How tight do you hold characters to their allignment?

[MarkVIIIMarc]

In our game we banter lightly about it when a character does something against their alignment.

In Real Life some of us have complicated personalities where we love our families and all but sometimes drive like jerks. There are also enough people who would not think of stealing money from a purse but think nothing of selling questionable products.

When real life People do something evil out of character either it guilts them and they maintain their alignment or it starts to change them. I have no study to quote on the percentages unfortunately.

So how far do you let a character wander from their alignment for a one time event?

[Errow]

For what it's worth, I don't personally hold characters to their alignments at all. The most I would do is say that whatever act they're planning wouldn't be considered good by their society's standards and might attract attention from authorities or have legal consequences. Then I privately hash out some consequences, which might be something as simple as guards giving them the side-eye or something more elaborate. And that's only if they're *seen* doing something evil. I haven't had to deal with evil characters doing good thing yet. The way I see it, I control most things in the world but the one thing I don't control is a player character.

[Sariel Vailo]

depends on their class and background.

[Desamir]

My groups use alignment strictly as a descriptive tool, not a prescriptive one. Each player can choose an alignment if they wish, but the DM doesn't even need to know it because it's purely a roleplaying aid.

I generally don't pick an alignment. Instead, I make a character with a personality and motivations, and let those drive his behavior.

[Kane0]

Alignment doesn't mean much anyway, it's just a convenient label. Our groups hardly brings it up at all.

[NecessaryWeevil]

By "hold," do you mean changing their alignments on their sheets if you feel they've gone outside them, or inflicting some kind of punishment?

[Deadman97]

I believe that you can hold them close but anything far out of the way makes them change alignment or something like that

[Cespenar]

One could still hold alignments as vague guidelines yet change them if the player consistently acts outside of that alignment.

However, the new bond/flaw/ideal system hardly necessitates any overarching alignment on top of the sheet. Just remove that, allow custom bonds/flaws/ideals, and it's all gold.

Still, it's sometimes good to have some basis to remind your players of what they are playing. For example, in my last game, a guy just got bored and went "eff it, let's kill them all". Even though I'm normally not strong for the alignment system, both me and the DM simultaneously went "dude, you're CG, what gives?" at the fella. If he had no alignment on his sheet he'd probably try to wiggle and find an excuse, but now he just looked mildly embarrassed and went "yeah, ok".

[Prince Zahn]

All valid options, there isn't really a wrong way to handle alignment anymore because it's significance has severely lessened. When a good character does an evil act because his ideal, bond or flaw said so, do you punish him? Not according to the rule books, which strongly suggest that sticking true to your character should be rewarded with Inspiration.

In my games alignments are typically optional, if you need it you write it down. worst case scenario you can always ask your friends and DM "what alignment would you say my character is?" after a few sessions. Their answer may shock you :smalltongue:

People always do the wrong things for the right reasons, it's more realistic. and 9/10 times, if the other players knew why it was so legitimately important for the thief to accept the bribery, and throw them under a bus, or even worse that he was blackmailed into it, they would be a lot more understanding, or at least would act differently. But that's the thing, though - most of the time they don't find out, and won't see it that way. Lack of information can also lead to prejudice over alignment.

It's also worth noting that one bad event or wrong decision isn't necessarily going to make you evil (assuming you didn't have malign intent or harbored those emotions for a long time first or something), simply because the best reason for building character is for the moment you break character - even if it's justified on your character sheet, the other players will probably remember the moment where the LG paladin is faced with a moral dilemma and simply answers "let them die." or the day when the wizard burns the book of magic secrets he spent a whole sidequest trying to attain. That doesn't make them evil, but that choice will probably come with a price.

[JobsforFun]

Personally I sometimes like to hold my character to their alignment. Such as playing a LG I wouldn't lie but i'd gladly do what Durkon did in OOTS and say the locks had a "mechanical defect". But overall I just use alignment as a guide, since our table isn't to concerned with alignments and we wont be rule nazied for it. Overall being new to DnD and playing it for little less than a year I prefer to see it as a guide.

