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.

 

[Catolias]

Hopefully not. But .... are there applications to join the D&D Police?

"YOU! Drop that d20 right now! That's right. Drop it! We have reports that there have been people playing Druids wearing metal armor in this household. We are going to have to bring you down to the dunge... um, station."

I suspect if they are 5e D&D police they’d probably allow druids wearing metal armour. After all, as Mr Crawford reminds us, “D&D has general rules and exceptions to those rules.” Ergo, if everything is general, than nothing is specific and there are no rules.

 

[Remathilis]

Which is why flavor text matters. Flavor informs play − especially as default.

So for the sake of gaming, removing race tropes from flavor texts helps end the recycling of racist assumptions from an earlier era.

Remove and replace with...

That's the thing I think gives more than a few people pause: what after you replacing those race trope with? Are orcs no longer raiders but have towns, cities and nations? Do they have merchants and traders coming to local towns? Are there crafters and artisans? More importantly, if we are going to change both their physical and cultural elements to be less problematic, are they going to retain enough identity to still be orcs?

Even if D&D punts and says "orc culture is solely up to the DM to determine", you are just replacing the default with blank space. I kinda want to know WHAT is/will/should fill that gap now that orcs aren't CE raiders and destroyers.

 

[Remathilis]

I suspect if they are 5e D&D police they’d probably allow druids wearing metal armour. After all, as Mr Crawford reminds us, “D&D has general rules and exceptions to those rules.” Ergo, if everything is general, than nothing is specific and there are no rules.

Druids wearing nonmetallic armor IS the exception; the general rule is "a PC can wear any armor they're proficient with." Druids are proficient in all light, medium and shields, but only can wear them if they are made nonmetallic.

 

[Catolias]

Druids wearing nonmetallic armor IS the exception; the general rule is "a PC can wear any armor they're proficient with." Druids are proficient in all light, medium and shields, but only can wear them if they are made nonmetallic.

I know. However, my point (sarcastically) was that rules are sliding into guidelines to be used at the DM’s discretion. Discretion’s great but it becomes a real problem when that’s all there is. Too much discretion means the absence of rules and that creates confusion and one helluva mess.

 

[Panda-s1]

I know. However, my point (sarcastically) was that rules are sliding into guidelines to be used at the DM’s discretion. Discretion’s great but it becomes a real problem when that’s all there is. Too much discretion means the absence of rules and that creates confusion and one helluva mess.

yeah, can we not devolve into weird slippery slope arguments where D&D becomes a meaningless chaos of vague ideas?

seriously, the people in charge make a few statements about race and alignment going forward and some of you acting like ability scores are now meaningless and dice are literally getting thrown out the window.

Gary Gygax expressed such a view in 2005 across several posts on pages 3 and 4 of the linked thread.



Kay Wright Lewis, A Curse Upon the Nation (2017), on the 17th century origins of the term "nits make lice":

John Nalson, an English clergyman and historian, was told by a captain in the English army that “no manner of Compassion or Discrimination was shewed either to Age or Sex, but that the little Children were promiscuously sufferers with the Gulley [large knife], and that if any who had some grains of Compassion reprehended the Soldiers for this unchristian inhumanity, they would scoffingly reply, Why? Nits will be Lice, and so would dispatch them.” It is at this point that “the saying ‘Nits will make lice,’ which was constantly employed to justify the murder of Irish children,” became part of English vernacular.​

Gary Gygax is referring to its use by US Army Colonel John Chivington with regards to the Sand Creek massacre in 1864.

Sigh. I guess Gary, like Tolkien or Lovecraft, is a product of his time. Gary especially was a wargamer before RPGs existed, so I can imagine a lot of 60's and 70's era military think colored his perceptions. That said, Gary said these things 20 years after he had relinquished creative control of D&D and while that may have been a personal view of his, I don't necessarily see how it was a core element of D&D itself. It's not like that attitude is specifically reflected in the paladin, orc, or alignment sections of the PHB, for example.

That all being said, it probably explains Mordenkainen and Rolibar having an army of orcs far better than anything I saw prior...

