I’m thinking maybe they should. It’s very restrictive and forces your PCs into a black and white morality mold with no real shades of grey. Maybe replace it with like a Character Nature and Demeanor system like in White Wolf’s World of Darkness games.
I think in 5e it's already implemented in a way that allows you to ignore it completely if you wish. We generally do when it comes to PCs, although it can be helpful to characterize enemies or to frame conflicts, especially at epic levels where you may have deities representing moral absolutes warring against one another.
I’m thinking maybe they should. It’s very restrictive and forces your PCs into a black and white morality mold with no real shades of grey.
Is/does it? I don't see any mechanics or rules that force morality on PCs in 5E. Your alignment follows from your morality and actions, not the other way around.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I don’t find it restrictive, but it’s possible that I just retooled the whole thing in my head. I think if we admit that 90% of people in real life are True Neutral which, properly understood, means they ricochet from one point to another often over the course of a lifetime, all the shades of grey are still right there.
I think if we view society as a whole as basically Lawful Evil, with occasional phony ostentatious displays of piety to fake at being Lawful Good, the D&D alignment system actually makes a surprising amount of sense. Those of us who didn’t have a say in the construction of a Lawful Evil edifice, but who benefit from its existence, may not actually be evil ourselves, but we can’t ignore the facts of the situation and consider ourselves “good.” This doesn’t stop some of us from doing so anyway, of course. Some of us even pretend to be MORE good than our neighbors BECAUSE of our constant defense of a Lawful Evil institution.
Some of us try to use the ill-gotten advantages we receive through this situation to elevate our neighbors whom the system was designed to disenfranchise. But is that even possible? Can you use a system built to entrench evil to promote good? Well, whether you can or can’t, you can be sure that the first group of people I mentioned will use whatever decision you make to paint you as Chaotic Evil. The better to pretend that they’re the Lawful Good ones.
My point here is that there are no limits to the greytones you can achieve if you use D&Ds alignment system right. Our main obstacle in doing so is our adherence to thinking of alignments as a grid of nine equal squares. What it looks a lot more like is The Great Wheel. Everyone starts on a big central plain of pure grey and picks one of eight directions to walk in. Everyone knows there IS a north, but no one has a compass, so they kind of zigzag around looking for it.
It seems like a pretty optional part of the game already. I would agree that if you treat it like a discrete and unalterable trait then it's too limiting. I think you can use it in your game however you want, and you can start the game 45% good and 70% lawful and end up 65% good and 40% lawful. And you can decide for yourself what good and lawful mean. It's just some traits you might want to think about when building your character. Kind of like bonds and flaws. It is a suggestion for role playing, not a mechanical rule.
I don't use it, as I don't see a point. It's easy to drop out. I like the WoD Nature and Demeanor, but when they went to Virtue and Vice I think it was better. That works in D&D too, with Bonds/Flaws/Ideals. No need to even change the mechanics.
I like the Alignment System as it stands. It pretty much does what I've always thought it should. It gives players a "hook" to hang some of their roleplay around. Two characters, both of Good Alignment, could play quite differently if one is Lawful and the other Chaotic. They could both be Lawful Good and still play differently depending on their interpretation of what Law and Good mean. There is no current system that forces anything. No graph to track their choices and determine what their actual Alignment is.
I played a Druid once, back when they had to be True Neutral. When presented with a dying character I asked the DM, "will this character die without magical healing?" I was told "Yes". So I took out my ritual sickle, and prepared to finish them off. I figured ending their pain would be a kindness, while healing someone who should die would be an unnatural act. The other players did not see it that way. Particularly the one whose character was dying.
Can you play a Lawful Good Assassin? Sure. I don't see why not. You get your orders, you go do your job. You don't need to ask questions. Kill a cute little six year old girl, and her doting mother? Ok. Must need to be done or they wouldn't have ordered you to do it. Find out later that the person giving the orders just wanted to get rid of their wife and kid? You can keep right on as you have been, or swear a mighty oath to kill everyone responsible for allowing you to be mislead. For all of me, you can play a Paladin and do that.
I have a character I am eager to play someday. She's a Neutral Good Warlock whose Pact is with a Fiend. She doesn't know what her pact is with. The fiend isn't going to tell her. It just wants to watch her as it tries to get her to do evil things. It wants to corrupt her soul and claim it in the end. It wants to present her with some of those shades of gray that were mentioned and give her bad advice. Power corrupts. All the fiend needs to do is give her more and more power, then wait and see what she does with it.
