Alignment in D&DN...

[Sunseeker]

Then that would make the character Evil, regardless of what they said about it. The Good/Evil dichotomy is pretty cut and dry, but Lawful/Chaotic is where most people have trouble (and understandably so, because it's a difficult relationship even in reality).

"Lawful" has nothing to do with the legal system operating (or not operating) wherever the character is from or happens to be; "principled" is better word for describing it. Each juridicial law is grounded in a principle, but principles aren't formed, at a metaphysical level, from looking at the law. So a LG paladin who rides into a barony might decide that the baron needs to be deposed because of his cruel treatment of peasants, while the LE baron thinks he is only doing as is his right because he believes in a rigid social hierarchy.

But you second statement contradicts your first. Good and evil isn't cut and dry, it's all about perception. From the Baron's perspective, he'd be lawful good and your paladin would be chaotic evil, what with attempting to disturb his perfect system for one more guided by the heart and less by the head.

Also, principled and unprincipled presents us with a different dichotomy than lawful or unlawful. A lawful person follows the laws, a principled person might not. An unprincipled person might still follow the laws, because they don't want to get their butt landed in jail when they take candy from babies. An unlawful person doesn't care about the law and will generally not follow it if they can reasonably get away with it, a principled person can still have principles...just ones related to not following the law.

You could replace principles with "morals", an immoral person is not necessarily an unlawful, or even an evil person. And many moral people have often done evil, unlawful and unprincipled deeds.

The nice thing about the lawful/chaotic, good/evil system is that it can be sufficiently defined within the realm of the game. A moral(principle)-based system is going to have all sorts of out-of-game moralism attempting to say that this person has good morals...while they steal babies and slaughter the innocent. Even attempting to define morality within the game is a huge effort, while defining "good" and "evil", "lawful" and "chaotic" are not.

 

[kitsune9]

My point is that I would not stand up a series of sacred cows for no reason other than just because. The obvious example is this thread and my first reply on alignment. Get rid of it. I offered a counter-proposal to what you currently see as alignment. Another example could be ability scores. Do we really need all six? Do we need four defenses or can we get away with fewer (or add more)? I don't have answers for these, but the point is that through a reasonable design, each thing should be considered.

Well-said. I agree with your assessment.

 

[dkyle]

You're taking what I wrote far to literally. And traditionally speaking, "neutral good" is the "generally inclined to follow the law but not so pressed as to really give a doof one way or the other".
Generally speaking, I've seen chaotic as a more "self interested" alignment.

It's ultimately a spectrum. I don't see much point driving a real distinction between Lawful vs. Neutral or Neutral vs. Chaotic. Neutral is just someone that's closer to the middle than to either extreme.

I disagree that Chaotic is necessarily the "self interested" alignment. Robin Hood would clearly be Chaotic, as would V (as in, "for Vendetta"). But they both have goals clearly oriented towards others.

Allowing a character to just decide if every law is unjust at their whim is a great way to make having laws at all completly pointless.

Not at all.

First, a character that decides that laws are unjust on "whims" is clearly not Lawful. They are Chaotic. They do not respect the law. Of course, any character might believe themselves to be Lawful, but I think an honest player would understand whether their character is truly Lawful or not. Alignment should be a roleplaying aid; whether the player uses it is up to them.

But even with Chaotic characters, the laws still matter, as long as the authorities that established them have the power to enforce them. A Chaotic character that isn't insane or utterly self-destructive is likely to think twice about disobeying a law if he thinks he's certain to be killed over it.

A character could call themselves Lawful Good all day long and still go around killing babies because they just decided that the law or taboos against that really isn't good or lawful.

A character certainly could call himself something he is plainly not. Is that a problem?

 

[Essenti]

There has been too much skating on the edge of edition warring in this thread already. I have my issues with every edition, but I play them ALL and like them ALL. Those who are insinuating that if X sacred cow is not included in the core than 5e will fail like 4e are trying to make 5e become the opposite of what its design goals state... Make the game feel LIKE and play LIKE your favorite previous edition, including 4e. 5e is not supposed to produce a perfect clone of that favored edition. Wanting everything and the kitchen sink from your prefered edition shoe-horned into the 5e core means you should probably keep playing that edition if you think it is already perfect and nothing can be left out. If you want to play a game that has hopefully better and streamlined mechanics and still feels like you are playing a version of D&D you want to play, 5e is probably going to achieve that for you. If you want the game you are already playing reproduced in nearly exact and inticate detail... well, you already own those books, you win!

No sacred cow should automagically be taken off the chopping block for 5e, but WoTC does need to make a solid attempt at keeping those they can in the core and siphoning the weaker ones off into expansion modules or shunting them completely if they don't actually add value to the game.

What should make this next edition shine is how easily it can recreate the feeling of playing BECMI, AD&D, 2e, 3e, 4e, whatever, while giving us a solid and well thought out system to use that cleans up after the previous editions shortcomings. If you try to lump it all into the core you get a big mess, and if you diverge too far you get something that doesn't feel like D&D.

If some aspect of the game has become iconic to D&D because of the PROBLEMS it introduced, should it qualify as a sacred cow or be reguarded as that nasty looking pimple we probably shouldn't be staring at anyway? We need to seriously determine what parts should be allowed to die quietly and what parts we should hold onto because they make the game worth playing. Grabbing for everything and trying to shove it into the core is going to turn the whole thing into a steaming pile. Some sacred cows are more equal than others...

