D&D 5E A different take on Alignment

[Chaosmancer]

Because those words don't fit. Miser does. The words you just suggested imply a much greater amount of spending than the occasional few coppers to someone who is poor.

And Miser implies not giving any money to the poor, so your word doesn't fit either.

Miser is accurate for what I am saying. I don't need a different word.

No it isn't, it is "someone who spends as little money as possible" Giving money to the poor is not required, so not giving that money is "as little as possible"

I never claimed that there was a point value, but if a trait leans towards chaos, than chaotic has greater validity than lawful. I don't need to say that chaotic is 1.48572982654r9765t906732190438754r87yfkjhvdskjhfdsa,mncsaje298743219874321987321x more valid.

And $1.01 and $50 are both "more money" than a single dollar. That doesn't make saying "I have more money than a dollar" useful.

If all you are arguing is that it is possible, then congrats, it is possble in an infinite universe for just about anything to happen. But that doesn't make it "valid" to claim.

I've submitted exactly 0 contradictions in this thread.

You submitted the Miser who gives money to the poor, which is a contradiction, and fought tooth and nail to defend the Evil person who defends the weak by killing their enemies, which is also a contradiction.

So, that is 1 submitted and 1 defended.

Wrong. That lawful person followed his desire to put society first. People can and do have multiple desires at once, often putting some aside for others. When I look at a desert menu, I have a desire for ice cream, cake and pie. I only follow one of those desires, though.

Sure, people have multiple desires, but isn't how the phrasing it used when we say someone "follows their desires" or "puts others before their own desires"

And if we submit to your explanation of how everything is a desire, then there is no difference between a lawful person and a chaotic person, except their desires. You might as well say that a hungry man and a connoisseur have the same desires.

Sure they can. Nothing contradictory about it.

Yes there is. Harming people is directly contradictory to "Do no Harm" and I have yet to see an example of Evil that includes never harming anyone.

I could very easily make a character who was dedicated to the point of self-sacrifice to the healing and betterment of those who are ill, but who was abused and then abandoned by his mother who was a prostitute. That had a great impact on him psychologically and he's a serial killer of streetwalkers. However, that pathology doesn't stop him from his work as healer. He will still ecstatically heal anyone who is ill, oddly enough, even streetwalkers, though he may target one once she is fully healed.

It's not hard to find a way to match the desire and joy of healing with someone who is also evil. Evil isn't just one thing. That's just your narrow minded misconception of alignment.

No, it is your narrow minded view of "Do No Harm"

Read it again. "DO NO HARM", does that say that you heal the sick? Nope. It says "do no harm". If you kill someone, what is that? HARM. So, if you are a serial killer, then you are... harming people. Which directly contradicts your soul-deep belief in "DO NO HARM"

You seem to think that "Do No Harm" just means, "Heal the sick" or "Practice Medicine". That is not what it means. It means "DO NO HARM."

So, unless you can prove that killing someone doesn't harm them, you are arguing a contradiction. And yes, people can be contradictory. I understand that. But no system every devised for a game can handle contradictions like this. The system doesn't have space for "Good towards orphans, evil towards women, neutral towards dogs, good towards cats," ect ect ect.

Even alignment, which tried, just threw up its hands and gave us Grey Neutrality, which has no definition except "Not good or evil"

So first, you are misunderstanding that section. The ideals rules that you are quoting are if you are making up the ideal from scratch, so of course you will need to describe it completely. It then goes on to say you can pick one from the background. Those backgrounds give one single word and nothing more. One word. It's bolded for you. THEN, it gives a possible description that you can adopt or you can pick something else, but the ideal alone is that single word.

You can't say that the rules for ideals change depending on if you are using a poorly formatted example or if you are doing one yourself. That is like claiming that triangles can have four sides if you are building one, and only the examples in the book are three-sided.

This is a complete misstatement of my position. I'm saying that as written, the ideals in the PHB are a single word that doesn't tell you enough to go by. YOU have to create more for your character in order to tell whether that ideal is moral or immoral, and how.

Do no harm is not an ideal from the PHB.