I've yet to see two people who agreed entirely on how any given Alignment should be played. I can't see how the system could be restrictive, black and white, or require any type of morality.
I wouldn't mind if it vanished come 6e. Although 5e has few if any crunchy mechanics that hinge on alignment, it still creates a framing that narrows the range of moral behavior for novice players. I also don't really care much for the idea that a deities represent extremes of alignment, because there are clearly more than a few LG deities that interpret their doctrines differently. Primus (the modron power) (LN) is nothing like St. Cuthbert (LN).
I agree that interpretation can, and should, lead to a variety of perspectives with the current system, and I think that's intended. Unfortunately you still come across the occasional DM who seems to feel that it is intended to limit your actions,and enforces that perspective. Removing it might solve that problem, as it tends to come hand-in-hand with a by-the-book attitude. Replacing it with something that serves the same motivational purpose is better though.
I'm curious, what have been people's experiences with systems that integrate motivational/value-based mechanics? Exalted did this, where you had something similar to Ideals and Bonds, and social your mechanics made it harder or easier to be influenced by things depending on weather they did or didn't match your values. Some of the magic required or was improved by those traits too. Like defensive effects that worked better in defense of what you cared about, or stopped working if you violated your convictions. One particularly memorable game involved a primary antagonist who was functionally invulnerable while she was still in love with her husband. We spent four sessions sabotaging their relationship before the final showdown. I'm in favor of this sort of thing.
I mean it’s pretty optional already. I personally like using the alignment chart in regards to the machinations of the Outer Planes as I and several DM in my group enjoy using the politics of the Outer Planes and their inhabitants in our campaigns and world building.
Honestly, it’s removal wouldn’t stop those that like using alignments from using it anyways so it really isn’t a big deal to me one way or the other.
As a DM I find alignments useful for quickly getting a sense of an NPC or a monster's attitude. For instance, the fact that a Displacer Beast has lawful evil alignment as opposed to being unaligned immediately tells me a lot about it. The good/evil axis also relates strongly to altruism vs selfishness, which is very useful to keep in mind when players attempt to persuade, negotiate or intimidate.
It's not a perfect system by any means but no system that tries to lump complex behaviors into a small number of discrete buckets ever is.
I consider Alignment to be a valuable jumping-off point for character creation. It helps to have the rough sketch of a perspective character's worldview that Alignment represents while fleshing out the rest of the character around those bones, even if the Alignment changes or becomes nuanced to the point of no longer fitting perfectly back in that original box. For that reason, and the reason that players can choose to ditch Alignment with no negative repercussions, I think it's worth keeping Alignment in the game.
Been meaning to circle back to the thread to drop the below video. I thought it was a cool coincidence that this thread got made pretty much around the same time LegalKimchee dropped his though on alignment.
First my two cents. I wouldn't toss out alignment entirely. It's important to understanding the "traditional cosmology" so unless you're home brewing your entire planar system, alignment helps you orient to how the planes work. Also, as mentioned alignment isn't really all that restrictive mechanically. I'd go further and say it's probably not good for productive and fun play if alignment is simply used as a prescriptive enforcement tool. Rather it's a broad foundational stroke to describe a characters mindset when it comes to morality. This can be ideals they aspire to but do not meet. So yes, alignment as a shackle system = I'd say is not fun play. Alignment as a source of inspiration for character development = I say that's how it should be done.
Anyway, I'll drop the below video. LegalKimchee is one of my favorite YouTube D&D commenters. His vids tend to be more about the social and creative aspects of play. Anyway, here's some more food for thought on alignment. If you're not super versed in moral philosophy and ethics some of this may go over your head, but I think most folks can take something away from it, especially his use of Tiamat and Bahamut as reference points (he's not the first to use them this way, but it helps his point along):
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
It really doesn't restrict your characters at all. Like scatterbraind said, it made in a way that it can be ignored if you want to. I have used it before, but mostly as just a guideline for my DM for what he is to expect from my character in the game.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
I’m thinking maybe they should. It’s very restrictive and forces your PCs into a black and white morality mold with no real shades of grey.
We could say the same about any labels.
Do you think writing 'elf" on your character sheet is restictive and forces you to act the same as every other elf in the world, with no shades of grey? Hopefully not. There are general ways in which all elfs act alike but your elf can be different to my elf and both can be different to another player's elf.
