Alignment Issues!

[Dausuul]

But D&D's never had a real analogy to an all-pervasive Force like Star Wars has. There's no "disturbances" in magic really. Well, aside from wild magic in certain settings but that's still something completely different.

I don't think your idea is necessarily a bad one (in fact, it's my preferred interpretation of LS/DS for Star Wars), I just think it's more alien to D&D than standard alignments are.

Well, I don't really expect my approach to be adopted in 5E; a brand new alignment system isn't what you want when trying to unify the community. However, I don't feel like any of the traditional D&D alignment systems serves any useful purpose. In theory, they could encourage roleplaying, but in practice I have never seen them do any such thing.

Don't get too hung up on my "great disturbance in the Force" comment; that was just a throwaway Star Wars reference. My point is that, coming at it from a thematic/flavor perspective, I feel like a paladin's detect evil power should be about sensing supernatural evil rather than mundane. It always struck me as weird that skeletons and zombies* don't show up on a paladin's radar, but a callous and corrupt bureaucrat does. (Cue arguments over how callous and corrupt you have to be for it to count. That's another reason I don't like traditional alignment.)

Likewise, a warlock whose power comes from a bargain with Asmodeus should be burned upon touching a holy avenger sword; not because the warlock personally is a bad person but because she is tainted by the essence of the Nine Hells. Light and Shadow alignments support such mechanics much better than the traditional Good and Evil.

[size=-2]*In 3E because skeletons and zombies are neutral, and in 4E because paladin radar has been disabled.[/size]

 

[The Human Target]

3.

Good guys, Bad Guys, and everyone else.

Everything else is flavor text.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I vote for three alignments: Light, Shadow, and Unaligned.

• Light means you have a spiritual connection to the powers of good/sunshine/healing/fluffy bunnies.
• Shadow means you have a spiritual connection to the powers of evil/nightfall/undeath/psycho axe murderers.
• Unaligned means you're not spiritually connected to either.

None of the three says anything about your behavior or your moral code. That's up to you. Alignment is just a question of what jersey you're wearing in the interplanar cosmological football game*. For example, skeletons and zombies are Shadow-aligned, not because they're malicious or hateful but because they are animated by dark powers. A cleric of Pelor is Light-aligned because she's spiritually linked to a deity of Light. If she renounces Pelor, she becomes Unaligned instantly, even if she continues to help kittens out of trees and escort old ladies across the street.

(It is of course possible that if the cleric of Pelor starts murdering people in the dead of night, Pelor might decide to sever her link to him. In that case, likewise, she becomes Unaligned. But that's a specific action by a specific NPC--Pelor--rather than some kind of vague cosmological moral standard.)

[SIZE=-2]*Do they wear jerseys in football? Heck, I don't know. The only sports I watch are roller derby and politics.[/SIZE]

I really like this idea. It won't work for core 5e, mostly due to the fact that 5e is clearly not going to break much new ground mechanically, but as an add-in modular alignment mechanic - it's fantastic.

I ran a game in the 3.x ear where this would have served me much, much better than the existing rules for alignment ever did. If/when I ever get back to that game, regardless of edition, I'm stealing this idea.

It also gave me more food for thought concerning how alignment could relate to power source, and what that could mean for my games... so, thanks!

I tried to XP you. Really, I did.

 

[jsaving]

I'd like to see D&D return to the iconic 9-position alignment system, but the designers do need to come up with a more coherent and consistent definition of what law and chaos actually mean. Is it modron-like rigidity versus anarchy? Is it "having a code of conduct," no matter what that code says, versus "not having a code of conduct"? It it being honorable versus "doing what's necessary"? Is it a willingness to judge others when they fall short in their duties versus validating their behavior no matter what it turns out to be? Is it respecting authority figures and/or the law of the land versus flouting them?

My opinion - alignment works best when it's a shorthand description of how characters will act regardless of the campaign setting into which they're placed. If I know that the members of a party are "good," for example, I know they'll try to help people as best they can, even if they occasionally disagree amongst themselves over how best to do that. But if you instead tell me that the members of a party are "lawful" in the sense that they have codes of conduct and respect various authority figures, I don't have any idea how they'll respond to a given situation until someone specifies the configuration of authority figures to whom each character is accountable and the particular vagaries of each character's code of conduct. And that defeats what is (at least in my opinion) the main benefit of having an alignment system in the first place.

