Rule of Three: 20/3/12

[Fanaelialae]

I believe this is the best compromise. You then have the alignment 'compass' only without the vagueness of neutrality:

Chaotic Good | Good | Lawful Good
Chaotic | Unaligned | Lawful
Chaotic Evil | Evil | Lawful Evil​

I disagree. I think True Neutral definitely has a place in the alignment system. The figure who acts to maintain balance between other powers is a good example of this.

I see Unaligned as more of a way to opt out of the alignment system. More or less, "I choose to not dedicate myself to the cause of a moral philosophy". Traditionally, that fell under the purview of True Neutral, but I think TN serves better to represent keepers of the balance.

Unaligned would be more like, "You crazy aligned guys do whatever you're gonna do, just leave me out of it". It's effectively self-interested, but not to the point of evil. An unaligned person isn't likely to screw someone else over to get what they want, but they also aren't going to run into a burning orphanage, or act to preserve the cosmic balance without a good reason to do so. They're unaligned.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

The answer to question number one pretty much confirms what I was guessing at. A couple weeks ago, I took the time to jot down some ideas on how to build a system where attack bonuses and defenses didn't go up per level.

I don't have it handy, but the idea would be that bonuses to hit and defense would still exist so you could make harder or easier monsters and to give the PCs some reason to take a feat or a class ability. For instance, all fighters might get +1 to hit. Making them immediately better at fighting than all other classes. Particularly nasty monsters might have +3 or +4 to hit.

Of course, IMHO, for this to work correctly you need to decouple bonuses to hit from stats as well.

This allows you to, as the Ro3 says, use monsters who are level 1 who do 1d8 points of damage with a 50% chance to hit against level 8 PCs with 8d8 hitpoints and know that it would take 16 of them 1 round on average to take down 1 PC. But likely the PCs have combat maneuvers to dodge one attack or parry one attack which will enable them to survive slightly longer with skill instead of AC bonuses.

This also allows you to differentiate between the classes. Fighters are allowed to wear plate so they have an AC of 16(for example), meaning most monsters only hit them 25% of the time. But Wizards get hit 55% of the time.

 

[erf_beto]

Most people I played with ended up with Chaotic Good because of the lack of an explicit Unaligned... alignment. They want to be good (as all heroes are), or at least not evil (less problem with authorities), but not abide to the laws of some crazy tyrant overlord. And some players chose True Neutral because they thought it meant just that.

 

[Hassassin]

Unaligned would be more like, "You crazy aligned guys do whatever you're gonna do, just leave me out of it". It's effectively self-interested, but not to the point of evil. An unaligned person isn't likely to screw someone else over to get what they want, but they also aren't going to run into a burning orphanage, or act to preserve the cosmic balance without a good reason to do so. They're unaligned.

Individualistic. Self-interested, but not to the point of evil. Sounds like Chaotic Neutral.

 

[am181d]

I disagree. I think True Neutral definitely has a place in the alignment system. The figure who acts to maintain balance between other powers is a good example of this.

Beh. I've never found this convincing. If you're actively interesting in balancing the system, that suggests your lawful (i.e. you're concerned with order). It's not contradictory for someone who's lawful to want to control but not eliminate chaos. In fact, that kind of weird logic is what make lawfulness lawfulness.

(If you find that unconvincing, consider that evil merchants don't want to kill good customers, they want to exploit their goodness.)

I don't think I've ever seen a character in a game that's come across as convincingly True Neutral. Every other character class, you can describe a personality that fits that alignment. With True Neutral, it always feels like you're just trying to emulate the description in the PHB.

Also, bears in previous editions were True Neutral, and they are NOT interested in maintaining a balance between good and evil.

For these reasons, I endorse replacing True Neutral with Unaligned. (Or, at minimum, changing it to True Neutral/Unaligned.)

 

[Dausuul]

I disagree. I think True Neutral definitely has a place in the alignment system. The figure who acts to maintain balance between other powers is a good example of this.

Mm. To me, this gets at the core disconnect within the alignment system: Is it about how you behave, or is it about what you believe?

If the former, then True Neutral and Unaligned are the same thing. You sometimes do good things and sometimes evil things, sometimes lawful and sometimes chaotic. You can have an elaborate philosophical justification for this, or not, but the result is the same either way.

If the latter, then there is a meaningful distinction between True Neutral and Unaligned, but it also implies a hard look at some of the ways in which alignment has traditionally been used. If you believe in the ideals of Good, but constantly fall short, you'd still qualify as Good. If you support a Lawful society, it doesn't matter if you yourself are an untrustworthy rogue. Myself, I like this approach, but it doesn't quite square with what we're used to.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

If the latter, then there is a meaningful distinction between True Neutral and Unaligned, but it also implies a hard look at some of the ways in which alignment has traditionally been used. If you believe in the ideals of Good, but constantly fall short, you'd still qualify as Good. If you support a Lawful society, it doesn't matter if you yourself are an untrustworthy rogue. Myself, I like this approach, but it doesn't quite square with what we're used to.

