D&D 5E Do you find alignment useful in any way?

[imagineGod]

I think that what alignment was used for has been superceded by other systems that do it better (with one exception).

In my understanding, alignment is used for Character Behavior, Spell Effects, and Enemy Behavior.

Character Behavior is now mostly motivated by Background, Ideal, Bond, and Flaw, which often uses the language of alignment! There are Ideals which explicitly use "Chaos" or "Evil" in their description.

Spell Effects now use creature type instead of alignment, such as in the spell Protection from Good and Evil.

The one gap I see is Enemy Behavior. That's why I think it should be replaced with some codified traits that a DM could use to easily make decisions about how their enemies act.

You make good points. The way earlier Edition spells and magic items worked based on alignment no longer work that way in 5th Edition.

An improved shorthand system to Alignment would be welcome by most DMs running monsters on the fly. Reality check. Wizards of the Coast has no alternative yet, if they did, we would have seen it in defined properly Tasha's like we saw with racial Attributes, and then exemplified in the new Ravenloft stat blocks.

Sadly, WoTC was blindsided and just threw the toys out for everybody as a knee-jerk reaction.

And everything became smelly when stat blocks using full words for alignment instead of two letter shorthand.

 

[Oofta]

Either I miscommunicated or you didn't read the second part of my post.

In my perfect D&D, codified terms like Greedy, Cowardly, Bloodthirsty, Clever, etc would be aligned with behaviors described for DMs who want help running enemies. To me, seeing that a Warlord is Vain and Merciless is much more useful than seeing they are Lawful Evil. Especially if there was then a paragraph saying that Vain enemies may be susceptible to characters using Charisma to compliment them, and that a Merciless enemy will attack characters who are unconscious at 0 HP.

Furthermore, I just find Alignment reductive! In my own experience, when players use their Alignments as motivation instead of their Background, Bond, Ideal, and Flaw, or other truths built up about their characters, it leads to more friction or restraints than nuance.

Much like @Maxperson I don't know personality descriptions my players have for their PCs. It's their tool to help them define what matters. I react to what their PCs do, not what's on their sheet.

If you throw enough words into a description, if they have a common definition you can achieve some of the things that alignment achieves. But in the real world, once I give the (very) brief description of what alignment means to new players they get it. If you have code words for TBIF then you need to know what those words mean. For that matter you may need to decide how they interact with each other.

I have no problem with multiple descriptors. A truly flexible system would have, say 1-10 descriptors. Some of those may be good, evil, lawful, chaotic, loyal, greedy, vain and so on. Certain combinations probably wouldn't make sense. But that could get needlessly complicated.

Best option? Keep alignment and TBIF. Both are imperfect, neither tells you everything you need to know, both are effectively optional.

 

[ph0rk]

That is the nice thing about "rulings, not rules" being emphasized. One DM can make alignment mean nothing at all and another DM can make alignment be just as integral as it was in older editions.

I think this requires a good deal of work, as most of the stuff that keys off alignment has been removed. Probably a dozen or more spells and abilities need tweaking to pre-5e language.

Doable, sure, but not as easy as if alignment was still in the system and marked as optional.

 

[Mistwell]

Comparing alignment to a rule that doesn't make sense if you put any amount of thought about it really isn't a stellar defense.

Also, how is alignment useful if it is so subject to interpretation? With such variance in its interpretation, it doesn't seem like it would be a useful shorthand.

That's your lawfulness showing again. Hit points make a lot of sense. They just make sense in a different way to different people. Same thing with alignment.

You're looking for a universal, constant application from table to table across all players. But my point is, it's OK if that's not how some game elements work. As long as it's working for those tables which use it, in a way they appreciate for their game, then it's useful to that table.

Saying something isn't useful if it is subject to interpretation and variance is just repeating, in a different way, the same argument. Maybe there are 8 different ways that different tables can use game element X. Saying it's only useful if they all use it in 1 way doesn't make sense to me. It can be useful in all 8 ways, at all 8 different types of tables. That doesn't make it not useful - it just makes it harder for you to put on a spreadsheet as a single thing you can measure easily.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I think this requires a good deal of work, as most of the stuff that keys off alignment has been removed. Probably a dozen or more spells and abilities need tweaking to pre-5e language.

Doable, sure, but not as easy as if alignment was still in the system and marked as optional.

Oh, I don't add much of that old stuff back in. A lot of that kind of stuff did not make sense even back then with the stricter alignment rules.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

You're looking for a universal, constant application from table to table across all players. But my point is, it's OK if that's not how some game elements work. As long as it's working for those tables which use it, in a way they appreciate for their game, then it's useful to that table.

