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.

 

[Azzy]

Lore varies. I have not read the Lords of Madness or I, Tyrant versions yet but I find the 5e nightmare concept strikes the best chord for me so far.

The 1e Monster Manual is silent on the issue. The Ecology of the... article from Dragon magazine has previously be discussed. In the 2e Monstrous Manual (nothing is given in the Mounstrous Compendium, volume 1), beholder reproduction is said to be uncertain and wives verious theories. In, I, Tyrant, the reproduction is said to be through self-fertilization with live birth of several young that have inborn racial memories. 3e's Lords of Madness doesn't vary much from that presentation. Much like 1e, the 4e Monster Manual says nothing on the subject (I don't know if some other 4e source delves into it). 5e, we are all familiar with. If there's any other TSR/WotC sources that detail beholder reproduction and life cycles, I am unaware of them but would be happy to be informed about them.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Did you actually read the article?

I mean, at it's "worst" the opinion piece says "The end of Evil races proves that Dungeons & Dragons needs to move away from concepts of cosmic good and evil, while focusing more on true good and evil: selflessness vs. selfishness. ".

Still, though, the author defines good and evil in concrete terms: selflessness vs. selfishness.

I think the article is attacking a strawman. He says :

This is how Dungeons & Dragons ought to be played going forward: characters have wants, needs and morals that should guide their actions rather than slavish devotion to "doing good" or "doing evil."

I am pretty sure Loyal Stupid and Chaotic Stupid have never beent the regular way of playing the game.

With the removal of races that are inherently evil, players and DMs will need to measure their characters based on their self-serving intent rather than obedience to a demon or sadism -- which will result in more nuanced games.

I am pretty sure humans were allowed to be NPCs in the D&D before this debate, so the introduction of yet-anothed-non-inherently-evil race won't probably change a lot: I gather from this thread and others that many groups actually adopt action hero morality. They'll just apply action hero morality to orcs (He's the janitor at the necromancer facility, he's working for a necromancer, therefore he dies, let's not consider he could be coerced/suffer from mental illness/have an history of childhood abuse/...) In real life treatment of "bad guys" is more nuanced but I don't foresee "orcs losing their always evil status" as a change toward more nuanced games.

 

[Remathilis]

Did you actually read the article?

I mean, at it's "worst" the opinion piece says "The end of Evil races proves that Dungeons & Dragons needs to move away from concepts of cosmic good and evil, while focusing more on true good and evil: selflessness vs. selfishness. ".

Still, though, the author defines good and evil in concrete terms: selflessness vs. selfishness.

I took it for what you saw at its worst: D&D should shy away from Objective Good and Evil as a defining power in the cosmos and instead focus on personal (in this case selfless vs selfish) definitions. My point is you don't need alignment if you are going to define good and evil as personal choices vs. Cosmic Forces. If you get rid of Cosmic Good and Evil, you might as well get rid of Law and Chaos since those aren't exactly A game material and just make alignment part of the Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws of a character.

And yes, it's an opinion piece from a nonofficial site. But it points to me a through-line: the rhetoric about "always evil" monsters, the removal of alignment from humanoid monster types, Jeremy's discussion of alignment that began this thread, and now this. There is a movement in the community to shy away from Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos being immutable cosmic forces on which the multiverse is built and move it towards "another personal choice a character makes".

I'm holding to my prediction: the current trend will be for D&D to continue shy away from alignment even as an RP tool and eventually to dispose of it entirely.

 

[Marandahir]

I think a big thing 5e has already been doing for this is making BIPOC more present throughout the artwork of Humans in the rulebooks.

In past editions, it very much felt like Human was code word for White Western European, unless the game was set in a different fantasy-cookie-cutter culture like Oriental Adventures, in which case Human was the people from that area. In either case, non-Humans have often taken on the story-roles, if not the caricatures, made of minorities, by virtue of the D&D baseline of Humans as the majority population in most settings. Because the game has been historically designed by and for white dudes from the US and Canada, that's created some problems. These problems are exacerbated when we explore folk like Orcs, who from their roots were laden with the baggage of in part representing what Europeans thought of the Huns and Mongols, alongside other folks that didn't look like their baseline assumption.

