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<blockquote data-quote="183231bcb" data-source="post: 8029627" data-attributes="member: 7020751">I know this post was from many pages back, but this thread is moving fast so I'm just getting to it now.&nbsp; I don't see how 3e's often/usually/always would be an improvement.&nbsp; For starters, the Monster Manual said that members of an &quot;always &lt;alignment&gt;&quot; species aren't actually always of that alignment, which caused confusion for people who didn't read the MM carefully and thought &quot;always evil&quot; meant literally always with no exceptions.But the bigger problem is that even the descriptors &quot;often &lt;alignment&gt;&quot; and &quot;usually &lt;alignment&gt;&quot; is that it conflated race, religion, and culture.&nbsp; A hobgoblin who lives in a society which encourages evil acts and worships an evil god is more likely to be evil than not.&nbsp; A hobgoblin who is a member of the evil supervillain's evil organization is also more likely to be evil than not.&nbsp; A hobgoblin who does not live in a mostly-evil society has no particular reason that we should expect them to be evil.&nbsp; The Monster Manual in 3.5, however, presents the statblock which supposedly represents an entire species and says they are &quot;usually Lawful Evil.&quot;&nbsp; Maybe one could argue that in a setting-specific book, if most members of a species live in one particular society or belong to one particular organization, then you could say that members of that species are often or usually a certain alignment.&nbsp; But even then, there's no reason to expect that (for example) drow who don't worship Lolth would have a tendency towards a particular alignment.&nbsp; And such species-wide generalizations make even less sense in a supposedly setting-neutral core book like the Monster Manual.The best solution, IMO, is to reserve alignments for individuals and groups who are expected to share an ideology, and to leave alignments out of the statblocks that represent an entire species.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="183231bcb, post: 8029627, member: 7020751"] I know this post was from many pages back, but this thread is moving fast so I'm just getting to it now. I don't see how 3e's often/usually/always would be an improvement. For starters, the Monster Manual said that members of an "always <alignment>" species aren't actually always of that alignment, which caused confusion for people who didn't read the MM carefully and thought "always evil" meant literally always with no exceptions. But the bigger problem is that even the descriptors "often <alignment>" and "usually <alignment>" is that it conflated race, religion, and culture. A hobgoblin who lives in a society which encourages evil acts and worships an evil god is more likely to be evil than not. A hobgoblin who is a member of the evil supervillain's evil organization is also more likely to be evil than not. A hobgoblin who does not live in a mostly-evil society has no particular reason that we should expect them to be evil. The Monster Manual in 3.5, however, presents the statblock which supposedly represents an entire species and says they are "usually Lawful Evil." Maybe one could argue that in a setting-specific book, if most members of a species live in one particular society or belong to one particular organization, then you could say that members of that species are often or usually a certain alignment. But even then, there's no reason to expect that (for example) drow who don't worship Lolth would have a tendency towards a particular alignment. And such species-wide generalizations make even less sense in a supposedly setting-neutral core book like the Monster Manual. The best solution, IMO, is to reserve alignments for individuals and groups who are expected to share an ideology, and to leave alignments out of the statblocks that represent an entire species. [/QUOTE]

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