[DivisibleByZero]

Alignment is a crutch. I/we ignore it at our table.
It's okay as a tool to gauge how altruistic (or not), or how rigid/orderly (or not) someone *generally* is, but when you start asking "how much do you let them wander for a one time event?" then you're putting too much emphasis on it. At that point it becomes a detriment.

[Naanomi]

I keep track of a character's 'real alignment' separate from what they write on their sheet for the tiny amount of times it is actually relevant

Edit: I may make someone 'play their alignment' if it is magically influenced like by lycanthrope

[Grimjudgment]

How I run my games is pretty simple with alignment.

If you're a cleric or paladin, you're suggested to remain close to your alignment. If you're anything else, your alignment is a descriptor of your actions combined with their intentions.

I don't force an alignment shift for people doing even some major evil acts such as murder unless it's a reoccurring thing.

My greatest penalty for the party doing something evil was the time they attacked two factory workers on their break, and one of them rolled really low to hit and said "I miss" and I calmly looked at them and stared into their eyes, telling them how he just stabbed an innocent worker, watching them bleed out as the light drained from their eyes. I finished the description with "Congratulations, you've just killed your first innocent man. He didn't even have the capability to fight back."

We had to take a break in the session because the player literally couldn't handle the thought of it.

Afterwards, when one of the players searched the body, they found a locker with his wife and daughter's portrait inside.

We had to take another quick break.

Making a person evil on a sheet of paper doesn't influence their actual actions. Consequences do.

[Sigreid]

I don't even care if they write one down.

[Tanarii]

Alignment is mostly roleplaying tool for the player. One that is intentionally very broad. It's not a straight-jacket, it's a rough overall behavioral guideline to use in concert with Personality, Ideal, Bond and Flaw. If a player is intentionally ignoring it for no particular reason, that's on them. They're the one playing "out of character", based on the character they decided they were going to play when they wrote the Alignment down on their character sheet.

About the only time it really matters is if the DM has a restriction on Alignments. Then it's incumbent on the DM to explain what that means. For example, I have a "no evil alignments" rule. That means two things: A) The PC can't regularly behave in a way that is described by the Evil alignments; B) Don't be a ****.

Edit: I'll add, I think Alignment (or at least, a short-hand sentence for moral and social attitudes) is an extremely powerful RP tool to assist in portraying a character that isn't the player themselves. That's why I encourage players to use it. I feel ignoring it or discarding it completely is just as much a mistake as using it as a straight-jacket.

[Toofey]

Unless a character is tied to an alignment for some reason I generally don't, even if they're a priest or paladin or somesuch, I hold them to the details of their god more than their alignment. I tell my players as much.

On the flip side, I definitely track my character's alignments because it will determine how people who can magically detect alignment or know their actions will view them. (I do my best to restrain this to npc's who legitimately know what the character has done somehow though)

[RickAllison]

For one-time events, I consider what other personality traits (written or unwritten) are relevant. For example, a Knight Paladin with the personality aspects of "The common folk love me for my kindness and generosity", "I do not place myself above other folk. We all have the same blood", "It is my duty to protect and care for the people beneath me", "My house's alliance with another noble family must be sustained at all costs", and "I often hear veiled threats and insults in every word addressed to me, and I'm quick to anger".

This is someone who morality-wise is committed to very LG ideals, or at least NG. When the noble alliance is threatened, he ventures outside those ideals because the specific circumstances require compromise. He should probably look for better solutions before resorting to hiring that assassin to murder the witness to a secret liaison, but doing so is not violating alignment. Specific personality traits should trump more general guidelines. He may favor Law and Good based on alignment, but any conflict between the two of those is liable to tend toward the benefit of the common folk he feels obligated to help. But a threat to his Bond, the noble alliance, may have a conflict with those general ideals and he may also gain new Bonds over his journey. Lastly, he is liable to overreact due to his intense paranoia. Conforming to his other personality aspects does not violate his alignment.

