Alignment - is it any good?

[Agamon]

The one thing that would help sway me from 3.5 to 4E is if they stick a sword through alignment. We hates the nasty alignments, we does.

 

[pemerton]

This post brings together a number of different things asserted on this thread by different posters, not to try and refute those posters, but to try and illustrate why I think that alignment is complex, not simple, and also why I think it pushes D&D away from gritty fantasy and towards Forgotten Realms-type fantasy (whether that is a good or a bad thing would be an issue for a different thread).

First, on PCs killing things:

In D&D killing things and taking their stuff is not evil, provided the things you're killing are themselves evil.

It could even be argued that that is why alignment was necessary in the first place, otherwise 'adventurers' (aka hitmen and grave robbers) might seem rather immoral.

I agree with both these claims. But notice straight away that it rules out (for example) two rival Good churches whose paladins kill one another in holy vengeance. Thus, D&D can't really be used to roleplay the Crusades, medieval Spain (with conflict between Christians, Jews and Muslims), Charles Martel's battle in the Pyrenees, etc.

Instead, paladins' enemies have to be Orcs or other more-or-less inherently evil humanoids (in practice, if not in theory - once orcs, in practice, are given the same range of alignments and personalities as humans, their utility as a game device is lost), and demons. At the same time, there is a push towards homogeneity among the Good churches, because their clergy (if they are to remain Good) must cooperate with one another in the face of evil.

Again, this puts limits on certain sorts of plots. For example, it is natural to thing that feudal warriors should be at odds, even at war, with the villagers and druids whose lands they are subordinating and bringing under military rule. But a paladin of Heironeous (the natural examplar of feudal rule) who kills a cleric or NG druid of Ehlonna (a natural defender of the villagers' ancient ways) is in danger of losing his or her paladinhood. Thus, the conflict can't reallly develop in the way we would naturally expect. A certain sort of plot is excluded by the operation of alignment - unless we want to make all the feudal warriors LN or LE Hextorites, which has its own difficulties, obviously, because historical knights saw themselves as Christians, not Satanists.

a paladin kills for a living too; what are the circumstances?
To slay another is usually a chaotic act, but to do so as a term of employment, soldier for instance, is lawful (obey commands of a higher authority). To slay another is usually evil, but to execute a criminal is patently good. To steal from one is choatic, but not neccessarily evil, qv Robin Hood.

But a paladin who kills the non-evil is in danger of losing paladinhood. And to slay others simply to take their loot is obviously evil, in any standard moral system (natural law, utilitarianism, Kantianism, etc). And so would it be regarded by most GMs, I think. Hence the need to dress up D&D killing and looting in moral terms, as defence of the Good from the Evil (Orcs, demons etc).

Conan has many facets and as a DM I would adivse the character to choose Chaotic Neutral (personal gain above all other things (ie selfish)) or Chaotic Good (with Neutral tendancies) as often times he has the best intrest of others in mind as well, but cares not how they are served.

On the Conan sidebar. It really depends who's writing Conan as to what alignment you would peg him at. Having just discovered the originals, I'm really astounded at the differences between REH's Conan and De Camp's which I had read previously.

In Tower of the Elephant, Conan kills guards so he can rob a tower. There is no reason to think those guards are Evil, and they're no threat to anyone except burglars. Looks Evil to me.

In The Pool of the Black One, he kills a pirate so he can take his job. At best Neutral.

In Xuthal of the Dusk, its a massacre of the city folk who are no real threat to anyone. Highly non-Good, I would say.

That's just off the top of my head.

So Conan (as written by REH) is at best CN, plausibly CE. Nothing wrong with that, you might say, just descriptive alignment at work, but:

Alignment is the universe's way of keeping score. In the CN character's example above, sure, she does lots of good things, but, she also is completely untrustworthy and does lots of bad things. Thus, CN.

And Conan is not in the least untrustworthy, and very frequently goes out of his way to protect his allies and those to whom he has made commitments. But once the CN or CE label appears on the character sheet, a certain picture is painted which tends not to leave room for the sort of nuance that we know is typical of actual people and actual fictional characters. I think this is an instance of alignment not being sufficiently discriminating. It ha no label for "murderer, thief, but loyal to allies". Nor for "honest, reliable, good-hearted, but hating of religious/political/etc foes". And so on.

There are other major fantasy protagonists who could be called evil...or at least amoral enough to be no closer to good than neutral.

