Useful aspects of Alignment in D&DN

[FreeTheSlaves]

I'd like to explore the areas where alignment is most useful in a practical sense. Sure I've got my own ideas but, yeah, just want to know what other people think.

Disclaimer - I'm taking it as a given that alignment is an option that can be removed by players that don't want to use it. The point of this thread is not to advocate doing away with alignment, rather the point is to list areas of most usefulness to you.

Anyhoo, here's my list:
1) It is a short-hand tool for the DM to describe the broad values of an NPC.
2) Likewise, it is a short-hand tool players use to signal to the DM how they want to play their characters. The DM can take this into consideration as they plan adventures.
3) The player has written down confirmation of their character's standing.
4) It sets the scene for Spells and effects to interact with aligned PC/NPCs in appropriate ways.

Over to you

EDIT - actually I think it's reasonable to also point out areas where alignment shouldn't go. Personally I wouldn't want to see XP penalties.

 

[Yora]

This is all completely right.

Problems with alignment appear in three cases:
- When players have to keep their characters actions within the limits of specific alignments to avoid penalties. (Since that means actually defining specific actions as being tied to alignments.)
- When characters can objectively measure the alignment of other characters and creatures. (Since it creates a mindset in which Good and Evil equal Right and Wrong.)
- When the game takes place in a setting that does not have cosmic forces of Good and Evil.

In the last case, the good and useful aspects of alignment can also be achieved with Allegiances, while avoiding all of the problems. However, allegiances are very closely tied to the specifics of the settings and don't work well in generic contexts.

 

[hafrogman]

I'd agree with everything except point 4. To me, alignment is at it's best when it's not at all mechanical*. The two-axis alignment system serves as a great introduction to the idea of roleplaying. Once someone is more familiar with the idea of developing and maintaining an independent personality, it can fade into the background. But it's a great starting point for suggesting a moral framework for the character.

I think, in terms of mechanical effects, positive and negative energy / holy and unholy are better basis for mechanics, divorced from alignment.

Devils are evil because they are cruel and malicious.
Devils are repelled by certain spells because they are supernatural creatures who react to a specific energy type.

A magic circle against evil might keep out a vampire or a devil, but it won't stop the selfish jerk from next door.



* One place I would accept a mechanical aspect to alignment would be the Helm of [-]Radical Personality Shift[/-] Opposite alignment, where once again it serves as a good tool for roleplaying, giving a player a new basis to build their character's new personality off of.

 

[Yora]

Point 4 does work. In certain types of setting.
Which were quite popular some time ago, but almost nonexistant in current fantasy. It works when monsters are manifestations of a cosmic evil that poisons and currupts mortals, and when the purity of divine beings harms and annihilates them and causes pain to those people in league with them. Lord of the Rings is like that implicitly. Everything involving holy water works like that implicitly.

(My theory is, that this worked well previous to and during the cold war, where people were used to see the world as "us vs. them". In the last 20 years, we've become used to see "them" as people like us, but with different oppinions, with people who still think in the old categories being portrayed as closed minded, fanatics, or racist. In modern fiction, conflicts are conflicts of perspective, not conflicts of nature, making the contrast of purity and corruption unsuitable for games influenced by more recent fiction and the way younger people see the world.
Good vs. Evil can be made to work, but it is now a special case, not the default.)

 

[Raith5]

1) It is a short-hand tool for the DM to describe the broad values of an NPC.
2) Likewise, it is a short-hand tool players use to signal to the DM how they want to play their characters. The DM can take this into consideration as they plan adventures.
3) The player has written down confirmation of their character's standing.
4) It sets the scene for Spells and effects to interact with aligned PC/NPCs in appropriate ways.

1 Agree

2 I dont agree with this. Rather than 'signal', the player should actually roleplay that disposition. Does the player act to kill a helpless hobgoblin prisoner and what reason do they give for their action? I dont think alignment is a particularly interesting roleplaying tool precisely because a good PC could foresably give a reason to kill said hobgoblin (in the name of justice or prevent future attacks from the critter) or a reason not to kill the hobgoblin (mercy etc). I rather see the despition in the context of moral dilemmas in play rather than on the character sheet.

