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.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

If you get rid of alignment entirely it gets harder to explain and justify the established extraplanar embodiments of them. Demons, devils, slaadi, modrons, etc.

This is particularly impactful for demons and devils, who have been fighting the Blood War against each other since 2E over alignment differences. 4E changed it up a little by saying that the Blood War started because Asmodeus stole a piece of the Seed of Evil at the bottom of the Abyss to make his Ruby Rod and that he wants more pieces of it to make new powerful magic items. Regardless, devils and their society in the Nine Hells are defined in large part by their adherence to Lawfulness, and the Abyss and its demons are embodiments of Chaos who live in kill or be killed, might makes right plane. A stronger demon can slay a weaker demon so long as there's not an even stronger demon threatening to kill anyone who harms the weaker demon; in contrast, part of my deep dive into devil lore in D&D uncovered that it is a crime in the Hells for a stronger devil to destroy a weaker devil, and as a result devils are more likely to be punished with active duty in the Blood War, demotion to a lesser kind of devil, imprisonment, torture, or a unique curse.

If parts of alignment had to be excised, I'd rather the explicit Good and Evil axis get the axe because it's too subjective. After all, the devils bring in the souls of people who used Law for selfish purposes in life and remake them into devils who fight against the existential threat the demons pose, which frees the forces of good to do other things with their time, liking aiding mortals, than endlessly battle demons themselves. If the devils eventually win a decisive victory in the Blood War that will certainly be a major problem, but as of now could it not be argued they perform a vital service to the entire multiverse by keeping the worst aspects of Chaos in check and free up the forces of good to do good works? It could be that certain factions in the higher planes secretly do what they can to make sure the Blood War never ends. That way they can continue to do good works in the Material Plane while the fiends stay perpetually in check, despite Blood War skirmishes occassionally spilling over into the world and fiends on both sides looking to recruit mortals for the war.

Then we're left with Law and Chaos, which are arguably more important to defining the planes and their denizens than Good and Evil. Care would need to be taken, though, to emphasize that Law can include positive aspects like stability and unity as well as negative aspects like inflexibility and conformity, while Chaos can include positive aspects like flexibility and freedom as well as negative aspects like disorganization and instability.

To go to an example from the writing of Michael Moorcock, whose fantasy literature was heavily concerned with Law and Chaos, a world of absolute Law is a featureless void where nothing exists that has the possibility to change, while a world of absolute Chaos is incomprehensible.

 

[Remathilis]

It will be so nice when alignment becomes a thing of the past that we all look back at, shake our heads, and chuckle softly to ourselves, like with THAC0 and racial class level limits.

The difference I see is that alignment is iconic to the game. Ask anyone to describe their character in less than a minute and you will hear "they're a (race) (class) (alignment)" as usually the first thing. It might not be a nuanced version of who that PC is, but it gives me enough distinction in two words to know that a LE half-orc monk and a NG half-orc monk are gonna play very differently.

Plus the memes man, the memes! People who don't even play D&D know what a Chaotic Neutral is!

But you're probably right. Alignment is going to die on the pyre of making the game "more inclusive" and "more welcoming" to newer players. The wheels off that have been set into motion. There is going to be a lot of things joining alignment in the dustbin of history when 6e finally gets made.

 

[Aldarc]

Different tables, I guess. I rarely, if ever, hear players nowadays describe their character in terms of their alignment as if that were the defining cool thing about their character.

 

[Oofta]

I had a barbarian at one time that was loyal to his friends, never lied, was not particularly unpredictable. If he gave his word, he did his best to keep it.

I had his alignment as CN. He lived by a personal code. He valued personal strength and honesty because lying was a sign of weakness. When he (rarely) gave his word he kept it and he wasn't unpredictable because he wasn't insane. He was loyal to his friends because he wasn't a loner or a sociopath.
But it was his code, and only his. He thought most external rules were pointless and everyone should seek their own path. He didn't care about titles, wasn't particularly motivated to help others unless he got something out of it.

I really don't understand why someone who doesn't believe in external authority is automatically going to have completely random behavior, most mentally stable people do not. Same way that someone who is lawful can be spontaneous as long as it's not breaking any rules they consider applicable.

EDIT: just be clear - I think his alignment was accurate even if it only represented one small piece of who he was.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

When DMing, I care more about alignment as it pertains to devils and demons and slaadi than I do at it pertains to player characters.

As a player, how I consider alignment and its importance depends on the character.

If a character is more likely to be aware of and concerned with the goings on of the planes, like a Fiend Pact Warlock, I might make him Lawful Evil but willing to work alongside the party so long as their actions lead in some way to undermining the demons' interests and aiding the devils' interests. Said character might help the party save a city now with the knowledge that a devil cult is planned to be established there within the next few years.

If a character is less concerned or aware of multiversal politics then their alignment is more of a guide for how trusting they are of authority and what motivates them. I'm currently playing a Chaotic Neutral Fighter in a campaign, and in a recent session we were teleported into the middle of an active battlefield with no context for where we were or who the armies fighting had their allegiance with. We just knew one side was wearing the same colors while the other side wasn't wearing any sort of cohesive uniform. My character took the lead with a snap-decision judgment to fight the former group, which was influenced by his Chaotic distrust of authority. Unfortunately we learned after the battle that my decision had put us on the side of an invading mercenary force and that the more organized army we helped defeat was defending their homeland.

