No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.

[Vahnavoi]

Regarding barbarians, there is another, deeper reason they aren't supposed to be Lawful:

Robert E. Howard.

You know, creator of Conan the Barbarian.

Trying to keep this brief, the whole reason why Conan is a barbarian is because in Howardian philosophy, barbarianism represent true, vital and natural state of humans, while civilization is for weak pencil-necked gormless nerds.

Law, in D&D, means being for the group. It means being for civilization. Neutral means being for nature and Chaos means being for the individual. So of course barbarians, being chiefly inspired by Conan and Norse berserkers, you know, fierce warriors famous for individual prowess in combat, would stand in opposition to Law.

[Lord Raziere]

That depends on the campaign world. In some you can basically have yourself as your deity, or some ideal. In others you must pick a member of an existing pantheon.

Barbarians are all about unleashed fury and impulsive action. Lawful alignment includes self-discipline and restraint. That is why they are incompatible. Same issue with bards - wandering adventuring minstrels are supposed to be unpredictable and somewhat chaotic.

Again, self-discipline and restraint are required to develop martial arts. Arrogance and playing by your own set of rules can be lawful evil if they are combined with discipline.

Druids and Rangers had more logical alignment restrictions in earlier editions, where druids were limited to only True Neutral and Rangers had to be good-aligned. The argument is that druids must be at least partially neutral in order to maintain the emotional detachment that the natural world requires, where survival often comes at the expense of other animals and ugly things happen to baby animals and such. Rangers, on the other hand, were the protectors of the weak against the more savage parts of nature, and so had to be good-aligned.

Again, earlier editions of D&D make more sense, because a paladin in those editions clearly was more powerful than the other character classes. Greater power came with greater responsibility, in effect. There are players who like having a strict code of conduct.

It's a debatable point. What you're describing is a common style of play, but only one style of play, after all. Player groups often undertake missions on behalf of legal authorities, which is right up a paladin's alley, especially if they are also religious authorities. Games can be played where all the players are in fact an order of knights. And the type of alignment problems you describe can happen for clerics or druids just as easily as for paladins.

Barbarians also had very tough restrictions on their behavior when originally introduced in the original Unearthed Arcana, like not being able to associate with magic users or use magic items at low levels(!) The theory was that this helped to balance their extra class abilities.

Part of the perceived unfairness of alignment restrictions in later editions is because the designers kept some restrictions while dumping others. Usually if they loosened up restrictions they also reduced the power of the class, but it's been somewhat inconsistent, noticeably with the paladin.

Wow I'm glad that we've moved further away from that sort of nonsense over time. all those "more logical" restrictions again just sound like blindly holding to old nonsensical campy cliches. So twee. Like a ranger having to be good just because? what you never heard of poachers? nobles who hunt for sport? Hellooo?

Spoiler: Other concepts possible without these alignment restrictions

Show

Lawful Bard: Dirge Singers of the Dhakaani, diplomats, people who strongly believe in singing old traditional songs to maintain one's culture, a herald who has rule to always tell the truth when sharing the news, an educator or teacher, things like that

Lawful Barbarian: a culture that has a strong tradition of ritualistically entering a rage to protect the people around them and only do so when they decide it is needed having rules about when they do so, a warrior who masters a meditative state who becomes incredibly eerily calm and focused that emulates a rage, a warrior possessed by a spirit that gets enraged when the rules are violated, a warrior from a culture that sees becoming a barbarian as a form of sacrificial martyrdom surpassing the paladin taking upon the sin of raging so as to fight for the gods and thus embody the wrath of the gods and they expected to take out as much of the energy before they die themselves, thing slike that.

CG Druid: goes around rescuing animals from evil nobles who hunt or use them for sport/entertainment in arenas

LG Druid: campaigns to pass environment conservation laws when needed.

LE Druid: Takes over the world so as to control the population of sapient beings by culling them systematically to make sure they don't overtake the natural world, seeing them as nothing but species disrupting the ecological balance

CE: "Animals don't have rules. Neither do I!"

Neutral Good Paladin: "The Law abuses as much as it helps, I must be above rules or chaos in my compassion."

Lawful Neutral Paladin: "My Country, right or wrong."

Chaotic Neutral Paladin: a guy who flips a coin to determine to help someone or not, believing chance is the only fairness in the world

Neutral Evil Paladin: "Its all about me, due to the imperfection of perception I can't be sure anyone in the world except me truly exists therefore the most moral action I can take is to always benefit myself at the expense of things that may or may not be people"

True Neutral Paladin: "I fight for mortals against any extraplanar influence! Leave mortals alone, we deserve to make our own decisions rather than be pawns to one side or another."

like, why don't you make a princess class with skills in getting kidnapped while your at it? Always female always LG Princess, class features is getting kidnapped but summoning an always male LG heroic knight to save her. Vizier class, Any evil, has spells like suggestion to make their good king minion obey them. But why stop there? we need to have A Destined Hero class who is always secretly the rightful king, of course always LG and their class features revolve around the fact that they are one that fights the BBEG and no one else, they get a sword of destiny, things like that. maybe even a Dead Mentor class to die and pass on lessons to its student and name all its class features after Obi-Wan quotes.

Then after that, we make an always LG Superman class that has to obey the Comics Code. No not superhero, Superman specifically we can't have variance, depth or creativity, only the most flimsy cliche surface level concept as per DnD tradition, because that is how they're "supposed" to be. because DnD is apparently a cartoon made in the 80's and can't ever be anything else.

Possible forms of play do not equal probable forms of play. Again, random adventurers meeting in a tavern is as cliche as any other fantasy trope now, and again players often have certain character concepts in mind they want to play before finding a game and DM's know that disallowing character concepts to play a more focused game often has trouble attached to it as not everyone cares for that kind of focused game, and thus again assuming no one is a jerk the path of least narrative resistance forms: the random adventurers all meet in a tavern and the GM accepts them all as viable character concepts and all the players just silently agree to not start trouble (or at least not too much trouble) with each other as each one personally doesn't want their character to get into needless trouble by stirring the pot and making them waste time on needless conflict through character interaction when they get to the good stuff they are actually here for, forming an unspoken "if its my party member, I leave it alone" partiality mindset, but paladins are reported to break that social convention and start morally chastising other players and treating them like any other person in the world when it comes to their moral beliefs which quickly gets annoying and problematic. Again such a behavior is so common that its a cliche that people feel need to parody and point out.

Again, 9 out of 11 of the classes already do DnD just fine without the detect evil morality you profess to be vital, most games don't concern itself with going with the focuses on organizations you speak of, therefore its clearly optional and ignorable. and again, some people on this forum have outright said they'd rather play DnD with EVIL characters than a paladin because the paladin won't be impartial to the party. all your arguing for is your headcanon about DnD being some good portrayal of some objective morality heroic/high fantasy ideal, which isn't well supported. its certainly an attempt at it, thats undeniable, but its execution is incredibly lacking in many areas as I have already pointed out.

[Rynjin]

Barbarians are all about unleashed fury and impulsive action. Lawful alignment includes self-discipline and restraint. That is why they are incompatible. Same issue with bards - wandering adventuring minstrels are supposed to be unpredictable and somewhat chaotic.

Again, self-discipline and restraint are required to develop martial arts. Arrogance and playing by your own set of rules can be lawful evil if they are combined with discipline.

I've always had a problem with all of these, at it precludes three quite common narrative archetypes.

For Barbarians, the "cold fury" often portrayed in stories, where the righteous anger of the character in question is not allowed to explode randomly, but is controlled and channeled to devastating effect.

The scholar and scientific musician for Bards, who understand the underlying theory of music and the tales they tell (which is possible in Pathfidner and I believe 5e, as they both dropped the silly Chaotic only restriction).

And for Monks, as subject near and dear to my heart, the "fighting prodigy" who gets by mostly on natural training and physicality. I've been re-reading History's Mightiest Disciple Kenichi again recently, and a character that always stands out is a guy nicknamed (ironically enough), Berserker. He's a martial artist like everyone else, but essentially just feels his way through combat with no formal training at first; even when he finds a master later, the focus is on honing his natural talents rather than drilling techniques into him, because that is the best way to bring out his full potential. To a broader extent is the difference between "Sei" (focused, calm, methodical) and "Dou" (explosive, powerful, energetic) martial arts, which you can see borne out in real life to an extent in both styles (the difference between hard and soft styles) and in individuals within those styles that just have different attitudes toward martial arts.

