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

[Crimson Longinus]

It can't be the other way around. The description comes first and represents the designers vision for the race. The artwork is made for that. You can trust the secondary source and secondary vision if you want to, but I'm going to trust the correct, primary vision

I have worked as a professional illustrator for RPGs. The art doesn't randomly appear, there is art director and there are notes send to the artists, there's an approval process. The orcs look like they do in the art because WotC wanted them to look like that. It is not in any way of lesser value than the text.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I had never thought of whether "of them all" and "of all time" were different things. In any case, changing it to simply "best" feels like it would let one answer the question he was aiming for.

In that case, it feels like knocking off the best of your competition so you can be the best is a trope.

Oh, knocking off the competition is textbook (just ask Tonya Harding). It's just something that works much better for athletes aiming for the best in that minute than artisans whose work is timeless.

 

[Maxperson]

In virtually every horror story involving alignment I’ve read or experienced, the principal people involved were sure that they were handling alignment fine, and that everyone else was wrong.

I'm sure they did, but the fact that I've not had a single alignment issue since the very early days in of 3e, and even those were a couple of very mild disagreements that got quickly talked out, shows that I understand it just fine. The horror stories also involve one other factor. In virtually every case, it's a bad DM or player who is causing the problem, not alignment. Alignment is just the scapegoat for the bad DM/Player in that instance.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I have worked as a professional illustrator for RPGs. The art doesn't randomly appear, there is art director and there are notes send to the artists, there's an approval process. The orcs look like they do in the art because WotC wanted them to look like that. It is not in any way of lesser value than the text.

That said there are cases where the artists are known to have ignored the briefs and still got paid (frequently when asked for less cheesecake). But the same applies to writers.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I wonder if part of the loyalty to alignment is couched in the feeling it gives to 'know' you're 'right' about something that establishes your literal moral superiority and in the past allowed one to literally punish the transgressors.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Do your PCs have to perform holy rites? Do you require them to have a god instead of just an ideal? Do they get penalized in any way if they don't promote the agenda? Requiring the later two of those anyway seem to go against some of the other posters on here.

Only because "this penalty shouldn't happen" is not at all the same as "no penalty should happen."

If a cleric too blatantly flouts the rulings of their church the church is probably going to have words to say about it. And by words I mean first a summons then a summons backed with an armed guard, and then one backed by multiple high level clerics. Churches don't like doing things like that, hence the escalations.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

I'm going to say that I have seen some alignment problems. Outside of a few instances in the days of 1e involving forced alignment change and the associated penalties, they all involved Paladins and arguments over whether a specific act was chaotic or evil. There weren't a lot of those, because the people I played with quickly stopped playing Paladins and life was good. I saw those kinds of issues through the early days of 3e. Since then, literally nothing.

 

[Mistwell]

I wonder if part of the loyalty to alignment is couched in the feeling it gives to 'know' you're 'right' about something that establishes your literal moral superiority and in the past allowed one to literally punish the transgressors.

This feels like yet another one of those "those people who disagree with my view have bad motives which makes me superior to them," type arguments.

You have people in this thread who support alignment. You've asked them why they support it and they have answered you, and none of their answers is the speculation you just put forward. So how else are they supposed to view what you just said as something other than you think they're all lying and just have bad motives?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Do your PCs have to perform holy rites?

Yes. But that's what they do when they choose their spells. Just like wizard is studying their spell book.

Do you require them to have a god instead of just an ideal?

Yes, as that is how divine magic is defined in the metaphysics of the setting. It is magic where the caster is an intermediary. Druidic magic is divine in this way too, but they receive their power from multiple smaller spirits. Presumably a cleric could be similarly animistically powered too.

Do they get penalized in any way if they don't promote the agenda?

Theoretically but unlikely in practice. I mean the player chose to play a cleric of certain god, so they presumably were fine with the core tenets of said god. And it's not like a priest of war god needs to actively promote war, they just need to bless warriors on the eve of battle and stuff like that. The gods are intentionally distant and vague and do not micromanage stuff.

Requiring the later two of those anyway seem to go against some of the other posters on here.

Yes, probably. It's just how metaphysics in this setting happen to work. In some other setting they might work differently. And no one is currently playing a cleric or paladin in my game, so this doesn't actually matter at the moment.

 

[Maxperson]

Believing the opposite of everything being preached seems hard. It isn't hard at all irl to find examples of hypocritical religious leaders (or hypocritical politicians or...).

The entire point of the Cleric is that they believe in what they follow to such a great degree that they get magical powers for it. Either through faith alone if alignment or philosophy, or from the god that they believe in. You literally could not find a hypocritical Cleric, because anyone like that would fail to have the required belief to get powers in the first place.

Such absolute faith and belief is very rare, which is why in my world a major Temple will only have a handful of Clerics and the rest are just non-magical priests. A minor temple probably has 1 or 2 Clerics, and a shrine or small town church probably does not have a cleric at all.