So Heckin' DONE with Alignments

[sabelo2000]

Playground, please lend your assistance in the following matter:

As I'm gearing up to DM a new group, I've realized that 90% of the table problems I've encountered have come down to my players presenting their characters as Chaotic Stupid or Lawful *******, and I wonder if I should just not have alignments altogether.

On the surface, that means that any player, NPC, or monster that isn't an Outsider will be treated as Neutral for game purposes.

Benefits:
* Players are discouraged from the false logic of "my alignment is X, so I do Y."
* Enemies and encounters are not limited to opposing alignments (I can present Angels etc. as protagonists)
* Smite Good/Unholy Word etc. have reduced effects vice a "good" party

Drawbacks:
* Smite Evil/Holy Word etc. have reduced effects on most enemies
* Holy/Unholy weapons are harder to use
* How do I handle Paladins/Clerics? (see below)
* How do I handle Undead?

I think, for game rule purposes, Clerics/Paladins and other classes that "radiate an aura" of a particular alignment will be treated as fully of that alignment, since really what they're radiating is the proxy power of their God or Patron. The same logic guides their choice of channeling divine energy and casting heal/harm magic.

But Undead? I'm undecided. Certainly a Skeleton or Zombie isn't necessarily Evil, heck it's barely free-willed enough to have an alignment of its own. And a righteous Paladin turned to a Vampire against his will doesn't automatically shift his entire worldview... although centuries of being a powerful immortal might slowly warp his morals.

Most importantly: WHAT AM I MISSING? What objections/problems might come of this (either in RAW terms or from the table)?

[Troacctid]

You could try using the Magic: The Gathering color wheel instead of the traditional alignment grid. I know someone homebrewed an adaptation for it somewhere around here.

[Tiktakkat]

You are missing quite a lot.

First, you can take the Chaotic Obnoxious or Lawful Stupid off of the character sheet but you cannot take it out of the players.
All this does is allow them to act even Chaotic Outright Ridiculous or Lawful Stupider and still get away with immunity to alignment smackdowns.

Next, you do not miss it, but you seem to think there is a casual fix to the various problems you note.
Well, theoretically there is: you can play with variant systems like Oriental Adventures does where alignment is secondary to honor or some other factor. At least those systems pretend it solves the problems. Really they have as much subjectivity and room for player shenanigans as the core alignment rules.

As for objections from the table, they are also rather obvious: any player selfish enough to play a Chaotic Obnoxious or Lawful Stupid in the first place is selfish enough to pitch a fit when told he cannot, denouncing you to all (in the group) and sundry (other potential players in the local gaming community) as a lousy, cheating, unfair DM.

Finally, ultimately your "fix" will never manage to teach the players how to play the alignments, not to mention how to play a cooperative game like D&D where alignments are rather hardwired into the system.


Instead, I would advise talking to the players ahead of time, explain the issues you have had the in the past, and "request" (insist) that the new characters be of limited alignment choices, or even just exclusively Neutral Good. Yes, that means no paladins for now.
Once everyone is comfortable with the dynamic and the "new" way to play alignments the options can be expanded for additional campaigns or replacement characters, but not to all 9 alignments right away. In particular, all Evil alignments and Chaotic Neutral will be off limits until the group really connects.
I've done that with several groups over the years, and the results have always been excellent. I've had players run strict paladins that raise the expectations for the entire group without forcing choices, chaotic clerics whose madness never derails the action, vicious assassins with total group loyalty, and evil pirates who vent exclusively on the opposition.

[An Enemy Spy]

The thing about Alignments is people apply them backwards from how they should. Don't choose an alignment and then try to play a character who matches it, play the character the way you want to and then decide which alignment best applies to them. People get too hung up on alignments, they're highly malleable descriptions that have lots of overlap, not stone chiseled instructions with clear boundaries on how you have to behave.

[digiman619]

Pathfinder had some ideas on how to remove alignment that you can read about here. (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/alignment-description/additional-rules#TOC-Removing-Alignment) Perhaps you can retrofit it for your game.

[NichG]

Playground, please lend your assistance in the following matter:

As I'm gearing up to DM a new group, I've realized that 90% of the table problems I've encountered have come down to my players presenting their characters as Chaotic Stupid or Lawful *******, and I wonder if I should just not have alignments altogether.

On the surface, that means that any player, NPC, or monster that isn't an Outsider will be treated as Neutral for game purposes.

Benefits:
* Players are discouraged from the false logic of "my alignment is X, so I do Y."
* Enemies and encounters are not limited to opposing alignments (I can present Angels etc. as protagonists)
* Smite Good/Unholy Word etc. have reduced effects vice a "good" party

Drawbacks:
* Smite Evil/Holy Word etc. have reduced effects on most enemies
* Holy/Unholy weapons are harder to use
* How do I handle Paladins/Clerics? (see below)
* How do I handle Undead?

I think, for game rule purposes, Clerics/Paladins and other classes that "radiate an aura" of a particular alignment will be treated as fully of that alignment, since really what they're radiating is the proxy power of their God or Patron. The same logic guides their choice of channeling divine energy and casting heal/harm magic.

But Undead? I'm undecided. Certainly a Skeleton or Zombie isn't necessarily Evil, heck it's barely free-willed enough to have an alignment of its own. And a righteous Paladin turned to a Vampire against his will doesn't automatically shift his entire worldview... although centuries of being a powerful immortal might slowly warp his morals.

Most importantly: WHAT AM I MISSING? What objections/problems might come of this (either in RAW terms or from the table)?

I think the game is greatly improved by removing alignments, both at the in-game level and metagame level. Of the things you listed, I'd basically propose the following solution:

- Alignment-based effects associated with explicit divinities or with domains replace alignments with 'aligned with/opposed to the deity or concept in question' type distinctions. So a cleric of Moradin who would normally cast 'Detect Evil' instead casts what is effectively 'Detect Enemy of Moradin's Faith' - that is, it more or less asks Moradin 'do you approve of this person or not?', and it is exactly as meaningful as that. I'd weaken or de-emphasize the spells in cases where they're supported by faith in an ideal rather than supported by an actual divinity. Someone who is a cleric that deeply believes in something like 'fire is a purifying and holy force' might be able to detect a water elemental, a cleric of water, or an outsider with a fire ability that spreads corruption rather than purifies, but they wouldn't e.g. get to know how many campfires a ranger smothered during their life. Cosmologically, when a deity is involved, the caster gets to piggyback on their portfolio sense to evaluate literal past actions, motives, and decisions; whereas if its just an ideal then the information used to discern for/against is more local and energy-based in nature.

- Alignment-based effects tied to magic items use the belief structure of the item's creator, not objective cosmic alignment.

- The Great Wheel geometry of the Outer Planes is an affectation of map-makers who have to render the non-spatial relationships between the concepts underlying mortal belief onto a 2d surface. There's some truth to it (since lots of people believe in good vs evil enough to color the part of the planes that is literally defined by belief), but it's also not uniquely true. At the core, each of the Outer Planes represents some strong concept underlying mortal life experiences and philosophies, and the way things work in that plane is driven by that concept more than how good/evil/lawful/chaotic the concept happens to be. For example, the Beastlands is Chaotic-Neutral Good in the traditional cosmology, but its concepts have a lot to do with naturalism, hunter vs hunted, ecologies, etc - so in this variant those aspects are just more important than the 'good' part. Optional meta-plot that the specific Good/Evil/Law/Chaos maps are being intentionally spread around by the Yugoloths/other planar conspiracy of your choice, who want belief in the standard chart to destabilize some of the Outer Planes that don't fit those pigeonholes so well, allowing them to steal aspects off of them to create their own ideal of Evil.

