Hussar
Legend
Although, to be fair, they gave us Unaligned, which is something I was very disappointed to see dropped in 5e. It just solves SO many alignment issues.
D&D 4E The Best Thing from 4E
Although, to be fair, they gave us Unaligned, which is something I was very disappointed to see dropped in 5e. It just solves SO many alignment issues.
Tony Vargas
Legend
Considering the alignments conspicuous in their absence - Chaotic Good and Lawful Evil - I also get the impression that they did some focus groups or other research and concluded those alignments felt weird or contradictory or were confusing to people, or something like that. That, even though CG was very clearly encompassed by 4e 'Good' and 4e 'Evil' was very like LE.
Also missing, the alignment of choice of disruptive players everywhere: Chaotic Neutral.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Yeah, I can't say I miss CN or LN either one. NE and LE can both live within the rubrik of 'evil'. I think what the 4e Cosmology essentially does is it answers the question of "is chaos compatible with the good?" with 'no'. The gods defeated the primordials at the dawn of the world, they answered that question. You CAN be good and not like laws and rules much, but its inherently a compromise. Likewise you can be a regimented and hierarchical evil, but in some sense you're ascribing to principles who's logical consequences promote good, not evil. So TRUE ultimate evil must embrace total chaos, and TRUE ultimate good must embrace law.
Of course, in typical 4e fashion, they allow the GM to contrive to revisit this whole question if he chooses. The gods aren't really entirely lawful, or good. The primordials aren't really entirely defeated, and someday there will be a Dusk War. Lawful Good is the best rule for the universe, but there has to be a LITTLE chaos, and thus a little evil in the world, or it would die. GMs can play that how they like. You CAN actually be a 'chaotic evil hero' in 4e's paradigm. You'd be an anti-hero, but you might serve the ultimate good. A GM could also foreclose that kind of thinking and simply build a pure black-and-white campaign without any concern for the nuances. In that sort of game the gods should finish the lattice of heaven and bring the world to its perfect climax with the total annihilation of all remaining remnants of chaos.
Tequila Sunrise
Adventurer
For me, the feature of 4e alignment is that because it doesn't actually matter, it's basically a tabula rasa. Groups can use the 4e scheme, the 3x3 scheme, the original L-N-C scheme...or they can just not bother with alignments, as I told a new player just last week.
I'm personally not against alignment having tie-ins with certain game rules, but if alignment has no mechanical weight, I don't see the need for players to even write one on their character sheets.
(Okay yeah, that paladin PP has an alignment tie-in and there are one or two others, but alignment is close enough to purely fluff in 4e for me to house rule the few exceptions.)
I'm personally not against alignment having tie-ins with certain game rules, but if alignment has no mechanical weight, I don't see the need for players to even write one on their character sheets.
(Okay yeah, that paladin PP has an alignment tie-in and there are one or two others, but alignment is close enough to purely fluff in 4e for me to house rule the few exceptions.)
The Crimson Binome
Hero
I'm going to add that to my list of favorite things about 4E.
sabrinathecat
Explorer
You say that like it's a bad thing?
Just when it seems that this thread has run its course, we get terrific posts like this one!
I think you're spot on about the 4e approach to alignment, its connection to the default cosmology and mythic history, and the various ways a gaming group might approach it.
In our game, the PCs are currently in combat with Orcus. They've sealed the Abyss and ended Torog's control over the souls of the Underdark.
The invoker/wizard has, as his final target, Miska the Wolf-Spider. They had to release Miska from the Crystal of Ebon Flame into the wilds of Carceri so that they could trap Ygorl, the Slaad Lord of Entropy, within it. Killing Miska will also enable recovery of the seventh piece of the Rod of Seven Parts. Erathis wants this to happen, because the Lattice of Heaven can only be made when every broken thing has been unbroken, but some of the PCs - especially the drow sorcerer (formally a Demonkin Adept but now a highly muti-classed bard of Corellon) - are worried about this on two counts: that the Lattice of Heaven will impose a stasis on the world that will stifle all change and life; and the reassembling the Rod will trigger the Dusk War, as per an ancient prophecy, hence potentially brining the entire world to an end.
This may turn out to be the ultimate question of the campaign, and could be the one that finally splits the party.
Tony Vargas
Legend
I just play 'Unaligned' characters, instead.
It's amusing that Unaligned encompasses both CN and LN, as well as "to heck with this morality stuff, I have may own agenda..."
Problem was, as soon as you realize everything is fluff, the only reason to pick one power or combo or race or class or weapon, over any other, is mechanical advantage. Which makes the game the perfect min maxer's dream. It was fun going through all the powers, but once you figure out which are the best ones to take, most of the shine of refluffing is gone. It robs the game of a lot when you can imagine that a staff is exactly the same as a sword in terms of effect or impact on the story. Even the weapon category starts to become meaningless at that point. Fire isn't fire, ice isn't ice but my own invention ice-fire, which glows red and burns stuff so you can't tell that it's not real fire. Of course I picked that because I want a flame sword wielding PC, but ice damage is leaps and bounds better due to feat and item support. Once you can literally change fire to ice and ice to fire, and a staff into a sword and vice versa, a question presents itself : "what does the game actually mean when everything in it is completely fungible like this?". Is it a dream? Or some kind of haze.
To me a sword is a sword and a staff is a staff, if it does bludgeoning damage it by definition doesn't have an edge to it. But of course all the keywords in the game are also fungible, so marking means anything, hit points mean anything, swords can be staves and fire can be indistinguishable from ice. Is that great? Or terrible. I guess the way you answer that question is a good predictor of what kind of game you like (or love). If the flavor text is mutable, why read the book? Just pick the best power every time, refluff, and you're done.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Well, the first part I sympathize with, if you can refluff anything into anything, or at least into a lot of other things, then you're mostly picking things for their mechanics. However, you can't just refluff anything into anything else at all because there has to be narrative to mechanical consistency. A sword won't work as a magic staff because you can't make range attacks with it. A fighter just won't feel like a wizard, no matter how much you refluff his attacks, armor, class features, etc. There's also just the concept of the path of least resistance. Is it REALLY worth the large amount of work to reflavor your fighter to be a wizard when you can just play a wizard? Or a swordmage, a hexblade, a bladesinger, etc if you want different flavors of that.
As for the whole 'ice-fire' thing, LULWUT? There IS such a thing as narrative consistency here. I mean sure, you probably could reflavor a lot of ice powers as fire powers. There's a lot you would have problems with though as they create zones and do various things that don't make narrative sense for a fire based power. Also you have the weirdness that you have the wrong resistances and etc applying. Its not something that really works wholesale like that very well. Its better to just invent some new feats that do something similar to frost cheese.
Which brings me to the end, which is, you can always invent NEW stuff. So what if it happens to be mechanically identical to some old stuff but look different? You're just saving yourself work as a GM by doing that. It also is a LOT more palatable to players when presented as "Gosh, I invented this new feat, I call it 'fire cheese on a stick', wanna try it?" Players DO go for that. They'll balk at things being too obviously ripped from other things, like a wizard made from a fighter, but feats and powers work fine.
So, while I accept your initial point in a sort of academic theoretical way, I don't think its an actual problem in real-world games. Its one of those theory-crafted objections to 4e, of which there were many back in the day.
Similar Threads
