alignment is bad and you should feel bad

[FabulousFizban]

alignment is, without a doubt, the dumbest mechanic in the game. it does nothing except generate arguments and make someone exclaim, "you're character wouldn't do that, it's against your alignment!"

biitch don't tell me what my character would do - in this open ended sandbox game where the limit is supposed to be my imagination.

alignment serves no useful purpose. i say junk the whole mechanic for the trash it is and let players determine who their character is and how and why they act on their own terms.

who is this person that is saying, "yeah, alignment, that's why i game! d&d wouldnt be d&d without alignment." really?

and if a character has a moment of divinely (player) driven insanity, who cares? people go crazy in real life too - sometimes without warning.

and if becomes a game disrupting problem; if the gods (players) prove too mercurial in their temperments, then
zeus (the dm) needs to make olympus fall in line (rocks fall).

[Arbane]

Without alignment, how are we supposed to make the paladin fall arbitrarily?

Semi-seriously, I'm fine with crossing out 'alignment' on the character sheet. Plenty of RPGs made since 1974 have done so, and it works fine for them. (IIRC, alignment got started due to a DM needing a way to get his players to stop backstabbing each other. "Not playing with jerks" hadn't been discovered yet, apparently.)

I forget the name of it, but there's at least one Fantasy Heartbreaker game out there which has alignment, but uses it soley as an indication of which Elder God/Cosmic Force your character has the most affinity to, not a Morality Meter (So, no 'good' or 'evil' on it). I liked that.

[Aliquid]

alignment is, without a doubt, the dumbest mechanic in the game. it does nothing except generate arguments and make someone exclaim, "you're character wouldn't do that, it's against your alignment!"

biitch don't tell me what my character would do - in this open ended sandbox game where the limit is supposed to be my imagination.

I agree alignment is highly problematic, but even with alignment, I don't think someone can say that. The "alignment" on your character sheet doesn't determine your behavior. Your behavior determines your alignment. So at best, the DM would say "If you keep behaving like that, your alignment will change", and unless you have specific abilities that depend on alignment (paladin etc), then your response would be "OK, my alignment changes... so what?"

and if a character has a moment of divinely (player) driven insanity, who cares? people go crazy in real life too - sometimes without warning.

Again, it only matters if you have alignment driven abilities. If you play in a game where Clerics get their abilities from their god... their god could easily decide "I'm not giving powers to that guy any more... I don't need a lunatic like that going around and claiming he is doing things in my name"

Pull out spells like "detect evil" or "protection from evil", and you can quite easily remove alignment. Alignment really isn't important to the game at all. And as you say, it just causes arguments... nobody agrees on what qualifies as one alignment vs the next.

[Geddy2112]

It makes sense in any world or system where there is objective morality and ethics. Where good and evil are literal forces that fight against one another, and beings can be made out of or at least part of these things. That said, I am fine throwing it out or limiting it to deities and their agents, where mortal beings simply cannot be good or evil lawful or chaotic etc.

I also don't like it for clerics and divine classes-they should not fall for breaking their alignment, they should fall or lose powers for violating whatever it is their deity upholds. This of course breaks down to good and evil for good and evil deities, but even if you worship an ideal or nature or whatever, you would lose powers for going against that ideal.

As a player and a DM, I don't care what you write down on your character sheet, only what you do. The world and characters respond according to action and belief, not some 2 letters you write on a piece of paper. I don't mind players using that to help flesh out their character concept and to help them get into the mindset of what their character would do in a given situation. That said, alignment should be descriptive, not prescriptive, indicating what a character generally has thought and done, not how they must respond to a situation.

[tensai_oni]

Yeah, there's a reason non-DnD systems very rarely use the alignments as understood by DnD. Some of them have mechanical ways to describe a character's personality, values or loyalties, but not in the way DnD does it.