- Even in the base game, Undead are elemental existences rather than alignment existences (which would more properly correspond to the various outsiders). They're associated with the Negative Energy Plane rather than the Positive Energy Plane, and so in terms of spells/abilities that specifically impact undead or arise as consequences of undeath, it has to do with that aspect rather than anything about evilness. Undead can still be berserk, inimical to life, etc - this doesn't automatically mean that a random zombie has as good of a chance of being your friend as your enemy. But if there's any evil in their creation, its in the suffering caused to the soul ripped free of the afterlife in the case of intelligent undead, the damage caused by creating ecological disasters (e.g. zones saturated in negative energy which might lead to spontaneous formation of uncontrolled undead), etc. Cultural norms about undeath would vary from place to place, deity to deity, etc, and (assuming care was taken), an 'ethical necromancer' would not be an impossibility.

- Paladins are probably the most problematic in this framework. I'd insist that Paladins be selected by specific deities as militant representatives of that deity's cause in the mortal realm (whereas clerics are more about spreading the faith and aligning beliefs of worshippers to what the deity actually wants to represent), and all of their corresponding Smite/etc stuff ties to the deity. Stuff like the Paladin's code and falling, I would de-emphasize and instead say that the deity who sponsors the paladin would hold the paladin accountable for executing their will properly - as part of that, (most) deities would give the equivalent of a free Phylactery of Faithfulness effect where, if the paladin begins to misbehave, they let them know first and give them a chance to mend their ways rather than just snatching away their power because of an accidental lie or a catch-22. Basically, the deity's interest is served in having a competent representative, so outside of deities whose personalities specifically involve torturing their own worshippers, the deity will generally work with the paladin to get the results they want. A direct removal of power would happen for either an outright betrayal by the paladin, an extended refusal to actually go along with the deity's instructions, or a situation where the deity continuing to back the paladin up would fundamentally undermine the deity's cause (because it would imply that the deity approved of the paladin's actions and influence belief).

So a Pelorite paladin letting an undead go would get a message from the boss 'hey, part of your job is to mop up the undead, don't get lazy' but no removal of power. A Pelorite paladin helping their necromancer buddy start up a zombie-for-hire service would get an ultimatum 'remove yourself from this association or else' - continuing to advance the opposing cause to Pelor would be a betrayal once Pelor has made it clear that this is inappropriate. A Pelorite paladin who uses the power of healing to torture someone would be warned against it, and would lose power on committing the act because otherwise Pelor would be saying to the world 'this is what is meant by the concept of Healing that I represent'. But it has to do with what Pelor wants to be about, not what is cosmically Good.

[Saintheart]

One suggestion to go halfway without removing all alignments?

Remove the Lawful-Chaotic axis and leave Good-Neutral-Evil untouched, and impose (or better yet, negotiate) codes of conduct instead for those lawful classes or professions that would otherwise depend on it, i.e. paladin or monk. And in the case of those codes of conduct, render it that only a willing and wilful breach of the code results in loss of classes.

Your table problems are due to lawful idiots and chaotic stupids. That, in turn, suggests people who have seen an ironclad rule of behaviour and warp it in their own minds as something they have to follow or else character consequences result.

Ironically, chaotic stupids present the same problem as lawful idiots - the difference is that the chaotic sees himself under a rule to break stuff, which, actually, is just another ironclad rule they follow.

Remove the law/chaos axis and you're taking out rules of behaviour. You're instead just asking characters what their basic morality is. (And one might note morality is hard enough to judge just between good and evil, let alone work out what shading of lawful or chaotic it is.)

This won't remove all your problems if you play with a bunch of immature idiots who aren't prepared to see other points of view -- and I've found most lawful stupid or chaotic campaignbreakers are more of this kind than not -- but I have a hypothesis that many of the problems with the alignment system spring out of the fact that lawful/chaotic is a personality trait, a way of addressing the world, rather than a moral standpoint, and D&D's 9-point box treats moral standpoints as alignments.

And I say all of that being a guy who actually likes Lawful Neutral characters and having tried to discern what makes a Lawful Neutral a cool character.

The other reason I suggest negotiated codes of conduct for paladins or monks is because
(a) leaving aside the exterior trappings of either being a Certified Good Guy (the paladin) or a Man With Mastery Over His Body (the monk), the idea of these classes is that you hold yourself to certain standards of conduct, willingly or otherwise. The drive is to hold one's self to a certain standard.
(b) people are less likely to chafe against standards of behaviour if they have freely accepted them and indeed had a hand in creating them.

[Aotrs Commander]

I agree alignment was an idea that just doesn't really work, because strangely trying to fit the full breadth of sapient/sentient personality and pidgeon-hole it into nine categories just doesn't work. (In spite of me personally fitting near-perfectly into one...) AD&D's alignment was really dumb, so I can see (and even myself thought to start with) them making alignment into a bigger deal mechanically in 3.0 seemed like a good idea.

But really, it wasn't.

Myself, I have left alignment mostly alone (except only to use it as a very light touch these days), pretty much solely for the mechanical element; but I did flat remove all the alignment restrictions from all character classes with the sole except Paladin/antipaladin early on (okay, technically, I retained the thing about clerics and their deity alignments). (One of my first 3.0 parties, someone wanted to play Gabrielle off Xena as a monk, and quite reasonably didn't think LF fit; my response was an immediate "I don't see whay not," thereafter, I more or less decided that alignment restrctions on classes were basically bullcrap except in niche cases.)

I agree with Saintheart's suggestion that the broad categories of good, neutral and evil are useful; even in an alignmentless system like Rolemaster there is some "evil" stuff (specifcally evil base spell lists for some of the primary casters), but applied presciptively, not descriptively.

[Saintheart]

I agree alignment was an idea that just doesn't really work, because strangely trying to fit the full breadth of sapient/sentient personality and pidgeon-hole it into nine categories just doesn't work. (In spite of me personally fitting near-perfectly into one...)

Well, given you're a spirit-bound lich you likely have it rather easier to select an alignment than us mortals who have all these chemicals sloshing around that change us from lawful to chaotic depending on how high our alcohol content gets. :smallbiggrin:

[Aotrs Commander]

Well, given you're a spirit-bound lich you likely have it rather easier to select an alignment than us mortals who have all these chemicals sloshing around that change us from lawful to chaotic depending on how high our alcohol content gets. :smallbiggrin:

Nah, I was LE before I became a lich...!

(Cruel - but not entirely unjustfied people might also make the comment that it's just because I'm sufficiently one-dimensional...)



But hey, even a stopped clock's right twice a day, so even alignment can fit right once, yeah?

[redking]

Why not start all the PCs out as Neutral, and depending on how they play, assign them an alignment based on their actions. Any chaotic stupid player is assigned as Chaotic Neutral, along with an form of insanity using the insanity rules. Make the drawback for being insane hurt. Force the Lawful Stupid types under an authority that comes down on them like a ton of bricks when they are stupid. A good flogging in front of all the town people never hurt.

[Sutr]

I don't think I've played with alignment in 15 years as a DM. Some people still add one to the character sheet though, especially paladins shooting for lawful good. My longtime players a few years back actually looked at a new character and told him he didn't read the houserules when he said "my character would do smash something of the king's because he's chaotic." It then went into a better roleplaying session about why his character felt shortchanged by the extra rewards they got. I think he was given land, technically elevating him to nobility, but as he grew up in the capital he saw it as a slight as he couldn't do anything with it. The other three had been given titles that came with at least some political power.

Undead don't need to be fixed just keep it that the peasants and others see them as evil, and they still can be objectively so like fiends.

