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.

 

[Eric V]

Counterpoint: I've seen critiques that fiction depicting the break down of society turning people into selfish bastards ignores examples of people coming together during real-life disasters for survival. There's also many examples of real world Lawful societies penalizing the weak.

Plus, Law and Chaos exist on a spectrum. I believe the Knorr of the Jakandor setting I described on the previous page is a good example of a Chaotic-leaning society where a high value on personal honor and reputation keeps people in line rather than laws forced on them by a legal authority.

Frankly, the terms Law and Chaos themselves probably complicate the issue due to the common belief that Law is Good and Chaos is Bad. I saw an alternative concept of alignment on Twitter the other week I thought was interesting, though I doubt I'd use it as is. I'll try to find it.

Absolutely. For the weak to survive and eventually thrive, they need better Lawful (i.e. Lawful Good); not chaos.

 

[Maxperson]

Ugh. Stop being a jerk. I'm saying: Look at the world today. People who are weak (for whatever reason) can't cope with chaos the way the strong can.

They can't cope with law the way the strong can, either. It's not that chaos or law penalize the weak. It's that the weak are.......weak. And that means that they have a harder time coping that the strong do.

A natural disaster causes chaos, yes? Who deals with that best?

Those best able to take advantage of the laws.

Being diagnosed with a disease introduces chaotic elements in one's life. Who deals with that best?

Those who historically have been best able to take advantage of the laws of the land and make more money.

In the long run, chaotic forces are more damaging to the weak than to the strong.

And yet laws are some of the strongest impediments to the weak. It used to be that you could easily open up a business and make some money. Then lawful came around and made sure that the weak had virtually no chance of doing that any more by creating tons of red tape and costs.

 

[Maxperson]

Absolutely. For the weak to survive and eventually thrive, they need better Lawful (i.e. Lawful Good); not chaos.

And yet laws do more to keep the weak down than they do to help. We see that time and time again here in the real world. The laws serve the rich(strong).

 

[TheSword]

Ugh. Stop being a jerk. I'm saying: Look at the world today. People who are weak (for whatever reason) can't cope with chaos the way the strong can.

A natural disaster causes chaos, yes? Who deals with that best?
Being diagnosed with a disease introduces chaotic elements in one's life. Who deals with that best?
In the long run, chaotic forces are more damaging to the weak than to the strong.

I don't understand why you say a commune would be chaotic.

Well the lack of hierarchy, living outside the established order of society, not conforming to societies expectations of the rat race, not buying into the concept of publish ownership, houses, mortgage, credit cards. These are are strict conformist institutions so tend to the lawful side.

Chaos can also mean simple change, a person who can’t stay in one place can be chaotic. A person who goes with the flow and adapts well could also be chaotic. I don’t agree that you need to be lawful to survive.

 

[Eric V]

Well the lack of hierarchy, living outside the established order of society, not conforming to societies expectations of the rat race, not buying into the concept of publish ownership, houses, mortgage, credit cards. These are are strict conformist institutions so tend to the lawful side.

Chaos can also mean simple change, a person who can’t stay in one place can be chaotic. A person who goes with the flow and adapts well could also be chaotic. I don’t agree that you need to be lawful to survive.

The commune itself has rules to follow, presumably?

People who conform tend to be Lawful, but Lawful doesn't necessarily lead to conformity.

I don't know that the cosmic D&D Chaotic really meant "simple change" though.

4e had it right, IMO. The commune people would be "Good." Well, hopefully. More likely unaligned. Still, benevolence without subscribing to a system of order to ensure it. If order happens to make more good, fine. The LG person insists that (proper) order makes more good.

If one is going to actively promote Chaos as much as one promotes good...it's going to interfere with the good. Note, I don't mean simple indifference to Law, I mean actual opposition to it.

Real world examples show this, no? Even now, just consider putting on a mask to prevent easy transmission of COVID-19. A Lawful Good person insists on a law to do so for the greater good. The Good person simply wants what's best for all, and can see how in this case, the law is a good idea to achieve this.

How is a Chaotic Good person supposed to act here? Use their own judgment, act according to their conscience and not wear a mask...well, we've seen how this can have negative effects: higher transmission rates, which is disproportionately affecting the weaker members of our population.

I don't think "Chaotic Good" makes sense. Revolutionaries against tyranny are "Good" not "Chaotic Good." They hope to replace a system of bad laws with rules that don't oppress people.

 

[Oofta]

Ugh. Stop being a jerk. I'm saying: Look at the world today. People who are weak (for whatever reason) can't cope with chaos the way the strong can.

A natural disaster causes chaos, yes? Who deals with that best?
Being diagnosed with a disease introduces chaotic elements in one's life. Who deals with that best?
In the long run, chaotic forces are more damaging to the weak than to the strong.