Treat alignment the same. If you and I both write "Lawful Evil" on our character sheets then there will be general ways our characters act alike (for example, both can probably be trusted to keep promises and honour contracts) but they can have quite different characters and personalities.
I’m thinking maybe they should. It’s very restrictive and forces your PCs into a black and white morality mold with no real shades of grey.
We could say the same about any labels.
Do you think writing 'elf" on your character sheet is restictive and forces you to act the same as every other elf in the world, with no shades of grey? Hopefully not. There are general ways in which all elfs act alike but your elf can be different to my elf and both can be different to another player's elf.
Treat alignment the same. If you and I both write "Lawful Evil" on our character sheets then there will be general ways our characters act alike (for example, both can probably be trusted to keep promises and honour contracts) but they can have quite different characters and personalities.
. . . um, there are a ton of subraces of elf to make your character even more unique. There are even different groups of different subraces (moon elves and sun elves as part of High Elves). There's also Half-Elves, in case you want to be half-human.
So, yeah. If alignment was at least as nuanced as the different varieties of elves, IMO, it would be a much better system than the current 3 x 3 grid.
Nah. The alignment grid isn't really a grid. It's more of a gradient. And not even just a 2D map, It's much more open than that. Alignment doesn't need to be more nuanced, it just needs to be understood as a very broad strokes system. It's indicative, not defining.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Nah. The alignment grid isn't really a grid. It's more of a gradient. And not even just a 2D map, It's much more open than that. Alignment doesn't need to be more nuanced, it just needs to be understood as a very broad strokes system. It's indicative, not defining.
Agreed....I always treated as a foundation point. Not something that restricted everything my character would do or say. I will say the first group I played with back in the day initially went a bit overboard on how you ran your character and alignments. It can be a downer if everyone is treating their characters as cardboard cutouts from personality to alignments. Think that was one of the things that drew me and some other to the GURPS rule set and combining it with D&D back then. They had a lot of different personality traits you could use such as quirks that helped make characters more varied and unique. Always cool to create your own as well but was a nice tool to have to get one some ideas for advantages, disadvantages, and quirks if they were having some trouble coming up with their own way to make their character unique and fun for them to play.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Discord: Wickedjelly #4533
“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.” ― Robert Frost
I'm an old grognard, but I like the alignment system. Mostly because in my D&D philosophical concepts can manifest in physical forms. The concept of good and evil, sins and virtues is real and can manifest as creatures and things. That's kind of the charm of the game for me, as in real life I am a general poststructuralist and ontological social constructivist, and tend to see the world in shades of gray and alternating perspectives. It's liberating to have a world of make believe where there are clear binary oppositions.
That being said, nowadays my players don't use alignment, I find it too restrictive. For everything else in my game worlds though alignment is there.
I’m thinking maybe they should. It’s very restrictive and forces your PCs into a black and white morality mold with no real shades of grey. Maybe replace it with like a Character Nature and Demeanor system like in White Wolf’s World of Darkness games.
I think in 5e it's already implemented in a way that allows you to ignore it completely if you wish. We generally do when it comes to PCs, although it can be helpful to characterize enemies or to frame conflicts, especially at epic levels where you may have deities representing moral absolutes warring against one another.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Is/does it? I don't see any mechanics or rules that force morality on PCs in 5E. Your alignment follows from your morality and actions, not the other way around.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I don’t find it restrictive, but it’s possible that I just retooled the whole thing in my head. I think if we admit that 90% of people in real life are True Neutral which, properly understood, means they ricochet from one point to another often over the course of a lifetime, all the shades of grey are still right there.
I think if we view society as a whole as basically Lawful Evil, with occasional phony ostentatious displays of piety to fake at being Lawful Good, the D&D alignment system actually makes a surprising amount of sense. Those of us who didn’t have a say in the construction of a Lawful Evil edifice, but who benefit from its existence, may not actually be evil ourselves, but we can’t ignore the facts of the situation and consider ourselves “good.” This doesn’t stop some of us from doing so anyway, of course. Some of us even pretend to be MORE good than our neighbors BECAUSE of our constant defense of a Lawful Evil institution.
Some of us try to use the ill-gotten advantages we receive through this situation to elevate our neighbors whom the system was designed to disenfranchise. But is that even possible? Can you use a system built to entrench evil to promote good? Well, whether you can or can’t, you can be sure that the first group of people I mentioned will use whatever decision you make to paint you as Chaotic Evil. The better to pretend that they’re the Lawful Good ones.
