D&D 4E D&D Fluff Wars: 4e vs 5e

[76512390ag12]

Can you explain this?

I will have to say that I have often found the all but forgotten LN (good), LN (evil), CN (good), CN (evil), NG (law), NG (chaos), NE (law), NE (chaos) much more interesting and informative than LN, CN, NG, NE, and N.

Sent from my SM-G901F using Tapatalk

 

[MechaTarrasque]

Well, that worked. Of course, I always found them different.
OTOH, at the same time, they made Slaadi officially the same as Demons. (Which is also what they always were, but not, IMHO, what they should have been. Chaos has always gotten a raw deal, is what I'm say'n.)
While in the aura, take an OA against any ally that moves adjacent? "No, you're trying to take my precious! Stay away!"

*snag*

I really like that mechanism for aura of greed.

I agree about the slaadi and CN. You have to get into some "evil defined as sadism" stuff to make them CN (slaadi will infect you with a disease, but if they can't infect you, they won't torture you). Not that sadism is a bad definition of evil (particularly for a rpg where PC's routinely kill but don't torture enemies), but it leaves out a lot of bad stuff where you aren't necessarily getting your jollies off on it.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

Can you explain this?



Sent from my SM-G901F using Tapatalk

I tend to think that most NPC's (and even PC's) have a primary alignment, but adventuring (or dealing with pesky PC's) often takes people out of their comfort zones, so the dedicated servant of the law may have to use their discretion where the law hasn't been written (and it is good to know if they will be nice or merciful or indulge the odd urge to lord it over someone), the normally solo villain who circumstances have forced to join a group may have to decide to be a team player for a while or stir up trouble inside the group, etc. It is easier to have these decided beforehand (although some PC's could test the patience of a saint). It also reflects that some aspects of alignment may be more temporary than others.

Now outsiders are a different story.....

 

[Tony Vargas]

I really like that mechanism for aura of greed.

Thank you.

I've really gotten back to running in my old, improvisational AD&D style as I've gotten used to 5e, it shows even when I run 4e. But I've run 4e for a long while now, and I still do prep for it more often than I do 5e or did AD&D, because it's just so easy to whip up an encounter or mod a monster, and it's less often wasted effort.
So I have gotten pretty good at the weird exercise of fitting less intuitive concepts to the language of powers.

I agree about the slaadi and CN. You have to get into some "evil defined as sadism" stuff to make them CN (slaadi will infect you with a disease, but if they can't infect you, they won't torture you). Not that sadism is a bad definition of evil (particularly for a rpg where PC's routinely kill but don't torture enemies), but it leaves out a lot of bad stuff where you aren't necessarily getting your jollies off on it.

I was so put out the first time I saw the Slaadi. Good gets animal-bodied high-level casters, evil gets succubi, and Chaos gets... /toads/? C'mon, toads?! Psychotically evil toads that say 'N' next to 'C' thanks to some sort of cosmic clerical error.

Guess I'm still a bit put out.

 

[Aldarc]

Now I do find it baffling why 4e didn't just narrow it to good, evil and unaligned since leaving in remnants of Law and Chaos attached to good and evil respectively isn't really true to any source and heavily prejudices what those cosmological forces represent. It's basically making Law equivalent to good and Chaos equivalent to evil (a simplistic and incorrect view at best which really mudies the waters for those who want their major cosmological conflict to be based around those forces)... or better yet just eliminate alignment all together and let DM's decide on their own cosmological forces in game. I could have got behind them saying hey we want the default to be games of good and evil not chaos and law but instead they did a half-hearted removal which in my opinion kind of missed the point on both fronts.

I would have been fantastic if WotC had gone with a set of possible alignments.

