D&D General The Problem with Evil or what if we don't use alignments?

[Maxperson]

Oh god, not another one.

People, please stop beating on Psych 101 terms. They're already dead.

And even if you were using them correctly, pointing out a fallacy is not an actual valid argument.

It's the Fallacy Fallacy!

 

[Maxperson]

And that's where everyone stopped reading.

It was the question of primary importance in that post. You don't lead with it like that unless that's what the post is ultimately about. It had some other interesting questions in it, but most other things get drowned out in an alignment thread. It might not be a bad idea for you to start another thread just asking that question.

 

[Helldritch]

If we retrack the thread to faithless cleric then....

A cleric must follow an ethos. If not a god, then he must follow an.... you guessed it ! An alignment! For a LG cleric it means that you will have to follow the precepts of LG. The same goes on for the other alignment. A philosophy might work given a generous DM but I think it is beyond the scope of the game's actual stance of what it can actually do.

The clerics following an alignment will have to live and preach by this alignment. This means that the cleric would.be hard pressed to preach one thing while actually believing something entirely the opposite. It might work for a short while, but at some point, when does preaching becomes belief? And divine magic comes from belief. So preaching something you do not believe and act as if you actually believe will, eventually, make you believe what you ate preaching. Much like a self brainwash...

So unless our cleric is infiltrating an enemy church, if he is not following a god he might end up becoming exactly what he was trying to undermine! Remember that for a godless cleric, belief is what gives him his divine abilities. At some point, preaching a different ethos or set of beliefs will affect him. A god will not be there to shield him or her from the influence of the heathens.

There was a kind of clerics in the Book of Vile Darkness that were stealing divine magic from the gods but I never played with that option...

 

[Maxperson]

If we retrack the thread to faithless cleric then....

A cleric must follow an ethos. If not a god, then he must follow an.... you guessed it ! An alignment! For a LG cleric it means that you will have to follow the precepts of LG. The same goes on for the other alignment. A philosophy might work given a generous DM but I think it is beyond the scope of the game's actual stance of what it can actually do.

Those are not the only options. There are also ideals that are not an alignment or god. Buddhism is a good example of one. There does have to be an ethos, though.

 

[Yaarel]

A cosmic force Cleric can play out in many ways. Each player can decide and write down how.

 

[Helldritch]

Yep, but without a god to guide the cleric; an infiltrated cleric might get corrupted by the very ethos he is trying to infiltrate. With a god, whenever you pray, you know that something greater is giving you your powers. Without a God, you access your power through sheer belief. An infiltrating cleric will/might get "tempted" by the teachings of this ethos he is trying to infiltrate.

A god offers some protection from outside influence, a simple ethos do not. At least this is how I imagine things.

Edit:" Maybe my view is biased by the fact that I come from a much older edition where a cleric had his spells granted directly from his god!.
1st and 2nd level spells were obtained through sheer beliefs, but 3rd and 4th were granted by a Solar, 5th by a demigod or higher. 6th by a lesser god and 7th by a greater god.

It was a good reason for a cleric to spread the beliefs of his god as only a greater god could grant 7th level spells. There powerful your god, the stronger you would become.

 

[Neonchameleon]

And I never claimed the contrary. Why use a demolition mace when a finition hammer will do the trick? A tool has its uses and when you use it for something that it is not intended for, you get the horror stories we all heard or seen in the 80s and early 90s.

Buuuuuuut
It is not because the tool is not adapted for your need that the tool isn't a good one. You gotta use the tool for what it was meant to do. A car is a great vehicle to carry you from point a to point b. But if you want it to carry 50,000 kg load, you will find that a car is lacking in that endeavor. I do not blame the car, I blame the driver. Just as I do not blame alignments, I blame those that want more from it than what it is supposed to do.

Sometimes even when a tool supposedly is adapted for your need then the tool isn't a good one.

If alignment was a hammer it would be one with a half-length unfinished and unvarnished handle prone to give splinters, and where the head was held on by simple friction while the head itself was made of cast iron so it was prone to shattering if you swung it hard.

Yes, if you only use it within the safety parameters you can use it to hammer in nails. This doesn't mysteriously make it a good hammer. It makes it the cheapest hammer on the market - and hammers aren't expensive. A hammer of a better length, better weight, with a polished handle, and a head that doesn't fly off is a better hammer even for the things that cheap hammer is supposedly meant for.

But there will be people who have adapted their technique to this terrible hammer and will protest when the kit replaces it with a better one because they are used to the tools they are used to.

 

[Helldritch]

Nope, you ate totally wrong in that account. The alignment system is perfectly adapted to what it is supposed to do.

When you do not have skills to use a tool, do not blame the tool, blame yourself. You have hit yourself on the thumb with the hammer? Do not blame the hammer, blame your lack of skills with the hammer. The same analogy can be said of alignments. If you have burned yourself with them, isn't it because you tried to use them for what they were not intended?

These arguments you are using can be used both for your position and against. For me, alignments are a simple hammer. They're not a mace or a small finition hammer. I do not use alignments to do things they're not supposed to do.

Use them as intended and they work perfectly.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Nope, you ate totally wrong in that account. The alignment system is perfectly adapted to what it is supposed to do.

Nope, you are totally wrong in that account. Largely because the alignment system isn't "supposed" to do anything. It's two separate systems welded together.

If you want to play a Fantasy Western then Lawful/Neutral/Chaos makes perfect sense and reinforces the thematics of the game. If you want to play High Fantasy Adventure, Dragonlance-style Good/Neutral/Evil makes sense and reinforces the thematics of the game.

Nine point alignment makes about as much coherent thematic sense as the front of a motorbike welded to the back of a car.

When you do not have skills to use a tool, do not blame the tool, blame yourself.

And when I have the skills to not only use it but to understand why it was made, how it evolved, and why it is no longer fit for purpose I don't blame either

Even Gygax himself gave up on alignment. But for some reason you think it's fit for purpose.

You have hit yourself on the thumb with the hammer?

Nope. I've thrown out the "hammer" because I was using better hammers before I played my first game of D&D and I know what a good hammer looks like. I've watched too many other people hit their thumbs on that hammer.

That said D&D 5e has the appropriate response to the "hammer" they include for legacy reasons. They've redesigned the game so everything's held together by screws and not nails. So there's almost nowhere you have to actually use that hammer.

 

[Neonchameleon]

And while I'm on the subject, D&D is a game that should be entry level. If too many people are hitting their thumbs with it then it's a flaw in either the design of the game or the use of the hammer.

It would be clearer to see with a power tool; if a band saw were to take too many fingers then you could blame the fingers lopped off and some amateurs would. On the other hand any responsible professional environment would do a health and safety check and realise that the whole thing was unsafe and look at installing finger guards.

One person hurts themselves is user error. A substantial fraction of people hurting themselves means that you look at the design of the tool.