D&D General Which edition handled alignment best?

[Twiggly the Gnome]

1977 Basic: Lawful Good, Lawful Evil, Chaotic Good, Chaotic Evil, and Neutral.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

i think it's a real shame there are so many people saying things to the effect of '5e does it best by not doing anything with it'

Indeed. I for one am not satisfied until it is completely gone!

 

[aco175]

I was with 4e when I could just list good and be enough.

 

[Pale Violet Light]

lawful good rule-follower, good person, evil jerk, chaotic evil force of destruction, and unaligned and out the spectrum.

I read this as “on the spectrum”; my immediate thought was “how rude!” followed by “shouldn’t they be lawful neutral, anyhow?”. Anyway, for someone who likes playing anti-authoritarian chaotic good characters (how I think I am) and humorless lawful neutral rule-followers (how I actually am), I prefer the nine-alignment system.

 

[Jack Daniel]

My honest answer is Chainmail (the alignments are just metagame organizing principles for the two opposing teams, they don't have anything to do with how the individual units/characters behave), but given the list of options presented, I have to pick 1e. I still use most of 1e's alignment rules in my OD&D/BECMI games.

 

[the Jester]

3e. Alignment was a cosmic force and there were mechanical implications, such as DR that was bypassed by good, lawful, chaotic, or evil weapons, or weapons that did extra damage against a certain alignment, etc. Yet it wasn't a straight jacket for pcs, and for most characters, it could never have an impact on how the character worked (clerics, paladins, etc aside).

 

[the Jester]

Are you suggesting that it doesn't make sense that there's a Chaotic Neutral language in older editions?

If you treat alignment language as a subset of language that only lets you talk about the nuances of specific philosophical points of view, it makes a certain amount of sense.... but even then, it works better if you have to share another language before you can speak (e.g.) CN to each other.

 

[Voadam]

For alignment languages I like basic law chaos neutral over nine cosmic languages. Cosmic Law and Chaos are archetypically cool forces to tap into and three factions is a useful number for identifying friends from foes and communicating with cosmic forces faction allies. It supports a chaos dungeon with diverse monsters, for instance.

Nine grid LG paladin not being able to do this with a NG cleric of the same patron god but able to do so with a paladin of a different god is kind of weird and makes it more niche in applicability.

 

[Azzy]

i think it's a real shame there are so many people saying things to the effect of '5e does it best by not doing anything with it'

Why?

 

[not-so-newguy]

What's the difference between BECMI vs B/X? They're both three alignment systems, AFAIK.

Anyway, I picked BECMI.