Alignment is at its absolute worst in these interactions, where they act as prescriptions and restrictions on what kind of character a person can make, rather than simple descriptors of what a character IS or BELIEVES.

[NigelWalmsley]

The Bard thing specifically is just absurd. Certainly there are approaches to music that are "wild" or "disordered" or "rebellious" or whatever word you think Chaotic means. But equally there are approaches to music that are deeply rigorous and based on mathematics.

The argument is that druids must be at least partially neutral in order to maintain the emotional detachment that the natural world requires, where survival often comes at the expense of other animals and ugly things happen to baby animals and such.

That only makes sense for a pretty limited view of what a "Druid" can be. A villain who rants about "nature red in tooth and claw" and "the strong consume the weak" and "adapt or die" is pretty plausibly a Druid, but does not seem especially neutral on any meaningful axis. There are a lot of philosophies you can have that are "about nature", and not all of them require emotional detachment. It seems to me that what alignment is doing here is pointlessly curtailing the range of supportable characters.

Again, earlier editions of D&D make more sense, because a paladin in those editions clearly was more powerful than the other character classes. Greater power came with greater responsibility, in effect. There are players who like having a strict code of conduct.

A code of conduct is a thing that is different from (and much more reasonable than) alignment. There's nothing inherently Lawful or Good about having a code of conduct, it's just a set of principles your character abides by. "Never pay for something you can take by force" is not something I'd describe as "Lawful" or "Good", but you could stick that in a code of conduct just fine.

[Jason]

The whole idea of having character classes is to play recognizable archetypes. The earlier editions of D&D simply had archetypes thst were a little less generic and a little more recognizable.

[Laughing Dog]

Regarding the people equating 'Bard' with 'musician':
Stop. Please. You are focusing on a single part of the class, and missing the rest of it. The reason bards are non-lawful is not because the are musically inclined. They are such because the are wayfarers, wanderers, folks who oft have wanderlust in their hearts. I suggest you read Keith Taylor's Bard series. This, I suspect is where a good chunk of the class' inspiration came from. (Admittedly, it's been a while since I read any of the four books.)

If you wish to make a musically inclined class that is specifically lawful, go ahead. I don't think that'll be high priority for Wizards anytime soon.

@Lord Raziere: So the True Neutral Paladin is basically the Rilmani, but in mortal form (and more mortal issues)?

[Rynjin]

They are such because the are wayfarers, wanderers, folks who oft have wanderlust in their hearts.

This describes literally every adventuring character, otherwise they would be staying at home grinding away at whatever their chosen profession is.

[Lord Raziere]

Regarding the people equating 'Bard' with 'musician':
Stop. Please. You are focusing on a single part of the class, and missing the rest of it. The reason bards are non-lawful is not because the are musically inclined. They are such because the are wayfarers, wanderers, folks who oft have wanderlust in their hearts. I suggest you read Keith Taylor's Bard series. This, I suspect is where a good chunk of the class' inspiration came from. (Admittedly, it's been a while since I read any of the four books.)

If you wish to make a musically inclined class that is specifically lawful, go ahead. I don't think that'll be high priority for Wizards anytime soon.

@Lord Raziere: So the True Neutral Paladin is basically the Rilmani, but in mortal form (and more mortal issues)?

Well yeah, 5e. alignment restrictions are kind not a thing so...you can be lawful bard without needing a class to specifically be lawful bard. specific class ain't needed, because what is having two alignment exclusive yet similar classes going to do other than take up space? you might as well make them one class and get rid of the alignment restriction altogether. which is what they did, and which is what I'm for.

and here is the other thing: you claim the bard needs a specific book series no one has ever heard of to get, Jason claims the archetype as "recognizable". these two views contradict each other, as needing to read a specific book series is the opposite of recognizable- its referential and thus obscure. the bard is only recognizable in the sense of what people see in the media that comes AFTER DnD. namely that they're useless foppish comic relief for the most part.

No idea who the Rilmani are either. I'm just drawing inspiration from the 5e Paladin's Oath of the Watchers.

like if you think I'm going to go read some obscure thing just so I can "understand" something in a rpg, your wrong. I didn't do that for Exalted when its fans said to, I'm not going to do so for this. its a bad attitude of "well you'd get it if you read all these side materials no one ever talks about, why haven't you already?" except applied to entirely separate series that technically have nothing to actually do with the game in question. and yeah, as Rynjin said, the "bard" your talking about literally sounds like every adventurer ever to exist. it could describe a lot of characters in fantasy in general not just DnD or its derivatives and to get a picture of how wide that is: DnD has LOOOOT of derivatives, and I'm not just talking about tabletop stuff.

[Laughing Dog]

Well yeah, 5e. alignment restrictions are kind not a thing so...you can be lawful bard without needing a class to specifically be lawful bard. specific class ain't needed, because what is having two alignment exclusive yet similar classes going to do other than take up space? you might as well make them one class and get rid of the alignment restriction altogether. which is what they did, and which is what I'm for.

and here is the other thing: you claim the bard needs a specific book series no one has ever heard of to get, Jason claims the archetype as "recognizable". these two views contradict each other, as needing to read a specific book series is the opposite of recognizable- its referential and thus obscure. the bard is only recognizable in the sense of what people see in the media that comes AFTER DnD. namely that they're useless foppish comic relief for the most part.

No idea who the Rilmani are either. I'm just drawing inspiration from the 5e Paladin's Oath of the Watchers.

like if you think I'm going to go read some obscure thing just so I can "understand" something in a rpg, your wrong. I didn't do that for Exalted when its fans said to, I'm not going to do so for this. its a bad attitude of "well you'd get it if you read all these side materials no one ever talks about, why haven't you already?" except applied to entirely separate series that technically have nothing to actually do with the game in question. and yeah, as Rynjin said, the "bard" your talking about literally sounds like every adventurer ever to exist. it could describe a lot of characters in fantasy in general not just DnD or its derivatives and to get a picture of how wide that is: DnD has LOOOOT of derivatives, and I'm not just talking about tabletop stuff.

First: I did not claim that it needed a specific book series to read to understand (also do I really count as no one?). Do not put words in my mouth. It is neither appreciated nor does it do you any credit. If anything it makes you look like a rude, petty person.
Second: Apologies, I tend to think more in 3.x edition, so I tend not to consider later editions when something comes up in D&D.
Third: The Rilmani are a group of outsiders that are Neutral in the 'oppose the other alignments' sense. I was attempting to make a small joke.
Fourth: I do not expect you to do anything. I merely gave a suggestion. Please stop reacting with unnecessary vitriol.

Finally: Regarding the every adventurer bit: No, I'd say a large number are more motivated by desire for wealth or power than wanderlust. I agree that I didn't make a fairly clear point, as I am notably bad at getting my point across. (No, that is not an excuse.)

[Lord Raziere]

.....Okay

I'm sorry. I had a bad experience. I didn't mean anything by it, but regardless of my intention or what I meant you got hurt.

I'm not going to argue with you over whether my words were rude or not. But I don't feel comfortable discussing anything in this thread anymore if words like "vitriol" and "petty" such accusations towards me like that are being thrown around. I can already tell that won't end well. So I'm not going to post in this thread any more. Just in the future if your going to find people rude? Don't insult people in response with that kind of talk, its unnecessary and doesn't make you all that credible yourself, just FYI.

[Vahnavoi]

So many goofy assumptions above. But hey, there's something I agree with Nigel for once, so let's get it out of the way.

The Bard thing specifically is just absurd.

Yes. Bards were introduced in 1st Edition AD&D as an optional, prototypical prestige class sort of thing. They were extensions of the druid archetype, itself a special subclass of cleric, and their alignment restrictions made sense in that light (had to be some flavor of neutral). 2nd edition onward they were reinvented as a base class, but they've always suffered from "fifth wheel" syndrome where their class is just cobbled together from bits of other classes... plus music.

Of course their Alignment restrictions make no sense, the entire class makes no sense.

---

Wow I'm glad that we've moved further away from that sort of nonsense over time. all those "more logical" restrictions again just sound like blindly holding to old nonsensical campy cliches. So twee. Like a ranger having to be good just because? what you never heard of poachers? nobles who hunt for sport? Hellooo?

