5e Alignment "Guide" & end-of-2017 argument thread

[PhoenixPhyre]

All of this makes me very glad I removed alignment as a thing root and branch from my setting. Outsiders? No fixed alignment. There are malicious angels and virtuous devils/demons. Items? Those clauses don't exist, or the items (amulet of pure good, etc) don't exist. Sprites' heart sense--well, first, sprites don't exist (a related elemental creature kinda exists, but sprites don't). Second, such an ability would test how tainted your soul is by mucking around with soul-consumption magics (of which necromancy is one of many types). Essentially, how demonic are you (where "demon" <==> "consumes souls for power"). All of this is part of my session 0, and reinforced later on so there are no surprises.

If a character wants to write down an alignment for personal use (as a role-playing aid), fine. I won't ask, I won't use that knowledge in any way. All I care about is how your character acts. You claim (in character) to be good but are a mass murderer or zealot? The world's going to react to you based on your actions. You claim (again, in character) to be evil but love to hug puppies and actually don't do anything to harm anyone? That's how you'll be treated.

For that matter, my (self-bestowed) nickname at work is "Dr Evil." I make a grand production of claiming to be evil, and justifying my decisions based on my evilness. When my students ask "Can I do X" (where X is something against the rules, or otherwise obnoxious), my answer can be "No, because I'm evil." "Why do we have to take a test? Because I'm evil." Underneath, I'm actually a teddy-bear, a total softy. And the kids know that. Deeds will out.

[Luccan]

If a character wants to write down an alignment for personal use (as a role-playing aid), fine. I won't ask, I won't use that knowledge in any way. All I care about is how your character acts. You claim (in character) to be good but are a mass murderer or zealot? The world's going to react to you based on your actions. You claim (again, in character) to be evil but love to hug puppies and actually don't do anything to harm anyone? That's how you'll be treated.

I mean, you can play a character who thinks their actions are justified, have people react accordingly, and still use the alignment system. You just have to be playing with people willing to act with a certain level of thought as to how their actions should reflect on their alignment.

I figure alignment is a roleplaying aid when you start and from then on, your actions define your alignment. In other words, don't put that LG down if you're going to start the game acting CN. But if you end up going from LG to CN over the course of the game, then you should write LG down at the beginning and adjust as you and your DM (who should have some say over the expectations for alignment in the game) think it's appropriate to start that shift.

Of course, alignment works best when you have people who trust each other. If your group feels they can't, well really they shouldn't be playing together, but if it just can't agree on alignment parameters, it's probably best to drop it. Save alignment detection for exemplar types.

[Malifice]

To be clear, the Gods don’t decide anything about Alignment... it is a higher order decision in the Cosmology than the Gods are, and they are just as subject to it as anyone. Things are not Good because Pelor likes them, and Gods can (and have) has their alignments change over the eons.

Tell that to the faithless that Kelemvor turns into wallpaper.

When your 'LG' Paladin of Torm (responsible for genocide of a nearby Orc nation) rocks up to the Fugue plane on death, he gets judged faithless (evil) and gets walled in.

Because he's really (objectively) evil.

Same deal when he attempts to pick up a Talisman of Ultimate Good. It burns him. Likely to his great surprise.

[Malifice]

Gods and PCs aren't real and do not exist at the Player / DM level. Nor does Alignment.

Neither does alignment. They're all contrivances of a fantasy world.

'The Gods view you as evil, so you are. If you dont like it, there is the door.'

No arguments, simple and effective.

[krugaan]

Neither does alignment. They're all contrivances of a fantasy world.

'The Gods view you as evil, so you are. If you dont like it, there is the door.'

No arguments, simple and effective.

Black and white!

Neutral is for *******!

[War_lord]

Point of order: At this point it's very very clear that the official line is that D&D is a multiverse. That is to that that Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Grayhawk, Darksun, Dragonlance, Birthright, everybody's homebrew worlds and Nentir Vale all exist within the same reality with the asterisk that the worlds that don't work with kitchen sink elements (i.e. Eberron and Darksun) get to say that they're "hard to reach", so the authors can escape having to deal with the possible ramifications.

