D&D 5E Mechanizing Alignment

[miggyG777]

Fine if you want to debate about alignement every game!

With a defined framework of what the alignment categories represent, as mentioned in the first post, I would see this kind of arguing every game as failure on the DMs part to referee the game.

 

[Coroc]

.....Player: "I want to trip the thief that just stole the womans purse"

DM: "Roll an acrobatics check vs DC 15."​

Player: "Got a 13 with proficiency."​

DM: "I see you have +3 in Lawful, since this is a Lawful action and you haven't used your bonus today, you may apply it to your roll."

​

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In most countries of the world and nearly everywhere in the past .... yes this would qualify as upholding the law... these days though in most western countries:

DM: I see you have +3 in lawful, since that is a chaotic evil action you get a -3 modifier and roll with disadvantage.
Player manages the trip anyhow
DM: The city watch approaches you: How dare you, as a privileged adventurer to hamper this poor man who just wants to feed his ten hungry children. You are going to jail and the judge decides your fate tomorrow. Before that pay 3g to this poor guy for the bodily harm you did cause him ....

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I use aligment and allegiances (religion, race, tribe, brotherhood, country, code of honor) and allowing alignment with opposite allegiance (for example a sheriff who is breaking the rules to defend the law or a zealot who wants a better world but chosing the wrong way), and spells and other powers can hurt enemies with same alignment but different allegiance, for example a drow cleric against an orc shaman.

My concept of chaotic good is different, meaning somebody too attuned to nature or primal powers, or somebody who respect the Natural Law but he would rather minimal power of control by the state.

 

[Olrox17]

Interesting, but I think there's a weakness in the mechanic. If you happen to have 0 points in a specific alignment, you'll never have any reason to invoke it, because you'd get a +0 to the roll. So, a character that only has lawful and good points, will only ever have lawful and good points, never chaotic or evil ones.

No room for change or temptation over time.

 

[miggyG777]

Interesting, but I think there's a weakness in the mechanic. If you happen to have 0 points in a specific alignment, you'll never have any reason to invoke it, because you'd get a +0 to the roll. So, a character that only has lawful and good points, will only ever have lawful and good points, never chaotic or evil ones.

No room for change or temptation over time.

Good catch. I have thought about this too and I came up with different solutions:

Perhaps one could make the baseline of each stat a +1 by default and let the player distribute 4 points on top of that.

Or maybe it is not a problem at all. Why would the player not invoke a +0 to add flavor to his character? I mean technically if a character has +3 good and +1 evil, it makes less sense to invoke evil still, since good always gives him a bigger bonus. But there might be times where the character wants to call upon the powers of evil i.e to hurt the guy that killed his family in a bad way and open new story options that way.
So rather than the alignment stats being the cause of why a character acts in a certain way, they are an effect of how the character acts.
Nobody is stopping the player to put 5 points into good and only ever invoke that to get the maximum bonus, but this way the bonus will only be applicable in e certain subset of scenarios. So by diversifying and changing alignments he might forgo an immediate bonus that he could have used and open up new ways to use it in the future.

Or perhaps the DM decides that the character has to roll a d6 to increase an alignment stat because of his actions without the player invoking the power himself.

 

[Olrox17]

Good catch. I have thought about this too and I came up with different solutions:

Perhaps one could make the baseline of each stat a +1 by default and let the player distribute 4 points on top of that.

Or maybe it is not a problem at all. Why would the player not invoke a +0 to add flavor to his character? I mean technically if a character has +3 good and +1 evil, it makes less sense to invoke evil still, since good always gives him a bigger bonus. But there might be times where the character wants to call upon the powers of evil i.e to hurt the guy that killed his family in a bad way and open new story options that way.
So rather than the alignment stats being the cause of why a character acts in a certain way, they are an effect of how the character acts.
Nobody is stopping the player to put 5 points into good and only ever invoke that to get the maximum bonus, but this way the bonus will only be applicable in e certain subset of scenarios. So by diversifying and changing alignments he might forgo an immediate bonus that he could have used and open up new ways to use it in the future.

Or perhaps the DM decides that the character has to roll a d6 to increase an alignment stat because of his actions without the player invoking the power himself.

Another possible solution off the top of my head: make it so the bonus to the roll is not equal to the alignment stat, but is the stat plus some fixed value. Maybe even a d4 die roll, so if you have 5 good points, your "good" bonus is d4+5, but even if you have 0 points, you still get a d4 to add.

 

[mrpopstar]

Thank you for sharing the resource, @miggyG777. I wouldn't add the additional mechanics to my own game, but I do like the simplicity of the categories.

 

[miggyG777]

Another possible solution off the top of my head: make it so the bonus to the roll is not equal to the alignment stat, but is the stat plus some fixed value. Maybe even a d4 die roll, so if you have 5 good points, your "good" bonus is d4+5, but even if you have 0 points, you still get a d4 to add.

That would amount to pretty high bonuses. As far as I can see the +5 is the limit because it theoretically means you get a roll with advantage.

 

[Olrox17]

That would amount to pretty high bonuses. As far as I can see the +5 is the limit because it theoretically means you get a roll with advantage.

True. Then you could have +1 as minimum base bonus, so even if you have 0 points in an alignment, you get at least a +1.

 

[LordEntrails]

I don't see alignment as broken, so I dont see a need to fix it. But I do see that some would feel that it is lacking a mechanism to be used at the table. As such what is presented in the OP is intriguing.

But, it also seems tedious and a hassle that is frought with debates and arguements of what is what. Hence more reasons it does not appeal to me.