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

[Maxperson]

See above

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

I'm starting to wonder what exactly you want the books to have in them, if lore is meaningless and everyone should just make up their own? What exactly do you want the game to be?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I'm starting to wonder what exactly you want the books to have in them, if lore is meaningless and everyone should just make up their own? What exactly do you want the game to be?

A toolkit for creating a fantasy campaigns. Lore is setting specific, it can be in setting books.

 

[Aging Bard]

As a DM, I find alignment very useful for worldbuilding through NPCs and societies. It provides believable situations for your PCs to react to. I'm less concerned if the PCs exactly correspond to their chosen alignments: as players, they get to be more deep and complex.

Here are summaries of how I handle each of the alignments. To repeat, these are MY decisions and do not necessarily correspond to any official source. They are provided for your amusement and enjoyment. Please be nice!

The Good-Evil axis corresponds to respect to personal agency, while the Law-Chaos axis corresponds to respect for an external source of law (so a Chaotic individual only respects their own personal "code", which could take many forms).

Lawful Good is the most common alignment anywhere. It respects both the agency of all individuals and the external law of society. Even in a foreign land, one would respect the local customs unless they were not Good.

Neutral Good values personal agency over specific laws. Laws that punish or inhibit freedom are especially suspect. This is an uncommon alignment at the level of a society but quite common for individuals in Lawful societies.

Lawful Neutral persons are sticklers for rules. There is no problem infringing on the agency of rule-breakers, who should know better. This alignment is more common than Neutral Good, especially in more hierarchical cultures.

Chaotic Good is the alignment of the elves and is a strange philosophy. In essence, individual agency and code is all, and there is no external law that can be considered legitimate. Elves must be rallied to individual causes by force of persuasion alone, and such commitments are always contingent. Few non-Sylvan races have the temperament to adhere to this alignment, as it requires extraordinary interpersonal trust to perpetuate.

Lawful Evil societies use the law to further the agency of those with will to power. Law is a game of the strong and wily, used to control the weak. Laws will be highly stratified to serve the current rulers and subjugate the rest. This alignment is the prototype for most authoritarian regimes.

Chaotic Neutral elevates individual personal code above all. What is right or wrong is always filtered through one’s code, so Good and Evil are of lesser concern. Such societies are extremely rare and charismatically driven. A common strong religion can help to dictate a common creed, even drifting into cultism.

Neutral Evil venerates desire above all. Laws are immaterial unless they enhance individual freedom without limit. Such societies are very rare without strong charismatic or religious leadership. Slavery and other manners of personal exploitation are common.

Chaotic Evil regards all individuals as completely sovereign and beholden to none. Anything one can conceive of is permissible. Other individuals are raw material to be used as desired. Any such society can only held together with raw unrestrained power. The perhaps infinite layers of the Abyss show how no overall consensus is ever possible.

True Neutral is essentially anti-philosophical, that intellect is a poor guide to what is right and wrong or just and unjust. The basic needs of all individuals are equally important, and how these are satisfied is not particularly important. Personal agency and creed are much less important than existence, and staying out of each other’s business is the preferred way to avoid disputes and let people live their lives. This is an uncommon alignment, whose adherents tends to venerate “natural” solutions to conflict.

 

[Malmuria]

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.

Yeah I guess the reason this question comes up with regards to a potential next edition does not have to do, ultimately, with usability (and IMO 5e stat blocks are not very usable in other ways either). Nor does it end with changes to alignment. Rather, some people are uncomfortable with humanoid creatures being baseline or default bad guys. The question is, for those of you who like alignment, would a switch to "any alignment" for humanoids make you stop playing this edition (if you haven't already)? Conversely, if you don't like alignment or for their to be default 'bad buy' humanoids, would you not buy a new edition that had those elements? Or would you (either group) buy the new edition and homebrew what you needed? It will be interesting to see if wotc can keep dnd as an all-things-to-all-people kind of game.

 

[Mistwell]

A toolkit for creating a fantasy campaigns. Lore is setting specific, it can be in setting books.

I appreciate that. I feel like we kind of got that with 4e. Which was fun. 5e is fun too, in some of the same ways and in some different ways. But I get at least what you like in a system, I think.

 

[Wolfram stout]

This looks to me like you are suggesting that you would have difficulties placing red dragons (CE) in the City of Brass. Huh. Seems like instead of opening possibilities, alignment is closing them off.

Also, what alignment is Haughty and Cruel? What about Gregarious? Can a monster be LN and still very friendly?

But to answer your question, yes, it makes a lot more sense that a creature with a fire theme would be found in the City of Brass whatever its alignment rather than an ice-themed LE creature (or even an lightning-themed dragon, like blues).

Maybe it makes sense for them to work together even if they have different outlooks. Maybe one is enslaved by the other. Maybe this particular red dragon (or this group of them) rejects stereotypes.

red dragons absolutely have a place in the city but not in the Efreeti's troops. The city of Brass is a huge Plane-hopping site and I want to give most of the city that oppressive feel of stay in the lines and you are safe, step out of line and The weight of the system may crush you.

i think having a few LE Blue Dragons in his court does that in a way that a Brass or Red would not. Now the merc company camped in the outer city, yes they may have one or two.

in fact I think I will add that as background the players may get involved when a pair of Blues have to take down a trouble making red.

 

[pemerton]

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.

I don't think there's anything about Blue and Green dragons apart from their alignment tags that makes them better suited than Black or Red dragons to hang out in the City of Brass. Is there?

 

[pemerton]

The original Githyanki where that lore comes from were not set as LE. They were any evil, which means plenty of CE among them, matching the Red Dragon alignment.

In The Best of White Dwarf - Articles, vol 1, they are variable but never good and always evil. The Fiend Folio has them as variable but always evil.

It's the Fiend Folio that refers to "a pact with a group of red dragons . . . which, in return for shelter, food and treasure, assist the githyanki when on the Prime Material Plane by acting as steeds. . . . These red dragons will obey only
githyanki when the latter are on the Prime Material Plane."

How exactly pacts work among the CE isn't something the entry goes on to explore.

 

[pemerton]

On goblins using morning stars - I haven't gone back to Chainmail, but in the AD&D Monster Manual there is this picture, and then a list of how goblins "are typically armed":

I think there is some uncertainty in AD&D over what exactly a morning star is. In the PHB it is 4' long, heavy, does 2d4/d6+1 damage, and presumably is two-handed. Given that the MM tells us that goblins are 4' tall, the weapon that goblin is wielding seems more the size of a horseman's mace (1.5' long, d6/d4 damage).