What I'm getting at, is that, for all these worlds to have the alignment system in them, alignment has to be some sort of universal truth, divorced from any one set of gods.

[Regitnui]

What I'm getting at, is that, for all these worlds to have the alignment system in them, alignment has to be some sort of universal truth, divorced from any one set of gods.

Addendum; Eberron has "soft" alignment. There's no Wall of the Faithless or divine reward for your actions. An Evil innkeeper doesn't worship demons and sacrifice virgins in her basement, she overcharges people and keeps money for herself. In Eberron, alignment is most definitely a roleplaying aid. The best example I can give you is two kings;

Queen Aurala is a NG monarch trying to restart the continent-spanning war that lasted a century because she believes the kingdom would be truly better under her rule. She uses whatever she has available, but won't unnecessarily hurt people or risk the lives of her subjects, current or future, to achieve this. She's also largely considered a cold manipulative ice queen.

King Kaius III is a LE warlord of warlords trying to maintain the tenuous peace that exists. Because he is LE, he will do anything and everything he can to do this, up to and including personally murdering dissidents and rivals while keeping the country he rules under martial law two years after the war ends. He's also considered a weak, if ruthless and good, ruler by his subjects.

So the cosmic overarching principle of FR doesn't apply to Eberron. A CE person is not automatically worthy of death, even in the eyes of the hardline LG religion.

[Luccan]

Addendum; Eberron has "soft" alignment. There's no Wall of the Faithless or divine reward for your actions. An Evil innkeeper doesn't worship demons and sacrifice virgins in her basement, she overcharges people and keeps money for herself. In Eberron, alignment is most definitely a roleplaying aid. The best example I can give you is two kings;

Queen Aurala is a NG monarch trying to restart the continent-spanning war that lasted a century because she believes the kingdom would be truly better under her rule. She uses whatever she has available, but won't unnecessarily hurt people or risk the lives of her subjects, current or future, to achieve this. She's also largely considered a cold manipulative ice queen.

King Kaius III is a LE warlord of warlords trying to maintain the tenuous peace that exists. Because he is LE, he will do anything and everything he can to do this, up to and including personally murdering dissidents and rivals while keeping the country he rules under martial law two years after the war ends. He's also considered a weak, if ruthless and good, ruler by his subjects.

So the cosmic overarching principle of FR doesn't apply to Eberron. A CE person is not automatically worthy of death, even in the eyes of the hardline LG religion.

To be fair, the Wall has squat to do with your alignment and everything to do with not worshiping the Faerun deities (they're a bit insecure). Also, I'd argue none of the settings require evil people to worship demons (or commit other forms of non-nuanced evil behavior). In point of fact, unless you're nuts like a gnoll, worshiping demons seems like something any thinking evil doer would stay away from.

Deals with devils are one thing: if you can negotiate a deal your willing to pay up on and mind the fine print, you'll have all the power your evil scheme needs. Demons are crazy.

Edit: Also, that just sounds like Eberron doesn't use alignment properly, nothing "soft" about it. Kaius sounds LN (well, except maybe the murder dissidents part) and Aurala sounds somewhere south of Good, at least, she just thinks she's the best option and that restarting the mega-war is the best way to take power.

Edit 2: This is more minor and comes from my view of mercy being a trait of Good alignments, but a LG person or group shouldn't be out to kill everyone who detects as Evil. Any group concerned with detecting alignments should be aware they can be faked and more importantly, that people can change. In fact, I figure being Lawful, they'd be more for an actual trial if they suspect wrong doing, rather than outright killing a man in the middle of the street because he detected as evil. That's how you get the Paladins no one wants to play with.

[War_lord]

Addendum; Eberron has "soft" alignment. There's no Wall of the Faithless or divine reward for your actions. An Evil innkeeper doesn't worship demons and sacrifice virgins in her basement, she overcharges people and keeps money for herself. In Eberron, alignment is most definitely a roleplaying aid. The best example I can give you is two kings;

The Wall isn't a punishment for being evil. The wall is a punishment for not worship any god. Because if people in the Realms didn't worship any god and got away with it, the gods would lose their powers. Why is that a problem? Because the gods of the Realms need to do specific things to keep the world running, otherwise the whole thing collapses and Ao has to start again. Ao doesn't care that the wall is kind of a **** move because Ao only cares about keeping that world running.

