I was thinking of random hypothetical like whether one of my players might argue with me if I said that Adultery isn't something a character with a Good alignment would do...
And then it occurred to me that the system has no penalty for breaking alignment anyway.
Even for the Paladin, the class most traditionally shackled by alignment, it's more about obedience to the tenants of his oath.
Detect Evil is now Detect Outsiders, having little to do with alignment. And even protection from evil has nothing to do with the actual characterization on the sheet.
The most I could do is deny an inspiration gain, right? But even that would more appropriately be judged by the character's personality traits.
So why have an alignment system at all?
Same reason why you have descriptions of personality traits, ideals, bonds and flaws, I guess?
Well according to most people here, the DM shouldn't ever force a player to play in a certain way in the first place. And yes the only thing the DM can do is not award that player any inspiration.
In my personal opinion, players should play their character according to its personality the best they can. I might tell a player that I think something doesn't fit too well to his character, but I never went further than that so far.
KaptainKrunch wrote:
So you can make posters like this...
I like having alignment as a quick guide to behavior for NPCs and monsters. But other than telling people no evil PCs I pretty much ignore it, like I suspect most people do.
It doesn't hurt to have it, it's been part of the game since the AD&D, it's one (of many) ways of describing characters and monsters.
Alingment serves several purposes:
1) Lets the DM make it clear ahead of time what sorts of behaviors he will tolerate in his game. If he bans evil or chaotic neutral for example that gives players at least some idea what kind of game it is going to be without an overly complicated discussion.
2) In an established setting, it lets the DM predict how people in the city you grew up in should react to you. Obviously a LG character in the town will be greeted differently by the poeple who grew up with him than a CN one. Hopefully it will prevent making the town who grew up with him seem naive.
3) Good and evil have always been a huge part of fantasy storytelling and its good to have a flavorfull expression to reflect what side the characters plan to be on and whether they want to be heroes.
4) Makes it easier for the DM to predict what motivations he needs in his adventure so things don't get overly derailed. Nothing worse than writing an adventure of a group of slaves in need of rescue and finding out the players don't care and leave to find adventure elsewhere.
5) Most important of all, its fun to make a character, and picking an alignment is one more quick and easy step in transitioning a concept in your head down onto paper for everyone to see.
KaptainKrunch wrote:
AndrewJO wrote:
It is kind of hard to Planescape without it.....
Alignment is different for PC's and NPC's. For PC's, it starts as a good indication of what they aspire to morally speaking and serves a signpost along the way. A DM should give the PC's the opportunity to achieve (or fail to achieve) that goal. I have never been a fan of alignment restrictions on classes, but I have never hesitated to substitute angels for demons when the murderhobos were being exceptionally murderhobo-y.
For NPC's, it serves as a quick way to gage the intentions, particularly if there are 20 goblins. There are some editions (3, 3.5) where alignment made up half of the fluff in the monster manual entries, and we never know when some misguide types will again clamor against "too many words", so it is best to keep it. Just in case.....
There are a few magic items that are restricted by alignment. Robe of the Archmagi is one. There is at least one other, but I cannot remember its name. I feel that 5ed has labeled some races as inherently evil or good by nature. See Protection from Evil / Good spell for the list. Because of that, I also feel that the races not labeled as inherently aligned are allowed to flow between any of the alignments.
One of the interesting shows, Sons of Anarchy, has several evil characters. I can pick out at least one that is chaotic evil, but still works within the group of characters in the show. Some of the characters in the show may even be considered neutral good. I find it very interesting to watch the show and see how a chaotic evil character interacts with a neutral good character and they still achieve a goal of the group.
Because of the above, I don't drive any player to play a character in any particular way. However, I do insist that they work with the other players to ensure the game is fun. I also make them aware that alignment can affect some of the magic items available at higher levels.
Alignment should really be held in the same regard as personality traits, flaws, ideals, and bonds...as a guide to roleplay.
As other people have pointed out, there are only 9 versions, and there will be a lot of table variance on what CG or CE actualy mean. I see some people play True Neutral in the same way I might play a Neutral Evil. Some people imbue "Chaotic" with darker connotations, some don't. It's helpful for me as a DM at the beginning of a campaign to get a feel for what I've got sitting at the table...or when I'm setting up a game to give players an idea of what *won't* work as well in an upcoming campaign. I told my current players to 'steer somewhere towards Good' when creating characters so that they'd know that the storyline is more suited towards heroic characters. But since that point...I'm not sure alignment has come up.
My basic definition of alignment that I give to new players
- A good creature is more likely to have empathy for others and understand how the world looks from the perspective of others and understand how their actions will impact others.
- An evil creature looks at other creatures as objects and will have no empathy for what others feel. They may care deeply about another creature but only in the same way that a good aligned person would look at a favorite tool. If the tool no longer has value, it can be discarded with no regret.
- Lawful creatures look at the world and see a clockwork mechanism. Everything has a proper place in the order of the universe and things go best when things are done in the proper way.
- Chaotic creatures look at the world and see no organization, no grand design other than (perhaps) order rising out of chaos. They may have a personal code of conduct they've constructed for themselves, but don't necessarily expect anyone else to follow it.
I view alignment more as a framework, an individual's take on how the world works nothing more.
Alignment can also work as a rule of thumb for how the rest of the world reacts to you.
"Everybody knows" Drow are Evil, and every day the vast majority of Drow prove that statement accurate. However the Drow standing before me is Drizzt, who is really a stand-up kind of guy. I have to interact with him to find out he is the exception, though. In the meanwhile, Drizzt has to deal with a lot of people who try to attack him thinking it is self-defense.
[Deleted by poster due to response]
That's the sort of response that goes beyond a rules question or even the scope of this forum and I regret posting given what has been said in response to my post. I have deleted it but cannot do anything about the response post except to report it.
El_Condoro wrote: