D&D 5E RIP alignment

JEB · Mar 7, 2021

Dausuul said:
I don't think it's going away entirely. 5E has committed firmly to the Great Wheel, more's the pity, and alignment is pretty integral to the Wheel.

True, the Great Wheel could wind up being the last vestige of alignment in the game. Though of course, you could also describe the cosmology without continuing to attribute the layout to alignment. Might even make certain planes' placement less odd (like the Beastlands).

Plus the Great Wheel isn't the only cosmology we've seen in 5E - there's also Eberron's (though Tasha's actually linked it to Sigil, for what I think was the first time) and the MTG multiverse (as seen in Ravnica and Theros). Maybe they'll go back to 3E's approach, and make cosmologies more ad-hoc.

Maxperson · Mar 7, 2021

darjr said:
Folks, it was dropped from monster stat blocks.

sheesh.

There's no good reason to drop it, though. It had highly limited mechanical effect and a simple blurb at the beginning of books explaining that monsters can be other alignments is enough.

darjr · Mar 7, 2021

JEB said:
True, the Great Wheel could wind up being the last vestige of alignment in the game. Though of course, you could also describe the cosmology without continuing to attribute the layout to alignment. Might even make certain planes' placement less odd (like the Beastlands).

Plus the Great Wheel isn't the only cosmology we've seen in 5E - there's also Eberron's (though Tasha's actually linked it to Sigil, for what I think was the first time) and the MTG multiverse (as seen in Ravnica and Theros). Maybe they'll go back to 3E's approach, and make cosmologies more ad-hoc.

Wait, I very intrigued by this idea.

I think they'll need to support the factions and the idea of law and chaos. I wonder how it would work?

JEB · Mar 7, 2021

Maxperson said:
There's no good reason to drop it, though. It had highly limited mechanical effect and a simple blurb at the beginning of books explaining that monsters can be other alignments is enough.

Well, there is one good reason. When folks are upset at the idea of inborn alignment, removing alignment from everyone is a pretty strong statement that inborn alignment is gone. Though as noted, I think there were less absolutist ways of addressing that problem...

Retreater · Mar 7, 2021

Great. I never use it anyway.

Hexmage-EN · Mar 7, 2021

So does this mean Planescape is dead?

tetrasodium · Mar 7, 2021

JEB said:
True, the Great Wheel could wind up being the last vestige of alignment in the game. Though of course, you could also describe the cosmology without continuing to attribute the layout to alignment. Might even make certain planes' placement less odd (like the Beastlands).

Plus the Great Wheel isn't the only cosmology we've seen in 5E - there's also Eberron's (though Tasha's actually linked it to Sigil, for what I think was the first time) and the MTG multiverse (as seen in Ravnica and Theros). Maybe they'll go back to 3E's approach, and make cosmologies more ad-hoc.

She's mentioned a couple times in Rising (16,59)

I don't believe she's ever been mentioned in any other eberron stuff pretty much making her a sigil npc who happens to come from eberron. Ebberon is an advanced sphere that embraces things like capitalism & gives cultural stasis the finger making it extremely reasonable for a sigil book say that the few people from eberron who found this untapped market of primitive burks excited to spend mountains of gold on basic mass producible wide magic goods aren't shouting it from the rooftops back home while the market is good. Even the dragonmark houses themselves have motive for secretly operating there since it would allow them to engage in things banned under the Korth Edicts & Treaty of Thronehold even if they are operating openly in sigil itself.

edit: just to be clear, this is probably one of the best ways to link the two & her mentions are completely fine so far

MGibster · Mar 7, 2021

Hexmage-EN said:
So does this mean Planescape is dead?

I certainly never expected to see any Planescape products in the future. But then I didn't expect a Ravenloft setting so I guess I'm not exactly the Amazing Kreskin.

darjr · Mar 7, 2021

Hexmage-EN said:
So does this mean Planescape is dead?

no

Charlaquin · Mar 7, 2021

JEB said:
Possibly. But if they think it's too troublesome to have alignment on monsters, and in PC race writeups, and even for unique NPCs, I imagine they'd prefer to just leave it out entirely.

Maybe, but it’s also, as people in this thread have said, part of D&D’s identity. It would take very little effort to dedicate a page of the 6e PHB and an inch of space on the character sheet to let people who want to have an alignment to describe their character with do so, while not having default alignments on any PC races, NPCs, or monsters (which is the thing people don’t like about it).

D&D 5E RIP alignment

JEB

Legend

Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus

darjr

I crit!

JEB

Legend

Retreater

Legend

Hexmage-EN

Legend

tetrasodium

Legend

MGibster

Legend

darjr

I crit!

Charlaquin

Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)

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