D&D 4E Would you have alignment in 4e?

[Dagnir]

wait, hold up..... 4e?????? what rumor is this???? i never heard of it???? well once as a april fools joke i think from wotc.

 

[arscott]

D20 Modern Allegiance system would be the way to go. It allows for both the "alignment is a fundamental part of D&D" and "alignment is far to simplistic and should be banished to a series of netherhells which may or may not be evil" styles of play.

 

[johnsemlak]

Keep Alignment in D&D.

It's a useful structure for organizing pantheons, cosmologies, magic, etc. It's also heavily intergrated into D&D already, and taking it out might unravel the great game that we play.

At the end of the day I think a lot of gamers don't mind a B&W good versus evil campaign, and poeple who want a 'grey' morality system can leave it out.

 

[rounser]

Wow, taking stuff for granted much are we???

Like a class, an alignment tells you with a single word masses of information that are directly relevant to how you should play that character. It's not sophisticated, but rather it's shorthand, so people take it for granted and think they're above it, ignorant of the large amount of work it's doing for them and the space it's saving.

Take away "evil" from "evil wizard", and you've lost a lot of information. Now do that to the entire monster manual. Ditching alignment is suddenly not such a hot idea....in fact, it's outright dumb.

And it does have a mechanical purpose; it tells you who suffers from Protection from Good.

The way it's implemented is another matter (e.g. the straightjacket approach), but again, the concept should not necessarily be dropped because the implementation is shoddy.

Given that whenever a convenience like this or the class-based system comes up and everyone wants to ditch it, or the implied setting as a whole, ignorant of the huge amount of work it's doing for everyone, I'm rather glad that you guys aren't designing 4E!

(Quite frankly, if there is no game mechanical reason for alignment to exist, then it should be gone).

Quite frankly? Sheesh Merric, maybe we should do away with monster names too, there's no mechanical reason for them either! None of these mechanically irrelevant tags like "goblin" or "red dragon", we'll call them all "Monster" and be done with it...

 

[MerricB]

And it does have a mechanical purpose; it tells you who suffers from Protection from Good.

Indeed it does. I did vote "yes" on keep alignments, incidentally. I don't like the idea of losing alignment. (I do want them to be more than just a penalty, though).

Cheers!

 

[Sledge]

I'll add another definite yes. I don't want anything more complicated for management. I don't want to drop to standards applied by alignment. I like having evil creatures.
In fact the only tweak I would put in would be to make it clear that for most it shouldn't be a straightjacket, unless the subject is an [Evil] critter.
Never let it go. Oh and Law and Chaos rock as well. I'm a big fan of Moorcock.

 

[trancejeremy]

I like it. However, I think people use it incorrectly, though.

There was a very early article in Dragon by Gary Gygax on alignment and it had a chart of the alignment spectrum, and where various archetypes/critters were on it. Not just 9 different types, there was a lot of shades of grey in it.


Still, in its very original form, it was borrowed from Michael Moorcock and Poul Anderson. Moorcock has done the most with it - most (and we're talking dozens) of his novels deal with the struggle between Chaos and Law. So maybe the good/evil axis should be dropped? (or not).

 

[Herobizkit]

Like a class, an alignment tells you with a single word masses of information that are directly relevant to how you should play that character.

I'm not sure I completely agree with you, rounser. While an alignment does give you a clue as to how the character "should" act, I come from the school that a person/character is judged by their actions; a character acts the way he wants because he wants to, not because he has an alignment.

I mean, let's face it... if a character has (for example) LG on his sheet and he regularly kills defenseless people, the DM is going to change the character's alignment to something more suitable (which invalidates the character choosing LG in the first place). The character probably shouldn't have picked LG anyway. Now, what if the LG character regularly kills defenseless orcs? Suddenly, he's a hero... but what makes killing defenseless orcs okay but not humans? That little 'E' tacked on to the orcs' alignment. Silly, really. Shouldn't all life be protected? What about slaughtering orc children? Because they will grow up to be evil, a LG character (and a Paladin, especially) is probably within his rights to bump them off. And don't even get me started on the whole Detect (alignment) spells.

Take away "evil" from "evil wizard", and you've lost a lot of information.

Not really. Without the word 'evil', you have a wizard who looks like any other wizard you might normally see. To me, this makes sense and is much more believable. What does an "evil" wizard look like? Does this "evil" wizard do nothing but commit evil acts everywhere he goes? Doesn't seem very bright. I guess evil must also mean stupid.

Now do that to the entire monster manual. Ditching alignment is suddenly not such a hot idea....in fact, it's outright dumb.

I've read the entire GURPS Monster Manual. GURPS does not use an alignment system. Reading the monster's description (and in most cases, seeing the picture), it becomes obvious what monsters are designed to be opponents for PCs. In fact, by definition, any monster in the MM can be an opponent for PCs... why should alignment have to be the judge?

And it does have a mechanical purpose; it tells you who suffers from Protection from Good.

So you're saying the purpose to have alignment is to allow the existence of spells to counter/defeat/protect someone with an alignment? Redundant much?

I'm a firm believer in non-alignment. Let the heroes with the shades of grey overcome the light and dark of the D&D world!

 

[FireLance]

I vote to keep alignment, but for metagame reasons: to help weed out players that I probably won't enjoy playing with or DMing for. Basically, anyone who doesn't have a "Good" alignment component.

 

[rounser]

I come from the school that a person/character is judged by their actions

Perhaps then you should state that alignment is more useful for NPCs than for PCs, then, because the alignment gives the DM an indicator of how to play the 50th NPC they're playing that day.

Similarly to how the character creation rules suit PCs more than they do NPCs (way too time consuming), alignment suits NPCs more than it does PCs. This is a flaw in implementation, then - I'm sure with enough imagination you could redesign alignment rules to cater for PCs, just as you could redesign character creation to cater for NPCs. The symmetry of approach for NPCs and PCs falls down in these areas, I think.

Not really. Without the word 'evil', you have a wizard who looks like any other wizard you might normally see. To me, this makes sense and is much more believable. What does an "evil" wizard look like? Does this "evil" wizard do nothing but commit evil acts everywhere he goes? Doesn't seem very bright. I guess evil must also mean stupid.

"Evil wizard" is obviously part of the script the DM sees for playing that character, not what the PCs see when they meet the wizard. Duh...

GURPS does not use an alignment system. Reading the monster's description (and in most cases, seeing the picture), it becomes obvious what monsters are designed to be opponents for PCs.

As opposed to reading it in the stat block in under a second. It's an advantage of D&D that you can do this, not a disadvantage. Likewise, "lawful evil 15th level fighter" conveys a lot of information about that character which I doubt GURPs can match, and is one of the unsung features of D&D that no-one seems to recognise and therefore takes for granted, or downplays, or considers unsophisticated and beneath them...all the while reaping the benefits of it.

So you're saying the purpose to have alignment is to allow the existence of spells to counter/defeat/protect someone with an alignment? Redundant much?

No, it's a counterexample to Merric's contention that it has no mechanical use. It does. Wards against - and divinations of - evil and good are fantasy conventions, and the alignment system facilitates them. I consider the "here's a moral snapshot of this character" shorthand more useful than any mechanical advantages, though.

I'm a firm believer in non-alignment. Let the heroes with the shades of grey overcome the light and dark of the D&D world!

Um...ever heard of neutral alignment? Militant, active neutrality doesn't seem to get much exposure, which is an unfortunate byproduct of D&D's alignment system...black and white are seen as more dynamic than grey, but it doesn't have to be played that way, it's just a D&D cultural thing I think.