I don't understand why you say a commune would be chaotic.

I'm saying that chaos can be bad, it does not need to be. Several examples have been given. Bad storm or natural disaster? People help each other not because of some law, rule or regulation, they help each other because of empathy and good will. We've been helping an elderly neighbor since covid hit not because of some responsibility but because it's the right thing to do.

Besides, you are conflating chaotic events with chaotic alignment. Chaotic alignment doesn't mean you embrace chaos for the sake of chaos. It can. It can also mean that you just value personal choice over external rules. It's just a guideline to someone's moral compass.

Anyway, have a good one I'm done.

 

[Chaosmancer]

No, it is not. The whole point of CG is that you do what you consider right at the time no matter what any previously agreed upon rules might say, whereas someone LN follows their previously agreed upon code/ruleset even when their heart tells them otherwise.

If you see strict adherence to a pre-written personal code as following your conscience, then I can see why it would become difficult to distinguish CG from LN. But I think that is straying quite far from RAW or at least RAI.

Ah, I see you have added to the listed alignment and put forth your own interpretation. Nothing in LN says that the personal code must be pre-written or a ruleset.

It is a personal code, you don't need to write it out, it is the rules you follow, because you decided on those rules. And if you are Chaotic Good, and your consience does not align with your own personal rules... you've got a serious problem. Why did you make rules that go against your conscience?

And, nothing in a personal code says that it cannot have by-laws or be changed going forward. You could completely have a character who has "Rule #2: Never trust a Dwarf" and follow it with "Rule #3: Rule #2 is superseded if the Dwarf is telling you the best place to get Booze." And could further be changed by adding "Rule #1,457: Despite being a Dwarf, you should trust Bob. Except with booze, he has naughty word taste"

There are no problems in defining a chaotic society. Stateless societies with few rules still exist. Not many, but they do, and were much more common the farther back you go.

In a fantasy setting you can create fantasy societies that are chaotic as a state. It's not hard to do. Loose rules and laws, and laws identifying more rights and power to individuals, etc.

Simply having rules/laws doesn't invalidate the chaos and turn a chaotic society lawful. It all depends on what the rules state, how stringently they are enforced, etc.

So what rules need to exist and how heavily must the be enforced to go from Chaotic to neutral, and then neutral to Lawful?

Also, what do States have to do with this? State's are not required. You could have a stateless group of people, perhaps following a religion, that nomadically wander and have highly stringent codes and laws they follow. A nation state or city-state has nothing to do with how lawful you are.

Fact: It does not explicitly say in the book that chaos is anti-society or that chaotic societies are impossible.
Fact: It does explicitly say in the book that chaotic societies exist.
Fact: I have personally run campaigns with chaotic societies for years and never once has my game crashed on account of logical contradiction.
Fact: Never once has your game crashed on account of what's going on in my game.

Skipping most of your post, let us look at this.

Last point, useless. Doesn't matter.After all, we are talking about WoTC changing the rules of the system on a meta-level, the fact that two tables that have never interacted have never affected each other is as true as it is meaningless.

Which, also brings us to your third point. Which, since we are talking about WoTC changing the rules, while it is nice that your personal experience has not led to your own decisions contradicting, I would have to wonder how you are defining a chaotic society. As I mentioned with @TheSword , many times when people are putting forth a society as "chaotic" it really isn't, it is instead just working under different laws.

In fact, I have noticed a lot of people like Sword and Maxperson putting forth ideas that are not in the book, making leaps of inference if you will, and making connections that are not there. Like there being a concept of property rights, or a nation state, which makes me wonder, do people think that a nation is more lawful if they have an Emperor instead of a King instead of a Great Chieftain? It could be that people are placing a lot of emphasis on aspects that have nothing to do with how lawful a society is, and instead worrying more about how familiar those laws are.

Which brings us to points 2 and 1. Putting "Order and Society" on the sliding scale that is Law and Chaos, and knowing that Chaos is anti-order, we have two options.

Either Society is the opposite end from Order, and therefore society is chaotic and order is lawful

or

Society and Order are meant to be seen as a single unit, placing them firmly in the Law side of the spectrum and the opposite of Chaos. And, since if we look to find the most chaotic places, we see no societies (and in fact in the most purely chaotic places we see nothing much of anything except endless energy and matter) I propose that yes, Chaos is anti-society. And despite the book claiming a society might be chaotic, by their own definitions, I don't know if I am convinced that is really the case. And since I've found so many mis-labelings already, I have to wonder if these examples are also mis-labeled.

Now, I fully admit that some societies can be "more chaotic" than others. That is obviously true, but I do not think we have any solid evidence of something that is truly chaotic, because by the very definition of society, it is about a set of rules that people follow. And if we look to the most chaotic of beings, demons (without demon lords for a moment) and Slaad, we see that they do not have societies.

the alternatives suggested are either long cumbersome descriptions which will get cut in products due to demands of space.

