D&D 5E Do you find alignment useful in any way?

[Crimson Longinus]

Right. A guy who's solution to most problems is to punch them really hard is not aggressive.

Any system is going to be open to interpretation unless you write paragraphs of text. If you have to read paragraphs of text, it's no longer a quick reference.

But it all goes back to the fact that just because you don't find it useful doesn't mean that the majority of people don't find it useful in at least some ways. Probably because most people don't look at it as a straightjacket or something that defines every aspect of a person's behavior.

A lot of people find horoscopes meaningful. Doesn't change the fact that they're meaningless nonsense. Alignment is the same, it doesn't actually provide useful information, but people who like it just see in it what they want to see at given moment.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

They've worked so terrible it's the best selling edition of all time.

I liked 4e too. I really did. And people argue 4e was superior because it had better stat blocks and variations for each monster than 5e does. But objectively, 4e was not working for enough of the player base, relative to 5e, for whatever reason.

So sure, you are free to think they're terrible. But in the very least, acknowledge a fair number of other people like them how they are.

An issue with 4e being unpopular is that there really isn't a complete picture of why it was unpopular; so a lot of things in it that people actually might have been fine with got jettisoned.

Personally I feel that having a decent selection of differnt types of warriors of given group would be very useful for creating interesting but themed encounters. Like if I want there to be a fight with the lizard folk it is nice if I can easily have a variety of differnt kinds of lizard folk instead of having to insert some completely unrelated monsters. Now modifying stat blocks is not terribly hard, but if you need to improvise things quickly, readymade ones would certainly be handy. There are some of the variant stat blocks in MM, but usually they're just more elite/leader versions, there really isn't many of variants in the mook department. There could easily be shooty/skirmisher/tanky/etc variants of many foes.

 

[Wolfram stout]

A lot of people find horoscopes meaningful. Doesn't change the fact that they're meaningless nonsense. Alignment is the same, it doesn't actually provide useful information, but people who like it just see in it what they want to see at given moment.

Well, not quite. D&D has lore, and I know my players know the big broad strokes. As I stated in the thread earlier, I am fleshing out the City of Brass. Which Dragons do I want in the company of the LE Efreet ruler? I want to play up the Lawful side, so Black, Red (even with fire), and White don't fit as good as Blue and Green. This took me less than 2 minutes to double check (as I didn't remember off the top of my head). Now, I can go back and read Blue and Green and see if that fits my mental image.

Is that meaningless? Maybe, if all the lore in the D&D books are meaningless. But I don't have the time to build a full world with full background lore. And if I did, they (edit My Players) don't have the time or mental energy to tap into it, while again they know the broad strokes.

 

[Oofta]

A lot of people find horoscopes meaningful. Doesn't change the fact that they're meaningless nonsense. Alignment is the same, it doesn't actually provide useful information, but people who like it just see in it what they want to see at given moment.

Just because you don't understand how to use it doesn't mean it cannot provide useful information. Pretty much everyone I've ever played with uses it much the same, close enough for it to be worthwhile. Superman is LG, Joker is CE, Mafia bosses are LE and so on.

But you've made up your mind that no matter how it's explained, so have a good one.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Well, not quite. D&D has lore, and I know my players know the big broad strokes. As I stated in the thread earlier, I am fleshing out the City of Brass. Which Dragons do I want in the company of the LE Efreet ruler? I want to play up the Lawful side, so Black, Red (even with fire), and White don't fit as good as Blue and Green. This took me less than 2 minutes to double check (as I didn't remember off the top of my head). Now, I can go back and read Blue and Green and see if that fits my mental image.

Or have brass dragons (it's City of Brass after all) and red dragons (as they're elementally associated with fire like the efreet and the whole plane of fire.)

Is that meaningless? Maybe, if all the lore in the D&D books are meaningless. But I don't have the time to build a full world with full background lore. And if I did, they don't have the time or mental energy to tap into it, while again they know the broad strokes.

Yes, it is meaningless, as your justification is circular. You just have these meaningless teams based on meaningless two letters. You can of course do that, but it doesn't mean it makes any more sense than any other combination; in fact I'd claim my suggestion above is thematically stronger and will also work for people who are not well-versed in archaic D&D minutiae; they would just wonder what your air and forest associated dragons are doing on the fire plane.

 

[Mistwell]

What I mean is that there is a qualitative difference between what the kids call fluff and crunch in the monster stat block. Within the fiction, a group of 4 orcs might have leather armor, or they might all have full plate and a shield, and neither choice makes more sense than the other. But a difference in 3 or 4 in AC is very important for the math of the encounter. So, to the extent that the DM is relying on the math of the stat block (as a game element and not just part of the fiction) the difference between leather and plate is meaningful. The fiction of the encounter has an equal impact, but is more variable as it depends on the dm's ability and interest in roleplaying. For some people, alignment is helpful in that regard and that's fine.

Honest question in that regard: the npc stat blocks in the MM and Volo's have "any alignment" instead of a specific alignment (e.g. Priest, Veteran, etc). Is this a problem for you, that there's no baseline for these statblocks? How would people feel if in future supplements humanoid creatures also had "any alignment" in their stat block, while fiends and undead and so forth still had alignments. In this way, alignment would still be part of the metaphysics of the implied setting, but humanoid "monsters" would get to have the same range as the human-elf-dwarf-halfling npc humanoids.