There's no requirement that you sacrifice virgins or worship demons to be evil. I'll get back to why (Baker has admitted) overcharging people is considered Evil in Eberron instead of Neutral. To the surprise of basically no one who isn't part of the fanboy brigade, it's not some deep cosmic thing.

It's still not a roleplaying aid in Eberron though. In fact, the super broad definition of evil in Eberron makes it even less valid as a roleplaying aid. In Eberron writing evil on your character sheet can mean anything from "I murder and eat little girls" to "I regularly fart on the Lightning Rail and then blame it on other passengers". It's rendered meaningless by design (For a reason I shall get to shortly)

Queen Aurala is a NG monarch trying to restart the continent-spanning war that lasted a century because she believes the kingdom would be truly better under her rule. She uses whatever she has available, but won't unnecessarily hurt people or risk the lives of her subjects, current or future, to achieve this. She's also largely considered a cold manipulative ice queen.

King Kaius III is a LE warlord of warlords trying to maintain the tenuous peace that exists. Because he is LE, he will do anything and everything he can to do this, up to and including personally murdering dissidents and rivals while keeping the country he rules under martial law two years after the war ends. He's also considered a weak, if ruthless and good, ruler by his subjects.

Please point me to definitely not good things Aurala has done.

Kaius is a Vampire, of course he's evil. Even Keith Baker agrees that Vampire inherently means evil.

So the cosmic overarching principle of FR doesn't apply to Eberron. A CE person is not automatically worthy of death, even in the eyes of the hardline LG religion.

I get that as an Eberron fanboy a huge part of your motivation is that you have a hate on for FR. And I'm far from knowledgeable about FR. But I really am curious about which 5e sources says that everyone Chaotic Evil automatically deserves to die. The existence of the kingdom of Many-Arrows rather goes against that. The idea that chaotic evil automatically means should genocide is a player meme. Not something the game seems to suggest is a natural conclusion.

The closest thing I remember from SCAG is that some sects of Kelemvor actively seek out and destroy undead of any kind or any knowledge of how to create undead. But that's a Lawful Neutral cult, and it goes on to point out that this behavior often puts them at odds with neutral or even benevolent keepers of knowledge and leads to them hunting even the few good forms of undead.

There's an Eberron faction that does the exact same thing.

Also, that just sounds like Eberron doesn't use alignment properly, nothing "soft" about it.

Baker actually admits to deliberately using a super broad definition of Evil and a super narrow definition of Neutral specifically to trip up the alignment detecting magic that was so prevalent in 3.5e in his blog. A lot of the supposed "unique" elements of Eberron are actually just either logically incorporating 3.5e's problems into the world or making hacky workarounds for those problems. As it was an official setting he had to fit the "core" rules of D&D into the campaign setting, even if they didn't make much sense thematically. I recommend reading his blog even if you're not interested in Eberron, he has some interesting things to say. He's not like his "fans" at all.

So it's not that they didn't know how it's meant to work, they knew how it worked and choose to bend the rules a bit because of the limitations they had to work with at the time.

[Regitnui]

I get that as an Eberron fanboy a huge part of your motivation is that you have a hate on for FR. And I'm far from knowledgeable about FR.

Were the insults really necessary? I'm bringing up how a certain setting uses alignment. There is no 5e Eberron. So I referred to how it was handled in 3.5. Stop going off on your hatedom whenever someone brings up Eberron. You have an allergic reaction when it's brought up positively or as a comparison to FR. That's great. Go see a doctor about that.

Now to take care of what you actually said, before you insulted me for no good reason.

What I'm trying to point out is that by using a "softer" or "broader" alignment than the other settings at the time, Eberron gave the world a little more ambiguity and made the alignments less unforgiving and prescriptive. If the Evil innkeeper overcharges your adventurers for a night's stay, it's an opportunity for roleplay. How do you deal with someone who is making life difficult for your character when violence is inappropriate?

