Alignment optional?

[Nero24200]

So I've been reading through the D&D next stuff and noted a few oddities compared to previous editions. Feats are in but are specifically noted as being an optional rule (albeit, from the forms, it sounds like a commonly used optional rule) however I've not noticed the same with alignment. The Players Handbook specifies that all creatures have an alignment (or unaligned) but I can't find any mechanics tied to it.

The paladin's smite works differently from previous editions and is no longer tied to alignment and the only cleric spells that I can find that reference anything like Good or Evil strangely do not tie to alignment either, but more towards rebuking outsiders.

So is alignment purely cosmetic? Can I house rule it out without having a headache of homework? It was always one of my gripes in previous editions that it can't be taken out without considerable rewrites for certain classes.

[Flashy]

So is alignment purely cosmetic? Can I house rule it out without having a headache of homework? It was always one of my gripes in previous editions that it can't be taken out without considerable rewrites for certain classes.

Yes. To my knowledge there is not a single class feature or spell that keys off alignment.

[Slipperychicken]

So is alignment purely cosmetic? Can I house rule it out without having a headache of homework? It was always one of my gripes in previous editions that it can't be taken out without considerable rewrites for certain classes.
Pretty much. There are a handful of magic items and a few obscure classes that care about character alignment, but very little else. I've been playing for a while, and haven't run into any issues with it. You could literally tell your players to cross out the "alignment" part of their character sheets, and you wouldn't miss out on anything significant.


So rejoice, as your game no longer needs be shackled by alignment!

[KiltieMacPipes]

As a general rule, unless it really makes a difference, (for instance, I still require that clerics are no less than one step from their deity) I don't even have my player choose their alignment. If they want to know what it is, I'll tell them based on how they've been playing. It's always entertaining when the "Chaotic Neutral" contract assassin gets burned by the holy artifact because they don't think that a steady diet of murderhobotry for hire during downtime will make them evil.

[mephnick]

Haven't used it for years. We all think it's useless, so it's always been optional at my table.

[Regitnui]

Alignment is one of those things that new players don't really get about D&D, so I don't mind it being optional. It's tricky explaining how 'lawful' and 'chaotic' differ without falling back on cliché, or at least it is for me.

[M Placeholder]

For me, its dependent on the setting. In the campaign I was playing a Gnome Bard in, none of us paid much attention to the allignment, and though we all put down allignment on your sheets, we never played to that allignment. The Paladin human and the Dwarf followed Mouradin, but they weren't that fussed about following a code. I was a bard and the majority of my spells (Illusions, charms) were chaotic in nature, so I guess I was chaotic, but I never really kept track.

The Dark Sun campaign I am DMing has a Half Giant -not the diet version that was in 3.5 from the Psionics handbook or the Goliath - a 1200 pound, 12 foot tall barbarian, and though he is supposed to change one aspect of his allignment every day (either law/chaos or good/evil) according to the lore (Half Giants are a magically created race and that accounts for alignment), I never needed him nor asked him to. I had a player in the group who played a Thri-Kreen, and he played his character Lawful Neutral and to the laws of the clutch.

Unless its a race like the Thri-Kreen (they have genetic memory and have a very set social order), or its a specific setting like Planescape (Belief=Power), I don't usually bother with allignment.

[Naanomi]

A warlock's Sprite familiar can detect alignment

[Malifice]

Yes. To my knowledge there is not a single class feature or spell that keys off alignment.

You can't be an Oathbreaker oaladin unless you're evil.

That's the only one I know of.

[M Placeholder]

If (when?) WoTC put out a Dark Sun guidebook for 5th, the Defilier Wizard will probably have an evil requirement. Turning plants into ash and leaving the ground as sterile as an operating theater is not a good act.

[rollingForInit]

You can't be an Oathbreaker oaladin unless you're evil.

That's the only one I know of.

And even then, the restriction 100% flavour and not mechanics.

[Sigreid]

IMO alignment is useful for 2 things. 1. giving a DM the general temperament of a monster or group. 2. Helping new players get in character. My group ignores it, but we are still on a spectrum of good and neutral with one or two more evilish.

