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.

 

[VelvetViolet]

Which could mean that some women might seek them out because they want strong children.

Fantasy eugenics? Sign me up!

Something as simple as this could drive a whole series of military fantasy novels.

 

[Oofta]

Fantasy eugenics? Sign me up!

Something as simple as this could drive a whole series of military fantasy novels.

Yeah, I can actually see some interesting story lines from it.

 

[Maxperson]

Can’t you solve this by simply stating orcs pop out of holes in the ground, adult and holding weapons? That’s what 13th Age does and it’s great.

I can't solve it with that, but then it's not an issue in my game. If it was, though, it the above would be problematic since I and my players require a game with more depth. There needs to be females and children for orcs, bugbears and the rest. If the party follows the orc trail to their home, they simply aren't going to find it empty and with no signs of anything but adult orcs. A game without this kind of depth bothers us.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Ask 100 people if they think something that is an insane manipulator seeking treasure and death, is good or evil. I'm going to bet the vast majority choose evil. Even if descriptive behaviors are better than two letters, that doesn't mean that you can't still peg things as being good or evil.

Right, but let me ask you this.

Why did they peg it as evil?

Was it evil because it was a beholder? Or was it evil because it was a manipulator seeking treasure and death?

That's the point. The point is that instead of just plopping down a "evil" label, we get to see why it is evil. It is evil because of X, and therefore anything that does X is evil. I could make any creature an Insane Manipulator seeking treasure and death and they'd all be evil, so it opens us up to caring about their actions instead of just putting them in a box and moving on.

Just look to the 1e MM. The 1e brownie is LG, ugly and humanoid looking, if small. 1e cloud giants are ugly as hell, humanoid looking and half of them are NG. 1e gnomes in the MM are ugly, humanoid and good. The 1e androsphinx is pretty ugly. And I wouldn't call treants works of beauty in any edition.

I'm sure I could find examples in every edition.

Then do it for 5e please. Because you listed a whole lot of 1e stuff, and nothing from 5e which is the edition we are talking about.

I would argue this is a very useful stereotypes. It allows for "orcs" to be both rather intelligent (able to work in groups, lay traps, sound alarm, regroup after fleeing), therefore being a fun monster to fight, without all the problem linked to using violence, especially lethal force, against an opponent that could be considered human. If a human opponent surrender, in most country, it is a crime to finish him, even in the context of an open war; it would be evil for PCs to execute prisonners of war. It would also be boring to have them handle lines of POWs during the many fights they do in an adventuring day. Therefore, having non-human opponents (orcs, mind flayers, beholders...) is useful.

There is a point here that you aren't considering. I bolded it.

If the human surrenders it is a crime to kill them.

So, if a mindflayer surrenders... shouldn't it also be a crime?

Maybe but let us step back from the curtain for a moment. Why are they surrendering? See, the Dungeon Master has full control here. If the human cultist refuses to surrender... then the players aren't under any compulsion to not kill them. It isn't like they are forced to never kill a human after all, heck, when they fireballed the first group of cultists they killed a lot of them.

So, making orcs intelligent humanoids with complex morality does not mean that players suddenly can't kill them. Because if they don't surrender... then you kill them. The issue only gets complicated when the enemy starts surrendering, and at that point, the DM wants this to be a a decision.

If I have a mindflayer surrender, I want my players to stop and consider it, to have their morals tested. It is a monster that is unredeemable, but can you just kill something that is surrendering? If I expected my players to just shrug, kill it and say "its a monster, killing it is fine" then I wouldn't have bothered having it surrender. Because there would be no point in it.

The reverse is also true; if the primary purpose of orcs are to be antagonists, why do they need deeper motivation? Are you having philosophical debates with the orc guards in the dungeon? Are you arresting goblin bandits and having them stand trial for their crimes? When you enter a hobgoblin camp, is your first instinct to negotiate trade relations with the nearby village? They are primarily used as antagonists, and what motivations they may have tend to be evil because the game is a lot cleaner when you don't have two factions of "good people" on both sides.

Because at the meta-rule level, it is easier to simplify than to make more complex.

It is easier for you to say "these orcs you will encounter are raiders and murderers" while at the meta level we have a complex society to draw from, than for us to go create a complex society from "kill anything that is a player race"

I think this is the point of miscommunication we keep running into. People are free to run whatever they want in their campaigns, we are just asking for a change at the meta-level, and it is far easier to simplify evil motivations for a group of people than it is to make caricatures of evil and violence more complex.

Heck, watch any movie where the action hero faces off against a "criminal group" and you'll likely have humans being shot and killed across the screen for nearly an hour with no deeper motivations than "they are the bad guys". While we can still understand that humans are complex and capable of many different moral frameworks.

My thoughts as well. In Star Wars we have Storm Troopers, in a lot of other games we have Nazi soldiers. How many get mowed down in movies and games?

From a game design perspective, having them as the go to bad guy serves a very specific purpose. If I'm playing a Star Wars game I know the storm troopers are the bad guys. Unless it's specified otherwise in the campaign when I'm playing D&D the orcs are the bad guys. I can set aside the real world and just roll some dice and have fun.

On one last note, I don't see how using a thesaurus to come up with different words for raiders and savages really changes anything. There are only so many words in the english language. Besides a raider is someone who does sudden attacks and assaults, a bandit is an outlaw. To me they have different connotations. Doesn't mean some of the wording an imagery shouldn't change just that it's not as simple as people imply.

Here is the problem, in fact Star Wars is a great example, because they have Aliens.

Storm Troopers are human right? So why are Han, Leia and Luke not evil storm troopers? They are humans right?