Queen Aurala is actively encouraging the overthrow of the monarchy in Breland, denied refugees from the destroyed Cyre asylum, and manipulates her family and nobles as pieces on a chessboard by using her spy network. None of those acts are explicitly Evil, even by real life standards, but they're not good either.

Kaius' idea of negotiations is coldblooded torture after one chance to declare loyalty, protects the Talenta Plains halfling tribes so that they secure his southern border but encourages their enemies to attack so he has an excuse to keep troops there, offers support and funds to the Cyran refugees son they set up a new country in the middle of his biggest rival kingdom, and has stopped the creation of undead soldiers. Those are good actions, but driven entirely by self-interest and therefore his Evil (selfish and ruthless) alignment.

There you go. A Good character doing bad things and an Evil character doing good things. Alignment is best a little fuzzy, in my opinion, and please don't insult me again. It's rude.

[smcmike]

Tell that to the faithless that Kelemvor turns into wallpaper.

When your 'LG' Paladin of Torm (responsible for genocide of a nearby Orc nation) rocks up to the Fugue plane on death, he gets judged faithless (evil) and gets walled in.

Because he's really (objectively) evil.

Same deal when he attempts to pick up a Talisman of Ultimate Good. It burns him. Likely to his great surprise.

Neither does alignment. They're all contrivances of a fantasy world.

'The Gods view you as evil, so you are. If you dont like it, there is the door.'

No arguments, simple and effective.

The point is that alignment is not necessarily tied to the Gods, and that even if the Gods act as judge, jury, and executioner, they are applying a law that is beyond their whims.

Let’s say I play a proper paladin, one who doesn’t do genocide or whatever other horrible thing you want to insert here. He’s Good, by any reasonable definition. He dies.

The DM announces “you are judged to be evil, and sent to the lower planes for an eternity of torment. Roll a new character.”

The DM says he was evil. Since the Gods are controlled by the DM, the Gods say he was evil. They are all wrong.

[Vaz]

With respect to the ongoing conversation, the less War_lord has chance to spout about ethics the better, as he/she gets aggressive to defend what someone else thinks, as their entire argument revolves around what the book says despite the complaints raised about what the book says, and then proceeds to abandon any concept of critical thinking.

[War_lord]

What I'm trying to point out is that by using a "softer" or "broader" alignment than the other settings at the time, Eberron gave the world a little more ambiguity and made the alignments less unforgiving and prescriptive. If the Evil innkeeper overcharges your adventurers for a night's stay, it's an opportunity for roleplay. How do you deal with someone who is making life difficult for your character when violence is inappropriate?

Actually, I disagree. The actual effect is that alignment is deliberately overly unforgiving, in order to render it totally worthless as a concept. In Baker's Eberron, an Innkeep who waters down their ale is evil, a tax collector who strictly follows the laws they're acting under is evil, hell someone who could murder or steal pings as evil in Baker's Eberron. The whole point of it (and I'm paraphrasing Baker himself here) is that if a Paladin walks into a typica Inn and uses Alignment sense, 3 people in there will ping as evil. At that point "evil" isn't ambiguous, it's totally meaningless. It's not actually a morally ambiguous world, it's a morally obfuscated world, worse, it's obfuscated mainly through metagaming.

Queen Aurala is actively encouraging the overthrow of the monarchy in Breland, denied refugees from the destroyed Cyre asylum, and manipulates her family and nobles as pieces on a chessboard by using her spy network. None of those acts are explicitly Evil, even by real life standards, but they're not good either.

Starting wars and manipulating people isn't actually evil.

Kaius' idea of negotiations is coldblooded torture after one chance to declare loyalty, protects the Talenta Plains halfling tribes so that they secure his southern border but encourages their enemies to attack so he has an excuse to keep troops there, offers support and funds to the Cyran refugees son they set up a new country in the middle of his biggest rival kingdom, and has stopped the creation of undead soldiers. Those are good actions, but driven entirely by self-interest and therefore his Evil (selfish and ruthless) alignment.

Kaius is a vampire, he could dedicate his whole life to saving sick orphan puppies and he'd still be evil. He doesn't even have to do anything. By Keith Baker's logic, merely being capable of doing evil things makes him evil.