 

[TheSword]

I had a barbarian at one time that was loyal to his friends, never lied, was not particularly unpredictable. If he gave his word, he did his best to keep it.

I had his alignment as CN. He lived by a personal code. He valued personal strength and honesty because lying was a sign of weakness. When he (rarely) gave his word he kept it and he wasn't unpredictable because he wasn't insane. He was loyal to his friends because he wasn't a loner or a sociopath.
But it was his code, and only his. He thought most external rules were pointless and everyone should seek their own path. He didn't care about titles, wasn't particularly motivated to help others unless he got something out of it.

I really don't understand why someone who doesn't believe in external authority is automatically going to have completely random behavior, most mentally stable people do not. Same way that someone who is lawful can be spontaneous as long as it's not breaking any rules they consider applicable.

Are you saying this as an argument for or against against?

Everything you said is valid and the alignment system doesn’t stop this being the case.

 

[Voadam]

It was in 3e that I realized that I didn't need alignment in the game.

Did you house rule 3e's class alignment restrictions, Paladin detect evil, Paladin smite evil, celestial and fiendish smites, all those cleric attack spells that affected targets differently by alignment, divine spell selection restrictions for alignment, holy/unholy/anarchic/[whatever the lawful one was] weapons, and the alignment DR of outsiders?

3e had the most mechanical alignment stuff baked in IMO. It could be excised or minimized to different levels with house rules (no class restrictions, paladins smite everyone, everyone is neutral except specific alignment descriptor things) but it was a bit of work with varying mechanical consequences.

 

[Oofta]

Are you saying this as an argument for or against against?

Everything you said is valid and the alignment system doesn’t stop this being the case.

I thought his alignment was accurate. He believed in personal freedom and making your own choices, being answerable only to himself. That had nothing to do with his other personality traits of being loyal to his friends or being an honest person.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

I had a barbarian at one time that was loyal to his friends, never lied, was not particularly unpredictable. If he gave his word, he did his best to keep it.

I had his alignment as CN. He lived by a personal code. He valued personal strength and honesty because lying was a sign of weakness. When he (rarely) gave his word he kept it and he wasn't unpredictable because he wasn't insane. He was loyal to his friends because he wasn't a loner or a sociopath.
But it was his code, and only his. He thought most external rules were pointless and everyone should seek their own path. He didn't care about titles, wasn't particularly motivated to help others unless he got something out of it.

I really don't understand why someone who doesn't believe in external authority is automatically going to have completely random behavior, most mentally stable people do not. Same way that someone who is lawful can be spontaneous as long as it's not breaking any rules they consider applicable.

I'm pretty certain the Jakandor setting would be critiqued as problematic if it was well known enough for people to pay attention to it, but your post about your character brought it to mind.

In that setting the conflict was between a Chaotic human society known as the Knorr and a Lawful human society known as the Charonti. One book was released for playing PCs on the Knorr side against the Charonti, another book was released for playing on the Charonti side against the Knorr, and the last book was a collection of adventure ideas for both sides.

As described, the Chaotic Knorr believed very strongly in personal honor, oaths, and bonds between individuals. Ambushes and even the use of ranged weapons in battles between Knorr factions were frowned upon (although these were fine for hunting or fighting the Charonti). Knorr who behaved dishonorably and didn't uphold their sworn oaths were shamed by their peers and could end up exiled outcasts from all Knorr settlements. Rules for special honor rituals were supplied so that a Knorr character could supernaturally bind themself to an oath they'd sworn to another, like a self-imposed geas, which would inspire trust in the individual the oath was sworn to. One of the sample Knorr "adventures" had the PCs as part of a council to settle a dispute between Knorr farmers and decide if one party had acted dishonorably or not.

Despite all this focus on honor and oaths and keeping your word, the Knorr were Chaotic because they hated the concept of formal laws and contracts. They believed that people should keep their word to maintain their personal honor and reputation, as well as to express their respect for their peers. A person who wants you to sign a contract and relies on a formal system of laws to keep you beholden to that contract is not someone to be trusted. The Knorr once briefly began trade with people from another land who insisted upon the rule of law and contracts, but eventually the Knorr came to view these foreigners as treacherous and dishonorable, severed ties with them, and agreed to reject everything those Lawful foreigners tried to convince them of and maintain their traditional emphasis on honor, oaths, and mutual respect over Law. To the Knorr, a culture that has to invent a formal legal system to enforce that people keep their word is a culture filled with untrustworthy, dishonorable people.

Personally, this made the Knorr way more interesting to me than the Charonti, whose main shtick was necromany being seen as normal and agreeing as a society than it is a person's civic duty to allow their corpse to be reanimated as a special Charonath zombie to serve as part of the primary labor force and army of Charonti civilization.

 

[TheSword]

I thought his alignment was accurate. He believed in personal freedom and making your own choices, being answerable only to himself. That had nothing to do with his other personality traits of being loyal to his friends or being an honest person.

Sounds like you have it pretty spot on. The character trends to CN but there are some exceptions in there.