Removing required alignments and Ex-Classes

[EnnPeeCee]

I know some people favor the idea of removing alignments from D&D altogether, but I feel that they are an important part of the game. However, I do question why some classes have a restriction on what alignment they can be. What harm is there in removing the requirements entirely?

By removing the alignment restrictions, this would also remove "falling" from most classes. If this was put into place, how about removing codes of conduct as well, thus removing all Ex-Classes?

The only semi-major change that I would see being required is incorporating the Paladin alignment ACFs into the class itself.

As for PrCs, I'm still undecided if this would be a good idea or not.

Thoughts?

[Infernalbargain]

But, but, but, but... what are we going to argue about then?

[Flickerdart]

Some classes have alignment restrictions for a reason - PrCs of deities, for example, require that the character share the god's alignment. Other classes have alignment restrictions because WotC is dumb, like the Evil tag on Assassins. The latter should be done away with as quickly as you can, the former just leads to people worshipping concepts rather than deities and can also go, but has a little more justification.

[Wyntonian]

If you can trust your players to not be complete tools, great. Otherwise, it would be a little awkward to see the LG blackguard and his skeleton buddy,

[Greenish]

If you can trust your players to not be complete tools, great. Otherwise, it would be a little awkward to see the LG blackguard and his skeleton buddy,As opposed to LG Bone Knight and his small army of skeleton buddies? :smalltongue:

[EnnPeeCee]

Yeah, PrCs like Blackguard are reason I'm on the fence about simply saying "No restrictions". I can't see any reason not to say "no restrictions on base classes" however.

[Greenish]

Wouldn't good Blackguard just get Turn Undead and Celestial servant instead? And neutral would decide?

[Hirax]

I generally don't have a problem waiving alignment restrictions, especially because so many of the are utterly stupid, like bards. If someone wanted to drastically a blackguard I suppose I'd allow it, though you'd may as well not not call it a blackguard at that point. Classes are just a hunk of stats, really, alignment shouldn't be an issue as long as the given class abilities make sense for a character of that alignment.

[Knaight]

Get rid of them. Most of the problems with alignments have to do with them being implemented in the mechanics, the less of that there is, the better the alignment concept gets.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

But, but, but, but... what are we going to argue about then?Balance/tiers, RAW vs RAI, fudging, houserules, banning ToB and/or psionics, "no sane DM," core vs. splats, 3.5 vs Pathfinder vs 4e, stormwind fallacy, optimizer vs. powergamer vs. munchkin, refluffing... Yeah.

[Coidzor]

Most of it'd be trivial to deal with, where a hand would be needed. I'm sure there must be something where things don't pretty much automatically take care of themselves or present their own solution, but I can't think of any right now.

It removes a couple of potential hoops for certain builds, but those would be problems in and of themselves without the hoops being removed or just aren't problems.

Opening up sanctified/vile spells could potentially be interesting, but I don't really see any real potential for synergy between having both available as options.

And most of the exalted/vile feats aren't really that good anyway, so mixing them isn't really much of an issue. They mostly cause problems due to being a source of intraparty strife, IIRC, anyway.

And, hell, allowing a neutral bard to have double inspire courage isn't going to break the game anymore than a good bard that has double inspire courage.

[Zaq]

Incarnates would be a little tricky, but doable. You'd have to pretty much completely rewrite the fluff from scratch if you wanted that to work, though that's not impossible. (I guess you could just replace G/E/L/C with, I dunno, North/South/East/West or something) Soulborns too, I suppose, but nobody cares about Soulborns anyway. I consider them to be an NPC class.

[EnnPeeCee]

Incarnates would be a little tricky, but doable. You'd have to pretty much completely rewrite the fluff from scratch if you wanted that to work, though that's not impossible. (I guess you could just replace G/E/L/C with, I dunno, North/South/East/West or something) Soulborns too, I suppose, but nobody cares about Soulborns anyway. I consider them to be an NPC class.

Ah, I've never used them before. Had no idea they were based on alignments. Doesn't sound like it would be too much trouble to fix.

[Zaq]

In a nutshell, they HAVE to be either NG, NE, LN, or CN, and some of their class features (and soulmelds) change depending on which alignment they are. It wouldn't be too hard to just change them to four different styles, but as I said, you'd have to totally rewrite the fluff. In my opinion, they're one of the only classes where the alignment restriction makes sense from both a fluff and crunch perspective.

[Psyren]

Isn't this Eberron's whole schtick? (For Clerics and the "always X" monsters, anyway.) It doesn't seem to have plunged that world into total anarchy.