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

[Helldritch]

They replaced THAC0 with something that achieved exactly the same thing with simplified math.

Yeah... adding is always easier than substracting....

On the other hand, it is more intuitive that more is better/harder.

 

[FrozenNorth]

In the meantime, if I want a creature that is normally evil to stand out if I don't have alignment I can't do that.

Monsters in campaigns stand out because of their actions, not their alignment. Have a meazel target a downed opponent, and the players will hate him, regardless of alignment.

Plus you avoid the whole: all members of this intelligent race just happen to think the same way.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Orcs have gone from Chaotic (OD&D and Basic) to LE (AD&D 1e and 2e) to Chaotic Evil (3, 4, 5e). They went to Acheron in the AD&D era to have their endless Valhalla battlefield fights against the goblinoid dead spirits on the Lawful (evil) plane of endless battle.

Has their personality changed in that time? My impression is that they have always been described as bloodthirsty raiders.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Yeah... adding is always easier than substracting....

On the other hand, it is more intuitive that more is better/harder.

You jest, but studies (that I recently read about in the Economist) suggest humans have a bias in favour of changing things by adding, rather than removing.

So for humans at least, subtracting really is harder than adding.

 

[Helldritch]

So removing the different damage table for weapons when used against large foes was censorship then? Or removing any of the other myriad nonsensical rules that AD&D was cluttered with?

Seriously, sometimes rules and other content just gets removed because they function poorly, are needless clutter or do no longer with the mechanical or thematic vision the writers are going for. That's a normal part of game design.

Removing something is not the same thing as modifying it for clarity or improvement. The removal of alignment does not clarify it nor does it improve it. It is just deletion. And therefore, a firm a censorship just like the satanic panic was censorship. The name change never clarified or improved what demons (Tanar'ri) or devils (Baatezu) were.

Alignment always added an easy way to provide a guideline to RP both foes and PCs. Yes there are alignmentless systems out there and they work. There are also systems in which there are alignments and they too work out fine.

A lot of what makes D&D stand out is commming from alignment as this gives a unique way to play and interpret the game. For some, the law/chaos axis is way more important than the good/evil axis and vice versa. To each tables I have seen over the years, there were pros and cons to alignments. But alignment has always been integrated into D&D and it gave it a unique way to play. It is only in recent years that the alignment systems has passed from the "It is too restrictive to Role Play" to "It is problematic because of racist tropes" as the main attack line on it. Since the deletion of alignment would only cater to one side and bring nothing new to the table, it is then a form of censorship to go with the mood of the moment. Just like the satanic panic move was.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So it was censorship when they removed THAC0? Ok, mate.

They replaced THACO. They did not, and have not, replaced alignment. They just took it out.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Monsters in campaigns stand out because of their actions, not their alignment. Have a meazel target a downed opponent, and the players will hate him, regardless of alignment.

Plus you avoid the whole: all members of this intelligent race just happen to think the same way.

For what will certainly not be the last time, alignment is a general default, that doesn't necessarily apply to every member of a group and can easily be changed by the DM. They say that right in the beginning of the MM. How is that not enough? I really don't get it.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

They replaced THACO. They did not, and have not, replaced alignment. They just took it out.

I think it could be argued that ideal, bond and flaw are alignment's replacement as a roleplaying aid. Granted, the monsters don't have those, but if alignment is completely removed, they probably should (or something similar.)

 

[Cadence]

Among other things, people don’t like it when a DM tells them that their alignment is not what they wrote on their character sheet. I have never seen a DM do that to a character’s BIPF.

I've never seen a 5e DM call a player on alignment mismatch, but certainly believe the posters. I wonder if the DMs who do so had exposure to 3.5 or before.

For TBIF in 5e, I'm kind of surprised there aren't more angry posts about DMs not being good with inspiration to award based on it (giving it to friends, not rewarding it's use in certain cases, etc... <insert reddit post that doesn't want to do the right thing here as a link> ) and what people thought were traits, ideals, bond, laws being rejected by the DM ( Are personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws required? ). I wonder if it's just because a lot of DM's forget inspiration exists even if they're trying to use it and because TBIF aren't as much a part of the game as alignment was in 3.5 and before.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

For what will certainly not be the last time, alignment is a general default, that doesn't necessarily apply to every member of a group and can easily be changed by the DM. They say that right in the beginning of the MM. How is that not enough? I really don't get it.

"...and some, I assume, are good people."