We are not limited to the ideals in the PHB. Just like we are not limited to the names in the PHB, or the Personality Traits in the PHB.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Those "elaborations" are nothing more than one possible example among many. Or are you seriously suggesting that the only possible traditions are religious and sacrifice? Argue how you will, it's apparent on its face that what I'm saying is true. Even your explanation of elaboration admits that the ideal is one single word, which is then expounded upon in the example.

Nothing requires the example to be used, or if used, to be the alignment suggested.

Hey Max, note something for me will you.

It is an ideal FOR AN ACOLYTE OF A RELIGION. Do you think that that might, maybe, have something to do with them having an ideal written for a... religion.

Just like they have a bond relating to... a church of a religion?

 

[Chaosmancer]

Huh. Sorry about that, I thought you were basically riffing off the Hippocratic Oath. But you really mean to take this literally as a guideline for everything, not just the oath for the profession of physician. Okay.

Do no harm: do no harm to whom, or what? Do no harm to defend yourself? Do no harm to other creatures about to do harm to others? Do no harm to any creature just because they're in the way of some important goal? For that matter, can you eat meat? I'm sure that pig didn't volunteer themselves to be bacon. Swat a mosquito? How far do you have to take it? It's obviously not just "do no harm to those in need" like I had interpreted. Pretty unworkable for, well, anyone. Particularly unworkable for an adventurer*.

Are you familiar with Jainist Monks? They try to live this way. They even wear face coverings to prevent breathing in microbial life.

Yes, this is an ideal that is incredibly hard to live up to 100%. These are questions they would struggle with, things they would have to find solutions to. I'd probably never give this ideal to an adventurer, just because pacifists are hard to play with, let alone play as. But that doesn't mean that we should take @Maxperson 's approach either and claim that we could casually make a person whose guiding principle is "do no harm" and make them a serial killer, because "do no harm" doesn't cover not killing people as long as you are a good doctor.

Help those in need. If this is your guiding principle, not just a general statement then where does it end? There will always be those in need. Do you sacrifice everything you have? Spend every waking moment trying to help others? Bit problematic because you still have to eat which means you need money. You can't go dungeon delving to get money (see above) so you'll have to get a job ... but aren't you harming someone else by taking away a possible job opportunity? Talk about a sticky wicket!

Again, yes, that is a very difficult ideal to live up to. There is seemingly endless need, where do you stop? Generally people stop at the line of their own health, because dying to help one more person today means you leave hundreds uncared for in the future, but it is another incredibly difficult ideal to fully live up to.

Of course I can hear your response now. I'm just taking this to an extreme. Which, I am. Just like you take alignment to a ridiculous extreme. There has to be interpretation and exceptions based on the PC. Without some exceptions, not taking things to the extreme, the ideal becomes unworkable.

Here's where you misstep though.

Let's ignore the obvious contradictions like a killer who claims to believe in doing no harm. What happens when someone doesn't live up to their ideal? When practical concerns have put them in a spot that challenges what they believe they should do?

Generally drama. Hard questions, hard answers, taking a serious look at how far you go for your ideals.

But... can the DM just assign them a different ideal? Can they take their character sheet away and say that they broke their ideal so they need a new character? Do items in the world burn them with holy fire for breaking their ideal?

No.

And, unlike a set of general vague concepts like Alignment, ideals are personal. The player chose this ideal because it was something they wanted to explore, question, and try and live by. Where a player might not give a flying care about whether or not you consider using poison to break their alignment, they are going to care when they are faced with a situation that directly challenges their ideal. Because they made that ideal, that is specific to their character and their situation.

 

[Maxperson]

And Miser implies not giving any money to the poor, so your word doesn't fit either.

Miser also implies starving to death, because not spending money if we go with your position, so.................maybe you're being overly narrow again.

No it isn't, it is "someone who spends as little money as possible" Giving money to the poor is not required, so not giving that money is "as little as possible"

Wrong. Giving a small bit of money to the poor is as little as possible if you have the ideal of having a soft spot for the poor. Your white room idea of miser is soundly rejected. Personality traits don't exist in a vacuum.

