murder you? It doesn't matter if their view of the world is different, you pay the person for their service and eat/drink whatever they brought you.
In regard to 1.
I don't really know which gods you're referring to. The gods I'm aware of from different editions (I generally use the Dawn War pantheon) are very active and have aeon spanning goals. They are not lazy. Orcus is actively trying to unseat the Raven Queen and actively fights Vecna. Asmodeus actively takes souls for his everwar against the far realm. And they command their followers to spread the word of their great deeds and designs to garner more power to do these things.
2. I don't know those gods but it sounds like they aren't granting the power directly like in a more common d&d pantheon.
3. Why do you care who gives you the power? Well this is exactly why you began worshipping: they have a way of thinking or doing things that jives with you. You want to support them and when you do they give back. That wasn't a guarantee, but it strengthens your faith. This is the heart of worship.
If a player says their character is Chaotic Good but they follow and worship a Chaotic Evil deity, then the player either doesn't understand the concept of "follow and worship" to begin with or they are just an idiot. Assuming they actually play the character in line with the deity's dogma/ideals, they should get powers/spells from them and the DM makes their alignment CE for anything that is relevant to mechanics regardless of what the player and their character claim (including insight checks by NPCs when appropriate along with their resulting opinions and actions concerning the PC).
If they say they're good but worship an evil deity and remain strictly good by their actions, which would mean they don't act in accordance with the deity's ideals and practices to some significant degree, then the DM decides when that behavior has gone on for long enough that the deity pulls the plug on the PC's powers. A particularly appropriate time to do so would be when the PC is fighting someone or something that actually does embody and uphold the deity's philosophy. If the PC survives the experience, they might conclude that they should find a god or goddess to worship that they would be a better fit for as a spokesperson, champion, and conduit for their divine will on the Material Plane.
Edit: For further elaboration on being aligned and acting in a way that is morally opposed to one's deity, such behavior is generally defined as "heresy" by most faiths and is typically frowned upon rather strongly by all practitioners of such religions. And by "generally" I mean that is the actual definition of heresy.
I feel like this might work better with warlocks? Where maybe the patron and warlock don't entirely see eye to eye, but the patron is still able to get some use out of the warlock and the warlock isn't SO opposed to the patron that they won't accept that power. Maybe they don't share ideals but have a common goal etc, or the warlock agrees to a pact for what it can do for their own goals and is willing to accept doing things for the patron that don't always align with their own desires.
For gods and clerics though where the idea is that you're WORSHIPPING the god, it would feel odd to me to have the cleric's ideals stray too far from the god's goals and ideals. Not to say it 100% could not ever work but it begs the question why are they serving THIS god in particular then, and why does that god choose to reward this worshipper whose ideas do not conform to their own?
Arguments like this are another reason I'm in favor of removing alignment from the game.
In this particular case I'm not sure that really removes the issue?
Your ideals and goals either line up with that of a god's or they don't. Removing the 3x3 alignment grid isn't going to make it less awkward if you have someone worshipping a god they fundamentally disagree with, or a god blessing a cleric that fundamentally disagrees with them. And if you can come up with a reason for this to happen without alignment, you can come up with a reason for it to happen with alignment.
Umberlee has always been worshipped by people who don't want to die in storms at sea...not that she cares either way.
Paid homage to by sailor so they don't drown in a shipwreck is a hell of a lot different than being a Cleric (who is granted divine power) but is of a diametrically opposite alignment. The fact is there ARE other Good/Neutral aligned gods of associated with the oceans/seas from other settings that could easily be Interlopers (gods can do that in D&D) and have followers outside their main worshipers. That's an easy fix that doesn't require upending a primary aspect of the game, no matter what people (wrongly) think of it.
Arguments like this are another reason I'm in favor of removing alignment from the game.
In this particular case I'm not sure that really removes the issue?
Your ideals and goals either line up with that of a god's or they don't. Removing the 3x3 alignment grid isn't going to make it less awkward if you have someone worshipping a god they fundamentally disagree with, or a god blessing a cleric that fundamentally disagrees with them. And if you can come up with a reason for this to happen without alignment, you can come up with a reason for it to happen with alignment.