[Naanomi]

Alignment matters mechanically in what... 3-6 situations?
-sprites can detect it
-some magic items work differently for people of different alignments
-your alignment can be forcefully changed by curse, undeath, lycanthrope, etc

Plus
-it is heavily implied that the Outer Planes 'know' your alignment and may treat you differently
-where you end up when you die in the default cosmology
-I think Ravenloft (in CoS) cares mechanically about alignment but I havn't read it to be sure

I don't tell players they can't be Evil, but I do sometimes say I expect them to be the heroes in the story... usually gets my point across better

[blurneko]

I don't even have alignment in my games.
The only things I want is for people to clarify the key personality traits of their character. In fact, I am more than happy if events in-game change their personality to reflect their growth.

[Joe the Rat]

I'm in the descriptive, not proscriptive camp. Unless you are running a game where it's a salient or manifest feature (Planescape, Moorcock's multiverse, DCC, etc.), it's a pair of letters that goes nicely with your ideals, traits, bonds, and flaws.

My home game has three players with a stated alignment, simply because they find it helps describe their characters. The caveat here being that while alignment doesn't matter, character does. If someone does something really out of character (The monk is an ass to someone other than the elf or the gnome, the paladin recommends torture for anyone besides the gnome, the warlock is nice to the gnome, the owlbear doesn't try to eat the gnome, etc.), I'll pip them on that seeming out of place. "Hey, that doesn't sound like so-and-so, are you sure?"
This is not as an admonishment, but a check to see if they want this character to go in that direction.

[ad_hoc]

I have no idea what alignment the PCs in my game are.

I think alignment is great and I'm glad they kept it in 5e, it's just not something I need to keep track of as DM. I've got other things to do.

[Stan]

My groups use alignment strictly as a descriptive tool, not a prescriptive one. Each player can choose an alignment if they wish, but the DM doesn't even need to know it because it's purely a roleplaying aid.

That's how we do it. This approach is made easier in 5e as alignment has very few mechanical effects and no classes have alignment restrictions. If a player thinks a lot about alignment to guide their behaviors, good for them. If they build their character around a different set of ideas and finds alignment restrictive, that's cool too.


I generally don't pick an alignment. Instead, I make a character with a personality and motivations, and let those drive his behavior.

Along these lines, I think the suggested characteristics in backgrounds are a better tool for new players to get character ideas than alignment is.

[Demonslayer666]

As DM I don't. Alignment is a roleplaying aid for them, they can do whatever they want. Their alignment doesn't dictate their actions. Their actions can change their alignment.

If a good player continuously acts not good, their alignment will eventually change to neutral, or evil if the act is heinous enough.

[Fishyninja]

As many have people have said, I use it as a guide. i.e. my character is classified as Lawful Neutral (Not sure how well it fits as I am a thief).

The Idea for me is that I hold true to my own code and the code of Honour Amongst Thieves.
I'll kill when attacked and when there is no other choice but not a Murderhobo. In a lot of ways I am quite Altruistic. I have so much money I end up giving lots of it to the party and to people who I think can make it work for everyone, i.e. I'll rarely give money to people specifcally but I'll give it to say the movers and shakers who will make sure it goes to helping as many people as possible.

[Sir cryosin]

As a DM I don't give two s**** worth about alignment. As a player same thing pretty much I don't I hate alignment. Like somebody said in one of the other post I have motivation and personality characteristics and ideas and I let those guide my actions.

[BW022]

MarkVIIMarc,

I find trying to be "tight" on alignments is counter-productive, wastes time, and is typically futile.

Alignment is already subjective. Further, virtually all actions are subject to the characters 'beliefs' and state of mind... to the point one can rationally argue almost anything. Is stealing chaotic or evil? Or is it good if you steal from bad people? Is it lawful is the ends justify the means? In Native American culture... stealing an enemies horse could easily be treated as lawful.