[Sredni Vashtar]

Even in the older editions, alignment was easily ignored mechanically.

[Steampunkette]

Alignment has never been required, to be honest.

Personally, I like to use it for my groups as a general compass and rough idea of what they're doing. Plus it allows me to play the "Niggling Doubt" in their mind without leashing them. Alignment shifts, after all. And I don't give out penalties for changing who you are through roleplay.

In my games it gives my players a hook to hang their characters on. And when it doesn't fit, when alignments shift, it gives those players, and their characters, clarity. Which is usually a fairly powerful moment.

Plus I always like playing with the Corruptive/Redemptive aspects of the Forces of Good and Evil in the world.

[burninatortrog]

No alignment is best alignment.

[Regitnui]

The thought occurs that Good and Evil, Law and Chaos are less definitive forces and more points prescribed by the mortal envisioning of the outsiders who embody the traits; Lawful is 'more like modrons/inevitables', evil is 'like demons and devils' and Good is 'like the angels'. Chaos is embodied in the Slaadi, but I don't think anyone's ever actively considered them role models.

[Knaight]

Even in the older editions, alignment was easily ignored mechanically.

Not like in 5e. 3.x has tons of stuff, like Smite Evil, damage reduction/alignment, alignment weapons, protection against alignment, so on and so forth. There's actual mechanical backing to alignment, and that makes it a lot harder to remove without muddying up the rest of the system. 5e has essentially nothing.

[DracoKnight]

You can't be an Oathbreaker oaladin unless you're evil.

That's the only one I know of.

You don't have to be evil. You just have to have not repented for breaking your oath. That doesn't make you evil. That just means you don't regret one particular lapse in judgement. Like a Devotion Paladin killing the person who killed his brother in cold blood - assassin style - instead of in fair combat. This would initiate the change to Oathbreaker, if they didn't repent in my mind.

[Safety Sword]

It's good... and ev... I mean... bad that alignment is optional.

In a campaign where Good and Evil are not just concepts, but cosmic forces such as Dragonlance, alignment is necessary to do it properly.

All in all though, character classes being freed from restrictions due to alignment is a good... er... positive thing.

[Sredni Vashtar]

Not like in 5e. 3.x has tons of stuff, like Smite Evil, damage reduction/alignment, alignment weapons, protection against alignment, so on and so forth. There's actual mechanical backing to alignment, and that makes it a lot harder to remove without muddying up the rest of the system. 5e has essentially nothing.

Removing it entirely would be troublesome, I'd imagine, but that's still workable anyway. Not a whole lot of your examples ever came up in my experience, aside from Smiting. Even then, it's just a label given to certain creatures or characters. Mechanically, it's simple to separate from in-character descriptive stuff.

I never understood what the big deal over alignment was to begin with anyway, so maybe I'm missing something.

[Artglow]

Removing it entirely would be troublesome, I'd imagine, but that's still workable anyway. Not a whole lot of your examples ever came up in my experience, aside from Smiting. Even then, it's just a label given to certain creatures or characters. Mechanically, it's simple to separate from in-character descriptive stuff.

I never understood what the big deal over alignment was to begin with anyway, so maybe I'm missing something.


See I'm the opposite, I've never understood why people have such an issue with the alignments that have been part of D&D for a very long time.

[Malifice]

You don't have to be evil. You just have to have not repented for breaking your oath.

Yeah you do:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=64858&d=1414775237&thumb=1

Its right there in the first paragraph.

[MaxWilson]

It's worth mentioning that WotC has optional rules in Unearthed Arcana for custom alignments besides the law/chaos and good/evil axes:


You might find that the alignment choices of
good and evil, law and chaos are too abstract for
your campaign. You might prefer attitudes that
are more nuanced, without the implicit
demarcation of heroes as good-aligned creatures
and villains as evil-aligned ones. A simple
solution is to discard alignment in favor of an
alternative system that brings the key conflicts
in your campaign to the forefront.

