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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DammitVictor" data-source="post: 8268530" data-attributes="member: 6750908">For as long as I have been a member of these forums, do I really need to spell out that my first answer is that I scrub every trace of alignment out of the system? If there are angels and demons in my setting-- which is hardly a given-- those beings and their empowered mortal servitors are the only exceptions. No alignment restrictions on classes. No aligned spells. No alignment domains.  Paladins have an Oath that spells out their Code of Conduct and specifies some of their abilities.My settings are godless. If there are Clerics at all, they follow a religion and their magic represents ideals taught by that religion-- there are usually several religions to choose from, all of them are optional and none of them are divine MLM schemes. Some of them may even be substantially correct in their beliefs about the workings of the universe. If Druids are a thing, they are not the same thing as Clerics.Obviously, no Alignment and no "Gods" means no Great Wheel. Honestly, I would really like to not define this because all of the action takes place in the actual setting... but given a choice between defaulting to the World Axis cosmology or resorting to operant conditioning to get players to leave it alone... well, the World Axis isn't so bad. Still, I fantasize about telling players "There are no dimensions outside of this one, take 1d4 psychic damage" whenever I'm designing a new setting.With very very few exceptions-- mostly Drow-- subraces are not a thing. The concept of "race" in D&D terms... is just a little more flexible and accommodates more natural variation. This is mostly reflected in class selection.It's not actually a deviation from lore-as-written, so much as deviation from a baseless oral tradition, but demihuman/humanoid relationships are more uneasy and skeptical than they are immediately and invariably hostile. In order for gangs of humanoids to be a potential random encounter in the middle of the capitol city, families of humanoids have to be living on the outskirts of the capitol city. In order for random goblin and orc patrols to be carrying handfuls of minted coins, someone has to be willing to trade for those coins with them.</blockquote>

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