Bring back alignments?

[Osgood]

I miss having all nine alignments, and hope they return in the next edition.

 

[Squire James]

Since they are now mostly divorced from the actual game mechanics, I think it is perfectly fine to arrange their alignment system as they wish. If you miss the nine alignments (and the Great Wheel, for that matter!), you can put them right back in with little fuss. Or if you want the alignment words to just be additional words used to describe a character's Appearance and Mannerisms, that's okay too.

Now, if I can only get my players in my High Fantasy campaign to stop acting like they're in a Thieves World setting...

 

[Ryujin]

While ol' EGG and company may have 'invented' the concept of alignments, Palladium perfected it.

The alignment system, as it stands in 4e, is about as complex and limiting as I can tolerate. I generally use it as a guideline, rather than a rule book. I would much rather have players be free to explore their characters' motivations and ideology, rather than constantly reference some vague framework. Real people are more complex than a few words on a page. Virtual people should be the same.

 

[nightwyrm]

Personally, the only alignment derived "fun-killing" I've ever seen was when people playing LG Paladins wanted to use torture.

Blah, this is why my paladin simply kills everyone in battle then have the cleric cast speak with dead.

 

[balam_br]

Even in 2nd edition i tried to dump the alignment system from my games, and it was HARD cause of mechanic issues. I like some morality chalenges in my games and alignment simply got in the way...

So no... i dont miss the "alignment as mechanics" of the previous editions and dont wanna see it coming back.

 

[Stormonu]

eh, I have a love-hate relationship with alignment.

I think they ought to keep it for creatures, and drop it for PCs.

Better yet, expand the alignment system to about 50 adjectives that can be used to quickly describe NPCs or monsters, and give an individual maybe 2-3 of them.

I'd be Impulsive Lazy Good-Hearted - what about you?

 

[Pentius]

The problem I had with the alignment system was simple. Each term was described just well enough for most people to have clear ideas on what each alignment was, but not clear enough for those ideas to be the same. Throw it into the mechanics, and you get a nice recipe for table arguments. Some lucky people have only seen the downsides of it occasionally, or not at all. I, on the other hand, have played under a DM who considered my barbarian to be "acting too Lawful" when I did not actively flaunt the law.

 

[Hactarcomp]

I miss the nine alignments, but I think we're better off without them.

Very few people actually go into the world intending to be evil. Even pure sociopaths don't see themselves as evil, merely justified in harming those around them. It's part of why, as a kid, I objected to most of the more serious bad guys in the cartoons. They were being evil for evil's sake. Who does that?

Hitler didn't believe he was evil. He thought he was protecting his race from the deprivations of those he perceived as inferior. The war was a means to restore his great and glorious country to its proper place in the world. Pol Pot didn't think he was evil, despite the execution of over a million people for such offenses as being teachers in the country of Cambodia.

So no matter how evil an enemy is, he should, in his heart of hearts, believe he is, at worst, a normal person in his morality, and for those with strong beliefs, they should view themselves as being good and righteous. Admittedly, that's kind of hard for a follower of Orcus, but outside of badly written comic book villains, who runs around cackling "I'm evil!"

On the other hand, I feel the loss of the LN and CN categories is a loss. Lawful Neutral feels like more than simply unaligned. It is valuing order above all else. No matter how good or evil the authority is, order is always preferable to chaos. Chaotic Neutral having those ideas reverse. (It was great to see the step away from CN just being crazy people and instead make it people who wanted to see a constantly fluctuating, changing situation. That can be harmful to many people, but it could be useful, from some points of view.

So, while I'm nostalgic for the nine alignments, I think, in a way, we'd be better off without any of them. After all, a lawful evil ruler who is doing what he thinks is necessary to keep the subversive element in line and keep his kingdom prosperous will see himself as lawful neutral or lawful good and the chaotic good rebels opposing his tyrannical rule as chaotic evil. After all, they're trying to weaken his kingdom, which will expose its inhabitants to war, strife, disease and all the other horrible things that come with chaos.

And we all know Batman is all alignments

 

[delericho]

So now what do we have for PCs
Lawful Good
Good
Unaligned

This was their way of sidesteping the whole "What do we do with Alignments?" problem

4e alignments are awful. They should either be given teeth or removed from the game entirely. At this point, my preference would be the latter.

Anyways - does anyone else miss Alignments? Do you remember the fun Alignments brought to old editions?

Sort of.

The one thing that I miss from the 'old' alignments is the Paladin class. There truly was something attractive about playing the character who had principles and felt the need to stick to them. That's something that just doesn't seem to happen in 4e - the moment a character's principles become remotely problematic, they get casually cast aside. Because, hey, it's just a game, right?

So I do miss that. A bit.

On the other hand...

It does occur to me that if the only reason you get those situations is because the rules force the character into sticking with his principles, then it's quite likely that the players actually weren't all that interested in playing that concept in the first place. After all, there's nothing in the 4e alignment system (or even a 'no alignment' system) that prevents characters from having principles and sticking to them.

And if you need the rules to enforce something that the players just don't care about... maybe your game is better off without that thing in the first place. Maybe.

 

[Ryujin]

The problem I had with the alignment system was simple. Each term was described just well enough for most people to have clear ideas on what each alignment was, but not clear enough for those ideas to be the same. Throw it into the mechanics, and you get a nice recipe for table arguments. Some lucky people have only seen the downsides of it occasionally, or not at all. I, on the other hand, have played under a DM who considered my barbarian to be "acting too Lawful" when I did not actively flaunt the law.

Precisely.

Back in 1e, I had a rather protracted argument with my DM, about the actions of my Human Fighter/Monk. We were adventuring in an LE kingdom. My character was LN. For some reason the DM didn't understand that I played my character as having an inviolate personal code. The laws of the land didn't mean diddly squat to me. I broke the law of this LE kingdom, as it was in conflict with my personal code. To the DM, the word of law was what I should abide by, rather than Law.