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

[Jfdlsjfd]

Let's pretend they're pigfolk.

Can I have the recipe of shredded orc with gravy?

Edit: in order to contribute something positive, I'd say that I am not sure if eating another species, despite it being sentient, would qualify as "evil" in the context of objective D&D morality.

 

[Yaarel]

In a polytheistic setting, the relationship between a Cleric and a deity belongs in the Ideal and Flaw section.

The deity itself and-or its sacred community are "Bonds".

Additionally, the Cleric might share some "Ideal" in common cause with the deity.

Perhaps the Cleric and the deity might even share some "Flaw".

In some polytheistic settings it is important for the Cleric to share the same ethical alignment, and in other polytheistic settings it doesnt matter - and the worshipers of the deity can schism against each other and can disagree with the deity.

The reward for a player who roleplays the Clerics relationship with the bonded deity, is the DM grants Inspiration dice.

The punishment for not roleplaying the relationship to the deity, is the DM doesnt give Inspiration. But the DM might still grant the player Inspiration for good roleplaying in other situations.

 

[Helldritch]

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.

From what I am reading, you've hit your thumb more than once. I perfectly know the history and the evolution of alignment. I started playing in 1980 so.... But that alone is not enough for you. I have introduced hundreds in the hobby, and I am still doing it (well, we're on pause with the covid, but once it is over; we will resume our Friday night D&D exhibition games). And guess what, since the end of the 80s, I have to personally see the horror stories you claim that are so common even now.

I use alignment for
NPCs that will stay unnamed as way to play them with a simple basic personality.

I use it as a beginner's RP aid.

I use it as a building start for my main villains.

I use it as a quick reference to build varied encounters that will make sense by not using/mixing vastly different aligned monsters/foes.

You keep claiming that every alignment users are getting hurt and yet, I have not seen this in 30 years and I am in contact with about 50 DMs and all of them use alignment as I do. None have had any problems with it. IF alignments were so problematic, I would have witnessed or heard somewhere else other than this forum.

If for you, the alignments are a dangerous tool, it may simply be because you do not know how to use it correctly. Maybe you got hurt by a bad DM and I am truly sorry for you if that is the case. I really am for you seem to be a nice person. But you are cutting yourself from a useful tool. That is your choice. Do not impose it on others.

 

[Helldritch]

In a polytheistic setting, the relationship between a Cleric and a deity belongs in the Ideal and Flaw section.

The deity itself and-or its sacred community are "Bonds".

Additionally, the Cleric might share some "Ideal" in common cause with the deity.

Perhaps the Cleric and the deity might even share some "Flaw".

In some polytheistic settings it is important for the Cleric to share the same ethical alignment, and in other polytheistic settings it doesnt matter - and the worshipers of the deity can schism against each other and can disagree with the deity.

The reward for a player who roleplays the Clerics relationship with the bonded deity, is the DM grants Inspiration dice.

The punishment for not roleplaying the relationship to the deity, is the DM doesnt give Inspiration. But the DM might still grant the player Inspiration for good roleplaying in other situations.

Interesting take. I would be much arsher than that. Not following your deity will mean that if your transgression is strong enough, you might end up with so spells at all. It would be the same thing with a paladin and some warlock patrons.

But I should mention that we do not play with inspiration but with cinematic advantages.

 

[Flamestrike]

Do any people actually have issues with a (say) an Evil aligned agent of a Good aligned faith casting spells?

In 5E there is nothing against it, and one could only rule against it on some presupposition that the God themselves witholds that divine power from the agent.

What if it doesn't work that way, and the God cant withhold that divine power?

The 'cosmic rule of Ao' (for example) states that as long as an agent is working for the faith (like a LE Inquisitor of LG Torm) that he still gets granted his magic, but still gets judged as 'False' on death.

The very implication that 'False' judgements exist does indicate that one can sincerely believe they are working within the teachings of a religious doctrine, but nonetheless are actually wrong in that belief.

