Yet another argument about alignment

[ThurlRavenscrof]

In the past when I played a character who was out for number one, I would make their alignment evil. But now that I'm studying the MM a little more, I'm noticing that creatures labeled as evil tend to actively work to bring about torture, slavery, death, and destruction. Creatures who are out for number one seem to be labeled neutral.

This is kinda making me think I've never actually played an evil character... Are evil characters just selfish people who want power or are they people who honestly enjoy suffering and try to create as much of it as they can?

[Naez]

5e seems to have changed alignment to where unless you're a sadist you're not evil.

[Demonslayer666]

I agree that being selfish is a pretty "neutral" thing. A normal, amount of selfish, like, that's too risky, I'm not going to put myself in harms way even if would help someone else out.

But selfish can also be evil too. It depends on what you are willing to do to get what you want. Evil selfish would be wiling to kill someone in cold blood to loot their corpse.

[lunaticfringe]

Good is pretty selfish too apparently, if you pay attention to people's Character​ Sheets.

[Unoriginal]

In the past when I played a character who was out for number one, I would make their alignment evil. But now that I'm studying the MM a little more, I'm noticing that creatures labeled as evil tend to actively work to bring about torture, slavery, death, and destruction. Creatures who are out for number one seem to be labeled neutral.

This is kinda making me think I've never actually played an evil character... Are evil characters just selfish people who want power or are they people who honestly enjoy suffering and try to create as much of it as they can?


5e seems to have changed alignment to where unless you're a sadist you're not evil.

Look, for this issue, it's not complicated:

An evil character is a character who usually seeks to do actions that are malevolent and/or harmful to others, deliberately.

A selfish person who want power could be evil, if most of their actions while selfishly pursuing power are knowingly harmful to others.

But a selfish, power-wanting person could also be neutral, if they have enough morals to not be outright malevolent while doing so. It's not because you want power that you'd do something like kill an innocent person to get into the secret cult of secret that control the city.

[Coretex]

5e seems to have changed alignment to where unless you're a sadist you're not evil.

This makes the most sense to me and seems like a good change.

Good people get joy and fulfilment from bringing joy to others.
Neutral people get joy and fulfilment from bringing joy to themselves.
Evil people get joy and fulfilment from bringing pain to others.

By this metric most people end up being Neutral really, which I think is a good thing.
There doesn't have to be a balance of Good Neutral Evil entities in the world.

The heroes who are good are special specifically because most people only care about themselves.
The villains who are evil are special because their disorder causes them to seek out ways they can hurt people.

Even in real life (and art imitates life) most people fall into Neutral quite handily, which is why we praise those who actively help others and condemn those who seek the suffering of innocents. Note however how (fortunately) few of those people there are.


Lawful people believe there is inherent good in order and structure and seek to abide by and enforce it.
Chaotic people don't care for anything BUT the second part of the Alignment chart.
eg. A Chaotic Good person wants to do good and won't let anything interfere with that

Chaotic doesn't mean insane or unpredictable like I see so many people suggest often. It doesn't mean you serve chaos as opposed to order.
Insanity is probably best represented by an abysmal Wisdom score, making decisions that in no way reflect what is going on around you.
Chaotic just means you pursue the (good, yourself, evil) part of the chart with no regard for circumstances.


Everyone has a different take on how alignment works. I tend to like mine because it reflects realisticish people and is not prescriptive on characters as much as it has something that every character can fit into.

"Where does your character get their joy from?"
"What would stop your character from doing something that fulfils them"
Done.

[LtPowers]

Are evil characters just selfish people who want power or are they people who honestly enjoy suffering and try to create as much of it as they can?

The most basic question to ask of the character is this: Is she willing to cause harm to innocent people if that's the easiest way to further her own goals? Or does she try to avoid it and look for alternatives? The former is evil; the latter is probably neutral.


Powers &8^]

[Unoriginal]

Good is pretty selfish too apparently, if you pay attention to people's Character​ Sheets.

