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.

 

[Tsuga C]

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.

We know that those rules are insufficient and have changes coming in future products.[/excerpt]

And D&D drifts farther and farther into the land of moral relativism and Political Correctness...

Whatever.

So long as players and DMs agree to a system of some sort and recognize that the DM is the final arbiter within the milieu, things should work themselves out.

 

[jsaving]

I am struggling to understand why so many people feel slighted by the idea that people can pick their own alignment regardless of what it says in the Monster Manual entry for their species. That isn't political in the least, it's just role-playing, which I thought was the point of playing D&D in the first place.

 

[Panda-s1]

And D&D drifts farther and farther into the land of moral relativism and Political Correctness...

Whatever.

So long as players and DMs agree to a system of some sort and recognize that the DM is the final arbiter within the milieu, things should work themselves out.

oh no, instead of fighting orc invaders you might have to fight....orc invaders, except maybe some of them aren't evil, and there's another orc tribe somewhere else just chillin' and making trade agreements with the city, how awful the future of D&D will be D:

 

[Baba]

I can't remember ever having had any use for alignment, as player or dm.

After sketching up a character concept, we usually remembered at the end to decide which alignment would fit the character best, noted it on the sheet, and then never used it again.

As kids playing BECMI and AD&D2 we considered the implicit worldview in alignments to be a bad fit for our fantasy worlds, and we found the concept of "evil races" to be a bit iffy. We experimented with meeting hospitable orcs, who invited the characters to supper and traded stories with them.

Forgetting about alignment could lead to a few headscratching moments - like when in the old Myth Drannor box an elven lich politely and a bit hesitantly asks the characters to tell him their alignments: He wants to give them a magic item, but only if they are Lawful. He hopes they do not consider the question to be rude. (We thought it absurd that the characters were supposed to have a declared alignment, like a party affiliation. But I guess if you go further back, the alignments even had their own languages.)

Reading Elric made a few pieces fall into place.

I remember being impressed with Planescape and then third edition trying to do something interesting with alignments, playing them up as fundamental forces in this weird fantasy multiverse. It wasn’t supposed to model real life. I could buy into that. Still didn't actually use it in play, though.

Something I find refreshing in the Illiad is that there isn't a "good" side and a "bad" side in the war. There are just people in conflict. (Even though a modern reader won’t find much virtue in sacking a city because of a breakup.)

Most often, that is the case in our d&d campaigns too. Sometimes the characters are a bit nicer than their opposition, and sometimes they have nicer goals. But they aren't the "good" side, fighting the "bad" side. They're just people in conflict.

 

[Remathilis]

oh no, instead of fighting orc invaders you might have to fight....orc invaders, except maybe some of them aren't evil, and there's another orc tribe somewhere else just chillin' and making trade agreements with the city, how awful the future of D&D will be D:

The good ones are just off camera a little ways to the left doesn't really fix the problem if every orc you meet in the campaign is still an invader...

 

[Panda-s1]

The good ones are just off camera a little ways to the left doesn't really fix the problem if every orc you meet in the campaign is still an invader...

the point is the complainers can still have the same old cliche adventure in this new "politically correct" D&D they're so afraid of.

 

[Oofta]

the point is the complainers can still have the same old cliche adventure in this new "politically correct" D&D they're so afraid of.

How about we stop lumping everyone who disagrees as "complainers" who only want cliche adventures and are "afraid"?

Maybe, just maybe, instead of insulting each other we could express our preferences? Acknowledge that every game has and will continue to have issues because nothing is perfect? Accept that we can both play the game and have different goals and experiences? Talk about what adjustments could be made and what people's concerns are?

With 5E we have the most popular TTRPG ever published. I don't think anybody knows exactly how that happened, but before we start ripping out subsystems (alignment for this particular thread) in entirety maybe we should talk about less drastic measures?