That already exist.

that seems to be the point being missed with what I am trying to say. I'm not saying we need to add a half page of lore for every monster, I'm saying all monsters already have a half page of lore that does a better job of telling us what they are about and their general attitudes and preferences than alignment does.

So, if we already have "long combersome descriptions" which are cutting our product lengths down because they are taking up space... why don't we use them?

For the record, if you look at the DMG treasures section you’ll see fairly large quantities of mechanical relevancy from who can wear a grey cloak of the arch mage to who gets sent into the pit by a talisman of ultimate evil.

Grey Cloak? checks book

Huh, I forgot about that. Guess since they all do the exact same thing and color is a purely aesthetic choice, I just never bothered to care about the alignment of people wearing those robes.

It should also be remembered that Alignment allows DMs and players to exclude unreasonable behaviors from the table without having to prescriptively list everything. ‘No Evil’ characters has been a standard rule at our table and occasionally we have ‘entirely evil’ campaigns like way of the wicked.

And yet, alignment as a tool for controlling player behavior, is not really all that great of a thing.

And, if a player is really going to be stopped from being disruptive from not having an E written on their sheet, then you could probably also just apply the Wheaton rule and be done with it.

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.

Just because you no longer have an axis of cosmic Law and Cosmic Chaos doesn't mean devils are suddenly hippies.

Heck, your thing about the the Ruby Rod? That's the first time I've ever heard it. Usually I'm told the Blood War is because Law and Chaos hate each other, so they are fighting. Fighting over a resource is much much more interesting. Heck, it almost makes me want to change my lore about the war against Demons to include it.

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.

Honestly, this is a perfect example of what I am talking about. I see the Knorr as lawful. Heavily lawful.

Their disregard for contracts and formal law systems makes sense, but I don't see that as making them Chaotic. After all, we've established that at least in 5e Lawful Neutral fits them perfectly, with an adherence to tradition and a personal code.

Found it. Hope it's legible. If not I'll delete and summarize via text later.

View attachment 123849

Hmm, that is an interesting one. I'll have to look at it and think about it more.

 

[Maxperson]

So what rules need to exist and how heavily must the be enforced to go from Chaotic to neutral, and then neutral to Lawful?

Who cares. It's a game. We don't need to go into that much detail.

Also, what do States have to do with this? State's are not required. You could have a stateless group of people, perhaps following a religion, that nomadically wander and have highly stringent codes and laws they follow.

While they may have lawful elements, nomadic tribes are also very individualistic.

A nation state or city-state has nothing to do with how lawful you are.

Correct. But it has a great deal to do with how lawful the society is. Setting up a state typically(not always) involves a great deal more law and order.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Skipping most of your post, let us look at this.

You skipped the part asking why you're driving this conversation in circles and whether that's getting you anywhere in order to double down on driving this conversation around in circles. Why did you do that? Is that getting you anywhere?

Anyway, there's only one new point I'd like to address; the rest is reassertion, and I'm not interested.

In fact, I have noticed a lot of people like Sword and Maxperson putting forth ideas that are not in the book, making leaps of inference if you will, and making connections that are not there.

Yes. That's exactly what we're doing. Reading a one-paragraph description and applying it to a game for dozens or hundreds of sessions is always going to be a process of interpretation. What's going on here is not that we have the canonical truth of the matter and you don't. What's going on here is that we and you have competing interpretations. We read the words one way, you insist they be read another way.

You might think at this point that the issue becomes subjective and there's no more to be said. Under other circumstances, that could be true. The problem here is that your interpretations lead to silly contradictions, and our interpretations don't. And that you're trying to convince us to adopt your interpretations. Why on earth would we do that? Why would we throw away something that works for something that doesn't? You seem to be actively trying to make things worse, and you keep dodging the question of why.

But anyway: competing interpretations. You go on to wonder if our interpretation has something to do with emperorship versus kingship -- you're speculating about what our interpretation is. But you don't need to speculate. We have been trying to tell you all along how we interpret these concepts. If you want to know, all you have to do is stop rejecting, contradicting, or ignoring what we're telling you. When I explain, e.g., how despotism can be chaotic if it causes chaos through instability, instead of reasserting your own contradictory interpretation again and again, try just saying, "Huh, that makes more sense, I understand better now how this system works for you, thank you."

Or you could keep arguing at people who are very obviously not buying what you're selling.

Up to you.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Who cares. It's a game. We don't need to go into that much detail.

So, it is an arbitrary detail. Great. So, again, alignment doesn't seem to be offering me anything except arbitrary guidelines that I get to determine as the DM.

So, why do I need them in the book if I am already supposed to decide how lawful "LAwful" is and how chaotic "Chaos" is?