[King of Nowhere]

You are missing quite a lot.

First, you can take the Chaotic Obnoxious or Lawful Stupid off of the character sheet but you cannot take it out of the players.



I think the game is greatly improved by removing alignments, both at the in-game level and metagame level.

both of those are true

in that you can remove alignments mechanically, with a bit of common sense. introduce a code of conduct where it's really needed (paladins and clerics) and otherwise remove/refluff other effects referring to alignment.
my game had alignments, but they never were a concern. i don't think they were ever used as anything more than a loose descriptor; I didn't even bother to assign a law-chaos value to some of the main villains. and nothing bad happened. the game works perfectly fine.

on the other hand, chaotic stupid and lawful dumb players will still remain. the lack of alignment will not prevent them from doing stupid stuff with their character.
removing alignment can be done, but it won't fix your problems.


any player selfish enough to play a Chaotic Obnoxious or Lawful Stupid in the first place is selfish enough to pitch a fit when told he cannot, denouncing you to all (in the group) and sundry (other potential players in the local gaming community) as a lousy, cheating, unfair DM.
i don't think that's a problem. any player that's so disruptive will get a bad name pretty fast, and won't be believed

[Morty]

I don't think anything would actually break if Smite Evil just worked on everything and everyone. It just means it's up to the paladin not to go around smiting people who don't deserve it.

[False God]

Playground, please lend your assistance in the following matter:

As I'm gearing up to DM a new group, I've realized that 90% of the table problems I've encountered have come down to my players presenting their characters as Chaotic Stupid or Lawful *******, and I wonder if I should just not have alignments altogether.

On the surface, that means that any player, NPC, or monster that isn't an Outsider will be treated as Neutral for game purposes.

Benefits:
* Players are discouraged from the false logic of "my alignment is X, so I do Y."
* Enemies and encounters are not limited to opposing alignments (I can present Angels etc. as protagonists)
* Smite Good/Unholy Word etc. have reduced effects vice a "good" party

Drawbacks:
* Smite Evil/Holy Word etc. have reduced effects on most enemies
* Holy/Unholy weapons are harder to use
* How do I handle Paladins/Clerics? (see below)
* How do I handle Undead?
-Let the players smite who they want. "That guy" is a fair enough target. Many of the Holy Word-type spells are tagged with "good" and "evil" already, the players don't need to be aligned, but these spells represent powers derived from good or evil beings. If you start using the powers of good to smite other good people, then the powers that be may start smiting YOU.
-Just make Holy/Unholy provide bonus damage in the form of positive/negative energy. And again, this is potentially divine energy sourced from the powers-that-be who may actually be aligned. Removing alignment doesn't make Pelor suddenly evil, or Asmodeus suddenly good. They're still powerful beings of good/evil energies.



I think, for game rule purposes, Clerics/Paladins and other classes that "radiate an aura" of a particular alignment will be treated as fully of that alignment, since really what they're radiating is the proxy power of their God or Patron. The same logic guides their choice of channeling divine energy and casting heal/harm magic.
This works just fine, and as above. I'd add a "code" based on their deity similar to 5E's Paladin codes, and if they start violating that or smiting people their god doesn't like, they might start getting smote by said god.


But Undead? I'm undecided. Certainly a Skeleton or Zombie isn't necessarily Evil, heck it's barely free-willed enough to have an alignment of its own. And a righteous Paladin turned to a Vampire against his will doesn't automatically shift his entire worldview... although centuries of being a powerful immortal might slowly warp his morals.
Undead are typically powered by necromantic energies, which most of the time are evil in nature. They're literally powered by evil magic. Much like Angels and Demons, they're creatures born of magic that already has an alignment built into it. Reason it out however you like, "good magic" is made up of the hopes and dreams of humanity while "evil magic" is made of all their pain and suffering, or something. But they're literally made of aligned materials. You can remove alignment, but you can't get past the fact that the "good planes" are literally made of "good energy" and the "evil planes" are made of "evil energy".

As long as they're sentient creatures they're fully capable of making their own choices and even being a good person! (I throw a good-demon at my players from time to time and it thoroughly confuses them because they register as both "good" and "evil", but not neutral.) But where "neutral" folks have a little angel and demon on their shoulder each trying to get them to do good or evil respectively, creatures made from aligned materials don't have the other side. They ONLY have the little angel or the little demon encouraging them to do good/evil at any opportunity.

As someone who isn't a big fan of alignment, this is typically how I do it.

[Zaq]

I like having alignment as a fallback when trying to hash out the motivations and reactions of a new character I'm still getting a feel for. I try not to make it a primary consideration, but I do let it color the character's perceptions and their behavior a little bit. Like, play the character first and the alignment second (if that), but the alignment is part of the character and that isn't necessarily a bad thing if you don't make it into a bad thing.

That said, like any tool, there are things you can do with alignment that are useful and things you can do with it that are way the hell less useful. If your group is doing non-useful things with it and your game will be stronger without it, by all means, chuck it out the window and don't look back. I don't think it's automatically bad, but it's absolutely not automatically good either.

[GrayDeath]

You could try using the Magic: The Gathering color wheel instead of the traditional alignment grid. I know someone homebrewed an adaptation for it somewhere around here.

THis is an interesting Replacement. We used it once or twice as well.

Also jsut removing Law/Chaos,a s also suggesated above might helpt.

BUT: These are InGame solutions for a mostly OutGame Problem.

As others have said, that is a PLAYER Problem, not an Alignment Problem.
Removing ALignments will merely remove the easy justification for Problem Palyers, not their ... lets call them "Asocially inspired" actions.

My suggestion hence would be to talk to your group. In depth, and as long as possbile, to determine if your playstyles are actually compatible, and then make a game following the achieved compromise.


On a sidenote: I very very rarely use Alignment outside D&D. But in it, it is such an essential part (and so obviously mentioned) that I tend not to ahve any trouble with it as long as I can talk with all other palyers before, so that we have a compatible view on it. :)

[Bartmanhomer]

I think you should talk to your players about the type of behaviour that you feel is disruptive in the game.

[Troacctid]

You know what else you could do is use 4e's alignment system, which is of course objectively better than 3e's.

[martixy]

I solved this very easily on my table:

Alignment is descriptive, not prescriptive.

I, the DM, tell you, the player, what your alignment is, based on how you act, not the other way around. Also, I eliminated any alignment requirements from classes, spells, feats, whatever.

Admittedly my players aren't ones that constantly use their alignment as an excuse for their characters actions, but it does happen occasionally. Well not any more. They just do what they want and I tell them the result.


First, you can take the Chaotic Obnoxious or Lawful Stupid off of the character sheet but you cannot take it out of the players.
All this does is allow them to act even Chaotic Outright Ridiculous or Lawful Stupider and still get away with immunity to alignment smackdowns.

First sentence is true and I think that's the beauty of this approach - it removes one incentive from players, which might be enough, and it doesn't grant immunity to "alignment smackdowns". Although that phrase sounds like the DM equivalent of obnoxious alignments. Really you shouldn't be battling your players like this. If your party is stupid let them be stupid, if they want to turn the game into slapstick, and you don't want to - tell them, if your party is evil, let them be evil, if you don't want to let them - tell them. It's up to the players of the game(incl. DM) to decide if their play styles mesh enough for everyone to have fun.

[Telok]

I've done two things that worked in my games.

One time I just replaced the base alignment system with the one from Palladium/Rifts (https://imgur.com/gallery/DmKvb) and did away with the law/chaos axis for spells and effects.

