D&D 5E A different take on Alignment

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

Great example! Except for one critical thing.

You aren't advocating for 100% of all monsters to have rolled stats, unless DMs want to not use it. But you are advocating for 100% of all monsters to have alignment, unless DMs want to not use it.

That's the problem here, isn't it?

 

[Oofta]

Great example! Except for one critical thing.

You aren't advocating for 100% of all monsters to have rolled stats, unless DMs want to not use it. But you are advocating for 100% of all monsters to have alignment, unless DMs want to not use it.

That's the problem here, isn't it?

Who's advocating for 100% of all monsters to have alignment? I think the new lineages make sense without alignment make sense for example.

I do think that while alignment for monsters helps me out, it should be made more clear that they are optional default alignments. It says that in the MM, but it's in the intro and not called out enough. If you want to have a beholder that throws off the shackles of default alignment and spends all their days caring for orphaned kittens you are free, and encouraged, to do so.

Is it really so hard to ignore two letters out of the several hundred words we have in just statistics of the creature before we get into the fluff text?

 

[Chaosmancer]

It's possible to spend none and die.

Which since Miser doesn't mean suicidal, is clearly not meant by the definition.

It always drives me nuts when you go around trying to force these absurd extremes, then turn around and accuse me of bad faith arguing Max. You want me to take what you say at face value? Then I must assume you don't understand the fact that most people aren't suicidal or you have no conception of what "as little as possible" means in a human context. Because saying it is possible to starve to death while hoarding money ignores both of those things.

Why not give them more? Um, because.....................miser.

Who by normal understandings of that title, would have given them nothing. So, being a miser didn't stop that, why would it stop them giving more? I mean, you want to out forth that they will starve themselves to death to avoid spending money, but somehow they are willing to give money to poor people?

You can repeat that until the end of time, and you'll still know that it's "More than a dollar," which isn't nothing.

It isn't nothing, it is just, you know, practically nothing.

Prove that. Show me where it says desires are only chaotic. That no lawful or neutral person follow their desires.

I did. You decided that following societies expectations is really following your own desires. Which, is not how any person who wrote these games considers it. As long as you refuse to see conforming to other people's desires as following your own desires, then we are never going to get any where.

It's almost as if you haven't read alignment before. You are aware that there is a second axis that modifies the first, right?

I have read alignment. Repeatedly. Over years of the game. If your best defense of your understanding of alignment is a personal attack against me, then you have no leg to stand on.

Again, you accuse me of bad faith arguing constantly, and yet you seem to have no problem making personal attacks and insinuations. Do you think that I've quoted the alignment section of the PHB repeatedly in this thread due to luck?

It's also not a part of the oath as I quoted it to you earlier. The ones that doctors swear. So either it's worthless as a D&D oath, or it doesn't prevent evil. You can choose.

You mean the Hippocratic Oath? It does prevent evil. It is a different oath than "Do No Harm" but it clearly can be used by an Adventurer and it clearly prevents evil if it is your defining core belief.

Here is your problem. You want to seperate the actions of "being a good doctor" from everything else. You want their belief in being a doctor to be one thing, and their belief in murdering people to be another. But only one of them is a driving ideal. Only one of them can be the core of their belief system, unless we are dealing with a Jekyll and Hyde situation.

Following the Hippocratic oath as a doctor, and the Hippocratic Oath being the core belief that you shape your entire life around, are two different things. A doctor who follows the oath simply because it helps them make money, likely has an ideal related to money. A doctor who follows the oath as a cover for their criminal activities, likey has an ideal related to those activities. A doctor who would break that oath to pursue justice likely has an ideal based on justice.

Um, no. The description is a modifier to the ideal, though. It's not the ideal itself. I've been saying for pages that you need more than the ideal(and more than the blurb in the PHB) to tell alignment.

No, it is not a modifier to "the ideal itself" because a single word cannot be an ideal. As we have shown, as we have argued. You are holding onto an idea that no one else agrees with.

Because he isn't acting on whim or impulse. He doesn't have a deep seated belief in flaunting the rules and doing his own thing. Everything he does is about law, tradition, order and for others.

But you have argued that following the rules is because you desire to. So, he is following impulse. The impulse to follow the rules. He does have a belief in doing his own thing. That thing being following the rules. Traditions can be chaotic, you yourself argued that. Doing things for others is really doing things for himself, you argued that.