AD&D's concept of ranger came from Lord of the Rings. Poachers and evil nobles aren't rangers in that context. It shouldn't even matter to you, since playing poachers and evil nobles is fully possible in AD&D, just not as rangers. Ranger isn't catch-all word for "vaguely outdoorsy people". Anyone can do outdoors stuff in AD&D.

Other concepts possible without these alignment restrictions...

Law means standing for groups while Chaos means standing for the individual. Throughout this list, you switch to sillier "ChAoS meAnS No RuLEs!" to make your points, when if you consistently used the classic reading, you'd have no point at all. But what the heck, let's go through all of these.

Lawful Bard: Dirge Singers of the Dhakaani, diplomats, people who strongly believe in singing old traditional songs to maintain one's culture, a herald who has rule to always tell the truth when sharing the news, an educator or teacher, things like that

This character could just be a Lawful cleric. Nothing about this requires being a bard, because anyone else can sing. (In 1st Edition AD&D, a Lawful Neutral bard would be legal and habe exactly the role you describe.)

Lawful Barbarian: a culture that has a strong tradition of ritualistically entering a rage to protect the people around them and only do so when they decide it is needed having rules about when they do so, a warrior who masters a meditative state who becomes incredibly eerily calm and focused that emulates a rage, a warrior possessed by a spirit that gets enraged when the rules are violated, a warrior from a culture that sees becoming a barbarian as a form of sacrificial martyrdom surpassing the paladin taking upon the sin of raging so as to fight for the gods and thus embody the wrath of the gods and they expected to take out as much of the energy before they die themselves, thing slike that.

This is just a mess. Firstly, Rage, as a mechanic, is clearly meant to represent a berserk state where you're too mad to tie your shoelaces properly. It's not "eeriely calm" state or being possessed by an angry ghost, those have different mechanics, there's no need to place these characters in the barbarian class. Secondly, a Lawful culture can think whatever it likes about people consumed by Rage, this has no bearing on alignment of the people who do the actual raging. In summary, half of these concepts have no place being barbarians, and the half that do could just be Neutral Good, which is a legit Alignment for barbarians in 3rd edition.

CG Druid: goes around rescuing animals from evil nobles who hunt or use them for sport/entertainment in arenas

A True Neutral Druid has enough reason to rescue animals from evil nobles. You don't need to be Chaotic Good to do this concept. You're presuming a connection to Chaos and Good where there is no necessity for such.

LG Druid: campaigns to pass environment conservation laws when needed.

Your bog standard True Neutral druid is already invested in following rules to conserve the environment. You're presuming a connection to Law and Good where there is no necessity for such.

LE Druid: Takes over the world so as to control the population of sapient beings by culling them systematically to make sure they don't overtake the natural world, seeing them as nothing but species disrupting the ecological balance

That's again close to textbook TN druid. What do you think makes this character LE, specifically, instead of NE, which would be rules-legal in 3rd edition? They're explicitly placing ecological balance over well-being of any single group, after all.

CE [Druid, I presume] : "Animals don't have rules. Neither do I!"

Again, Law means being for the group while Chaos means being for the individual. Stating you have no rules doesn't really tell anything about how you relate to groups, especially not when you're comparing yourself to animals, who do occasionally form groups. Oh, and they also have rules - a druid, a character meant to know a thing or two about nature, ought to know this. I have no problem deeming that Chaotic Evil character expressing a strawman misunderstanding of animals as basis of their actions shouldn't be a druid.

Neutral Good Paladin: "The Law abuses as much as it helps, I must be above rules or chaos in my compassion."

What about this screams paladin? A Neutral Good holy warrior can just be a cleric, or fighter/cleric.

Lawful Neutral Paladin: "My Country, right or wrong."

That's a knight, which is full well modeled by basic fighter. (Or the redundant knight class. )

Chaotic Neutral Paladin: a guy who flips a coin to determine to help someone or not, believing chance is the only fairness in the world

You want to be Chaotic Neutral lol-random holy warrior, be a cleric or fighter/cleric of the god of gambling.

Neutral Evil Paladin: "Its all about me, due to the imperfection of perception I can't be sure anyone in the world except me truly exists therefore the most moral action I can take is to always benefit myself at the expense of things that may or may not be people"

Again... what about this concept screams paladin to you? Instead of Neutral Evil fighter?

True Neutral Paladin: "I fight for mortals against any extraplanar influence! Leave mortals alone, we deserve to make our own decisions rather than be pawns to one side or another."

That's a fighter. Why the Hell would you pick a class made to represent a supernatural champion to represent a character who wants for the supernatural to get out?

---

Tl;dr: a good portion of these concepts, which you imply couldn't be done under the restrictions, either would fit an exiting Alignment-Class-combination just fine, or aren't good examples of their class or Alignment to begin with and could be served better by another, trivially implemented combination.

[NigelWalmsley]

The whole idea of having character classes is to play recognizable archetypes. The earlier editions of D&D simply had archetypes thst were a little less generic and a little more recognizable.

"Specifically Good Outdoorsman" isn't really a more recognizable archetype than "Outdoorsman", because there are plenty of outdoorsmen that aren't Good. It's a more specific archetype, I suppose, but by that logic you can justify any restriction on any class, as it will necessarily make that class more specific.

They are such because the are wayfarers, wanderers, folks who oft have wanderlust in their hearts.

So they're adventurers? There's nothing really inherently "chaotic" about that either.

If you wish to make a musically inclined class that is specifically lawful, go ahead. I don't think that'll be high priority for Wizards anytime soon.

The point is you shouldn't need to. The Bard is a music magic class. That's the core of it. You shouldn't need a separate Lawful music magic class, because that's (as you correctly deduce) a huge waste of space. You should just let the existing music mage be lawful, just as you should let the spider-mounted outriders of the Drow be Rangers (despite being Evil) and the black-clad templar of the Iron Spire be Paladins (despite being Evil). Concepts like "nature warrior", "music mage", "angry warrior", and "warrior devoted to a cause" aren't inherently aligned, and when you make them inherently aligned, you end up hacking around your system to reverse that (see: all the "Paladin, but doesn't have to be Lawful Good" PrCs, ACFs, and variants in 3e).

[ImNotTrevor]

AD&D's concept of ranger came from Lord of the Rings. Poachers and evil nobles aren't rangers in that context. It shouldn't even matter to you, since playing poachers and evil nobles is fully possible in AD&D, just not as rangers. Ranger isn't catch-all word for "vaguely outdoorsy people". Anyone can do outdoors stuff in AD&D.

Everything from here forward is about as useful as telling people talking about some comaints from using Windows 10 how fix problems in MS-DOS. Like.... thanks, I guess, but we're a couple decades removed from there and AD&D has a similar relationship to modern D&D and modern play as MS-DOS has to Windows 10.

Law means standing for groups while Chaos means standing for the individual.

You are the final arbiter of what Law and Chaos mean? I'd have thought it was someone I'd heard of before.

Throughout this list, you switch to sillier "ChAoS meAnS No RuLEs!" to make your points, when if you consistently used the classic reading, you'd have no point at all. But what the heck, let's go through all of these.

I mean, I looked up Chaos and it means (generally):
complete disorder and confusion

This character could just be a Lawful cleric. Nothing about this requires being a bard, because anyone else can sing. (In 1st Edition AD&D, a Lawful Neutral bard would be legal and habe exactly the role you describe.)

Ok but if you want them to have the power of song and get some good mileage out of Charisma....

This is just a mess. Firstly, Rage, as a mechanic, is clearly meant to represent a berserk state where you're too mad to tie your shoelaces properly.

The gnoll statblock is clearly meant to represent a hyena person but I can change the name on it to "Ungodly Abomination" and have them be skinny, lamprey-headed monstrosities without problem. There's nothing the gnoll does that a creepy many-toothed worm head thing couldn't also do.

Flavor =/= Mechanics.

There is nothing preventing a barbarian's rage from having any aesthetic you want it to have, so long as the results are the same. Rage in real life doesn't only come in red hot varieties. It can also be ice cold. Consider yourself lucky you've not been on the recieving end of ice-cold rage. It rarely ends well.

It's not "eeriely calm" state or being possessed by an angry ghost, those have different mechanics,

>Looks at Ancestral Guardian Barbarian Subclass
You uh... you sure, my guy? 5e did the ghost thing, and in general there's no reason amother subclass couldn't have that flavor without the mechanics.

