D&D General So how about alignment, eh?

[MNblockhead]

Except that's not true. People are quick to tell you here that it has practically zero mechanical weight in 5e so tables can easily ignore it. So can you explain what are the "actual mechanical repercussions for the PCs's actions" when it comes to alignment in 5e D&D? What are the actual mechanics for alignment in 5e? Can you explain how alignment exists as a game mechanic in 5e?

In D&D's core rules, outside of some magic items, you are right. It really depends on the setting or adventure and I haven't seen it given much weight in official WotC settings or adventures. But because they have alignments provided for monsters and include it as part of the basic rules it is a mechanic that can be easily worked into homebrew and third party adventures and settings.

That fact that tables can easily ignore it is great. Many people dislike alignment, as this thread makes clear.

As I wrote earlier in this thread, I would be okay with it being moved to the DMG as an optional rule. I would miss having it included in monster stat blocks, but it is simple enough for me to assign alignments. Also, if it were added as an optional rule in the DMG, WotC could give guidance on traditional alignments for certain creature types. Also, by having it as an option rule they could get creative with other optional alignment-related mechanics without alienating those who dislike alignment.

 

[Oofta]

I think some of this betrays D&D's roots as a wargame system. You needed to easily distinguish who the "bad guys" were so the players could promptly kill them. Unless of course your players were a bunch of murder hobos anyway

As D&D evolved past dungeon looting, I think that's when the alignment system got more problematic. That's why I like either ignoring it all together, or if push came to shove, for spell reasons like for detecting someone with malicious or harmful intent as "detect evil".

Mass media entertainment has always had good and evil. The entire MCU is primarily about the forces of good and evil, even as individuals struggle with their morality. So this idea that we only tell stories about good vs evil only because D&D grew out of a wargame is simply untrue.

With the exception of a vestigial aspect of a spell here and there, identifiable evil is no longer part of the game unless you want it to be. I don't want to have to worry about existential theories as if I were in graduate school level philosophy class when I play D&D. Depending on the campaign and the group, I just want to spend a few hours now and then where I'm playing the good warrior fighting evil. The real world is complex and messy, sometimes I just want to escape that for a while. Good news is that in 5E you can do that, or plunge your players into a gray morass of real world morality if you want.

The game, and alignment, is what you make out of it. In 5E, it's just a descriptor no more or less useful than any other.

 

[RareBreed]

Mass media entertainment has always had good and evil. The entire MCU is primarily about the forces of good and evil, even as individuals struggle with their morality. So this idea that we only tell stories about good vs evil only because D&D grew out of a wargame is simply untrue.

The alignment system probably did not come into being whole cloth due to it being derived from a wargame. But I do feel like it became a quick litmus test of "what am I allowed to kill to get experience and hoard it's treasure".

I'd also challenge the notion of mass media having good and evil. Not challenge it in the sense that it's not true. We do definitely have that in mainstream media. What I mean by challenge is we have to be careful about defining what good and evil really are. And that's kind of my problem with "good vs evil" because it's too easy to make things black and white.

The movie didn't quite do the comics justice, but the Avengers: Civil War movie was kind of a moral "grey" area, and why the heroes were fighting against each other. I'd even argue that what characterizes the Copper Age of comics is not just abandoning the "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" of the Golden/Silver ages, but having extremely popular characters who are anti-heroes (eg, Wolverine or the Punisher...and yeah I know, they are more Bronze Age than Copper, but I think their true popularity blossomed in the Copper Age). I think that most modern media entertainment nowadays even questions the whole notion of "what is a good guy?".

Or who is a bad guy for that matter. We see it now with characters like Dr. Doom who have become kinda-sorta "good" (debatable, but he's no longer unabashedly "evil") or show casing the complexity of someone like Namor (both hero and nemesis of the air-breathers). Without giving away too many spoilers, look at the "bad guys" of Falcon and Winter Soldier TV series, or Wakanda Forever. I think people actually like that ambiguity, at least to some degree. It gives characters more depth and makes them far more interesting than slapping some label "oh that's the bad guy, I am supposed to boo and hiss at him, and cheer on the good guy".

I agree with you though; I think people should only make as much out of the alignment system as they want. I think it's something that should actually be addressed at the outset of a campaign too, because different players (especially if they are new and came from another gaming group) might have wildly different assumptions about how alignment works. But it's also why I'm not in favor of an alignment system in the game rules. It makes the rules seem "official" and less arbitrary and so, many players might have a perspective and understanding that is in line with how the rules present it.

 

[Oofta]

The alignment system probably did not come into being whole cloth due to it being derived from a wargame. But I do feel like it became a quick litmus test of "what am I allowed to kill to get experience and hoard it's treasure".

I'd also challenge the notion of mass media having good and evil. Not challenge it in the sense that it's not true. We do definitely have that in mainstream media. What I mean by challenge is we have to be careful about defining what good and evil really are. And that's kind of my problem with "good vs evil" because it's too easy to make things black and white.