So... at least half these points you have said could make him chaotic instead of lawful

 

[Chaosmancer]

If you don't like the way a DM impose something on you, the solution is easy. Do not play with that DM. Be the DM. Your game, your rules. It is as simple as that. I have 12 players in two groups and could have much more as I am asked to DM by a lot of people. If my take on alignment was as distasteful as you make them to be, I do not think there would be so many people asking me to be their DM.

So, not only is the solution for me not to use it. I also have to avoid DMs who use it... Didn't I say exactly that... I think I did.

And you also go on to do a classic correlation equals causation problem. You have a lot of players. You use alignment. Therefore alignment can't be a problem at all because if it was you wouldn't have players. This ignores literally every other facet of the game, and that even if they don't have a problem with alignment, others do.

See, I can do the same thing. I have had nearly 20 players over the years before Covid, and I never used alignment. So if alignment was as neccessary as you claim, I do not think I would have had any players. Same structure, same argument. Did I convince you?

Again, alignment is a tool. A tool is as good as the one using it. It is easy to blame a tool for the short commings of the tool's user.

So, it is my fault. Another classic deflection. It isn't that alignment is poor for the job, it is that I have shortcomings that prevent me from using it correctly.

Wrong.

I have seen alignment stupidities imposed on paladins in previous editions simply because paladins were so powerful in these editions (especially 1ed). And yet, none of that ever happened in my games. My first DM was clear from the beginning that alignments were a guideline, something of an ideal that mortals were trying to achieve. But mortals can fail. The important thing, is that they continue to strive for their ideal. Alignment is a big thing in my games. It has a big impact and yet, it is not as contriving as what you seem to have suffered by a billion miles. For me and my players, alignments work quite well. We have long reached an understanding and any new players are shown what alignments are and how we play them. This is even before session zero.

And yet, let us get down to the root questions of alignment.

Are you a bad guy or a good guy?

Do you follow the rules or not?

Those are the major questions of the alignment axes. Those aren't difficult questions to answer, and they don't tell me anything about what the character actually believes in. Being a good person doesn't tell me about their convictions, except that, in general, they are a good guy.

I did have players that did not agree on my/our views on alignments. Claiming otherwise would be a lie. Some were way harsher than I was and others were like you. Mainly because they had bad experiences such as the ones you had. But strangely, after playing with me, they changed their stance and now would not even think to play D&D without alignments. The tool is too useful to ignore.

Clearly false by the simple fact that I have ignored it for the entire life of 5e and a good chunk of 4e. If it was too useful to ignore, then I couldn't have done so.

 

[Chaosmancer]

In addition, if we take away alignment, people will just use TBIF as "I'm just doing what my Ideals say" or "I can't help it if I'm playing to my flaw".

Here is the thing though.

If you wrote a flaw that says "I can't help but steal beautiful objects" and then you steal a beautiful object, you are playing to your flaw and you signalled it from the moment you wrote that on your character sheet. No one is really going to be surprised, and a DM who saw that on the sheet and didn't have that discussion about it goofed.

But, if they decided to betray the party and lead them into an ambush... that isn't playing to their flaw. Their flaw says nothing about that.


Now. Which actions are allowed and not allowed under Chaotic Neutral? Which things can you expect them to do, what are their vices?

That is a big difference. "I'm Neutral Good" doesn't tell you whether or not the player will lie or if they will refuse to fight guards who are doing their job. "I don't hurt innocent people" does tell you one of those things.

 

[Maxperson]

Which since Miser doesn't mean suicidal, is clearly not meant by the definition.

It always drives me nuts when you go around trying to force these absurd extremes, then turn around and accuse me of bad faith arguing Max. You want me to take what you say at face value? Then I must assume you don't understand the fact that most people aren't suicidal or you have no conception of what "as little as possible" means in a human context. Because saying it is possible to starve to death while hoarding money ignores both of those things.



Who by normal understandings of that title, would have given them nothing. So, being a miser didn't stop that, why would it stop them giving more? I mean, you want to out forth that they will starve themselves to death to avoid spending money, but somehow they are willing to give money to poor people?

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"he later admitted to modeling Scrooge on the 18th century Member of Parliament and moneylender John Elwes. Though Scrooge's physical appearance and concern for personal economy were modeled after Elwes, he was different in many ways. Elwes would do absolutely anything to cut costs in his own life, but was generous enough in lending to friends."