On "Eerily calm":
A man with a battleaxe screaming across the battlefield chopping up your allies in a screaming fury is one kind of scary.

A man with a battleaxe single-mindedly staring you down as he comes right for you, silently, killing everything in his path without breaking eye contact with you is a different kind of scary.

Both are scary, both are a rage state, both would use the same mechanics. Where's the problem?

there's no need to place these characters in the barbarian class. Secondly, a Lawful culture can think whatever it likes about people consumed by Rage, this has no bearing on alignment of the people who do the actual raging. In summary, half of these concepts have no place being barbarians, and the half that do could just be Neutral Good, which is a legit Alignment for barbarians in 3rd edition.

Wait so... "you are unpredictable/angry for 5 minutes a day" means you MUST be a chaotic alignment?

A Totem Warrior Barbarian with a quiet respect for nature and the natural order, part of a lawful tribe and who follows its tenets in his personal life very closely, and who has learned to channel the prkmal ferocity of the animals of the wild into a "rage" state of primal fury for a couple minutes per day (or if there's only a 3 round combat, 18 SECONDS) is... chaotic because of that handful of minutes/seconds as opposed to his behavior for the rest of the day?
Do you recognize how unreasonable that position is or should I demonstrate further?

A True Neutral Druid has enough reason to rescue animals from evil nobles. You don't need to be Chaotic Good to do this concept. You're presuming a connection to Chaos and Good where there is no necessity for such.

Sure. They don't need to be. Why CAN'T they be?

That's again close to textbook TN druid. What do you think makes this character LE, specifically, instead of NE, which would be rules-legal in 3rd edition? They're explicitly placing ecological balance over well-being of any single group, after all.

Again, Law means being for the group while Chaos means being for the individual. Stating you have no rules doesn't really tell anything about how you relate to groups, especially not when you're comparing yourself to animals, who do occasionally form groups. Oh, and they also have rules - a druid, a character meant to know a thing or two about nature, ought to know this. I have no problem deeming that Chaotic Evil character expressing a strawman misunderstanding of animals as basis of their actions shouldn't be a druid.

I don't recall many of these examples so... hell, I'll do a couple.

CE Druid:
Rot. Rot! Decay... the most beautiful form of nature. Everything should rot and fall apart. A world of pure decay, unending entropy... nature plays by rules but loves to break them and kill them. Nature is at its best when it is chaos and disorder, when expectations crumble and the cruelty of chance has its day. I shall bring rot to the ordered cities of man, tear down their precious walls and convert them to corpses. Let all of it rot. Burn away the forests, let decay take them. Death is the real beauty in nature.

Druid motivated by the allure of rot, decay, and entropy. Perhaps once a more normal druid, who slowly fell into his/her madness and never lost her powers. Would probably be a Circle of Spores druid.

LE Druid:
The fools of this Circle don't understand the threat that the kingdom poses to our wood. But I will show them. I'll play by their rules, do their rites, but I have my plans. They'll see in time. When the people of the kingdom burn and nature reigns supreme, they will finally understand.

Druid who believes in the rightful rulership of nature so much that they are willing to basically commit genocide to enforce that supremacy, and who is dedicated to his/her group such that he/she is unwilling to go openly against them but will indeed push them towards becoming more organized and more sympathetic to his/her efforts.

By many intepretations of Law/Chaos aside from your weirdly hyper-narrow view, these two characters fit these alignments just fine.

What about this screams paladin? A Neutral Good holy warrior can just be a cleric, or fighter/cleric.

Wrong question. Why CAN'T this concept work as a Paladin?

That's a knight, which is full well modeled by basic fighter. (Or the redundant knight class. )

And what if I want to play this concept as a paladin? Is it badwrongfun? So sorry. Gonna do it anyways.


You want to be Chaotic Neutral lol-random holy warrior, be a cleric or fighter/cleric of the god of gambling.

Again... what about this concept screams paladin to you? Instead of Neutral Evil fighter?

I wanna do it with smiting.

That's a fighter. Why the Hell would you pick a class made to represent a supernatural champion to represent a character who wants for the supernatural to get out?

>Be Paladin
>Wanna get the supernatural outta here
>channel supernatural smiting power into my sword swing.
>Supernatural.
>kill yourself
>Supernatural gtfo

This is stupid.

Tl;dr: a good portion of these concepts, which you imply couldn't be done under the restrictions, either would fit an exiting Alignment-Class-combination just fine, or aren't good examples of their class or Alignment to begin with and could be served better by another, trivially implemented combination.

Tl;DR
These concepts can also work just fine exactly as described regardless of your whining so...
Why should I care that I COULD do it another way?

I COULD build a "Druid" by playing a cleric who really likes trees and whose spell choices lean in that direction and who I flavor as nature-y. (When I heal someone, the wound is overgrown with flowers that quickly wilt and fall away, leaving healed flesh behind.)

Or I could just play a Druid. Sure, I COULD go the long way around, or I could just know what class I wanna llay and play that class.

If the point of bringing up AD&D is to somehow say it's more correct because older is just the Primacy fallacy.

Either way I remain unconvinced that alignment is a necessity.

[Vahnavoi]

Everything from here forward is about as useful as telling people talking about some comaints from using Windows 10 how fix problems in MS-DOS. Like.... thanks, I guess, but we're a couple decades removed from there and AD&D has a similar relationship to modern D&D and modern play as MS-DOS has to Windows 10.

The different Alignment systems seen throughout D&D's history have less differences than even different version of MS-DOS. You're making a claim of progress that doesn't actually hold to scrutiny.

If the point of bringing up AD&D is to somehow say it's more correct because older is just the Primacy fallacy.

Nope. The point of bringing up AD&D was to make and answer specific points of why things are as they are. It's not "more correct" because it's older. Newer versions just fail to be appreciably better. Someone wanting to use Alignment in 5th edition would benefit from 1st Edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide about as much as any other guidebook.

Oh yes, that where you also find it clearly written that Law stands for groups and Chaos stands for the individual. The problem isn't whether you agree or disagree with those definitions; it's that if you've never seen it and don't know where it came from despite having played newer version of D&D, it's a clear sign that the newer versions omitted a perfectly clear definition for no reason. Or that you're arguing in bad faith.

[MoiMagnus]

The problem isn't whether you agree or disagree with those definitions; it's that if you've never seen it and don't know where it came from despite having played newer version of D&D, it's a clear sign that the newer versions omitted a perfectly clear definition for no reason. Or that you're arguing in bad faith.

5e alignment system doesn't reference "Group vs Individual" directly. The nearest from that is the sentence

Alignment is a combination of two factors: one identifies morality (good, evil, or neutral), and the other describes attitudes toward society and order (lawful, chaotic, or neutral). Thus, nine distinct alignments define the possible combinations.

And in the remaining of the text describing every single alignment (see https://www.aidedd.org/en/rules/background/), it implicitly says that a character strictly following a personal code or a tradition based on individualistic values would still be Lawful. They paint more Law vs Chaos as "Strict codes VS Unrestricted behaviour" than Group vs Individual.

[Vahnavoi]

@MoiMagnus: let's compare 1st Edition AD&D, Dungeon Master's Guide, page 23:

"Law and Chaos: the opposition here is between organized groups and individuals. That is, law dictates order and organization is necessary and desireable, while chaos holds the opposite view. Law generally supports the group as more important than the individual, while chaos promotes the individual over the group. "

[JNAProductions]

@MoiMagnus: let's compare 1st Edition AD&D, Dungeon Master's Guide, page 23:

"Law and Chaos: the opposition here is between organized groups and individuals. That is, law dictates order and organization is necessary and desireable, while chaos holds the opposite view. Law generally supports the group as more important than the individual, while chaos promotes the individual over the group. "

That came out in 1979, correct?

So, while it's good to know the history of something, when it's more than four decades old, it may not apply anymore.

[PhoenixPhyre]

That came out in 1979, correct?

So, while it's good to know the history of something, when it's more than four decades old, it may not apply anymore.

But history is destiny, right? Things never change, and only the original developer has any say in anything. Gygax is the god of D&D, right?

[Vahnavoi]

That came out in 1979, correct?

So, while it's good to know the history of something, when it's more than four decades old, it may not apply anymore.

