Hey there, it’s me, resident Comedy Archmage Dan Telfer. And you know, I was mulling over what I could do with my vast and unchecked power here at D&D Beyond and I got to thinking, if a character is more "lawful" than "good" or "bad," something odd happens. They're not exactly "neutral," they warp into something truly, almost frighteningly, relatable.
Imagine, if you will, that it’s your turn to take watch duty during a long rest, but as you set up your chess set with your druid friend… WHERE ARE ALL THE DAMN BISHOPS? Or I don’t know, what’s a “fantasy bishop” for D&D dragonchess, a thief or whatever? Just stay with me here, your character plays several games a day so someone nearby must have stolen them! Someone in the party even! You immediately cast detect evil.
Well, bad news adventurino, nobody nearby is evil. “Show thyself, evil miscreant!” you cry to the night sky, a horrible echo booming through the elven forest and your friend’s dining room (shhh their kid is trying to make a TikTok on their iPad in the next room). But alas, your wails are of no use. Somebody stole your thieves because… well come on, chess in Dungeons and Dragons? Several times a day? How meta are you gonna make everyone get? Play D&D.
Maybe this hypothetical player character (that is not always just me) is, in fact, a jerk. But they’re probably having a blast.
Yes, Make This Your Real Alignment
This alignment is called Lawful Petty, and you too can convince the narrator of your game to let you write it on your character sheet. Don’t get me wrong, I like the existing rules of D&D, and I remember having fun with alignment. Yet as I theoretically age, I observe a pop culture that leans on its anti-heroes. It’s tough not to want to roleplay a little Walter White action now and again (but he’s more of a Toxic Neutral type).
See that guy on the right? That's the guy you want to be, hands in the air, protesting that he did nothing wrong, meanwhile the guy on the left used to be nice until you drove him insane with your petty rules.
Stare at the words “Lawful” and “Petty” together. You get it. Even if it does start to look like “Lori Petty” after a while. I bet you can see why this idea is perfect for D&D. Theft opens wide up. Complex sabotages unfold. You are a moral champion of cheap slights. A strict adherence to a narcissistic moral code that isn’t exactly evil, and as far as you care is completely good.
A character with all the rules and morality of a paladin, but with a short-sighted view of the world. Think “stinging but relatively non-lethal” revenge, burning something down and driving away smiling. These tropes are your toolbox.
If someone offends thee, they shall get a new scar forthwith. Speaking of which...
Scars Over Death
If you’re worried about how to keep from being evil, give the character a strict “no sentient creature should die if it can be taught a lesson” code to offset the fact that they can be mean as all-get-out. Petty Batman. Not torture; deep, deep humiliation.
If they’re dead they can’t feel justice anymore.
Let’s say you figure out the sleeping quarters of a local crime lord.
Now, the easy thing to do would be to fight your way to his headquarters. Instead, do recon to figure out where he sleeps. And insist on going to great lengths to bring true polymorph to the table, even if it means bribing a local archmage.
Then, while the crime lord slumbers like a beholder making babies, sleep has them turned into a stench kow… forever.
And let's say the crime lord barters with your party, and wary of your antics they shut down any complex life-altering events for him. "Hey," they say, "we noticed you were plotting with a local archmage like a lunatic, so we're calling that off."
But in the process of your little agreement, the crime lord makes a comment on your looks? You are already making arrangements for them to recieve a drunken stench kow tattoo before you even leave the room.
But once you hone in on stench kow there is no going back. You see that crime lord and the stench kow's scent fills in your nostrils like the ring of a stench bell.
Game of Chicken: A Song of Ice and Fire
Here’s a walkthrough you can use as another example. Let’s say only you understand chickens. You had them on your farm since you were a child. You gave them names. Then you eventually liberated them. When someone else owns a chicken, you know they’re raising them wrong. When they eat it, they are the cruelest of fiends. They may never know why, but every time they make the mistake of eating chicken, you’ll make sure they have the most violent of diarrheas.
This could go for people who use feathers in spells. People who kick abyssal chickens. People who turn down aarakocra for dates. You name it. You will smite them with your fiery revenge. Perhaps even fiery bathroom revenge.
Holy Insults
Your character could be called narcissistic, sure, but also they see passive aggression as a holy death by a thousand cuts. Each cut full of divine, petty significance.
The moment anyone insults you to your face, smile broadly and shrug. You didn’t come here to make friends, you came here to break friends in. You also came to this game (in the real world) with a stack of index cards and a marker. This is optional of course, but can be a complex character’s best friend if the narrator is game to indulge it.
Pass a note card to your DM asking if they’d approve a series of Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) checks to steal all their water. We’ll see how thoughtful they get during the upcoming desert excursion when they need to call in favors.
And remember, you feel downright virtuous doing this. You're not doing this because it makes you cackle maniacally, you're doing it because it balances the impossibly specific scales in your head. You think they should be in everyone's head, and unlucky for them if your justice doesn't makes sense. You're just out there in a cute outfit, living your best life, stealing all the water.