No, but then you determine whether or not someone fits as a cleric of a particular deity based on how well that person's behavior serves to forward the deity's goals. Umberlee is a "respect the sea or else" goddess, you could fit someone who's "good" under that umbrella in a number of ways.
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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.
Arguments like this are another reason I'm in favor of removing alignment from the game.
In this particular case I'm not sure that really removes the issue?
Your ideals and goals either line up with that of a god's or they don't. Removing the 3x3 alignment grid isn't going to make it less awkward if you have someone worshipping a god they fundamentally disagree with, or a god blessing a cleric that fundamentally disagrees with them. And if you can come up with a reason for this to happen without alignment, you can come up with a reason for it to happen with alignment.
No, but then you determine whether or not someone fits as a cleric of a particular deity based on how well that person's behavior serves to forward the deity's goals. Umberlee is a "respect the sea or else" goddess, you could fit someone who's "good" under that umbrella in a number of ways.
There's a difference between worshipping Umberlee and giving prayer & offerings to sooth her anger and not get wreck when you go the sea. The second case isn't worship per se, at least not as most people understand it. We have to remember that most people in the Forgotten Realms are polytheistic, which means they don't just worship one God and that's it, they pray to whichever God in their Pantheon suits their current issue. Some might be more devoted to one, but praying to the Sea Goddess for safe travel doesn't mean you actively worship her (hope I'm making sense).
But even if we agree to call that worshipping Umberlee, there's another world of difference between worshipping a God and being a part of their clergy, and then yet another difference between that and being a cleric (in the D&D sense of the term).
So yes, in theory you could be a Good align character actively worshipping Umberlee, but that doesn't mean she'd want to give you powers. (that being said I don't now enough about Umberlee to say what she would or wouldn't do)
Arguments like this are another reason I'm in favor of removing alignment from the game.
I agree for removing alignment restrictions (in most cases) but I don't think alignment is bad per se. As long as people stop seeing alignment as "you're Chaotic Neutral so you have to act that way" and start seeing it a "you're mischievous and don't really to do the right things but aren't a psychopath either, you're Chaotic Neutral then" then it's fine.
Arguments like this are another reason I'm in favor of removing alignment from the game.
I agree for removing alignment restrictions (in most cases) but I don't think alignment is bad per se. As long as people stop seeing alignment as "you're Chaotic Neutral so you have to act that way" and start seeing it a "you're mischievous and don't really to do the right things but aren't a psychopath either, you're Chaotic Neutral then" then it's fine.
The first half of your statement describes players who use the existence of the chaotic neutral alignment to play their characters like sociopathic lunatics and claim they aren't evil, just "a free spirit." The second part is a good example of what the CN alignment is supposed to actually represent. There is no inherent "problem" with alignment, just idiots who use it as an oversimplified excuse for disruptive roleplaying. "It's what my character would do!" The character is an insane murder hobo who would be locked up for life in the psych ward of a maximum security prison in the real world, assuming they survived the violent confrontation with law enforcement that would happen about five minutes real time after the player makes that statement.
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Hence why effectively removing Alignment makes no sense whatsoever to a setting where the gods are absolutely 100% real and Good/Evil are definable forces.
Okay, with everyone saying "You can't be a cleric to a god that doesn't have the same alignment as you [even though that restriction has never existed in D&D 5e]", what about all of these scenarios?
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
It might work differently in Eberron or Ravnica, but in Forgotten Realms Gods do grant power, not the faith itself. Divine Magic is just regular magic channel through a divine being (sort of like warlock magic works but on a bigger and more divine scale).
And as far as faith is concerned, yeah I don't think it's required. If a God wants to grant power to random guy #5, the God can just do regardless - at least I think so, maybe Ao as put some rules in regards to that. But as I see it, divine power are granted as a reward for faith, why would Gods give out power to anyone of just pays lip service to them?
Yeah the Gods do feed on the faith of their worshippers, but it's not that one sided, if only Gods received something from that relationship, most faith would have died centuries ago. And you have to remember that the bulk of a faith isn't made of cleric and paladin, and that most worshipper of a God don't get any divine power from them.
Except for the fact the Cleric is literally doing the god's bidding on the Prime Material. Not sure where people ever got the idea of Paladin's powers being divinely granted.