Do I need to repeat myself? Apparently I do.

Newer editions have different definitions. That doesn't mean they're better definitions.

That the above definition was given in 1979, doesn't mean it's non-functional today. You can take it and use it for any contemporary game that uses Law-Chaos-axis, and it will work just fine.

The reason I go back to it is not because it was put down by Gygax, it's because it's nice, clear and explicit in ways a lot of other definitions are not.

Old rules aren't always bugs that get fixed in later versions. Sometimes, they're features that get omitted.

[JNAProductions]

Do I need to repeat myself? Apparently I do.

Newer editions have different definitions. That doesn't mean they're better definitions.

That the above definition was given in 1979, doesn't mean it's non-functional today. You can take it and use it for any contemporary game that uses Law-Chaos-axis, and it will work just fine.

The reason I go back to it is not because it was put down by Gygax, it's because it's nice, clear and explicit in ways a lot of other definitions are not.

Old rules aren't always bugs that get fixed in later versions. Sometimes, they're features that get omitted.

Alright-so is a gnoll warband, all gathered together under a demonically-infused prophet, Lawful because they all work as a group? Likewise, is an espionage agent sent by the crown to disrupt a tightly-knit squad of elites Chaotic, because they're working against a group?

Moreover, it kinda ignores the core thrust, which is (far as I can tell) "What's the benefit of alignment in general?" While better definitions of alignment CAN help it find a place, I share the opinion that alignment is something that shouldn't really matter to a game.

[Seto]

I mean... I'm sure you aware of that, but Detect Evil in 3.5 and Pathfinder already makes a difference between regular folk and creatures Evil by nature. A basic Commoner with the Evil alignment will not be detected. You have an Evil aura if you have 5 levels or more, which makes sense because those people are important. At level 5, you start to have faint cosmic significance. A strong soul, and magical forces take note. But even the lowliest Lemure or skeleton will detect on the radar.
By and large, your aura is linked to how reliable and useful an asset you are for those "forces" that constitute the universe. An Evil Priest is committed to Evil, and wields the power of an Evil God. They're players in the game, even at low level. A random adventurer is less reliable, but starts being a player when they're powerful enough, even if their Evil acts are coincidental to their nature.

EDIT: Apologies, I thought we were in the 3.5 forum. The point stands for this particular game and... most editions I know, I guess?

[Vahnavoi]

Alright-so is a gnoll warband, all gathered together under a demonically-infused prophet, Lawful because they all work as a group?

"Demonic", in context, implies their prophet is in this for personal motive, or encouraging the rest to act on their personal motives. So this is likely a Chaotic prophet exploiting a Neutral or Lawful group, or a loose band of Chaotics temporarily acting in unison, each for their own individual interest.

Likewise, is an espionage agent sent by the crown to disrupt a tightly-knit squad of elites Chaotic, because they're working against a group?

No, probably Lawful, because they are serving their own king and country. They are still acting for a group despite acting against another.

These determinations might change with additional details - such as what the prophet's creed is, or whether the spy is being extorted to do their job. In a real game, I'd have more information, so I could make a stronger case. Any vagueness here doesn't come from definitions of terms, it comes from lack of empirical knowledge.

Moreover, it kinda ignores the core thrust, which is (far as I can tell) "What's the benefit of alignment in general?" While better definitions of alignment CAN help it find a place, I share the opinion that alignment is something that shouldn't really matter to a game.

I already answered that at the start of my involvement in this.

1) alignment serves as a pledge for what kind of character you're playing. "My character is Good" tells the GM "my character desires well-being of other creatures", "My character is Neutral" tells the GM "my character is indifferent to well-being of other creatures" and "My character is Evil" tells "my character desires suffering of other creatures". These give the GM a benchmark to evaluate your player decisions against and give them ideas of how other characters might react to them.

2) It gives the GM, who has to play a wide array of characters, ideas of how these characters differ in attitude, behaviour and response to player actions.

3) It can serve as a turning point for other mechanism. In D&D, this means which afterlife a character would go, which gods are for or against them, which spells and magic items they can use etc. It connects particular moral choices made by characters with discreet game mechanics, allowing them to change progress of a game in ways that a player can comprehend and plan for.

---

You can replace semantic content of "Good", "Neutral" and "Evil" with whatever you like, as long as they have a clear relationship the arguments hold. In fact, you can extend the same arguments to other dichtomous pairs, like "Human versus Machine", "Human versus Vampire", "Sane versus Insane" etc.. (Yes, from a perspective of mechanical design and game function, Cthulhu's sanity rules constitute an alignment system, as do WoD various virtue mechanics, Cyberpunk's empathy, corruption as found in many other game systems, etc.)

The only real argument against Good and Evil, specifically, is that some people clearly can't accept "Game Good isn't what I think is good in real life" and that a character following their real life idea of good might be Chaotic Evil (or whatever else) instead. If you think doing a search-and-replace with those terms and turning them into "Holy" and "Unholy", go ahead. It's actually a non-change, because it retains all the good parts of Alignment and fails to avoid this one bad thing (because people still have ideas of what is Holy or Unholy in real life).

That post's concerned with Good - Evil - axis because that was specifically being contested. But it applies equally to Law - Chaos - axis and it shouldn't be hard to figure out how.

[Democratus]

Alignment is a tool. It can be used in many ways.

Giving an example of someone using an alignment system poorly, and saying that it makes alignments bad...is like stating that a hammer was used to kill someone and, therefore, hammers are bad.

Use the alignment system that works best for you. Or use none at all.

[ImNotTrevor]

Alignment is a tool. It can be used in many ways.

Giving an example of someone using an alignment system poorly, and saying that it makes alignments bad...is like stating that a hammer was used to kill someone and, therefore, hammers are bad.

Use the alignment system that works best for you. Or use none at all.

Alignment is a tool in the same way a stick that you found on the ground outside Home Depot is a tool.

Like, sure. Technically. It doesn't achieve anything that can't be achieved by much easier means with better and readily available tools, but sure. Technically it's a tool.

My argument isn't that alignment gets used poorly sometimes. It's that the BEST examples of alignment use are 0% better than what I achieve without using it at all, and it's worst examples are infinitely worse. So with that spread, what on earth would compel me to use it?

I also wanna address this post because I missed it before and it's exactly the sort of post that proves my point.

Ask and ye shall receive.

1) alignment serves as a pledge for what kind of character you're playing. "My character is Good" tells the GM "my character desires well-being of other creatures", "My character is Neutral" tells the GM "my character is indifferent to well-being of other creatures" and "My character is Evil" tells "my character desires suffering of other creatures". These give the GM a benchmark to evaluate your player decisions against and give them ideas of how other characters might react to them.

This does nothing not achieved by a brief tone conversation and, like.... having the NPCs react naturally to witnessed behavior.

2) It gives the GM, who has to play a wide array of characters, ideas of how these characters differ in attitude, behaviour and response to player actions.

Couldn't you do this better with 3-4 word personality notes, which will give better and more detailed information than alignment would?

3) It can serve as a turning point for other mechanism. In D&D, this means which afterlife a character would go, which gods are for or against them, which spells and magic items they can use etc. It connects particular moral choices made by characters with discreet game mechanics, allowing them to change progress of a game in ways that a player can comprehend and plan for.

Obsolete as of 5th edition. None of these mechanics exist. And with all of the other, better ways to implement these sorts of options, alignment is even less necessary than ever before.



So yeah, I STILL remain unconvinced that alignment is needed. I have yet to recieve any reason for its existence not done AS WELL or BETTER than a tone discussion during Session 0, talking to your players like grownups, and having a scrap of creativity. All things YOU SHOULD BE DOING ANYWAYS.

[NigelWalmsley]

The idea that groups are Lawful and individuals are Chaotic isn't really born out by the rules. There are solitary monsters that are Lawful, and civilizations that are Chaotic. Moreover, that definition basically means that "Chaos" is the same as "being ineffective". Which isn't really a compelling ethical conflict to have. The fight between "people who work together to achieve their goals" and "people who don't do that" is certainly a fight you can have, but it's not really a particularly interesting fight. By definition, any organization you interact with is going to be composed of the "work together" side.