Another time I specifically set the alignments as magical auras imposed by powerful planar entities. They were 'light', 'dark', 'order', and 'yo mama (called chaos by some)'. The afore mentioned powerful planar entities (essentially sapient outer planes that could cause effects on the prime material) each had one or two alignment auras and any 'divine' caster or other character race/class that had an alignment aura had to be linked to one of the powers and got one of their patron's auras. Nobody had an alignment unless they had some form of 'divine' connection, and even if they did have such a connection it didn't dictate or inform their behaviours. Then I implemented the Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup Gods (http://crawl.chaosforge.org/God_comparison) as the pantheon/powers, a piety system, and 5-level prestige classes. It was an older version of DCSS with a slightly more limited god list and a better bullet pointed likes/dislikes list.

Frankly I haven't used the D&D alignment system for almost 20 years now just because there's so much junk and useless or wrong preconceptions piled on it.

[Tiktakkat]

I agree alignment was an idea that just doesn't really work, because strangely trying to fit the full breadth of sapient/sentient personality and pidgeon-hole it into nine categories just doesn't work. (In spite of me personally fitting near-perfectly into one...) AD&D's alignment was really dumb, so I can see (and even myself thought to start with) them making alignment into a bigger deal mechanically in 3.0 seemed like a good idea.

Alignment was never supposed to fit the full breadth of personality into nine categories.
Trying to make it do that is always going to fail.

It was only supposed to fit the limited breadth of archetypes of classic mythology and fantastic literature into nine categories, increased from an original three categories.
Leaving it to do that will almost always succeed - provided the players and DM know and understand those archetypes.

[OGDojo]

well removing Alignments is pretty drastic, teaching your new players what their character's alignment would do is part of the DMs job, if it completely goes against what their alignment would do don't keep silent, tell them no.

there are 2 rules of being a DM,
Rule 1: this is the DM's world, so the DM makes the rules
Rule 2: if you have a problem with the DM or his rulings, refer to rule 1.

if they dont like the way you DM then they can leave.

now to fix Chaotic stupid, dont put them against creatures, give them puzzles. then they have to think their way out. Lawful goods doing what they please? print out a list of local laws that the world follows in order to keep the peace and give it to them, paladins follow the law and bring people to justice, not slaughter people or hurt people needlessly. if they fail to follow those laws send people after them, people that are higher level than them.

this is YOUR WORLD, if the guardians of this world are Great wyrm gold dragons then send them after the party if they are causing issues.

if they are being dumb give them opportunities to be smart. if they are itching for a fight, give them a fight that they can take out in 1-3 rounds lol

the point is, give them consequences for breaking their alignment. give them concequences for running amok, give them consequences, this game is about being free to do whatever you want, but freedom has consequences.

if a paladin breaks his oath and goes against his rules then he loses his powers. his smite evil doesn't work, his spells wont cast, and his special abilities won't activate. his mount leaves and he is cut off from his God.

[Droid Tony]

Well, the big drawback is that your not really doing anything that will effect the players behavior. Ok, you will just say they are ''neutral", and then they will just simply act however they want. In short they will act Neutral Stupid...or worse just still be Alignment Stupid.

Noy so much Benefits:
* Players use false logic of "my alignment is Neutral, so I do X." (aka no change)
* Any foe encounter can be opposed to the PCs (this has nothing to do with alignment)
* Smite Foes works just fine..

Also:

*Undead fit more "anti life" then some type of Alignment Foe. Sure you could have a vampire evil crimelord, Or you can have a vampire that kills victiums and destroies life.

*Divine things work just fine if you just make them Opposed to each other. The god of justice character can smite a god of theives character and back at them.


Really, you big problem will be that you think you are changing the game...but nothing will really change.

[The Insanity]

This is not an Alignment problem. This is a Player problem. If you'll remove Alignment, the Player will just use some other excuse to be a ****. Will you remove Roleplaying if the Player says "this is what my character would do"?

[Bohandas]

* How do I handle Undead?

I would split the difference and handle undead by alignment (not necessarily always evil btw, ex. ghosts) as well. Maybe instead of limiting alignment to outsiders, limit it to creatures that are inherently magical (ie. Outsiders, Undead, Elementals, and Fey)

[Bartmanhomer]

This is not an Alignment problem. This is a Player problem. If you'll remove Alignment, the Player will just use some other excuse to be a ****. Will you remove Roleplaying if the Player says "this is what my character would do"?

I agree especially if the players are inexperienced.

[Enixon]

You are missing quite a lot.

First, you can take the Chaotic Obnoxious or Lawful Stupid off of the character sheet but you cannot take it out of the players.
All this does is allow them to act even Chaotic Outright Ridiculous or Lawful Stupider and still get away with immunity to alignment smackdowns.



That pretty much sums up my experience as well.

It's been my experience that getting rid of alignments to curb lawful-stupid or chaotic stupid behavior mostly just ends with everyone jumping straight to what would previously have kicked them straight to Chaotic Evil the moment morality becomes a slight inconvenience.

Well, maybe "Pragmatic Evil" is a better way of putting it than Chaotic, now that they're not "good" or "neutral" acts that used to be "evil" are now just another tool to pull out and since as the evil way is often more likley to cause the least personal inconvenience it's the way that will be reached for first. Why negotiate for information when you can just torture what you want to know out of captives? Who cares that slaves will get caught in the Fireball, it'll clear the goblins out quickest? Now that "well I'm Neutral Good so I wouldn't let you do that." or even "Detecting as evil makes going to the God of Healing's temple awkward" are no longer issues just be ready for your "heroes" to do stuff that would make the grittiest 90's comic book edgelord antihero blush at the drop of a hat because now, unless there's some outside reason, like a NPC they need to keep alive reporting their atrocities to the authorities, there's often no reason not to.


Now this is just my personal experience so results may vary of course.

[D+1]

I've written reams about alignment in D&D for decades. As stated by others, this isn't a rules problem. It never has been and never will be. It is a PLAYER problem. Alignment is the attempted SOLUTION, not the CAUSE of the problem.

As far as players are concerned the purpose of alignment is now and always has been to be a guide for them to play better characters - characters that are consistent if not actually reasonable in their behavior (and that includes the chaotic-aligned characters). That is to say, alignment is intended to HELP the players run characters who are not just random-acting nutburgers who follow no personal code or beliefs whenever it suits them as players. Players who can't be bothered to at least TRY to keep their characters behaving reasonably and consistently (much less use alignment as justification to NOT do so) will never have reasonable and consistently-behaved characters regardless of how many behavior codes and restrictions, or added alignment penalties you have, or systems of good/bad traits and behaviors, OR if you dispose of alignment entirely. If anything, doing the latter is an open invitation to the players that says, "I give up trying to keep you guys and your PC's in line. Just go ahead and do whatever random crap you feel like at any moment." If they won't even try with alignments you can be quite assured that any replacement system trying to get them to stay in line will be just as gleefully ignored and abused, and replacing it with nothing says, "I guess utter chaos can't actually be worse than Alignment, can it?"

Players who are trying deliberately to NOT be disruptive, and who WANT to play characters whose motivations and actions MAKE SENSE don't need alignment to help them continue to not be disruptive, and didn't need alignment to somehow FORCE them to not be disruptive in the first place. SOME players actually do need some guidance for playing characters with sensible, or at least predictable behavior that isn't intended to tear the game apart. For them, alignment helps JUST AS MUCH as other methods of limiting or governing how player characters behave. And then there are players for whom none of that works. And there are DM's who want to use alignment as a painful hammer to the players heads, trying to control them and manipulate their PC's directly to do what they as DM want them to do, rather than let it be what it should: A guide and an encouragement to players to keep trying to DO BETTER at roleplaying without having to be forced to it.