With respect to the ongoing conversation, the less War_lord has chance to spout about ethics the better, as he/she gets aggressive to defend what someone else thinks, as their entire argument revolves around what the book says despite the complaints raised about what the book says, and then proceeds to abandon any concept of critical thinking.

I care about what the book says, because I play D&D. If you want to write an RPG with whatever you took away from Philosophy class, great, I'm sure someone will care enough to discuss that. I'm not that person, and this is not that board.

[Vaz]

If you're unwilling to discuss, then why are you discussing? You're just proseletyzing at this stage, and ignoring the fact that the book has discrepancies, while also allowing a certain aspect of open interpretation with a wide window of possibilities.

You can't use that in a discussion about a rule which states one thing that is open to interpretation (i. E Trance and resting) which is being discussed and then saying 'well the book says'... We know what the book says, you're adding nothing to the discussion apart from aggro, and taking away the discussion from people who are willing to discuss. So the question is 'Why are you here'?

[War_lord]

If you're unwilling to discuss, then why are you discussing? You're just proseletyzing at this stage, and ignoring the fact that the book has discrepancies

The book does have discrepancies, those discrepancies exist because the team was pretty clearly split on how to deal with alignment. However...

while also allowing a certain aspect of open interpretation with a wide window of possibilities.

...Those discrepancies are not a space for you to start infodumping your Philosophy notes onto us like it's wisdom from on high.

You can't use that in a discussion about a rule which states one thing that is open to interpretation (i. E Trance and resting) which is being discussed and then saying 'well the book says'... We know what the book says, you're adding nothing to the discussion apart from aggro, and taking away the discussion from people who are willing to discuss. So the question is 'Why are you here'?

I'm here to discuss alignment in 5e, the topic of this thread, which is in the 5th edition forum. Not the "Vaz's personal beliefs" forum. There was actually a fairly productive discussion going till the usual suspects arrived.

[Millstone85]

The point is that alignment is not necessarily tied to the Gods, and that even if the Gods act as judge, jury, and executioner, they are applying a law that is beyond their whims.

Let’s say I play a proper paladin, one who doesn’t do genocide or whatever other horrible thing you want to insert here. He’s Good, by any reasonable definition. He dies.

The DM announces “you are judged to be evil, and sent to the lower planes for an eternity of torment. Roll a new character.”

The DM says he was evil. Since the Gods are controlled by the DM, the Gods say he was evil. They are all wrong.

Even if the planes are above the gods, the DM controls those too.

If the planes are in turn under the One True God, then He is an NPC as well.

The DM gets to make a fictional universe where their definition of good is the only reasonable one.

It is that much of a power trip.

[War_lord]

Even if the planes are above the gods, the DM controls those too.

If the planes are in turn under the One True God, then He is an NPC as well.

The DM gets to make a fictional universe where their definition of good is the only reasonable one.

It is that much of a power trip.

I have a succinct response to that.

If you don't trust your DM, why are you playing with them?

[Unoriginal]

You know, this discussion would be a lot better if you actually talked about 5e's alignments and not about the 3.5's ones.


5e's alignment systemis not the 3.5 one. Therefore, bringing Eberron or 3.5 era Forgotten Realms is irrelevent.

For exemple, there is no indication 5e's FR has a Wall of the Faithless, to my knowledge.

5e's alignments are nothing more and nothing less that what the PHB and other books say about them.

Your PC malevolent any time they can get away with it? Neutral evil. Your PC does good deeds in a way that fit society most of the time? Lawful good. Your PC follow their whims without much care or ill-intent directed to others? Chaotic neutral.


Alignments in previous editions was a bloody mess. And last time I've checked, this thread's title wasn't "let's ruin 5e's alignment by talking about other editions".

[War_lord]

For exemple, there is no indication 5e's FR has a Wall of the Faithless, to my knowledge.

SCAG pg 20. "The truly false and faithless are mortared in the Wall of the Faithless... where their souls slowly dissolve and begin to become part of the stuff of the Wall itself"

[smcmike]

Even if the planes are above the gods, the DM controls those too.

