They Killed Alignment

[Gloombunny]

Anyway, the new system just seems illogical to me--if you're going to acknowledge that preferences for Law and Chaos can flavor preferences for Good and Evil, you can't just arbitrarily say that Lawful can only be Good, and Chaotic only Evil. Well, you *can*...but IMO, you shouldn't.

They didn't say that. They just felt that the difference between lawful good and other kinds of good is more clear and significant than the difference between neutral good and chaotic good. And so forth for chaotic evil and other evil. I tend to agree, insofar as I spend any time thinking about alignment. (But really I'm just happy that my group can keep ignoring alignment but now not even have to ignore certain spells or powers to do so.)

 

[Victoly]

It's also incredibly easy to houserule if you don't happen to like it.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

LG NG CG
LN TN CN
LE NE CE

Old system

LG G- --
-- U- --
-- E- CE

New system.

I find the new one much crappier then the old. They didn't add or change anything, they just ripped out a few blocks.

That said, as others have stated, with it divorced from the mechanics, you can just say "SCREW YOU" and add those blocks right back in.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

I actually kind of enjoy it. It feels like a nod back at BECMI's Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic system.

Law/Neutral/Chaos makes sense and, like you say, harkens back to the tradition OD&D inherited from Anderson and Moorcock. A five-alignment system - lawful good, chaotic good, lawful evil, chaotic evil, and neutral - was also used in some early iterations of D&D; it makes sense and sets up clear-cut dramatic conflicts. 4e alignment generates mush like this:

By the standards of good and lawful good people, chaotic evil is as abhorrent as evil, perhaps even more so. Chaotic evil monsters such as demons and orcs are at least as much of a threat to civilization and general well-being as evil monsters are.

That's weak, dude.

 

[Harr]

Funnily enough, years ago when we were making up characters, one of my players smirks at his sheet and goes " 'Alignment', huh, are we really ever gonna use this for anything??" I go "Not really nope", he says "so cross it out?" I go "yep". So ends the story of my problems with alignment Mearls should have done the same thing in 4e is MHO. But oh well.

 

[Saitou]

Since they divorced Alignement from the Rules, it's all a matter of opinion and taste. It will not impact the game, only how you play it.

However, I do wish they had made the distinction between being simply Unaligned and being Neutral. This is touched upon in the description, but I feel that another category would have been better. Thankfully, this is easily solved.

 

[AntiPaladin]

Since alignment doesn't have any impact whatsoever on the game mechanics, I couldn't care less what happens to the system. Go ahead and choose Good alignment and try to be chaotic, fine. Odds are the most players won't notice or remember anyway.

As long as the rules don't say things like "antithetical axiomatic damage" anymore I'm fine with it, great change.

 

[Family]

I'm glad that the cosmology isn't tied to it anymore.

 

[Blackeagle]

I would have much rather them use the DDM alignments (LG, CG, LE, CE) along with unaligned than the ones they went with.

Didn't DDM just kill alignments too?

 

[Family]

All I know is that we need a whole new batch of those motivational posters for 4e. Alignment or otherwise, a lot has changed, and we have a duty to mock it.