With 5e where alignment has no mechanical weight it indeed doesn't really matter if everyone agrees what it means. It can be just your personal label for your character and it doesn't matter if someone else would label your character differently. But in older editions where it was tied to a ton of mechanics (and many people here wanted to go back to that) and violating your alignment often had mechanical repercussions, the player and the GM disagreeing what certain alignment meant was a recipe for disaster.

 

[Hriston]

I think there are actually two traditional Alignment systems, and I like both of them. However, I am not certain that they co-exist easily or well.

First, I like Alignment as cosmic forces. Having Evil be a palpable force in the universe makes for some excellent games. Using circles of protection to keep undead at bay is a classic. Allowing paladins to smite and sense evil is great for their class fantasy.

Second is Alignment as a short sketch of viewpoint and behavior. The 3x3 is classic, and is "good enough" for many purposes, especially how it shows how two good, or two evil people might behave differently or even come into conflict. It's possible to be overly rigid with this form of alignment. But I have always found it's a good method for figuring out how a character should respond to a wide variety of situations, and what sort of situations where she will act against alignment.

However, I'm not sure that both systems work well together. Allowing detect evil, or smite evil from the first system to work on individuals in the second system is a mess. As well, it has a tendency to remove all nuance from the second system. The problem is both systems use the same words and terms, but one system is capitalized and the other lower-case. Lawful Evil and lawful evil, if that makes any sense. It's too easy to mix them together, when the systems work best being separate.

I use alignment in the first sense but not the second. The significance of the alignments of individual creatures is to show how they are aligned with those cosmic forces, perhaps unwittingly.

 

[transmission89]

I like alignment, I enjoy using alignment in older editions where it serves some purpose.

It epitomises my personal problems with 5e as d&d. In my opinion, too much content is in there as lip service to tradition without actually serving a purpose. And we wonder why debates exist around the use of alignment, gold, xp vs milestones etc. They’ve removed/atrophied the motivators, uses of these and so many new players are left scratching their heads, wondering why things are in the books and adapting to newer ways that “fix“ these problems. For me, alignment serves no use in 5th edition beyond just being a basic descriptor.

This is another contributory factor in my checking out of 5e and sticking to older editions of the game. Alignment meant something. It was a paladin‘s code of conduct, an actual force in game as spells or magic items would have various effects depending on it. Yes, on the face of a it, a peculiarity of D&D, but one that for me, was part of its soul, rather than just a generic fantasy RPG.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

It epitomises my personal problems with 5e as d&d. In my opinion, too much content is in there as lip service to tradition without actually serving a purpose.

I have long enjoyed those posts that talk about 5E having more 1E feel, or touting how to make it so. I don't need 5E to have 1E feel. 1E has always managed that just fine without help from new editions, and if I want 1E feel - I play 1E. If I WANTED the feel that 5E has, I'd play more 5E. But I want 1E, and 5E will NEVER be as good at being 1E as 1E is. Which makes me wonder - why do certain 5E proponents want to convince me that 5E is more like 1E than other editions have been, when I still play 1E?

3E was very different from 1E but I get what it was they were doing with it and why, and I enjoyed it enough to happily play it. I don't even know what 4E really was, but it completely lost track of what D&D USED to be before it came along. Certainly 5E still hasn't come to grips with what was actually lost from 1E and why. Maybe someday 6E will have figured a few things out.

 

[transmission89]

I have long enjoyed those posts that talk about 5E having more 1E feel, or touting how to make it so. I don't need 5E to have 1E feel. 1E has always managed that just fine without help from new editions, and if I want 1E feel - I play 1E. If I WANTED the feel that 5E has, I'd play more 5E. But I want 1E, and 5E will NEVER be as good at being 1E as 1E is. Which makes me wonder - why do certain 5E proponents want to convince me that 5E is more like 1E than other editions have been, when I still play 1E?

3E was very different from 1E but I get what it was they were doing with it and why, and I enjoyed it enough to happily play it. I don't even know what 4E really was, but it completely lost track of what D&D USED to be before it came along. Certainly 5E still hasn't come to grips with what was actually lost from 1E and why. Maybe someday 6E will have figured a few things out.

I mean certainly, there’s an argument to be made about what editions of a game “should” mean, and what d&d “should” be. But it’s not this thread and I don’t want to disrespect the OP with a massive derailing can of worms such as that.

As to your thoughts on a 6E, based on developments to 5e and the demands of the current player base, I doubt it .