D&D 4E My Special Rules for Nine Alignments in 4E

[Reydragk]

I've always been a fan of alignments as a way to guide roleplaying, but not as a mechanical aspect of the game. I like that 4e removes alignment from game mechanics, and I I like the idea of a separate alignment for "neutral" in the sense of balance between forces, and "neutral" in the sense of "I don't really care one way or the other". I don't like that 4e has the weird sliding scale it has now. I feel like it should have either ditched alignments completely, or kept the full matrix, possibly with the addition of unaligned as a 10th alignment.

In my home game, I use the proposed 10-alignment system;
Lawful Evil, Evil, Chaotic Evil
Lawful, Neutral, Unaligned, Chaotic
Lawful Good, Good, and Chaotic Good

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

My question was a bit trolly but I really would like people to think about why they like alignments. I suspect that when it comes down to it many are in favor of them because it is what they're used to.

You inspired me to blog about this. I took the title from your post, but the first paragraph is a reference to the more rabid align-haters I've seen.

You're much cooler than they are.

 

[Camelot]

I regard alignment as a consequence of your actions, not the other way around. Instead of, "I'm Lawful Good, so I can't kill the orcs in cold blood," it would be, "I killed the orcs in cold blood, so I'm Unaligned, or Good (but the end justifies the means), or Evil..."

Having an alignment from the beginning of the game is just a way to describe your character's actions in his or her backstory up until the point that the story begins.

 

[Kannon]

Alignment is good shorthand (I'm running my current 4e game with the 9 alignments from old-school D&D), but alignment is always more of a guide or general indication of how the character would act than anything else. Which means it changes if the character does. (So far we've had a nominally lawful good cleric shifted to neutral good due to campaign events.)

Then again, I never required paladins to be lawful stu---, er, lawful good, either. In 3.5 my group had a houserule that paladins had to stick within a step of their diety's alignment. It worked quite well, and led to a hilarious mid-battle debate between the party's chaotic good paladin and the lawful evil paladin they were beating down.

 

[TerraDave]

From what the designers said early on, it seemed to go like this:

chaotic neutral is a pain, and gives charecters a reason to "act out", so lets ditch it.

now, why stop there. What is the difference between ng and cg (especially without cn)? not enough, so lets merge. But we still have all these lawful alingments, ok, lets cut those....don't worry, unaligned covers all the gaps.

I am on the bandwagon of liking unaligned and no (or very few) mechanics linked to alignment, but don't think there was a real problem the 5 point alignment system solved. I can certainly think of not evil chaotic charecters and lawful not good charecters.

One approach I thought of was: unaligned, good, evil, chaotic, lawful, lawful good, chaotic evil. Another: just have the first five, and allow two to be picked.

In my current game, which has things (like gods) linked to the chaos, law, good, and evil, I basically interpret law=lawful good and chaos is the piloshopy of unalignment (sort of like a merger of cn and balancy n)

 

[Reydragk]

I don't like ANY implication that chaos and evil are tied, or that law and good are tied. Chaotic Evil shouldn't exist if Chaotic Good doesn't.

Robin Hood is a great example of a chaotic good hero, and any sort of evil Empire, or evil Secret Organization will have Lawful Evil elements. They're classic fantasy tropes.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

My question was a bit trolly but I really would like people to think about why they like alignments. I suspect that when it comes down to it many are in favor of them because it is what they're used to.

I don't doubt that's true in many cases, but I think you're not giving a lot of us enough credit. Alignment was something a lot of us took to way back when for a reason - it was, as others have said, a really good shorthand way to define the basic personality of a character or monster. D&D has never been, and is not now, about deep exploration of the shades of gray in a being's personality. It's about heroes vs. monsters. There are plenty of games without alignment, and when I want to play something without alignment, I play one of those other games.

Alignment was something that helped define what D&D was all about, as much as dungeons and dragons and magic and the adventuring party all helped define it. Why take alignment away, or pare it down, so the game becomes like any other game? Again, it strikes me as change simply for the sake of change, like what I said about comics above. Yeah, Superman having a big "S" on his chest doesn't technically add anything to the story, except it helps define him in the minds of millions.

 

[Fox Lee]

I'm guessing they did it because people had constantly had giant, essay-sized fights about what consituted Law or Chaos (probably because WotC's own descriptions conflicted at various points). And, yes, probably to discourage Chaotic Neutral, which was always a notorious excuse for a player to act like an ass >.<;

Do I think that was a good idea? Nah. In fact, I still find myself writing "Chaotic Good" a lot of the time, because "Chaotic" still feels like an important thing to make a point of for many of my characters. And I really miss Lawful Neutral, which was a compelling alignment for antagonists who weren't necessarily Villains(tm). I also think the law/chaos axis made for more interesting deities (at least in homebrew... the default ones are pretty naff).

OTOH, I come from a solidly established group where we see eye-to-eye about the more vague areas of alignment. For a new group, or one with fluctuating memebers, it's probably not so easy.

 

[marli]

I see seven alignments
its laid out like an two triangles with the tips pionting
123
\V/
/^\
456

1. Ordered Good. = you see good Delivered though Order and organisation.
2.Good= You believe in good but think a mix of freedoms and laws should deliver best.
3. Anacistic Good = You see good can only be delivered if there is no opression

being a scale PCs fit on it somwhere.

then there is the evil scale
4. Opressive Evil. Only through Opression can dictators bring victory.
5. Evil. Evil need a mix of Iron fist and Randon distruction to be effective.
6. Chaotic Evil. True suffering is only brought about if Greed and distruction runs riot.

Bad guys go on this scale.

as your belief in good or evil wanes your idealogy about how to empliment such beliefs becomes less important.
so neutral simply means the NPCs dont have an opinion...for now.
then there the Unaligned
you dont believe in good or evil so you really dont have an ideal.

 

[phloog]

Sorry to raise a dead thread, but I've just started looking at 4e and the alignment thing annoyed be, then I saw some of the posted rationales and discussions, and one of my old pain points came up.

What don't people get about Chaotic Neutral that it's "a pain" or an excuse to act like a buffoon any more than a CE character in a group?

To me it's the leap that makes no sense (oversimplifying here):

Chaotic Good - - Individual Freedom trumps Law/Government, and Life is sacred and to be preserved

Chaotic Evil - - Individual Freedom trumps Law/Government, and killing is fine and dandy

Chaotic Neutral - - you are insane...

Why shouldn't CN be interpreted as favoring the individual and his/her freedom above even life itself and its preservation?

Isn't the issue with CN just that a few (lots of) players just bought into the bad descriptions?

Having said that, the new five alignments are horrible choices to me not because I'm an old-timer, but because of the implication...to be "REALLY" good you must be lawful, which then leads to weird situations - - what if the government seems to be wrong? Whose law rules?

And I guess the biggest annoyance to me is not just that I've played Chaotic Neutral characters who got along just fine in any group, but that my current character is Lawful EVIL, and is getting along fine in a group of goods...because he's lawful evil, not stupid. He's the most law abiding PC ever...no longer possible I guess.

It LOOKS like most abilities aren't keyed to alignment, so unless someone can point to how this breaks something, I'm going to use all 9 IF I ever play 4e.