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<blockquote data-quote="Remathilis" data-source="post: 8027494" data-attributes="member: 7635">The thing is, alignment in D&amp;D used to have two purposes, to describe the tendencies of an individual and to describe the overwhelming tendencies of a group of people, be it a town, nation, organization, guild, religion or (yes) a race or species. It didn't describe EVERY memeber of said group, but used to be a way of summarizing the tendencies and danger level of the larger group. Hommlett was NG, Cormyr was LG, The Zhentarium was LE, etc. For example, the First Order in Star Wars is pretty Lawful Evil. Snoke seems very LE, Phasma is very LE, and Hux is quintessential LE. However, Finn is clearly not Evil, or even Lawful. Even Kylo Renn, while very dagnasty evil, is way too emotional and hectic to be at all Lawful. Yet I doubt anyone would argue that the First Order isnt' LE due to these outliers, nor that those two must be LE due to the fact they were associated with the FO. What WotC is now reacting to this notion that larger groups of people can have a social alignment that may not align personally with the individual. Its starting with removing racial tendencies (so that orcs won't be generally CE and elves CG) but it will expand to not giving any group an alignment. Not all citizens of Thay are evil or Cormyr good, Not all Zhents are evil or Harpers good, and not all stormtroopers evil and resistance good. So the social alignment is going to disappear as a concept. That will only leave alignment as a tool to describe individuals, and there is a better system for handling that: bonds/flaws/ideals. Its almost trivial to keep alignment at this point outside a few archaic magic item interaction rules.Believe me, Alignment is dead-rule walking.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Remathilis, post: 8027494, member: 7635"] The thing is, alignment in D&D used to have two purposes, to describe the tendencies of an individual and to describe the overwhelming tendencies of a group of people, be it a town, nation, organization, guild, religion or (yes) a race or species. It didn't describe EVERY memeber of said group, but used to be a way of summarizing the tendencies and danger level of the larger group. Hommlett was NG, Cormyr was LG, The Zhentarium was LE, etc. For example, the First Order in Star Wars is pretty Lawful Evil. Snoke seems very LE, Phasma is very LE, and Hux is quintessential LE. However, Finn is clearly not Evil, or even Lawful. Even Kylo Renn, while very dagnasty evil, is way too emotional and hectic to be at all Lawful. Yet I doubt anyone would argue that the First Order isnt' LE due to these outliers, nor that those two must be LE due to the fact they were associated with the FO. What WotC is now reacting to this notion that larger groups of people can have a social alignment that may not align personally with the individual. Its starting with removing racial tendencies (so that orcs won't be generally CE and elves CG) but it will expand to not giving any group an alignment. Not all citizens of Thay are evil or Cormyr good, Not all Zhents are evil or Harpers good, and not all stormtroopers evil and resistance good. So the social alignment is going to disappear as a concept. That will only leave alignment as a tool to describe individuals, and there is a better system for handling that: bonds/flaws/ideals. Its almost trivial to keep alignment at this point outside a few archaic magic item interaction rules. Believe me, Alignment is dead-rule walking. [/QUOTE]

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