My point here is that there are no limits to the greytones you can achieve if you use D&Ds alignment system right. Our main obstacle in doing so is our adherence to thinking of alignments as a grid of nine equal squares. What it looks a lot more like is The Great Wheel. Everyone starts on a big central plain of pure grey and picks one of eight directions to walk in. Everyone knows there IS a north, but no one has a compass, so they kind of zigzag around looking for it.
It seems like a pretty optional part of the game already. I would agree that if you treat it like a discrete and unalterable trait then it's too limiting. I think you can use it in your game however you want, and you can start the game 45% good and 70% lawful and end up 65% good and 40% lawful. And you can decide for yourself what good and lawful mean. It's just some traits you might want to think about when building your character. Kind of like bonds and flaws. It is a suggestion for role playing, not a mechanical rule.
I don't use it, as I don't see a point. It's easy to drop out. I like the WoD Nature and Demeanor, but when they went to Virtue and Vice I think it was better. That works in D&D too, with Bonds/Flaws/Ideals. No need to even change the mechanics.
I like the Alignment System as it stands. It pretty much does what I've always thought it should. It gives players a "hook" to hang some of their roleplay around. Two characters, both of Good Alignment, could play quite differently if one is Lawful and the other Chaotic. They could both be Lawful Good and still play differently depending on their interpretation of what Law and Good mean. There is no current system that forces anything. No graph to track their choices and determine what their actual Alignment is.
I played a Druid once, back when they had to be True Neutral. When presented with a dying character I asked the DM, "will this character die without magical healing?" I was told "Yes". So I took out my ritual sickle, and prepared to finish them off. I figured ending their pain would be a kindness, while healing someone who should die would be an unnatural act. The other players did not see it that way. Particularly the one whose character was dying.
Can you play a Lawful Good Assassin? Sure. I don't see why not. You get your orders, you go do your job. You don't need to ask questions. Kill a cute little six year old girl, and her doting mother? Ok. Must need to be done or they wouldn't have ordered you to do it. Find out later that the person giving the orders just wanted to get rid of their wife and kid? You can keep right on as you have been, or swear a mighty oath to kill everyone responsible for allowing you to be mislead. For all of me, you can play a Paladin and do that.
I have a character I am eager to play someday. She's a Neutral Good Warlock whose Pact is with a Fiend. She doesn't know what her pact is with. The fiend isn't going to tell her. It just wants to watch her as it tries to get her to do evil things. It wants to corrupt her soul and claim it in the end. It wants to present her with some of those shades of gray that were mentioned and give her bad advice. Power corrupts. All the fiend needs to do is give her more and more power, then wait and see what she does with it.
I've yet to see two people who agreed entirely on how any given Alignment should be played. I can't see how the system could be restrictive, black and white, or require any type of morality.
<Insert clever signature here>
I wouldn't mind if it vanished come 6e. Although 5e has few if any crunchy mechanics that hinge on alignment, it still creates a framing that narrows the range of moral behavior for novice players. I also don't really care much for the idea that a deities represent extremes of alignment, because there are clearly more than a few LG deities that interpret their doctrines differently. Primus (the modron power) (LN) is nothing like St. Cuthbert (LN).
I agree that interpretation can, and should, lead to a variety of perspectives with the current system, and I think that's intended. Unfortunately you still come across the occasional DM who seems to feel that it is intended to limit your actions,and enforces that perspective. Removing it might solve that problem, as it tends to come hand-in-hand with a by-the-book attitude. Replacing it with something that serves the same motivational purpose is better though.
I'm curious, what have been people's experiences with systems that integrate motivational/value-based mechanics? Exalted did this, where you had something similar to Ideals and Bonds, and social your mechanics made it harder or easier to be influenced by things depending on weather they did or didn't match your values. Some of the magic required or was improved by those traits too. Like defensive effects that worked better in defense of what you cared about, or stopped working if you violated your convictions. One particularly memorable game involved a primary antagonist who was functionally invulnerable while she was still in love with her husband. We spent four sessions sabotaging their relationship before the final showdown. I'm in favor of this sort of thing.
All the more proof alignment is not a straightjacket.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I mean it’s pretty optional already. I personally like using the alignment chart in regards to the machinations of the Outer Planes as I and several DM in my group enjoy using the politics of the Outer Planes and their inhabitants in our campaigns and world building.