Cold Compass
To make sure you’re getting this whole Lori Petty, er, Lawful Petty thing right (sorry I just watched some Orange is the New Black), let’s chart it out.
Take a piece of paper. At the top, write your character’s greatest moral joy. Make it real, make it good, make it kind. Otherwise you’re just evil, and it's important we skirt that ancient simplicity.
Then at the bottom, write the thing your character would take the most personally, and make it petty as all Nine Hells.
Every time someone hurts your ego, even a little, stare at your chart and figure how high up or low it falls. Odds are things will land near the bottom fairly often, and you’ll be having a lot of fun being a fantasy jerk as you aim for the top but never forget the bottom. That sweet, salty bottom.
Petty Trademark List
Ready to roleplay a creep, but not sure where to start? You can borrow from any of these you like, but why not roll a 6-sided and see which of these petty moves has been a lawful ritual to your character.
- Spell soiler: Mix cocoa powder in their bat guano, mix glitter in their diamond dust, regardless the resident caster is about to humiliate themselves and you’re never going to cop to who did it. You know how to mess with mages.
- Moral collector: Due to being robbed of a precious thing at a young age, you are now obsessed with re-appropriating all versions of this thing you see in the world as your own. You know, stealing. Maybe it’s scrolls. Maybe it’s decorative vacation spoons. Work with the DM to fit it in the world or maybe even in the pouch of a fellow player.
- Dulled weapon: You carry an incredibly weak weapon, and you attack anyone who insults you with it. Think variations on opera gloves- a wooden dagger, a stocking full of copper pieces, a leather strap made from a beast who looked at you wrong, etc.
- Keen-minds-your-business: Take the Keen Mind feat… just so you can ask your DM incriminating facts to lord over others and manipulate them into doing menial things for you.
- False Samaritan: Do everything a lawfully good character would… but give those benefiting from your actions a verbal, sincere-sounding, but deadly deliberate, “You’re welcome.” Then add them to a list. If they do not reward you in an appropriate and timely fashion, they are a traitor. Or if everyone you’ve helped behaves, call in your good deed beneficiaries to exact revenge on others.
- Guided by the slight: You worship a kind god, and you pray to them often. That’s what you tell people. But in actuality you give your DM some index cards and make an arrangement: every time you pretend to pray that a character receives a holy kindness through Bahamut, you say you’re making a Religion check… but it’s really an Insight check. You tell the group you’re getting holy messages, but really, you’re neutrally analyzing where a character falls on your are-they-in-need-of-fixing-and-do-they-owe-me chart through the DM.
There it is, another alignment forged, farewell 9-part alignment memes, you have cluttered our social media timelines long enough. I hope I can goof on this concept again in the future, and that some of you actually try this. Please let me know if you do, especially if you can pull it off without making every one of your friends mad at you.
Dan Telfer is the Dungeons Humorist aka Comedy Archmage for D&D Beyond (a fun way they are letting him say "writer"), dungeon master for the Nerd Poker podcast, a stand-up comedian, a TV writer who also helped win some Emmys over at Comedy Central, and a former editor of MAD Magazine and The Onion. He can be found riding his bike around Los Angeles from gig to gig to gaming store, though the best way to find out what he's up to is to follow him on Twitter via @dantelfer.
Well now I know the alignment of Homelander in The Boys.
After watching MrRhexx's What the Monster Manual Doesn't Tell you series on youtube I think the perfect race for this alignment is a Bronze Dragon in human form.
https://youtu.be/bNbnnTqDfPY
This will help me so much with playing my sociopathic sorcerer-rogue! Thanks!
My friends will hate me. Yes!
Yeah, not sure what to make of this. Of course, alignment is a joke anyway, so a joke post about it is only logical. I suppose I could see this as a tongue-in-cheek way of saying 'alignment is dumb, don't use it, just play an actual personality'.
I hear the arguments for and against alignments all the time for this game. Some DMs will strictly adhere to the system, making it an important part of their game. Some will remove it completely, stating that it is unimportant to play. Others will mix it up, make up their own, add to or subtract from the core 9. None of that matters.
I feel like this obviously comedic post about an alignment is being taken way too seriously. But everyone has a different sense of humor.
All that said, I like to use alignments as a starting point for figuring out how my characters feel about the world around them. Like a background, it just helps to define where I am in the current moment. It can change. And if it does change, it should be changed. The whole point for me is the roleplaying, and this is just another tool to help with that. If along the way, my lawful good paladin begins to shift their world views and become more neutral, chaotic, or evil, then their alignment should reflect that change as I, the other players, or the DM think of it... but only if it is important in the game you are playing. Otherwise, meh.
You don't know what you've done...You've given me my Kobold Paladin a perfect starting alignment until I get to third level and go anti paladin.