Law = honor could work, I think. So could a system in which lawful characters favor order over individual freedom and chaotic characters favor the reverse. I suppose even Modron-type stagnacy versus nihilism would work, though such a system wouldn't be especially interesting. But codes of conduct and obedience to particular authority figures need to be handled outside of the alignment system, not within it.

Those are my two cents, anyway.

 

[Gort]

Hope they leave it out of this one entirely. You don't need a box to tell you how to play or (as we see so many unfortunate times) to excuse anti-social play with "but it's how my character would react - look at my alignment!"

Of course, if they leave unaligned in I can ignore it just as much as I did in 4e.

 

[Celebrim]

I'd like to see D&D return to the iconic 9-position alignment system, but the designers do need to come up with a more coherent and consistent definition of what law and chaos actually mean.

And good and evil for that matter. Sadly, the various writers of D&D have never been able to write very profoundly on the topic, and the problem is muddled more by different authors taking different stances on the meaning of the four alignments. Everyone basically agrees on good, but after that, it gets muddled.

As for law and chaos, I've always thought that expressed at the moral level, it was essentially an argument between collectivism and individuality. On the one hand, the forces of organization and stability and on the other the forces of freedom and change. You seek to answer the question, "Do the needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few, or the one, or do the needs of the few, or the one, out weigh the needs of the many?" Which comes foremost, and which is the source of your identity? Something inside you, or a relationship with something outside of you?

I think a lot of confusion enters in on the word 'law' (as opposed to order), and it tends to conjure up the notion of a code - which is fitting but insufficient. It's not a question of whether or not you have a code, but whether you are the source of your own code or subjegate yourself to an external one.

 

[Nivenus]

As I see it, law, good, chaos, and evil (for D&D alignment purposes) can be summed up as such:

Law is about believing that society should be structure and ordered, that everything has its place and should not wander far from it. A Lawful character doesn't follow all laws for their own sake, but that law is essential for people to function properly and that things like honor, discipline, and integrity are essential character traits. Purely lawful characters also believe firmly that the good of the many should always come before the good of the few.

Chaos is about valuing diversity and independence above most of everything else. Chaotic characters at their heart believe people should be allowed to do what they want, when they want, and how they want, though some chaotic characters vary on exactly what this means (as a group that inherently promotes individuality are prone to do). Chaotic characters inherently distrust authority and believe in supporting even controversial practices, valuing the needs of minorities and individuals more highly than they do society at large.

Good is about doing the right thing and acting selflessly to help others even when there is no reward. Good characters at their most essential are philanthropic individuals, who sometimes go out of their way to help others and who believe that everyone deserves a second chance. Forgiveness, compassion, and generosity are hallmarks of this alignment.

Evil is about doing what it takes to put yourself (or those whom you associate with) ahead, no matter who else it hurts or harms. Evil characters aren't necessarily entirely selfish, but they are largely apathetic to the needs or wants of others. Untempered greed, malevolence, and spite are hallmarks of this alignment.

As I've stated before, I'd consider the good vs. evil axis to be more about how you treat individual persons and law vs. chaos to be more about how you relate to society as a whole.

 

[GM Dave]

Sorry if the following is long but plenty to discuss here. Break into smaller posts if you like or keep as a whole if you want to respond.

Welcome to the boards. My that's a lot of deep topics we can launch off from from there.

Thank-you.

I hope if you don't mind that I will use '...' to condense some of your quotes so I'm not filling up board space.

I think every player that creates a character needs to think deeply about what their character believes in and what goals that they have. I have no problem with that per se.

But the problem with codifying beliefs and goals into the game, beyond that its one of the harder challenges in game design, is that if you really do a good job of making that codification meaningful ... These games tend to be best when you have a group that can really focus on the low drama and get into the theater games involved in it. But they really aren't D&D and if D&D went that direction it would probably alienate a lot of fans. (I'm not saying you can't play D&D as a low drama game, because I've seen it done, it's just not something enforced by the mechanics.)

