D&D 5E Conflicting Alignment and Ideals

[Hand of Evil]

My soap box...Define what is EVIL in your campaign! Define what is GOOD in your campaign!

Examples (these are bad and extreme to make point):

• Evil - Cold blooded murder
• Good - Killing in war / defense / honor / dueling
• Evil - Orcs
• Good - Killing Orcs
• Evil - Worship Evil Gods
• Good - Killing those that worship Evil Gods
• Evil - When peasants are questioned, their answers. (They always lie)
• Good - What a Noble says.

Look at your gods and their domains, their friends and their enemies to build your list. This builds cultural taboos and phobias.

 

[Gargoyle]

I think the best way forward with situations like these is to just play the character for a few sessions, and then if you feel that their Alignment or Ideal or Flaw really is not actually what is developing in play, just replace them with one that will.

I think that's good advice. Shame it wasn't in the Basic rules, but maybe something like that is in the Players Handbook or DMG.

 

[Gargoyle]

I don't see how this is evil at all. The stronger force most often wins, and being powerful and mighty is a good thing.

Yeah, that was my first thought, but that's the quote right out of the basic rules. My second thought was, "why label these ideals with alignment at all?" I think ideals can be chosen independently of alignment for more complexity; the default assumption is that you would pick one that supported your alignment, which is fine, but not quite as interesting IMO.

 

[GSHamster]

I think you could make a workable character. For the Ideal, it is not necessarily Evil. I don't know if you watch any shounen battle anime like Bleach or Hunter x Hunter, but this is common worldview for the heroes. The good characters seek power because power is necessary for them to protect their friends or accomplishes their goals.

A common plot is "Hero encounters bad guy. Bad guy is stronger and defeats good guy. Hero realized he must improve his personal strength/power to defeat the bad guy." That's perfectly compatible with the Ideal, and is perfect for the individualist Chaotic Good alignment.

The harder one to reconcile is the Flaw with the Alignment. I'll go with Chaotic Good to heighten the contrast. The key here is that the Flaw contradicts the Alignment's natural instincts. But instead of declaring it a contradiction, let's ask ourselves, "Why? Why does she act against or repress her natural instincts?"

A couple ideas:

1. She is terrified of the punishment. Perhaps she broke the law in her youth, was caught, and was sent to prison. In prison she had a bad experience. Now she is terrified of going back to jail, and so forces herself to always obey the law. If she always obeys the law, she will never be sent back to prison.

2. She doesn't trust herself. In the past, she ignored the rules to do what she thought was right, and something tragic happened. ("If only you had obeyed the rules, your father would still be alive!") So now she substitutes the rules and laws for her own judgement. Again, this cuts against her natural instincts, but that's what makes it a Flaw.

I would probably go with the prison option because it plays into the Ideal. In the prison, she saw that Might makes Right. The stronger prisoners ruled over and tormented the weaker prisoners. That has imbued her with the determination to never be in a position of weakness again.

 

[Gargoyle]

I think you could spin that combination as Lawful Good. She respects power & believes that strong individuals & powerful states make for more secure & content citizens. The fact she supports harmful laws is a flaw so the fact it's "a bit evil" is fine.

I don't know how you can get it to chaotic good. I'm not sure a conflict between an alignment & a characterisation does anything more than remind us of how simplistic alignments are & I think the ideal & flaws should inform alignment if it's worth bothering with - I am not sure it effects anything mechanically & it's the least interesting RP feature.

Chaotic Good is more of a stretch, but I think with some effort you could spin it so that just about anything makes sense: She believes in strength and supports laws that she knows are harmful...but only because she's a fanatical soldier raised in a Spartan like city-state as a berserk shock troop. On a personal level, she's kind and generous and really terrible at staying in one place, organization, or maintaining relationships. Maybe she's not good at following orders; even if one believes in a military structure and its laws, it doesn't mean they are good at being in the military, so that's why she's now an adventurer. She rationalizes the horrors of their laws which involve mass executions as being necessary evils to protect themselves from traitors. She might be a little nuts. So yeah, a bit of work, but more interesting, and historically I think I described someone who could be a deserter from the Dahomey Amazons.