These baggage are carried into 5e, but the larger focus on providing a diversity of origins for Humans - right there in the PHB - alongside more diverse character images in the core rules, have allowed that problem to be mitigated in human-heavy campaign settings. That said, while Humans remain the most popular "race" in D&D, a key tenet of the game is being able to be something you're not - to imagine yourself, if you'd like, as a wildly different type of person, without feeling like you're lesser than because of it. You MIGHT want to explore the fantasy-racism storylines, but that cannot and should not EVER be the baseline assumption for a game focused on empowering players to have fun via roleplaying.

Orcs are a problem precisely because racist baggage is written into their write-ups. The Beholder examples from up chain are a very good contrast. These are a sacred-cow D&D product identity creature, so much so that any usage of them outside of D&D needs WotC's buy-in (see Onward), and unofficial usages of them are quickly modified in sequels or re-releases to be somewhat different (see Evil Eye in Final Fantasy I re-releases, and then the similar-but-different-enough classic series monster "Malboro," which has appeared from Final Fantasy II onward). Beholders are eldritch abominations. These are entities of blue-and-orange morality from a mind-shattered alternate plane of existence. They're intelligent, and thoughtful, and can be uneasy allies in certain circumstances (thinking the Xanathar especially here), but their very presence is anathema to that of Humanoids. They will not hesitate to destroy innocent lives at the turn of a dime, because the don't think or act at all like Humanoids. You can talk to them, even try to reason with them, but they an invasive species that will take over and destroy civilization if not contained or eradicated.

The game has room for such entities. The game also has room for such entities coming around to a different mindset - there are good genre examples: the Yeerk Aftran 942 from Animorphs, Ghost Rider from Marvel, and from here in D&D, the Kalashtar of Eberron are essentially this - eldritch nightmares bonded peacefully with humanoids that have decided to fight back against their Quori cousins and their Inspired hosts. These are exceptions to the rule that allow for Demons, Aberrations, Devils, even Fey and Undead (at times) to be alien in mindset and anathema to humanoidity in the same way that a toxic and invasive vine spreading across the landscape would be. Violence is sometimes the answer, even in the context of a game that often glorifies violence well beyond its due.

But here we have PC options that as a rule tell stories that are essentially the above. "Wanna play an Orc? Great, but you're going to have to either be fighting against the urge to kill all your companions and innocent people the whole way, and everyone in every town you visit will run away screaming. Still wanna play them? <pause> I didn't think so." Same thing with Dark Elves. Same thing with Goblins. Same thing with Tieflings. Kalashtar get away with it because they're only different from Humans on the inside. These stories do not have to be the domain of PC races. They should not be the assumption.

"So ban Orcs from PC race lists!" you say. "They were never a PC option to begin with!" And that would be fine, if they weren't carrying simultaneously carrying racist baggage of past portrayals and a host of neutral and positive examples of PC Orcs in other franchises. The nature of the Orc as a Player Character in 2020 is not the same as one in 2008 when WotC decided they didn't even feel comfortable including the Half-Orc in the 4e PH1 (nor a year later, when they decided that Half-Orcs are usually created Saruman-style was preferable to implicit/explicit rape in the PHB2). 5e didn't know what to do with Orcs and Half-orcs in 2014 when 5e came out, and defaulted to "here's Half-Orcs as a PC race, tell the stories as you've been telling them for 40 years, we're not going to give it too much thought this time." This was a mistake. WotC could only afford to not give it too much thought because they and their staff and their target audience at the time came from a place of privilege that didn't want to take an active stance in pushing back against historic and systemic discrimination. The nature of D&D's audience has shifted and thus forced WotC to shift with them.

 

[Azzy]

I think the article is attacking a strawman. He says :

I can't say I disagree with your assessment.