A good character could behave selfishly from time to time. After all, as noted in 5e, people hardly behave 100% of te time like the alignements they are. But a character who's selfish to the point of regularly letting others suffer for selfish reasons isn't going to be good.

[2D8HP]

These days, when I'm making a 5e PC, I decide on "Bonds", "Flaws", "Ideals", etc. first, and then I choose an "alignment" that matched up with them, but back in the 1980's...(my traditional start to a post) I mostly lest "alignment" blank, or under "alignment" I'd in pencil write "Neutral".

If my DM ever said that my PC is not behaving "Neutral" I planned to hand my DM the character sheet and a pencil with an erasure.

Then I planned to take back the sheet without bothering to look at what the "alignment" now was, and continue to play my character.


http://www.giantitp.com/comics/images/oots0202.gif


It just so happened that no DM has ever checked or mentioned alignment much, beyond one DM who recently specified "no evil" PC's, and then accepted players as far as I can tell based on back-story word count, including another player who's PC was a Cleric of a "God of Murder".

Since I actually read the back stories the other players submitted, it was obvious to me that despite "Chaotic Neutral" being on the character sheet (in quotation marks on the sheet!), that the PC was going to be played as evil.

The "campaign" ended very shortly after it started when the DM quit, after the players actually played the characters suggested by their PC's back-stories.

Thr DM had selected the menagerie of PC's, and had he actually bothered to read the back-stories he demanded he should have guessed how the PC's would have acted. Since all the PC's selected had the longest back-stories it was obvious to me that he just looked for length, and maybe character illustrations.

That was my third attempt to play "Phandelver", which I've never gotten to finish.

:sigh:

Anyway, what's on the sheet doesn't matter much, how you play is the thing.

[ThurlRavenscrof]

I agree than alignment rarely matters in general but I think alignment matters a lot in certain campaigns. If you need to find someone who died or talk to them you need to know which outer plane they went to. I think it also matters for lycanthropes because the DM might decide to control your character if you become an evil lycanthrope but that wouldn't make sense if you have other evil members of the party who are allowed to control their own characters. And it matters for warlocks when choosing a patron since so many patrons send their people on quests (and many patrons are evil).

I would even say (and this is a whole new level of role play I haven't cared to try) that characters in d&d would want to me mindful of their own alignment because many people would know what alignment is and they want to make sure their souls goes to a decent place when they die. I think they would know this information because they made the great wheel model of the multiverse correctly with all the planes ordered according to the alignment grid. (They could have organized them in a line or stack or a circle but in a different order.) And enough people would have traveled around the planes to know this is where people go when they die and all the nice people ended up here and all the chaotic people ended up there and so on.

[ThurlRavenscrof]

This makes the most sense to me and seems like a good change.

Good people get joy and fulfilment from bringing joy to others.
Neutral people get joy and fulfilment from bringing joy to themselves.
Evil people get joy and fulfilment from bringing pain to others.

By this metric most people end up being Neutral really, which I think is a good thing.



I like this. Simple and it makes sense

[furby076]

These days, when I'm making a 5e PC, I decide on "Bonds", "Flaws", "Ideals", etc. first, and then I choose an "alignment" that matched up with them, but back in the 1980's...(my traditional start to a post) I mostly lest "alignment" blank, or under "alignment" I'd in pencil write "Neutral".

wait....back in the 80s you would write in your character sheet in something other than pencil? Brave. As a DM, i wouldnt let that stand

[ShikomeKidoMi]

I agree that being selfish is a pretty "neutral" thing. A normal, amount of selfish, like, that's too risky, I'm not going to put myself in harms way even if would help someone else out.

This. Many of the Dungeons and Dragons evil creatures are actively sadistic, but 'looking out for number one' can easily cross the line to evil. It doesn't have to, you can usually ask for reasonable recompense for your work and no one thinks twice, but desire for profit or power can go overboard without actively desiring to cause suffering.