Rather than waste time and get into arguments about what real world players think a fantasy character would and wouldn't do following an artificial alignment system... I allow the players to define what the alignment means to them... a quick code, believes, goals, etc. The 5E background system works well for this, but you can add "What Chaotic Good means to my PC" and get them to write two or three sentences. I then hold the player true to this... not their specific alignment. With Gods and abilities... I expect the cleric or paladin's code to be a bit more tight (at least to include worship, rituals, deeds, etc.)... since it could have a more serious in-game consequences. It also means that the DM is judging the character based on the player's own criteria, so less arguments.

During the game, if the player does something I think is pushing their alignment which isn't clearly covered in the code, I'll ask for them to clarify how they see that action in terms of their alignment and possibly write that down.

[Honest Tiefling]

I've taken to writing weird things (or unhelpful things, such as my latest character who is simply 'evil' without any mention of law/chaos) in that slot to see if anyone notices. Obviously, my groups don't play with alignment.

Typically, we just use it a a way to make sure everyone's on the same page in terms of what the game is going to be like. Some PvP is allowed at times, but not at character creation.

[Hrugner]

I've taken to writing weird things (or unhelpful things, such as my latest character who is simply 'evil' without any mention of law/chaos) in that slot to see if anyone notices. Obviously, my groups don't play with alignment.

Typically, we just use it a a way to make sure everyone's on the same page in terms of what the game is going to be like. Some PvP is allowed at times, but not at character creation.

This is exactly what I do as well, right down to the stupid jokes to see if anyone notices. Alignment is used for setting character range at creation "this is an evil game" or "no chaotic" things like that.

[Sception]

Alignment is just a tool for describing a character's personality/identity, and shouldn't be taken any more seriously than horoscopes or MBTIs. I wouldn't punish a character for acting 'out of alignment' any more or less than I'd punish them for acting out of character with their background traits.

[Vogonjeltz]

It's also worth noting that one bad event or wrong decision isn't necessarily going to make you evil (assuming you didn't have malign intent or harbored those emotions for a long time first or something), simply because the best reason for building character is for the moment you break character - even if it's justified on your character sheet, the other players will probably remember the moment where the LG paladin is faced with a moral dilemma and simply answers "let them die." or the day when the wizard burns the book of magic secrets he spent a whole sidequest trying to attain. That doesn't make them evil, but that choice will probably come with a price.

The problem with acting out of character is, well that you're acting out of character.

A lawful good character who breaks under pressure decides not to be lawful or good anymore should adjust their alignment accordingly.


Alignment doesn't mean much anyway, it's just a convenient label. Our groups hardly brings it up at all.

I see this claim in this kind of thread quite often.

It would be inaccurate to claim the character remains one alignment when they are really another, and if alignment is so meaningless, nobody should have a problem with making that alteration on the character sheet to reflect the reality.

It's when someone does have a problem with making such a simple change that it's revealing the lie in that claim of unimportance. Players care, or they wouldn't get so bent out of shape when they play a character as Neutral Evil who's supposed to be Chaotic Good.

A player can choose any alignment they want, but their character actions ought to reflect the alignment they are (or the alignment they intend to be if they're deliberately playing a character whose alignment shifts over the course of their story). When it doesn't, it makes for bad storytelling, which is a cringeworthy faux pas.


I don't even care if they write one down.

I take it you never plan on using spells or artifacts that rely on alignment? It's hard to have Clerics (or Warlocks for that matter) if they have no alignment.

[Millstone85]

I don't even care if they write one down.
I take it you never plan on using spells or artifacts that rely on alignment?When a player comes across an axe that only the worthy may wield, or such thing, isn't that when the alignment they wrote on their character sheet matters the least? The DM's notes have the only relevant information.

[Honest Tiefling]

When a player comes across an axe that only the worthy may wield, or such thing, isn't that when the alignment they wrote on their character sheet matters the least? The DM's notes have the only relevant information.