Or, their is a Twi'lek in Jaba the Huts gang right? Are all Twi'leks gangsters?

So, this is the problem, clearly seeing one person of a species in a role in Star Wars does not tell us anything about the species as a whole. So why should it for Orcs?

Storm Troopers and Nazis are both human groups being opposed by humans. It is clear that their is an organization or idealogy that is being fought. Orcs are being opposed by humans and elves, making this about different species in conflict.

Let's say I'm running a campaign is in the hinterlands. A common theme is civilization on the edge, people worried about getting wiped off the map.

A great option for that existential threat is orcs as written in the MM. Raiding hordes, particular hatred of elves. Okay, now let's say the humans and the elves aren't on the best of terms, maybe an alliance can be formed. Somebody wants to play a half orc? Cool, some human barbarians allied with the orcs. Both sides plan to wipe each other out eventually but in the mean time, let's have some fun and some babies.

Awesome. Start of a simple campaign with a couple of easy to grasp hooks, especially if I'm a newbie DM.

But let's say orcs don't have an alignment. Suddenly I have no go-to existential evil threat that everybody knows about*. I don't see why I need orcs at all at this point, I can just use that human barbarian tribe.

Why does every problem you just listed for identifying the "bad" orcs not apply to this?

Isn't that human barbarian tribe worshiping a different religion than the "civilized" folk? Could they just tend to be violent and Evil and a menace to society? What happens if you kill their warriors, don't they have wives and children?


So, you can't actually use the human barbarian tribe. In fact, you seem to not be able to use anything that worships or has family units (by the way, evil orcs already do this in default DnD 5e, you've just labeled them evil and decided not to worry about the orc children)

And that is actually the clutch, all of these things you are laying out that will ruin the game for you if Orcs are suddenly not evil, already exist. They are already religious radicals with families and described like super predators. The difference is you are using the label of "evil" to hide behind and not see that as a problem.

Well, for the rest of us, the label of evil hasn't really ever been enough to hide those facts. In fact, the point that we are supposed to label them evil with no further consideration beyond that, and therefore killing them is perfectly acceptable is again part of the problem.


So, if you can run an evil human barbarian camp without an existential crisis, then I don't get why orcs should be any different.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I can't solve it with that, but then it's not an issue in my game. If it was, though, it the above would be problematic since I and my players require a game with more depth. There needs to be females and children for orcs, bugbears and the rest. If the party follows the orc trail to their home, they simply aren't going to find it empty and with no signs of anything but adult orcs. A game without this kind of depth bothers us.

But you don't need to have villages, which is the point.

Take the Warhammer 40K orcs. If you follow them back to their home.... it is a patch of green fungus turning into tiny orcs.

Orcs in LoTR were formed by throwing elves into pits, so they also didn't have families.

But the fact that you are going to require evil children and evil families to be slaughtered.... that is a problem for me

 

[Maxperson]

I would suggest googling "mud people" before going further with that.

It wasn't my idea but unfortunately there are potential land mines wherever you look. I remember someone taking umbrage at DQ selling moo-lattes because it was similar to mulatto (at one time a derogatory word that fell out of use over half a century ago). I mean, I guess I can see the association? If you happen to know the connection already?

And this is the problem with creating links that aren't there. Similarities don't equal a link. Too much has happened in the history of the world and we have too many cultures. There are huge numbers of things the DM could be inventing that exist somewhere else, possibly in a negative way.

 

[Lanefan]

Can’t you solve this by simply stating orcs pop out of holes in the ground, adult and holding weapons?

Whack-A-Mole, D&D style.

 

[VelvetViolet]

I can't solve it with that, but then it's not an issue in my game. If it was, though, it the above would be problematic since I and my players require a game with more depth. There needs to be females and children for orcs, bugbears and the rest. If the party follows the orc trail to their home, they simply aren't going to find it empty and with no signs of anything but adult orcs. A game without this kind of depth bothers us.

Different game genres have different tastes. Some games prefer orcs as simple evil minions made of muck, others to tackle the gritty complexities of real (ish) war.

But I’m sure we can all agree that it’s probably better not to take cues from colonialist stereotypes of indigenous peoples when creating evil minions.

 

[Maxperson]

Right, but let me ask you this.

Why did they peg it as evil?

Was it evil because it was a beholder? Or was it evil because it was a manipulator seeking treasure and death?

That's the point. The point is that instead of just plopping down a "evil" label, we get to see why it is evil. It is evil because of X, and therefore anything that does X is evil. I could make any creature an Insane Manipulator seeking treasure and death and they'd all be evil, so it opens us up to caring about their actions instead of just putting them in a box and moving on.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? It doesn't really matter. Whether I plot down evil and then describe in the flavor section how it's evil, or describe how it's evil and then decide it's evil, it's the same difference.

Then do it for 5e please. Because you listed a whole lot of 1e stuff, and nothing from 5e which is the edition we are talking about.

So first, this thread has traveled back and forth across all of the editions and to Tolkien and back, so 1e is relevant. Second, WotC decided to axed most of the good creatures and use the evil ones, since good creatures aren't used even close to as often as evil ones. 5e is a poor edition to use for what you are trying to use it for.

 

[Maxperson]

But you don't need to have villages, which is the point.

Take the Warhammer 40K orcs. If you follow them back to their home.... it is a patch of green fungus turning into tiny orcs.

If I want to play WoW, I play WoW. When I play D&D, I expect things to be a bit more realistic and not have every humanoid in the game come with spawn points.

Orcs in LoTR were formed by throwing elves into pits, so they also didn't have families.

Created that way, yes. They breed, though.