What if the only 4 alignments were NE, LN, CN and NG? (No true neutrals).

[Particle_Man]

I mean from the highest to the lowest level.

For one thing, even animals would be different, I guess (I suppose one might go for the dodge that "unintelligent" = unaligned. Or one could just go whole hog and say there really are "good" dogs and evil chickens).

For another, we lose many gods, all devils and demons (daemons are still around), many LG/CG outsiders too.

We'd lose Paladins, many alternate Paladins, and Soulborn (I know you are all broken up about that one).

Clerics would only have one alignment domain, maximum.

The "great Wheel" would be down to 4 outer "aligned" planes.

Anyway, this is off the top of my head. What are your thoughts?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

If you want a simplified alignment system, I'd be OK with Good <->Neutral <-> Evil, but anything beyond that? I prefer the original 9 point alignment system quite strongly.

 

[trancejeremy]

Well, it started out 3 alignments (Law, Chaos and Neutral, with Law = Good and Chaos = Evul), then it moved to 5 alignments when EGG realized (at least to him) that chaos does not necessarily mean evil and law does not necessarily mean good, then to the 9.

Personally though, I would argue that both law and chaos are ultimately evil, since extremes of either end up rather badly and so yes, the only true good would be NG.

So I would say there would be 7 alignments. LE, LN, CN, CE, NG, N, and NE

 

[Celebrim]

I personally feel that the 9 alignment system hits a sweet spot where it is just barely complex enough to reflect some real philosophical conflict, while not being so complex that it's unusable in a beer and pretzels game as your markers of ideology and belief.

The original Law/Chaos divide was from writers like Moorcock and represented conflict between two ideological principles that were inherently anti-life and anti-health (complete stasis vs. complete entropy). Neutrality was thus a middle way with (potentially) the emergent property of being good (pro-life or pro-weal). The problem with the Moorcock system is that it bears almost no relationship to any living tradition, and while real societies have promoted moderation as a quality of good, they have traditionally seen conflict as between virtue and vice not abstract physical properties of the universe.

The Good/Evil axis is fairly easy to apply in a group with the same cultural beliefs where that culture claims that good is a real thing. If you don't have that situation, the Good/Evil axis is very hard to apply on its own because people that fit outside it will resist being labeled as 'evil' (even if they behave like murder-hobos). You end up with big arguments over whether X is evil. Having a second axis therefore adds some flexibility and gives players some wiggle room to play out their own beliefs without the controversial designation 'evil'.

Quite a few groups, being made up entirely of self-declared moral relativists, resist alignment being in the game at all.

Deprived of its roots in Moorcock, Law/Chaos being unmoored has tended to diverge in meaning between different writers, each of which put their own spin on it. For example, I tend to see Law/Chaos as primarily a conflict between Society/Law and Individualism/Freedom, and feel that is a natural extension of the physical conflict between things being primarily defined by their relation to other things and things primarily being defined by their own inherent and unique properties. But I've seen 2-3 other differing definitions for Law/Chaos put forward.

If I wanted to get more complex than that, I'd probably use something like the Pendragon virtue system.

As to your question, I resist the idea that 'law' is more 'good' than 'chaos' and any system that tends to make 'chaotic evil' more evil than 'evil' or 'lawful good' more good than 'good'. I believe that it is complete confusion as to what makes something 'good', reflective of the fact that many societies naturally tend to promote 'law' as a virtue ('good') out of a bias toward upholding the society. I think it's also a confusion between 'self-centered' (sees the self as the arbiter and source of virtue) and 'selfish' (esteems one's own self above other selves) and 'selfless' (does not believe one's own self has value). There is I think a false assumption that all selflessness is good, but with a bit of imagination I think you can imagine person's that are self-sacrificing in horrible causes, and more philosophically I think you can see that 'good' does not claim that individuals lack inherent worth and that their only value is in how they serve others. Believing that individuals should serve others and that individuals have inherent worth are completely independent. Someone who is good might say that because each individual has inherent worth, they should also serve others as it is right (and necessary) for them to affirm the worth that they see in themselves by affirming other's worth.

It's worth noting that despite some confusion in the presentation of this, Gygax graphs the two alignments not as a circle by as a square. That is to say, in classic Gygaxian alignment systems the most good LG character is no more or no less good than the most good NG or CG character.

How you graph the alignments says a lot about your personal ethos. For example, unlike Gygax, I do graph the alignments as a circle rather than a square, and thus the most good LG and CG characters, while equally good, are less 'good' than the most good 'neutral good' (or 'pure good') characters. This is because by being mixed with law or chaos, they cannot be truly as good as someone who solely practices the virtue of 'goodness'. However, this graphing idea exists 'in game' as well, in that the adherents of the various philosophies are happy to represent the alignments as a circle - however each rotates the circle so that their own beliefs are in the highest and most honored place. Each adherent sees his own beliefs as being the most right, and the opposite belief as being the most wrong. A LE character doesn't see himself necessarily as being wrong for all that he's evil, but instead asserts that LE is the most right sort of belief system and those beliefs to either side - LN and NE in this case - are nearly right, and those further and further away less so, until he describes the beliefs of CG in the most abhorrent terms as an ideology that is truly wretched and without redeeming value at all.