And $1.01 and $50 are both "more money" than a single dollar. That doesn't make saying "I have more money than a dollar" useful.

Sure it is. You know one is more than the other. How useful that is is debatable, but it is in fact more useful than not knowing at all.

Sure, people have multiple desires, but isn't how the phrasing it used when we say someone "follows their desires" or "puts others before their own desires"

Nobody puts the desires of others before their own desires. Someone who is doing that is being selfish and following their own stronger desire to put others before their own lesser desires.

And if we submit to your explanation of how everything is a desire, then there is no difference between a lawful person and a chaotic person, except their desires. You might as well say that a hungry man and a connoisseur have the same desires.

Only if we follow your flawed and incorrect definition of chaotic. I don't, so there is in fact quite a difference.

Yes there is. Harming people is directly contradictory to "Do no Harm" and I have yet to see an example of Evil that includes never harming anyone.

No, it is your narrow minded view of "Do No Harm"

I quoted the oath. "Do no harm" isn't a part the current oath. Of course @Oofta just showed how it's impossible to follow that oath and be an adventure, as even if you do nothing but heal your companions and allow them to do more harm, you are doing harm by proxy, which violates your oath.

In short, it's a worthless oath for D&D unless you use the modern version, which allows evil.

We are not limited to the ideals in the PHB. Just like we are not limited to the names in the PHB, or the Personality Traits in the PHB.

Yes, I know. What's your point?

 

[Maxperson]

Hey Max, note something for me will you.

It is an ideal FOR AN ACOLYTE OF A RELIGION. Do you think that that might, maybe, have something to do with them having an ideal written for a... religion.

Just like they have a bond relating to... a church of a religion?

Why would ideals be limited to one narrow aspect of their background?

 

[Maxperson]

Are you familiar with Jainist Monks? They try to live this way. They even wear face coverings to prevent breathing in microbial life.

Yes, this is an ideal that is incredibly hard to live up to 100%. These are questions they would struggle with, things they would have to find solutions to. I'd probably never give this ideal to an adventurer, just because pacifists are hard to play with, let alone play as. But that doesn't mean that we should take @Maxperson 's approach either and claim that we could casually make a person whose guiding principle is "do no harm" and make them a serial killer, because "do no harm" doesn't cover not killing people as long as you are a good doctor.



Again, yes, that is a very difficult ideal to live up to. There is seemingly endless need, where do you stop? Generally people stop at the line of their own health, because dying to help one more person today means you leave hundreds uncared for in the future, but it is another incredibly difficult ideal to fully live up to.



Here's where you misstep though.

Let's ignore the obvious contradictions like a killer who claims to believe in doing no harm. What happens when someone doesn't live up to their ideal? When practical concerns have put them in a spot that challenges what they believe they should do?

Generally drama. Hard questions, hard answers, taking a serious look at how far you go for your ideals.

But... can the DM just assign them a different ideal? Can they take their character sheet away and say that they broke their ideal so they need a new character? Do items in the world burn them with holy fire for breaking their ideal?

No.

And, unlike a set of general vague concepts like Alignment, ideals are personal. The player chose this ideal because it was something they wanted to explore, question, and try and live by. Where a player might not give a flying care about whether or not you consider using poison to break their alignment, they are going to care when they are faced with a situation that directly challenges their ideal. Because they made that ideal, that is specific to their character and their situation.

It's not a hard ideal to live up to, it's literally impossible for a D&D adventurer to do it and not just be dead weight on everyone else.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Think a bit more. Useless for others if they don't want to use it. You can have the best car in the world. If you don't use it, it is no good for you at all. You are searching for the tiny details that will prove you right. There are none. Stop nitpicking. Take what I say at face value. Do not consider the detail but the general message.

The general message is: Alignment works very well if you want to use it. It can be a most useful tool if you use it.

There is no contradiction in anything I said. Most of the time, you have to consider that we are on our phone. Typing on these little F***ing Keyboards can be a real pain in the *ss. So we try to cut short on the number of words. Consider this, and take the general point view. Stop stopping at the details.