If the planes are in turn under the One True God, then He is an NPC as well.

The DM gets to make a fictional universe where their definition of good is the only reasonable one.

It is that much of a power trip.

I don’t buy it.

The DM’s power is entirely based upon the consent of the players. There is an informal contract involved, which often includes an expectation that the DM will use the rules more or less as they appear in the books. Arbitrarily declaring characters evil without any basis in the books or in real-world morality is a violation of this agreement, and is likely to cause the player to withdraw consent (walk).

This is akin to a DM declaring during play that the 20 you just rolled is a miss, without any justification.

[Unoriginal]

SCAG pg 20. "The truly false and faithless are mortared in the Wall of the Faithless... where their souls slowly dissolve and begin to become part of the stuff of the Wall itself"

My bad. Do they say how you qualify for "truly false and faithless"?

[War_lord]

My bad. Do they say how you qualify for "truly false and faithless"?

Souls that don't get collected by servants of a god (the DMG heavily implies this process takes place in Hades) are judged by Kelemvor, then:

"Some are charged with guiding lost souls, while others are transformed into squirming larvae and cast into the dust"

And it then goes on to say the line about the truly false and faithless ending up in the wall.

The DMG stats Larvae as neutral evil fiends that are just intelligent enough to suffer, retain only faint memories of their former life, and wriggle around waiting to be eaten by a fiend or used in a ritual by a Night hag or Rakshasa.

This is an opinion statement, but I think the implication is that faithless who were good people in life get the guide spot, the evil or arrogant get turned into Larvae and the Wall is reserved for the particularly horrible.

[KorvinStarmast]

If I say that you're starting to tend towards Chaotic Neutral, if I then later change your alignment. I'm not making a values judgement on the validity of your roleplay, I'm not "forcing" you to play your character differently. I'm just updating your alignment. If you really don't want to switch, you have to reflect that in your character's behavior going forward.

This ties into the matter of consequences in role playing games. The RP you present as a player interacts with the game world, and there are consequences to your decisions and actions, be they beneficial or otherwise. This is where a DM/GM ruling that an alignment as manifested by decisions, choices, and behaviors is changing to another alignment is faithfully doing what a DM should be doing: playing the part of the rest of the world where the character is doing whatever that character does. The option to change back (IMO) needs to be there; that path needs to be open, since change and character growth go hand in hand. (It's a point where I never agreed with EGG's "you never get to be the LG Paladin after one slip up" as regards that particular alignment constrained class ...)

Arbitrarily declaring characters evil without any basis in the books or in real-world morality is a violation of this agreement, and is likely to cause the player to withdraw consent (walk). This is akin to a DM declaring during play that the 20 you just rolled is a miss, without any justification.

Which goes back to the matter of "in good faith" that we addressed previously. Thanks for spelling that out.

[Regitnui]

5e's alignment systemis not the 3.5 one. Therefore, bringing Eberron or 3.5 era Forgotten Realms is irrelevent.

I brought up Eberron not as a "rabid fanboy", but as a way of saying alignment can be treated as murky, even in the unforgiving days of 3.5. 5e's alignment isn't the same thing. But looking at a setting where Evil people aren't necessarily horrible people (and Neutral is the vast majority of people) shows how alignment can be made just as much a roleplay aid as the other Traits.

[Millstone85]

Arbitrarily declaring characters evil without any basis in the books or in real-world morality is a violation of this agreement, and is likely to cause the player to withdraw consent (walk).

I do expect it to be based on real-world morality, namely the moral convictions of the DM.

If you don't trust your DM, why are you playing with them?

How would you go about trusting a DM with such a responsibility? What would you trust them to do?

So far, I haven't actually seen alignment detection in play. No sprite with Heart Sight, no sword that only the just may wield...

[War_lord]

I brought up Eberron not as a "rabid fanboy", but as a way of saying alignment can be treated as murky, even in the unforgiving days of 3.5. 5e's alignment isn't the same thing. But looking at a setting where Evil people aren't necessarily horrible people (and Neutral is the vast majority of people) shows how alignment can be made just as much a roleplay aid as the other Traits.