Personally, I am happy with Alignment not having a mechanical connection. I am happy with Goals and Beliefs being something that if used in a game are part of an award system.

The award could be experience, it could be 'recharge' of abilities, it could be a benefit to a future die roll. I would be fine with no award mechanic and this being a section that directs its usage for strictly role-playing value.

Alignment is one of those areas that appeals strongest to the non-crunchy, non-min/max type of players. This is important to include in play as there are a variety of types of players and providing a mechanic for the actor or specialist player types is a useful rule. Just as skill and feat systems have become more complex to appeal to the crunchy types of role-players you should have more complex rules that appeal to other types of players.

Why do people play other style games and be moan DnD? I think that it has much to do that DnD still doesn't have something, even if it is a 'cosmetic' rule that has no game mechanics to satisfy them.

I agree that alignments are a poor representation of what a person believes in, but I also think that that has never been either what they represent or thier in game purpose.... I believe that two characters with the same basic beliefs will be very very different in the crucible depending on their alignment, and will express their beliefs very differently.

You seem to be arguing both for and against your self in this paragraph.

You state that the current alignment system really doesn't represent beliefs and that beliefs are different from alignment.

Let's look at where alignment has a mechanical intersection with the DnD rules.

The first main intersection is the cleric with Positive and Negative channeling/turning/commanding. If you are associated with a particular alignment then you gain the ability to heal or harm living or dead. I also include in here that clerics of certain alignments can not be priests belonging to a particular God or belief system.

The second intersection is that some classes are limited to certain alignment choices. This can in some versions of the rules result in a player being stripped of their powers or not allowed to further advance in their previous profession because of some deed. Some versions of DnD had additional rules imposed on various classes of who they could associate with and maintain their class standing.

The third intersection is some spells are designed to work in a particular way if you are of a particular alignment. There are spells that ward certain types of people or detect people because they are of an unwanted ethos. I will further include that certain items function in a similar way to spells based upon this ethos or alignment.

One of the more interesting things you can do with a character is make him an alignment which either is, or superficially is, in contridiction to his basic beliefs. ... Then try to play these characters through the tensions and sometimes contridictions their beliefs and alignment have.

You seem to here be again arguing for the value of both belief and alignment. The trouble with this is that a belief system can easily include an alignment view but alignment views sometimes prevent beliefs or goals.

The way alignments are written and stated to be used in the rules is to prevent certain types of people or characters from doing certain actions. The consequence is supposed to trigger a change of alignment. In some editions the change of an alignment can be a serious penalty but in recent editions this rule has been removed beyond some consequences that I will discuss with the mechanics.

Sure,... But don't mistake alignment for beliefs. They don't cover exactly the same territory.

When I discuss the mechanics of the three intersections, I will show that alignment can be covered by belief and lead to a more open and flexible design. I think alignment can remain as a 'switch' for people wanting a particular cosmology but I hope to show that it can be a switch that is part of a larger system.

You seem to think that 'good' and 'evil' aren't meaningful.

Good, Evil, Law, Chaos, Red Dragon, Gold Dragon, Amethyst Dragon, Rainbow Dragon, Greed, Generosity, and many other terms that can have opposites, neutrals, or something not even on the scale are all meaningful. I just don't think that good, evil, law, and chaos have to be the only way to order a cosmology and if we are looking at improving the rule system and keeping the history then we need to look at the full value of these concepts and their impact on story play.

Beliefs tend to be far more diverse than alignments. As such, they are harder to mechanically code into the rules, and if they were so coded and done well, they'd be harder to rip out again.

Before discussing rules on beliefs, it is valuable to look at the three intersections that I marked and how the rules have dealt with those intersections to see if we need to design new or different rules.

The first intersection was clerics and the channelling/turning/commanding for positive/negative. The first thing to look at this is that it takes the nine alignments and really divides them into three groups. Group One does positive, Group Two does negative, and Group Three does which ever they want but lives with the choice.

This appears to be a little limiting as the 'good' tends to be positive and the 'evil' tends to be negative. The real limit is the religion or belief system of the cleric should match or come close to their patron deity. The practical play application is that there are many extra gods created to cover all these 'required' alignment sections and that meaningfully add to the play of the game.

