Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mistwell" data-source="post: 8617038" data-attributes="member: 2525">-2 points to Ravenclaw for two uses of actually in one sentence.No idea what you're talking about here. If the NPC statblock says LG, then I know that NPC is likely not intended as a combat-first encounter and I need to read the description more carefully. If it says CE then I know the NPC is likely intended as a bad guy. Either way, that's a meaningful shorthand which has some uses in my game. The LG is incredibly likely not someone who engages in child sacrifice, and I know of zero published adventures which would use that alignment to represent something like that in the adventure. If YOU don't find that as helpful shorthand, that's cool. But those two little letters in the stateblock are helpful for me.Yes, which is why I say it's a broad short hand and not a full replacement for an entire description. It's a guidepost. Which has its uses as an organizational tool. Some people organize their DM prep without it, and some DMs like myself use it in their DM prep. If you don't use it, that doesn't make it not useful to others.I can tell you with certainty that many professional writers for WOTC use it in THEIR adventure prep, and were none to please when it was wholesale removed from what they had written without notice at the last second. THEY thought it was something with utility.The type of armor being warn is OFTEN more important to the adventuring party than whether than particular now deceased bad guy was sinister or sarcastic or plotting with some other minor NPC. Because it was valuable loot, and also might serve as a disguise to kill the next bad guy they encounter whose personality traits they also don't give a crap about and which fry nicely with a fireball.Alignment is not a white-room issue. It's a commonly used tool which DMs use. It's far less about theory than utility. How you prep a game, what you do when you glance at a stat-block during a game, these are the things which are relevant to alignment. The theories about the corner cases of  alignment can in theory mean are just not important to the practicalities of how it's used in actual games. If some DMs find it useful, then damn dude let them use it. DMing is hard enough as it is. Game prep takes enough time as it is. Adjusting to something the PCs did unexpectedly is hard enough as it is. Don't take away a DM tool because in theory you don't like how some corner cases could work out. Not unless you have a good short hand replacement in mind already.</blockquote>

Verification