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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheSword" data-source="post: 8040606" data-attributes="member: 6879661">Couple of things after checking in...Hags are like family units not organization. They literally become more powerful by working as coven. They don’t work together because it’s efficient they do so because there are certain things they can only do as threes. Three witches has been a thing since, well, Greek times.You’re trying to look at specific creatures and say look... one aspect of how they behave looks lawful to me, and then say ha, alignment doesn’t work. However there are lots of things that influence this and you have to step back and see the bigger picture. How do they view society and the world. You’re trying to boil big vistas into small details and draw incorrect conclusions from that. Look at that pastoral landscape, there is a houses in it. Houses exist in towns so this must be an urban landscape instead. Step back stop trying to look for reasons why it doesn’t work and you’ll see that broadly it does.Alignments flexibility is a feature not a bug. It’s why in one campaign setting we can have fey that are playful, good natured and friendly, and in a grittier setting we can have fey that are whimsical, unpredictable, unstable and dangerous. Just by changing CG to CN. It tells me in two letters a wealth of information as DM about those particular fey. CG might say, you must go every hours you spend in our glade is like a year in the outside world. CN fey wouldn’t care, or might even think it’s funny.Lore descriptions are fine, but they only tell us what the writer thinks to tell us. The writer cant think of everything, neither should they have to. Alignment helps to fill the gaps and act as a starting point for a creative process. Most monsters have kept the same alignments for decades. They have been able to be reinvented in multiple settings by looking at different way alignment and physiology might make them behave. There are notable exceptions (Orcs, Drow) but designers are free to their creations if they want. It’s just that most don’t.Additionally most stat blocks (looking at the number released in the many campaign books have very little lore. Particularly the NPCs.Alignment is a universal system that can equally apply to a monster, a plane of existence, or a magic sword. That is a pretty flexible system to my mind and shouldnt be tossed away lightly.There is far too much nail biting based on the few lines in the PHB. The descriptions should probably be refined in a short essay in Xanathars Guide to expand on things. To help explain the difference between a moral code and a set of personal values. I’m comfortable with the difference but others seem to really find it difficult. Some need someone else to tell them what The right way to think is I guess.Alignment is not perfect, but it’s a flexible, nuanced system that’s helpful to me. It could be expanded upon for 5e to clarify it for those that aren’t familiar with it from earlier editions, or that can’t distance earlier editions from the things left behind. No alternative proposed, with the radicals saying we don’t need it... just use a page of lore instead that in many cases doesn’t exist.</blockquote>

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