The first real world miser, the one Scrooge was modeled after, was generous to his friends. A few other misers there also gave out money to charities.

Famous Misers and How They Lived

Most people have met at least one miser in their lifetime. You know the type: no matter how rich they may be, they hoard their money and spend as little of it as possible, delighting in their savings. Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol is perhaps the most famous miser (albeit a fictional...

www.ranker.com

Same guy up there makes this list as well, also this guy...

"Despite having more money than God, H.L. Hunt still pinched pennies by cutting his own hair, driving himself to work in an old car, bringing his lunch to work, and parking down the street from his office so he didn't have to pay the 50-cent parking fee. Worst of all, he was also known as a crappy tipper."

But he did tip, just like my miser above who gives a few coppers to the poor.

You're once again engaging in an overly narrow definition of something. Miser this time, rather than alignment.

I did. You decided that following societies expectations is really following your own desires. Which, is not how any person who wrote these games considers it. As long as you refuse to see conforming to other people's desires as following your own desires, then we are never going to get any where.

You didn't prove it a all. You made a statement that not even alignment backs up. Alignment backs me up on this. Read alignment man. Chaotic Neutral(only chaos) specifically mentions acting on whim. No mention of desires anywhere.

I have read alignment. Repeatedly. Over years of the game. If your best defense of your understanding of alignment is a personal attack against me, then you have no leg to stand on.

Then you must understand that chaotic is whim and impulse, not desires.

You mean the Hippocratic Oath? It does prevent evil. It is a different oath than "Do No Harm" but it clearly can be used by an Adventurer and it clearly prevents evil if it is your defining core belief.

No, it doesn't. Nothing in there prevents the evil serial killer doctor I described earlier in the thread.

Here is your problem. You want to seperate the actions of "being a good doctor" from everything else. You want their belief in being a doctor to be one thing, and their belief in murdering people to be another. But only one of them is a driving ideal. Only one of them can be the core of their belief system, unless we are dealing with a Jekyll and Hyde situation.

Um, no. That's YOU trying to separate everything. I'm incorporating everything together, which is how you get an evil serial killer doctor who follows the oath.

No, it is not a modifier to "the ideal itself" because a single word cannot be an ideal. As we have shown, as we have argued. You are holding onto an idea that no one else agrees with.

You guys have certainly argued. That's for sure. None of you has "shown" your claims to be true, though. It's clear that the sentence that follows the ideal is just one example of how the ideal can be interpreted.

But you have argued that following the rules is because you desire to. So, he is following impulse. The impulse to follow the rules. He does have a belief in doing his own thing. That thing being following the rules. Traditions can be chaotic, you yourself argued that. Doing things for others is really doing things for himself, you argued that.

Do you re-read what you write before you post it? An "Impulse to follow the rules." Why do you always have to come up with some ridiculously absurd example in order to try and be right? You should re-read your posts and if you see something that absurd, perhaps change it to something that makes sense.

 

[Helldritch]

You know, dear @Chaosmancer, the more I see your arguments against alignment and your explanations of what is lawful and what is chaotic, the more I believe that your problem with alignment is not alignment, but how you view them. And that maybe the reason why you have so much trouble with the views of your various DMs.

You have a very strange views of alignments that does not .... align with the views of others. And thus, you get frustrated and that is understandable. Maybe you should stop going to deep into what is and what is not and just stay on the surface. Things would work out a lot better. As strange as it may seems in this era of non conformity, maybe trying to conform to the views of your DMs about alignments would help you appreciate them for the good tool that they are.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

I have absolutely no trouble understanding @Maxperson . His English is quite acceptable and even better than some. He is to the point. I do not always agree with him but his argumentation skills are quite ok. In fact, he is almost always straight to the point with very clear directions and intentions. Maybe it is because there is no hidden message in his posts that you have trouble?

Hey, I was warned by a mod about thing I was implying that I was not even aware that I was implying... I told the mod to read my post at face value and did not get a warning point for that post. Sometimes, what you read can be tainted by your own personal experiences whereas the poster never intended what you saw because he/she has no such experiences him/herself.

I never search for hidden messages in posts. I take them all at face value. If I need clarifications, I ask for them.