I feel like Gary had this really antagonistic view of life in general. like not everything needs to be antagonistic, but when things seem diametrically opposed it's like a strength contest that always needs to be tested. I'm pretty sure he made it clear in 1st ed. AD&D that Dungeons & Dragons was supposed to be a primarily humano-centric game, and humans were generally neutral, which is why the things he says about good and evil are extreme; I'm pretty sure he laid out that being good or evil meant having some kind of absolute morality. the LG paladin might be obligated to kill an evil prisoner, but that probably doesn't apply to neutral characters.

this also appears as the DM (or rather, the "referee") being described as having an antagonistic relationship to the players. this of course is no longer the paradigm, instead most DMs today focus on collaborative storytelling (or at least that seems to be the general idea). I don't think this is tied to "fun" either, I'm pretty sure for Gary (and hopefully his players) being antagonistic was supposed to be "fun" the same way telling a story together is "supposed" to be fun.

 

[Azzy]

I kinda want to know WHAT is/will/should fill that gap now that orcs aren't CE raiders and destroyers.

Heh, I remember when they were LE in 1e.

 

[jsaving]

seriously, the people in charge make a few statements about race and alignment going forward and some of you acting like ability scores are now meaningless and dice are literally getting thrown out the window.

I am very puzzled by this as well. The only thing Jeremy actually said is something everyone who's read a Salvatore book or played BG/BG2 already knows -- people can choose their own alignment irrespective of the race that is written on their character sheet. If a reminder that people have free will causes you to conclude everything in the game is subjective now, you may want to reassess some of your assumptions.

 

[Remathilis]

Heh, I remember when they were LE in 1e.

To be fair, the alignment never matched the lore. But it did leave a lasting impression with Gruumsh being on Acheron (a LE plane) despite being CE in 3rd edition on...

 

[FrogReaver]

Well, it remains to be seen.



Disagree. Between cultural and religious indoctrination being very strong (we can look at the real world for many examples), and evil people don't typically think of themselves as evil (for instance proponents of imperialism and chattle slavery would tell you that what they are doing is proper and good for the people they oppress (see the whole "white man's burden" ideology). A lot of evil has been done with the justification that it was the right, moral thing to do. Even the nazis that they were moral and in the right.



They aren't the same. They just have free will like the other sapient species.





See, that's a very problematic worldview—the same worldview that was used to justify many, many nasty thing throughout history.



We don't need biological evil to have people rebel against or overcome their "nature". One can overcome indoctrination, vices, etc. We can see this with Joe Bednarsky, a former grand dragon off the kkk who has done many bad things, repented his former life and now worships in a black church and acts as the bodyguard for the (black) preacher. Another example is Malcolm X (who was not evil, let's get that out of the way). As a member of the Nation of Islam, he became indoctrinated into some very problematic worldviews that NOI has (anti-Semetism being among them, and the "white devil" thing). However, his travels to Africa and the Middle East opened his eyes to his prejudices and helped him overcome that to become more inclusive and distance himself from the NOI. It's truly a shame that he was assassinated only a few years later. We can have redemption stories without implicit evil.

In the grand scheme of things the truth is never problematic. The reason that the notion of people of different skin colors having different natures is dangerous in the real world is that it isn't true. In a fantasy world people of different species or even of different skin colors can actually have different natures. That can be a truth of a given fantasy world. That is to say, it's not inherently wrong for such a fantasy world to exist and be played in. It's not racist, it makes no one racist, etc. That said I can understand why someone might prefer a different fantasy setting - one where there's a sameness to the various humanoid races natures toward good and evil.

My objection is not the inclusion of such a fantasy setting. My objection is the outright removal of the other.

IMO cultural and religious indoctrination and stories of redemption of those involved in problematic ideologies are not the same as stories about overcoming your inherent nature.

 

[Maxperson]

Again. Until the core books specifically outline what is defined as Good and what is Evil, D&D morality might as well be subjective.

You're trying to point to the in-universe cosmology as a justification for arguing objective morality, but as far as I can remember, D&D has never actually done so.

Since RAW doesn't bother to define what Good and Evil actually are, players are left in the dark. What is Good, what is Evil? D&D's lore has never answered that satisfactorily, no matter how insistently they claim to have done so.

At that point, the morality of the world ends up being up to player adjudication, so the idea of D&D morality being objective is a non-starter.

Yes and no. The morality will be what those running the game decide it is, sure. But that morality will become objective within the game. If the DM decides that all killing, even in self-defense is evil, then in the game it doesn't matter how good a race thinks killing is, it's going to be evil for them anyway.