Ampersand Sneak Attack: Alignments

[Tequila Sunrise]

And just when I was growing accustomed to the idea of laying Law and Chaos down to rest... I've never had a problem with them, but I'm not married to them either.

As a whole I love alignment and will continue to run alignment in my 4e as I always have: there won't be any arbitrary class restrictions or vague/bizarre/contradictory definitions but alignment will have mechanical implications. I'll be dissapointed if alignment in the 4e PHB really is nothing more than descriptive text, though I wonder that they would waste space on alignment if that is the case. If alignment really does turn out to be just descriptive text, I'll be making my own classes and spells/abilities that work off Good and Evil.

King & country? Halfling liberation? You still have motives, you're just not overly concerned with good and evil.

For many of us who don't feel irrationally obligated to follow the book's more bizarre definitions, this has always been the definition of "neutral".

 

[MaelStorm]

I agree 100% with Sphyre on the unaligned part.

And I agree too that if alignment is just fluff and nothing more, than why keep it?

Personally, I think alignment is an important character development tool. And I also agree that their definition in the previous editions were always open to misinterpretation.

I welcome a broad definition of alignment as: Good or Evil. This is not so hard to roleplay.

I would also welcome a more specified and less broad definition of alignment for characters that would not be interested in playing just a "Good" or "Evil" alignment. But these need to be roleplayed adequately and would therefore need to be better defined than with just a little paragraph per alignment.

I would also welcome an optional alignment system that could be applied to different campaign settings in the DMG. Like a "Chaos vs. Order" theme instead of a "Good vs. Evil" theme. Or a completely foreign concept. A Faction and Code of Honor concept. Everything that adds more depth and nuance for a Character in a PoL setting.

 

[MaelStorm]

The reason I did link the Lawful with the Good alignment, and the Chaos with the Evil alignment is a personal theory that in the 4E these alignment will be associated together.

This theory suppose:
-that Lawful would stand for order and is only compatible with Good.
-that Chaos would stand for disorder and is only compatible with Evil.
-that there is no need for needless symmetry (hence no need for chaos to be Good anymore and no need for lawful to be Evil anymore)

 

[FourthBear]

Good Lord, I can't imagine the alignment bickering that will occur if WotC declares that in D&D order is associated with good and disorder with evil. That would piss off the alignment grognards, Planescape fans and untold numbers of armchair ethical philosophers. The only good thing would be that the ensuing nerd rages might convince the team that in 5e they should just remove the whole shebang once and for all.

 

[Mirtek]

The reason I did link the Lawful with the Good alignment, and the Chaos with the Evil alignment is a personal theory that in the 4E these alignment will be associated together.

This theory suppose:
-that Lawful would stand for order and is only compatible with Good.
-that Chaos would stand for disorder and is only compatible with Evil.

Which I strongly disagree with

 

[MaelStorm]

Which I strongly disagree with

EDIT: I don't want it personally. But I'm not against it either. It is my personal intuition.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

The reason I did link the Lawful with the Good alignment, and the Chaos with the Evil alignment is a personal theory that in the 4E these alignment will be associated together.

This theory suppose:
-that Lawful would stand for order and is only compatible with Good.
-that Chaos would stand for disorder and is only compatible with Evil.
-that there is no need for needless symmetry (hence no need for chaos to be Good anymore and no need for lawful to be Evil anymore)

They've already said that you will be able to play a lawful evil paladin.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm happy they're keeping the Law/Chaos division, and happy that they're making alignment in general more of a defining choice than it has been in previous editions (you only get an alignment if you WANT an alignment is a good way to make it so that you can easily not deal with it).

It very much encourages gameplay in the modes of heroic fantasy, and allows for 'shades of gray' between Good and Evil (namely the whole Civilization vs. Barbarism motif).

Alignment is one of the things that D&D does that makes it a heroic fantasy game to me, so I'm very excited to keep it.

 

[MaelStorm]

They've already said that you will be able to play a lawful evil paladin.

A lot of people are going to be happy then. Me, I'm going to reduce it to Good, Evil and unaligned.

 

[MaelStorm]

Now that everything is almost unchanged. And everybody is happy!!! This thread has no use anymore.