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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elf Witch" data-source="post: 5365295" data-attributes="member: 9037">It is neither. I don't tell my players what alignment to play. Well most of the time. I did once ask that everybody play some version of good because of the campaign I wanted to run. I let the players tell me what they want how they see their characters. I even allow evil alignments if they can show  me that it will not become a major disruption to the party. Maybe I am not saying this right so that it is understandable but my issue is when a player says I am a heroic good type character puts down lawful good on the character sheet wants to get benefits that it brings like good aligned weapons and then proceeds to play in a way that a good character would not. What I care about is good role playing. And  having an alignment system imo can help as a guideline. Which is why I use some form of it in any system I run. Even in Shadowrun I ask my players to describe and put on their character sheets if they are good, neutral or evil.Having it codified on the sheet helps prevent arguments that can crop off if I question  a players choice of action.  Arguments like I am just playing my character and their should be no consequences for my actions. An example how this works in game is this. I had a player who choose to play a lawfully good cleric of Heironeus. He was given a holy lawful good aligned  sword that did extra damage to evil and chaotic. The group had taken some prisoners from an enemy army. The cleric detected evil on them they were not. He offered to spare their lives if they gave information and did not try and to escape. They cooperated provide good intel. Did nothing to hinder the PCs in any way. After the mission was complete and it came time to release them the player playing the cleric announces he is going to slit their throats. To stop them from rejoining their army and giving any information to their leaders about the party.I stopped play and asked him if he was sure he wanted to take this action because as the DM I felt this was a major break with his choice of alignment and how he had been playing his character up to now. He started to justify his actions as being the smart thing to do to protect the party because the other side didn't have any concrete information on them.I simply asked him if he really thought that a lawful good character would give his word and swear on his holy symbol an oath to spare the prisoners and then turn around and kill them. That maybe killing them may have been tactically smart but was it honorable? After a few minutes of thinking he agreed with me that it was not something that a lawful good character would do but he was going to do it anyway and he realized that he would have some major atonement to do and that while he was atoning he would be cut off from his god and his sword would not function as a holy sword.The game moved on without  bitter arguments of how dare you punish my character for his actions and led to some really good role playing as the cleric worked to remove the blood from his hands of the innocent men he had slayed.</blockquote>

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