If there is anything you WON'T miss by dropping alignment entirely it will only be things you never had in the first place - like cooperative and non-disruptive players and PC's. If you do have cooperative and non-disruptive players then PC's dropping alignment is unnecessary. If you don't have that, nothing will change.

Even the game designers of every edition of D&D seemingly failed to REALLY grasp just what it is that alignment is best suited for and how to explain to DM's and players how to USE it to their advantage for better gaming rather than keep banging their heads against it as if it were a brick wall intended to keep them from having any fun.

When alignment was first presented in D&D it had no explanation to accompany it whatsoever. It was just a cool idea taken from a few examples of the written fiction that Gygax drew upon as his inspiration for D&D. If you had not read those books of fiction or at least played D&D with those who HAD read those books, alignment was a complete non-sequitur. No explanation where it came from, what to use it for or especially HOW to use it. And even if you had read those books, it was likely you weren't overly keen on having a cosmology like that governing YOUR campaign setting.

In 1E there was explanation and rules for alignment, but even Gygax wasn't very clear just how to use it except as a hammer to keep the more outrageous-behaving players and their characters in line. Every edition after that never really got down in the dirt to really figure out BETTER than Gygax had just what alignment should - and shouldn't - be used for in D&D, and how to have it make the game BETTER rather than continue to confuse players still trying to make sense of it.

But the problem is still with the players, not with how badly alignment is explained and implemented. You need to have a solid conversation with your players to make it clear what kind of behavior you really want to see (and not see) from PC's, and how alignment is intended to help them avoid outrageous behavior issues - not create them.

[Telok]

This is why I prefer the Palladium system alignments. They're a bullet point list of behavior guidelines for archtypical moral codes found in fiction. Exactly what D&D alignments are supposed to be but written as clear behavior guidelines in a simple format, not three paragraphs of half baked philosophical musings spread across multiple books.

[smetzger]

The thing about Alignments is people apply them backwards from how they should. Don't choose an alignment and then try to play a character who matches it, play the character the way you want to and then decide which alignment best applies to them. People get too hung up on alignments, they're highly malleable descriptions that have lots of overlap, not stone chiseled instructions with clear boundaries on how you have to behave.

This.

Have the players come up with a character. Some ways to do this is have them model their character after a character in a movie or have them choose 3 adjectives that describe how their character acts.

Do not let the players choose alignment. You the DM chooses their alignment and there usually isn't much need to tell them what their alignment is.

[rel]

After much consideration over the years my current approach is to delete alignment from the game entirely.
It ceases to exist.


Some details on crunch
Anything that uses alignment as a requirement (paladin, assassin, monk) no longer has that requirement.

Anything that interacts with alignment is excised from the game. Try to do this as neatly possible leaving as much associated stuff intact as you can.

e.g.
cleric class features would no longer include an aura but also wouldn't have any restrictions on what spells can be cast. Also all clerics would permanently chose whether they want to turn or rebuke undead like a neutral cleric currently does.

the spells protection from alignment would just read protection and no longer provide the first alignment based effect.

spells like detect alignment and holy word would simply cease to exist.

the pit fiend now has DR / silver, no longer has blasphemy or aligned attacks and has a slightly nerfed unholy aura.

In the unlikely event that a particular option is losing so many toys that it is no longer playable and absolutely required for realising a build talk to the player in question and work out a suitable replacement.

I can't think of any examples off the top of my head for this one.


Some thoughts on fluff
Once you get rid of any mechanical component to alignemnt adjust the world fluff to match. I suggest pushing things in a more traditional sword and sorcery direction. The kind of worlds imagined by the likes of Leiber, Howard and Vance.

People call each other good and evil all the time, the universe doesn't weigh in on the subject.

Maybe monsters are just misunderstood, tragic creatures that suffer a compulsion to kill. Maybe they just love the sweet taste of adventurer flesh.

Yes, there are gods and people claim to know their minds. Maybe they even do, a lot of gods are quite human in their desires and motives.
Whoever actually worships god x will tell you at length about how good and awesome said god is. If you don't like a god there is plenty of evidence to point to proving they are evil.

There is an afterlife, a place of mist and shadow where not much happens. Almost everyone goes there.
Please a god enough and you get to hang out in their palace.
Piss off a god enough and you get to hang out in their dungeon.

[Darg]

If people are playing their characters as stupid, enforce appropriate stats for the character. If the character is acting with below average intelligence give them 8 intelligence or 3. If the character isn't learning from their mistakes, they obviously have low wisdom. That and I outright tell the party that if they wish to separate from a character that is being a hindrance, we all do it irl anyway.

Of course, one should talk with the person first to explain that they are playing way too extreme and it is taking away from everyone else's enjoyment. If all else fails you can always just have the character do random balance checks to see if they trip and fall on a stick that impales them through the eye.

[Clementx]

Yanking Law vs Chaos out is really easy. All those spells that refer to them vanish, and since they only ever reference each other, no harm.

Slaadi and Modrons just become Neutral Outsiders (which I suggest making a Bane/Favored Enemy category covering the old lawful/chaotic ones). It would be nice to swap all Devil DR/silver to cold iron if you want to mix the fiendish races together. If you want to maintain the Blood War (or even older school Wind Dukes vs elemental Chaos), it becomes a matter of personal conflict between Asmodeus and Demogorgon, or whatever factions you care to focus on. As long as a player knows what metal to get and who is immune to what for what plane, it will be fine.

Barbarians can feel great loyalty to tribe, totem, and religion. Bards can be trapped by the tragic conflicts of honor and courtly love. Monks can be wild hermits who shirk all restraints to transcend humanity (replace Ki strike lawful with extraplanar/spirit bane of some kind). Warlocks have still sold their soul to something horrific. Alignment restrictions don't mean much there. Deities can swap in alternate domains quite easily. Paladin codes can be bushido, chevalerie, or Jedi, as appropriate to your setting and cultures.

Good vs Evil is a lot harder to carve out of the rules and setting. If you address the player issues as said by others above, the worse issues with GvE will fade. My solution is to emphasize that 80% of normal people are neutral, 5% are good and keep to themselves, 5% are evil and won't bother you, and the last 10% are fanatic enough to be a problem for others, no matter which side they are on.

[Tiktakkat]

Even the game designers of every edition of D&D seemingly failed to REALLY grasp just what it is that alignment is best suited for and how to explain to DM's and players how to USE it to their advantage for better gaming rather than keep banging their heads against it as if it were a brick wall intended to keep them from having any fun.

As it happens, when Gary Gygax had that problem, he wrote "The Village of Hommlett", with the clerics and druid and other NPCs intended to be rather blatant examples of the alignment, because on his sons just wasn't "getting it" with his PCs.
Of course that pales next to the really heavy handed, hardwired into the background as well as DM "rules", method presented in Dragonlance.


When alignment was first presented in D&D it had no explanation to accompany it whatsoever. It was just a cool idea taken from a few examples of the written fiction that Gygax drew upon as his inspiration for D&D. If you had not read those books of fiction or at least played D&D with those who HAD read those books, alignment was a complete non-sequitur. No explanation where it came from, what to use it for or especially HOW to use it. And even if you had read those books, it was likely you weren't overly keen on having a cosmology like that governing YOUR campaign setting.

