D&D 5E Removing alignments

[Li Shenron]

You can definitely play without alignment as a character feature.

Still, only a few players are genuinely hindered by alignments during the game, the majority of those who can't stand alignment for being restrictive is because they want to play a character that is both amoral (i.e. does anything he wants under the only logic that it's more convenient) and at the same time entitled to whatever goodie is tied to alignment.

Certainly tho, some DMs enforce alignment too strictly as if it was a prescription instead of a canvas upon which to base your character's complex nature and identity.

The key to understanding the issue is to notice how "player who hates alignment" and "DM who enforces alignment" are often the same person...

 

[Pickles JG]

Mechanically you will not notice they are gone. The traits are much better for providing simple role playing guides & the rest of it never lead to anything positive IME.

 

[DammitVictor]

Still, only a few players are genuinely hindered by alignments during the game, the majority of those who can't stand alignment for being restrictive is because they want to play a character that is both amoral (i.e. does anything he wants under the only logic that it's more convenient) and at the same time entitled to whatever goodie is tied to alignment.

Or they want to play someone pragmatic and ruthless without being told they're not Evil enough. I'd have no problem just writing LN or LE on my sheet if I didn't have to constantly justify every "heroic" act.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

Chaotic Neutral FTW. You get to set your own moral compass and change it as you wish.

Alignments are nice for role playing, though. I have a NG gnome wizard who likes to teach kids to read and is always doing benefits for the poor. On the other hand I have a CN thief that's using his down time to learn about poisons because, hey, it gets the job done, right? Both have had to deal with their alignments with respect to events in-game and it helps me as a player to remember that they should be true to it, because in D&D alignment represents their core values.

However we have to accept that alignments shouldn't prescribe stereotypical behavior in any given circumstance, either. Chaotic Evil beings have friends and family, too (just watch Sons of Anarchy) just as Lawful Good beings create plots and plan assassinations under some circumstances.

 

[Riley37]

There's the use of alignments as a shorthand, rule-of-thumb description of the motivations and behavior of critters including PCs. It's clunky, but I prefer it to Meyers-Briggs or Enneagram.

And then there's cosmology. In 1E, the distinction between books providing a game system, and books providing a setting, was not so clear, and there was One True Cosmology for all D&D games, at least according to the books. In that cosmology, the Prime Material Plane hung in the balance between Positive and Negative.

In such a world, every intelligent creature is aligned one way or another with those all-pervading influences, just as a compass needle has an ongoing pull to stay aligned with the Earth's magnetic field. Any individual can claim not to care, but look, if you're a cleric, then either you turn undead or you command undead, it's objectively testable.

So, first decide if your setting hangs between powerful, intrinsic, multiplanar structures of Good, Evil, Law and Chaos. If it does, then every creature, intentionally or not, is in some sort of relationship to those qualities.

If that's not the basic structure of the world, then you have other options.

 

[Jester David]

Alignments tend to work fine until people get told they can't do something because of their alignment. Which isn't how alignment best works. Alignment is a useful guide when you can't make a choice. "I don't know which side to pick, but I'm Chaotic so I'll pick the one emphasising freedom." Alignment isn't about what you can do, it's about what you should do.
If you have an awesome character then, no, you don't need alignment. If your morality springs wholecloth out of your head like Athena emerging from Zeus then you can forgo choosing. But if you want to build a personality over a session or two or ten then alignment is a really simple tool.

 

[Anth]

Your character don't need alignment in 5E, it's just a part of your background, and only a minor part at that.
I use the alignment in "reverse": the players don't need to specify alignment, but I, as a DM decide which alignment the characters have depending on how the players roleplay. Basically alignemnt is only used to decide where the characters go when they die.

But I still think that alignment is a good roleplaying tool for me as a DM when I play monsters.

 

[S_Dalsgaard]

Actually my biggest problem with alignments is the way some players think being CN is a carte blanche to act any damn way they please, including going on random murder rampages. As I see it CN is Han Solo at the beginning of A New Hope, not the Joker on one of his vacations from Arkham. I am not going to stop the CN character from murdering, but I will change his alignment to CE in my notes, with whatever consequences that may have in my campaign.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

Actually my biggest problem with alignments is the way some players think being CN is a carte blanche to act any damn way they please, including going on random murder rampages. As I see it CN is Han Solo at the beginning of A New Hope, not the Joker on one of his vacations from Arkham. I am not going to stop the CN character from murdering, but I will change his alignment to CE in my notes, with whatever consequences that may have in my campaign.

Murder for murder's sake is evil, period.

I agree with your identifying Han as CN at the start of ANH. CN is a pretty selfish position where your options are more about "What's in it for me?" than anything else. This is where it differs from CG, because a CG hero will fight tyranny because it's in their nature whereas a CN hero will fight tyranny when it's in their best interest.

 

[TwoSix]

I played in a Pathfinder game for a few months and I found that a few of the other players got pretty bogged down in what alignments people were. I remember one situation where one of the other players asked me what alignment I was and then said "well then you should do _____", which really got on my nerves (even though that was what I was planning on doing anyway).

Using alignment to dictate behavior is probably the worst thing that alignment makes some people do. If I act contrary to my alignment, then the DM can bloody change it. It's descriptive, not prescriptive.