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

[Oofta]

Let's do a test!

I have a monster in my setting called the Hundmithanden. To draw a mental picture, think black poodle or other water dog standing 5'8'' and wearing a shabby assortment of clothes and sporting an unsetting pair of human-like hands.

My setting is good, so it doesn't have alignment, but if it did, by my understanding of how it works, they would be CE.

What is their society, behavior and environment based on this total lack of reading the description. According to alignment proponents, this is all they need to run these guys, so let's hear it!

What's their role in the story? Do they have any motivation or goals? Because that still matters. What alignment tells me is a bit about how they might go about how they go about achieving their goals. It's not like I look at just the alignment, but alignment is a big part of it.

But white room blanks? Their society is ruled by the strong, might makes right. They care little about the lives of others, although they may make personal attachment to individuals. Laws, titles, rules mean nothing. Honor is a personal thing, not prescribed from on high. They likely don't think twice about harming others in order to achieve their goals, in fact they may well enjoy it and seek out ways to cause others grief and pain. They may acknowledge and even follow laws when it's convenient or if the reward for obeying the law is greater than breaking it.

 

[Maxperson]

If you ran B2 with Moldvay B/X by RAW wouldn't the babies be innately evil?

As an aside, Gygax's personal take on the Paladin (which I disagree with, and I guess as of when it was written was just opinion of someone no longer writing the rules) doesn't help here.

No idea. I didn't play much basic at all as I started with 1e. We dabbled in it from time to time for fun, but I never learned it well. So let me change my statement to, "In AD&D(the editions), it has never been true."

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Haven't those debates actually occurred in history in cases where one group committed genocide or lesser oppressions against others? Does that mean the real world has alignments? Or just that some people in the real world think they do? Do you ban your players from thinking there is absolute good and evil? If not, and two players disagree, do they debate it until the DM tells them to knock it off?

Characters can of course think so and debate things. And yeah, you correctly allude to real world genocides. I find it extremely distasteful if the game represents something akin to them even somewhat justified. And alignment definitely causes that. In real world various racists, bigots and other extremists have repeatedly claimed that the people they hate are inherently evil or unworthy. And I don't want to have a game in which such claims have any backing.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

If you ran B2 with Moldvay B/X by RAW wouldn't the babies be innately evil?

As an aside, Gygax's personal take on the Paladin (which I disagree with, and I guess as of when it was written was just opinion of someone no longer writing the rules) doesn't help here.

Gygax's views on the matter are rather loathsome.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Let's do a test!

I have a monster in my setting called the Hundmithanden. To draw a mental picture, think black poodle or other water dog standing 5'8'' and wearing a shabby assortment of clothes and sporting an unsetting pair of human-like hands.

My setting is good, so it doesn't have alignment, but if it did, by my understanding of how it works, they would be CE.

What is their society, behavior and environment based on this total lack of reading the description. According to alignment proponents, this is all they need to run these guys, so let's hear it!

"The Hundmithanden are said to have been come into being when a greedy nobleman invoked the demon lord of crime, Eldanoth, seeking to transform his kennel of prized poodles into a means for seeking out and collecting more wealth. Eldanoth transformed the nobleman's hounds and granted them grasping hands for taking whatever suited their fancy. However, the demon lord of crime stole from the dogs their loyalty to their master, and in mere moments the nobleman was killed, each hundmithanden fighting for piece's of the man's clothing and jewelry. They ransacked the manor, killing the servants and taking everything they could carry to hide within hidden caches of wealth. Since then the hundmithanden uses its hands to climb trees and buildings in remote wildernesses, jumping down onto passerby to slay them and steal anything of worth, clothes and all, with the choicest pieces worn to distract from the poodle-like creature's mange-stricken appearance.

The hundmithanden have spread far and wide, each one eager to get away from its rival crime hounds and keep them from sniffing out its wealth. On the rare occasion that they meet to reproduce, each newborn is snatched away by the grasping hands of one of the parents as soon as they have all been born, both parents seeking to claim the young and teach them to serve as underlings in their crime sprees. A young hundmithanden learns quickly that it must find and steal wealth that pleases its parent lest they be killed to serve as an example to the others. Inevitably, once the young reach maturity, the survivors fight to the death among themselves and their parent to claim the accumulated horde."

I'd write more but I've got a class to get to.

 

[transmission89]

If you ran B2 with Moldvay B/X by RAW wouldn't the babies be innately evil?

As an aside, Gygax's personal take on the Paladin (which I disagree with, and I guess as of when it was written was just opinion of someone no longer writing the rules) doesn't help here.

They’d be chaotic. As the axis was law, neutral, chaos.
The implication of chaos being predominantly evil can be interpreted in the description of the chaotic alignment in Moldvay.

No idea. I didn't play much basic at all as I started with 1e. We dabbled in it from time to time for fun, but I never learned it well. So let me change my statement to, "In AD&D(the editions), it has never been true."

Again, I did mention, the if assumption. If that is how you predominantly run then. What I’ve said doesn’t contradict what you’ve written, which I absolutely agree with.

There is an argument to be made about the relevance of uncommon, and what uncommon actually means in terms of frequency, to an adventurer thats had village burnt down in a raid. But of course, that’s all table talk.
I erase them in B2 for the reasons I already outlined.

 

[transmission89]

Gygax's views on the matter are rather loathsome, in my opinion.

Fixed it for you.

 

[Maxperson]

Gygax's views on the matter are rather loathsome.

Yeah. I don't at all agree with his views on Paladins and LG acts. Fortunately, he wrote in 1e that we should make the changes we want and run it how we want, not how he said to, since he wouldn't want anyone else telling him what to do, either.

 

[Sithlord]

The last couple of pages really seal just how bad alignment is as a descriptor.

Law in D&D means Order, not literal writs of government. Cosmic Law is supposed to be a thing regardless of where you are or whether civilization has imposed it will there. It is possible in game for beings who have never heard of any other beings at all to be Lawful (whatever that is.

But because Law and law sound and are spelled alike, we just got three pages of arguing over whether or not a freaking Solar would run a red light.

So much for the perfect uberhumans that love alignment being perfectly aligned in what alignment means to them.

I think what you said has been stated in different ways at least 20 times on this thread.

 

[Sithlord]

Would they? Stoicism and Daoism both have strong "natural law" commitments. And in the classic D&D alignment framework they are True Neutral.

Thomas Aquinas is a well-known theorist of the natural law who also coincides, in period, with the typical high mediaeval setting of D&D. And here is Aquinas on theft (I believe I'm quoting from Summa Theologica, II-II, Question 66, Article 7):

[M]aterial goods are provided for the satisfaction of human needs. Therefore the division and appropriation of property, which proceeds from human law, must not hinder the satisfaction of man’s necessity from such goods. Equally, whatever a man has in superabundance is owed, of natural right, to the poor for their sustenance . . .​

​

But because there are many in necessity, and they cannot all be helped from the same source, it is left to the initiative of individuals to make provision from their own wealth, for the assistance of those in need. If, however, there is such urgent and evident necessity that there is clearly an immediate need of necessary sustenance – if, for example, a person is in immediate danger of physical privation, and there is no other way of satisfying his need – then he may take what is necessary from another person’s goods, either openly or by stealth. Nor is this, strictly speaking, fraud or robbery.​

My impression is that many D&D players would equate that outlook with CG rather than LG.


I'm actually a philosopher, and that may be why I've always found Planescape and its factions unbearably silly.

As is my favorite John Locke.