D&D 5E WotC's Jeremy Crawford Talks D&D Alignment Changes

Jeremy Crawford has spoken about changes to the way alignment will be referred to in future D&D books. It starts with a reminder that no rule in D&D dictates your alignment.

Data from D&D Beyond in June 2019​

(Note that in the transcript below, the questions in quotes were his own words but presumably refer to questions he's seen asked previously).

Friendly reminder: no rule in D&D mandates your character's alignment, and no class is restricted to certain alignments. You determine your character's moral compass. I see discussions that refer to such rules, yet they don't exist in 5th edition D&D.

Your character's alignment in D&D doesn't prescribe their behavior. Alignment describes inclinations. It's a roleplaying tool, like flaws, bonds, and ideals. If any of those tools don't serve your group's bliss, don't use them. The game's system doesn't rely on those tools.

D&D has general rules and exceptions to those rules. For example, you choose whatever alignment you want for your character at creation (general rule). There are a few magic items and other transformative effects that might affect a character's alignment (exceptions).

Want a benevolent green dragon in your D&D campaign or a sweet werewolf candlemaker? Do it. The rule in the Monster Manual is that the DM determines a monster's alignment. The DM plays that monster. The DM decides who that monster is in play.

Regarding a D&D monster's alignment, here's the general rule from the Monster Manual: "The alignment specified in a monster's stat block is the default. Feel free to depart from it and change a monster's alignment to suit the needs of your campaign."

"What about the Oathbreaker? It says you have to be evil." The Oathbreaker is a paladin subclass (not a class) designed for NPCs. If your DM lets you use it, you're already being experimental, so if you want to play a kindhearted Oathbreaker, follow your bliss!

"Why are player characters punished for changing their alignment?" There is no general system in 5th-edition D&D for changing your alignment and there are no punishments or rewards in the core rules for changing it. You can just change it. Older editions had such rules.

Even though the rules of 5th-edition D&D state that players and DMs determine alignment, the suggested alignments in our books have undeniably caused confusion. That's why future books will ditch such suggestions for player characters and reframe such things for the DM.

"What about the werewolf's curse of lycanthropy? It makes you evil like the werewolf." The DM determines the alignment of the werewolf. For example, the werewolf you face might be a sweetheart. The alignment in a stat block is a suggestion to the DM, nothing more.

"What about demons, devils, and angels in D&D? Their alignments can't change." They can change. The default story makes the mythological assumptions we expect, but the Monster Manual tells the DM to change any monster's alignment without hesitation to serve the campaign.

"You've reminded us that alignment is a suggestion. Does that mean you're not changing anything about D&D peoples after all?" We are working to remove racist tropes from D&D. Alignment is only one part of that work, and alignment will be treated differently in the future.

"Why are you telling us to ignore the alignment rules in D&D?" I'm not. I'm sharing what the alignment rules have been in the Player's Handbook & Monster Manual since 2014. We know that those rules are insufficient and have changes coming in future products.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I think alignment should stay in the game. Not everyone will use it, of course, but it should be there for those who want it in their games and it's easier to axe it than add it.

Really? I think it is relatively easy to add it back into the game.

"There are two continuums, one between Law and Chaos. One Between Good and Evil. Which one of theses Nine Positions describes your character"

Done.

Same here. I may create background/personality and so on if I think an NPC or monster is going to be important to the campaign.

But 95% or more of the them? LE or CE is enough and gives me a decent handle on general behavior, trustworthiness and so on. Same way that I don't want factions - because my factions aren't going to be the same factions as anyone else's game.

Nope. But for people that haven't played the game for decades like I have, the game letting them know the difference between the evils of Demons, Devils and Yugoloths in a quick and easy manner is very helpful. As is the types of good., evil and neutral of the multitudes of more obscure monsters like Aboleths, Banderhobbs, Grimlocks, etc. I find alignment invaluable from the DM side of things. I don't have the time or inclination to create personalities and behaviors for every monster I run, and I don't really want to have to memorize the different reasons that a monster is CE, NE or whatever for all of the monsters that I use.