In Eberron Evil people are horrible people. Someone who does horrible things to "good" ends is still a horrible person. Someone who is truly capable of doing horrible things with no remorse but doesn't is still a horrible person.

http://keith-baker.com/dragonmarks-44-good-and-evil/

In my campaign, all four of these people will read as “evil” for purposes of detect evil. They all hurt other people on a regular basis and feel no remorse for their actions. Yet the innkeeper would never actually kill anyone. And the repo man is just doing a job and doing it well; he won’t interfere with anyone who hasn’t defaulted on their payments. In my eyes, one of the key elements of alignment is empathy. All four of these people are capable of performing actions that hurt others without remorse because they don’t empathize with their victims. But again, they vary wildly in the threat they pose to society. The serial killer is a dangerous criminal. The innkeeper is a criminal, but not a violent one. The cruel soldier is a danger to his enemies but protects his own people. The repo man has turned his lack of empathy into a productive tool. All of them are evil, but they are on different points of the spectrum.

Also hrelevant, if only to get another take on the question of "is Alignment motivation".

Alignment versus Motivation. Alignment reflects the way the character interacts with the world. Empathy is an important factor, along with the degree to which the character is willing to personally engage in immoral actions. But what it doesn’t take into account is the big picture. Let’s take two soldiers. Both joined the Brelish army of their own free will. The “evil” soldier hates the Thranes, and given the chance he will carry out torture, rapine and looting. He wears a belt of Thranish ears. Yet he loves his country and will sacrifice his own life to defend it. He’s “evil” because he is willing to carry out those atrocities; but he’d never do such a thing to a Brelish citizen. On the other hand, the “good” soldier will kill Thranes on the battlefield, but will not condone the mistreatment of prisoners or civilians. He hates the war but feels sympathy for the civilians on both sides; he further recognizes that the enemies he fights are just protecting their people, and treats them with respect. Both soldiers have the exact same goal and will fight side by side on the battlefield; alignment simply provides insight into how they may act.

[Keral]

I don’t buy it.

The DM’s power is entirely based upon the consent of the players. There is an informal contract involved, which often includes an expectation that the DM will use the rules more or less as they appear in the books. Arbitrarily declaring characters evil without any basis in the books or in real-world morality is a violation of this agreement, and is likely to cause the player to withdraw consent (walk).

This is akin to a DM declaring during play that the 20 you just rolled is a miss, without any justification.

I find that reasoning a tad unreasonable.

Alignment is subjective, theoretically. However, for it to work in the game it needs to be consistent, because you have to remember that it's not just there to be a roleplaying aid and moral compass, but it's also there to determine mechanical effects. In order to be consistent it needs to be objective. And to make it objective you pick one person and treat his subjective view as objective. That person is, by the book, the DM.

Unless I totally misunderstand you (which is always a possibility) you're saying that the DM shouldn't be the one in charge bacause if the DM is out of his mind and judges alignment in a crazy way then the game breaks.
But you really shouldn't base this on whether the DM is crazy or not. Because if he is, alignment is the least of your problems.

We should take for granted that both the DM and the players are using alignment in good faith. However, there is one Dm and multiple players. What happens if 3 players, all in good faith, have different ideas of what consitutes evil? Easy: it's the DM's role to judge and adjucate. Therefore he ultimately is the one deciding what is evil, what is lawful and whatnot.
But you have to remember that the DM's view on the matter is only important for the mechanical aspect of it. It doesn't impact on your roleplaying.


That basically comes back to my first post (I think it was the first, idk): there should be two alignments. The one the players chooses as roleplaying aid, compass etc. And the one determined by the DM which is to be used to adjucate mechanical effects.

Of course, if the DM is a douche and does crazy things it gets nasty, but that's not reason enough to not have the DM being judge over alignment matters. To me, it would be like saying "I don't trust the DM to run the encounters for us, so I think the players should be the ones running the monsters and NPCs". Would that be reasonable? I'm not trying to strawman or anything, it's a honest comparison.

[Unoriginal]

I brought up Eberron not as a "rabid fanboy", but as a way of saying alignment can be treated as murky, even in the unforgiving days of 3.5. 5e's alignment isn't the same thing. But looking at a setting where Evil people aren't necessarily horrible people (and Neutral is the vast majority of people) shows how alignment can be made just as much a roleplay aid as the other Traits.