Even Dungeons and Dragons are starting to lose the focus on alignment. In the newest edition, abilities that work on characters with a specific alignment are very few - there are some effects here and there, but they're small niche things for the most part. The Paladin's detect evil ability, or spells like protection from evil/good have been changed to affect supernatural creature types (aberrants, undead, fey, etc) instead of people of a specific alignment. Almost all alignment requirements are gone too. Paladins pick a specific code to follow, and fall not for performing an evil deed but for serious breaches against the code.

I suspect at ths rate, 5e has alignments only because DnD had them from (almost) the very beginning, so they're grandfathered in.

[Tanarii]

I agree alignment is highly problematic, but even with alignment, I don't think someone can say that. The "alignment" on your character sheet doesn't determine your behavior. Your behavior determines your alignment. So at best, the DM would say "If you keep behaving like that, your alignment will change", and unless you have specific abilities that depend on alignment (paladin etc), then your response would be "OK, my alignment changes... so what?"

Questionable. It's entirely possible in D&D 5e to primarily use Alignment as an additional character motivation, along with Personality trait, Ideal, Bond and Flaw.

In that regard, used primairly as a roleplaying aid to get in character for in-character decision making, it's not something required for the system to work. But a typical, but not required nor consistent, behavioral motivation based on social and moral attitudes, used by the player along with other personality motivations, can be useful.

But used that way, when there's a potential problem is when other players or the DM insist the player is playing out of Alignment. Especially if they're trying to judge Alignment based on a single given action, when it's about typical, but not required nor consistent, behavior. And only one facet of personality.

[Aneurin]

Semi-seriously, I'm fine with crossing out 'alignment' on the character sheet. Plenty of RPGs made since 1974 have done so, and it works fine for them. (IIRC, alignment got started due to a DM needing a way to get his players to stop backstabbing each other. "Not playing with jerks" hadn't been discovered yet, apparently.)

...That sounds remarkably petty if that's how alignment got started. Also, I don't actually understand how giving players an actual reason to kill each other ("You're playing an Evil character - my Good character must kill you and take your stuff!") stops the backstabbing happening.

I'd have thought requiring characters to be described in terms of personality would be a more useful tool (and more descriptive). So, Ordered/Neutral/Chaotic and Altruistic/Neutral/Selfish. You could even keep the various Detect (and even Protection, probably) spells by claiming that personality types attract or generate certain energy types (Positive energy for, say, Altruistic individuals.


On the other hand, I'd just as soon do without alignment at all. And do, since I don't touch anything that has it. Alignment (at least D&D's alignment, and I'm unaware of any others) tends to be an incoherent internally inconsistent mess since it makes the mistake of claiming to be objective without enough depth and complexity for that to be workable - and subjective morality renders most alignment-based abilities moot, particularly in the anecdotally adversarial early days of D&D where the DM was allegedly out to kill all the PCs.

Alignment tends to be arbitrarily limiting, too, since it - or, at least, many players and DMs - enforce their own ideas of how an alignment should (or more often shouldn't) act, while not actually giving a useable and informative personality sketch for the player to work with.


And most of all? It terrifies me when people try and claim (or, worse, justify) their blood-thirty tomb robbers' genocidal campaigns against 'evil' species as being in any way, shape or form 'good'. If you think trying to exterminate sapient beings just because a spell tells you they're evil is a 'good' act, then I'm sorry but I want nothing to do with you.

[BWR]

I'm fine with alignment and think it belongs in D&D. I don't play D&D because of it, as the OP so facetiously puts it, but I do think it should be there. Most D&D settings have objective morality and these are forces with tangible effects in the worlds, and in this respect it's perfectly understandable to see how well a character aligns with the various axes.

Sensible players don't quibble over every little diverse interpretation of an action. Sensible people know there is more to a character than alignment. Sensible people understand that PCs are not locked into a single mode of behavior and sometimes do stuff they shouldn't or normally wouldn't. Sensible people use alignment primarily descriptively (and prescriptive alignment hasn't been a thing for years). It's a quick note to see how your character fits in with the multiverse at large and can help indicate what sort of choices your PC would make it you are unsure (and some people actually do struggle to have fully fleshed characters right from the start).