See, sometimes though this stuff hurts more than it helps. Take Yugoloths. Man, I hate Yugoloths.

Demons? They want to destroy everything
Devils? They want to rule everything

Yugololths are mercenaries? But they aren't lawful so they won't always follow their contracts, but they will if you pay them enough gold, and they are immortal beings that care about gold because... well they are mercenaries and the really only care about profit, but not in the way Mammon is the Lord of Greed, see, its different because he is Lawful and they aren't?

It is just a jumbled mess as far as I have ever been able to tell.

And Banderhobs are equally weird come to think of it. Aren't they Neutral Evil? But their entire schtick is that they are dark servants, in fact it even says "A banderhob fulfills its duties until its existence ends." All they do is follow orders. That sounds.... lawful to me?

I mean, "an evil servant formed from shadows and flesh to carry out it's masters orders" tells me a lot more about who this thing works than "Neutral Evil". Same with an Aboleths "Psychic Fish worshipped as a God" tells me a whole lot about this thing and how it works than looking at "Lawful Evil"

 

[R_Chance]

Really? I think it is relatively easy to add it back into the game.

"There are two continuums, one between Law and Chaos. One Between Good and Evil. Which one of theses Nine Positions describes your character"

Done.

Hmmm... at a wild guess you want it out right If it's that easy to add in / remove and it has some use in the game (to some) why bother to remove it? It has a function in the game as a general descriptor of behavior, you just don't like it. You want to... describe the motivations of every being / group / and NPC individually? I hope you are young

See, sometimes though this stuff hurts more than it helps. Take Yugoloths. Man, I hate Yugoloths.

Demons? They want to destroy everything
Devils? They want to rule everything

Yugololths are mercenaries? But they aren't lawful so they won't always follow their contracts, but they will if you pay them enough gold, and they are immortal beings that care about gold because... well they are mercenaries and the really only care about profit, but not in the way Mammon is the Lord of Greed, see, its different because he is Lawful and they aren't?

It is just a jumbled mess as far as I have ever been able to tell.

And Banderhobs are equally weird come to think of it. Aren't they Neutral Evil? But their entire schtick is that they are dark servants, in fact it even says "A banderhob fulfills its duties until its existence ends." All they do is follow orders. That sounds.... lawful to me?

I mean, "an evil servant formed from shadows and flesh to carry out it's masters orders" tells me a lot more about who this thing works than "Neutral Evil". Same with an Aboleths "Psychic Fish worshipped as a God" tells me a whole lot about this thing and how it works than looking at "Lawful Evil"

And you found a couple of problematic descriptions. Time to eliminate the whole thing. And replace it with brief descriptions that are... problematic.

Mammon uses greed as a tool to lure people and well, Yugoloths are just in it for the money. Maybe they were... already damned and their greed is just part of that? So selfish evil for its own sake is NE. And a Devil's using mortals greed to lure them into sin and damnation is LE. Damn.

So, Banderhobs are LE, not NE judging by behavior. My guess is that they were made "NE" so any evil character could use them. As it is, if they were LE, I think they could still be used by any evil character.

Aboleths are worshipped as gods... what kind of gods, by who, are they nice or not? Sure you can fill in all that, but then your brief description isn't brief. Tag them with an alignment add some bits about "worshipped by" and their goals and you get to the same place. The alignment is a short, concise, descriptor that you can build on. Eliminating it doesn't change anything except probably requiring yet more description to pin down what they do, how they do it, and who they are.

The reason a lot of the alignment system is a "jumbled mess" is because it has been developed and altered for decades. The nine point scheme was developed to make it more nuanced than the original 3 point scheme (or the 6 point one suggested after that in Dragon magazine iirc). Sure it has issues, probably more of them because they haven't spent much time thinking about it for a couple of editions. But it's not rocket science and could be tidied up fairly easily. I'd say that's a good idea, because the potential replacement is going to be more complex, require more time and be just as problematic.

