D&D 5E A different take on Alignment

[Maxperson]

Forgive me if I am overstepping my bounds, but it seems to me that your reading and use of written English is very literal-minded and missing a lot of connotations and unspoken assumptions, thus putting you out of sync with Chaosmancer's understanding of written English (and other people you regularly argue with on issues like these). I don't know if this is a genuine communication breakdown, or if you're doing this on purpose to give him a hard time; just something I've noticed as to why I often I have difficulty following your arguments and rhetorical structure (as opposed to Oofta's or Helldritch's, which I don't agree with but can understand).

He made a claim. If it's possible for a miser to spend little money on things he feels that he needs to spend money on, then a few coppers here and there to a poor person are possible for a miser to spend money on. If he's going to ignore that to hold the definition literally and say that he cannot spend the occasional few coppers on a poor person, because it says "as little as possible," then I'm also going to hold it literally.

 

[Maxperson]

The PHB states that a player creates their ideal after thinking about their character’s wants and their personality. It goes on to say that each background in the PHB contains six suggested ideals that a player could choose. Finally, there is a section that indicates that if you choose on the the ideals from your background, you can customize it any way you want.

Your argument fails because you are treating ideals, flaws and bonds as a pigeonhole, whereas it is demonstrably not that as written.

ROFL No. I'm the one who is explicitly NOT treating them as pigeonholes.

 

[Oofta]

No one you are talking to in this thread has this sort of concern about PC personality descriptors (except maybe @Flamestrike, who is an alignment defender).

No one that supports alignment supports the behavior that's supposedly justified by alignment either.

People just tell stories about player with jerk behavior and blame alignment because it's what we've had. Players will play PCs with exactly the same behavior with or without alignment or TBIF.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I also find it telling that in all my years on ENWorld, I have seen countless threads and posts on alignment problems, and I have never seen a single one on problems with Ideals, Bonds or Flaws.

Yeah, this is pretty much the crux of the matter for me. Hence my (much, much) earlier point about "extensive, tedious, tendentious, acrimonious debate." It's cool that, for some people, it's not at all controversial. And they are perfectly empowered to keep using alignment as much as they want--just as they always have, even though things like class alignment restrictions have gone the way of the ammonites and THAC0. But it's pretty much impossible to argue that alignment has had anything less than a checkered history in the fandom overall, and (as noted) every single attempt by the designers to explain it "better" has not improved things (and usually made it worse; consider the oft-reviled Book of Exalted Deeds and Book of Vile Darkness).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

No one that supports alignment supports the behavior that's supposedly justified by alignment either.

People just tell stories about player with jerk behavior and blame alignment because it's what we've had. Players will play PCs with exactly the same behavior with or without alignment or TBIF.

Again, my experience has had things that were extremely specific to alignment that would...well, I cannot say with absolute certainty that literally no one ever could say them without knowingly sounding like a crazy person under BIFT, but it'd be a hell of a lot harder to make it make sense. Again, I have known people for whom having "Chaotic Evil" written on their character sheet meant that of course saving this orphanage for no pay was a Chaotic Evil thing to do, because they're Chaotic Evil, so therefore the things they do are necessarily Chaotic Evil. But I already said my bit and checked out when people started saying that it was possible to have "defend the weak" as an Ideal while being genuinely, unequivocally, no-one-could-mistake-you-for-anything-else Evil, so that may be a conversational dead-end.

"You saved an Orc child, Orcs are CE, that's an evil act, you're a fallen Paladin now!" is nonsense under BIFT. Likewise, "defending the weak" by slaughtering anyone who gets strong enough to oppose you is pretty obviously bonkers logic--now, a character could be incapable of seeing the hypocrisy involved, but it'd still be hypocrisy. Both things work completely fine under several so-called "normal" interpretations of alignment, but don't under BIFT.

If the crux of the problem were "bad players are bad," then your argument would have a lot more weight. But the crux of the problem, for a lot of us, is that alignment itself, by being a universal declaration of objective characteristic, causes problems. If it's an opt-in system YOU use--and you'll have 40 years of historical documentation to draw on if you want to call your orcs CE or LE or whatever the hell you want to call them--then whatever. But I have absolutely, literally, truly seen people presume that torture is perfectly fine for Good characters as long as you only torture bad guys, and at the exact same table other people (myself included) who were utterly appalled at the concept of torturing anyone or anything, something ONLY capital-E Evil people would ever use. And no one discussed it, because both sides thought it was so trivially obvious to the most casual observer that it never came up.

That's the problem with alignment. Exactly what others, IIRC including you, have held up as its strength. It gets people to turn their brains off. Anyone can choose to do that at any time, I agree. Alignment outright encourages it. BIFT doesn't.

 

[Oofta]

Again, my experience has had things that were extremely specific to alignment that would...well, I cannot say with absolute certainty that literally no one ever could say them without knowingly sounding like a crazy person under BIFT, but it'd be a hell of a lot harder to make it make sense. Again, I have known people for whom having "Chaotic Evil" written on their character sheet meant that of course saving this orphanage for no pay was a Chaotic Evil thing to do, because they're Chaotic Evil, so therefore the things they do are necessarily Chaotic Evil. But I already said my bit and checked out when people started saying that it was possible to have "defend the weak" as an Ideal while being genuinely, unequivocally, no-one-could-mistake-you-for-anything-else Evil, so that may be a conversational dead-end.

"You saved an Orc child, Orcs are CE, that's an evil act, you're a fallen Paladin now!" is nonsense under BIFT. Likewise, "defending the weak" by slaughtering anyone who gets strong enough to oppose you is pretty obviously bonkers logic--now, a character could be incapable of seeing the hypocrisy involved, but it'd still be hypocrisy. Both things work completely fine under several so-called "normal" interpretations of alignment, but don't under BIFT.

