D&D 5E RIP alignment

[Helldritch]

Take a complete noob. Tell the noob that Lawful means a tendency towards order and socialization. Tell the noob that chaos means freedom and not following restrictions. Then tell the noob that neutral means no particular tendency. Good and evil do not need description and never did.

Now take that noob, sit him in the DM's chair and make him run a lawful evil group of creatures... Yep, the noob will run the mob as intended without having to read the whole crearure's description in the MM. Just the stat block will be enough.

This is what alignment has always been about. A guideline that helps young (and old) DM to play and understand creatures they never saw before. For most creatures, alignment has never been set in stone. Exceptions has been made as early as the basic sets. Alignment is not about racism, it is about a tool to quickly grasp the basic behavior of a creature.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

I wish they'd just get rid of orcs by this point, honestly. I'd rather have alignment than them.

 

[Aldarc]

"Lawful evil" or "neutral evil" or "chaotic evil" are way, way more useful as quick descriptors for personalities than just "evil". 4E's attempt to simplify alignment ran into that issue, there was no longer any quick way to indicate "lawful but not good" or "chaotic but not evil". (4E's tendency to provide little to no personality or behavior for many monsters, outside of combat tactics, compounded that issue. Though at least they got better later.)

That's certainly your opinion, but it's one that I definitely don't agree with. "No longer any quick way to indicate 'lawful but not good'" is basically begging the question where the the only framework that is presumed to work is the prior one you have pre-determined as the true framework (i.e., the Nine Alignments). But doing so misconstrues what 4e is doing or how alignment operates in the purview of its worldview.

Obviously, 4e didn't discard Chaotic Evil. It did combine Lawful Evil and Neutral Evil into Evil as well as Neutral Good and Chaotic Good into Good. IME gaming, LE and NE often played out the same at the table, much as NG and CG did. Both were basically ways of playing pragmatic/non-stupid versions of "evil" and "good." It did get rid of "Lawful but not Good," but this is largely because it embraced a Cosmological Chaoskampf of human mythology that regards "Law" and "Good" as ultimate "goods" and "Chaos" and "Evil" as ultimate "bads" to the Social Order, to the Points of Light alone in the Dark. To this end, Evil (whether it is lawful or neutral) entails a perversion of Moral Order and Goodness that leads towards Chaos. In this regard, it was highly contiguous and had a tremendous amount in common with the presentation of Law-Chaos in B/X.

B/X seemed to manage fine

Exactly.

Except that "lawful" often also meant "good" and "chaotic" often also meant "evil". Note B/X elves are neutral rather than chaotic, for example.

Unaligned.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

I can’t imagine why it would.

Ah so, even after the "Ravenloft" Setting book, you all think you are getting a Planescape that will at all resemble the 2nd edition version? Oh, man are you guys going to be disappointed.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

A lot of terrible brain worms have followed Gygax's oddball use of "Race" to donate "species" and rather than, you know, actually correct that and change the name to "Species" (or even Pathfinder's ancestry is an improvement) they've instead led themselves down a path where apparently describing pit fiends as "lawful evil" perpetuates racism or somesuch. I mean, honestly guys, the alignment listing works well as a short hand description for the default expected behaviour of the creature in the Monster Manual. Ditching that but still describing orcs a rampaging, violent barbarians somehow solves the scourge of racism for some people, I guess.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

But do you understand the broader point he’s making that the arguments for and against racial stat mods are practically identical to the arguments for and against gender-based stat mods?

On the surface, perhaps. Dig deeper, though.

For example, compare a D&D species that averages 50lbs weight and tops out under 4’ in height or so to one that 8x more massive and roughly twice as tall. Personally, it bugs me that the latter wouldn’t be much stronger on average than the former.

That is a MUCH bigger difference than the differences due to sexual dimorphism present in pretty much any D&D species in any edition. (If D&D had a sentient species in which the genders were radically different- like ceratioid anglerfish or female Kzinti- there might be a point in gender-based stat mods for it. But you look at documented human history of athletics- even though we see differences, we ALSO see women today matching male performances of just a couple decades ago.

You don’t see 12 year olds anywhere near the powerlifting benchmarks of the 1990s.

Go through the other stats: a race described as being more dexterous, charismatic, intelligent, or durable than others should have that description modeled in its mechanics or those words have lost any meaning. It’s wasted ink and should be tossed along with the absent modifiers.

Also note that there’s a difference between stat limits (which used to be in the game) for gender and race and stat modifiers. The former is a floor or cap, the latter is not. A limit might prevent someone from playing concept X. A modifier is not likely to.

 

[Aldarc]

Ah so, even after the "Ravenloft" Setting book, you all think you are getting a Planescape that will at all resemble the 2nd edition version? Oh, man are you guys going to be disappointed.

Resemblance is pretty easy to achieve, as resemblance doesn't require an exact photocopy, merely an acceptable degree of likeness or similarity, much as an impressionist painting of a flower resembles a flower such that we can recognize it as such.

 

[Nikosandros]

On one hand, I'm a bit sad because I consider alignment a sacred cow. On the other hand, I personally haven't used alignment since 4e. As I wrote in other occasions, I like (and I'm probably in a very small minority) alignment in AD&D where it has strong cosmological implications and it interacts meaningfully with the rules, but if it is simply a descriptor, I don't find it useful.

 

[Marc_C]

I never liked alignements since I started playing D&D in 1980. Welcome to 50 shades of role playing instead of 9 or 3.

 

[BigZebra]

I’m gonna miss them as a GM. Really didn’t use the player’s alignment but for monsters I found them to be useful.