That said, alignment is fairly iconic, but there needs to be tweaks, especially concerning spells, but I do not believe alignment should necessarily be in the core. I have played D&D games that completely ignored alignment and it still felt like D&D!

Okay, my mini-rant complete.

 

[Janaxstrus]

But you second statement contradicts your first. Good and evil isn't cut and dry, it's all about perception. From the Baron's perspective, he'd be lawful good and your paladin would be chaotic evil, what with attempting to disturb his perfect system for one more guided by the heart and less by the head.

In D&D it's not perceptions or perspective. Evil is evil, good is good. Just because Orcs don't consider rapacious raids bad doesn't mean they don't fit the D&D definition of evil.

 

[Sunseeker]

In D&D it's not perceptions or perspective. Evil is evil, good is good. Just because Orcs don't consider rapacious raids bad doesn't mean they don't fit the D&D definition of evil.

That was my entire argument, and why I was disagreeing with the person I quoted about using different, more morally relative means of measurement.

 

[jsaving]

"Lawful" has nothing to do with the legal system operating (or not operating) wherever the character is from or happens to be; "principled" is better word for describing it. Each juridicial law is grounded in a principle, but principles aren't formed, at a metaphysical level, from looking at the law.

I'm not sure "principled" aptly describes the difference between lawfuls and chaotics. The iconic frontiersman who does what he thinks is right, even when his views are out-of-step with societal norms, is certainly well-grounded in principle. The modern-day libertarian who actively opposes most laws, authorities, and traditions is also well-grounded in principle. We may or may not agree with the principles such people would espouse, but they certainly aren't making things up on the fly.

The difference, really, is that lawfuls see order as desirable in and of itself whereas chaotics see it as stifling. To the LG individual, it obviously "takes a village" to help people prosper and a well-developed social structure undergirded by government is the best way to bring that about. Whereas the CG individual says, wait a minute, that would snuff out the "thousand points of light" that would have emerged if only people had been free to make their own decisions. Two different ways of looking at the world, both motivated by the desire to help other people, each ringing hollow to the other side -- that's what in my view makes the system worth keeping (as an entirely optional component of 5e).

I disagree that Chaotic is necessarily the "self interested" alignment. Robin Hood would clearly be Chaotic, as would V (as in, "for Vendetta"). But they both have goals clearly oriented towards others.

Exactly right. People often say Robin Hood can't be chaotic because he heads up the Merry Men, and "everybody knows" chaotics hate teaming up with people to do anything. But this completely misses the freedom-from-coercion part of being chaotic. Robin Hood heads up the Merry Men not because of heredity or tradition or force, but because the Merry Men continually vote through their actions to recognize him as somebody worth following -- and are free to stop following him whenever they wish.

 

[Dausuul]

Hey, look, people can't agree on what Lawful and Chaotic mean because the definitions are a messy, contradictory hash of political allegiance, personal behavior, and philosophical outlook. Whodathunkit?

This is why I think alignment is a great candidate for putting into a module where you can kick it the heck out of your game with no repercussions. The OP's approach does help nail down the definitions a bit, but the way I see it, either you're willing to dump traditional 9-way (or 3-way, or 5-way) alignment or you're not. If you're not, that's that. If you are, there's no obvious reason to replace it with a different system instead of scrapping it altogether.

Personality traits as a guide for DMs can be included in the monster/NPC writeup. A whole mechanical system for it seems like overkill.

 

[Sunseeker]

Hey, look, people can't agree on what Lawful and Chaotic mean because the definitions are a messy, contradictory hash of political allegiance, personal behavior, and philosophical outlook. Whodathunkit?

Lack of consensus is not always bad, it can make for some seriously compelling games when the DM puts their own spin on the alignment system and forces players to look at things from a very different worldview.

This is why I think alignment is a great candidate for putting into a module where you can kick it the heck out of your game with no repercussions. The OP's approach does help nail down the definitions a bit, but the way I see it, either you're willing to dump traditional 9-way (or 3-way, or 5-way) alignment or you're not. If you're not, that's that. If you are, there's no obvious reason to replace it with a different system instead of scrapping it altogether.

Really I think alignment is pretty optional already. Out of half a dozen games where DMs actually cared for you to put it down, only one of them was brazen enough to dictate how our characters should be played because of it.

Putting down an alignment should be optional in most situations. But it still serves as a good guideline when looking at how certain classes, races, dieties, and kingdoms function. It shouldn't be the rule on how your character must be played, only the guideline.

Personality traits as a guide for DMs can be included in the monster/NPC writeup. A whole mechanical system for it seems like overkill.

I agree, if a creature is important enough that it's gonna have a personality, that personality is much better defined by the DM creating it than some arbitrary allegiance system.

 

[SensoryThought]

While I appreciate the 4e attempt to simplify alignment, I have players effectively playing CG and LE alignments that would be better described under the original system.

I find the previously mentioned attitude that 4e has been discontinued therefore everything about it is stupid and a failure both dumb and unhelpful. Based on that flawed logic couldn't the same be said of every edition?