If the crux of the problem were "bad players are bad," then your argument would have a lot more weight. But the crux of the problem, for a lot of us, is that alignment itself, by being a universal declaration of objective characteristic, causes problems. If it's an opt-in system YOU use--and you'll have 40 years of historical documentation to draw on if you want to call your orcs CE or LE or whatever the hell you want to call them--then whatever. But I have absolutely, literally, truly seen people presume that torture is perfectly fine for Good characters as long as you only torture bad guys, and at the exact same table other people (myself included) who were utterly appalled at the concept of torturing anyone or anything, something ONLY capital-E Evil people would ever use. And no one discussed it, because both sides thought it was so trivially obvious to the most casual observer that it never came up.

That's the problem with alignment. Exactly what others, IIRC including you, have held up as its strength. It gets people to turn their brains off. Anyone can choose to do that at any time, I agree. Alignment outright encourages it. BIFT doesn't.

I don't see how baggage from past editions, books from previous editions really apply. There hasn't been a universal objective definition for a long time.

I don't turn my brain off, I try to see the world from a different perspective.

 

[Helldritch]

Again, my experience has had things that were extremely specific to alignment that would...well, I cannot say with absolute certainty that literally no one ever could say them without knowingly sounding like a crazy person under BIFT, but it'd be a hell of a lot harder to make it make sense. Again, I have known people for whom having "Chaotic Evil" written on their character sheet meant that of course saving this orphanage for no pay was a Chaotic Evil thing to do, because they're Chaotic Evil, so therefore the things they do are necessarily Chaotic Evil. But I already said my bit and checked out when people started saying that it was possible to have "defend the weak" as an Ideal while being genuinely, unequivocally, no-one-could-mistake-you-for-anything-else Evil, so that may be a conversational dead-end.

"You saved an Orc child, Orcs are CE, that's an evil act, you're a fallen Paladin now!" is nonsense under BIFT. Likewise, "defending the weak" by slaughtering anyone who gets strong enough to oppose you is pretty obviously bonkers logic--now, a character could be incapable of seeing the hypocrisy involved, but it'd still be hypocrisy. Both things work completely fine under several so-called "normal" interpretations of alignment, but don't under BIFT.

If the crux of the problem were "bad players are bad," then your argument would have a lot more weight. But the crux of the problem, for a lot of us, is that alignment itself, by being a universal declaration of objective characteristic, causes problems. If it's an opt-in system YOU use--and you'll have 40 years of historical documentation to draw on if you want to call your orcs CE or LE or whatever the hell you want to call them--then whatever. But I have absolutely, literally, truly seen people presume that torture is perfectly fine for Good characters as long as you only torture bad guys, and at the exact same table other people (myself included) who were utterly appalled at the concept of torturing anyone or anything, something ONLY capital-E Evil people would ever use. And no one discussed it, because both sides thought it was so trivially obvious to the most casual observer that it never came up.

That's the problem with alignment. Exactly what others, IIRC including you, have held up as its strength. It gets people to turn their brains off. Anyone can choose to do that at any time, I agree. Alignment outright encourages it. BIFT doesn't.

And I have had DM complaining about some of their players with noble, spy and soldiers backgrounds trying to abuse them and the TBIF associated with these. Just as I have alignmentless systems being abused as well. Tje problem never was alignments, TIBF, or virtues and flaws. It is always one person trying to impose his or her views onto others so that an advantage over the other players could be obtained. I blame the people abusing a rule. Not the rule itself

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah, this is pretty much the crux of the matter for me. Hence my (much, much) earlier point about "extensive, tedious, tendentious, acrimonious debate." It's cool that, for some people, it's not at all controversial. And they are perfectly empowered to keep using alignment as much as they want--just as they always have, even though things like class alignment restrictions have gone the way of the ammonites and THAC0. But it's pretty much impossible to argue that alignment has had anything less than a checkered history in the fandom overall, and (as noted) every single attempt by the designers to explain it "better" has not improved things (and usually made it worse; consider the oft-reviled Book of Exalted Deeds and Book of Vile Darkness).

It's not that telling at all. People have all kinds of alignment baggage from prior editions that they just won't let go of, and so they keep reliving it. If they would just look at 5e's alignment with an open mind, they'd see that it's really small(one sentence per alignment) and vague, and has no teeth anymore. It's simply a roleplaying aid.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't see how baggage from past editions, books from previous editions really apply. There hasn't been a universal objective definition for a long time.

I don't turn my brain off, I try to see the world from a different perspective.

I laughed at that, because I hadn't seen this post before I also mentioned it as baggage from prior editions.

 

[Oofta]

And I have had DM complaining about some of their players with noble, spy and soldiers backgrounds trying to abuse them and the TBIF associated with these. Just as I have alignmentless systems being abused as well. Tje problem never was alignments, TIBF, or virtues and flaws. It is always one person trying to impose his or her views onto others so that an advantage over the other players could be obtained. I blame the people abusing a rule. Not the rule itself

I've had that experience as well. The guy who thought being a noble meant that he was really playing 3 PCs and that mom and dad would bail him out of any situation. Another that tried to justify being a constant jerk because of a flaw.

Stories about how alignment is bad seems to come from books and "alignment horror stories" from at least a couple of editions back, if not back to AD&D days. Alternatively because they don't personally find it useful, it's bad and anyone who likes alignment is playing wrong or something.

I personally don't like rolling for abilities so I don't use it. I have my own horror stories. While I can discuss why I don't like rolling and explain my point of view, I have no problem with people that want to keep it as long as I don't have to.