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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Voadam" data-source="post: 8533860" data-attributes="member: 2209">I dislike general mechanics dictating how to play characters, so DMs policing PCs' alignments is something I find distasteful.I am OK with occasional exceptions. I had decent fun being charmed by a Vrock bard in a 3.5 game and then roleplaying convincing our party paladin we needed to ally with the Vrock against a greater evil Devil in the dungeon.I find most alignments are broad and open to different interpretations. I feel most can justify most any action or view so as a DM I feel fine not sweating whatever a player puts down on their character sheet. If a player views their character following their individual code as being chaotic or lawful it is fine by me. For my characters I think how I want to portray them then pick an alignment to put on the sheet that seems like it should work then hopefully not think about it again. I really do not try to use the alignment on the sheet as a guide to roleplay.As a DM I generally use alignment in thinking about monsters and NPCs. Most monster descriptions could work with any alignment but different alignments are roleplay and characterization hooks I can use. Similarly the good evil axis is a good quick guide for characterization for whether the monster or NPC is generally hostile or not in some way as a default.Take say Orcs. Their general monster description as bullying warriors is fairly consistent across editions but they were LE in AD&D and CE in 3e-5e. Lawful orcs suggest they are more follower soldier types who seek out evil armies because they like that type of lifestyle. So warrior minions of evil. Chaotic warriors might fight with or for an evil warlord and might join up in hordes, but they like fighting and raiding as opposed to the military structure of an army life. Different hooks for different characterizations of mostly the same basic Orc descriptions.I really enjoyed 3e's descriptor alignments with a lot of mechanical impacts. It allowed a level of alignment as cosmic forces instead of as morality guide which had fun aspects for me. In 3e/Pathfinder I eventually came up with house rules where mortals were neutral/unaligned by default, being divinely powered (cleric, paladin, druid, etc.) could give you an alignment, outsiders would have their alignment tags but free up their personal actions, planetouched I gave alignment descriptors for the outsider connection but allowed complete freedom of roleplay good or evil or whatever, and I assigned some alignment tags to some monsters (Undead got the [Evil] descriptor, fey go the [Chaos] descriptor and constructs all got the [Lawful] descriptor). So using an [Evil] spell tapped into cosmic [EVIL] and would detect as evil even if you were using summoned demons to rescue orphans out of a burning building.4e and 5e did away with most every mechanical impact of alignment so I don't sweat it much in my 5e game and mostly use monster alignment as a characterization hook.</blockquote>

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