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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dykstrav" data-source="post: 3288298" data-attributes="member: 40522">The single biggest myth I've seen is the idea that alignment = personality. The famous DM caveat of, "You can't do that because it's against your alignment."The 2E Player's Handbook and DMG have some very good examples of alignment considerations. For example, a lawful good merchant has no problem with price gouging for nonessential items: there's nothing inherently 'evil' about letting someone pay what they're willing to pay for a luxury item. That merchant can decide to not barter, let the character pay the asking price, and still be lawful good in every sense of the word. Paladins must be lawful good, but not every lawful good soul must act like a paladin.There's also a chaotic evil magician mentioned. A chaotic evil magician can sit around in a tavern and enjoy a mug of ale and a game of darts like everyone else, he doesn't have to only come to the village to lob fireballs into the nearest huts. The example cites how even a chaotic evil character can be a peaceful, productive member of society (although he'd be known as mean, churlish, and certainly wouldn't be popular with the villagers).Alignment is a concrete force in the D&D sense, in that it's measurable with detect evil and affected by spells like holy smite and the like. Like gravity or magnetism, it's another force of the universe that's somewhat impersonal. The trick lies in that each individual DM must decide what constitutes good an evil in his own setting. As far as the players are concerned, it's more descriptive than anything else (like saying that the character's eyes are blue). It's a statement that a character intends to play a character a certain way.</blockquote>

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