Agreed. This would not be a problem except that most canon D&D material goes out of its way to make Good the norm, Neutral the tolerated and Evil quite abberant for PCs.

Scoffing, cheating, and deceiving to deliberately harm others just because she can get away with it...those are all actions that are decidedly non-good.

Thus making it very awkward to play a Good rogue, because rogues scoff, cheat and deceive to deliberately harm others (via sneak attack). I think this quote also shows that it is difficult to get agreement on which aspects of behaviour are Law vs Chaos, and which Good vs Evil.

Alignment doesn't tell you what's in your heart or mind or soul. It does tell you which side your heart and mind and soul are currently batting for in the great cosmic conflict.

True. But in our actual moral thought we use more than two dimensions to characterise people's behaviour. But the D&D cosmos forces everything into two dimensions. This means that, if our D&D game admits the full scope of human personality, politics and society, the cosmos gets confused. For example, are church-going, family-loving, loyal, honest but Japanese-hating veterans of the Second World War Good or Evil? For a D&D campaign to progress smoothly, it has to put these difficult cases to one side - again, certain sorts of plot or protagonist are (in practical terms) ruled out.

All it takes is a bit of common sense and consideration to figure out alignment. But most folks would just prefer to use their own ethical philosophy and then argue with each other about which of them is 'right', while ignoring what sort of absolute ethical system the D&D rules and settings support. Numerous infinite planes of existence in D&D are composed of ethical forces. Deal with it and keep it in mind when considering ethical conundrums in D&D; the rules clearly support certain things as being right or wrong.

OK, at this point I will disagree. In the real world, moral philosophy is not all common sense. If it were, there would be no work for professional philosophers to do.

And alignment, by forcing everything to be captured in two dimensions of evaluation, makes the moral analysis harder, not easier. The best way to handle this is simply to drop many of the problem cases from the game. But this rules out a number of interesting options for plots and protagonists. In this sense, I think alignment is limiting. I'll leave it to others to argue why it is nevertheless a useful game tool.

 

[I'm A Banana]

But notice straight away that it rules out (for example) two rival Good churches whose paladins kill one another in holy vengeance.

How? AFAICT, two intractable LG organizations could both go to bloodshed over control of a particular sacred site (for instance), both believing that they are *more* good than the other.

But a paladin who kills the non-evil is in danger of losing paladinhood. And to slay others simply to take their loot is obviously evil, in any standard moral system (natural law, utilitarianism, Kantianism, etc). And so would it be regarded by most GMs, I think. Hence the need to dress up D&D killing and looting in moral terms, as defence of the Good from the Evil (Orcs, demons etc).

It's not inherently evil to slay something Good, or every hungry dire bear living next to a monastery of Pelor would be guilty of deep moral evil. It's not inherently good to slay evil: likewise, the bear next to a goblin camp would be a crusader for justice.

Good, Evil, and Neutral motives exist for the killing of a Good character; likewise, Good, Evil, and Neutral motives exist for the killing of any Evil (or Neutral) character.

Making the goblins in the dungeon *also* interested in eating babies adds a level of heroism to the game, but it doesn't make the rogue who wants to kill them to take over their empire and wield them against civilization a hero by necessity.

Thus making it very awkward to play a Good rogue, because rogues scoff, cheat and deceive to deliberately harm others (via sneak attack). I think this quote also shows that it is difficult to get agreement on which aspects of behaviour are Law vs Chaos, and which Good vs Evil.

There's only one authority at any table that matters: The DM's. And even then, what score you are doesn't matter much, because they are all basically equal.

It's not hard to play a Good rogue at all: you value others' life, you protect the innocent, and you restrict your predations to those who have it coming. It happens every week.

True. But in our actual moral thought we use more than two dimensions to characterise people's behaviour. But the D&D cosmos forces everything into two dimensions.

You're looking at it backwards. The D&D cosmos *describes* everything in two dimensions. Meyers-Briggs describes everything in four. Horoscopes, in 12. IQ on one. Alignment is not the entirety of your psyche.

This means that, if our D&D game admits the full scope of human personality, politics and society, the cosmos gets confused. For example, are church-going, family-loving, loyal, honest but Japanese-hating veterans of the Second World War Good or Evil? For a D&D campaign to progress smoothly, it has to put these difficult cases to one side - again, certain sorts of plot or protagonist are (in practical terms) ruled out.

