D&D 5E What do you think should be done with alignment?

[Cadence]

Trying to get some more insight in to what people think about alignment, building on Mistwell's poll at D&D 5E - Do you find alignment useful in any way?
Reading that thread made me change my gut reaction -- thanks to everyone who commented over there!

 

[Bedrockgames]

Personally, wonky though it is sometimes, I found the alignment system from 1E to 3E, to suit D&D pretty well. My second choice would be old three alignment system.

 

[el-remmen]

These threads are gonna make me actually go and carefully read what 5E has to say about alignment. I am one of those people who has no problem using previous editions as touchstones for working with current editions (and I don't think there is anything wrong with that), so really never felt the need.

 

[DEFCON 1]

If the game was to keep alignment in some fashion, then you might as well stick with the current 9 alignment system. Going back to 4E's five alignments or OD&D's three alignments is pointless, because the issue with alignment has nothing to do with how many alignments there are, but rather what alignment as a system is doing as a whole.

The issue is that alignments are defaulting creatures of all types to a baseline of how they behave. For some monsters, obviously that isn't as much of a big deal because their entire existence is predicated on said thing-- undead, devils, demons, celestials, aberrations etc.

But any intelligent race native to whatever setting you are using does not and should not have default alignments because any representative of said race can be anything they want. You have evil humans. You have lawful elves. You have good orcs. You have chaotic dwarves. So with no real baseline to any race's alignments, there's no reason to write them down as though they have one.

Yes, I know some people want to treat certain monsters like orcs to basically be mindless automotons to be mowed down willie-nillie with no thought to any sort of morality for killing them as though they were nothing but zombies... but quite frankly we are passed that point. Orcs in D&D are not mindless evil to be killed just because they exist anymore, and the game doesn't want to do anything that might make people think otherwise... and putting 'Chaotic Evil' in front of their statblock certainly does that. Like it or not... putting 'Chaotic Evil' in a statblock makes players think that destroying them is completely fine, no questions asked. But orcs and drow et. al. are not the same as demons anymore, and thus the alignment system should not run counter to it like it does right now.

 

[Hriston]

You left out Holmes Basic/1E MM Five-point Alignment, not that I would have chosen that option.

I'm not familiar enough with 4E to comment on its alignment system, but it seems well integrated into that game's lore from my cursory exposure.

I chose the option that includes 1E and that I would substantially modify it. The way I would do that is to make it explicitly part of the Multiverse setting and give it real mechanical teeth. I do this in my own 5E games by having the alignments of the PCs and NPCs interact to modify encounter reaction rolls and social interaction DCs.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

I think alignment is useful for monsters, cities, institutions, etc. For background NPCs, it's useful as a quick shorthand in place of personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws.

I think alignment is less useful for players' characters and fully developed non-player characters. Personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws make alignment rather redundant in those cases.

 

[Cadence]

You left out Holmes Basic/1E MM Five-point Alignment, not that I would have chosen that option.

I never saw the Holmes Basic (just Moldvay) and never noticed that the 1eMM never used the four Nx or xN! (It does have some with two alignments and some with tendencies).

Apparently Holmes originally went with the OD&D three point scale and Gygax added in the others: Holmes Alignment is Six-Point

 

[GMMichael]

5e has Alignment?

Anyway, I'd make it more strict and useful, allow DMs to invoke it for and against PCs. Or just throw it out.

 

[Minigiant]

Moar Options.

I played in a game where the DM used Wrestling Alignment and it was a blast.

 

[Cadence]

Moar Options.

I played in a game where the DM used Wrestling Alignment and it was a blast.

Wrestling as an alignment? Or descriptors based on wrestling? Or...?