Yeah, that sorta brings up the point that if the DM isn't sure of the character's alignment by actions alone by the time they get an artifact like this, something might have gone a little wrong...

[Sigreid]

When a player comes across an axe that only the worthy may wield, or such thing, isn't that when the alignment they wrote on their character sheet matters the least? The DM's notes have the only relevant information.

Nope. I'll ignore the axe's alignment too and make a call as to whether the player was playing the character in a way the axe would approve.

[RickAllison]

The problem with acting out of character is, well that you're acting out of character.

A lawful good character who breaks under pressure decides not to be lawful or good anymore should adjust their alignment accordingly.

No, that person has made a mistake, or took the easy way out, or thought the ends justified the means for that specific case.

And yes, this is a slippery slope. A kid who filches a candy bar once when he is hungry doesn't stop believing stealing is wrong and thus his alignment wouldn't change, but deciding that the business didn't really suffer and so it is okay to steal when the person can afford it would be a change of alignment.

Stealing something that isn't needed for life may be an Evil act, but committing it doesn't make one Evil. Repeatedly stealing because you feel that it benefits you more than it hurts the business is a sign of a change to Neutral/Evil.

Note that some acts go beyond this because they require several evil acts with opportunity to repent. Kidnapping, torturing, and murdering someone when they are no longer useful requires the person to seriously consider the acts. You may kill in a passion of rage, or punch a goon in the face because you need to know where a human sacrifice is being held and are running out of time, but that level is well beyond evil with good intentions.

My marker is based off World of Darkness's Morality. Alignment changes when the character can't regret his actions for being evil. It is when the Good person moves from "I know it was necessary, but it pains me when I think about it," to "There is nothing to regret, it was a necessary act." The former questions the act afterwards even knowing it was necessary while the Neutral person can simply brush it off. The Evil person goes "Why would you feel bad? It was a necessary evil." At that point, they aren't even comprehending that a person should feel bad for it.

Knight in Shining Armor: "I regret having to kill them, whether or not they deserved it."
Knight in Sour Armor: "They may have deserved it, but do not think that such an outcome is acceptable as a general solution."
Knight Templar: "They deserved it, and so do all like them!"



I take it you never plan on using spells or artifacts that rely on alignment? It's hard to have Clerics (or Warlocks for that matter) if they have no alignment.

It is exceedingly easy to have Clerics and warlocks without alignment. A cleric follows the teachings of their god and powerful servants such as them are given some leeway in general morality so long as they don't work against their deity's teachings, though that is easier for some gods than for others.

Eldath's followers not only tend toward Good, but also are about non-violence. A cleric who goes out to solve problems with his sword while not even killing is still more against her teachings than an Evil Druid who really couldn't care about the orphanage Burning down and insists that the townsfolk must find a non-sacred water source. Eldath may not cut off the former but she would admonish him at the least.

Correllion Larethion is anti-orc. Good followers will defend the innocent and hunt down bandit tribes. Evil followers will follow routed warriors to find their tribes and slaughter their women and children to prevent them from replenishing their population. Both follow his guidelines, but one group is far more extreme.

A warlock with a pact of Asmodeus may be your standard devil-worshipper trying to gain power, or it could be someone who struck a deal to save the soul of a starving orphan girl.

[busterswd]

-I think Ravenloft (in CoS) cares mechanically about alignment but I havn't read it to be sure

Main place this comes into play are campaign magic items that requires good alignment.


I'll use alignment as a brief reminder if a character is going to do something that seems a little bit poorly thought out. "Are you certain that a good aligned character would do that?"

I also play enough AL where you need to prevent outright dickish (read: NE/CE) behavior, and players are specifically barred from using those alignments. But again, it's more of a warning that "that's a pretty chaotic thing to do, are you sure you want to do that?" It serves as an early warning that they're doing things that may be too disruptive to the rest of the table.