No, it doesn't have to put these issues to one side. Heck, check out 90% of the Planescape material from 2e (which had a much more iron-fisty view of alignment).

It just has to answer the question: is racism Evil? According to the RAW, it's only evil if you actively attempt to kill them to make yourself happy, but the DM will have the final call in how his sides are divided, too.

 

[Arkhandus]

I agree with both these claims. But notice straight away that it rules out (for example) two rival Good churches whose paladins kill one another in holy vengeance. Thus, D&D can't really be used to roleplay the Crusades, medieval Spain (with conflict between Christians, Jews and Muslims), Charles Martel's battle in the Pyrenees, etc.

Instead, paladins' enemies have to be Orcs or other more-or-less inherently evil humanoids (in practice, if not in theory - once orcs, in practice, are given the same range of alignments and personalities as humans, their utility as a game device is lost), and demons. At the same time, there is a push towards homogeneity among the Good churches, because their clergy (if they are to remain Good) must cooperate with one another in the face of evil.

Well of course. Paladins are the holiest and most honorable of warriors; they should not be killing other good people. Most Christian knights would not be paladins in D&D, they would be fighters, and not necessarily good-aligned (you can be Neutral or Evil and still fight for a Good cause, if your means of fighting for that cause are not Good; D&D alignment is more about actions than intentions). Paladins are supposed to be above that; they are supposed to fight evil, not those their church sees merely as 'wrong' and misinterpreting the will of the divine. The paladins exist to slay demons and destroy evil cultists and exterminate villainous raiders, not slaughter other members of similar faiths over petty squabbles over minor religious issues.

Also, keep in mind that Clerics don't have to stay lawful good or whatever; a Heirronnean cleric can be lawful neutral from their feuds with fellow good-aligned churches, and still receive Heirronneus' blessings since he or she is still mostly adhering to the will of the Archpaladin, just misguided in their squabbling.

Again, this puts limits on certain sorts of plots. For example, it is natural to thing that feudal warriors should be at odds, even at war, with the villagers and druids whose lands they are subordinating and bringing under military rule. But a paladin of Heironeous (the natural examplar of feudal rule) who kills a cleric or NG druid of Ehlonna (a natural defender of the villagers' ancient ways) is in danger of losing his or her paladinhood. Thus, the conflict can't reallly develop in the way we would naturally expect. A certain sort of plot is excluded by the operation of alignment - unless we want to make all the feudal warriors LN or LE Hextorites, which has its own difficulties, obviously, because historical knights saw themselves as Christians, not Satanists.

Not really. Paladins are not exemplars of feudal rule; that would be Knights. Paladins are holy crusaders of a particular faith or ideology, not warriors of the state; they may be both in some cases, but must always put the demands of their faith first. Once they put their mortal lord before their god, then of course they fall from grace and lose their paladin abilities. Knights are the examplars of feudal rule and aristocratic warriors. They can be followers of Heirronneus and believe themselves good, when they are really neutral from all their fighting against people they simply perceive as evil or wrong, without a paladin or cleric giving them direct divine guidance on whether or not that is true.

But a paladin who kills the non-evil is in danger of losing paladinhood. And to slay others simply to take their loot is obviously evil, in any standard moral system (natural law, utilitarianism, Kantianism, etc). And so would it be regarded by most GMs, I think. Hence the need to dress up D&D killing and looting in moral terms, as defence of the Good from the Evil (Orcs, demons etc).

Paladins aren't supposed to kill stuff just to take its loot. Paladins exterminate evil creatures and unrepentant creatures who harm the innocent too often. Paladins are not standard adventurers, they're expected to maintain higher morality and only work towards destroying Evil and protecting Good. A paladin may slay some evil dragon or evil warriors, but he doesn't generally do it for the sake of taking their stuff; he or his companions may end up looting the corpses afterward, but for the paladin, they only take loot to fund their crusades and donate to worthy causes; acquisition of that loot is not their goal (if it is, then it means they've just lost their paladinhood). I miss the old rules or whatever that said paladins had to donate a significant chunk of their treasure..... But c'est la vie, paladins can accumulate wealth if they're putting it to good use.

If you want to model historical Earth, then D&D is not the game for you. The presence of a Wizard class alone should make that obvious; the real world does not have wizardry. If you want to model a fantastical, epic version of Earth's history, then great! D&D works fine for that.

