D&D 5E (2014) Do you find alignment useful in any way?

[pemerton]

The real issue is that someone doesn't understand what censorship is.

I agree, but I'm not sure if we have the same someone in mind!

 

[pemerton]

I think the historical Paladin triple requirements of being LG, specific code adherence, and falling for any evil action is primarily responsible for any historical or ongoing emphasis of policing of LG and associations with such in peoples' minds.

What has always puzzled me about this is that it's pretty clear what the paladin archetype is - not based on alignment but based on the literature they are derived from - and from that literature we can work out what LG requires. There's no particular reason why it should be hard to play a paladin and avoid committing evil acts - when are treachery, poisoning and assassination going to be the only paths to success in a FRPG?

 

[Maxperson]

This is a good illustration of my point about alignment proponents handwaving away any of the horror stories other people have dealt with.

Pointing out the facts is not handwaving away their horror stories. But the truth also needs to come out. If they are creating the horror themselves, that's where the fault lies. Yes the had a horrible experience. Alignment wasn't a part of it.

The guy who had his paladin steal an object and call it payment would have done the same thing if no alignment was present, causing the same issues.

The DM who killed off the PC for doing something he didn't like would have done the same thing if alignment wasn't present.

I can't recall the third example off the top of my head now, but it was similar.

Alignment just simply wasn't the problem with the first three cases I looked it. The horror stories were people problems, not alignment problems.

It is very easy to pretend that the people who would prefer to have alignment removed just want to take away something other people like when you can ignore the bad experiences people have had with alignment.

Just as easy as pretending alignment is the problem, rather than behavioral issues. The vast majority of instances of alignment being a real problem have been linked to mechanics. That problem is gone. What we are left with are problem people(DMs and players) who are using alignment as an excuse to engage in their problem behaviors. Absent alignment they'd be every bit as much of a problem, but they'd be using something else to justify their actions.

 

[Maxperson]

So you dismiss @Mecheon ‘s 7000 examples on rpghorrorstories, but accept unquestioningly a poll of 130 on enworlds?

Nope. I looked at the horror stories and found them to be what I expected. Just like the stories here, it was problem people creating the issues, not alignment. This also matches with my real life experiences with dozens of DMs and hundreds of players in a variety of environments. Absent mechanics to tie into alignment, the problems that arise(which are rare) are caused by people, not alignment.

 

[Maxperson]

But even accepting for a moment that some of those groups used alignment wrong, a tool that frequently injures those who use it, even improperly should be reassessed as a tool.

Sure, but then we'd have to get rid of hammers, nails, saws, screwdrivers, and pretty much every other tool. Those cause far more damage, far more frequently than alignment ever has.

 

[billd91]

I am shocked, SHOCKED, that a series that had a Confederate civil war soldier as its protagonist might be considered racially insensitive.

If you haven't read them, you might want to check your assumptions about the protagonist's views or the significance of his being a former Confederate soldier. There's plenty of racial essentialist thinking in its treatment of different races of Barsoom, but the books were written by the son of a Union officer and not really written to reflect the "lost cause" of the antebellum south or its white supremacist society, particularly since the protagonist is thrust into a milieu where that would be utterly irrelevant.

 

[Voadam]

What has always puzzled me about this is that it's pretty clear what the paladin archetype is - not based on alignment but based on the literature they are derived from - and from that literature we can work out what LG requires. There's no particular reason why it should be hard to play a paladin and avoid committing evil acts - when are treachery, poisoning and assassination going to be the only paths to success in a FRPG?

I don't think a lot of people have read the direct literature about the peers of Charlemagne.

There is a lot of room to vary on what exactly constitutes an evil act.

From the 1e Paladin class description "If they ever knowingly perform an act which is chaotic in nature, they must seek a high level (7th or above) cleric of lawful good alignment, confess their sin, and do penance as prescribed by the cleric. If a paladin should ever knowingly and willingly perform an evil act, he or she loses the status of paladinhood immediately and irrevocably."

From the 3.5 PH paladin description "Paladins must be lawful good, and they lose their divine powers if they deviate from that alignment. Additionally, paladins swear to follow a code of conduct that is in line with lawfulness and goodness." and "A paladin who ceases to be lawful good, who willfully commits an evil act, or who grossly violates the code of conduct loses all paladin spells and abilities (including the service of the paladin’s mount, but not weapon, armor, and shield proficiencies)."

3.5 "“Evil” implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient." Paladins generally do a lot of hurting and killing as divinely powered knight champions, sometimes without qualms or compassion for evil creatures when fighting evil.

 

[Maxperson]

3.5 "“Evil” implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient."

Apparently killing isn't evil when it's inconvenient, even if you have no compassion, because you can't do it without qualms.

 

[Cadence]

So you dismiss @Mecheon ‘s 7000 examples on rpghorrorstories, but accept unquestioningly a poll of 130 on enworlds?

