Alignment - is it any good?

[I'm A Banana]

One thing I will add is that I've found the existence of alignment actually adds more moral ambiguity to the game. When PCs find themselves being aided by clearly evil NPCs and opposing good NPCs, or find themselves having to pick sides between two opposing good (or two opposing evil) forces, it really makes them - and often the players - think about the meaning of good and evil and its applicability to human choice, belief and action.

Absolutely. Because alignment is really just a description of tendencies, it can make for some strange bedfellows. I'm a fan of odd mixes and interesting philosophies that intersect alignment at odd angles.

I like your way point of view. I also believe, that alignment is kind of "ready to use" mindset description.

It is a little bit as if I would say, I am phlegmatic, pessimistic materialist. These are also alignments, aren't they. (Choose one out of four temperament alignments -phlegmatic, sanguine, melancholic, choleric), (Choose one out of three world prognostic attitude alignments - optimist, pessimist, realist), (Choose yourself one philosophical alignment out of many).

Isn't it pretty much the same? And is it so bad to pigeon-hole people this (or any other) way?

Yep. The Meyers-Briggs personality test works in kind of the same way. People's brains are much more than the sum of their parts, and even D&D characters often have complex and elaborate motives. Alignment is a way to simplify this irreducible complexity for use in the game. It's immensely useful in D&D's heroic pattern because it really helps you feel Good and Evil as tangible (if not necessarily always incompatible) forces.

 

[Jeysie]

Eh. I'm not a big fan of alignment.

If it's simply used as a descriptor of a character's personality, it's all right... but then it also becomes mostly irrelevant except for some spells.

When it's used for restrictions on classes and such, it's just really annoying. Having to adhere to a certain alignment or lose your character benefits just causes arguments over what's "true" for an alignment and what isn't... and I can think of ideas for characters that are true to the idea of a class, yet would be described as having a restricted alignment for that class.

There's also the fact that basing alignment on actions leaves no room for the ambiguity of a character that does good things for evil motives, or vice versa. There's been a couple characters in my group where that was an issue.

Peace & Luv, Liz

 

[I'm A Banana]

There's also the fact that basing alignment on actions leaves no room for the ambiguity of a character that does good things for evil motives, or vice versa. There's been a couple characters in my group where that was an issue.

See, this, I think, doesn't use it as it is designed in 3e. Because it's a description, not a limitation, you're well within your rights to act out of character for your alignment in certain circumstances. And if you continue to act out of character with your old alignment, your alignment changes. And that's really no big deal except to some clerics and paladins.

 

[Jeysie]

See, this, I think, doesn't use it as it is designed in 3e. Because it's a description, not a limitation, you're well within your rights to act out of character for your alignment in certain circumstances.

Well, except that it's not "out of character" at all.

Case in point, I had a character once who was very preoccupied with being liked and having a lot of friends and a good "reputation".

She would end up doing a lot of little actions that would be described as "good" because people tend to like you better when you're nice to them.

But she wasn't "good" by a non-action-based stretch. If you asked her to put in an effort to do a good deed she wouldn't get any reward for, she'd scoff at you. And she'd have no troubles cheating people or otherwise being malevolently deceitiful if she thought she could get away with it still smelling like roses externally.

So no matter how much good she did action-wise, at heart she was very much Chaotic Neutral... concerned only with herself, and everyone else could take a hike unless they were willing to admire her.

I agree that doesn't use it as designed in 3e... which is why 3e's alignment makes me go "meh". There's little room for shades of grey or ambiguity.

Peace & Luv, Liz

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

There's also the fact that basing alignment on actions leaves no room for the ambiguity of a character that does good things for evil motives, or vice versa.

Ask someone with search privileges to dredge up the various Paladin threads and you'll see that your statement isn't entirely correct.