I don't see the point in eliminating it, but then that's all imho.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Demons? They want to destroy everything
Devils? They want to rule everything

Yugololths are mercenaries? But they aren't lawful so they won't always follow their contracts, but they will if you pay them enough gold, and they are immortal beings that care about gold because... well they are mercenaries and the really only care about profit, but not in the way Mammon is the Lord of Greed, see, its different because he is Lawful and they aren't?

Mammon's endgame, like all devils, is bringing the multiverse under the orderly dominion of the Nine Hells.

Yugoloths. Do. Not. Care. They don't care who wins the Blood War, they don't care whether law or chaos triumphs, they don't care about destroying everything, they don't care about ruling everything. They are the evil of utter selfish apathy.

Seems straightforward enough to me.

 

[Staffan]

Take Yugoloths. Man, I hate Yugoloths.

Demons? They want to destroy everything
Devils? They want to rule everything

Yugololths are mercenaries? But they aren't lawful so they won't always follow their contracts, but they will if you pay them enough gold, and they are immortal beings that care about gold because... well they are mercenaries and the really only care about profit, but not in the way Mammon is the Lord of Greed, see, its different because he is Lawful and they aren't?

It is just a jumbled mess as far as I have ever been able to tell.

The problem with Yugoloths/Daemons is that they're a result of Gygax's (and possibly other early designers') obsession with ticking checkboxes.

So, the original MM had a whole hierarchy of Lawful Evil devils, and another hierarchy of Chaotic Evil demons? Well, that's not enough – we clearly need to fill in those gaps with Neutral Evil daemons (ignoring that that's just an alternate spelling of demon). And hey, let's put in a set of Chaotic/Neutral Evil things too and call them demodands. And Chaotic Neutral frog-abominations, and Lawful Neutral geometric shapes, and so on. And of course we need to later expand it to the Upper Planes as well, and introduce any-good angels, Lawful Good archons, Neutral Good guardinals, and Chaotic Good eladrin, each with their own hierarchy. And in the process, these hierarchies dominate any description or discussion of the planes in question, leaving more singular creatures like hollyphants and night hags as an afterthought.

Heck, the whole Great Wheel structure is an extremely Lawful way of looking at the multiverse. That's probably why I dislike it so much in favor of more flexible planar arrangements.

 

[Voadam]

Demons? They want to destroy everything
Devils? They want to rule everything

Yugololths are mercenaries?

That's one way of looking at it. At various points in D&D history the lore has varied. Sometimes they both want souls to be driven to their particular alignment so the souls end up as raw material in the afterlife. Often it is unexplained.

Sometimes Devils are the incarnation of Sins. Sometimes they want to contract souls to them. Sometimes they are just cogs in the infernal army run by the archdevils. In 4e they are people looking corruptors so succubi were devils there (the classification/characterization system broke down quickly considering common types like bone devils or pit fiends). Are they elementals of LE?

Daemons have been mercenaries in 2e, nihilists in Pathfinder, exemplars of and feeders on sins as well as mercenaries in the Book of Fiends, and in 2e at the higher levels they are the architects of all the evils.

What do Demodands/Ghereleths stand for? Hoardlings? Pathfinder makes a little effort to define these types of things but they have come up with tons of evil outsider groups including Devas, Oni, Kytons, and so on.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Hmmm... at a wild guess you want it out right If it's that easy to add in / remove and it has some use in the game (to some) why bother to remove it? It has a function in the game as a general descriptor of behavior, you just don't like it. You want to... describe the motivations of every being / group / and NPC individually? I hope you are young

Yeah, I've wanted it out and taken it out for years. It offers me nothing of value. Especially on the Law and Chaos axis.