So Conan (as written by REH) is at best CN, plausibly CE. Nothing wrong with that, you might say, just descriptive alignment at work, but

Well of course Conan isn't Good or Lawful, that's just blatantly obvious. Conan's a barbarian, a knave, and a thief. He's definitely N or CN at best, NE or CE at worst. Maybe eventually he turns LN or LE when he becomes ruler, but during his adventuring days he's a scoundrel.

Thus making it very awkward to play a Good rogue, because rogues scoff, cheat and deceive to deliberately harm others (via sneak attack). I think this quote also shows that it is difficult to get agreement on which aspects of behaviour are Law vs Chaos, and which Good vs Evil.

Huh? Deceiving and cheating to defeat someone who's threatening your life at the moment isn't Evil, though. Unless they're some goodguy that you provoked into attacking you. And in case you didn't notice, Rogues can do nonlethal damage with Sneak Attacks with suitable weapons or unarmed strikes, so a Rogue can use trickery and deception to knock someone out to avoid having to really hurt them.

True. But in our actual moral thought we use more than two dimensions to characterise people's behaviour. But the D&D cosmos forces everything into two dimensions. This means that, if our D&D game admits the full scope of human personality, politics and society, the cosmos gets confused. For example, are church-going, family-loving, loyal, honest but Japanese-hating veterans of the Second World War Good or Evil? For a D&D campaign to progress smoothly, it has to put these difficult cases to one side - again, certain sorts of plot or protagonist are (in practical terms) ruled out.

That depends. Most likely they are Neutral or Lawful Neutral. Possibly Good, but that depends on their actions. Also, it's coloured by their perceptions, which were determined by what little they knew of their enemies. Their hatred may keep them from a peaceful afterlife until they learn to abandon that hate, in a D&D setting, but it is not likely to make them non-Good or seriously risk their chances of going to Celestia or Elysium or whatever unless they actually go out and kill or harass random people of the type they hate, in which case their actions may shift their alignment towards Evil. Being ignorant does not excuse evil acts.

As for the rest, we'll just have to agree to disagree. *shrug*

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Paladins are supposed to be above that; they are supposed to fight evil, not those their church sees merely as 'wrong' and misinterpreting the will of the divine.

And, like I said, this is where we get into problems.

IRL, nobody has ever formulated an absolute test for what is good or evil.

In the proposed example (used as far back as 1Ed, FWIW) of a Christian Crusader Paladin vs a Moslem Paladin, there was enough "evil" on each side that the two could easily justify entering the war as a combatant, finding themselves on opposite sides of the fray, possibly even meeting each other on the battlefield.

If they do so...what then? Do they recognize each other's innate goodness and let each other pass to kill others...or do they recognize each other's innate goodness and continue to fight?

There is no single right answer.

 

[Thunderfoot]

And, like I said, this is where we get into problems.

IRL, nobody has ever formulated an absolute test for what is good or evil.

In the proposed example (used as far back as 1Ed, FWIW) of a Christian Crusader Paladin vs a Moslem Paladin, there was enough "evil" on each side that the two could easily justify entering the war as a combatant, finding themselves on opposite sides of the fray, possibly even meeting each other on the battlefield.

If they do so...what then? Do they recognize each other's innate goodness and let each other pass to kill others...or do they recognize each other's innate goodness and continue to fight?

There is no single right answer.

Ah, but there in lies the moral quandry, to dfo what is good (not slay another good person) or do what is lawful (to kill my enemy as dictated by a higher official authority).

I find that often times it is the misunderstanding of law/good, chaos/evil that gets people into trouble. Not that I'm ging to answer the question, I personally believe that neither Crusaders nor Sarasens were paladins, but clerics and fighters of highly dogmatic beliefs, (as defined by game terms), which is why paladins are so stringent on the moral code. It not easy being near perfect.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Well, as I've said elsewhere, sometimes the RW just doesn't give you a "good" choice.

The point remains- it is entirely possible that two good people can be on completely opposite sides of the same issue.

In my WWYPD thread some time ago, I set forth a hypo based on RW events that had occurred in some form or another multiple times (though based on a particular one)- a Paladin in command of an overloaded lifeboat full of people.

He had no good options, he had no way to relinquish command- no matter what he did, innocents were going to die.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

I know, I know... this is neverending discussion. But I have recently met with group of people, who believe that the best one can do with alignment is not use it. In their opinion, it is not good even for newbies.