While they may have lawful elements, nomadic tribes are also very individualistic.

Not required to be individualistic. Nomadic Tribes only require being nomadic. They could very easily have a strong sense of community within their tribe, with every individual finding their role as dictated by a clan elder. In fact, tribes tend to have stronger communities, because they only have each other to rely on. The very idea of "tribalism" comes from the group mentality of nomadic people.

Correct. But it has a great deal to do with how lawful the society is. Setting up a state typically(not always) involves a great deal more law and order.

So, again, a matter of degrees.

It seems what I am seeing is that people are defining "Lawful" as involving formalized documents and books of law, which is not required in the slightest.

You skipped the part asking why you're driving this conversation in circles and whether that's getting you anywhere in order to double down on driving this conversation around in circles. Why did you do that? Is that getting you anywhere?

Anyway, there's only one new point I'd like to address; the rest is reassertion, and I'm not interested.

Asked and Answered. You wanted to know why I was having this discussion, I told you. You then asked me why I was having this discussion. I can keep justifying myself to you, but that seems to be a waste of energy. You don't want to talk about alignment, you don't have to. Personally? I'd rather discuss alignment than my motivations for talking about a ruleset for a fantasy game.

Yes. That's exactly what we're doing. Reading a one-paragraph description and applying it to a game for dozens or hundreds of sessions is always going to be a process of interpretation. What's going on here is not that we have the canonical truth of the matter and you don't. What's going on here is that we and you have competing interpretations. We read the words one way, you insist they be read another way.

You might think at this point that the issue becomes subjective and there's no more to be said. Under other circumstances, that could be true. The problem here is that your interpretations lead to silly contradictions, and our interpretations don't. And that you're trying to convince us to adopt your interpretations. Why on earth would we do that? Why would we throw away something that works for something that doesn't? You seem to be actively trying to make things worse, and you keep dodging the question of why.

But anyway: competing interpretations. You go on to wonder if our interpretation has something to do with emperorship versus kingship -- you're speculating about what our interpretation is. But you don't need to speculate. We have been trying to tell you all along how we interpret these concepts. If you want to know, all you have to do is stop rejecting, contradicting, or ignoring what we're telling you. When I explain, e.g., how despotism can be chaotic if it causes chaos through instability, instead of reasserting your own contradictory interpretation again and again, try just saying, "Huh, that makes more sense, I understand better now how this system works for you, thank you."

Or you could keep arguing at people who are very obviously not buying what you're selling.

Up to you.

Well, you want to keep making this about me, so I guess I will have to go back to the why of this conversation.

Page 1, post 1, sentence 1

Jeremy Crawford has spoken about changes to the way alignment will be referred to in future D&D books.

So, the game designers are talking about changing alignment.

A little while ago, people said they didn't want that, because alignment gives them so much useful information about a monster or NPC as a DM.

I challenged that, putting forth that alignment doesn't actually do that. There is a lot of other information you have, as a DM, that is far more useful and helps you far more than alignment. In fact, alignment tends to be contradictory and we have to go and look at other lore to see what the real situation is.

Ok, now that I have yet again put forth why we are talking about alignment, let's actually discuss some things. For example. this part you posted

When I explain, e.g., how despotism can be chaotic if it causes chaos through instability, instead of reasserting your own contradictory interpretation again and again, try just saying, "Huh, that makes more sense, I understand better now how this system works for you, thank you."

Do you remember the question I asked after you explained that a despot is chaotic because the results of their actions were chaotic? Probably not since you never answered it.

I asked if a person who saves the life of an individual, with no prior knowledge of this individual, is Evil if that individual turns out to be a demon or other serial killer.

In other words, if the Despot is Chaotic because the results of their actions create more chaos, is the rescuer Evil because the results of their actions create more evil?


In general, I would say people would agree that this is not the case. You are not made evil for sparing the life of a person who goes on to do evil. It is your intent that matters, not the result. So why does this not apply to the Despot? If the Despot is using brutal force and laws to try and enforce order, why do we say they are Chaotic just because the results are chaotic? If we are going to look at how alignment plays out, shouldn't the standards be applied equally?

It seems to me that the people insisting that alignment works very well for them seem to be talking about the alignment system in their heads, not the one in the books, which might explain why they don't seem to understand how it could not work for me.

I mean, we've had almost half a dozen examples telling me that tribal people or nomadic people are naturally more chaotic than people who live in houses with law books. But, that is nonsensical. A law is not less of a law if it is passed down via oral tradition instead of printed our from a xerox machine. Laws are not made lesser if the people who follow them travel the world instead of settling down in a single location.

People seem to be trying apply standards that are not part of the system, and then defending the system based on those standards. And, I'm sorry, but whatever system you've developed over the years of playing the game is not what we are talking about. We are talking about what is in the books.