We've been telling ourselves that the world is black and white since we had a concept of good and evil. That doesn't make it always right (although I have no problem calling some individuals and movements evil). I'm not talking about entire species being evil. I don't remember the last time I had a game where we went out hunting evil creatures simply because they were evil. But I also fully acknowledge that D&D is a game. It's easier to say "followers of [insert evil god or movement] are evil" because a large part of the game is fundamentally about killing enemies. So, yep, if my PC is running around killing things I want them to be evil, at least most of the time.

The movie didn't quite do the comics justice, but the Avengers: Civil War movie was kind of a moral "grey" area, and why the heroes were fighting against each other. I'd even argue that what characterizes the Copper Age of comics is not just abandoning the "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" of the Golden/Silver ages, but having extremely popular characters who are anti-heroes (eg, Wolverine or the Punisher...and yeah I know, they are more Bronze Age than Copper, but I think their true popularity blossomed in the Copper Age). I think that most modern media entertainment nowadays even questions the whole notion of "what is a good guy?".

Or who is a bad guy for that matter. We see it now with characters like Dr. Doom who have become kinda-sorta "good" (debatable, but he's no longer unabashedly "evil") or show casing the complexity of someone like Namor (both hero and nemesis of the air-breathers). Without giving away too many spoilers, look at the "bad guys" of Falcon and Winter Soldier TV series, or Wakanda Forever. I think people actually like that ambiguity, at least to some degree. It gives characters more depth and makes them far more interesting than slapping some label "oh that's the bad guy, I am supposed to boo and hiss at him, and cheer on the good guy".

Most people and movements that are evil don't think of themselves as evil. I think evil people do exist in the real world and have no problem with oversimplifying things a bit for the game. I remember back in Living Greyhawk days (the public game for 3.x) where there was a trend of modules having "moral dilemmas". Most of the time it meant "choose between the literal devil or literal demon". It wasn't a moral dilemma, it was a "F*** you if you're running a PC that wouldn't willingly align themselves with the epitome of evil, we're not giving you that option. There's not even a lesser evil here so suck it up and choose." So maybe I'm a bid jaded but most DMs and module authors don't really know how to handle moral dilemmas.

So yes, my personal preference is for things to be fairly black and white. Just like the majority of mass entertainment that deal with the subject. There can still plenty of room for ambiguity and complexity, in fact I think it can have more impact when it's exceptional. Like Syndrome from The Incredibles said, if everyone is special then no one is special. If everything is morally gray and there are no right answers then moral dilemmas are just another game day.

I agree with you though; I think people should only make as much out of the alignment system as they want. I think it's something that should actually be addressed at the outset of a campaign too, because different players (especially if they are new and came from another gaming group) might have wildly different assumptions about how alignment works. But it's also why I'm not in favor of an alignment system in the game rules. It makes the rules seem "official" and less arbitrary and so, many players might have a perspective and understanding that is in line with how the rules present it.

We do agree on that, I have a brief blurb in my invites if I'm bringing in new people and we discuss it in our session 0.

 

[Aldarc]

In D&D's core rules, outside of some magic items, you are right. It really depends on the setting or adventure and I haven't seen it given much weight in official WotC settings or adventures. But because they have alignments provided for monsters and include it as part of the basic rules it is a mechanic that can be easily worked into homebrew and third party adventures and settings.

That fact that tables can easily ignore it is great. Many people dislike alignment, as this thread makes clear.

As I wrote earlier in this thread, I would be okay with it being moved to the DMG as an optional rule. I would miss having it included in monster stat blocks, but it is simple enough for me to assign alignments. Also, if it were added as an optional rule in the DMG, WotC could give guidance on traditional alignments for certain creature types. Also, by having it as an option rule they could get creative with other optional alignment-related mechanics without alienating those who dislike alignment.

I'm not sure, however, if I would classify alignment as a mechanic. Hit points are a mechanic. Attack rolls (d20 + Ability Modifier + Proficiency + etc) are a mechanic. Saving throws are a mechanic. It's not clear to me that alignment is a mechanic. Your character feels woozy in a plane of an opposing alignment* isn't a mechanic. Paladins do not "detect alignment," whether chaos or evil; instead, they detect celestials, undead, and fiends. So the actual mechanic of Divine Sense and even the spell Detect Evil and Good pertains to creature type rather than actual alignment. Alignment's rules interactions are pretty much limited to some magic items.

* Note: no mechanical impact here either!

That said, I do like the idea of Alignment as cosmological factions that PCs willingly align themselves to and that having mechanical heft. Elsewhere I proposed something similar to Theros's piety system, but for Alignment factions. Though there, I would probably have it so that players could only align themselves to one basic alignment (Good, Evil, Law, Chaos, Neutral) rather than the full gamut of nine alignments.

 

[Vaalingrade]

To you onerous and frustrating, to many others interesting and fun.

All rules are a straitjacket to some degree. If I didn't want to play with any rules I'd join an improv troupe that doesn't enforce that "yes, and..." straitjacket.

5e handles this well. If you like the rule use it, if not, don't. I suppose I could accept alignment being relegated to the DMG as a variant rule, put I would not want it take out of the game completely for those who like it.

Yes, it is fun for some people to add morally judging their friends in order to mechanically restrict how they can play a game of imagination. Swell. I don't think it's the game's responsibility or advantage to help that.