This has been my preference, too, when using alignment. I've thought before that the alignment system could be more flexible if built this way, but that doing so would make it a bit too abstract for some fans that like it a little more cut and dried. Perhaps in 5E, with the emphasis on modular, they could move to the abstract approach necessary to make both readily useful within the rules:

"Alignment" is exactly what it says it is on the label--an alignment with some recognizable entity, group, power, philosophy, etc. that is strong enough to register in certain mechanics. However, what this means is defined in each alignment (or set of alignments) separately. Then you build a few separate sets for examples, and encourage these to change by campaign or preference.

You can have the 3x3 grid of Law, Chaos, Good, and Evil. Or you can have the Basic Law, Neutral, Chaos. Or the 4E model of five slots on a scale. In each of these, what it means to be aligned with one is defined in that example. That is, "Lawful Good" is going to mean something fairly close to the same thing in the 3x3 and the 4E model, but not exactly. Then you also have campaign models where it is more or less strict, i.e. when the mechanics kick in.

However, with this one level of indirection, you can also have things such as society class alignments: Nobles, Merchants, Peasants, Clergy, Outlaws. Or you can align with pantheons or factions within pantheons. You could align on geographical, racial, or political issues. In each case, the mechanics would be somewhat different. Detect peasant alignment doesn't quite have the right ring.

With the right sets, you can even mix multiple sets. If the gods really care about deep questions of good and evil, law and chaos, but the earthly authorities do not--only about trouble, you might have one character aligned as Neutral Good Merchants -- and thus in heavy conflict with the Neutral Good Clergy character.

As far as I'm concerned, if alignments don't fuel interesting conflicts in the game, then they aren't much use. But the interesting conflicts that our group wants in a particular campaign are not necessarily the same as last campaign.

 

[whydirt]

Again, I'm open to any and all alignment systems being included, but please don't make them part of the core game. Bring them in as one of the modules so people can decide how much they want alignment to matter in their games. Heck, you could even tailor alignment mechanics to each setting.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Individualistic. Self-interested, but not to the point of evil. Sounds like Chaotic Neutral.

No, Chaotic Neutral is someone who follows a philosophy that upholds chaos (whether consciously or not). They don't respect authority figures, for one.

An unaligned character, on the other hand, doesn't care about chaos. They're perfectly willing to offer authority figures respect, under reasonable circumstances.

Beh. I've never found this convincing. If you're actively interesting in balancing the system, that suggests your lawful (i.e. you're concerned with order). It's not contradictory for someone who's lawful to want to control but not eliminate chaos. In fact, that kind of weird logic is what make lawfulness lawfulness.

(If you find that unconvincing, consider that evil merchants don't want to kill good customers, they want to exploit their goodness.)

I don't think I've ever seen a character in a game that's come across as convincingly True Neutral. Every other character class, you can describe a personality that fits that alignment. With True Neutral, it always feels like you're just trying to emulate the description in the PHB.

Also, bears in previous editions were True Neutral, and they are NOT interested in maintaining a balance between good and evil.

For these reasons, I endorse replacing True Neutral with Unaligned. (Or, at minimum, changing it to True Neutral/Unaligned.)

I see Lawfulness as being dedicated to the cause of Order. As such, I don't think a Lawful character would seek to balance order and chaos, but rather stamp out chaos. He might be a realist, and understand that that's impossible, but that wouldn't stop him from trying any more than a good character would stop running into a burning orphanage simply because he realizes he can't save all of the children inside.

Admittedly, running a TN PC would be very difficult. It's more an NPC alignment. But there are NPCs suited to that alignment. I can't think of an example at the moment, but literature is rife with figures who only act to maintain balance between factions (usually good and evil).

As for bears being TN in past editions, that has no bearing (pun intended) on DDN. Unaligned didn't exist at that time, so the concept of TN was bodged into the TN definition. People who maintain the balance, and people who just don't care. That doesn't mean that we can't introduce distinction, by making TN keepers of the balance, and unaligned those who don't care.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Heck, when it comes to "exploding minons" and the like, simply have a power listed that causes them to explode (or whatever) if killed in one hit. That puts an interesting limitation on overly powerful attacks.

I was thinking similarly with mob tactics. Give the basic goblin bonuses in a mob. When you meet three goblins at 1st level they don't gain much from their ability. When you meet 20 at 10th level their ability really kicks in.

And add leader abilities to the leaders, such that when they have few followers at low level they get very little use of their ability. But when they lead a tribe at higher levels their ability shines.

Unaligned would be more like, "You crazy aligned guys do whatever you're gonna do, just leave me out of it".

Or unaligned could just as easily be, "I refuse to align myself with law or chaos, good or evil, I care naught but for the balance."