But ... nah. Let's just lump everybody who doesn't agree with our opinion into one block of people that we can derogatorily dismiss as complainers and who's opinions are not valid. Because divisiveness solves all problems.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Maybe, just maybe, instead of insulting each other we could express our preferences? Acknowledge that every game has and will continue to have issues because nothing is perfect? Accept that we can both play the game and have different goals and experiences? Talk about what adjustments could be made and what people's concerns are?

Sure, but his complaint is in-line with your complaint. Talking about "political correctness" (which is a slippery concept at the best of times, because what it actually means and how individuals use it are totally different things, and different individuals use it wildly differently) and "moral relativism" (flatly incorrectly - literally nothing the poster saying that mentioned involved "moral relativism", not even arguably) is unhelpful and prevents precisely the kind of discussion you're asking for.

I enjoy your posts a lot overall, and smile when I see that red-bearded dwarf, but you yourself are prone to using pretty extreme hyperbole, which can make it hard to have a reasonable discussion, not because you're unreasonable but largely because we have no idea what your actual feelings/concerns are. Hyperbole obfuscates what people actually think, because some people will use really extreme hyperbole relative to their actual fairly mild views, and some people will have views that are just so extreme they read as hyperbole, but aren't, and there are infinite places in-between, as well as people just misunderstanding things (and hyperbole makes this worse - I've seen countless times where someone on the internet made a hyperbolic statement, and then posters after that assumed it was literal fact). In some cases it's so extreme you can't even be certain what a poster is referring to.

Likewise, telling people that they're calling you a racist, when they explicitly aren't, is a good way to end a conversation, and prevent people engaging with you. What do you say to that? There's nothing you can say to someone who has decided that you're calling them a racist when you aren't. It's like discussions of privilege. Some people, the moment the term privilege comes out, flip their desk and rage out, and start screaming about how people are being totally unfair to them, you don't know their lives, and so on, which is profoundly missing the point. Privilege isn't an accusation or an attack, it's a thing that may or may not be the case. It's most often an issue when people offer solutions to problems, where privilege may lead them to certain assumptions about how the world works that are confounded by how it actually does for other people. Just because you have privilege doesn't make you "bad" any more than someone handing you $1000 makes you "bad". It doesn't change who you are at all. But some people just cannot not see it is an insult/attack to even mention it. What can you say to them?

As for alignment as a system, it's already been ripped out in 5E. It's not a system. It certainly was in 1E through 3E, in 4E it wasn't really, and in 5E it isn't. It's merely a summary of attitudes/behaviours at this point. I'm not sure why you're suggesting that it "shouldn't be ripped out". Short of a time machine, there's no way to un-rip it. And if you are again using hyperbole an expecting us to translate "ripping out alignment as a system" to "removing alignment defaults from races/monsters and/or making it clear alignment defaults are simply common, not facts", then that's a great example of how hyperbole harms the kind of discussion you're asking for.

Why not just not exaggerate? Say what you mean, instead of how it feels to you.

 

[Umbran]

the point is the complainers

Mod Note:

As if you haven't had your own share of complaining?

The Golden Rule applies: Would you like to be dumped in a bucked marked "complainers"? No? Then don't do it to others.

 

[Umbran]

I enjoy your posts, but you yourself are prone to using pretty extreme hyperbole, which can make it hard to have a reasonable discussion, largely because we have no idea what your actual feeling are. Hyperbole obfuscates what people actually think, because some people will use really extreme hyperbole relative to their actual views, and some people will have views that are just so extreme they read as hyperbole, and there are infinite places in-between.

To build on this - hyperbole blocks access to nuance and understanding of place of issues on the spectrum of severity. If everything is stated in only drastic terms, it drives conversation to poles, which reduces the ability to find compromise.

If you start from the position that anything and everything you don't like is the end of the world... you leave those with other opinions no options to offer alternatives, and you leave yourself no emotional space to back down and accept a compromise, or even that other people's points have merit.

Putting a hyperbolic stake in the ground is great for pontificators trying to rally toops. It isn't a good negotiating tactic.