Divine Magic, by definition, comes from the Gods. Paladin wield Divine Magic, where do you think it comes from?
I know in 5E they don't mention the Gods with speaking about Paladin, only their Oath, but every Paladin Order you can find in lore are bound to a God (or several with the same goal). I think the major difference between a Cleric and Paladin is that the latter are less bound to a specific and more to an ideal exemplified by one or several Gods.
Clerics specifically are singular members of clergy, which is a general term for priests, rabbis, imams, shamans, or any other religion-specific term for the people who teach other people about their faith and otherwise act as leaders, guides, and authorities of said collective faith. In the worlds of D&D those clerics, at least those with levels in the actual the cleric class, have literal and explicitly god given supernatural powers. In these same worlds, good and evil are very real and can be clearly defined and identified. Yes there is still a lot of moral gray area and situations, but to quote one of my favorite streamer DMs, there are also cases such as "That demon is made of evil. Substantively." If a god is classified as good or evil, then a priest who follows close enough to their ideals for said god to deem them worthy of granting them part of their power, then their actions, beliefs, motivations, and/or way of thinking would definitely put them in the same moral category.
Settings like Eberron and Ravnica where gods either don't exist for certain, are dead, or are absent for other reasons flat out do not apply to this conversation as it is explicitly about clearly defined deities who do canonically exist. The respective sourcebooks for those settings explain how divine magic works/originates there, usually by some variety of zeitgeist or collective will paradigm that influences reality itself or somesuch.
You might believably suggest that a trickster/chaos god could randomly decide to bestow their gifts upon some random schmuck, but they would also be just as likely to revoke those powers unexpectedly for the same reasons.
Any suggestion that gods with specific alignments would not care about doling out divine power to people who have nothing to do with their ideals other than perhaps donning the appropriate vestments and waving the right holy symbol is just bad writing and a lame excuse for lazy worldbuilding.
This isn't about alignment, really. Like by doing what the god wants to receive their power, you will be aligning yourself with them. And so you will end up with a similar overall alignment, but this isn't about whether your sheet says lawful good or neutral evil. This is about the player character carrying out actions in game that align them with the will of the god they claim to serve and from whom they derive their power. If you do not actively serve them, they can stop giving you power. So at the end of the day, you will be aligned with the god or you will not be getting power.
Again, maybe you're neutral evil while the god is chaotic evil, but it really isn't material. You can ignore the written alignment. A person doing the work of a god will be identifiable by that work.
Yes, I feel this. Thank you for putting it into such specific words and for your examples.
I don't think I understand how the reply function works. After I've posted I'm not sure how to see to whom I'm replying...that should be in the top block.
-Replying to Flushmaster
That's why I understand the PC's alignment a reflective of your choice as the character rather than a choice at creation. In my opinion, even if you start Lawful Good, if you constantly act chaotically you'll end up Chaotic Good eventually.
Same. That's why I use Quote, at least it's clear what and who your answering to.
In regard to 1.
I don't really know which gods you're referring to. The gods I'm aware of from different editions (I generally use the Dawn War pantheon) are very active and have aeon spanning goals. They are not lazy. Orcus is actively trying to unseat the Raven Queen and actively fights Vecna. Asmodeus actively takes souls for his everwar against the far realm. And they command their followers to spread the word of their great deeds and designs to garner more power to do these things.
2. I don't know those gods but it sounds like they aren't granting the power directly like in a more common d&d pantheon.
3. Why do you care who gives you the power? Well this is exactly why you began worshipping: they have a way of thinking or doing things that jives with you. You want to support them and when you do they give back. That wasn't a guarantee, but it strengthens your faith. This is the heart of worship.
If a player says their character is Chaotic Good but they follow and worship a Chaotic Evil deity, then the player either doesn't understand the concept of "follow and worship" to begin with or they are just an idiot. Assuming they actually play the character in line with the deity's dogma/ideals, they should get powers/spells from them and the DM makes their alignment CE for anything that is relevant to mechanics regardless of what the player and their character claim (including insight checks by NPCs when appropriate along with their resulting opinions and actions concerning the PC).