That is because most people inclined to be gamers at that time would have read all those books, and recognized the inferences. At most, the list of inspirational reading was to make the sources clear for those who might not have caught all the homages, and if they needed a quick list for newcomers.
And do note, the original 3-alignment version is from The Eternal Champion series, which includes Elric. I think I was the last person among the people I knew in the late 70s and early 80s to read Elric, and I never bothered with any of the others. Back then if you were the type of person inclined to try a fantasy role-playing game, the odds were overwhelming that you had read that, and so recognizing Law versus Chaos would be no big thing.
At worst, Gary overestimated how much gaming would continue to be an exclusive realm of hardcore sci-fi/fantasy nuts and wargamers. I certainly did years later, being horribly surprised at how little of the inspirational reading list most players had even heard of, never mind actually read.


In 1E there was explanation and rules for alignment, but even Gygax wasn't very clear just how to use it except as a hammer to keep the more outrageous-behaving players and their characters in line. Every edition after that never really got down in the dirt to really figure out BETTER than Gygax had just what alignment should - and shouldn't - be used for in D&D, and how to have it make the game BETTER rather than continue to confuse players still trying to make sense of it.

He was rather clear - pick an archetype and stick with it. If you cannot, you advance more slowly, or even go backwards, relative to the other players.
The problem was not the intent, but the method. That kind of brute carrot and stick approach never really simply does not have the appeal he expected it would, particularly compounded by the training rules he kludged up for AD&D.
The problem with later writers was generally a combination of not knowing the inspirational material as well, especially not as well Gary, along with not having a wargaming background for writing rules. They could write great background fluff for sure, but translating that into exception-based rules is way more difficult, and too many of them never really developed the skill - at least not until too late, which a few of them acknowledge.
Not that any real set of rules can ever make a functional way to balance character abilities with fluff and codes of conduct, even if they manage to get a functional list of each alignment or equivalent.

[NichG]

The thing you get rid of by not having alignments is alignment discussions.

Players will do as they do, but if there isn't moralizing about alignment ideals to fall back on then its easier to cut straight to the point - if some behavior is unacceptable at a given table, then that needs to be made clear as an out of game discussion, not reframed in terms of in-game rules or worse, carrots and sticks. It feels easier to tell someone not to torture an NPC because they're NG, but that's an error - it invites the idea that justification is possible that would permit that behavior after all (arguing about examples of good-aligned characters in the books using torture, ravages, offering to change their character's alignment to match, etc)

Rather, one should just clearly say 'I will not run torture scenes - if you want to play that kind of content you need to find a GM who will'. Own the decision and make it clear that it's an table culture issue and not a rules issue.

[Morty]

The thing you get rid of by not having alignments is alignment discussions.

Players will do as they do, but if there isn't moralizing about alignment ideals to fall back on then its easier to cut straight to the point - if some behavior is unacceptable at a given table, then that needs to be made clear as an out of game discussion, not reframed in terms of in-game rules or worse, carrots and sticks. It feels easier to tell someone not to torture an NPC because they're NG, but that's an error - it invites the idea that justification is possible that would permit that behavior after all (arguing about examples of good-aligned characters in the books using torture, ravages, offering to change their character's alignment to match, etc)

Rather, one should just clearly say 'I will not run torture scenes - if you want to play that kind of content you need to find a GM who will'. Own the decision and make it clear that it's an table culture issue and not a rules issue.

Yeah, that's pretty much the rub. Alignment has some utility in helping to nail down a character's morality and ideals, but its combination of being vague and highly deterministic provokes arguments and misinterpretations, as well as being really easy to abuse by bad faith players. Its benefits (such as they are) simply don't stack up to the downsides. There are methods of defining your character's morality and ideals that just plain work better.

[Telonius]

I think that there are a couple of times when alignment would "matter" in an average game. That's generally when a character is getting their powers from an entity other than themselves, and that entity cares how the character acts. So basically, your Clerics. It would kind of break immersion for a Cleric of St. Cuthbert to go around casting Chaos Hammer. Seems like the god might have a problem with that, if St. Cuthbert's actually the one providing the spells. (Note that there are settings like Eberron where even that isn't as big of a deal).

For Paladins, I completely re-write the fluff. Paladins are the "active" servants of the deity, as opposed to the more "contemplative" Clerics. (I also houserule away DMM abuse, and Divine Power is a War Domain only spell). For both Clerics and Paladins, I work with the players before the game starts to set up a code of conduct that they're expected to follow. Paladins in particular are expected to be paragons of their deity or philosophy, whether it's a deity like Pelor or something more like Nerull. Positive and Negative energy are still there, and some Clerics (of "neutral" deities) still have to pick between which variety they channel.

[Psyren]

The thing about Alignments is people apply them backwards from how they should. Don't choose an alignment and then try to play a character who matches it, play the character the way you want to and then decide which alignment best applies to them. People get too hung up on alignments, they're highly malleable descriptions that have lots of overlap, not stone chiseled instructions with clear boundaries on how you have to behave.

While this is nominally true, this is also a bit too simple. Alignment is certainly the end result of a character's organic actions, but it's also useful as an aspiration for a character that guides those actions. "I want my character to be a Chaotic Good freedom fighter" is useful as a quick overall summary of a character's outlook, and something they can return to whenever deciding what that character will or won't do/tolerate in a conflict. In other words, I don't view considering overall alignment first and then deciding what action to take as necessarily being "backwards" - rather, a character's actions and motivations can flow in both directions, and wanting to keep the two letters on their character sheet from changing can be just as much a driver for the player as anything else they do.

This is even more important for classes, abilities or other features that do require you to maintain one or both components of the character's alignment to maintain access to that class. "I want to stay a paladin" is a motivation and can help the player decide between two or more options.

[ShurikVch]

Obligatory quote from the Arcana Unearthed:
No Alignments

There are no alignments in Arcana Unearthed into which you must shoehorn your character's outlook. This rulebook does not attempt to define good or evil, nor does it address law or chaos. Characters should decide for themselves what is good and what is evil, the way real people do. There are no spells that reveal whether a character is evil or good - his actions and the perspectives of those around him determine that. No (or at least very few) characters think of themselves as evil. The truth is, such concepts are relative.

Yet even without alignments, villains still do terrible things to further their own goals. Heroes still make great sacrifices to stop them. The classic conflicts all remain. But now there are even more. Two noble and altruistic characters might oppose each other. Their personal ideologies might even cause each of them to define the other as "evil."

Characters with a conscience still act responsibly, and those with a code of conduct still adhere to it: having no alignment is not an excuse for all characters to act wantonly. As in the real world, things are much more interesting if there are not nine alignments but, in fact, an infinite number of them - each character becomes his own alignment.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Obligatory quote from the Arcana Unearthed:

I have to say, I find these sorts of "This game is so awesome for not using alignments!" snippets to be smarmy at best and misguided in general.


There are no alignments in Arcana Unearthed into which you must shoehorn your character's outlook.

I could understand the complaints about "shoehorning your character's outlook" if the available alignments were something like the four Hogwarts houses, where they basically map to Protagonist House, Antagonist House, Nerd House, and Other and your allegiance determines your personality to a nontrivial extent, but c'mon guys, two axes of three broad and overarching categories each do not a shoehorn require.


This rulebook does not attempt to define good or evil, nor does it address law or chaos. Characters should decide for themselves what is good and what is evil, the way real people do.

Funnily enough, just like alignments, real people can also have external labels assigned to their value systems even if they themselves don't really think about it or don't really agree with those labels, also known as "the entire field of moral philosophy"...which just so happens to divide most real-world ethical systems into the broad categories of deontological, aretological, and consequentialist ethics, which just so happen to map fairly nicely to lawful, neutral, and chaotic alignments.

And real people can aspire to act in accordance with certain values even if they're not always successful, like Psyren said about aiming to be CG even if you don't always succeed at that, so "deciding for themselves" can very well mean "choosing an alignment to attempt to emulate."


