D&D 5E WotC's Jeremy Crawford Talks D&D Alignment Changes

Jeremy Crawford has spoken about changes to the way alignment will be referred to in future D&D books. It starts with a reminder that no rule in D&D dictates your alignment.

Data from D&D Beyond in June 2019​

(Note that in the transcript below, the questions in quotes were his own words but presumably refer to questions he's seen asked previously).

Friendly reminder: no rule in D&D mandates your character's alignment, and no class is restricted to certain alignments. You determine your character's moral compass. I see discussions that refer to such rules, yet they don't exist in 5th edition D&D.

Your character's alignment in D&D doesn't prescribe their behavior. Alignment describes inclinations. It's a roleplaying tool, like flaws, bonds, and ideals. If any of those tools don't serve your group's bliss, don't use them. The game's system doesn't rely on those tools.

D&D has general rules and exceptions to those rules. For example, you choose whatever alignment you want for your character at creation (general rule). There are a few magic items and other transformative effects that might affect a character's alignment (exceptions).

Want a benevolent green dragon in your D&D campaign or a sweet werewolf candlemaker? Do it. The rule in the Monster Manual is that the DM determines a monster's alignment. The DM plays that monster. The DM decides who that monster is in play.

Regarding a D&D monster's alignment, here's the general rule from the Monster Manual: "The alignment specified in a monster's stat block is the default. Feel free to depart from it and change a monster's alignment to suit the needs of your campaign."

"What about the Oathbreaker? It says you have to be evil." The Oathbreaker is a paladin subclass (not a class) designed for NPCs. If your DM lets you use it, you're already being experimental, so if you want to play a kindhearted Oathbreaker, follow your bliss!

"Why are player characters punished for changing their alignment?" There is no general system in 5th-edition D&D for changing your alignment and there are no punishments or rewards in the core rules for changing it. You can just change it. Older editions had such rules.

Even though the rules of 5th-edition D&D state that players and DMs determine alignment, the suggested alignments in our books have undeniably caused confusion. That's why future books will ditch such suggestions for player characters and reframe such things for the DM.

"What about the werewolf's curse of lycanthropy? It makes you evil like the werewolf." The DM determines the alignment of the werewolf. For example, the werewolf you face might be a sweetheart. The alignment in a stat block is a suggestion to the DM, nothing more.

"What about demons, devils, and angels in D&D? Their alignments can't change." They can change. The default story makes the mythological assumptions we expect, but the Monster Manual tells the DM to change any monster's alignment without hesitation to serve the campaign.

"You've reminded us that alignment is a suggestion. Does that mean you're not changing anything about D&D peoples after all?" We are working to remove racist tropes from D&D. Alignment is only one part of that work, and alignment will be treated differently in the future.

"Why are you telling us to ignore the alignment rules in D&D?" I'm not. I'm sharing what the alignment rules have been in the Player's Handbook & Monster Manual since 2014. We know that those rules are insufficient and have changes coming in future products.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

He didn't say any of that.

OK. reduce those words. Still: I really wish politics would get out of D&D. I'm so sick and tired of politics and control.

 

[Maxperson]

This isn't a tangent!

The thread is about alignment. That means we can discuss three things:
1. D&D.
2. Cars.
3. Chiropractors.

Will the thread implode if we bring up the car of a D&D playing Chiropractor?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Well, I'll just continue to play without alignment, secure in the knowledge that it never mattered anyway. Excellent.

In my long-running campaign, there's a player character that I feel should be Chaotic Neutral at best, if not outright Chaotic Evil. (He still has friends he loves and cares about, but is happy to see the rest of the world burn, often with him lighting the match.) The player has insisted, since the beginning, that the character is Neutral Good.

It's never been worth fighting about, especially now that we've migrated to 5E, where there's no magic detection abilities to point at him and out him for his alignment.

(Seriously, though, this guy is like Heath Ledger's Joker with warlock abilities. Neutral Good he is not.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I don't see why people are claiming they need a "revision" of the game, the rules don't need any change, only the narrative descriptions of creatures, and of course the druids' armor limitations.

Given the amount of arguments about alignment over the years, making sure everyone's books say the same things has value. We argue enough as it is about alignment without people having different versions of the RAW in front of them.

Even if there's not a new edition, I think we need to get a reprinting with errata of all the current books.

 

[ccs]

Nobody at WotC is working on 6th edition.

That's because that project doesn't begin until about mid-2022.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Let's have some honest talk. Many (f not most) players played their PCs in accordance with their personality, not whatever alignment was on the character sheet. And would often use alignment as an excuse to play disruptively (hello CN and evil PCs)

Back in the day, in Vampire: The Masquerade, that was known as The Path of Doing Whatever I Want.

 

[Mercurius]

I'm confused. So WotC now openly supports moral relativism? Anything can action can be good and any action can be evil because alignments are only suggestions?

I think the operative word is tendencies, and that alignment is best viewed as a kind of magnetic center of gravity. Or we could look at it in terms of behavior and, yes, relative to context. Take killing, for instance. It can be either self-defense, for a larger cause, for personal gain, out of spontaneous anger, out of malice, etc.

Certain other behaviors, which I won't mention, seem to fit the bill as "always evil," but that doesn't mean only evil people commit them. A generally "good" or "neutral" person can commit evil acts. But what center of gravity do they come back to?

Part of the problem with alignment is that there is no agreed upon understanding with regards to the nature of evil. That confusion translates to D&D. An error people often make is suggesting that a fantasy world must abide by the rules of the real world, which it doesn't have to.

My PHB is in shipment right now (moving) but WotC might be well served by including a brief discussion suggesting to DMs that they consider the nature of evil in their world, that "D&D is a fantasy world and usually assumes intrinsic evil, with cosmologies including demons and devils; but DMs can customize their world as they like, taking a shades-of-gray approach, for instance."

 

[prabe]

Still: I really wish politics would get out of D&D.

Hate to break it to you, but that can't happen. Every fictional world contains within it the creator's (or creators') understanding/s of how the world works, which will include how societies work (or don't) which is going to include or imply their politics. Even the decision to be apolitical is an implicit statement along the lines of "the way things are is fine."

Sorry.

 

[Mercurius]

Yeah, I don't think this means 6E, but it probably strengthens the argument for 5.1 or 5.2 which I've been making for the anniversary in 2024. They can experiment with changes for the next few years in new products, adjust descriptions in D&D Beyond, and once they find the right balance, print revised 5.2 books in 2024 celebrating the Great Unificiation of All Possible Perspectives. And a 1,000 Years of Peace and Harmony shall commence...

 

[Fenris-77]

Yes, I think you can count on that. They've produced new editions before to show their commitment to certain cultural values (2e comes to mind) and there's no reason why they couldn't do that again.

However I do think the debate over whether 6e is "needed" misses the mark. Yes, the 5e core books are still top-sellers on Amazon and yes, there are few glaring deficiencies in its mechanics that require immediate attention. But tone matters too and perhaps the most visible and impactful way to handle that would be a new edition that combines minor mechanical changes with a frank acknowledgement that some of the flavor text wasn't what it should have been.

So you think that some minor mechanical changes and a 'frank acknowledgement' about the tone of some flavor text warrant asking everyone who plays D&D to buy all brand new core rule books? Seriously?! That's ... um ... certainly one opinion I guess. It sounds like financial suicide to me. You can change the flavor text in any printing, and the minor mechanical changes are not even remotely enough to warrant a 'new edition'. So, to address your first point, there are actually many, many, good reasons not to do that again.