I don't know your cultural background or social environment, but growing up my experience was that taking everything at face value was just setting myself up for embarrassment, or confusion, or a fight. Indirectness as courtesy and heavy use of idioms were how I was taught to communicate. Connotation, and other unspoken but critically important aspects of dialogue is where the real meat of communication lies, while denotation is but an imperfect vehicle, well suited for technical or legal contexts but not for casual parlance.

Which is why @Maxperson 's arguments confuse me, because a lot of his arguments involve quibbling over the denotative meanings of words, whilst completely missing, or even outright dismissing without due cause, the central point that was contained in their connotation over a disagreement between their understandings of the denotation, which from my perspective ends up with the argument being taken on a tangent that completely misses the forest for the trees. Reading his posts becomes an exercise of double and triple-checking the course of the argument because from my perspective, it often looks like he's completely missed the point multiple times over only for me to realize that he's using the words completely differently from his opponent and trying to get them to conform to his personal definitions, sometimes over the most minor of denotative disagreements.

 

[Oofta]

Here is the thing though.

If you wrote a flaw that says "I can't help but steal beautiful objects" and then you steal a beautiful object, you are playing to your flaw and you signalled it from the moment you wrote that on your character sheet. No one is really going to be surprised, and a DM who saw that on the sheet and didn't have that discussion about it goofed.

But, if they decided to betray the party and lead them into an ambush... that isn't playing to their flaw. Their flaw says nothing about that.


Now. Which actions are allowed and not allowed under Chaotic Neutral? Which things can you expect them to do, what are their vices?

That is a big difference. "I'm Neutral Good" doesn't tell you whether or not the player will lie or if they will refuse to fight guards who are doing their job. "I don't hurt innocent people" does tell you one of those things.

If you write "I'm an antisocial jackass" or "I'm blinded by my devotion" or any other of other flaws, you would still end up with behavior that people object to because of alignment. If I tell someone they can't have that flaw, they'll accuse me of controlling their character, just as if I told them they can't justify being insane because they put CN on their character sheet.

Actions are not defined by alignment, that's not what it's for. General world view, moral compass yes. Actions? No. Actions specific to an ideal? Sure. But how many ideals do you have? If your actions don't affect innocent people one way or another, there's no general guideline, it's just a void. A void that alignment can help fill in if you want.

If you aren't hurting innocent people, is it okay to murder rich people in their sleep because you don't think they're innocent? Who gets to decide what innocent is?

I can play the same game you play - end of the day it doesn't matter. Use whatever descriptor makes sense to you and ignore descriptors that don't. TBIF is quite narrow and limited to specific scenarios and doesn't give you a general feel for the person's moral compass.

 

[Helldritch]

I don't know your cultural background or social environment, but growing up my experience was that taking everything at face value was just setting myself up for embarrassment, or confusion, or a fight. Indirectness as courtesy and heavy use of idioms were how I was taught to communicate. Connotation, and other unspoken but critically important aspects of dialogue is where the real meat of communication lies, while denotation is but an imperfect vehicle, well suited for technical or legal contexts but not for casual parlance.

Which is why @Maxperson 's arguments confuse me, because a lot of his arguments involve quibbling over the denotative meanings of words, whilst completely missing, or even outright dismissing without due cause, the central point that was contained in their connotation over a disagreement between their understandings of the denotation, which from my perspective ends up with the argument being taken on a tangent that completely misses the forest for the trees. Reading his posts becomes an exercise of double and triple-checking the course of the argument because from my perspective, it often looks like he's completely missed the point multiple times over only for me to realize that he's using the words completely differently from his opponent and trying to get them to conform to his personal definitions, sometimes over the most minor of denotative disagreements.

Bachelor's degree in literature with a minor in teaching. Powerengineer as a career now because I was tired of waiting for a permanency in schools. And I use the direct approach as much as possible because it avoids (generally speaking) a lot of confusions and misunderstanding.

If I want to see 2nd and 3rd degree I certainly can but I prefer not too. I read a lot, both in French and in English and again, I have no trouble following Max. He is very straight forward. I find this very refreshing and appreciate his style. Just like I appreciate some of the views that @Chaosmancer shares with us. It is not because I disagree with someone that I do not respect or like him. This would be far from the truth.

What we have to realize is that this is a conversation in a written medium. We can not see the face and intonations of our fellow debaters so trying to see 2nd and 3rd degree meaning is .... meaningless. I feel it is way better to take things at face value. And if someone says something while meaning something else, it will be lost on me because I will always try not to go there (unless I specifically call it).