There are no spells that reveal whether a character is evil or good - his actions and the perspectives of those around him determine that. No (or at least very few) characters think of themselves as evil. The truth is, such concepts are relative.

In the real world, sure, but the idea appears over and over and over and over in fantasy that capital-E Evil is a tangible force that has its own powers, home base, physical effects on its followers/users, and, occasionally, sapience. Gandalf can detect the presence of evil in palantirs and possessed kings, Luke can sense the Dark Side in Vader and the cave on Dagobah, Rand can sense the True Power in the Forsaken and the taint of Shadar Logoth, and on and on. And Melkor, Darth Bane, and Demandred definitely think of themselves as Evil, again with the capital E, and positively revel in it.

Phrasing it as "In this setting, no forces of evil stir in the dark places of the world and corrupt servants to their will, the only evil that exists is that which is in the hearts of humanoid beings" is one thing, but the existing phrasing is overly general and comes off as "Well that's just, like, your opinion, man."


Yet even without alignments, villains still do terrible things to further their own goals. Heroes still make great sacrifices to stop them. The classic conflicts all remain. But now there are even more. Two noble and altruistic characters might oppose each other. Their personal ideologies might even cause each of them to define the other as "evil."

"Chancellor Palpatine is evil!"
"By my point of view, the Jedi are evil!"

:smallsigh:


Look, alignment is a tool, like any other mechanic. If you're playing a high fantasy campaign with Forces of Light and Darkness and other Capitalized Highbrow Concepts, alignment is an excellent--and, dare I say, essential--tool for incorporating those tropes into the game in a mechanical way. If you're playing a swords-and-sorcery campaign with lots of shades of gray, you don't need it...but it's rarely going to hurt you to have it, as even the famously-amoral Song of Ice and Fire series has the designated "these guys are so capital-E Evil the rest of you squabbling minibosses should unite against them" villains in the Others. Not using any form of alignment in a D&D-derived game is perfectly fine, but going out of your way to pooh-pooh alignment (and doing it badly) is just a jerkish thing to do.

[NigelWalmsley]

All RAW alignment is really good for is dividing the world into "people you can stab" and "people you shouldn't stab". Anything more nuanced than that, and the notion that you can cleanly label one side as "good" and the other side as "evil" falls apart. But that's all most people actually want out of D&D. The average player does not want to have a complicated discussion about questions like "what happens to the goblin civilians after we kill the goblin warriors" or "is it ethical to invade another kingdom and replace their religious, social, and political hierarchies with our own just because they sacrifice goats to Hextor and we sacrifice sheep to Pelor" or "would we do more good by using our powers to provide people with clean water and reliable healthcare than by going into ruins and stabbing the inhabitants in the face". They want to go into a dungeon, fight some orcs, and get some loot.

If you want something like alignment, you're far better off with (as was suggested earlier) something like the MTG color wheel. It provides the same level of character prompting, and sidesteps all the messy questions about real-world values. No one has real, serious ideas about what it means to be "Red" that you will offend by adopting MTG's views on the matter. The same cannot be said for "Good" and D&D.

[Buufreak]

No one has real, serious ideas about what it means to be "Red" that you will offend by adopting MTG's views on the matter. The same cannot be said for "Good" and D&D.

But the same can not be said of white and black. When one color is associated with being the elemental force that creates angels and the other for demons, people draw parallels. Not to mention the stigma that already lies in dnd; healing magic is seen as good and life draining or necromancy is seen as bad. Changing the titles to white and black magic schools isn't going to change that.

[Saintheart]

"Chancellor Palpatine is evil!"
"By my point of view, the Jedi are evil!"

:smallsigh:


Yes, but at least Obi-Wan had the moral high ground.

[Morty]

Look, alignment is a tool, like any other mechanic. If you're playing a high fantasy campaign with Forces of Light and Darkness and other Capitalized Highbrow Concepts, alignment is an excellent--and, dare I say, essential--tool for incorporating those tropes into the game in a mechanical way. If you're playing a swords-and-sorcery campaign with lots of shades of gray, you don't need it...but it's rarely going to hurt you to have it, as even the famously-amoral Song of Ice and Fire series has the designated "these guys are so capital-E Evil the rest of you squabbling minibosses should unite against them" villains in the Others. Not using any form of alignment in a D&D-derived game is perfectly fine, but going out of your way to pooh-pooh alignment (and doing it badly) is just a jerkish thing to do.

People have written stories about dark villains and noble heroes without alignment since pretty much forever, so I wouldn't say they're actually useful for it, much less "essential". We don't need a big, red "EVIL" label to know that Voldemort and his pals are irredeemable and can't be reasoned with; their actions speak for themselves. Meanwhile, if you do try for some moral nuance, alignment does nothing but get in the way.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

People have written stories about dark villains and noble heroes without alignment since pretty much forever, so I wouldn't say they're actually useful for it, much less "essential". We don't need a big, red "EVIL" label to know that Voldemort and his pals are irredeemable and can't be reasoned with; their actions speak for themselves. Meanwhile, if you do try for some moral nuance, alignment does nothing but get in the way.

I said that alignment is essential "for incorporating those tropes into the game in a mechanical way," not for telling those stories at all. You don't have to have an alignment tag to point out that Voldemort & Co. are bad guys for constantly throwing Dark magic around to kill and torture innocents, but if you want to put mechanics to things like Dark Detectors, murders damaging your soul, good guys having difficulty casting Unforgivables and bad guys having difficulty casting Patronuses, and so forth, you need some kind of [Evil Thingy] tag to hang those on. Similarly, in a Star Wars game you can handle the whole Dark Side issue purely through narrative, but if you want to put mechanics to being tempted to the Dark Side, sensing Dark Side locations and Force-users, needing to be sufficiently Dark-Side-y to use Force Lightning, and so forth, you're gonna need some kind of [Dark Side] alignment tag.

Whether you want to handle things mechanically by default, non-mechanically by default, or somewhere in between is an entirely separate question, of course. But the concept of characters in high fantasy being able to sense/protect against/power spells with/etc. the powers of capitalized Good and Evil--and corresponding abilities like "can sense evil" and "can shoot bolts of evilness at people" being given roughly the same narrative weight as "can sense invisible things" and "can shoot bolts of fire at people" when they show up--is common enough that rants about how attaching mechanics to those things is nonsensical and badwrongfun generally seem more out-of-touch than well-considered.


As far as moral nuance, well, if you feel that alignment gets in the way of dealing with personal moral dilemmas or the like--which I don't, as I've yet to see an example of such that wasn't either a misuse/misunderstanding of alignment à la "alignments are prescriptive straitjackets" or a contrived scenario à la "your paladin has to choose between killing a dozen babies or letting a demon prince conquer the world," but if you do feel that way--that's not necessarily an argument for dismissing alignments as useless and getting rid of them entirely.

You can ditch them, if you want to, but alignment rants like the one quoted tend to position that as the obvious and obviously-superior option, when you can quite easily do things like e.g. restrict alignment tags to supernatural forces, as I believe was suggested upthread, so archons and paladins are Lawful Good and blocked by protection from good while demons and cultists are Chaotic Evil and ping on detect evil-dar, but normal nice people and bad people either are treated as True Neutral for everything or are lowercase lawful good and chaotic evil and merely use those as aspirational roleplaying prompts without interacting with those spells, which may work better for the game you want to play.

[Saint-Just]

You can ditch them, if you want to, but alignment rants like the one quoted tend to position that as the obvious and obviously-superior option, when you can quite easily do things like e.g. restrict alignment tags to supernatural forces, as I believe was suggested upthread, so archons and paladins are Lawful Good and blocked by protection from good while demons and cultists are Chaotic Evil and ping on detect evil-dar, but normal nice people and bad people either are treated as True Neutral for everything or are lowercase lawful good and chaotic evil and merely use those as aspirational roleplaying prompts without interacting with those spells, which may work better for the game you want to play.

