D&D 5E What do you think should be done with alignment?

[Oofta]

Things that are often up to interpretation, and therein less-than-helpful.

There's many, many things open to interpretation in D&D. I think that if you get too caught up in details of alignment you're using it wrong. It's just a general idea of outlook, it's not prescriptive of every action a person will ever take.

In any case, I think alignment is fine as is. The description could be tweaked I suppose, and I see no reason go have "good and evil" in spells that are impact aberration, celestial, elemental, fey, fiend, or undead because there's not really a correlation

If you don't find it useful, that's fine. I just find it tells me something different than TBIF. When it comes to monsters and TBIF I don't want to read that much detail most of the time, it would be pretty useless for sorting and filtering, I think they are just as open (if not more so) to interpretation than alignment.

 

[DEFCON 1]

H

Here's a question: what degree of cultural description is acceptable? You may not have alignment per say, but the description next to the statblock usually does a pretty good job of letting you know what the alignment would be (see Relentless Killer, et al). Since one of the concerns regarding alignment is that it pigeonholes behavior (despite the MM intro being very clear that it doesn't), wouldn't you need to change the monster descriptions as well? If so, what do you write? Just physical description, since everything else is up to the individual campaign? Since any race can be anything, how would you describe a gnoll, or a halfling, or a goblin?

Absolutely. Since I assumed the poll was asking about what the future of alignment should be... the removal of a hard alignment in a monster statblock or race description would go hand-in-hand with a re-write of the descriptions as well... giving several different standards identities. Thus making clear that for instance for both drow and orcs that it is just the "weird" ones of the race that become "good" (while the standard rest of the default race is evil)... but rather that different groups of orcs might be good or evil depending on the gods they follow or what their intentions/desires are.

If we want to suggest that extra-planar creatures lean towards law/chaos/good/evil (or some combination) because of the planes they are found... that'll probably be fine. But any creature native to the prime plane that has intelligence and consciousness can go in any particular moral direction and the descriptions of said creatures should make that plain.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Incidentally this is one of the polls where I would only have allowed one answer.

Yeah... People who generally like the alignment but aren't super attached to any specific version will probably vote for several options.

 

[Cadence]

Yeah... People who generally like the alignment but aren't super attached to any specific version will probably vote for several options.

Well, two anyway

 

[Yaarel]

I feel the 5e alignment approach is ideal.

The alignments DESCRIBE a character narratively, but cannot PRESCRIBE what a character can do mechanically.

5e gets it right.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I have never been a fan of alignment, in regard of description of self aware creatures in general. I can buy into it so some extent for non prime material planar beings but think that more specific behaviour descriptors are better. There is, if nothing else, too much variance of what each term means for it be useful.

There are a lot of historical figures that, probably would have seen themselves as Lawful Good that we would see as Evil and probably not agree on the Law or Chaos side of the equation.

Then there are the issues with Law/Chaos and Good/Evil

 

[Yaarel]

I was kind of surprised by how much love each of the editions got.

Edit: And after I hit return, the votes start separating them more...

@Oofta made me reconsider 5e in the previous one poll thread. Thinking about it more, my only really strong dislike is that the names Good and Evil show up in the Protection spell, and the big improvement I'd want is asking folks to throw an adjective or three in the box too.

The 5e names for Protection spells have become nonsensical.

"Protection from Evil and Good", should now be more accurately called "Protection from Planar Beings", or "Planar Protection".

 

[Einlanzer0]

You missed one - replacing it with something more like ability scores: I currently use a secondary ability score supplement that handles morality through "tertiary" ability scores that change dynamically through character action and can be utilized in die rolls: Honor, Empathy, and Piety.

 

[Stormonu]

I'd like to keep the 9 + unaligned. Make it optional for PCs (who use a more robust ideal/bond/flaw/allegiance/fear), but use it to tag NPCs and monsters.

I wouldn't be against put back in some of the alignment hooks back into the game to actually have an effect against certain alignment types, or really even use them as chokepoints to access to certain subclasses (NOT classes, but subclasses), feats or other abilities. Heck, same for races too - I have nothing against a Elvin Bladesinger only allowable to elves, a Dwarven Defender only available to dwarves, access to the "Good" Domain only available to good clerics and a Paladin of Justice only available to Lawful characters.

Allegiance, BTW, is from d20 Modern, and could be groups, individuals or even to alignment.

 

[Maxperson]

Things that are often up to interpretation, and therein less-than-helpful.

Much like bonds, flaws, etc. It all up for interpretation. Things don't need mechanics to back them up to have value. Most settings don't have any mechanics to back them up. In the case of alignment, it has value to a lot of people. Probably more than find no value in it. That alone is enough to keep it as the default, but without mechanical teeth.