If you want to be channel positive and want to be worshiping a god of madness then you choose to be neutral and the chaotic neutral god allows you to spontaneously heal. Gods of death, war, pestilance and a dozen other usually 'evil' ideas have clerics with positive healing and the same goes for many negative channeling for 'positive' gods. If you could not make the fit with your own selection of alignment then you would 'manufacture' a god or an 'ethos' that matches your desire of domains and channeling goal.

While alignment and deity should have a mechanical effect, secondary rules, or campaign support (Forgotten Realms with all the gods with dozens of spheres or domains) make any 'barrier' meaningless.

Mechanically, it is better to separate alignment, deities, and connection to a power base of positive or negative because it isn't really driving the game for the players. A GM could use it for story purposes but then a belief statement can cover any story development a GM would want without having to work with mechanical concerns.


The second intersection of class choice being limited. Initially this seems a barrier and if you just play by the basic core books with no optional classes or prestige classes then it is a barrier. The trouble is that people start making up niche classes that do almost exactly what the class restriction prevents and calls it something else. These additional prestige classes and alternative classes often come from official books (anti-paladin, other types of paladins, other types of rangers, and many similar things that don't add to the game but 'noise' ~ I mean by noise that they draw attention away from something that adds a real benefit to the game). The result is a series of extra needles classes because the 'official' class lists a limit based on alignment. Players in groups tend to look at restrictions on who they can associate with or not associate with by saying they're 'different'. If the players play by the rule of restriction then it can often cause problems for the GM who may now have one or more players that can not adventure together (most GMs in this situation will ignore the alignment rule rather put up with the head ache of a divided party that quickly dies and requires a reboot of the game).

If you create a rule and then proceed to invent ways to get around the rule then the rule is really meaningless. The rule only serves as a 'switch' that some people will keep and others will move on past.


The third intersection is with spells and items. I think this is actually an easy fix. Instead of type by a particular alignment then type by something more meaningful. No Demons. No Undead. Only the friends of Floah. Only someone of noble blood. Only those that give homage to Thor. Only those that carry a token of the Blood Brotherhood.

Now, you don't have to make sure that there are 4 of every type of spell and continually tell neutrals to 'pick a side'. The spell or item has the limitation or ward built by the choice of what is the limiter. You save space in the rules and get to include all those neutral people.

Could you bring alignments back in? Sure, if your game has that cosmology then you could have a Protection from Law instead of a Protection from Demons.

The advantage is that mechanically that is an option instead of rule that is hard wired into the rules.

 

[jsaving]

As for law and chaos, I've always thought that expressed at the moral level, it was essentially an argument between collectivism and individuality.

This would be an excellent principle on which to build the 5th edition system, in my view at least.

The one point with which I'd quibble -- and it's been suggested several times in the thread thus far -- has to do with whether those who support collectivism inherently favor "the needs of the many" whereas the other side favors "the needs of the few." While I do think there's something to that basic idea, I'm not sure it fully captures the necessary nuances here.

To the chaotic good person in the kind of system you're suggesting, freedom is what enables people to reach their highest potentials, thereby creating a better environment for everyone. It's not a matter of sacrificing societal goals (the many) for individual goals (the few), but rather a belief that those who coerce others in the name of pursuing societal goals are inadvertently inhibiting the amount of good people could do if left to their own devices and are therefore inadvertently harming both the needs of the many AND the needs of the few.

Listening to this reasoning, the lawful good person just shakes his head and says no, we need to act collectively to protect people from themselves and make sure everyone assumes their proper role for the benefit of everyone. It's pie-in-the-sky thinking to believe individual people pursuing their own ends could ever form a decent society, and if some people have to be coerced into doing what's obviously best, then those people were being selfish anyway and deserve to be thwacked so that the needs of the many can be served.

In short, LGs would genuinely perceive themselves as favoring the many over the few, but risk being perceived by CGs as favoring elites at the expense of everybody else. Whereas CGs would genuinely perceive themselves as making life better for everybody, but risk being perceived by LGs as favoring the fortunate few over everybody else.

That's how I see it, anyway.