The value of alignment is certainly questionable when these new traits seem more interesting, but I sort of like the interplay that can exist between them when used as exceptions...a more basic example than the convolution above would be "He's Lawful Good but Greedy and will do whatever it takes to become wealthy." (edit: note that greedy is listed as an evil Ideal, but obviously could be a flaw too, either way I see no reason why a Good character shouldn't take it)

 

[Gargoyle]

But instead of declaring it a contradiction, let's ask ourselves, "Why? Why does she act against or repress her natural instincts?"

That pretty much distills what I was thinking and more eloquently.

And I was hoping to see something of this sort in the rules, but it seems like that was not their intent. Ah well, as long as we get good stuff out of it. I think this is why my wife likes dice rolls for things like this. It forces her to play something different. Plus she likes rolling dice.

 

[Pickles JG]

Chaotic Good is more of a stretch, but I think with some effort you could spin it so that just about anything makes sense: She believes in strength and supports laws that she knows are harmful...but only because she's a fanatical soldier raised in a Spartan like city-state as a berserk shock troop. On a personal level, she's kind and generous and really terrible at staying in one place, organization, or maintaining relationships. Maybe she's not good at following orders; even if one believes in a military structure and its laws, it doesn't mean they are good at being in the military, so that's why she's now an adventurer. She rationalizes the horrors of their laws which involve mass executions as being necessary evils to protect themselves from traitors. She might be a little nuts. So yeah, a bit of work, but more interesting, and historically I think I described someone who could be a deserter from the Dahomey Amazons.

All I know of the Dahomey Amazons I know from Flashman's Lady, highly recommended as are the other first half dozen flashman books.

Your character sounds like me. A strong believer in laws & order & paternalistic states but not very keen on conforming personally. Rather than this making me interesting I think it just illustrates how impractical the alignment system is for describing people or societies.

Using alignment to add a little more colour to a character along with the other personality traits seems OK but personaly I would not let it be more than a general guide.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

"I believe that strength wins out - so if I want the innocent to live free of fear, I must become strong."

I like this observation of yours.

Chaotic good, but believing that laws of man have to be followed works and "might doesn't make right there for the mighty must fight for right" sounds like Spider-Man or batman to me

 

[evilbob]

I think the best way forward with situations like these is to just play the character for a few sessions, and then if you feel that their Alignment or Ideal or Flaw really is not actually what is developing in play, just replace them with one that will.

I think the Starter Set - or maybe it's somewhere else, it is all running together - suggests that up to level 5, allow any player to change anything about their character when they level up.

 

[I'm A Banana]

She likes to roll dice, so naturally when she got the opportunity to roll for her soldier's background of Ideal, she did so and rolled Might - In life as in war, the stronger force wins (Evil). For Flaw, she rolled "I obey the law, even if the law causes misery."

After that, perhaps a bit out of order in the process, she read the alignment descriptions and promptly selected Chaotic Good as her alignment.

Doable, but I'm a guy.

"The law is the strongest force there is in this world, backed by the might of armies and the acceptance of people. I obey it because it has power over me. Yet, I long to be free of its bounds and its strictures. We - me included - are ruled by an authority that only earned its way through power. Power can be taken. Minds can be swayed. Revolutions can dismantle the system from within it.

I have no choice but to obey the strength and authority of law for now. But I inspire dissent. I know that people will rise up against the laws when they become too draconian, and sometimes I am too draconian specifically for the purpose of inspiring dissent. I root for them as I fight them. I know that they can win someday, and though they hate me, I will be an instrument of their eventual liberation. Through the methods of law, I will destroy the structure."

Though I think the intent is probably to pick an alignment after you roll those things, so that they're used to inform the alignment you take. Sounds like she didn't really use those elements to inform her alignment choice. Meh, let her re-roll or whatever.

I'm a fan of the counter-intuitive results myself, specifically because as a PS guy, I see alignments as really blurry categories.