It's not a "problem" it just has slightly less utility of I had no alignment in mind for that encounter already, and I am not already familiar with that creature. For example, if I just rolled on the random encounter chart a specific type of man eating plant creature, I flip to that creature and it has a decent intelligence, a language, but no alignment listed, I now feel stuck for time. Because I now face the choice of reading all the text below the stat block to see what the heck this creature is all about (was it once a tribe of kobolds turned into a plant creature by a medusa-like being which turns you into plants instead of stone? OK, they probably still act mostly like Kobolds), or just assigning a morality to this creature and hoping I didn't just screw something up which I will later regret or have to do a lot more work to explain.

I said earlier I'd be fine with alternative tags, but just don't make those tags into sentences which require yet more reading. You want to put "Sadistic/Aggressive" in a monster stat block, that's fine. It tells me enough of what I need to know. It's certainly telling me a lot more than "any alignment" tells me.

But leaving it "Any alignment" because you somehow don't want to stereotype a creature? Not helpful to me. The job of a stat block is to serve a utilitarian purpose of rapidly conveying a baseline for how to run that creature, which can be altered with that baseline in mind. Tell me what a typical creature in that default setting is sometimes like. Even if it's just the slight plurality of that creature, and even if you detail in the description that there are great variations in this creature and morality depending on tribe and geography and nation and such, this is ultimately a game and this stat block serves a purpose which requires conveying data quickly and succinctly about a baseline creature to a DM.

If it's REALLY important you impress on people that Crystal-Forest-Goblins tend to be peaceful and compassionate healers while Dread-Lord-Realm-Goblins tend to be Angry and Cruel, that's fine you can even make separate entries in the monster book for those different goblin types sort of like a Gold dragon and a Red dragon have different entries. Just don't do TOO MUCH of that (like 4e did) or make a separate book or even chapter on it in a expansion book (like a book of Dragons) if you have tons of specific variations you want to convey.

 

[Mistwell]

A lot of people find horoscopes meaningful. Doesn't change the fact that they're meaningless nonsense. Alignment is the same, it doesn't actually provide useful information, but people who like it just see in it what they want to see at given moment.

Oh look, more badwrongfun!

Consider the possibility people can find something genuinely useful even if you don't find it genuinely useful. That the games they are playing might not be as close to the games you play as you thought they were, and they're gaining utility from something you don't gain utility from because of those differences.

 

[Mistwell]

An issue with 4e being unpopular is that there really isn't a complete picture of why it was unpopular; so a lot of things in it that people actually might have been fine with got jettisoned.

Personally I feel that having a decent selection of differnt types of warriors of given group would be very useful for creating interesting but themed encounters. Like if I want there to be a fight with the lizard folk it is nice if I can easily have a variety of differnt kinds of lizard folk instead of having to insert some completely unrelated monsters. Now modifying stat blocks is not terribly hard, but if you need to improvise things quickly, readymade ones would certainly be handy. There are some of the variant stat blocks in MM, but usually they're just more elite/leader versions, there really isn't many of variants in the mook department. There could easily be shooty/skirmisher/tanky/etc variants of many foes.

I agree I would find that useful. BUT I'd want those many variations in a separate expansion book. Maybe even just on DMs Guild. I still want a single baseline in a monster manual. Because a lot of DMs just use the one book and then make their own variants from that base core book for their campaign.

I feel like that's one area where 4e went wrong with their monster books: by giving us many variations of a single thing, they ended up using too much page space on that single thing. Which resulted in Monster Manual 2 and Monster Manual 3 containing core, iconic creatures in them which should have all been in a single core book due to the utility of having a baseline for all the most core iconic creatures under one cover. And by the time they got to MM3 people were already pissed off about it and moving to Pathfinder.

 

[Wolfram stout]

Or have brass dragons (it's City of Brass after all) and red dragons (as they're elementally associated with fire like the efreet and the whole plane of fire.)


Yes, it is meaningless, as your justification is circular. You just have these meaningless teams based on meaningless two letters. You can of course do that, but it doesn't mean it makes any more sense than any other combination; in fact I'd claim my suggestion above is thematically stronger and will also work for people who are not well-versed in archaic D&D minutiae; they would just wonder what your air and forest associated dragons are doing on the fire plane.

That is interesting. So damage type is more defining of who gets along? The Haughty and Cruel get along better with the Gregarious more so than with Vain and territorial creatures, if the damage type matches.

Does the War between the Githyanki and Githzerai also bother you, since they are so similar except for their outlooks?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It's not a "problem" it just has slightly less utility of I had no alignment in mind for that encounter already, and I am not already familiar with that creature. For example, if I just rolled on the random encounter chart a specific type of man eating plant creature, I flip to that creature and it has a decent intelligence, a language, but no alignment listed, I now feel stuck for time. Because I now face the choice of reading all the text below the stat block to see what the heck this creature is all about (was it once a tribe of kobolds turned into a plant creature by a medusa-like being which turns you into plants instead of stone? OK, they probably still act mostly like Kobolds), or just assigning a morality to this creature and hoping I didn't just screw something up which I will later regret or have to do a lot more work to explain.

Do people actually do this? Just plop some random monster in the world without even having a basic idea what it is and how they fit in the setting? And if they do, why would it really matter if they got their personality 'wrong'?

I said earlier I'd be fine with alternative tags, but just don't make those tags into sentences which require yet more reading. You want to put "Sadistic/Aggressive" in a monster stat block, that's fine. It tells me enough of what I need to know. It's certainly telling me a lot more than "any alignment" tells me.

Yeah, I feel that MM could probably benefit from some sort of a short description or tag about the creature behaviour in combat situation to give the GM an idea how to use them. But I feel that things like 'brave and aggressive,' 'sneaky and cautious', etc would be more useful than alignment ever was.