So much this. I usually tend to dislike alignments, but significant number of in-game problems and probably more than half of internet arguments comes specifically from treating mundane and supernatural evil the same.

I am not well-versed in SW canon but in Middle-Earth you definitely cannot equate every sort of selfishness cruelty and whatnot with Morgot's influence.

[NigelWalmsley]

But the same can not be said of white and black. When one color is associated with being the elemental force that creates angels and the other for demons, people draw parallels. Not to mention the stigma that already lies in dnd; healing magic is seen as good and life draining or necromancy is seen as bad. Changing the titles to white and black magic schools isn't going to change that.

I think insofar as this is true, it is an admission that it is impossible to have an alignment system that doesn't boil down to Good and Evil. Your game is going to have angels and demons in it, and those things are going to be on teams. If you assume that people are going to treat "the team with angels" as "good" and "the team with demons" as "evil", then it's impossible to get away from good and evil.

But I don't think that's actually true. MTG has done a fairly good job (particularly more recently) of making Black and White more than Evil and Good. There are White villains (Elesh Norn, Heliod), and Black heroes (Liliana, Toshiro). Both Black and White have values that are good in moderation, but can become harmful taken to extremes. There probably would be some amount of bias, but its a lot easier to work with "this guy is ambitious and looks out for his own interests" than "this guy is literally and explicitly Evil with a capital E". Particularly if you do some world-building work to establish ethical lines that are orthogonal to the color lines.

[Buufreak]

words


You aren't wrong in that mtg has gotten far less polarized with it in the past decade, hell, Augustine was an absolute rules lawyer jackass that almost destroyed the guild pact out of greed. Heliod literally made a champion just to kill her when the job was done. Elsh Norn... eh, shotty example. Not to say **** isn't bat**** evil, but she comes from a warped plane where so is everyone else. Thanks Phyrexia.

But citing Liliana as a hero is somewhat short sighted. Developing a conscience at the last moment after being the definition of a selfish **** for eons doesn't make you a hero or good, capital or otherwise. It just means that eventually you found a limitation to what you are willing to do. Brother turned into zombie? No problem. Sold soul to 4 demon lords and an elder dragon for power and immortality? Chill. Watching all of your friends getting brutally murdered so said elder dragon can ascend to godhood at their expense, and being pissy that you were a pawn in this the entire time?

Which is funny, because that, too, isn't being a hero. Go read literally any guide or write up on being evil in a party of non evil. They all have almost the exact same sentence. "Be a ****, but not to your party." Her party started to die at her expense, and she flipped. That isn't heroism. That isn't goodness. It is a mix of guilt and selfishness. Liliana is a scathing pile of trash and I can't wait for her to actually be written out of the story, right next to Chad Chadwick Chadington.

... but then again, I've been wanting all walkers to bugger off for quite some time, from a story and meta stand point.

Also, fun meta sidenote. Has OP touched back yet, or did he rant, dip, and we've been repeating ourselves to a wall for 5 days?

[Bosh]

You could go back to basics and use alignment to mean, well, alignment rather than morality.

Is a character from one of the outer planes or somehow pledged to outer planar forces? Then you get an alignment. Otherwise you're unaligned. So a priest of a LG deity is going to ping LG even if they're a bit of an *******. Demons and possibly undead ping evil but a random murderer doesn't. Keeps the spells working fine and takes away the BS.

[ShurikVch]

Note: D20 Modern already doesn't have "Alignment" - just "Allegiance", which very well may not include any of "Chaos", "Evil", "Good", or "Law" (and, in certain cases, may be just "none")

"See No Evil" article (Dragon #323):
Divine spellcasters possess a multitude of powers, from turning undead and heating the wounded to taking on the form of animals. Deities and other primal forces grant these abilities both in the form of continuous powers and magical spells. Higher-level spoils often manipulate life and death, but clerics all too often overlook one of their most useful low-level spells: detect evil.
The power to know a person's soul creates more questions and moral dilemmas than it solves, however. What does a spell caster do when he detects evil in someone who's not performing an evil act, for example? Doss the spellkaster draw a weapon and murder the person before she hurts someone else? A great burden and awesome power comes with peering into another person's soul.
Like a smudge of dirt, evil appears on people and things bearing its taint. Yet even non-evil people perform acts of questionable morality. Tracking down such a person proves difficult if you can only cast detect evil. A spellcaster must specialize in a particular form of detection in order to hunt down such individuals. This article provides spells to help in such hunts. Use them in addition to detect evil or pick one to replace that spell to play a more morally ambiguous game.The spells in this article are:
Detect Attitude (Bard/Cleric/Paladin 1) Reveals target's attitude.
Detect Guilt (Cleric/Paladin 1) Reveals how much guilt target feels.
Detect Heresy (Cleric 3, Paladin 2) Reveals heretical thoughts or actions in target's recent past.
Detect Violence (Cleric/Paladin/Ranger 1) Reveals violence done in the area within recent past.



And Melkor ... definitely think of themselves as Evil, again with the capital E, and positively revel in it.Are you sure?
From the Melkor's PoV, it's (probably) Manwë and Tulkas who're Evil (presuming Melkor even used such categories in the first place)


"Chancellor Palpatine is evil!"
"By my point of view, the Jedi are evil!"

:smallsigh:It's funny you're mentioned it:
Reasons Why the Jedi are the Villains in Star Wars (https://vocal.media/futurism/reasons-why-the-jedi-are-the-villains-in-star-wars)
6 Reasons The Jedi Would Be The Villain In Any Sane Movie (https://www.cracked.com/article_22320_6-weird-ways-star-wars-had-us-rooting-psychopaths.html)
15 Reasons Why The Jedi Are Bad Guys (https://screenrant.com/star-wars-why-the-jedi-are-bad-guys-villains/)
The Jedi Are Actually The Biggest Villains In Star Wars, And They Don't Even Try To Hide It (https://www.ranker.com/list/awful-things-done-by-the-jedi/tamar-altebarmakian)

[Vaern]

Alignment doesn't really prevent you from using any specific types of enemies because they happen to be of the same alignment as the players. Two good forces can be pitted against each other when their ideologies clash.
An example that always comes to mind is when I was with a party of four good characters and came to fight a lich, who had only become a lich to prevent a devil who screwed him over from getting his hands on the wizard's soul and to gain enough power to take revenge on the devil. We had already destroyed his phylactery before learning of his goals and motivations, and in the grand scheme of things we were trying to hunt down and kill this devil ourselves. Two of the people in the party saw an undead abomination who had committed unspeakable acts that needed to be put down. The other two saw someone who had been backed into a corner with potential to be redeemed, and suggested he might cooperate in exchange for our protection and assistance in hunting the devil. On top of that, killing the lich at this point would only empower the devil we were after and make the final fight more difficult. While we were debating, an NPC cleric who had been minutes behind us burst through the door and engaged the lich in combat, pulling us into the fight with him. Two of us decided to try incapacitating the cleric on the lich's side, while the other two tried to destroy the lich with the cleric. The bulk of the fight consisted not only of good-aligned characters, but players themselves fighting for their own particular idea of what the Good-est course of action should be in the situation.
And so this particular exmple shows that having a certain alignment neither restricts the potential alignments of enemies within a game, nor does it railroad players into making a single definite decision. All it means is that you need to be a bit more creative in your narrative and create more interesting motivations for your characters to get away with using good characters as villains.