In game 'neutrals' on the other hand view alignment as a cone, with neutrality and moderation in the exalted raised center and all extremes to be greatly avoid as wrong and destructive ideologies.

Some in game NG philosophers would imagine the alignments something like a football, with good at the exalted point and all paths leading away toward ultimate evil. In this view, the law/chaos axis is largely arbitrary and unreal, being arbitrary points of no great value along a circular continuum. Pursuing ultimate law or ultimate chaos is at best chasing your tail, as eventually an extreme of adherence to tradition or to self-centeredness wraps around into the other and is indistinguishable, and immoderation of either sort likely to just be evil by a different name. Interestingly, 'trancejeremy' in an earlier post in the thread states the alignment position compatible with this school of thought. Perhaps he's right, but in game such assertions would be met with argument and scholarly debate as each partisan tried to advance his own model.

Your model I've never seen before and I wonder what you think it maps to. It looks to me like you are saying good is 'values both society and the individual', law is 'values only society', chaos is 'values only the individual', and evil is 'values neither society nor the individual'. And that's fine, but I think you are going to run into problems. For example, suppose a person values society not at all but rather considers it the source of most ills, but values the individual and acts charitably toward others. And another person values society to the same degree, but his self-centeredness is selfish and not only self-serving, but he willfully does harm to others for his own profit. Are they both simply chaotic, despite one being productive and the other destructive? Or, are you going to say one is good and the other evil? But if you say that, how does their particular good or evil differ from that of a just magistrate that upholds the law, and a fanatical cultist willing to blow himself up to kill his enemies?

I guess what I'm saying is that while the nine alignment system is not as complex as the real world and may be even misleading (certainly the in game arguments over what it means suggests there isn't going to be agreement on whether it is misleading), the real world is AT LEAST as complex as the nine alignment system and any simplification will lose something. There are probably real world things and real world beliefs that don't fit neatly in it, but certainly when you start pulling chunks out of it things that relate to real world beliefs that formerly had a happy home find themselves adrift with no place to reside without some contradiction or loss of clarity.

 

[Particle_Man]

Ok, taking a trip through the MM for 3.5 (and wiping out races/monsters of other alignments, even if it just says "usually" or "often"). . .

Allip are still around for mid-level undead, Angels, maybe Animated Objects if I allow non-sentients (Int -, 1 or 2) as the only true neutrals, Ankheg (I think I will, it is easier), assassin vine, Azer as our first LN race, Basilisk, Belkers, Bulette, Carrion Crawlers, Celestial template (we have angels after all), Centaurs (Ng represent!), Chaos beasts, Cloakers, Cockatrice, Darkmantle, Destrachian, Devourer, Digester, Dinosaurs, Dire Animals, Giant Eagles, Drow Elf (uh-oh! But Lolth the CE goddess is gone, I think), Ettercaps, Fiendish template (there are a few fiends that are NE), Formians (I still think modrons should have been in the MM I), Frost Worm, Fungus (shieker, violet), ghost, Cloud Giant, Girallon, Githyanki, Gnome (only PHB race standing! Even humans are gone! How does it change things if the entire PC party is small?), Goblin (given class levels they can be the low-to-high level standard bad guy race), Golems, Gorgon, Grimlock, Guardinals, half-celestial, (since half-dragon doesn't have an entry for pseudo-dragon parents, but only true dragon parents (all gone) it is gone too), half-fiend, hippogriff, homunculus, Hydra, Inevitables, Kraken (I didn't know they were evil!), Kuo-toa, Lich, Magmin, Night Hag (probably the source of most of the half-fiends), Nightmare, Oozes, Giant Owls, Owlbears, Phantom Fungus, Phasm, Planetouched, Pseudodragons (might need a new name?), Purple Worm, Roc, Rust Monster, Salamanders, Satyr, Sea Cat, Shadow Mastiff, Shield Guardian, Shocker Lizard, Skeleton, Slaad, Spider Eater, Grig, Pixie, Stirge, Swarm (except Hellwasp Swarm), Titan, Treant, Triton, Vampire, Vampire Spawn, Vargouille, Winter Wolf (evil), Worg (evil), Yeth Hounds (evil, sensing a pattern here!), Zombie, most animals, most vermin.

Class-wise, if we just go with these monsters Dragon Disciple is also out (again, the pseudo-dragon exists, but it isn't written up for this prestige class).

I would have to change the Summon Monster lists to change celestial and fiendish alignments to NG and NE, or really purge those lists.


For another if we just go by the phb, we lose many gods (We still have Pelor, Garl Glittergold, Ehlonna, Wee Jas, St. Cuthbert, Olidammera, Nerull and Vecna), all devils and demons (daemons are still around), many LG/CG outsiders too. Maybe drow stop being the crazy race and become the secrets race? Or I guess they could be death cultists.