D&D General The Problem with Evil or what if we don't use alignments?

[Yaarel]

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A YouTuber I follow had a live stream a few weeks ago where he made this chart showing what he believed to be the political leanings of Batman villains (though he also made sure to point out that several characters have been written inconsistently, making it harder to label them).

If nothing else it's a fun thought exercise.

I am a bit queasy using the term the term "libertarian" in the context of villains. Killing people is the opposite of respecting their freedom.

But yeah. These kinds of compass maps are useful. Including the D&D alignment system as a compass map.

 

[JEB]

What do you think his official alignment in 3e is? The answer is "chaotic evil." Because people keep imagining that CE is the evilest of evils.

Strahd is only officially chaotic evil in the White Wolf 3E supplements and in the original 1E Ravenloft adventures (where the character wasn't yet fully developed, so default vampire). He's lawful evil throughout 2E, and also in Expedition to Castle Ravenloft in 3E. He's "evil" in 4E. He's lawful evil in 5E. Honestly, White Wolf 3E is the anomaly here.

 

[Oofta]

I didn't say they were.


It should be less easy to miss. And in future editions, the lore given should be for the average ones, not the evil ones. The lore should show how some are evil, yes, but shouldn't go so far as to say most are evil and only a small percentage aren't.

And yes, that applies to Good races.


Right now, orcs have five paragraphs on how evil they are. They're evil, and sometimes they band together into larger, even more evil groups. You can tell they're evil because they have evil names (I bet if there was a group of dwarfs who called themselves The Screaming Eye, everyone would think they're cool and not evil). There's also extra paragraphs on how their evil god Gruumsh makes them do evil things because of those mean old other gods taking away all that land.

So... how's about three paragraphs on evil orc groups and two paragraphs on not evil orc groups? And instead of saying "orcs worship Gruumsh, who makes them do X, Y, Z" it gets changed to "on many worlds, orcs worship Gruumsh, who makes them do X, Y, Z, but on other worlds, they worship other gods, or Gruumsh doesn't have as strong a grasp on the orcs, and the orcs on these worlds act differently."

Page count remains the same.


But that's your campaign, which is a very radical change from the norm. Because the norm says that orcs are born like humans are and goblins are mostly evil. (Also, in my mind, your orcs are constructs, not humanoids; they're just fleshy constructs.)

The rules should at least try to encourage people to think about why they're using these monsters.

My point is there should be a section in the DMG (and probably another in the MM) talking about how alignment is just the default and how to adjust. I think anything that deviates from the default should be setting specific like what Eberron does.

You don't. But how many other people do? Lots, or this sort of discussion wouldn't come up every time alignment is mentioned.

There may have been one person (I don't remember) who brought of killing baby orcs who said they think it's okay if orcs are always evil. Was Ripley evil when she torched the egg sacks of the Xenomorphs in Aliens? Beyond that? It's always the people like you who don't like it that bring it up. Repeatedly.

And I do agree that there should be monsters. I even agree there should be intelligent, natural monsters, not just unintelligent beast-monsters or unnatural entities. But I think that intelligent monsters should have a reason for being evil that's more than just "because D&D tradition" or "because their god/arch-fiend made them that way" or "because they're uglier and/or not the same color than the good guys."


And once you give intelligent monsters a reason, it no longer makes sense for every one of those monsters to share that reason.

If an intelligent creature can decide their brain structure gives them empathy, then any intelligent creature should be able to do so. However people overestimate how much control they have over who they are. Some people have a different structure in their amygdala that makes them psychopaths (coded as callous and unemotional the diagnostic manual). Even though it's quite rare, they commit half of all violent crimes. With proper treatment, they're more likely to stay out of jail but they will never develop empathy, the best they can do is be trained to pretend to be normal because it's more rewarding in the long run. [1]

Last, but not least I'm not going to tell anyone that the way they run their game is bad-wrong-fun. If people want to do dungeon crawls where slaughtering every monster in sight, that's up to them. If you want the evil versions of monsters to be 1 in 100 that's also perfectly fine.

In any case, there's nothing new here. I find alignment useful. I think it's an incredible leap of logic to say that if we didn't have alignment we wouldn't have evil monsters or that it would make the game better in any way. We'll just have to agree to disagree.

 

[Faolyn]

Strahd is only officially chaotic evil in the White Wolf 3E supplements and in the original 1E Ravenloft adventures (where the character wasn't yet fully developed, so default vampire). He's lawful evil throughout 2E, and also in Expedition to Castle Ravenloft in 3E. He's "evil" in 4E. He's lawful evil in 5E. Honestly, White Wolf 3E is the anomaly here.

Right--which just goes to show that his alignment is all over the place and therefore isn't really all that useful. Which edition do you pick? Does he change if you use a different edition?

 

[Maxperson]

Chaotic with a streak of Lawful in it sounds very Neutral to me.

I'm with the people who say that if alignment doesn't pen what you do into one box, then it's not actually very helpful. If you have the alignment but have to read the text to find out the exceptions and figure out how they work within the listed alignment, then you might as well drop the alignment altogether.

It doesn't work that way. First, it's not balanced. Second, neutral evil has a specific meaning that is not simply chaotic evil + lawful evil.

 

[Faolyn]

My point is there should be a section in the DMG (and probably another in the MM) talking about how alignment is just the default and how to adjust. I think anything that deviates from the default should be setting specific like what Eberron does.

