Alignment in D&DN...

[Zireael]

So to be clear, you don't want Paladins to be required to be LG? So if the DM says "your Paladin is no longer LG", it just means writing something else on your sheet, not losing Paladin abilities, or any inability to continue leveling as a Paladin?

As long as your "trait" based is strictly a roleplaying aid, it sounds fine to me.

The Paladins are a special case - the alignment restriction has been on them forever (even though I can see them working fine without it).
But yes, I want the "trait" to be purely a roleplaying aid.

 

[Shemeska]

Bring back all 9 classic D&D alignments.

 

[Sunseeker]

The DM. Same as it always was. It's the DM who decides your paladin is no longer LG... or that you have to change alignment because you're roleplaying CG instead of NG...

I've only played in one game where the DM said I was "doing it wrong", much to noones surprise, I left that game about a week later. It wasn't even an issue of playing something outside my alignment, he just had a specific idea about how my alignment MUST be played and how my character MUST act because of it.

 

[howandwhy99]

What if we left behind the Law-Chaos and Good-Evil axes, and instead defined a series of alignment traits that the character has, i.e. honest, pragmatic, greedy, faithful, selfish etc...

Something very much like this was in AD&D. PC traits were totally up to the players to write, while NPCs had their personality traits rolled up on optional tables.

Alignment as it was originally conceived wasn't really about personality at all. It was more of a cosmic team jersey one wore with the tracking allegiance on a chart.

 

[Mattachine]

There are plenty of rpg's that include a player-defined "alignment", allegiance, or personality, which the GM then adjudicates. Examples: World of Darkness, Spycraft, Burning Wheel, Toon, etc.

I don't think D&D has traditional had a roleplay mechanic in the vein of these games, and I'm not sure it should.

 

[El Mahdi]

So who decides whether you're roleplaying it or not, and what happens if they decide you're not?

Me as DM...

...and that's what the electrodes on the seats of my dining room chairs are for.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

9 alignments is so iconic. Do away with it (like in 4e) and you face integration problems.
And actually, I really like alignments. Although the 5e model, no detect alignment spells was one of the best ideas.
Maybe detect alignment rituals would be ok. But instant: i know if you are the "big bad", i seriously don´t want that back.

 

[Sunseeker]

9 alignments is so iconic. Do away with it (like in 4e) and you face integration problems.
And actually, I really like alignments. Although the 5e model, no detect alignment spells was one of the best ideas.
Maybe detect alignment rituals would be ok. But instant: i know if you are the "big bad", i seriously don´t want that back.

I still feel this is campaign dependent, and making the power less specific in it's nature "you sense evil nearby" as opposed to "John Johnson the town Preacher is evil." would go a long way to making the power more fair.

That's how I run the power anyway. Seems to work out and keeps my players searching.

 

[Mark CMG]

I feel it is either time to abandon alignment altogether or shunt it off to being solely a DMing tool to help the DM assess non-PCs and aid in adventure and setting construction.

 

[kitsune9]

I'm not a fan of traits. With the standard alignments, we have spells and abilities are built into them, but with traits, there's a risk to be a lot more and thus abilities/spells can get silly (Smite Honesty, Protection from Evil and Greedy, Detect Selfish, etc.).