An orange is the new black reference when if should have been a Tank Girl one... tsk tsk
I love your summary and defining of the restrictions of alignment in d&d, and to be honest I like this mechanic in the game. However how many games actually play the alignment mechanic?
In my game the characters don’t have don’t have defined alignment. They play essentially the players alignment and leave it at that. I would love to have them play defined alignments however I do t think they are mature enough to deal with the potential conflict this would bring.
I’m not sure if this was written in seriousness, but I’m definitely going to be serious when I start using it on a character I just started building a few days ago.
Hey Dan, on your title page on the main website, you spelled something wrong in your description. "...and start by making on that's petty as hell." That's supposed to be one right?
this is exactly the type of player that everyone complains about having played with at one point in time, but now they no longer talk with that person because their actions are by no means lawful. Its playing chaotic stupid under another name and expecting everyone else to indulge you.
Made a warlock(3)/bard(2) and took pact of the chain with the voice of the chain master invocation. Picked an imp as my familiar and the rest of the group has never seen or heard of him. He's always invisible and following others to spy on them. I blackmail and extort them to better my standing in the party. Best a-hole ever
Man. Lots of really harsh backlash on a clearly comedic piece.
Heh...what's interesting to me is the very clear split here, and I don't mean Lawful vs. Chaotic or Good vs. Evil. The Comedy Archmage was advocating for none of these so much as he was advocating for sitcom hijinks at tables receptive to sitcom hijinks, but the response shows a very clear split between "I'm a DM" and "I'm a player". This DM/Player split is much more interesting to me than having an alignment debate for the upteen billionth time.
DMs look at this in dismay and frustration, see it as nothing but an excuse for a player to be a game-wrenching toolbag that constantly ruffles feathers and sows discord. They gum up plotlines, they nettle NPCs, they get the other players going; they're a menace and they don't need any more encouragement than players already have. The DM just wants people to sit at the table and play the game.
The player response is "this is exactly what I've been needing for my next wacky idea!", and they love it. It is, as Dan said, a very personally relatable set-up. We've all met those guys (or are those guys), most of them at work, who aren't evil or vicious or tyrannical (or at least not evil, maybe), but who have a nonsensical hang-up about something or other that seems to be all-important to them and nobody else gets it. This is your typical Bad Boss, that frustrating coworker who's always on your case for never turning in your paperwork right, or that barista at the local Coffee Shack with a Book of Grudges fit to rival a dwarven king because she's a coffee barista and she has good reason for that book. It's the sort of thing that a lot of us might want to poke fun at, or analyze in the relative safety and funtimes-happytown of a D&D game.
Now admittedly, some DMs are absolutely on board with running an office comedy game. Anyone who bought the Acq Inc. book is all aboard the Lawful Petty train. And some players play to get away from this kind of shit at work and want nothing to do with it at their tables. Broad generalizations are broad and never accurate to every situation, so don't poke me on that, but I find it fascinating as someone who both runs a game I'm trying to take reasonably seriously and someone who plays in other games that are being taken reasonably seriously how individual people's opinions can go completely 180 based on where they're sitting.
The DM wants a party with a grizzled, seasoned fighter protecting the frail but haughty and knowledgeable wizard from harm, a devout and humble cleric ensuring everyone stays up while the nimble and woods-wise ranger slings arrows from the back. The players want to run kobold paladins with pronounced neurotic tendencies, rogues that can't leave sufficiently shiny belt buckles alone, lady bards played by creepers who play their bard they way they wished women were, and every variety of defective ****-up under the sun. Because the players are sick unto death of those tired old fantasy tropes, while the DMs are sick of trying to build a heroic fantasy story around the cast of Boondock Saints.
It's always interesting to me to watch the two sides of that debate push against each other. Thanks for the comedy, Dan. And for the popcorn-worthy discussion thread that accompanied it.
I just want to be clear that despite the fact that it opens with the word comedy and has a "Comedy" tag this is a new mechanic to be taken seriously.
Tanks.
Homelander was Textbook Lawful Evil.
I would never allow a player to play this in my game, nor would I ever want to play as or with such a character. I'm a fan of in-character betrayal and the character development that brings, but the whole bit about using notecards and the like to have the DM sabotage the players for you (rather than outright saying it and trusting the players will keep their OOC knowledge and in-character knowledge separate) fosters and encourages a DM vs. Player environment, and nobody likes that. If you don't feel the conflict originating in the story is enough for your tastes, I'd recommend finding trouble elsewhere rather than building your character as a neurotic jack A.
Where do we report the miscategorization?
#Comedy
I'm sorry, I can see some people like this, but this actually annoys me. IMO, this is merely cheapening and diluting D&D to achieve the kind of "humor" that might be found on a Kardashian show. Those who enjoy this, go right ahead and have fun with it and more power to you, but I have seen nothing worthwhile from EITHER of the posts so far by this unfunny writer.
For more inspiration, check out r/MaliciousCompliance :)