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.

 

[Haldrik]

Do you remember the movies where the action hero kills hechmen, and nobody worries about death of secondary characters? This scene shows those people also have got families, and they suffer when the hechmen die in the hands of the action hero. Is the hero really a "good guy"?

Especially the many movies where the "hero" kills many mooks without hesitation or thought. But then suddenly discover moral crisis about whether or not to kill the main villain!

As if less powerful people dont deserve human rights.

As if only powerful people have rights.

Especially when the bigbad evil guy is responsible for the crimes. While the less powerful are coerced.

It is like in war. Kill all the 18 year olds who had little choice but to fight. Meanwhile the elder leader who is fully in power is put on trial.

I know the movies kill the mooks to be "exciting" then have moral qualms about the bigbad for "dramatic tension". But using these tropes incritically, ends in an ethical horror. The "hero" comes across as evil.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I don't care how people use orcs. I think it would be an overreaction to remove alignments from monsters that happen to be shaped vaguely like humans. Orcs, for many people, are useful and fill a role in their campaigns. Better to be clearer that for all monsters the alignment is just a default. I just don't think orcs (or any humanoid) is particularly different than other intelligent monsters.

Okay, but a lot of other people feel that humanoid people who are clearly a people/folk/race having a "default" alignment that the MM presents as strongly coded into them at birth is harmful.

So, if you don't care...why are you spending so much time, every time it comes up, acting like it affects your home game, and getting defensive wrt to your home game when people respond in reference to the officially published game?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Well, for one, I was talking about actual monsters, not monstrous humanoids. Second, real people don't look like monsters or monstrous humanoids. People might say that they do, but they don't. So no, I'm not unaware, I was indexing the falsehood inherent in that position.

So, you're aware of the rhetoric that is relevant to how "monsters" (which monstrous humanoids are part of, as they are in the monster manual) are portrayed as evil and recognizable as such because of their appearance. Great.

So, do you disagree with the position that it's a bad thing to depict people who look a certain way as monstrous, and thus inherently in opposition to the prettier "free peoples"?

 

[Oofta]

Okay, but a lot of other people feel that humanoid people who are clearly a people/folk/race having a "default" alignment that the MM presents as strongly coded into them at birth is harmful.

So, if you don't care...why are you spending so much time, every time it comes up, acting like it affects your home game, and getting defensive wrt to your home game when people respond in reference to the officially published game?

It's a forum to share ideas and opinions. I'm sharing my ideas and opinions.

Thanks for sharing, have a good one.

 

[Maxperson]

So, do you disagree with the position that it's a bad thing to depict people who look a certain way as monstrous, and thus inherently in opposition to the prettier "free peoples"?

In real life, yes. Absolutely.

In a game, they aren't being labeled as monstrous just due to appearance. Nor are they in opposition to "prettier" free people based on that appearance. They are also evil and at direct odds with the "prettier"(don't know how you can call dwarves pretty) people due to that evil nature.

 

[Remathilis]

Especially the many movies where the "hero" kills many mooks without hesitation or thought. But then suddenly discover moral crisis about whether or not to kill the main villain!

As if less powerful people dont deserve human rights.

As if only powerful people have rights.

Especially when the bigbad evil guy is responsible for the crimes. While the less powerful are coerced.

It is like in war. Kill all the 18 year olds who had little choice but to fight. Meanwhile the elder leader who is fully in power is put on trial.

I know the movies kill the mooks to be "exciting" then have moral qualms about the bigbad for "dramatic tension". But using these tropes incritically, ends in an ethical horror. The "hero" comes across as evil.

That's easily solved; if the PCs kill a sentient creature, they receive no XP for the session.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It's a forum to share ideas and opinions. I'm sharing my ideas and opinions.

Thanks for sharing, have a good one.

If you "share your opinion" in a public forum, it's open to challenge.