As to why they did 4E's alignment system as they did, there were likely a number of factors at play here. By no means, am I suggesting that my explanation is exhaustive or definitive. QuietBrowser touched upon one of the issues, namely Alignments in Theory vs. Alignments in Play. LG and CE are probably the most easily grasped alignments, however superficially, by casual people. It's not hard to grasp the fundamental philosophic difference between Law, Order, and Goodness on the one hand and Chaos, Destruction, and Evil on the other. LE and CG represent two other common tropes, particularly when played against each other: Evil Tyrannical Oppressor vs. Good Liberator for Freedom! But part of the problem rests not so much in these four extreme points, but in the in-between and how these relate to the extremes. Chaotic Neutral is probably one of the most reviled alignments in D&D. From my own experience, I would much rather a PC be Chaotic Evil than have to deal with a character with the Chaotic Neutral alignment. Namely, because often a player uses the CN for their character to be evil de facto without being evil de jure. Chaotic Neutral in theory is about freedom and "Chaos" without regard to good or evil. The problem is that in-practice, CN usually veers towards Chaotic Evil or "unaligned" (as per 4E). That was also likely a similar reason for the synthesis of Lawful Evil and Neutral Evil. In-practice, these alignments are frequently played, on the whole, as "non-destructive/chaotic evil," which 4E simplified to "Evil." Same thing again for Chaotic Good and Neutral Good, albeit with these alignments frequently played in terms of their relation to Lawful Good: i.e. "good that's willing to operate outside of law/order." Hence the reduction to "Good."

My second suspicion is that WotC wanted an alignment system that more closely mirrored their meta-narrative's aesthetic. Not so much the meta-narrative itself, but the aesthetic. Again, QuietBrowser astutely mentioned the presence of the Chaoskampf motif in 4E's cosmology. The aesthetic of 4E's cosmology is mythical. It harkens to a lot of ancient myths of human civilizations (e.g. Canaanite, Assyrian, Greco-Roman, Germanic, etc.). "Order" has a positive cultural association while "Chaos" has a negative cultural association that approximate moral senses of good and evil. Good actions uphold the cosmological order, while evil actions pervert order, thereby threatening the return to chaos, lawlessness, and barbarism. Although the 4E gods are of various alignments, there is a general sense that the gods are aligned with "Order" while the Primordials/Titans are aligned with "Chaos." When you compare the ethical system in the mythical aesthetic that I mentioned with the 4E alignment system, it's not difficult to see the philosophic overlap.

In some respects, 4E's alignment probably more closely mirrors my sense of "mythic alignment" as well as how these alignments often played in-practice, so I cannot discount personal biases in my two explanations above. But as I said before, I am a fan of Law vs. Chaos. So when I see the 4E alignment system, I don't necessarily think that it reflects a cosmological "reality," but, instead, that it reflects humans (and other mortals) imposing their own moral sensibilities on the (Law/Chaos) cosmology. In other words, the 4E alignment is reflective of the normative moral/ethical perspective of the human subject.

As something of an aside, though related to being a fan of Law vs. Chaos, I feel that I am one of the relatively few people below the age of 35 who have read Moorcock's Eternal Champions. You may know others, including yourself, who have read them, but I have not met many people who are familiar with these books and much less those who have actually read them. You can just about tell someone's age when they think that a soul-sucking sword is a rip-off of Arthas the Lich King's Frostmourne in WoW and not of Elric of Melniboné's Stormbringer.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

Thank you.

I've really gotten back to running in my old, improvisational AD&D style as I've gotten used to 5e, it shows even when I run 4e. But I've run 4e for a long while now, and I still do prep for it more often than I do 5e or did AD&D, because it's just so easy to whip up an encounter or mod a monster, and it's less often wasted effort.
So I have gotten pretty good at the weird exercise of fitting less intuitive concepts to the language of powers.

I was so put out the first time I saw the Slaadi. Good gets animal-bodied high-level casters, evil gets succubi, and Chaos gets... /toads/? C'mon, toads?! Psychotically evil toads that say 'N' next to 'C' thanks to some sort of cosmic clerical error.

Guess I'm still a bit put out.

I sympathize. Building a CN outsider that isn't CE with a fig leaf has been a consistent difficulty for the game, pretty much regardless of the publisher or designer. Someday someone will find the CN equivalent to "it's a robot" that has worked out so well for LN, but it currently escapes me.