Honestly, it’s removal wouldn’t stop those that like using alignments from using it anyways so it really isn’t a big deal to me one way or the other.
"Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
Characters for Tenebris Sine Fine
RoughCoronet's Greater Wills
As a DM I find alignments useful for quickly getting a sense of an NPC or a monster's attitude. For instance, the fact that a Displacer Beast has lawful evil alignment as opposed to being unaligned immediately tells me a lot about it. The good/evil axis also relates strongly to altruism vs selfishness, which is very useful to keep in mind when players attempt to persuade, negotiate or intimidate.
It's not a perfect system by any means but no system that tries to lump complex behaviors into a small number of discrete buckets ever is.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
I consider Alignment to be a valuable jumping-off point for character creation. It helps to have the rough sketch of a perspective character's worldview that Alignment represents while fleshing out the rest of the character around those bones, even if the Alignment changes or becomes nuanced to the point of no longer fitting perfectly back in that original box. For that reason, and the reason that players can choose to ditch Alignment with no negative repercussions, I think it's worth keeping Alignment in the game.
This is fascinating. Thank you guys.
@RoughCoronet0 I agree with you about the Outer Planes.
Been meaning to circle back to the thread to drop the below video. I thought it was a cool coincidence that this thread got made pretty much around the same time LegalKimchee dropped his though on alignment.
First my two cents. I wouldn't toss out alignment entirely. It's important to understanding the "traditional cosmology" so unless you're home brewing your entire planar system, alignment helps you orient to how the planes work. Also, as mentioned alignment isn't really all that restrictive mechanically. I'd go further and say it's probably not good for productive and fun play if alignment is simply used as a prescriptive enforcement tool. Rather it's a broad foundational stroke to describe a characters mindset when it comes to morality. This can be ideals they aspire to but do not meet. So yes, alignment as a shackle system = I'd say is not fun play. Alignment as a source of inspiration for character development = I say that's how it should be done.
Anyway, I'll drop the below video. LegalKimchee is one of my favorite YouTube D&D commenters. His vids tend to be more about the social and creative aspects of play. Anyway, here's some more food for thought on alignment. If you're not super versed in moral philosophy and ethics some of this may go over your head, but I think most folks can take something away from it, especially his use of Tiamat and Bahamut as reference points (he's not the first to use them this way, but it helps his point along):
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
It really doesn't restrict your characters at all. Like scatterbraind said, it made in a way that it can be ignored if you want to. I have used it before, but mostly as just a guideline for my DM for what he is to expect from my character in the game.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
- Litany Against Fear, Frank Herbert
We could say the same about any labels.
Do you think writing 'elf" on your character sheet is restictive and forces you to act the same as every other elf in the world, with no shades of grey? Hopefully not. There are general ways in which all elfs act alike but your elf can be different to my elf and both can be different to another player's elf.
Treat alignment the same. If you and I both write "Lawful Evil" on our character sheets then there will be general ways our characters act alike (for example, both can probably be trusted to keep promises and honour contracts) but they can have quite different characters and personalities.
Nah. The alignment grid isn't really a grid. It's more of a gradient. And not even just a 2D map, It's much more open than that. Alignment doesn't need to be more nuanced, it just needs to be understood as a very broad strokes system. It's indicative, not defining.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Agreed....I always treated as a foundation point. Not something that restricted everything my character would do or say. I will say the first group I played with back in the day initially went a bit overboard on how you ran your character and alignments. It can be a downer if everyone is treating their characters as cardboard cutouts from personality to alignments. Think that was one of the things that drew me and some other to the GURPS rule set and combining it with D&D back then. They had a lot of different personality traits you could use such as quirks that helped make characters more varied and unique. Always cool to create your own as well but was a nice tool to have to get one some ideas for advantages, disadvantages, and quirks if they were having some trouble coming up with their own way to make their character unique and fun for them to play.
Discord: Wickedjelly #4533
“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.”
― Robert Frost
I'm an old grognard, but I like the alignment system. Mostly because in my D&D philosophical concepts can manifest in physical forms. The concept of good and evil, sins and virtues is real and can manifest as creatures and things. That's kind of the charm of the game for me, as in real life I am a general poststructuralist and ontological social constructivist, and tend to see the world in shades of gray and alternating perspectives. It's liberating to have a world of make believe where there are clear binary oppositions.
That being said, nowadays my players don't use alignment, I find it too restrictive. For everything else in my game worlds though alignment is there.