Law and Chaos is, if anything, somehow worse than Good and Evil as a set of descriptors. For all that "Good" is hard to nail down precisely, it's easy to nail down generally. Chaos doesn't even have that. About the only thing that Law and Chaos have going for them is that they are recognizable labels for villains. Mass Effect's Reapers, for example, are pretty clearly Law villains. But not all villains fall into one of those two categories. There are also Nature villains and Imperialist villains and all kinds of other forms of villainy. Which points to one of the big flaws with D&D's alignment system: these things aren't binary. There's certainly room for there to be factions in the game that people align themselves with. But those factions need to be defined in terms of what they are, not in terms of how they relate to other factions.

[Vahnavoi]

My argument isn't that alignment gets used poorly sometimes. It's that the BEST examples of alignment use are 0% better than what I achieve without using it at all, and it's worst examples are infinitely worse. So with that spread, what on earth would compel me to use it?

My argument has never been about compelling you to use anything. If my standard for a succesful defense of Alignment was "convice ImNotTrevor they're compelled to use [it]", I'd go about this quite differently.

No, my standard is "prove Alignment has utility". That doesn't require proving it has utility to you, specifically, nor does it require proving Alignment is necessary.

Here, a brief list of things of things which I find to have utility, but will readily admit are not necessary for a working roleplaying game:

- a game master
- dice
- rulebooks
- pens & paper

Just for contrast.

I also wanna address this post because I missed it before and it's exactly the sort of post that proves my point.

I will begin by noting that I find your demonstrations of how to do things "better" to be sadly lacking.

This does nothing not achieved by a brief tone conversation and, like.... having the NPCs react naturally to witnessed behavior.

A brief tone conversation, like maybe:

GM: most people in this setting are Good.
Player: okay, but my character is Evil.
GM: okay.

The Alignment system is not a replacement for a "tone conversation", it is an example of one.

Neither is it replacement or somehow antithetical to "having the NPCs react naturally to witnessed behavior" - it makes stamenents of what is intended behaviour for the PCs and what is natural reaction for the NPCs.

Couldn't you do this better with 3-4 word personality notes, which will give better and more detailed information than alignment would?

Alignment, using a hopping two words to describe a character, is already a part of this process. As I've said before and will have to reiterate again later in this post, D&D has always used additional descriptors of characters and personality. The Alignment system isn't antithetical to the practice you describe, it exists alongside it to provide additional information.

Obsolete as of 5th edition. None of these mechanics exist. And with all of the other, better ways to implement these sorts of options, alignment is even less necessary than ever before.

You have described a reason for why I'm going back to 1st Edition. To quote myself from another thread:

You should be quoting Gygax, because 1st edition AD&D had a better definion of the Alignment system than 5th edition has. Luckily for you, another person, Jason, already did.

5th edition Alignment system is not any real improvement over 1st edition AD&D, anymore than 2nd edition was.

To recap some history:

1) 2e Alignment was screwed over by TSR's decision to market the game to kids and appeal to moral guardians. They didn't really change the system, but they subtly changed the definitions so that Evil is what would make your mom angry and so is naughty-naughty, and even non-Good is pushing it. Players were heavily encouraged to play Good and "heroic" characters, but only in a way that adhered to contemporary PG-13 standards.

Notably, even people at TSR thought a lot of this was ridiculous, and if TSR had seriously stuck to their guns, things like Planescape, Dark Sun and Ravenloft probably wouldn't exist.

2) 5e Alignment was screwed over by WotC's crisis over 4e. They'd tried to kill or change many "sacred cows" of older editions in order to make a more functional game, including condensing Alignment to CE - E - Un - G - LG... only to find out that people actually liked those sacred cows and Paizo made a business for itself essentially selling a 3e retroclone.

So they had to walk it back, but at the same time, they were under crossfire from people who hated Alignment in earlier editions. As a result, 5e doesn't stand on its own. It's Alignment is vestigial lip service to older fans, with most of its features removed so it's easy to ignorr. Seriously. The most positive remarks I've heard of 5e Alignment come from people who hated it in 3e and love how the new version "doesn't get in the way". That's a case of damned by faint praise if there ever was one.

5th edition isn't particularly well-designed, Alignment-wise, because the authors purposefully half-assed it. Now, in the thread this quote is from, some other people made a short-but-decent defense of 5th Edition's Alignment system, specifically. I don't expect you to be convinced by that either, but it's there if you want to see it.

But yes, in context of my defense of Alignment, the third point is inapplicable or only weakly applicable. That's not the same as "obsolete". Other Alignment systems still exist for which the defense applies, they are usable today and didn't cease to function just because its 2020 and not 1979. It should be possible for a person to read my posts, agree with the third point, and then go back to 5th edition D&D and add in the missing mechanics.

---

The idea groups are Lawful and individuals are Chaotic isn't really born out by the rules. There are solitary monsters that are Lawful, and civilizations that are Chaotic.

You know full well that when attached to a single being, Alignment describes a creature's disposition towards groups, and whether it is temporally solitary or amidst others doesn't rebuke the system. A solitary creature following Lawful ethos will act differently than one following Chaotic ethos, and people in a generally Lawful civilization will act differently than those in a Chaotic one.

Moreover, that definition basically means that "Chaos" is the same as "being ineffective".

Said a Lawful person about the Chaotic.

Which isn't really a compelling ethical conflict to have. The fight between "people who work together to achieve their goals" and "people who don't do that" is certainly a fight you can have, but it's not really a particularly interesting fight.

Now you're back to stating play preferences as if they constitute a great criticism.

By definition, any organization you interact with is going to be composed of the "work together" side.

You are confusing organizations with people in them. There can be Chaotic characters within a group of Lawfuls, abusing it, exploiting it, struggling to get out etc.. There's a reason why the system makes these determinations on character basis.

Law and Chaos is, if anything, somehow worse than Good and Evil as a set of descriptors. For all that "Good" is hard to nail down precisely, it's easy to nail down generally. Chaos doesn't even have that. About the only thing that Law and Chaos have going for them is that they are recognizable labels for villains. Mass Effect's Reapers, for example, are pretty clearly Law villains. But not all villains fall into one of those two categories. There are also Nature villains and Imperialist villains and all kinds of other forms of villainy. Which points to one of the big flaws with D&D's alignment system: these things aren't binary. There's certainly room for there to be factions in the game that people align themselves with. But those factions need to be defined in terms of what they are, not in terms of how they relate to other factions.

Bolded part for emphasis. You have, once again, fallen back to critizing a system for a flaw it does not have. Not only does it admit "Neutral" between Law and Chaos (and has nine, not two, Alignments in total when combined with its other axis), D&D has always used other descriptors in addition to Alignment.

F. EX., Saying some villain is "Imperialist" and saying they're "Lawful Evil" are not mutually exlusive statements that never have been made and never can be made of the same character. On the contrary, you can examine why the villain is "Imperialist" and within the Alignment system determine if they're also Evil, which then allows you to make additional statements about them.

[ImNotTrevor]

The forum decided to delete my post-in progress, so I might be particularly brief.

My argument has
never been about compelling you to use anything. If my standard for a succesful defense of Alignment was "convice ImNotTrevor they're compelled to use [it]", I'd go about this quite differently.

No, my standard is "prove Alignment has utility". That doesn't require proving it has utility to you, specifically, nor does it require proving Alignment is necessary.

Alignment does have utility. I'd agree with that. But as I said, it has utility in the same way a stick yiu found outside of Home Depot has utility. Not nearly so much as the tools you'll find inside, but it does have some sort of utility.

Here, a brief list of things of things which I find to have utility, but will readily admit are not necessary for a working roleplaying game:

- a game master
- dice
- rulebooks
- pens & paper

Just for contrast.

The difference here being that these things when included are either more likely to be good than bad, aren't easily emulated with something else, and/or their inclusion/exclusion is entirely neutral. Though for some, their lack might change the very nature of the game you're playing, where alignment does not have that level of influence.

I will begin by noting that I find your demonstrations of how to do things "better" to be sadly lacking.

Yeah, the other guy's examples tend to be lacking when you make up a strawman version of them and pretend that's what he's talking about. As seen here:

A brief tone conversation, like maybe:

GM: most people in this setting are Good.
Player: okay, but my character is Evil.
GM: okay.

Problems:
1. This is not a tone conversation. This is some random statement about the predominant Alignment of people in a setting which... Ok?