If they say they're good but worship an evil deity and remain strictly good by their actions, which would mean they don't act in accordance with the deity's ideals and practices to some significant degree, then the DM decides when that behavior has gone on for long enough that the deity pulls the plug on the PC's powers. A particularly appropriate time to do so would be when the PC is fighting someone or something that actually does embody and uphold the deity's philosophy. If the PC survives the experience, they might conclude that they should find a god or goddess to worship that they would be a better fit for as a spokesperson, champion, and conduit for their divine will on the Material Plane.
Edit: For further elaboration on being aligned and acting in a way that is morally opposed to one's deity, such behavior is generally defined as "heresy" by most faiths and is typically frowned upon rather strongly by all practitioners of such religions. And by "generally" I mean that is the actual definition of heresy.
I feel like this might work better with warlocks? Where maybe the patron and warlock don't entirely see eye to eye, but the patron is still able to get some use out of the warlock and the warlock isn't SO opposed to the patron that they won't accept that power. Maybe they don't share ideals but have a common goal etc, or the warlock agrees to a pact for what it can do for their own goals and is willing to accept doing things for the patron that don't always align with their own desires.
For gods and clerics though where the idea is that you're WORSHIPPING the god, it would feel odd to me to have the cleric's ideals stray too far from the god's goals and ideals. Not to say it 100% could not ever work but it begs the question why are they serving THIS god in particular then, and why does that god choose to reward this worshipper whose ideas do not conform to their own?
Arguments like this are another reason I'm in favor of removing alignment from the game.
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.
Umberlee has always been worshipped by people who don't want to die in storms at sea...not that she cares either way.
In this particular case I'm not sure that really removes the issue?
Your ideals and goals either line up with that of a god's or they don't. Removing the 3x3 alignment grid isn't going to make it less awkward if you have someone worshipping a god they fundamentally disagree with, or a god blessing a cleric that fundamentally disagrees with them. And if you can come up with a reason for this to happen without alignment, you can come up with a reason for it to happen with alignment.
Paid homage to by sailor so they don't drown in a shipwreck is a hell of a lot different than being a Cleric (who is granted divine power) but is of a diametrically opposite alignment. The fact is there ARE other Good/Neutral aligned gods of associated with the oceans/seas from other settings that could easily be Interlopers (gods can do that in D&D) and have followers outside their main worshipers. That's an easy fix that doesn't require upending a primary aspect of the game, no matter what people (wrongly) think of it.
No, but then you determine whether or not someone fits as a cleric of a particular deity based on how well that person's behavior serves to forward the deity's goals. Umberlee is a "respect the sea or else" goddess, you could fit someone who's "good" under that umbrella in a number of ways.
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.
There's a difference between worshipping Umberlee and giving prayer & offerings to sooth her anger and not get wreck when you go the sea. The second case isn't worship per se, at least not as most people understand it. We have to remember that most people in the Forgotten Realms are polytheistic, which means they don't just worship one God and that's it, they pray to whichever God in their Pantheon suits their current issue. Some might be more devoted to one, but praying to the Sea Goddess for safe travel doesn't mean you actively worship her (hope I'm making sense).
But even if we agree to call that worshipping Umberlee, there's another world of difference between worshipping a God and being a part of their clergy, and then yet another difference between that and being a cleric (in the D&D sense of the term).
So yes, in theory you could be a Good align character actively worshipping Umberlee, but that doesn't mean she'd want to give you powers. (that being said I don't now enough about Umberlee to say what she would or wouldn't do)
I agree for removing alignment restrictions (in most cases) but I don't think alignment is bad per se. As long as people stop seeing alignment as "you're Chaotic Neutral so you have to act that way" and start seeing it a "you're mischievous and don't really to do the right things but aren't a psychopath either, you're Chaotic Neutral then" then it's fine.
The first half of your statement describes players who use the existence of the chaotic neutral alignment to play their characters like sociopathic lunatics and claim they aren't evil, just "a free spirit." The second part is a good example of what the CN alignment is supposed to actually represent. There is no inherent "problem" with alignment, just idiots who use it as an oversimplified excuse for disruptive roleplaying. "It's what my character would do!" The character is an insane murder hobo who would be locked up for life in the psych ward of a maximum security prison in the real world, assuming they survived the violent confrontation with law enforcement that would happen about five minutes real time after the player makes that statement.