And, I'd want to challenge you that they function as general descriptors. If they did then I could take five Chaotic Evil creatures and their behavior would be relatively similar, right?

Red Dragon
Gnoll
Cloaker
Chasme Demon
Will-O-Wisp

Think about the personality, tactics, goals, ect of these creatures. Are they really similar at all? We've got a Cruel Tyrant, a bloodthirsty pack hunter, a singular ambush predator, a hive servant, and a lure predator.

Those descriptions are far easier to work with and build around than "Chaotic Evil"

And you found a couple of problematic descriptions. Time to eliminate the whole thing. And replace it with brief descriptions that are... problematic.

Considering I've had issues with alignment for over a decade, I don't think it is "a few problematic descriptions". Those were just examples on how the system fails, using the example given.

Mammon uses greed as a tool to lure people and well, Yugoloths are just in it for the money. Maybe they were... already damned and their greed is just part of that? So selfish evil for its own sake is NE. And a Devil's using mortals greed to lure them into sin and damnation is LE. Damn.

You seem to be trying to be making a point, but I can't parse it.

Yugoloths don't care about mortals. At all. They care about getting paid. They are immortals that want to amass wealth, for seemingly no reason. They don't tempt mortals, they don't care about souls or worship, they just are violent, cruel and greedy.

But, Mammon's defining trait is his greed. He weaponizes greed, he spreads greed, he uses his greed to play off the greed of others.

Yugoloths could be true neutral and the only difference would be they would be a little less malicious. They are tepid water. And, evil for the sake of evil sounds like Chaos to me. I do it because it feels good, or I do it because I want to would be standards of chaotic evil, but that is all the Yugoloths are, yet they are neutral evil?

So, Banderhobs are LE, not NE judging by behavior. My guess is that they were made "NE" so any evil character could use them. As it is, if they were LE, I think they could still be used by any evil character.

Which was kind of my point. They don't fit their alignment, so using them as an example of why alignment is helpful is a bad example.

Aboleths are worshipped as gods... what kind of gods, by who, are they nice or not? Sure you can fill in all that, but then your brief description isn't brief. Tag them with an alignment add some bits about "worshipped by" and their goals and you get to the same place. The alignment is a short, concise, descriptor that you can build on. Eliminating it doesn't change anything except probably requiring yet more description to pin down what they do, how they do it, and who they are.

The reason a lot of the alignment system is a "jumbled mess" is because it has been developed and altered for decades. The nine point scheme was developed to make it more nuanced than the original 3 point scheme (or the 6 point one suggested after that in Dragon magazine iirc). Sure it has issues, probably more of them because they haven't spent much time thinking about it for a couple of editions. But it's not rocket science and could be tidied up fairly easily. I'd say that's a good idea, because the potential replacement is going to be more complex, require more time and be just as problematic.

So, I think there was something I thought was obvious, that you are missing. Grab an MM. Open it to the Aboleth page, not the statblock, the entire other page on the back. The eight paragraphs of lore and description.

Keep that. Go to the statblock, white out the two words "Lawful Evil".

That's it. I have eight paragraphs telling me how they act, what they want, what it known. I have abilities and effects that tell me so much. Those two words? I don't need them. Nothing they tell me is more evocative or easier to work with than what I have from other sources.

And that is ignoring the same issue I brought up above, which is that you can have a wide pool of creatures that share alignment, and they don't really act that alike. Neutral Evil by itself doesn't tell you enough, and the only reason Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil do is because you can compare them to the most famous icons of those alignments. Is the creature more like a Devil or more like a Demon,

And even that isn't too helpful, since a Kyton is different than an Erynes is different than an Amnizu, so even within devils there is a vast gulf of difference.

Mammon's endgame, like all devils, is bringing the multiverse under the orderly dominion of the Nine Hells.

