Alignments

[tedcahill2]

I saw a few threads delving into alignment and wanted to share a site I found awhile back, without hijacking the other threads, that helped me understand all the alignments.

http://www.easydamus.com/alignment.html

That is all.

[Zanos]

This site may be useful for certain DMs in certain settings, but very little of what it says is actually drawn from D&D sourcebooks.

[Frosty]

Actually I think those are taken verbatim out of DnD books. I remember reading those exact words before somewhere.

Still, those guidelines are way too simplistic, and do not account who do things that fall into one category, and other things that category.


"Good" implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.
What if a person has concern for the dignity of other, makes personal sacrifices, and subscribes to altruism, but his respect for life isn't always strong enough to override the pursuit of his mission (which may involve an altruistic end)?

"Evil" implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master. That same person can also be hurting and killing others, precisely because he is concerned about the dignity or well-being of another group. He may kill with a lot of qualms, and but end up doing it because the alternative (in his mind) is worse for the world (example: Use of atomic bombs)

Alignment is very nuanced, and to use a few sentences to summarize them does it a disservice I feel.

[Zanos]

Some of the main page is taken out of the book, but if you select the individual alignments or any of the other pages(especially intelligence) it's pretty much just the webmasters opinion.

[Buufreak]

If I'm not mistaken, this is directly taken from 3.5 PHB1.

[Kelb_Panthera]

The linked page is a direct excerpt from chapter 6 of the PHB starting on page 104. Also found here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/description.htm).

Once you navigate into anything else on the site, you run into the author's (not entirely correct) interpretation of how to interpret that basic outline.