Angels/Demons in a World Without Alignment?

[Dog Moon]

So Angels are like the epitome of Good [though there are also the Eladrin and Lupinals of CG and LG - or something like that], Demons CG, and Devils LG. There are also the Yugoloths, who are NE.

If you decide to take away alignment, what becomes of these? Does anything really need to change beyond a few miscellaneous SLAs like Circle Against Good or similar abilities?

Or is alignment the driving force to why these beings must fight and without that driving force, must they be modified enough to give them a different reason to fight?

 

[Crothian]

Just because one removes alingments from the game doesn't mean the concepts they represent and the belifs of certain creatures have to change. So other then a few small mechanic changes I keep them the same.

 

[Nightfall]

I'd also like to point out it's CE for Demons and LE for Devils in D&D...not CG and LG for Demons and Devils.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Well, apart from quite a few (Sp) and (Su) abilities in some cases, no there's not really much you'd have to alter rules-wise.

And as Crothian (more or less) said, without Good, Evil and the rest, you're just left with good, evil, and the rest.

 

[Tonguez]

Actually for Outsiders Good and Evil are Descriptors NOT alignments therefore no change - Circle Against Good affects creatures with the Good descriptor

 

[Shemeska]

It's also randomly worth noting that Angels are not the epitome of good. They're direct servitors of good deities, while it's Archons (LG), Guardinals (NG), and Eladrin (CG) that are the true physical manifestations of the good alignments. For angels, the will of their patron deity is more important than the actual goodness of the action.

But if you remove alignments, the true planeborn make a bit less sense since they exist seperate from deities and aren't beholden to them (they're beholden to the alignment/plane they represent). Similarly for Baatezu (LE), Yugoloths (NE), and Tanar'ri (CE). You could either recast them all as immortal extraplanar races some benevolent and some malevolent, or make some of them divine servitors, or you could make them alien entities of more unknown (but still conflicting) motivations. The planar makeup would need to change as well to an extent if alignment didn't exist because for the outer planes at least, alignment is the basis of the planar setup, etc.

 

[mythusmage]

In my case I cut it back to one devil, Satan himself, and many demons. All of whom are good in nature. It being their task to punish evil doers when said malefactors die. The Abyss being a place where one is punished, not where one can advance to high rank in nastiness.

But then, I'm strange.

 

[Particle_Man]

You can do as you like, and it will probably work.

Though I just thought of an interesting angle where you take away all good and evil outsiders and the big war is between Inevitables (under some lawful neutral god...Wee Jas?) and Slaadi (a truly infinite number, to make up for their complete lack of organization). But that is far from your concept, so end threadjack.

 

[Ripzerai]

It might be fun. One of the disappointing aspects of a setting with absolute, objective morality and beings who personify that morality is that it's rare to find institutional corruption among the celestial hosts, and it's rare to be able to sympathize with the cause of the fiends. If you remove alignments, that changes - the celestials can be absolute scum as often as they're paragons of virtue, and the PCs might well decide to aid the fiends in fighting against them.

 

[Nyaricus]

Well, IRL, we don't have 'alignments' as in D&D, but Good and Evil are still concepts which all people understand (of course, history has shown us that "good" and "evil" can be largely subjective; the Crusades for example).

In my experience, there are some things which are truely evil, and some things which are different, thus we distrust them and become apathetic to them: we fear what we do not know or understand.

However, for angels (Shem, I think Dog Moon was using a more general name for Celestials; though it might be an oversight on his part since his OP was a bit vague ) and demons, I think that saying that they still fight for good and for eveil (respectively, of course) then all is good. If you want a morally "gray" world, with no alignments - fine! That's what my homebrew is like. However, I also have angels and demons and devils and fiends of all sorts (drawn from mythology and religion and whatnot) who represent those higher virtues which the more "earthly" races can only vaguely understand and, in truth, represent.

DM, if you are interested, I could write up a mega-post about the history of my campaign setting (well, more of the multiverse it's in, so kinda meta-level far back in the reachs of time sorta stuff), which, while tangential, might interest you.

cheers,
--N