Yugoloths. Do. Not. Care. They don't care who wins the Blood War, they don't care whether law or chaos triumphs, they don't care about destroying everything, they don't care about ruling everything. They are the evil of utter selfish apathy.

Seems straightforward enough to me.

Demons don't care either. I mean, they care about who wins because they are one of the two sides fighting, but I don't think that say, Spirit Naga (Chaotic Evil) really care who wins the blood war either.

But, I'm sure that evil apathy doesn't describe a Yuan-Ti, they care very much about winning and controlling the world. They are also Neutral Evil, not Lawful.

So, again, I don't think these two word descriptions are really adding anything useful. Neutral Evil isn't the evil of Apathy, and Chaotic Evil isn't rooting for each other to win.

 

[Lanefan]

Trying to interrogate D&D with modern real-world morality is a fool's game. There may be RPGs out that that wrestle with ethical issues in a nuanced way. D&D isn't one of them.

The main thing you do in the game is kill sentient beings with swords, axes, and fireballs. For fun and profit. Nobody in the real world thinks that's justifiable. If you try to impose real-world values, ideologies, and expectations onto D&D, the whole thing falls apart.

Which by extension means the in-game definitions of Good and Evil (and to a lesser extent Lawful and Chaotic) cannot and will not be the same as their more usual definitions.

In the game, Good and Evil might be defined more by why you're killing sentient beings with weapons and spells, rather than whether you're doing so. Meanwhile, Lawful and Chaotic are defined to some degree by how you kill them.

Start from that basis and you're good to rock.

 

[prabe]

In the game, Good and Evil might be defined more by why you're killing sentient beings with weapons and spells, rather than whether you're doing so. Meanwhile, Lawful and Chaotic are defined to some degree by how you kill them.

Probably not how I'd organize it, but I'm curious, not arguing: How is the Law/Chaos axis defined by how you kill them?

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Demons don't care either. I mean, they care about who wins because they are one of the two sides fighting, but I don't think that say, Spirit Naga (Chaotic Evil) really care who wins the blood war either.

Demons care because they actively want to tear down the order of the multiverse. If the devils didn't exist, they'd still be trying to do that. Yugoloths would not and are not.

I don't know enough about spirit naga lore to comment on them specifically. But it's no surprise that a material creature wouldn't have an opinion on an extraplanar conflict. Alignment isn't just a descriptor of whose flag you wave at the Great Wheel Olympics. What the chaotic evil descriptor tells me about spirit naga is not that they're Team Demon. It tells me that they act in ways which tend to increase the level of chaos around them; they resent rules and order and resist their imposition; and, accordingly, they are prone to conflict with whatever lawful evil neighbors they may have. If they are brought into alliance or submission with some greater power, they are likely to be unpredictable and possibly disloyal.

That's the value alignment has for me: it's a convenient starting point for setting up conflicts that all resonate with a common general theme of good vs. evil and law vs. chaos. If it doesn't do that for you, if perhaps your campaign doesn't spotlight those themes, cool, you do you, I'm not trying to convince you that you have to use alignment. What I am trying to do is help you understand why others use it. As a first step: if you think you see an inconsistency but it obviously doesn't bother us, don't fixate on it as an problem but instead ask whether it might only seem like a problem to you because you have misunderstood something. E.g. this "spirit nagas aren't rooting for the demons" thing.

But, I'm sure that evil apathy doesn't describe a Yuan-Ti, they care very much about winning and controlling the world. They are also Neutral Evil, not Lawful.

"Yugoloths are apathetic" != "All neutral evil creatures are apathetic". That said, apathy does happen to be very much a part of the yuan-ti's schtick as well.

 

[Lanefan]

I guess the question is, do you really need the game to tell you that demons are evil?

Yes, because I want the game to tell me what if anything happens because the demons (or anyone/anything else) are evil instead of good or lawful or whatever; and thus also need the game to tell me who or what those things apply to.

In short, I welcome there being mechanics around alignment and look for the game to provide them.