I type on my phone too. I still generally try to make sure I include all the pertinent details.

And your opinion seems to be that if we wanted to use alignment we would find it useful. Well, I can't speak for @FrozenNorth or @pemerton or the others, but I did try and use alignment. I did try and find use for it... and I find it worthless. I found so many contradictions and other issues that instead of trying to fix it, I scrapped the whole thing and never looked back.

So, clearly it isn't as simple as "if you want to use it, you will find how it is useful" because I tried for a full year or more, and it never worked. Except in the most general terms like "I'm a bad guy" which is about as useless a tool as I could find, since I can call someone a bad guy without needing alignment.

 

[Oofta]

Are you familiar with Jainist Monks? They try to live this way. They even wear face coverings to prevent breathing in microbial life.

Yes, this is an ideal that is incredibly hard to live up to 100%. These are questions they would struggle with, things they would have to find solutions to. I'd probably never give this ideal to an adventurer, just because pacifists are hard to play with, let alone play as. But that doesn't mean that we should take @Maxperson 's approach either and claim that we could casually make a person whose guiding principle is "do no harm" and make them a serial killer, because "do no harm" doesn't cover not killing people as long as you are a good doctor.



Again, yes, that is a very difficult ideal to live up to. There is seemingly endless need, where do you stop? Generally people stop at the line of their own health, because dying to help one more person today means you leave hundreds uncared for in the future, but it is another incredibly difficult ideal to fully live up to.



Here's where you misstep though.

Let's ignore the obvious contradictions like a killer who claims to believe in doing no harm. What happens when someone doesn't live up to their ideal? When practical concerns have put them in a spot that challenges what they believe they should do?

Generally drama. Hard questions, hard answers, taking a serious look at how far you go for your ideals.

But... can the DM just assign them a different ideal? Can they take their character sheet away and say that they broke their ideal so they need a new character? Do items in the world burn them with holy fire for breaking their ideal?

No.

And, unlike a set of general vague concepts like Alignment, ideals are personal. The player chose this ideal because it was something they wanted to explore, question, and try and live by. Where a player might not give a flying care about whether or not you consider using poison to break their alignment, they are going to care when they are faced with a situation that directly challenges their ideal. Because they made that ideal, that is specific to their character and their situation.

Taken to an extreme, your ideal is unworkable. Taken to an extreme, alignment is unworkable. Ideals are specific, alignment is general. You don't have to use either.

 

[Oofta]

I type on my phone too. I still generally try to make sure I include all the pertinent details.

And your opinion seems to be that if we wanted to use alignment we would find it useful. Well, I can't speak for @FrozenNorth or @pemerton or the others, but I did try and use alignment. I did try and find use for it... and I find it worthless. I found so many contradictions and other issues that instead of trying to fix it, I scrapped the whole thing and never looked back.

So, clearly it isn't as simple as "if you want to use it, you will find how it is useful" because I tried for a full year or more, and it never worked. Except in the most general terms like "I'm a bad guy" which is about as useless a tool as I could find, since I can call someone a bad guy without needing alignment.

So you found it personally useless (and given how you misinterpret it I'm not surprised) it should be removed from the game? Even though nothing breaks if you ignore it?

 

[Helldritch]

@Chaosmancer
Good if you type on your phone too. The keyboard might be better suited to your hand type. That is not the case for me and I took a big phone to be a bit more comfortable but it is not perfect. Also, if I am on my phone, it also means that I am at work. So it can be possible that it took me 5 to 10 tries just to write a few sentences. I give priority to the boiler and turbine I operate. So sometimes, an idea might be dropped without me realizing it.

So again, because of the above, I have to go for a direct approach where what you read have no hidden agenda and you can take it at face value.

And you tried alignment and did not like it? Great!!! Don't use it. I tried motorcycle and did not like them either. In fact, I can't stand them but I don't want to remove them for that reason. There are people that like them. What kind of person would I be if I were to work to remove them from those who like motorcycles? It is not because I do not like something that I should work to remove that thing from those that like it.