As for moral genocide, if that's OK by the setting, then it's OK. Personally I find Dragonlance's gods dropping a mountain on people for being too good and calling it just and good abhorrant, but that's how that setting works and that's how I play in that setting. Game morality =/= real world morality.

[Faily]

In general, for me, I find alignment to be more in line with other game systems' Nature, Motivation, Virtue/Vice, Personality trait, etc... it's something to give guide in what sort of person your character is. In the case of Clerics and Paladins, well, they are people completely dedicated to a religion's dogma or philosophical values, so yes, it makes sense to me that it is a bit different for them... especially considering that Gods and the like actually do have power to grant and take away if they are displeased with how their followers are using their divinely granted abilities. And I say this as a player who has had a Paladin who needed Atonement 3 times (and no, it was not done because my GM is a ****).

Setting-wise, in the D&D-settings I know, Law, Chaos, Good, and Evil are all actual cosmic forces vying for dominance on the planes. Not only through the conflict between outsiders bound to their planes of dominance, but also through the actions of living beings on the Material Plane (or whatever it is called, depending on the setting). It is why certain spells have alignment descriptors, because they are actively channeling the power of that cosmic force into that magic, thus bringing it more into their realm... so it makes sense to me that the more Evil-aligned magic a person cast, they too become more touched by that force as they bring more of Evil's power into their world. Same for the other three alignments.

So for me, yeah, D&D wouldn't quite be D&D if you did away with alignments. When I play D&D, I do like the meta of Good vs Evil (with capital G and E)... I do like playing heroes who fight in these battles.

When I don't want to play that, I can play other games that deal with different things. Simple as that. Different games and systems for different preferences and flavours.

[D+1]

alignment is, without a doubt, the dumbest mechanic in the game. it does nothing except generate arguments and make someone exclaim, "you're character wouldn't do that, it's against your alignment!"

Actions dictate alignment. Alignment doesn't dictate actions. "You CAN'T do that!" is absolutely INcorrect. The CORRECT response is, "IF you do that then your alignment could/will change! If it changes then that can/will have in-game consequences."

biitch don't tell me what my character would do - in this open ended sandbox game where the limit is supposed to be my imagination.

Again, alignment - when understood and used correctly - does not tell you what you can/can't do, only what happens if your PC does things they shouldn't IF they do them. The game is not as open-ended as you claim and never was. Alignment was there in the original 1974 rules serving as a means to limit what your character could do without repercussions. That is, you could still choose to have your character do wildly inappropriate or contrary things from one moment to the next - but it would come at some cost or at least give the DM some official basis for saying that you can't just do anything you want without some SENSIBLE motivation for your character to do it.

Why CAN'T you just have your PC do anything you want at any moment? Simply put: It's disruptive.

alignment serves no useful purpose. i say junk the whole mechanic for the trash it is and let players determine who their character is and how and why they act on their own terms.

It does have a very useful purpose. Not everybody needs it for that purpose, but in my personal experience it's the players who want to completely eliminate it who are most likely to have their PC's act like complete random, disruptive-to-the-game, nutburgers. More than anything else, that is what alignment is intended to keep under control.

who is this person that is saying, "yeah, alignment, that's why i game! d&d wouldnt be d&d without alignment." really?

Who are you to say the opposite? When you are DM of your own game you have no game police telling you that you have to use alignment. If you want to convince others that they should not use it either AND that the game shouldn't even include it at all, then you have to come up with reasons that have some real weight and, "Because _I_ simply don't like it," isn't too persuasive especially when you demonstrate that you've fallen into the most common misunderstanding about alignment - that it DICTATES your actions.

and if a character has a moment of divinely (player) driven insanity, who cares? people go crazy in real life too - sometimes without warning.