 

[Celebrim]

To the chaotic good person in the kind of system you're suggesting, freedom is what enables people to reach their highest potentials, thereby creating a better environment for everyone. It's not a matter of sacrificing societal goals (the many) for individual goals (the few), but rather a belief that those who coerce others in the name of pursuing societal goals are inadvertently inhibiting the amount of good people could do if left to their own devices and are therefore inadvertently harming both the needs of the many AND the needs of the few.

Listening to this reasoning, the lawful good person just shakes his head and says no, we need to act collectively to protect people from themselves and make sure everyone assumes their proper role for the benefit of everyone. It's pie-in-the-sky thinking to believe individual people pursuing their own ends could ever form a decent society, and if some people have to be coerced into doing what's obviously best, then those people were being selfish anyway and deserve to be thwacked so that the needs of the many can be served.

In short, LGs would genuinely perceive themselves as favoring the many over the few, but risk being perceived by CGs as favoring elites at the expense of everybody else. Whereas CGs would genuinely perceive themselves as making life better for everybody, but risk being perceived by LGs as favoring the fortunate few over everybody else.

That's how I see it, anyway.

I think you are quite right in your analysis as far as it goes, and it would certainly be true that this perception that the best way to protect the group was to protect the individual and the best way to prosper the individual would be to prosper the group would be a common stance and justification by the two sides of the debate. And many people would genuinely believe it, and perhaps have good reason for their beliefs.

But I don't think its inherent to the two stances. It's a particular nuance of the two. But I think that ultimately the chaotic can say, "The individual first, the individual second, and society can go to hell.", and ultimately the lawful can say, "If we have to use the bones of our individuals as grist and their blood as lubricant, the society first, the society second, and the society always."

Whether they openly state that or not, that's where the two beliefs end up in practice. You kind of hint at it yourself when you have your mouths say things like, "if some people have to be coerced into doing what's obviously best, then those people were being selfish anyway and deserve to be thwacked so that the needs of the many can be served." I note that you _don't_ put the equivalent statements in the mouths of your chaotic spokesperson, which, if I may be so bold is probably a big clue about where your preferences lie.

And this is where it gets hard for people. While those tendencies might lean to evil, they can be found even in the good components of those philosophies. A Paladin finds himself forced to order individuals to their deaths as if they weren't individuals. A chaotic finds himself having to stand in defiance of the world to protect his rights, or that of a loved one. One of the hardest problems I find people have defining law and chaos in isolation is not defining it in relation to good, or conversely not defining good or evil in your relationship to self or others.

So to pick on him, Nivenus gives a very good short law and chaos run down. But then he blows it by defining Good in a way that is practically a synonym for law, and Evil in a way that is practically a synonym for how he has defined chaos.

Note:

Good is about doing the right thing and acting selflessly to help others even when there is no reward. Good characters at their most essential are philanthropic individuals, who sometimes go out of their way to help others and who believe that everyone deserves a second chance. Forgiveness, compassion, and generosity are hallmarks of this alignment

The essential nature of both law and good can't be 'acting selflessly'. Likewise, the essential nature of both chaos and evil can't be 'acting selfishly'. There is I think more too it than that. After all, 'lawful evil' is 'evil that acts selflessly' because that's what the individual components of the LE society does. And likewise, 'chaotic good' is 'good that acts self-centeredly'. People often have a very hard time with that last one, but one of the more obvious examples is the Maxim: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." (Note, I'm not arguing Christianity is CG, and don't want to go there.) That 'golden rule' has often been criticized because it defines good in a relationship to oneself - the assumption of what you want best for yourself is what is best for others as well. There is a giving aspect to it, but its a giving in relationship to the self and depending on your own consciousness to be the judge. Not everyone is happy with that being part of the idea of what good is.

In a very simple way, the core of good is belief in the value of construction, creation, healing, and nurturing - both of the self and of others. While evil is the belief in the opposite values: deconstruction, destruction, violence, and pain. The composite alignments wield these two notions. For example, CG wants to use about construction, creation, healing, and nurturing to bring about change as an act of individual fulfillement. CE gets individual fulfillment by utilizing the opposite actions to bring about change. And so forth. But good and evil independently are rather unconcerned with the question of the individual versus the society, and consider it something of a distraction versus the important point. Good in and of itself would say that both selfishness and selflessness are equally wrong-headed acts of destruction.