2. This is apparently not a session 0 since the player is already bringing a character

3. This GM hasn't established anything about the tone of the campaign and is just allowing the players to do what they want.

I can see how if this is what you call a Tone Conversation, it would accomplish nothing. Because nothing meaningful about tone was communicated, and nobody cared. Wow.

Here's some of my vaguely planned statements for the OPENING of a Tone Conversation that I will be having for a Hexcrawl.

"This hexcrawl will be focused on exploration and the growth of a colony. While this does mean that Colonization will be involved as a general theme, we are going to seriously avoid blanket conquest and mistreatment of natives. Let's not repeat the horrors of history and try to have things go a bit better this time. That obviously doesn't mean combat is forbidden, but I think you can tell where the line is between 'self defense' and 'genocide.' Overall I'd like the seriousness level to strike a 70/30 balance between playing it straight and having humor."

"The first characters to arrive will all be here in Ahmbra on special assignment from the Trovian Empire. Whether you are here by choice, by command, by obligation, or by punishment, your characters must have a vested interest in doing their assigned job of exploring the wild and helping the colony grow and flourish."

Bingo. THAT is a few starting seeds of a tone discussion. It is done thoughtfully, with an idea towards what the campaign will look like in broad strokes.

The Alignment system is not a replacement for a "tone conversation", it is an example of one.

Yes, just like your example. It's a "tone conversation" with quotes around it, because it doesn't achieve that goal at all.

Neither is it replacement or somehow antithetical to "having the NPCs react naturally to witnessed behavior" - it makes stamenents of what is intended behaviour for the PCs and what is natural reaction for the NPCs.

Ah, so alignment is prescriptive of how PCs should behave and how NPCs should react.

I hope you weren't one of the ones saying that Alignment is just descriptive.

Beyond that, I don't see how having only 9 kinds of NPCs helps me. If all my NG npcs should react in X way towards LE PC behavior, then why do I have more than the 9 NPCs? This isn't EXACTLY your argument, but you can probably see how predetermining reactions based on alignment will skew towards basically 9 personality types, yeah?

Alignment, using a hopping two words to describe a character, is already a part of this process. As I've said before and will have to reiterate again later in this post, D&D has always used additional descriptors of characters and personality. The Alignment system isn't antithetical to the practice you describe, it exists alongside it to provide additional information.

Consider the following character description:

Spoiler: Description

Show

She takes NO $#:+ from ANYONE. Cusses like a sailor. Will 100% kick your ass. Diana is a big believer in the chain of command. She is loyal to Mezzan, loyal to the people of Ambition, and deeply committed to her duties, to the detriment of her personal life.

She is good at her job and runs a tight ship. These special assignment boys and girls are being tolerated, not having the red carpet put out. Until they can prove themselves useful, they're just another bunch of ***holes sent by the beaurocracy.

Now tell me:
How does having "Lawful" somewhere give me more information than what is here without making her a caricature?

How does CE meaningfully give me more information than I can reasonably extrapolate from:
"Voracious, Cunning, Predatory, Brutal, Paranoid" and how does CE imply Voraciousness, Cunning, Paranoia or a Predatory nature? (Brutality is probably implied by CE to some degree, I suppose)

If I'm being totally honest, I find that a character's goals and wants are a far better indication of their reactions to things than their alignment is. For instance: A LG Paladin Dies. How does a LE Sorcerer respond?

Belrond is utilizing Varnus's good nature as a way to manipulate him, and Varnus has been getting all kinds of work done for Belrond without realizing it, allowing him to consolidate power in the region by toppling the lesser pretenders to the throne. How does he respond when Varnus is killed?

Even without knowing Belrond's specific sort of evil alignment we probably have a better idea of how he responds than we do for a generic LE Sorcerer, and adding "lawful evil" as a tag to Belrond doesn't really change much about his response nearly so much as the other way around.

So yeah, alignment is useful, kinda, sorta, but not so useful as to merit being held as something that makes a system better, and the potential costs/annoyances are pretty costly compared to that teeny tiny benefit.

5th edition isn't particularly well-designed, Alignment-wise, because the authors purposefully half-assed it.

They purposefully *minimized its importance.* They didn't want it to be any more important mechanically than hair color or eye color. They couldn't REMOVE it because brand identity, but if they could have, they would have.

But yes, in context of my defense of Alignment, the third point is inapplicable or only weakly applicable. That's not the same as "obsolete". Other Alignment systems still exist for which the defense applies, they are usable today and didn't cease to function just because its 2020 and not 1979. It should be possible for a person to read my posts, agree with the third point, and then go back to 5th edition D&D and add in the missing mechanics.

Obsolete, meaning "out of date, no longer current" or "no longer in use."

It is telling that alignment systems are rare among RPGs generally. D&D and Pathfinder use it. Corruption systems are a bit less rare, but... calling them "alignment" is a stretch, since it's less a statement of "how good or evil are you" and more a measurement of "how much has the evil goo/force/corruption
corrupted you" which is a different question entirely.

The majority of systems that pseudo-approximate alignment show a preference towards coherent individual factions rather than moralistic forces like Good and Evil, and characters have allegiance to them to some degree, but even this isn't truly quantified.

The fact of the matter is that once you stop giving brainspace to alignment, things get more creatively open, more fleshed-out, and generally higher quality.

Basically, if alignment is helpful for fleshing out characters, *why don't fantasy authors USE IT?* You can't give me the "Writing and TRPGs are different" here because we're talking about CHARACTERS, not storylines. A well-made character is well-made in both for the same reasons. So why is alignment as a quality-booster entirely ignored, if it has meaningful utility?

The answer is: it doesn't have meaningful and unique utility compared to every other tool in a writer's pocket. And if you use THOSE tools, your characters will be better than the 3x3 alignment puppets.

[Vahnavoi]

The forum decided to delete my post-in progress, so I might be particularly brief.

You have odd standard for "brief".

Alignment does have utility. I'd agree with that. But as I said, it has utility in the same way a stick yiu found outside of Home Depot has utility. Not nearly so much as the tools you'll find inside, but it does have some sort of utility.

Dismissive bad faith analogy aside, that'd mean my job here is done, if you'd actually stopped here.

More seriously, I'm fine with someone admitting Alignment has utility, just not enough for them to personally use. Anything past this point is no longer me arguing for something, it's about me arguing about how you argue.

The difference here being that these things when included are either more likely to be good than bad, aren't easily emulated with something else, and/or their inclusion/exclusion is entirely neutral. Though for some, their lack might change the very nature of the game you're playing, where alignment does not have that level of influence.

You can feel however you like about those things, point was to make you stop harping about compulsions and necessity when I wasn't using those as goalposts to begin with.

Yeah, the other guy's examples tend to be lacking when you make up a strawman version of them and pretend that's what he's talking about.

Oh, you mean like someone (not you, someone) repeatedly claiming Alignment is binary in places it is explicitly not? Now you know what it feels like!

But, snark aside, credit where it's due: the examples you gave me now are good demonstrations of what you're talking about. They aren't "sadly lacking".

Problems:
1. This is not a tone conversation. This is some random statement about the predominant Alignment of people in a setting which... Ok?

2. This is apparently not a session 0 since the player is already bringing a character

3. This GM hasn't established anything about the tone of the campaign and is just allowing the players to do what they want.

1 & 3. Compare and contrast:

GM: most characters in this setting are Good.
Player: okay, but my character is Evil.
GM: please change that, I don't want Evil player characters in my game.

This is a brief tone conversation, my original dialogue was a brief tone conversation, a GM "just allowing the players to do what they want" is a statement about tone of a campaign. The only way you can think no statements of tone are being made is if you are presuming Good and Evil have no meaning.

2. I will abstain from making much comment about "Session 0", because it's not clear to me there is any exact methodology behind that term, and I routinely find I can do all the things that are supposedly part of "Session 0" in less than a session, at the start of the first session.

Again, I'll note that maybe this all about you having an odd standard for "brief", because if we omit brevity, I can just have my players read through AD&D books and it will inform them of tone just fine. Again, the system makes its own statements on tone.

Continuing on the issue of brevity:

"This hexcrawl will be focused on exploration and the growth of a colony. While this does mean that Colonization will be involved as a general theme, we are going to seriously avoid blanket conquest and mistreatment of natives. Let's not repeat the horrors of history and try to have things go a bit better this time. That obviously doesn't mean combat is forbidden, but I think you can tell where the line is between 'self defense' and 'genocide.' Overall I'd like the seriousness level to strike a 70/30 balance between playing it straight and having humor."