And anybody with that low an opinion, that great a misunderstanding of alignment SHOULDN'T use it. They shouldn't be ALLOWED. Anyone else can and probably should at least try it for several characters over several campaigns so they can FORM THEIR OWN OPINIONS. And if the naysayers even begin to talk about it in game for any reason they should be told, bluntly, to shut up.

I would like to find some sources on both positions. The positive and negative effects of alignment. Why does D&D 3.xE even uses the alignment. What was the designer's goal? Was it just - keep this sacred cow alive or something more?

It's not a matter of positive and negative EFFECTS. It's a matter of understanding what reason there is to use it in the first place, and how to use it to that end in the second place.

Alignment is a tool for roleplaying. It exists to assist players in playing characters more believably and consistently. It does this by looking at the pattern of behavior and beliefs of a character and assigning them to a GENERALIZED category. Players can then use this category as a reference point in monitoring how their characters patttern of behavior and beliefs changes or remains fixed.

Is it good as a moral compax or does it limit you free role-play? What are you experiences. Thank you in advance for any insight on this issue.

Alignment does not restrict your roleplaying a whit. However, there are understandably in-game and meta-game consequences for alignment changes, just as a person in the real world who begins to make major changes in belief and behavior will face various consequences of that.

It works just fine as an in-game moral compass. It is NOT a model of real-world morals, behaviors, ethics and philosophy. It is intended for use in a FANTASY roleplaying milieu. It reflects a moral and ethical landscape that is vastly more fixed, more black & white than the real world. It tends to look at such detailed topics as unchanging within a given alignment category simply for the sake of convenience. It makes reams of oral and written background and explantions of motivation unnecessary.

It is similarly not a good model for application in fiction for the very reason that fiction can and does do a much better job of describing an individual characters inner thoughts. Fiction can go into a characters morals, ethics, religion, philosphy, and motivations in GREAT depth with much more interest. Alignment exists to ELIMINATE the need to go into exhaustive depth on such subjects. An author can write two pages or whole chapters explaining WHY a character does what he does. A D&D player is better served to simply say, "My character is Lawful Neutral" to list such motivations.

Alignment DOES exist in its current form, largely as a matter of tradition. As it was first put forth its PURPOSE in existing wasn't to be a useful roleplaying tool for players so much as a Game Design Hammer for the DM to use to maintain roleplaying order and discipline. Statements in the text regarding how and why to use alignment as a guideline were at odds with the rules that made it a Big Stick.

Right up to the present Alignment suffers from being badly written. Every version has fussed confusingly over what you can/can't do but floundered and ignored simple statements about WHY keeping a characters actions reasonable and consistent with alignment categories is A GOOD THING; it's something useful and desireable.

For experienced roleplayers alignment should be LESS of a problem, not more, as the player will be more familiar with how and why to keep his characters behavior reasonable and consistent. It is most useful for newbies who do NOT have the intuitive grasp of character roleplaying.

Alignment doesn't need more "rules" or stricter definitions of categories or the like. It only needs to be written up in a rulebook by someone who will finally approach it with an eye to emphasis on WHY IT EXISTS, because that is what makes alignment useful, even indisposable.

 

[Ourph]

My main problem with alignment is the prevalence of discussions and threads like this. It's a game rule and, therefore, should be straightforward to interpret and use. The reality is that everyone has their own interpretation of what alignment means, how it should be applied and which set of actions/beliefs define each specific alignment. That may or may not be the fault of the rule's design, but it's pretty obvious that whatever the cause of the confusion, the current rules aren't doing enough to address the confusion and create a rule that is more universally understood and consistently applied. Until that happens I would prefer that the rule simply not be included at all.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

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.

But then again, the way you're trying to use it there is to describe/define in detail the character and her motivations. Alignment is generalized categories. It should not bother you that out of nine general categories there isn't one to provide a SPECIFIC descriptive context for every given character. As a player, it should only bother you if the one specific category you've chosen as your characters alignment cannot provide a viable reference point to compare YOUR characters actions to. Again, the alignment is not dictating, nor limiting your characters choice of actions, nor reactions to in-game motivations. If you have a character whose behavior genuinely seems to drift between different alignment categories - so what? Can't you still use those alignment categories to gauge how your characters behavior remains consistent in its own fashion, despite NOT fallling neatly into one general category?