D&D 5E A different take on Alignment

[Maxperson]

Well I dont agree with this. There are no good assassins'. If your first and foremost method of problem solving is murder, you are not a good person. Everyone tries to justify evil actions as a good thing, as opposed to just being an evil person who isnt a total dink. Evil doesnt mean you kid every puppy and steal every baby's candy. Though, this is a classic alignment argument that really took hold after the common "no evil" houserule came about.

Not all assassination is murder.

 

[Chaosmancer]

So that's like the power not the person. That PC didn't choose to be a Chaos Sorcerer. He was born one. You are just as likely to have a LG Chaos Sorcerer as a chaotic one.

Sure, the person who plays the Chaos sorcerer and focuses on the phrasing "unpredictable power" is going to choose to be lawful.

Deny it as you want, there is a lot of emphasis on them being chaotic more than lawful

Stealing power is not good, but it's also not inherently chaotic. As for Feylocks. Congrats! You've just shown that Warlocks can choose to be chaotic like anyone else, not that they are predisposed to that alignment.

Stealing power is also not Lawful, which was more the point.

Well, you've moved back on one of them at least. But again, see that Sorcerers are born with their power. They don't choose it, so that one chaotic bloodline has no bearing on alignment and the others don't even have that small connection to chaos.

Storm Sorcerer? They'd be fairly chaotic. And again, being born with chaotic power and having "obscure motivations" tends them towards chaos more than towards law.



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My sympathy for a GM who (i) runs a game that can't progress unless the players have information X, and (ii) uses his/her power over the fiction (in this case, NPCs) to make sure the players don't get that information, and then (iii) complains when the players declare actions for their PC that they think might force the GM's hand in respect of that fiction: ZERO.

What you're describing sounds like the quintessence of all bad railroads and GM beatsticks I've ever heard of bundled together into one terrible combination.

In perfect fairness, I suspect they are trying to play the NPCs as "realistic" and that the players will just give up and proceed in blind. But, going in blind isn't what any player is going to do.

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Well I dont agree with this. There are no good assassins'. If your first and foremost method of problem solving is murder, you are not a good person. Everyone tries to justify evil actions as a good thing, as opposed to just being an evil person who isnt a total dink. Evil doesnt mean you kid every puppy and steal every baby's candy. Though, this is a classic alignment argument that really took hold after the common "no evil" houserule came about.

You may not agree with it, but those are exactly the sort of blanket statements that cause these issues.

Because what are player character's if not assassins, hired to go and kill problems for the area?

 

[pemerton]

Sure, "being good shouldn't be easy" but we are playing a game.

doing the Good thing is often hard.

I don't see that doing the good thing should be particularly hard in terms of game play.

It may be hard both to do the good thing and to advance one's PC's immediate interests, but that's a different matter. There's no reason why successful game play should require advancing one's PC's immediate interests.

 

[pemerton]

If you're looking at it to tell you why, you're using alignment incorrectly. It's a helping tool, not a directive. The alignment can give you ideas on why you would be going after only bad guys. Someone who is lawful evil will likely have very different motivations than someone who is chaotic good.

This seems backwards. If I want to imagine a character who assassinates only bad guys I can do that. It doesn't seem to help this act of imagination by mediating it via the alignment labels.

 

[Maxperson]

Sure, the person who plays the Chaos sorcerer and focuses on the phrasing "unpredictable power" is going to choose to be lawful.

What does what the person chooses have to do with the class? If they want to match the chaos, that's a player choice, not a predisposition of the sorcerer bloodline.

Deny it as you want, there is a lot of emphasis on them being chaotic more than lawful

Show me? All you've shown so far is a bloodline that doesn't show what you think it does.

Stealing power is also not Lawful, which was more the point.

Than you should have stated your point instead of declaring them more chaotic.

Storm Sorcerer? They'd be fairly chaotic. And again, being born with chaotic power and having "obscure motivations" tends them towards chaos more than towards law.

No they wouldn't. Again, bloodline is not chosen and a lawful character is as likely to be born with that as a chaotic one. That bloodline does not predispose those PCs towards chaos.

 

[Maxperson]

This seems backwards. If I want to imagine a character who assassinates only bad guys I can do that. It doesn't seem to help this act of imagination by mediating it via the alignment labels.

Because you are good at it. Try to look at it from a new player's perspective. They are likely to be overwhelmed by rules and such. Any aid to help them roleplay their characters like alignment, flaws, merits, etc. is a good thing.

 

[pemerton]

Because you are good at it. Try to look at it from a new player's perspective. They are likely to be overwhelmed by rules and such. Any aid to help them roleplay their characters like alignment, flaws, merits, etc. is a good thing.

No. A new player can think of characters and the alignment system doesn't help.

There are many writing workshops that get run, to help would-be writers practice thinking of characters. I don't believe that any of those suggest that the D&D alignment system is helpful for this process.

 

[Maxperson]

No. A new player can think of characters and the alignment system doesn't help.

With respect, you don't get to tell people what they can or cannot think of. I've watched new players struggle with ideas and alignment has been a big boon for some of them. That alone proves the bolded statement to be wrong.

Is alignment going to be helpful to everyone? Of course not. It won't even be all that helpful to all new players. It will be helpful to some of them, though, and it's invaluable to me as DM. I've said repeatedly here that it's primarily a DM tool now and only really useful to those players that want to use it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Well I dont agree with this. There are no good assassins'. If your first and foremost method of problem solving is murder, you are not a good person. Everyone tries to justify evil actions as a good thing, as opposed to just being an evil person who isnt a total dink. Evil doesnt mean you kid every puppy and steal every baby's candy. Though, this is a classic alignment argument that really took hold after the common "no evil" houserule came about.

Couldn’t disagree more. Rather than get into IRL historical examples, let’s construct a fairly easy D&D example.

Thay, in the FR, is ruled by tyrannical necromancers. They are unquestionably an oppressive evil regime.

An order of assassins, or an individual assassin, that kills key targets to assist a resistance in taking down that regime, who avoids lethality against people who are just in their way, is quite easily a Good character and a good person.

The idea that violence is just magically always evil unless it’s direct imminent self defense is simplistic and misguided, IMO.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Maybe. I don't think sticking the evil label on the character tells me very much about why or how. Sticking a good label on an assassin also seems potentially contradictory (unless by assassin you simply mean the character class, as opposed to killer-for-hire or Bourne-style operative).

Or Ezio or Connor of the Assassin’s Creed games, or the real life Assassins of Medieval Persia and Syria, or various fantasy assassin orders who assassinate tyrants and the like.

Or even a Bourne style operative could be of any alignment, very much including the good alignments.

Pretty much the only broad assassin archetype I can think of that can’t really be Good, is the killer for hire. Even then, I could make up an order of them that is good.