If we're going by hits for rpghorrorstories alignment site:reddit.com, then I got 7,020
Going more specifically for alignment on site:reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories, then I got 2,100

Going for hits on reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories

Higher count than alignment:
background 6,120
rogue 6,000
combat 5,390
sorcerer 5,310
wizard 5,120
bard 4,930
druid 4,770
elf 4,700
cleric 4,550
paladin 4,450
barbarian 4,490
monk 4,240
dwarf 4,230
orc 3,910
warlock 3,770
strength 3,490
sword 3,400
flaw 3,380
dragonborn 3,150
assassin 2,800
gnome 2,730
"death saves" 2,720
inspiration 2,230
kobold 2,220
drow 2,210
charisma 2,202

Alignment: 2,100

Lower count than alignment:
trait 2,040
intelligence 2,030
fireball 1,460
constitution 1,380
battlemaster 1,250
wisdom 1,260
cantrip 640
dexterity 599
"charm Person" 414
hobgoblin 168
kender 62
order domain 1

 

[pemerton]

I don't think a lot of people have read the direct literature about the peers of Charlemagne.

Sure. But I think LotR (with knights like Aragorn and Eomer) and some version of King Arthur are fairly well known by FRPGers (and at least as well known in the late 70s, when paladins were invented as a class, as they are today).

There is a lot of room to vary on what exactly constitutes an evil act.

From the 1e Paladin class description "If they ever knowingly perform an act which is chaotic in nature, they must seek a high level (7th or above) cleric of lawful good alignment, confess their sin, and do penance as prescribed by the cleric. If a paladin should ever knowingly and willingly perform an evil act, he or she loses the status of paladinhood immediately and irrevocably."

I think that "chaotic" act is problematic in AD&D because it's not terribly well defined. So I'm not going to try and defend the coherence of that - I think it's close to unworkable. But evil is given a pretty clear meaning, by Gygax in his DMG (p 23):

the tenets of good are human rights, or in the case of ADBD, creature rights. Each creature is entitled to life, relative freedom, and the prospect of happiness. Cruelty and suffering are undesirable. Evil, on the other hand, does not concern itself with rights or happiness; purpose is the determinant.​

So whenever a paladin acts in disregard of the rights or wellbeing of others, that is an evil action. Further text on good and evil alignments in the PHB and DMG indicate that scorning truth and beauty are also evil acts.

It's possible to concoct scenarios - well-known to philosophy students! - where no-win pressure can be placed. For instance, is it good or evil to switch the careening trolley onto the track where it will kill one person, rather than leave it on its current path where it will kill five people? Switching is clearly sacrificing the wellbeing of the one; but there's a tenable argument that not intervening is a cruel indifference to the wellbeing of the five.

But these sorts of situations are, I think, not that likely to come up in FRPGing unless a GM goes out of his/her way to make life hard for the paladin: and if the paladin player then makes a call - to switch (the needs of the many outweigh that of the one) or to not (it is fate, not me, who killed you five!) then it seems to me that there is no need for the GM to second-guess or superimpose his/her own view.

The very existence of a LG knight class tells us that defensive violence is not impermissible. Consensual violence - duelling etc - is probably suspect (it lends itself to showing off, and doesn't contribute that much to happiness) but a villain who offers to free the hostages if defeated by the paladin in a duel seems like fair game!

Punitive violence is more tricky - one of the paladin level titles in AD&D is Justiciar, and in the film Excalibur when Arthur is knighted the ritual confers "the right to bear arms and the power to mete justice"; but I can imagine many players who would find retributive violence distasteful at least. Again, this seems a place where the GM can follow the player's lead. There is nothing in the concept of good vs evil action, nor inherent in the gameplay conceits of D&D, that dictate a particular answer here.

From the 3.5 PH paladin description "Paladins must be lawful good, and they lose their divine powers if they deviate from that alignment. Additionally, paladins swear to follow a code of conduct that is in line with lawfulness and goodness." and "A paladin who ceases to be lawful good, who willfully commits an evil act, or who grossly violates the code of conduct loses all paladin spells and abilities (including the service of the paladin’s mount, but not weapon, armor, and shield proficiencies)."

3.5 "“Evil” implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient." Paladins generally do a lot of hurting and killing as divinely powered knight champions, sometimes without qualms or compassion for evil creatures when fighting evil.

This is another occasion where I think the 3E presentation of alignment is markedly weaker than Gygax's. Gygax gets to the heart of it when he says that, for evil, purpose is the determinant ie the evil person does not acknowledge other people, their rights and interests, and other values like truth and beauty, as limits on their will and desire.

The paladin who commits an evil act, then, falls into pretty clear tropes: wrathful killing (ie out of hate or anger rather than defensively or in just retribution); wanton or prideful infliction of violence or withholding of aid; giving advice to others not out of sincere belief in its helpfulness but because of the benefit that the resulting act will grant to the paladin; etc.

In real life it's easy to fall into at least some of this sort of conduct because we're fallible humans ruled in part by our passions. But in the context of typical FRPG gameplay I think it should mostly be possible to avoid such conduct.