Let's just take one of the things the OP mentioned: Slavery. People taking slaves aren't necessarily doing it because they enjoy hurting others. They could be doing it to make a quick buck.

Evil, essentially, is selfishness to the extreme: Not caring how much getting what you want hurts others. In some cases 'what you want' might be a feeling of sadistic glee, in others it might be cold hard cash.

[Vogonjeltz]

In the past when I played a character who was out for number one, I would make their alignment evil. But now that I'm studying the MM a little more, I'm noticing that creatures labeled as evil tend to actively work to bring about torture, slavery, death, and destruction. Creatures who are out for number one seem to be labeled neutral.

This is kinda making me think I've never actually played an evil character... Are evil characters just selfish people who want power or are they people who honestly enjoy suffering and try to create as much of it as they can?

Being selfish might be evil depending on how it's enacted.

"act as their conscience directs, with little regard for what others expect" - Chaotic Good.
"act with arbitrary violence, spurred by their greed" - Chaotic Evil.
"follow their whims, holding their personal freedom above all else" - Chaotic Neutral.

"do the best they can to help others according to their needs" - Neutral Good.
"do whatever they can get away with, without compassion or qualms" - Neutral Evil.
"steer clear of moral questions and don't take sides, doing what seems best at the time" - Neutral.

The selfishness rubric is a matter of degrees. On the one hand we have someone who's totally selfless and will even flout societal mores to help others (Chaotic Good) and then on the other, someone who's utterly selfish to the point that they won't even let societal mores stop them from taking what they want (Chaotic Evil).

So, the question becomes: How rigidly is your character actually following that "out for number one" ideal?

There are some prime examples of this in the PHB under the ideals sections of backgrounds.
"Greed. I will do whatever it takes to become wealthy. (Evil)" - PHB 129
"Greed. I'm only in it for the money and the fame. (Evil)" - PHB 131
"Might. If I become strong, I can take what I want- what I deserve. (Evil)" - PHB 132
"Greed. I'm only in it for the money. (Evil)" - PHB 133
"Power. If I can attain more power, no one will tell me what to do. (Evil)" - PHB 136
"Mastery. I'm a predator, and the other ships on the sea are my prey. (Evil)" - PHB 139
"Might. In life as in war, the stronger force wins. (Evil)" - PHB 140

Try not to worry overly about it. If you think the character is straying from the original concept, re-evaluate how they'd approach a few situations and decide if they've changed from who they were.

[Honest Tiefling]

These days, when I'm making a 5e PC, I decide on "Bonds", "Flaws", "Ideals", etc. first, and then I choose an "alignment" that matched up with them, but back in the 1980's...(my traditional start to a post) I mostly lest "alignment" blank, or under "alignment" I'd in pencil write "Neutral".

If my DM ever said that my PC is not behaving "Neutral" I planned to hand my DM the character sheet and a pencil with an erasure.

Then I planned to take back the sheet without bothering to look at what the "alignment" now was, and continue to play my character.


I agree than alignment rarely matters in general but I think alignment matters a lot in certain campaigns. If you need to find someone who died or talk to them you need to know which outer plane they went to.

Very much this. I've taken to simply writing random words in the alignment field to see if the DM even bothers. I think my next character's alignment will be 'elf', regardless of their actual race is, in honor of the old class.

[Sigreid]

IMO:

Neutral: Looks out for number one most of the time. Usually harms others only when that's the clearest path to their goal that they can see. Doesn't actively desire to harm others, even if the restraint is only and acknowledgement that reckless brutality too often causes as many or more problems than it solves. Likely feels a bit bad when they have to harm someone, but has a better him than me attitude.

Evil: Looks out for number one nearly all the time. Views harming others as pretty much the fastest and easiest way to get what they want. This harm can be physical, mental and/or emotional and the evil character will never even consider feeling bad about it or hesitating and will only consider the most immediate and obvious consequences.