I disagree because I think that would be far too easy to overlook. I think it also leads to a bit of laziness. Why not have all humanoids be neutral by default, and have specific settings decide whether they are good or evil in them?

There may have been one person (I don't remember) who brought of killing baby orcs who said they think it's okay if orcs are always evil.

That would be Gygax. And a lot of other people as well.

Was Ripley evil when she torched the egg sacks of the Xenomorphs in Aliens? Beyond that? It's always the people like you who don't like it that bring it up. Repeatedly.

Well, it's been decades since I saw that film (I've only seen the first two), so I could be fuzzy on some details, but as I recall: Ripley was trapped. There was literally no place she could go without getting killed, and the general atmosphere of the planet was at least a bit toxic. She had no way of replenishing her supplies. She was in a kill-or-be-killed situation. Xenomorph eggs were literally dangerous from the get-go, since the facehuggers attacked immediately upon hatching and chestbursters (who, much like certain D&D monsters like mind flayers) kill the person they were using to incubate. The xenomorphs themselves appeared completely incapable of communication--I could be wrong, but I don't recall seeing anything like evidence of handicrafts, writing, or anything else that would indicate xenomorphs were sapient. Their vocalizations sound like animal noises, not like any sort of human language. They acted in all way like smart but very vicious predators. That had acidic blood. Ripley was trying to survive long enough to get off-planet.

Compare to D&D, where the average party actively and deliberately enters an orc lair with the full knowledge that orcs are sentient beings simply to kill them and take their stuff. They can leave at any time they like, and would likely be able to get away without too much trouble. There's a good chance that they either know Orcish or have access to a spell like comprehend languages or tongues. It is possible to negotiate with, bribe, threaten, or ally with orcs. Orc babies are born through old-fashioned sex and don't require a host body to die for them to be born, and orc babies have to grow up just like human babies do. In other words, D&D orcs are exactly like D&D humans, elves, dwarfs, halflings, gnomes, etc., except that someone, way back when, decided their purpose was to be sword fodder for low-level PCs.

If people like me don't bring Aliens up, it's because that has absolutely no similarity between them and D&D orcs.

If an intelligent creature can decide their brain structure gives them empathy, then any intelligent creature should be able to do so. However people overestimate how much control they have over who they are. Some people have a different structure in their amygdala that makes them psychopaths (coded as callous and unemotional the diagnostic manual). Even though it's quite rare, they commit half of all violent crimes. With proper treatment, they're more likely to stay out of jail but they will never develop empathy, the best they can do is be trained to pretend to be normal because it's more rewarding in the long run. [1]

Intelligent creatures don't "decide that their brain structure" gives them anything.

Last, but not least I'm not going to tell anyone that the way they run their game is bad-wrong-fun. If people want to do dungeon crawls where slaughtering every monster in sight, that's up to them. If you want the evil versions of monsters to be 1 in 100 that's also perfectly fine.

In any case, there's nothing new here. I find alignment useful. I think it's an incredible leap of logic to say that if we didn't have alignment we wouldn't have evil monsters or that it would make the game better in any way. We'll just have to agree to disagree.

That's fine. You can find it useful. I just don't think it's as objectively useful as you think it is, especially since monsters have changed alignment between editions (orcs and Strahd have been mentioned; two other examples are dryads, who went from N to CG back to N; and mephits used to be N and are now NE) or don't do an adequate job matching the text (beholders are LE, despite being completely paranoid, unwilling to trust or ally with anyone they don't completely control except in those rare occasions when their personal madness allows them to see other beholders as extensions of itself rather than separate individuals, don't respect people of higher authority, and as of this edition, being born from dreams).

And I think that, in general, it causes too many problems to be worth the small amount of benefit it gives--which is an extremely basic overview of how the monster might act.

 

[Faolyn]

It doesn't work that way. First, it's not balanced. Second, neutral evil has a specific meaning that is not simply chaotic evil + lawful evil.

No, it's not balanced, but if a creature is generally lawful but is willing to perform chaotic acts, what does that make them? Lawful-chaotic?

 

[Vaalingrade]

At the risk of someone aggressively mislabeling this as a 'strawman', did we just get a post that both: equates killing sapient children to exterminating an aggressive artificially created animal and then offhandedly allude to certain mental illnesses causing evil?

Just giving a chance to walk that crap back.

 

[JEB]

Right--which just goes to show that his alignment is all over the place and therefore isn't really all that useful. Which edition do you pick? Does he change if you use a different edition?

Except it's not all over the place; once the character was fully formed, his alignment was consistent with his described personality, outside of one licensed, third-party opinion. (4E was even as close to "lawful evil" as it could assign.)

 

[Maxperson]

No, it's not balanced, but if a creature is generally lawful but is willing to perform chaotic acts, what does that make them? Lawful-chaotic?

No. It makes them lawful. Alignment isn't a straightjacket. Why are you trying to make it one? Vader and the Emperor are like 90-95% LE and 5-10% CE. That doesn't equate to NE or CE. They are LE, but like any reasonably realistic personality, will have aspects that fall into other alignments.

Basically, you look at a personality and each alignment is a box. The biggest box is your alignment. The rest are the aspects that fall outside of your alignment. If they're mostly the same size, you're neutral.