 

[Azzy]

I took it for what you saw at its worst: D&D should shy away from Objective Good and Evil as a defining power in the cosmos and instead focus on personal (in this case selfless vs selfish) definitions. My point is you don't need alignment if you are going to define good and evil as personal choices vs. Cosmic Forces. If you get rid of Cosmic Good and Evil, you might as well get rid of Law and Chaos since those aren't exactly A game material and just make alignment part of the Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws of a character.

Selfish vs selfless is still a pretty objective thing, though. Not being "Cosmic Morality" doesn't change that. Despite this opinion piece, what WotC is doing isn't gettting rid of "Cosmic Morality", it's just that humanoids (and probably many other sapient creatures) are not inherently any particular alignment as a spieces. Instead, it's down to upgringing, life choices, allegiane, etc.

And yes, it's an opinion piece from a nonofficial site. But it points to me a through-line: the rhetoric about "always evil" monsters, the removal of alignment from humanoid monster types, Jeremy's discussion of alignment that began this thread, and now this. There is a movement in the community to shy away from Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos being immutable cosmic forces on which the multiverse is built and move it towards "another personal choice a character makes".

The "should D&D remove alignment (full stop)" argument has been going on for decades. It's why most other RPGs don't have alignments as such. This is nothing new and I think you're giving it more weight than you should.

I'm holding to my prediction: the current trend will be for D&D to continue shy away from alignment even as an RP tool and eventually to dispose of it entirely.

Maybe eventually? I don't see it happening in this edition and as many people complain about alignment there is probably an equal amount that does like it. I think this decision will likely be dtermined by what the fan base wants. It's nothing to get concerned about, though, IMO. The only constant is change.

 

[Marandahir]

Honestly, I feel strongly that Eberron's Gnolls (as depicted for PC options in 4e Dragon Magazine and in 5e's "Exploring Eberron") should probably be called something different to avoid confusion with the now-Fiendish Gnolls of the core rules.

Eberron loves to subvert fantasy tropes regarding monsters, but Medusas are still monstrosities, even if they have treaties with Great Houses and Nations… Gnolls are fundamentally different entities between Eberron and 5e MM/VGtM…

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

Honestly, I feel strongly that Eberron's Gnolls (as depicted for PC options in 4e Dragon Magazine and in 5e's "Exploring Eberron") should probably be called something different to avoid confusion with the now-Fiendish Gnolls of the core rules.

Eberron loves to subvert fantasy tropes regarding monsters, but Medusas are still monstrosities, even if they have treaties with Great Houses and Nations… Gnolls are fundamentally different entities between Eberron and 5e MM/VGtM…

I miss the days when gnolls were a gnome-troll hybrid. I'm sad to see that one go.

 

[Marandahir]

I miss the days when gnolls were a gnome-troll hybrid. I'm sad to see that one go.

In some ways, Gnolls, Kobolds, and Trolls are all kinda similar in the sense that there's little consistency between media/settings on what those words mean. Even Goblins are sometimes the same thing as Kobolds, sometimes not…

I do not miss the above days re:hybrids. I far prefer the 5e storytelling approach for 100% evil Gnolls, and am glad to hear that they're going to be Fiends going forward. But the role of a Canine-like or Hyena-like (yeah, Hyenas are Feliforms, I know) PC race is a glaring absence in the lists of D&D PC races, and I would NOT like PC Gnolls that are some sort of mongrel.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

In some ways, Gnolls, Kobolds, and Trolls are all kinda similar in the sense that there's little consistency between media/settings on what those words mean. Even Goblins are sometimes the same thing as Kobolds, sometimes not…

I do not miss the above days re:hybrids. I far prefer the 5e storytelling approach for 100% evil Gnolls, and am glad to hear that they're going to be Fiends going forward. But the role of a Canine-like or Hyena-like (yeah, Hyenas are Feliforms, I know) PC race is a glaring absence in the lists of D&D PC races, and I would NOT like PC Gnolls that are some sort of mongrel.

You don't like owlbears? What chimera, griffons, and hippogrifs? Medusas? We must live on different planets. "The wizard's mad experiment" is the best type of monster.