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

[Wolfram stout]

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


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 an 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.

On that we agree, Sneaky and Cautious, is better than alignment, and if allowed a vote, I would vote yes to include that in the stat block, but until that is an option, alignment is a bit useful for narrowing down some monster types.

 

[Vaalingrade]

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

Which has become a core of the pro-alignment argument: not wanting to have to read the description and having two letter tags that apparently mean an entire persona despite representing very narrow areas of personality.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

The association was thematic, and once alignment is gone you're free to assign the entities whatever motivations you want. (And yes, I suspect anyone gets better along with gregarious than vain and territorial.)

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

No. They're just people of the same species with opposing ideologies. Hardly unique. Of course in D&D they must bizarrely be classified as differnt (sub)races making the thing awkward.

 

[Malmuria]

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.

Interesting...I'm not sure I ever do anything like this as a dm. If I design a dungeon, I tend to write down the activity/motivations as to why the creatures are there (even if it's just, 'owlbear den owlbear is hungry'). Even when I write random encounter tables I include a note about activity and motivation or else use a reaction roll (Hot Springs Island randomizes this, which is interesting). I don't use the random encounter tables in the MM because they are boring.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

There's literally nothing you can say that will ever make alignment meaningless nonsense for me. For me it has meaning. That means....................it's not a fact. It's just your opinion and it only applies to you and those who share similar opinions.

 

[Mistwell]

Do people actually do this?

Yes, people actually do this.

Don't gloss over that. I think we're getting to the heart of an important issue. NOT EVERYONE PLAYS THE GAME LIKE YOU PLAY IT, AND THIS IS LIKELY THE SOURCE OF YOUR INSISTENCE THAT PEOPLE DON'T GET UTILITY FROM SOMETHING THEY CLAIM THEY DO GET UTILITY FROM.

All you have to do, to understand where other people are coming from (not agreeing with them, just plain old understanding them), is to accept their games don't look like your games and you're therefore missing important data about how their games are being played.

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

For me it's usually because it's from some published adventure, and I had enough time to prepare for where I thought the group would go but they went somewhere else or did something unexpected. Which is part of liking sandbox-type adventuring. It just happens sometimes. DMs have to roll with it, adults are often pressed for preparation time with family and kids and we don't have the time we used to have to read ahead and read it again or keep it all in our heads, and having useful tools at their disposal helps deal with that.

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 an 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.

It would be useful enough. I am not sure it would be "more" useful since I have decades of experience with a different type of shorthand, but it would at least be more useful than "any alignment" with no tags at all.

 

[Voadam]

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.

Individual monstrous humanoids always got to have the same range of alignments as human elf-dwarf-halfling NPC humanoids.

When the MM entry for Dwarves from past editions said LG alignment and NPC dwarves in those editions had various alignments, why would you think it would work differently for Orcs or Hobgoblins? When the 5e MM says the alignment entry is just a default and the 5e PH says most D&D races have tendencies towards certain alignments but these are not binding, why would you think that means individual Orcs cannot have the same range of alignments as individual Elves?

If they changed the alignment from a specific one to "any" that could be fine but it would take away some of the characterization differences between different humanoids and change the narrative of a bunch of monsters. It would indicate that certain humanoids were no longer generally good guys or bad guys. This would be a substantive narrative change like how Eberron Orcs are substantively different from default D&D orcs in a narrative sense.

4e did that with a bunch of PH races as well. In the 4e MM dwarves were listed as unaligned while elves and halflings were alignment any as opposed to prior edition LG dwarves and halflings and CG elves. This was a bit of a 4e theme of formerly good guys now being neutral/any, it happened to angels and metallic dragons too.

It can work, Eberron creates a great D&D noir feel without clear good guys.

Strong contrasts of general good and evil evoking Tolkien can also work though and has been the general D&D. default.

It is mostly an aesthetic flavor choice on how gray versus black and white the D&D world is.

Evil angel planetars of Tiamat (4e style) can work but require a narrative change to what an angel is.

 

[Lanefan]

I think the point is that of all the playable races, exactly two kobolds and orcs receive a penalty to stats. So the more “monstrous” races are dunked on, and, orcs especially, really don’t get anything to compensate.

Meanwhile, Elves get +1 skill, resistance to charm, +2 to Dex, immunity to magical sleep, Elven Weapon training, and can choose a subrace with a +1 to a different stat and a subrace benefit. Maybe they should have gotten the -2 to a stat?

Absolutely they should.

IMO any species that gets a bonus somewhere should get a more-or-less-corresponding penalty somewhere else. Orcs: down by 2 Int, so up by 2 Con. Elves: up by 2 Dex, so down by 2 Str; or 1 Str and 1 Con.

Never mind that IMO Orcs and Kobolds shouldn't be "playable races" in the first place...

 

[Lanefan]

How are they getting enough for it to be the signature weapon of their species? Why do they pick over all the swords and daggers and clubs to pick the spikey balls?

IT's not each individual, it's each role. You get stats for the rank and file footsoldier, the scouts, the leaders and a few outliers to 1) make the species more viable as a full encounter and 2) better represent what that species is fielding.

So 5 or 6 statblocks for each species instead of one.

Couldn't the same thing be achieved by using a 3e-like series of templates? E.g. you've got the baseline statblock for each creature then if you want a beefed-up version you overlay the "leader" template on it, or the "soldier" template, etc.

If nothing else this would save a boatload of page space: you only have to print the variants once, instead of once for each species.

YES! TEN BILLION PERCENT, YES!

Racial stats, especially mental stats, are awful.

So every species then ends up being mentally just the same as Humans. Why, when we already have Humans for that?

 

[Lanefan]

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?

Uh...yep.

And if they do, why would it really matter if they got their personality 'wrong'?

If it's that random then its "personality" and tendencies will (assuming the party don't just kill it in three rounds!) emerge during play, and I'll tag an alignment on from that. Why? Because while this one monster might be random the first time I plop it in it's also setting a lot of precedents for any others of its type that might be encountered later.