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

[Crimson Longinus]

There is a lot to unpack in such a short snippet, because I think that point (1) is not really the argument being put forth, but, rather, it's the implications from point (2). To summarize: it is more about second-hand racism that D&D unintentionally inherited (and propagated) through its adoption of the various tropes from those fictional sources* of fantasy, science-fiction, and westerns that the wider D&D community has only really recently begun to self-reflect upon. The additional layer of alignment (and the moral judgments it contains in its framing of peoples) in conjunction with the aforementioned doesn't really help matters any.

* Themselves (e.g., John Carter of Mars) rooted in 19th and early 20th century Euro-American adventure stories and narratives with some heavy-handed racist, colonial, imperialist, and White Man's Burden overtones.

Yeah. And this is not about arguing whether long-dead fantasy authors were racists. They may have been perfectly decent people by the standards of their time, but it doesn't change the fact that due the world they lived in their works will contain some assumptions and stereotypes that are rather unfortunate today. This doesn't make their books bad, nor does it mean they need to censored; we can understand the context in which they were created. But it creates a problem when those outdated tropes are just uncritically copied into modern works.

 

[Lanefan]

You play a different edition, though. In 5e you can't detect evil or good.

Were I ever to run 5e or any other game I'd still keep the idea of effects that triggered off various things, including alignment. For example, an enchantment on an area that allows Evil creatures/people to pass freely but hurts Neutrals for 5 points per round and Goods for 15 points a round.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Were I ever to run 5e or any other game I'd still keep the idea of effects that triggered off various things, including alignment. For example, an enchantment on an area that allows Evil creatures/people to pass freely but hurts Neutrals for 5 points per round and Goods for 15 points a round.

Who made that? Certainly not anyone who is good, that thing instantly kills any neutral commoner that walks into it!

 

[Lanefan]

Who made that? Certainly not anyone who is good, that thing instantly kills any neutral commoner that walks into it!

Well duh it wasn't made by anyone Good!

But an enchantment like that covering the 100' entry passage into the Lich Lord's caverns? Hells yeah.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Well duh it wasn't made by anyone Good!

But an enchantment like that covering the 100' entry passage into the Lich Lord's caverns? Hells yeah.

Oh right, I misread it. The evil are immune, makes more sense that way.

Anyway. I utterly despise any method of objectively determining whether someone is 'evil' or 'good' in the setting. That kills a lot of good in-game drama and easily leads to OOC-drama.

 

[Krachek]

I'm not the person you asked, but will offer an answer anyway!

I think there are deep differences.

The first identifies certain values - including life, beauty and truth - which are scorned; identifies a goal, namely, power ("their yoke"); and identifies a means - strict order and stringent discipline. It both gives me a sense of the worldview of the LE person (they like organisation, they are hungry for power, they don't care about others, they are happy to lie) and also tells me what would prove them to be wrong (namely, if order and discipline in fact tend towards the mitigation of power and the realisation of values like life and truth and beauty).

The second identifies a goal - taking what they want - and a means to that goal - being methodical - and a limit on that goal - tradition, loyalty or order. It doesn't tell me how the limit and the goal are related. For all I can tell from that, a local greengrocer - who methodically earns the income that she wants, but within the limits of a code of mercantile practices and fair dealing - is LE. Obviously the definition is not intended to cover her, but I can't tell that from the description, which is basically useless.

I think that we put too much importance on a system that held half a page in all Phb!
We try to rule all the behavior in Hell by a few sentences! Asmodeus would be proud!
The DnD community has build too many material and make too many assumption on a so short and brief descriptions.

 

[Cadence]

I have no idea, because "useful in any way" is quite consistent with "not very helpful".

There's another poll asking what people would do with alignment. Even given two choices, the combined percents of those who would either nuke alignment completely or replace it with something more verbose is only 42%.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

There's another poll asking what people would do with alignment. Even given two choices, the combined percents of those who would either nuke alignment completely or replace it with something more verbose is only 42%.

And in that poll you could vote for multiple options and there were more pro-alignment than anti-alignment ones, so it is pretty worthless.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

To me

The question is not how useful you find alignment. The question is just if you find alignment useful in any way in any of your 5e D&D games?

If you care to comment how you've found it useful, or how you've found it to be no use at all, please do so.

For me, alignment is just shorthand for how the creature, person, etc. MIGHT and TENDS to act, but it's not a straight jacket. I find that useful.

 

[Cadence]

Oh right, I misread it. The evil are immune, makes more sense that way.

Anyway. I utterly despise any method of objectively determining whether someone is 'evil' or 'good' in the setting. That kills a lot of good in-game drama and easily leads to OOC-drama.

Does this quickly lead to a path of doing in any of the past d&d cosmologies involving the outer planes and differing afterlives (where the gods, controlled by the DM, decide if the dead PCs and NPCs get to go to heaven, for example, or if the overgods would even have allowed a system that included eternal damnation )?