3 I am not sure alignment can capture standing. The 3rd ed allegiance system can though because it mixes metaphysical, religious creeds and political commitments of the PC. I think alignment only does metaphysical stuff so misses more subtle questions of the PCs standing with respect to real world organisations etc.

4 I like the idea that a PC can take on the commitment to a cause that gives mechanical benefits, powers or effects - but I dont think alignment should be the basis for that.

 

[howandwhy99]

I agree with 3 & 4 and made a few others up of my own:

Alignment defines how NPCs behave in every situation.
It is a matrix for for tracking both NPCs and PCs shifts in alignment.
Current Alignment gives bonuses and penalties to Morale and Loyalty.
Alignment defines the cultural design of every monster.
Everything in the game world has an Alignment and how they interact together may in part be due to alignment as well.

 

[pemerton]

1) It is a short-hand tool for the DM to describe the broad values of an NPC.
2) Likewise, it is a short-hand tool players use to signal to the DM how they want to play their characters. The DM can take this into consideration as they plan adventures.
3) The player has written down confirmation of their character's standing.
4) It sets the scene for Spells and effects to interact with aligned PC/NPCs in appropriate ways.

I'm very opposed to mechanical alignment. I think it is one of the major causes of D&D's reputation for fostering antagonistic play.

Insofar as (4) is a remnant of mechanical alignment, I'm not interested. Apart from anything else, it makes tracking alignment matter - which then makes it something over which player and GM may disagree - which then has the potential to lead to needless antagonism.

I think alignment makes no sense as anything but a metagame label. It should not be part of the gameworld. In the real world, it makes no sense for beings or entities to conceive of themselves as "evil". Leaving aside ironic usages, such as Milton's Satan's "Evil, be thou my good", people don't describe themselves as evil. They have stories to tell themselves about how what they do is reasonable, or necessary, or excusable, or otherwise permissible given the circumstances in which they do it. Gygax's description in his PHB and DMG of people who actively pursue suffering and woe is a description of severely aberrant personalities, which doesn't capture the disagreement in actual real world moral and political disputes.

Turning to alignment as a metagame label:

(2) and (3) still don't do much for me. Just tell the GM. Write a background. State some religious or political allegiances. And most importantly, play the character!

(1) is harmless enough. In 4e, for example, "Chaotic evil" means something like "relishes destruction, wants to reduce the world to primordial chaos". "Evil" means "selfish and nasty, domineering, etc". And unaligned, good, and lawful good are various modes of being a reasonable and decent person.

Rolemaster does the same sort of thing with a dozen or so Outlook labels.

 

[Stormonu]

I'd like to see alignment replaced with a d20-modern-like allegiance system.

Although I had been pondering if alignment could give some sort of benefit like backgrounds and themes, though I haven't been able to properly brainstorm any sort of benefit.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

I'd agree with everything except point 4. To me, alignment is at it's best when it's not at all mechanical*

...

I think, in terms of mechanical effects, positive and negative energy / holy and unholy are better basis for mechanics, divorced from alignment.

...

* One place I would accept a mechanical aspect to alignment would be the Helm of [-]Radical Personality Shift[/-] Opposite alignment, where once again it serves as a good tool for roleplaying, giving a player a new basis to build their character's new personality off of.

Yeah I agree that not all mechanics that included alignment had necessarily benefited from it. I can also think of:
- Devil/Demon DR - a skirmish in the blood war would last forever when the fiendish footsoldiers can't hurt each other.
- Dictum/Holy Word etc... where it made only sense to be Neutral when these started to be flung around.

Divorcing say Holy/Anarchic etc.. from alignment makes sense for half the games that don't use alignment. Thing is, without an interaction with alignment what does the holy sword mean? Is it just one of the counterparts to the flaming sword, or a means to beat some specific type of damage reduction? In what sense is it holy and what does that mean?

 

[Zireael]

I agree that alignment is useful for 1,2,3. And point 4 is also a good point, while keeping the D&D Next idea of it working only on outsiders, non-native creatures or ones strongly tied to magic. Point 4 also applies to things such as holy weapons, holy water etc.

However, 1-3 could also be achieved with, say Allegiances, or something else entirely.

Alignment does do its job in these fields.

Alignment, however, doesn't belong in:
- limiting a character's actions (ethos, code of conduct etc.)
- limiting XP a character earns
- allowing characters to know the exact alignment of another character so easily using magic