Plus, the worst of that crap has been gone for nigh on fifteen years. Even if we wanted to encourage that kind of thing, it's long gone and at this point, we're just keeping this weird vestige latched on to the game for no reason other than for people who like it to know the words are still there and occasionally yell at their friends for writing the 'wrong' ones on their character sheet.

 

[Vaalingrade]

The alignment system probably did not come into being whole cloth due to it being derived from a wargame.

It was stolen from Elric.

 

[CreamCloud0]

The movie didn't quite do the comics justice, but the Avengers: Civil War movie was kind of a moral "grey" area, and why the heroes were fighting against each other. I'd even argue that what characterizes the Copper Age of comics is not just abandoning the "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" of the Golden/Silver ages, but having extremely popular characters who are anti-heroes (eg, Wolverine or the Punisher...and yeah I know, they are more Bronze Age than Copper, but I think their true popularity blossomed in the Copper Age). I think that most modern media entertainment nowadays even questions the whole notion of "what is a good guy?".

civil war is morally grey because it's funamentally a good vs good movie, or at least neutral vs neutral/good vs neutral, but opposed through law vs chaos, iron man himself being chaotic inclined but aligning with the side of law because he recognises his unstructured methods have too much collateral damage and the cap being a lawful-seeming individual advocating for chaos, i don't think cap is actually an especially lawful individual he just gives that impression because working for SHIELD and the military and the other govenment organisations facilitate executing his moral values of helping people but when push comes to shove steve rogers has consistently picked chaos over law to pursue his ideals, repeatedly lying about his age and identity to try enlist, going AWOL to rescue the soldiers from the german camp, helping bucky escape from getting arrested because he was his friend and picking to be a criminal vigilante rather than not be able to help someone from being tied up by red tape.

 

[Aldarc]

It was stolen from Elric.

What's funny is that Gygax added Good vs. Evil as an axis because he felt that it added more nuance, but when Moorcock talks about Law vs. Chaos as a principle in his books, he said that he purposefully avoided Good vs. Evil with his choice, because Law vs. Chaos allowed greater nuance from the black and white morality of Good vs. Evil. I'm inclined to agree with Moorcock. But I do think that this issue highlights one of the problems of alignment in D&D. Good vs. Evil speaks more to the heroic fantasy roots of the game (e.g., Lord of the Rings), whereas Law vs. Chaos speaks more to the sword & sorcery roots of the game (e.g., Moorcock Multiverse, etc.), and they are honestly not good tonal matches.

civil war is morally grey because it's funamentally a good vs good movie, or at least neutral vs neutral/good vs neutral, but opposed through law vs chaos, iron man himself being chaotic inclined but aligning with the side of law because he recognises his unstructured methods have too much collateral damage and the cap being a lawful-seeming individual advocating for chaos, i don't think cap is actually an especially lawful individual he just gives that impression because working for SHIELD and the military and the other govenment organisations allign with facilitating his moral values but when push comes to shove steve rogers has repeatedly picked chaos to pursue his ideals, repeatedly lying about his age and identity to try enlist, going AWOL to rescue the soldiers from the german camp, helping bucky escape from getting arrested because he was his friend and picking to be a criminal vigilante rather than not be able to help someone from being tied up by red tape.

Debating the alignment of fictional characters is a pretty pointless exercise IMHO because people can walk away with multiple readings of characters. There is not a singular reading or interpretation, and people tend to project a lot on the characters their own understandings, ideals, and interpretations as the singular reading. Not to mention how different people understand alignment differently. But this is not different from how people can read the same presentation of a fictional character in a movie and ascribe to them different Myers Briggs personality types.

This is why I think that alignment as factions is better than alignment as personality type.

 

[Lanefan]

See the Vex example illustrates exactly the problem with alignment.

And the problem is enforcement.

Because when you as DM tell a player, “your alignment is changed” or “that good aligned item doesn’t work for you” then you are telling the player that your understanding of their character is the right one and they are wrong.

That’s a conversation that very rarely goes well. Doesn’t matter if you are 100% right and can cite a hundred examples. You are telling a player that they are playing their character wrong.

Not at all. They're playing the character perfectly well. However, due to patterns of in-game character behaviour established during that play, the external/universal perception of that character no longer agrees with the character's (assumed) perception of itself as reflected by what's written on the sheet. In these cases, the universal perception almost* always trumps the internal pereception.

This becomes very relevant when you have alignment-restricted classes or situations, as I do. It also becomes relevant when there's a clear in-game advantage inherent in being a particular alignment and a player is trying to game the system by writing the advantageous alignment on the sheet but actually playing as something else (I've seen this done, believe me).

* - the one exception is a character still in its first few sessions of play that hasn't established any patterns yet; in these cases, I have to go with what's written on the sheet until-unless shown otherwise by the character's ongoing actions.

And that’s a conversation that should never, ever be had.

Yet it seems there's some (many? I am not one of them) here who are ready and willing to have that conversation any time a player has a character turn Evil: "No Evil PCs here - you're playing it wrong."

Can't have it both ways.