 

[Chaosmancer]

This has nothing to do with any responses, but I saw something. I flipped open volo's to see if they listed Gruumsh's portfolio and noticed the "Orc Flaws"

#1 -> "I have a calm temperament and let insults roll off my back
#4 -> "I understand the value of civilization and the order that society brings"
#6 -> "I believe in living to fight another day"

I glanced at Yuan-Ti and they have a similiar set, but this really is helping drive the points home. There are orcs that can be calm, or understand society and they are the Orcs that have "flaws" and are less "orcish"

Adding in spawn points makes it like WoW D&D to me. So yes, you put words into my mouth. After this response, if you want to continue this conversation, I'd like an apology for it.

I apologize for not using your exact wording in the exact order and exact way you said it.

WoW, Warhammer with spawn points, Skyrim, or any other game with spawn points. Spawn points don't cut it for my game.

Soooo, I don't use the new Gnoll lore or the new Beholder lore. I don't like it. A parasite growing into something else, though, is equivalent to a baby becoming an adult. You can go to a Mindflayer city and kill baby Mindflayers if you want to.

So, you refuse to use DnD lore as written... wait, I'm putting words in your mouth again.

You don't use new gnoll lore. Spawn points don't cut it for your game.

Following from those two points, I begin making interpretations and assumptions, but the next sentences are my thoughts and not exactly what Maxperson has said.

Demon lore includeds spawning from the Abyss. That sounds like a spawn point. I can assume since "Spawn points don't cut it for my game." that you have also changed that detail. I will also assume that since " Spawn points don't cut it for my game." that you do not use the Meenlock lore, since they also spawn.


However, just because you do not use it for your game, does not mean it does not exist in the game. So, it would be possible to create orcs in such a way as to follow the examples of gnolls, meenlocks and demons, and avoid the problem of orc babies.

If you can't look at them and see ugly, there's nothing I can say. Take the pics out and ask 100 people if they are ugly, average or good looking and see how many ugly answers you get.

I will now make assumptions and follow this discussion with my own thoughts, these are not Maxperson's words, which are quoted above this in their entirety. I do not presume to put words in Maxperson's mouth

Frankly, I doubt I'd get very many people calling them ugly. I feel like you are judging them by a very high standard of beauty, or perhaps you just find the artistic style on them displeasing, but compared to something like the Annis Hag or Fomorian, these are clearly neutral at worst.

Primarily though, orcs are the antagonists of said stories, or at least set apart from the world of men and dwarves and elves. The strongest case I hear for them is that playing a half-orc is the same deal, so why not go full Monte?

(RIP half-orc, you're going to lose the only thing that kept you separate from orcs: PC playability. Now, kneel down over here and tell us about the rabbits...)

Wow, comparing the half-orcs to Lenny from Of Mice and Men? Real classy there.

And, yes, Orcs are often antagonists. So are dragons. Doesn't prevent good dragons. Actually, lot of stories where the elves are antagonists. Can still have good elves. Heck, most fiction involves human's being the antagonist.

The point though, was that making orcs not evil, does not remove their cultural cache. They still have something to bring to the table. And if we had to choose to keep Orcs, Dragonborn or Goliaths, Orcs would win. Hands down.

Then go play Warcraft.

You are choosing to play against type. Just because you want to play a beardless dwarf swashbuckler with a rapier doesn't mean the game is obligated to make an entire culture of beardless dwarf swashbucklers for you to hail from. Species get stories built into them.

Consider the poster-child of antihero races: tiefling. They are devil-spawn and most people view them as untrustworthy at best. Some tieflings live up to this reputation. (The PHB even states that many end up evil) but PCs end up usually being the ones who don't. Should the game reverse this because some players don't want to be viewed as outcasts or devil worshippers, they just want them sexy tiefling horns?

What about a PC who wants a Cannibal halfling? Are we now to say "some halflings are cannibals, most people in town avoid dinner invitations from them." ?

We're going to get to the point that races (species, ancestries, whatever) are just physical skins and a few powers and that's it. No distinct cultures, no unique mindsets, because that will mean people have to play those characters with certain expectations and that hurts my Indigo Soul's feelings.

My inner Grognard is showing...

And purple child shaming. Again, real classy. Love to see that you are open and willing to hear discussions.

So, let me go ahead and follow the line of logic that we have just created.

1) The only reason people want to play orcs is to be anti-heroes
2) Not everyone wants to be an anti-hero, some people are pulling from different inspirations
3) If your special snowflake self wants beardless dwarven swashbucklers, the game is not obligated to create a race of beardless dwarven swashbucklers.