"The first characters to arrive will all be here in Ahmbra on special assignment from the Trovian Empire. Whether you are here by choice, by command, by obligation, or by punishment, your characters must have a vested interest in doing their assigned job of exploring the wild and helping the colony grow and flourish."

"Exploration-focused hex-crawl campaign. Characters begin as Imperial agents in a periphery. Mostly dramatic with pinch of comedy. PG-13."

That's about how much I'd need to tell of this campaign pitch to my players. And it wouldn't be an opening of conversation, it would pretty much entirety of it, before actual start of the game.

It's not that yours is a bad pitch for tone - it's good. But as criticism of alignment? I could tag "System used is 1st Edition AD&D. No. Evil characters" and it would communicate a lot of information to my players, more than words like "Ahmbra" and "Trovian" because setting familiarity is its own kerfuffle aside from tone.

Ah, so alignment is prescriptive of how PCs should behave and how NPCs should react.

I hope you weren't one of the ones saying that Alignment is just descriptive.

Do I need to dig up my AD&D books up again and quote entire rule sections to you? Because the rules are perfectly clear that for PCs, actual behaviour is what determines alignment. Stated alignment is a pledge a player makes, that they then either succeed or fail to follow... with the consequence of changing Alignment if they fail, with possible associated mechanical penalty, before the game moves on.

A prescriptive element for NPCs does exist, but that's because the NPCs don't exist before being defined. They don't have any actual behaviour nor guidelines for behaviour before the GM sets something up.

Beyond that, I don't see how having only 9 kinds of NPCs helps me. If all my NG npcs should react in X way towards LE PC behavior, then why do I have more than the 9 NPCs? This isn't EXACTLY your argument, but you can probably see how predetermining reactions based on alignment will skew towards basically 9 personality types, yeah?

There aren't only nine types of personality, because Alignment isn't be-all-end-all of personality. There are nine basic moral characteristics and when we look at Alignment reactions towards each other, we get... how do I calculate this? 9x9=81 reaction sets? That's a decent amount to play through. However you choose to count it, it is a multiplicative, combinational exercise which nets you a large number of games.

Beyond that, we'll have to go back to counting how many real sets of basic moral characteristic there are, before deciding whether 9 is a small number. Because real factorial analysis regularly sorts real people into a fairly small number of groups. There likely isn't an unlimited amount of basic moralities and it's highly likely real people do skew towards just a few.

Consider the following character description:

Spoiler: Description

Show

She takes NO $#:+ from ANYONE. Cusses like a sailor. Will 100% kick your ass. Diana is a big believer in the chain of command. She is loyal to Mezzan, loyal to the people of Ambition, and deeply committed to her duties, to the detriment of her personal life.

She is good at her job and runs a tight ship. These special assignment boys and girls are being tolerated, not having the red carpet put out. Until they can prove themselves useful, they're just another bunch of ***holes sent by the beaurocracy.

Now tell me:
How does having "Lawful" somewhere give me more information than what is here without making her a caricature?

It doesn't; "Lawful" gives you most of the first paragraph in a condensed form. What you've given me is... is there a single English word for this...? uncondensed description of what being Lawful means for this single character. The rest is additional description the sort of which, again, D&D has always used alongside Alignment.

How does CE meaningfully give me more information than I can reasonably extrapolate from:
"Voracious, Cunning, Predatory, Brutal, Paranoid" and how does CE imply Voraciousness, Cunning, Paranoia or a Predatory nature? (Brutality is probably implied by CE to some degree, I suppose)

If you paid attention, you'd have noticed CE isn't there to give you any information about those. It's there to inform you that this creature relishes suffering (Evil) and targets other for its individual benefit (Chaotic).

So now if you add a term such as "predatory" after CE, you know now they are not preying on others for the sake of making the world better.

If I'm being totally honest, I find that a character's goals and wants are a far better indication of their reactions to things than their alignment is. For instance: A LG Paladin Dies. How does a LE Sorcerer respond?

With sadness if the Paladin was part of the same group, because that group has now suffered; with indifference or glee if the Paladin was not, because there's now one less of inferior people in the world.

Goals do help in determining reactions, but why are you bringing goals into discussion about a system that was never meant to describe totality of goals?

They purposefully *minimized its importance.* They didn't want it to be any more important mechanically than hair color or eye color. They couldn't REMOVE it because brand identity, but if they could have, they would have.

I know, that's what I said! It doesn't make me have any more confidence in them.

Obsolete, meaning "out of date, no longer current" or "no longer in use."

People play 1st Edition (and 2nd Edition, and 3rd Edition...) today. You can play them today. They influence how 5th Edition is played today, because a lot of setting material predates 5th Edition and a lot of GMs were players of earlier editions. You can backport mechanics to a 5th edition game today.

Aligment didn't become obsolete with the advent of 5th Edition, anymore than Go has become obsolete by advent of videogaming.

It is telling that alignment systems are rare among RPGs generally. D&D and Pathfinder use it.

D&D and Pathfinder are top two most popular tabletop systems locally, perhaps globally, so what rules they use affects plurality, perhaps majority, of games actually being held. Counting by systems gives a wrong impression of how exposed people are to alignment and how much it is actually used.

Basically, if alignment is helpful for fleshing out characters, *why don't fantasy authors USE IT?* You can't give me the "Writing and TRPGs are different" here because we're talking about CHARACTERS, not storylines. A well-made character is well-made in both for the same reasons. So why is alignment as a quality-booster entirely ignored, if it has meaningful utility?

Did you forget that Alignment was inpired and copied over from literature? Or that a huge amount of contemporary fantasy fiction was directly inspired or even derived from D&D?

Raymond E. Feist, Margaret Weiss, Tracy Hickman, whoever made Records of Lodoss War, Nasuverse (seriously, FATE characters have or at least used to have D&D Alignments)... those are just the few well-known examples that immediately come to mind, without doing any serious research on this.

---

Apologies if I omitted something; at this point it's as likely to be because I botched editing this, as because I didn't have anything to say. I doubt anyone is going to get more use out of me dissecting posts like this, so this will be my last comment in this thread. If y'all consider attrition an acceptable debate tactic, consider ImNotTrevor the victor here.

[NigelWalmsley]

You know full well

No, I don't. Different sources claim alignment means different things. I don't "know" what alignment means any more than I "know" what the hacking rules for Shadowrun are, or the the Polymorph rules for 3e D&D are, or the Skill Challenge rules for 4e D&D. There are a lot of possible answers, and that's before you get into the glosses individual players have produced to try to make things work in their games.

Bolded part for emphasis. You have, once again, fallen back to critizing a system for a flaw it does not have. Not only does it admit "Neutral" between Law and Chaos (and has nine, not two, Alignments in total when combined with its other axis), D&D has always used other descriptors in addition to Alignment.

Good/Evil and Law/Chaos are absolutely binaries. "Neutral" does not make them not binary, because "Neutral" is not a side people are on unless you're watching Futurama. Not making a binary choice does not make it not a binary choice.

F. EX., Saying some villain is "Imperialist" and saying they're "Lawful Evil" are not mutually exlusive statements that never have been made and never can be made of the same character. On the contrary, you can examine why the villain is "Imperialist" and within the Alignment system determine if they're also Evil, which then allows you to make additional statements about them.

Sure. You could also say that they were "Choleric" or "Fire" or "Green". You could describe them in terms of a nearly infinite number of sets of categories. You could group them by favorite food or astrological sign. The question is whether any particular grouping is worth the effort necessary to include it.

[Jason]

No, I don't. Different sources claim alignment means different things.

Which is one of the reasons there is a DM. Don't know if what you're about to do is evil? Ask the DM. His answer is what goes in his game.
If you're the DM, make a judgement. Just try to be reasonably consistent and it'll work out fine.

Good/Evil and Law/Chaos are absolutely binaries. "Neutral" does not make them not binary, because "Neutral" is not a side people are on unless you're watching Futurama. Not making a binary choice does not make it not a binary choice.

Neutral is a choice. It's basically "the middle ground between the other two options" or "moderate" or "the refusal to consistently chose one side of the axis" whether law/chaos or good/evil, or both.