 

[Charles Rampant]

The Slaadi are really odd. The fact that they visually resemble some Demons doesn't help, either! The real problem is that, if you showed someone the alignments, and then showed them images of the various outsiders, that they might be able to place things like Modrons, Devils, Angels, and the like; but they'll have no chance with the Slaadi at all. And that is kind of a problem, since that means you have easy to spot Good, Evil, and Lawful; but Chaotic sort of just looks like Evil, if it let itself go. My best attempt at making them distinctively interesting to the players was to be very random with them - I'd roll dice to see how many appeared each round, I'd roll dice to see who they attacked, I'd roll dice to see whether they would go around battlefield hazards or just straight through, etc.

I think that the Rilmani are also really problematic, but in a different way. I thought about using one in my game recently as a kind of recurring 'curios merchant' who would pop up in different campaigns, sell the players some minor magical items while also helping the bad guys, all under the guise of 'maintaining the balance'. I thought it sounded cool. But then I thought about what the players would think of a silver-skinned guy who can use light powers, claims to love neutrality, and appeared to be playing both sides simultaneously, and came to the conclusion that it would just be confusing. Still tempted, though!

 

[Tony Vargas]

I sympathize. Building a CN outsider that isn't CE with a fig leaf has been a consistent difficulty for the game, pretty much regardless of the publisher or designer.

A shapeshifter with no 'natural form,' that otherwise has unique abilities that don't resemble those of others of its kind.

Or, y'know, CN values freedom above all else, so the outsider personification of that might be metaphysically, totally free - including being free of attributes and labels , so they simply cannot be described (in game or any other terms). ;P

Someday someone will find the CN equivalent to "it's a robot" that has worked out so well for LN, but it currently escapes me.

I never cared much for Modrons, either, too alien, though I suppose that makes a fair point about LN.

Back when I was annoyed at the Slaadi, I came up with a set of LN(E) outsiders, they had names that were palindromes, and resembled anthropomorphized ants, wolves, & lions (any animal that lives communally runs in a pack, etc - I didn't think to use fish at the time, unsurprisingly), their deal was crushing individuals and individuality and promoting tyranny. FWTW.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

A shapeshifter with no 'natural form,' that otherwise has unique abilities that don't resemble those of others of its kind.

Or, y'know, CN values freedom above all else, so the outsider personification of that might be metaphysically, totally free - including being free of attributes and labels , so they simply cannot be described (in game or any other terms). ;P

I never cared much for Modrons, either, too alien, though I suppose that makes a fair point about LN.

Back when I was annoyed at the Slaadi, I came up with a set of LN(E) outsiders, they had names that were palindromes, and resembled anthropomorphized ants, wolves, & lions (any animal that lives communally runs in a pack, etc - I didn't think to use fish at the time, unsurprisingly), their deal was crushing individuals and individuality and promoting tyranny. FWTW.

I suppose they could redo the chaos beast like the hordlings from back in the day (pick a head from list A, torso from list B, .......), and change chaos phage to be more if a humanoid fails a con save, he/she changes races (like with reincarnation)--take that biological determinism (besides I think many a powergamer would fear his/her wizard becoming a half orc more than the wizard dying via chest burster). I am all for temporary mental changes from hanging around outsiders (aura of anarchy, and few murderhoboes would get within a 100 feet of guardianals if they had an aura of charity), but it is hard to make purposely infesting people you randomly meet with a disease/parasite/curse a nonevil act.

I was thinking Inevitables for the LN robot, but modrons also fit the bill.

I like your LN(E) outsiders--if Formesians (or however you spell the ant-guys' name) landed in Archeron instead of Arcardia, that is what they would be like.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I suppose they could redo the chaos beast like the hordlings from back in the day (pick a head from list A, torso from list B, .......), and change chaos phage to be more if a humanoid fails a con save, he/she changes races (like with reincarnation)--take that biological determinism (besides I think many a powergamer would fear his/her wizard becoming a half orc more than the wizard dying via chest burster). ...but it is hard to make purposely infesting people you randomly meet with a disease/parasite/curse a nonevil act.

Heck, the Slaadi mode of reproduction is antithetical to CN ideals. Budding would be more appropriate.

I was thinking Inevitables for the LN robot, but modrons also fit the bill.
I like your LN(E) outsiders--if Formesians (or however you spell the ant-guys' name) landed in Archeron instead of Arcardia, that is what they would be like.

I forgot about the Inevitables & Formians, like 'em both better than the modrons.