In 5e, if you are evil you are a pretty terrible person. You don't have to be a full-blown mass murderer or kidnap little kids and torture them to turn them into brainwashed assassins, sure, but you still have to routinely be malevolent/voluntarily cause suffering.

While I like the humor of the kind of stories where being an evil scientist, a supervillain or a dungeon lord is just considered another job, something like that in the standard D&D campaign is out of place. And having D&D people of evil alignment not acting evil just beg "why call them evil?"

[Regitnui]

I'd like to emphasise that I'm using Evil and Good capitalised for the alignments, and evil and good in lowercase to mean the IRL use. If anyone was confusing Good for good and Evil for evil.

In my campaign, all four of these people will read as “evil” for purposes of detect evil. They all hurt other people on a regular basis and feel no remorse for their actions. Yet the innkeeper would never actually kill anyone. And the repo man is just doing a job and doing it well; he won’t interfere with anyone who hasn’t defaulted on their payments. In my eyes, one of the key elements of alignment is empathy. All four of these people are capable of performing actions that hurt others without remorse because they don’t empathize with their victims. But again, they vary wildly in the threat they pose to society. The serial killer is a dangerous criminal. The innkeeper is a criminal, but not a violent one. The cruel soldier is a danger to his enemies but protects his own people. The repo man has turned his lack of empathy into a productive tool. All of them are evil, but they are on different points of the spectrum.

That is precisely what I'm talking about. People who are Evil by alignment aren't necessarily what the average person IRL would describe as evil. The innkeeper is a jerk, the repo man is harsh, and the soldier is a nasty piece of work. Arguably (because someone probably will), only the soldier would be described as evil, and even then only because he's on the opposite side of a war to those describing him as such. The Good soldier would also be demonized by his opposite numbers.

Alignment versus Motivation. Alignment reflects the way the character interacts with the world. Empathy is an important factor, along with the degree to which the character is willing to personally engage in immoral actions. But what it doesn’t take into account is the big picture. Let’s take two soldiers. Both joined the Brelish army of their own free will. The “evil” soldier hates the Thranes, and given the chance he will carry out torture, rapine and looting. He wears a belt of Thranish ears. Yet he loves his country and will sacrifice his own life to defend it. He’s “evil” because he is willing to carry out those atrocities; but he’d never do such a thing to a Brelish citizen. On the other hand, the “good” soldier will kill Thranes on the battlefield, but will not condone the mistreatment of prisoners or civilians. He hates the war but feels sympathy for the civilians on both sides; he further recognizes that the enemies he fights are just protecting their people, and treats them with respect. Both soldiers have the exact same goal and will fight side by side on the battlefield; alignment simply provides insight into how they may act.

A great example as to how your alignment is another roleplaying aid, alongside bonds, ideals, traits and flaw. The two characters are likely identical mechanically; Human Fighters. It's their alignment, ideals, bonds and flaws which make them different people and therefore different characters.

In 5e, if you are evil you are a pretty terrible person. You don't have to be a full-blown mass murderer or kidnap little kids and torture them to turn them into brainwashed assassins, sure, but you still have to routinely be malevolent/voluntarily cause suffering.

While I like the humor of the kind of stories where being an evil scientist, a supervillain or a dungeon lord is just considered another job, something like that in the standard D&D campaign is out of place. And having D&D people of evil alignment not acting evil just beg "why call them evil?"

They are routinely malevolent, as you put it. They're just the sort of malevolent nearly everyone overlooks but for gossip. They're very much the "lesser of two evils". In the same way a PC can be, if played in good faith at the table.

[War_lord]

A great example as to how your alignment is another roleplaying aid, alongside bonds, ideals, traits and flaw. The two characters are likely identical mechanically; Human Fighters. It's their alignment, ideals, bonds and flaws which make them different people and therefore different characters.

It's not a roleplaying aid, it doesn't tell you anything about their motivations. WHY evil soldier is torturing prisoners and making ear belts is what's important.