Alignment doesn't prevent that - IF you're using it correctly. It simply establishes that there are game-mechanical consequences for that.

and if becomes a game disrupting problem; if the gods (players) prove too mercurial in their temperments, then
zeus (the dm) needs to make olympus fall in line (rocks fall).

Alignment avoids the DM having to resort to such objectionable, heavy-handed steps.

[johnbragg]

Alignment does some useful things.

It helps complete newbie roleplayers decide what they want their guy to be. Is he fighting for justice and to be a big hero (Luke Skywalker), or is he trying to make his fortune (Han Solo)? Good vs Neutral. Does he value honor and upholding the rules, or is he inclined to "break the rules" to get things done? Law vs Chaos.

It also helps DMs (especially new DMs) decide how their various enemy humanoids differ from each other. Hobgoblins have orange skin and form hierarchical societies, (LE) orcs have green skin and have difficultly organizing anything larger than a small band without breaking into a riot over something or other (CE), while gnolls are just violent, sadistic jerks (NE). So forged papers from the Dark Lord will get you nowhere with the orc guards, will get you a conversation with the gnoll guards, will get you ushered anywhere you want to go by the hobgoblin guards.

But I haven't put my alignment or had my players put their alignments on character sheets in a long, long time. I think the last time I picked an alignment was in the early 2000s, where I decided my first 3rd edition character would be "lawful neutral", with the provision that he had a strong bias towards anything that society accepted as normal and an aversion to anything bizarre or aberrant. So he was just peachy-keen with the party's Death Priest doing necromancer stuff--(he's a Death Priest, whaddaya expect?) or the magitech kingdom having crews of zombies pulling carriages--while being pretty freaked out for a half a level by the Monk's unarmed damage ability (monks were not native to the setting).

[Pleh]

Meh. I've never seen it taken that seriously. My tables treat it more like a suggestion than a rule. Worst case is making some deity take a particular disliking to you.

[johnbragg]

Meh. I've never seen it taken that seriously. My tables treat it more like a suggestion than a rule. Worst case is making some deity take a particular disliking to you.

I think it's the tarragon of RPG features. It has some ocassional utility, no one would really miss it if it were gone, too much of it ruins things.

[digiman619]

Well, Pathfinder had rules for removing it. You could borrow from there.

[Berenger]

Use Allegiance rules. End of trouble.

[Sajiri]

Actions dictate alignment. Alignment doesn't dictate actions. "You CAN'T do that!" is absolutely INcorrect. The CORRECT response is, "IF you do that then your alignment could/will change! If it changes then that can/will have in-game consequences."

This is how my group handles it. We use alignment to describe our character's actions but not to define it. Although we tend to keep alignment mechanics out of the game, except for when it comes to clerics and who they worship (but we tend to be looser with that too). I don't like the idea of penalising someone for changing alignments

It's not uncommon that my own characters have had their alignments change over time based on their experiences. I think it's a fun thing to play with, but maybe not strictly as the D&D rules define it.

[Psikerlord]

I agree that alignment is, at least as of 5e, of no practical utility. Just remove it. We havent used it for years, and most other RPGs dont use anything like it. Game is more engaging without it, imo. If you want a hard "credo" or "code" for a faction or particular individual, go for it. But alignment as a vague label is best removed/forgotten.

[Eldan]

I use it as a "which plane is your character ('s soul) most aligned to mechanic. Which has rather a lot of mechanical effects, as it happens.

[dagfari]

Alignment is descriptive, not prescriptive. Alignment describes how your character thinks about the world on a moral level. It describes how your character justifies their actions. In the case of overtly religious characters, it reflects an important part of their relationship with their deity (who also has an alignment that describes their way of thinking about the world)

It's all about the moral justification for your character's actions.

Can a Lawful Good religion oppress nonbelievers?
"Unbelief, and evil belief especially, are inherently corrupting. Better to stamp it out at the root, than let it grow and fester. We protect the good people of our country by removing the evil from among them."

