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.

 

[Aldarc]

That seems to indicate that the alignment system was not really needed. The players knew how they wanted to play and were able to do it without the rules telling them to.

Yeah, the fact is that CN and CG basically returned to the top alignment choices, and most agree people in this thread seem to agree that the most plausible explanation is that these alignments typically empower the player to play mostly as they want, whether "good" or "neutral." Whether they are "unaligned" or "Chaotic Neutral," the pattern is pretty clear: players don't want alignment getting in the way of roleplaying their characters.

Brand name only gets you so far. But this is pointless. I don't think alignment means anything more or less than what each group wants it to. I find it useful and in my experience it's a useful handle for newbies who have never picked up a polyhedral die in their lifetime. Feel free to disagree.

Sure thing. Most new players, IME, don't see the point of alignment. They may fill it out on the character sheet, but they typically do so with the same gusto as filling out whether they are "single" or "married" in a tax form.

 

[Weiley31]

While I still say Alignment should still stay in I know I know weird looks from ya all it can still be used in interesting ways probably with how newer views on not having it appear in monster blocks now. As stated before, a Lawful Evil Devil may be a bit weird to see suddenly going Chaotic Good, you can flavor it in interesting ways.

Imagine a being such as a Baatezu or a Ta'nari experiencing a sort of "existential crisis" by suddenly experiencing a new alignment. Does it warp its form as its body struggles with the idealized concept? I.E.do you flavor such a PC as a reskinned Tiefling ala Tyranny of Dragon's plot hook suggestion where it states your PC is a dragon who was confined to lesser mortal form?

Does it create a bizzare "BBGG" who goes full on Lawful Stupid and ends up being a Divine Paladin that the party has to stop because of such alignment confliction as it causes the Crusades to happen in an attempt to "save the World" but the party is "too lost" to realize that?

Do you make a Campaign where each of the PC's are actually the Alignments themselves and they have to go on a wacky hi-jinx quest to discover WHY the Realms aren't labeling things with them anymore and how their time is over?

 

[Neonchameleon]

I agree you are right about how the Slaad gets described, and that the official description is in error to make them sound Evil.

Aggressive against Lawful, yes. But Evil, no.

Even when they first appeared in the Fiend Folio Slaad have leaned towards evil; death slaad (who were some of the most powerful slaad) were explicitly at least sometimes there from the start. Also slaad have always been inimical and explicitly described as having a warped sense of humour. As exemplars of chaos they've always been tapdancing the CN/CE line and over the years; Charles Stross (their creator) describes them as something like "Lovecraftian by someone who hadn't read Lovecraft." It's possible to claim that Great Cthulhu and the rest of the mythos aren't evil - but when most extraplanar mythos beings are inimical as they are then intent isn't magic.

 

[Micah Sweet]

For the same reason they welcomed back 0-9 spell slots, the Great Wheel, and other things 4e chucked; it was the D&D they wanted.

I mean, you could solve nearly every long-standing argument about D&D by just adapting Mutants & Masterminds to be fantasy. Build your own races and classes without naming or setting baggage, customable abilities for martial and magic, ability scores revised to just modifiers, HP gone, AC and armor makes sense, no alignment, etc.

But you gotta wonder if all that was done, is it still D&D? M&M is a great system, but it's not D&D. 4e tried to innovate and got soundly rejected for it. 5e went back to basics and is a smash hit. Let D&D be D&D.

Yeah, that game where's there's no alignment, no racial ASIs (heck, no ability scores!), hp completely reworked, planar stuff completely different, etc., could be a cool and fun game, but it wouldn't be D&D. And marketing it as D&D is, IMO, not a path that increases the brand. They would be shooting themselves in the foot.

 

[jayoungr]

"Brand" wasn't enough to make 4E last longer than four years. Not saying whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, just agreeing that brand isn't everything.

And also, I have the impression that WotC really didn't expect 5E to get as big as it did.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Who's "pretending"? D&D is growing rapidly year after year. If it had fundamental flaws that didn't work for the majority of people, it wouldn't.

Talk about moving the goalposts mate

You went from saying that if another game was "better" or "the best", it would inevitably beat D&D (which I don't think is true), to now saying that so long as it doesn't have "fundamental flaws which don't work for the majority of people" (an incredibly low bar), D&D will grow rapidly year after year!

I think you're pretty much right, but that seems like a fairly drastic position-move. So long as D&D doesn't suck, the combination of brand and market advantage are going to keep it dominating the market for a very long time.

Also good job now you have me talking like a Skaven... "position-move" indeed!

 

[Oofta]

Talk about moving the goalposts mate

You went from saying that if another game was "better" or "the best", it would inevitably beat D&D (which I don't think is true), to now saying that so long as it doesn't have "fundamental flaws which don't work for the majority of people" (an incredibly low bar), D&D will grow rapidly year after year!

I think you're pretty much right, but that seems like a fairly drastic position-move. So long as D&D doesn't suck, the combination of brand and market advantage are going to keep it dominating the market for a very long time.

Also good job now you have me talking like a Skaven... "position-move" indeed!

To be honest, I think I lost the thread of what you're trying saying a while back.

On topic, if you don't like alignment, don't use it. Nobody I've played with in person has had a problem with alignment. The majority find it at least somewhat useful now and then.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Nobody I've played with in person has had a problem with alignment.

Skeptical face frankly mate.

You've played D&D for decades, presumably with a fair number of different people, and none of them have said "alignment sucks" or disparaged it in any way? That's astonishing. I mean, I've never played with anyone who hated alignment so much that, say, they wouldn't play a game with it in, but like a significant fraction of them have rolled their eyes at alignment, or talked about the problems it has, including people who run games with it in.

Maybe you mean something more extreme by "has a problem with" though?

 

[Chaosmancer]

In my (short) time playing 4e, everyone I saw play wrote "unaligned" on their character sheet and forgot it. A few clerics and divine PCs picked Good.

For me, 4e's system was the worst of both worlds; it did nothing to differentiate PCs (as they were all unaligned) but put orcs, drow, and other MM humanoids in the "Evil, slay in sight" bucket. CE was SuperUltraEvil, LG might as well not exist since few PCs and almost no monsters used it.

That sounds to me like your players had no interest in dealing with alignment. So, the system allowed them to ignore it. That's a win in my book.

For the same reason they welcomed back 0-9 spell slots, the Great Wheel, and other things 4e chucked; it was the D&D they wanted.

Seeing the rest of the posts about this, it certainly doesn't seem like it was the DnD they needed though. I mean, CG, LN, and LE didn't exist, but as far as you the DM noticed, they still played those characters. It sounds like they don't need the alignment system at all, they could crack open 6e, see no alignments listed and continue on doing what they are doing.

So, if you don't need it, why waste the page count on it?




Also, on the Brand argument. I know it isn't enough by itself, but DnD is like Xerox and Kleenex. It is too foundational to the market. An DnD product will explode if it is even a little bit of what people want, because DnD is the definitive tabletop RPG.

 

[Oofta]

Skeptical face frankly mate.

You've played D&D for decades, presumably with a fair number of different people, and none of them have said "alignment sucks" or disparaged it in any way? That's astonishing. I mean, I've never played with anyone who hated alignment so much that, say, they wouldn't play a game with it in, but like a significant fraction of them have rolled their eyes at alignment, or talked about the problems it has, including people who run games with it in.

Maybe you mean something more extreme by "has a problem with" though?

Um ... no? Sorry to burst your bubble, but I don't make naughty word up. I can't think of a single person that voiced significant complaints about alignment in person. Maybe because I never expected alignment to dictate every thought, word and deed.