So, no. You are wrong.

Not only, like I said, is it possible to play an anti-hero going against the group of evil without needing to involve race (former cultists or members of evil empires are great for this) but since not everyone is pulling from the same sources of fiction, they might be looking for different types of games. They may be wanting to play an Eberron style orc, who is a tribal protector of ancient seals, not a murderous savage who people will flee from on sight lest he decapitate them and drink from their skull.

Also, while tieflings are a poster child "anti-hero" race, they are also the poster child for "The Sins of the Father" because no tiefling is ever choosing their nature. They are born with a stigma because someone else, potentially thousands of years ago, made an evil decision.

So yes, I tend to not assume that Tieflings will be treated as though they are evil, because for thousands of years they have just been the children of people who made evil decisions. And I do not believe in blaming the child for the sins of their great-great-great grandparents.

In fact, there is a tiefling in a game I am playing, and she went digging for some 3.5 races and came across Pearl tieflings. Are you familiar? They were a variant where the churches prayed and conducted holy rituals to purge the Infernal essence from the body of the child. So, she is playing a character who was left as an orphan at a church, and the priest their literally prayed away the evil in her blood, and altered her very nature and body, while she was a baby.

Which, I don'y know about anyone else, but we all expressed quite a bit of "yikes, that is horrifying" especially since she was still treated as though she was a boiling pot of evil, just ready to explode.

That's what she wanted, and we've all worked around it, but I could easily see that sort of story making certain gamers sick to their stomach, so offering an alternative is a good idea. Because, some people just want to have horns, and some people want to explore the social reality of being the literal spawn of evil that everyone despises.

Different strokes.

Umm ... congratulations? Run it the way you want as I said in my post? I don't know what the heck you're getting at with any of this. Other than "a game where you kill evil orcs is a problem because I say so" of course.

I think having an easy to identify bad guy laid out in the MM is a good thing. Good for the game, good for people who like to subvert tropes.

For example if I were running the campaign that had human barbarians working with orcs I might make it more interesting. While the players decide what actions they will take I would consider a potential tangent to get to the root cause of why the barbarians allied with the orcs in the first place. Maybe a regime change is a possibility, or they're doing it out of desperation. Maybe a faction of the barbarians could be convinced to help.

But the orcs? Nah. Orcs will be orcs. I think simple, easy to grasp bad guys is good for the game for a great number of people.

Need I remind you that it is a game? Not reality or even particularly reality adjacent? Orc genocide will never be part of my game, but guilt free killing the bad guys is. If I want moral dilemmas there are plenty of opportunities but I want them to stand out as the exception. I don't tell other people how to run their games, just how I run mine and why. I don't take the moral high ground every time someone disagrees with me, I just acknowledge that they can run the game the way that they want. Last but not least no game is perfect, if there's problematic imagery and wording fix it.

But telling/implying other people that the way I choose to run the game is "better"? That something is a problem because I declare it to be? Nope.

And the endless circle continues. Which, I guess shouldn't be surprising since you cut my entire post and only responded to the straw man of "it is bad because I say so"

I went back and looked, and you ignored about seventeen lines of text and addressed none of it, which I know you had to have read since the part you snipped out was buried in one of the last paragraphs. So, if you aren't interested in having a conversation, I'm not going to bother any more.

 

[SkidAce]

A beholder isn't a natural person who is a member of a race. Beholders aren't a race, or a people, or a species. They're a literal anomaly caused by the realm of unknowable madness touching the world and warping it.

Ecology of the Beholder #76 I believe, they "lay eggs" and leave them in nesting places like turtles. They are termed a species in several locations in the article.

This reference is not intended to call you out, rather remind that beholders have been termed as a species, and the person using them as an example my be approaching it from that point of view. Which applies to a lot of species/races in the campaign world, and thus how we treat them.

Many different viewpoints...mostly valid...

 

[Haldrik]

That's easily solved; if the PCs kill a sentient creature, they receive no XP for the session.

I go by the number of "successful" challenges per level. Yeah, same idea.

Success without killing is better for some encounters.