Can a Lawful Good cleric animate the dead?
"All true believers know that the soul departs from the body and proceeds to their eternal reward. What is left behind is merely a shell. Why should the shell of the departed soul not serve for the good of all? An animated skeleton makes a farmhand that will never tire, growing food that will feed the poor."

Can a Chaotic Evil goblin show mercy to his enemy?
"Bonebreaker show you mercy today, yes, you remember. You remember mercy from goblin and give good thing to bonebreaker later!"

Can a Lawful Neutral cleric prepare illusion spells?
NO, probably not. All a cleric's spells come from the power of their deity - and if the deity is one of law, he will likely not grant the power to confuse, cloud the mind or charm anyone.
"Why would I grant you the power to do something I despise? Do not ask a second time."

[Seto]

I like alignment, it's part of the D&D experience for me, because it's indicative of cosmic morality. Knowing that my character's actions are not restricted to their own tiny life but aligned to mysterious cosmic forces, and in some characters aligned strongly enough that they have an actual aura - is something I appreciate in the fantasy genre. It's a big part of the appeal of Tolkien for me: incarnations of Good and Evil, corruption to Evil, etc. It's black-and-white, sure, but it's also kinda awesome when Shelob reeks of Evil so much that the hobbits can feel upon entering her lair, without ever seeing her, that something terrible lives here.

Now I also like (indeed, prefer) nuanced and grey morality more akin to real life. But when I want that experience, I don't play D&D.

[Mordaedil]

Alignment is descriptive, not prescriptive.

This.

Every version of D&D since oD&D specifically states this. It confuses me how many people seem to get it wrong, even today.

And then people just go "wow, it's way better to play the game without alignment", even though nothing really changed from how the rules say it should work.

[Eldan]

In the right game and setting, I'm actually fine with alignment being at least partially prescriptive. There is a cosmic semi-sapient force of law or chaos or goodness or evil, and it decides whether you belong in its club or not. I'm absolutely fine with neutral or evil moral crusaders who still consider themselves good and absolutely see the cosmic definition of good as wrong.

[Arbane]

Without alignment, we wouldn't have Chaotic Neutral.

[denthor]

A character can do anything. I am lawful good. I will go and murder every child in this town because one may someday be evil. So kill them why they are still good.

It is up to the DM to decide if a shift in alignment and when.

[Jay R]

The biggest problem with D&D alignment hasn't even been mentioned yet.

It is inconsistent with every real-world morality, ethics, or philosophy ever created.

There is no nine-way division of human actions as described in D&D. It's just not how people behave.

People aren't "good" until they perform enough immoral or amoral actions to flip the switch to "neutral".

The original D&D was unambiguously trying to simulate fantasy literature. So a morality system was put in the simulation because the challenge of good vs. evil is a crucial aspect of many fantasies. The extremes were called "Law" and "Chaos" from Moorcock and Dunsany because it sounded cool, but they were clearly intended to represent good and evil. High level clerics were Patriarchs if Lawful and Evil High Priests if Chaotic, etc.

Eventually, enough people noticed the discrepancy that they had to fix it. They could:
1. change the words to "Good" and "Evil",
2. make the rules clear by explaining the gaming jargon, or
3. try to hide the mistake by inventing an unrealistic and overly complicated game mechanic.

For Gygax, this was always an easy choice

[Tanarii]

Without alignment, we wouldn't have Chaotic Neutral.

You just won ever Alignment discussion ever.

People aren't "good" until they perform enough immoral or amoral actions to flip the switch to "neutral".

That's an edition specific interpretation of Alignment. For example, in 5e immoral or amoral or other Alignment "value" isn't tied to individual specific actions, with one specific exception*. It's about typical, but not constant nor required, behavior.

For that matter, it's a sub-edition interpretation for some editions. For example, 1e Dragonlance has Alignment charts for tracking micro-Alignment changes due to individual specific actions. Of course, Dragonlance was all about individual actions carrying moral weight and enough evil ones (or one big enough one) causing a Fall from Grace.


