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

[tetrasodium]

not the d&d alignment. Palladium has a system that describes how a character will act to make it mildly useful (ie what do you think about lying cheating backstabbing torture etc) & I've seen a few others similar but can't recall them. d&d's alignment is of negative value & actually introduces problems as people try forcing it to free willed mortals who don't neatly fit into good/evil-law/chaos axis

 

[Necrozius]

I would have liked to reply "sort of". I am more interested in Alignment in a cosmological sense, or as it is represented in Michael Moorcock's books. While playing a character, I never felt satisfied with my alignment category and always leaned into Neutral to have better flexibility.

However, I haven't used Alignment in any RPG except for D&D, so... it begs the question if it is even needed at all!

 

[Krachek]

My take on alignement
Good, will try to help you
Evil, won’t hesitate to even kill you
Lawful, tradition and honor have some importance
Chaotic, Free will and free speech is important
A guess that somebody will go 70% of the time according to its alignment.
But more than that, it seem silly.

 

[billd91]

I voted Lemon Curry because it's a mixed bag. It's got some uses and I like some uses, but it's a barrier when used badly.
I guess I'd rather have a game be either 3e/PF in which all alignments can have implications for game mechanics (spell effects, in particular) but aren't overly restrictive or give it the minor significance that 5e gives it. I can live with either quite well.

 

[Shiroiken]

It's an efficient shorthand for the creatures views. While it could be replaced with another system, I don't feel it necessary. When I RP, I look at my personality, traits, bonds, and flaws, but I look at them through the lens of my alignment. As a DM, alignment gives me a good idea of what the creature's attitude is likely to be, without a massive listing of information.

 

[Mercurius]

Useful? Sure. Necessary? No.

But more importantly: Fun? Yes! Well, for the most part.

In a way it isn't that different from Ability scores. All we really need are the modifiers, but "+2" is less evocative than "14," especially if you've been playing D&D for most of your life.

In the end, Alignment is an over-simplification, but so is D&D. It is a short-hand perspective that is useful with limits, but not definitive and could be problematic if over-relied upon.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I find it useful as a roleplaying tool to loosely categorize characters by alignment. I don't find it useful as a mechanical element. Whether that counts as "useful at all" depends on what useful means to you.

 

[CleverNickName]

Looking at the poll options and some of these responses, I think I use alignment far more than the OP imagined it would be used.

I feel like the qualifiers of "in any way" and "in some way" in the title and poll set the wrong tone. They make it sound like it's just a minimal, once in a while sort of thing, when I use it as a baseline of standard NPC behaviors (are they greedy or generous? are they pleasant or unpleasant to be around? are they willing or unwilling to help others? On and on and on.)

When I vote "yes" it sounds like "oh sure, I'll maybe use it once in a while or something, I guess." But what I am trying to say is "I use alignment all the time for almost every encounter, it is an important tool for role-playing my NPCs and monsters and it would be weird to play without it."

 

[Fenris-77]

I don't even think it's that useful. It's not too hard to draw up a character sketch where in different parts of that character's life they exhibit pretty different alignments in D&D terms. People (even fictional ones) are complex, and I don't find the broad strokes of the alignment system all that useful in explaining behaviour in any kind of useful way. YMMV of course.

 

[Iry]

It makes my players happy with nostalgia when they have these flags flying behind them. They know alignment doesn't define them, but it's a sacred cow that is more like an adorable pet cow now.