D&D 5E Breaking down alignment to a basic core

[Sacrosanct]

9 alignments? Get rid of them. Sure, Lancelot is lawful good and Han Solo is chaotic good, but 90% of the time, players just ignore that level of detail anyway. Also, people are way more nuanced than that. Depending on scenario (and mood), a person could be lawful good one day, and chaotic neutral the next (well, maybe not that radical, but close).

Suggestion? Make alignment similar to B/X. Good, neutral, and evil. Good means you generally try to do things the society views as good, but aren't tied to always following the rules, or always willing to break the rules. You could, but no one cares about enforcing that in game for the entire campaign. Also, every humanoid species in the MM doesn't have a default alignment. It is whatever the DM put is at for that particular region and culture. Again, you absolutely can have all orcs evil, but maybe there's a clan that isn't.

 

[aco175]

I'd be fore just having PCs be listed as good or maybe neutral. Most of my players play the same alignment all the time anyways. They are generally good and try to do the right thing. They bit on the normal plots of rescuing and saving things.

Monster on the other hand, I like having a general alignment for knowing that individuals can be different. If there is a new monster like a moon dog or something, I would like to know if they were intended to be more like NPCs or monsters.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I'd be fore just having PCs be listed as good or maybe neutral. Most of my players play the same alignment all the time anyways. They are generally good and try to do the right thing. They bit on the normal plots of rescuing and saving things.

Monster on the other hand, I like having a general alignment for knowing that individuals can be different. If there is a new monster like a moon dog or something, I would like to know if they were intended to be more like NPCs or monsters.

Monsters, yes. Humanoids, no

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

I've thought about using a hybrid 1e/4e alignment system, inspired by this chart:



Lawful Good Saintly
Good Beatific
Evil Diabolic
Chaotic Evil Demoniac

Creatures that fall in the middle are either Neutral or Unaligned depending on whether they are intelligent enough to have moral agency.

 

[payn]

I like the way Law/Chaos plays into games way too much to give up on it. It's easy enough to ignore alignment now anyways.

 

[JustinCase]

I agree with your first paragraph, but disagree with the second. Then I agree once more on the "no default alignment for humanoids".

I'll refrain from voting, then.

 

[Dormammu]

I’m for it, but I’d prefer the Lawful/Chaotic paradigm to the Good/Evil one.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

My house rules about alignment:

Adding allegiance (race, tribe, religion, fatherland, family, brotherhood) and allowing opposite allegiance+alignment, for example a sheriff who breaks rules to defend the order would be chaotic with law allegiance, and a rebel who commits terrorist attacks in the name of the fight against the tyranny would be evil with "supreme good" allegiance. The spells and powers with key alignment can hurt enemies with same one but different allegiance, for example drow cleric vs orc shaman. Then being neutral doesn't help to avoid higher damage.

My idea of chaotic alignment is to be attuned with primal forces or nature, or only obeying code of rules linked with the allegiance. Sun Wukong, the famous Chinese monkey king (Dragon Ball was based in Journey into the West) would be an example of chaotic alignment but disciplined training as a monk.

 

[Helldritch]

Personally, I still use the 9 alignments with the alignment chart from the Old Dragon Lance Adventure in 1ed. You have 10 points. Playing your alignment moves you toward the right (10) of your alignment by one. Doing something against your alignment moves you to the left (1-0). If you hit zero, your alignement shifts toward the alignment zone that caused your shifts. A neutral component has -5/0/5. Only in doing extreme good, evil, lawful or chaotic actions will move the bar one way or the other.

Some actions will move the bar faster than other. The killing of innocents, refusing to get paid for a risky mission etc... might move the bar more than one notch. If you change alignment, -1 level for each component that moved. So a lawful Good character turning neutral will get -2 levels. I have done this for 30+ years and it works like a charm. It encourages players to play their alignment as best as possible. It also make players make characters that fits with each other's goals (but not always, that is the fun of it. Isn't it?).

 

[Orius]

Not a good idea, IMO. Alignment arguments seem to break down along the good-evil axis more often than law-chaos because good and evil are more subjective than law and chaos and generate more heated disagreement.