While a Paladin is Lawful Good and has a Code of Conduct, there is all kinds of wiggle room in there, especially if you look at what I call "Old Testament Paladins vs. New Testament Paladins"- vengeful and merciless destroyers of evil versus ones who consider honor and mercy the highest virtues. Others try to define Paladins in terms of them serving Good and not Gods.

Why do those threads get heated and divisive?

Because in 50,000 years of real world human history, hundreds of religions and philosophies have tried to define "Good" in absolute terms...and each one has failed.

At some point, in some kind of RW situation, every formulation of "Good" breaks down.

(Which is why I always tell people to discuss in no uncertain terms with their DM what kind of Paladin they want to play.)

And if the most alignment-bound class in D&D has wiggle room...

 

[Doug McCrae]

Is a HERO system Superman knockoff any less heroic for his lack of alignment? No. But there isn't the sense that his ethics are a vital part of his being, something that, if broken, would cause physical pain or mental trauma to him. He can be played that way...but he doesn't have to be.

HERO system Superman would have a number of Psychological Limitations. Code Against Killing, Devoted To Truth, Justice And The American Way and so forth. This does much the same job as alignment in that it describes his personality in a systematized way but allows a lot more than nine options.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

In HERO, Superman could eventually buy off all of those PsychLims. It would take time, but it could be done...

And then, unfettered, he could use his powers like Titan of Dark Horse Comics' "Comics Greatest World" line. He was a Superman knockoff who started killing people off- actually pretty good stuff.

In contrast, a Paladin would lose his powers- sure, he'd become a Blackguard...but its not the same as an Evil Paladin. The abilities differ.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Is that a problem? It's the difference between 'natural' powers and divine powers.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

No, its the difference between a totally internalized system of ethics & morality that are part and parcel with one's paranormal abilities and a system of ethics and morality that can be peeled away piecemeal without consequence, regardless of one's power source.

The things that sap Supes' powers are things like kryptonite and magic, not failing to be true to his sense of morality.

After all, did he lose any of his powers after killing those Phantom Zone escapee Kryptonian criminals, Gen. Zod, Faora and whatshisname back in the 1990s? Nope.

Even though he had always taken great pains to avoid killing in the past- even other mass murderers- he killed them. Even though he could have imprisoned them in the Phantom Zone again, he killed them. Even though he had always tried to stop others frome killing irredemably evil people, he killed them.

Despite this fundamental rift in his ethics, he remained essentially unchanged. He was sad and mopey for a while, but he got over it. And in the meantime, he could still fly & fry like always.

 

[pemerton]

I think that alignment introduces complexity, not simplicity. Instead of players just playing their characters, they also have to think about how their PCs actions lead to them acquiring a metaphysical label, which then determines how various spells, planes etc will affect them.

It is further complicated by the fact that those metaphysical labels use words like "good" and "evil" which have an ordinary meaning that is not fully reflected in the game - for example, it seems to be sufficient to count as "evil" in D&D that someone act in a selfish manner, but in real life most people act selfishly a lot of the time, and we don't judge them to be evil (to put it technically - what in real life we tend to regard as superogatory, D&D tends to make a necessary condition as counting as "good").

This complexity is compounded by the fact that most PCs are more-or-less Conanesque mercenaries, who will kill without a second thought, but the game encourages players and GMs to think as "good" as the norm (look at alignments in modules, for example, and admonitions against playing evil PCs).

There are other implicaitons, too. Most paladin PCs, for example, want to smite the infidel. But if the infidel are not labelled "evil", then they are in danger of losing their paladinhood. To resolve this issue, a D&D campaign has to make most of the enemies of the paladin not humans with a conflicting relgion (a la the crusades) but essentially evil humanoids or demons. (Thus, I don't think its a coincidence that D&D makes it a bit hard to do gritty - because alignment is anti-gritty.)

As Ourph said above, it's hard to drop alignment altogether because of its link to spells etc. The easiest approach might be one I've heard R Foster advocate - let the player choose the label, and then basically ignore it until the label is needed to resolve a spell effect.