Ref: http://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/UA5_VariantRules.pdf

[Raphite1]

Just to add one more voice to what seems to be the consensus:

I pay zero attention to the alignment of the PCs in the 5e game I'm running. Alignment has affected nothing mechanically, so imo whatever is written on their character sheets is just a reminder to the player to help them play their character consistently. If they want there character to change over time and behave differently, then that's fine too. In fact it's great!

I'd tweak their alignment by DM fiat if it ever came up in play and they had been playing differently than whatever was written on their sheet, but that has yet to happen in 5e.

[MaxWilson]

I'd tweak their alignment by DM fiat if it ever came up in play and they had been playing differently than whatever was written on their sheet, but that has yet to happen in 5e.

I did have a case where one PC attacked another PC. I asked him, "Why did you do that?" and didn't get a good answer (he turned out to have a hidden motivation but he didn't tell me during the session), so I told him, "By the way, your robe of the Neutral Archmagi just stopped working" and continued with play. (BTW, he had done some other sketchy things too, this was just the straw that broke the camel's back.)

That's the only time so far that alignment has mattered.

[Malifice]

Just to add one more voice to what seems to be the consensus:

I pay zero attention to the alignment of the PCs in the 5e game I'm running. Alignment has affected nothing mechanically, so imo whatever is written on their character sheets is just a reminder to the player to help them play their character consistently. If they want there character to change over time and behave differently, then that's fine too. In fact it's great!

I'd tweak their alignment by DM fiat if it ever came up in play and they had been playing differently than whatever was written on their sheet, but that has yet to happen in 5e.

I had a 'LG' bard in my campaign briefly. He took on a job to help cure people of the plague and save lives (and then not only accepted payment, but also tried to haggle the price up). He bought a dog that he never remembered to feed, and didnt even name (its sole reason for existence was as a force multiplier, when it died he didnt care and simply bought another one) that he sent into battle against even the most fearsome monsters with no regard for its safety. When the party encountered dead pixies strung up from a tree, he tried squeezing out some of the blood from their teeny little corpses as he had heard a rumor it turns lead into gold. Finally, he defied the local (admittedly LE) town authorities by attempting to forment a rebellion.

I pulled him aside after a session or two and advised him that in my view, he wasnt acting in a particularly lawful (or really even noticably good) manner, and that 'CG' was perhaps more appropriate.

I never saw him again after that. I get the feeling that he was used to murderhobism 101 and this was as 'good' as it got for him.

I once played a LG fighter/ cleric in DnD 3.5 and after the DM fluked a roll on some random treasure chart, scored a 20,000 gp diamond at 3rd level. As an orphan, I gave it away to the local orphanage in town.

Should have seen the look on the other players (murderhobos the lot of them) faces.

[Artglow]

What is it about the alignment system that people have a problem?

[Tanarii]

Alignment is a tool to help you understand how your character typically (but not always) behaves. See PHB page 122 for those descriptions. It goes along with the Personality, Ideal, Bond and Flaw you choose from the background.

It's fairly easily discarded. Even more so than the background traits, because those provide Inspiration.

[Knaight]

What is it about the alignment system that people have a problem?

It's basically a set of roleplaying training wheels. Early on, there's some actual utility there in figuring out characters, but later the habit of 9 characterization boxes becomes something that needs to be actively unlearned. On top of that, there's the whole matter of whether you're playing in the alignment properly, if the switch costs class features, so on and so forth in certain editions. Once the training wheels are no longer needed, they become an obstacle and a distraction. Alignment also pretty heavily encourages lazy design from the professional designers; there it's a short cut around actually describing things.

[Steampunkette]

Training Wheels is pretty pejorative, inaccurate, and reductive... I've been playing the game for 20 years and more and enjoy the objectivity of alignment and the ease of organization it offers.

That doesn't mean I can't or won't rolepay without it, or that my role playing abilities are lacking in some way.

[Slipperychicken]

If (when?) WoTC put out a Dark Sun guidebook for 5th, the Defilier Wizard will probably have an evil requirement. Turning plants into ash and leaving the ground as sterile as an operating theater is not a good act.

Does that mean pollution is evil now? Do I take hits to my alignment for driving a car powered by fossil fuels?