D&D 5E (2024) Are the new default alignments of Goblins (CN) and Kobolds (N) more consistent with their current portrayals?

[Gradine]

Default alignments are dumb and should be ignored anyway

FTFY

 

[Shadowdweller00]

If you randomly meet a medusa in the wilderness... how random is it? Did the local villagers warn you about a medusa picking off those who stray too far, or is she just minding her business in her own home? If the latter, it doesn't hurt to attempt a parley and roleplay a little. If she screams and attacks anyway, then you roll for Initiative and nothing's changed.

On the flip side of this, enemies that attack the party on sight are fairly infrequent in my games. One will occasionally meet stuff like hungry monsters hunting for a meal or supernatural foes like undead that have innate compulsions to kill; and maybe the odd ambush / mugging attempt - but most living creatures will try to size up the party first. And most sentient enemies will try to make demands before resorting to violence.

 

[Kurotowa]

On the flip side of this, enemies that attack the party on sight are pretty infrequent in my games. One will occasionally meet stuff like hungry monsters hunting for a meal or supernatural foes like undead that have innate compulsions to kill; and maybe the odd ambush / mugging attempt - but most living creatures will try to size up the party first. And most sentient enemies will try to make demands before resorting to violence.

Pretty much. The one gameplay type that does suffer from this is "Murderhobos wandering the countryside performing home invasions", because it cuts away at the moral justification for blanket designating certain populations as acceptable targets. Which yes, okay, if that's really the core gameplay of your campaigns it might cause you some issue. But really, that sort of story is not looked on highly anymore. So it's no surprise that the official game is trying to move away from it.

 

[Divine2021]

Huge fan of alignments on monsters, as they are a quick shorthand that tells me AT A GLANCE how I can roleplay them. They’re a huge timesaver, and as a busy GM I find it a complete cop out when designers decide not to include them—they’re actively making me spend more time on something I’d rather not.

Saying that, I have zero problem with how kobolds and goblins are aligned here.

 

[Umbran]

FTFY

Hey, folks? Can we raise the quality of the criticism a tad? Thanks.

 

[Tonguez]

yeah goblins have always been a bit more chaotic opportunist than anything else so if I ever bothered using alignment CN would be a nice way of doing it without bothering with actual characterisation.

Neutral means nothing and is a cop out, but then alignment should be dropped anyway ...

 

[Clint_L]

Just decide what role you want a goblin or kobold, or group of goblins or kobolds, to play in your game, and that's their "alignment." Who cares what the MM says? It's your table.

With regards to the OP, I would definitely say that CN seems more in line with the types of characters that I see players making with goblins (i.e. kind of wacky), and kobolds generally seem to be played as territorial minion-types, so sure, neutral makes sense, I guess, so far as any alignment makes sense.

 

[InkTide]

Just decide what role you want a goblin or kobold, or group of goblins or kobolds, to play in your game, and that's their "alignment." Who cares what the MM says? It's your table.

The issue I've always had with default alignments in a stat block has little to do with the philosophy of 'alignment' or 'default alignment' and more to do with the fact... it's the only thing in a block of RAW text that isn't actually RAW and barely even qualifies as lore (except for extremely specific types of monster, like those that are basically "alignment, embodied" to a certain extent).

Most people only interface with the block. If the block has a default alignment on it, that's the assumption they'll make - it's one of the reasons I liked that dragons in Fizban's had "typically" beside the alignment. When somebody brought up those blocks, that reminder was always there. It's the kind of thing that needs to always be there for it to stick in the mind of a general audience, because the lack of that verbiage is what sticks in their minds without it. A paragraph in the preface somewhere just doesn't cut it.

We can all shout at each other about how "it's just a suggestion" until we're blue in the face, but it's useless in a place like this because the people who'd need to hear "CE in the goblin stat block doesn't mean you should assume they're all CE" aren't the ones posting or reading here.

From what I've seen, we still have not progressed to a general awareness in the fandom/playerbase that default alignments aren't even really a lore recommendation anymore. Many players encountering monsters/NPCs that deviate from the default are likely to still just assume it's DM fiat. Again, a paragraph in a section only a DM is going to read just doesn't cut it.

However... for something like this, a change to goblins and kobolds, a new default alignment probably should show up in the stat block like this, for that same reason, even if you dropped most default alignments from the blocks.

So I quite like these changes (goblins being CN fits well enough, and kobolds have genuinely felt to me like they were diluting what "Evil" meant as LE - they're either bumbling goofballs or traditionally depicted as defending their homes (sometimes both), even as enemies of the PCs). I'm actually more disappointed we lost "typically" with the dragons. If alignment needs to be in every block, IMO it should have "typically" next to it except for those aforementioned "alignment embodied" examples.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Neutral is also the new Any Alignment. All Humanoids are Neutral, and the book explicitly says that mean the DM can make their individual alignment anything.

 

[Charlaquin]

Neutral is also the new Any Alignment. All Humanoids are Neutral, and the book explicitly says that mean the DM can make their individual alignment anything.

Which I find funny, because saying that while also making most creatures neutral aligned by default is basically doing away with default alignments, but in a way the people who insist on default alignments existing are ok with.