Maybe Ao dictates that in such cases, Gods must grant those sincere (but misguided) Clerics spells.

It's not hard to imagine, and it opens up plenty of interesting possibilities (entire schisms in faiths with different interpretations on what the God wants, and how to best interpret his doctrine).

 

[Neonchameleon]

I use alignment for
NPCs that will stay unnamed as way to play them with a simple basic personality.

Oh yes. Their personality is "Lawful Evil." That's not a personality unless you're playing a comedy game based on Saturday Morning cartoons.

You can get a personality off a few words (Fate does it regularly) - but alignment is a bad way of doing this because it's such a flanderization.

So you can do this - but it's a bad way of doing this.

I use it as a beginner's RP aid.

Again I've used beginners RP aids. Alignment is a particularly bad one.

I use it as a building start for my main villains.

Possibly this works. As long as you then put enough work in that the alignment becomes redundant.

I use it as a quick reference to build varied encounters that will make sense by not using/mixing vastly different aligned monsters/foes.

And here again you have a truly crappy system if you want a naturalistic seeming world and are using nine point alignment. You can use it for that - and end up with a Council of Evil which if you looked at the psychology would not work together.

Or you can try motivations and environments. In which case alignment becomes pretty redundant.

But I suppose that when the only tool you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. And if the only tool you have is alignment you're going to force it to do things it isn't good at.

You keep claiming that every alignment users are getting hurt

I have never claimed this. I have claimed that it leads to some problems. This I stand by - but saying "every" is a straw man.

If for you, the alignments are a dangerous tool,

For me they are a bad tool that sometimes has dangerous results.

One of the worse things alignment does is take up space that could be used for something that was actually half-decent. And that wasn't frequently morally bad, especially when applied to races. We've Gygax on killing orc children.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Do any people actually have issues with a (say) an Evil aligned agent of a Good aligned faith casting spells?

For 34 years of the history of D&D this was considered a problem (at least if the spells were from the deity).

Me, I consider that this leads to a narrowing of the possible storytelling.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

They are, because the description says that they are. The art doesn't match the description, making the artwork faulty.

Or other way around. Considering that there are far more pictures of orcs than there are exact verbal descriptions of their appearance, I'd trust the pictures.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

On the other hand, why bother? Just provide a stat block. Since people in real life, around the table, can't agree on what is good, evil, lawful or chaotic, using those denominations doesn't add anything to the description. Keep the fluff in specific settings. The Xenomorph would be classified as evil by some groups, I'd see them as not aligned -- they are no more evil than sharks or smallpox. What's the point in labelling them with unclear qualifiers?



The MM did that if you read entry on Quaggoths, we learn that "in a distant age, quaggoth tribes dwelled upon the surface as nocturnal arboreal hunters, possessing their own language and culture". That's basically a sentient species. The stories continues... "When elves entered the mortal realm, they clashed with the quaggoths". OK, that's basically a war, it happens all the time even within a species... "eventually driving them to near extinction. Only by fleeing deep into the Underdark did the quaggoth survive". So we had tribes of a sentient species, with language and culture, that was genocided by elves. With a passion, because not only did they have to hide in the Underdark but they had to go DEEP into the Underdark... staying near the surface wasn't enough not to be destroyed by the land-grapping elves, showing sign that they were really intent into exterminating them. I'd be strongly suspicious of ancestor-worshipping elves in this context. TBH, I don't think many people pay attention to the Quaggoth story, but it really paints elves of old into worse than orcs, because the orcs had a reason to be aggressive, while the elves apparently just wanted to take their land.