*creating undead is not a good action

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
(general comment)

Ultimately the biggest flaws in Alignment stem from certain beliefs that people bring to the table:
- that you are a good or bad person (ie category) based on some few individual actions, not your overall behavior.
- individual actions carry 'Cosmic Alignment' moral weight.
- Evil actions or behavior carry more moral weight than lawful, good or chaotic ones. (Sometimes same logic applies to Chaotic carrying more than Lawful.)
- Fall from Grace, a bad enough Evil action damns you to be Evil despite a long history of Good behavior before and after.

(Edit: note that some of these are actually how Alignment is supposed to "work" in some editions. )

[Tinkerer]

The biggest problem with D&D alignment hasn't even been mentioned yet.

It is inconsistent with every real-world morality, ethics, or philosophy ever created.

Yep. And that is because the D&D world itself is inconsistent with every real world system of morality, ethics, or philosophy ever created. This is a world where the stars aren't some burning gas giants light years away, where dragons exist, and where the world itself is literally judging every action you take resulting in actual measurable consequences as a result.

Which is neat and fairly unique.

Myself I normally dislike removing alignments from D&D because it is one of the very few notable mechanics within the game and removing it is just a step towards making D&D a generic fantasy setting. That is why I spent some time working on exactly how alignments work in my worlds because how they are presented in the books is pretty fundamentally flawed generally.

However if one isn't going to address exactly how they work then I reluctantly agree that removing them is probably the best strategy. Which is a shame because I do think that there are some strong possibilities for good topics there.

[Davrix]

Alignment is descriptive, not prescriptive. Alignment describes how your character thinks about the world on a moral level. It describes how your character justifies their actions. In the case of overtly religious characters, it reflects an important part of their relationship with their deity (who also has an alignment that describes their way of thinking about the world)

It's all about the moral justification for your character's actions.

Can a Lawful Good religion oppress nonbelievers?
"Unbelief, and evil belief especially, are inherently corrupting. Better to stamp it out at the root, than let it grow and fester. We protect the good people of our country by removing the evil from among them."

Can a Lawful Good cleric animate the dead?
"All true believers know that the soul departs from the body and proceeds to their eternal reward. What is left behind is merely a shell. Why should the shell of the departed soul not serve for the good of all? An animated skeleton makes a farmhand that will never tire, growing food that will feed the poor."



Can a Chaotic Evil goblin show mercy to his enemy?
"Bonebreaker show you mercy today, yes, you remember. You remember mercy from goblin and give good thing to bonebreaker later!"

Can a Lawful Neutral cleric prepare illusion spells?
NO, probably not. All a cleric's spells come from the power of their deity - and if the deity is one of law, he will likely not grant the power to confuse, cloud the mind or charm anyone.
"Why would I grant you the power to do something I despise? Do not ask a second time."

This guy gets it

Makes me wonder if this post is related to the one I made a few days ago, my good is your evil. And this demonstrates the points I was trying to make in it. Though I think the crux comes from the simple fact a lot of people who play dnd deal with moral ambiguity in Real life so much that they want the hard definitive line that DND can offer of what is right or wrong and don't want to gray that line ever so they can feel good about themselves crushing he bad guy or doing well... naughty things :)

[SimonMoon6]

Alignment has been a stupid thing to have in a game, ever since 1st edition. Even back then, the people I gamed with would try to figure out some house rules to avoid having to use such an artificial and strange game element. But it was even dumber back then because there were *alignment languages*! Any two lawful good characters could communicate because they shared a language, the language of "lawful good"... but if you were neutral good, you would have no idea what they were saying!

[Scripten]

I've always run it as "Alignment is a cosmic power and is also subjective", which, while not a straight RAW interpretation, has served me fairly well. My players would consider their actions based on alignment if they wanted to, and I would have their actions considered by each god in the pantheon based on that god's own personality and judgement. Then, if there's ever a disagreement (I've never actually had one), then the argument I would put forth is that the god sees it that way and considers the PC's interpretation of their alignment to be just that, an interpretation.