[DivisibleByZero]

Being selfish has nothing to do with Law or Chaos, nor with Good or Evil.
You can make a selfish Lawful-Good (previously known as Lawful-Stupid) Paladin who is selfish.
Being selfish is a personality trait, not an Alignment factor.

[ZorroGames]

Being selfish has nothing to do with Law or Chaos, nor with Good or Evil.
You can make a selfish Lawful-Good (previously known as Lawful-Stupid) Paladin who is selfish.
Being selfish is a personality trait, not an Alignment factor.

Very similar to CG - Chaotic Greedy disguised as Chaotic Good in the early material (Strategic Review i believe, certainly AD&D 1st Edition.)

[Malifice]

In the past when I played a character who was out for number one, I would make their alignment evil. But now that I'm studying the MM a little more, I'm noticing that creatures labeled as evil tend to actively work to bring about torture, slavery, death, and destruction. Creatures who are out for number one seem to be labeled neutral.

This is kinda making me think I've never actually played an evil character... Are evil characters just selfish people who want power or are they people who honestly enjoy suffering and try to create as much of it as they can?

A selfish person (who doesn't actively or go out of their way to either harm or help others) is neutral.

If you are selfish and you go about manipulating, abusing and harming others for your own benefit, you are evil.

[MadBear]

I've always found that thinking of the alignment in terms of a graph is helpful. That's because you can be CE while not being a murdering psychopath. You can also be LG without being a devote saint. Remember the spectrum of good/evil and law/chaos is more fluid then a single decision or personality trait.



http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0576_1.png

[DivisibleByZero]

And you can respect the laws (or live by a code of some sort), and be a good person with zero malice in their heart who honestly wants to make the world a better place if they only but had the chance. You're LG.
LG doesn't mean Extremist, like many people seem to think.
Incidentally, this is most people. Most people are Lawful Good.
And you can still be selfish. Because selfishness, once again, is a personality trait, and has no bearing whatsoever on Alignment.

[Waterdeep Merch]

You could fill a library with philosophical and psychological books regarding selfishness. If you boil things down enough, every action you can possibly take is an act of selfishness. After all, you will only ever do things for your own worldview and benefit, even when you convince yourself that you're not. Sacrifice yourself for the greater good? You mean, do everything in your power to achieve what you believe to be best. Which is not to poo poo it, but to point out that every decision everyone makes, for good or ill, is, in some way, an act of bias and selfishness.

The real question is to what degree and for what goal, which is the only thing I really care about in regards to D&D alignment. As far as I see it, a being willing to give of themselves to achieve a goal they believe to be beneficial to others or at least limits the harm caused to others in its pursuit is good. A being who's goals are either self-oriented or intended to be beneficial to others but sometimes causes a light bit of harm to people innocent in the eyes of the goal is neutral. A being who regularly harms others for a self-oriented goal or causes extreme harm to people innocent in the eyes of the goal is evil.

Even self-defense works here. A good character only protects themselves as much as is necessary and stops. A neutral character might go the extra mile to make sure they aren't attacked again. An evil character takes it too far, morally, by either acting sadistically, continuing to harm combatants that can no longer fight back when they have no reason to believe they'll ever be able to harm them again, or even upping the stakes and seeking lopsided retribution for the attack.

As you can clearly tell, there's no definitive line to what could be considered good and evil, and what looks one way to one person might be entirely different in their eyes. Your BBEG could, theoretically, be good by these standards. A balanced personality will also often act in any of the three alignments given the time and nature of the goal or action taken. What's most important isn't if they've ever once decided that those marauding orcs have REALLY gotten on their nerves for the last time, but which is their modus operandi.

And all this is just one viewpoint on morality. Based on a selfish, biased point of view wherein I define my world on reason over method over action. Where my players disagree, I generally let them define their character based on their own views on good and evil, as I can accept that my views are not universal and thus may not be correct.

They just have to accept that I'm going to identify all of the NPC's and monsters in the world based on my own metric.