And frankly, reading the story of the gods conspiring against Gruumsh to take all the places to live and letting nothing for the orcs can be interpreted as just an orcish belief... but it's totally coherent with elves as fantasy nazis claiming their vital territory and driving other people into extinction. It's also make the idea that orcs are evil the same way that "Indians are evil because they don't want to let us take their land" in hollywood westerns, not a very convincing idea of "evil". They are just currently at war with every other race because they were not afforded a place to live in the world. It's certainly a long lasting war, but unless you consider that all war is evil -- in which case most (all?) human cultures are evil, there is nothing inherently evil by being at war. They do sacrifices of their eyes to their god -- that's a religious belief, nothing evil. They take a great pleasure in killing elves -- ok, that's sadistic, admittedly, but after millenia of war I am pretty sure anyone would arrive at the point of hating the soldiers of the other side -- it's not an excuse, though. They are raider and plunderers, but that's not particularly evil by itself, attacking ennemy supply lines is a common and sound practice. They kill "any humanoid that stands against them". That's pretty much the goal of any army. Only the mention of their bloodlust let the reader infer that they might also kill humanoids that don't stand against us, but it's never explicitely written. The mention that they are always on the move isn't evil, it's just a regular practice of nomads. Their habit of attacking "the richest target" proves that they are intelligent. Attacking poor targets yield less gold.

At the next paragraph, I started wondering if it wasn't a case of unrealiable narrator because it's stated that they are "flaunting such vivd and grotesque titles as Many Arrows". The latter is canonically peaceful... And the name isn't grotesque ; it's even sounding very similar to the Broken Arrow tribe of Native Americans.

The next paragraph is even more interesting... "Rejecting notions of racial purity, they proudly welcome ogres, trolls, half-ogres and orogs into their ranks". Who exactly is embracing notions of racial purity in the setting? That would be a sign of enlightenment on the orc parts. If it's mentionned, it's because it's noteworthy, a distinctive trait of them.

Their goddess of fertility ask them to procreate often and indiscriminately. So they must be fruitful and multiply and reject notion of racial purity. Great, that's not something unheard of, especially fitting for a fertility goddess. That, and their babies are orcs or half-orcs, irrespective of the other parent's exact species.

You can read the description as "orcs are evil, plundering, xenophobic, rapists and genocidal maniacs" of course and it might even be the intended effect. But the wording in the MM can be read as "orcs were the butt of the jokes of human, dwarven and especially elvish gods, despite just wanting some place to settle, so they had to become nomadic people and setttled people continues to treat them with a strong anti-nomadic bia, including accusations of all the crimes ranging for "killing and plundering" to "having funny names" to prove that it's justified to kill them. I'd say they are average and maligned by the evil followers of the other gods, the same who exterminated the peaceful quaggoth to take their lands.



Reason: their ancestors were not granted any land to inhabit, so they must survive by plundering, which makes them evil in the eyes of the settled people, regardless of their individual qualities. Even if you're the smart and peaceful Obould Many-Arrow who brokered a peace treaty with all your neighbours, taking the risk of angering your own fighters and being killed for that -- you will still be derided as a "flaunting a grotesque name", the name of your proud ancestors.

This is truly amazing post and I can't press the like button hard enough. This is a perfect example of alignment leading to dumbing down interesting conflicts and leading to offensive results. There are truly interesting narratives there, ones which are not black and white, ones which both sides may have valid grievances and who's right or wrong is in the eye of the beholder. But once the alignment is introduced all of this goes out of the window; 'savages' are evil, and pretty people who need lebensraum are good, the end of story.

 

[Cadence]

And how is labeling a creature "neutral evil" going to tell you how it reacts in any particular situation? And do all neutral evil creatures react in the same way to that situation? If not, then how is that label useful, or more useful than actually giving it a few sentences of motivation?

Has a single person claimed the two letters give as much detail as a few sentences of motivation? Every MM size set of motivation sentences will also leave out a huge variety of situations too. And so we have the multiple page treatment for some creatures given in other sources. And they also leave out how a particular one might react in some situations...

The two letters give a start and are quickly scannable. If they're in the ballpark the few MM sentences give more. What they leave out the DM makes up.