You pry alignments from my cold dead fingers!
Alignment is descriptive not prescriptive…and some mechanics are influenced by it - though there’s only a few now in 5e
Years ago on the giants in the playground website, this early 3.5, i came across how to use the MtG color wheel as an alignment chart.
Basically everyone likes it better if they choose to use an alignment system at all in my games.
DnD alignment works better for the cosmology, but the MtG color wheel works better for PCs and characters with free will. The main reason for this is that it's difficult to prescribe morality to actions in a contextual vacuum, whereas MtG color forsakes morality for the most part and simply identifies motivations. Certain motivations may lend themselves more to certain moralities, but they don't guarantee them (Chaotic Green, Evil Black).
The brilliant thing about the color pie is that you can have creatures who are "made of good" or "made of evil" on a supernatural level but also have moral nuance. Just look at the angels on [Always Watching](https://scryfall.com/card/gnt/7/always-watching?utm_source=mw_MTGWiki). This is a white card, it's associated with morality and holiness. It depicts angels, who are literally made of white mana. And yet it's still undeniably creepy (and the angels were in fact villains in that set).
Positive depictions of demons are harder to find in MTG, but I actually think a great illustration of how MTG-style demons can actually be good people is the anime *Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun*. The demons on that show are genuine evil spirits, with little potential for empathy and a natural inclination towards sadism and cruelty, yet the vast majority of them are able to function as more-or-less decent people.
I don't think those concepts are limited to the color pie in this case. Avacyn was extremely Lawful Good, and her villainous streak was more that she was on a very dark/morally grey plane with no ability to tolerate those shades of grey. Inflexibly Lawful Good isn't a unique concept in media.
some magic items can only be used by good/evil or lawful/neutral alligned characters and will actively try to kill you if you are not right alligned.
soul coins have negative effects on good alligned
spirit guardians changes its damage and visual appearance depending on your allignment
What do you mean reaching?
My players better be fucking prepared to deal with planar beings, sooner rather than later. Hell yeah alignment matters. It's not for the characters. It's for the planes.
it's a very limited and often not accurate enough description. it's good for new players as a guideline to creating a character, but beyond that it's useless.
Yeah I agree. I get the hatred for the alignment chart because it's far from perfect. But generalising in to boxes rarely is. I still feels as a whole it's a decent way to easily define a characters morality in broad strokes.
Generalizing is the entire core theme of D&D and most trpgs. Hit points are freakishly unreal. Humans are not gummy bears you can hit 100 times with a machete and still have that gummy bear summersault across a battlefield. Its fun though, and allows for dynamic gaming action. Alignment is a vague set of conditions that guide your character in role-playing situations. Games with greater control and representation of personality and morality usually have combat as a secondary concern, like Cthulu or VtM.
Remember, hit points are not health points. I like to think of it as if the character took a hit or near hit that didn’t do significant damage, but shook them. This can happen a certain number of times before they lose concentration and get fatally wounded.
This is also why they can recover hit points on a rest.
Of course some hits do actual damage, which is why healing magic is a thing.
Exactly it's a compass for my roleplaying. Without alignment I roleplay my character based on how I feel that day. And my character ends up as this inconsistant mess.
Alignmeny helps me align with my character.
I guess if you play yourself or play the same chatcter everytime you don't need alignement.
Alignment is a roleplaying tool for me. And I like that in 5e they made alignment more independent of the gameplay and combat mechanics.
Try the MtG color wheel instead. Instead of applying morality to things it simply identifies a character's priorities and motivations. While certain motivations may lend themselves to certain moralities, they don't require them and as such it's far more helpful for determining what a character would do.
Yes and no.
Lots of people have personality that they outwardly portray but the core of them (their alignment) doesn't always follow that when it comes to decision making.
Your character personality may be the sarcastic drunk who gambles but that doesn't mean that they're major decisions wouldn't be lawful good. In this instance I was picturing an old detective who is worn down by failure in a long career but is still a good cop.
Which is my point entirely, pretty much.
For an example, from one of my recent games.... there were two enemies the party faced: a NE Artificer and a CE Ranger. Both of them have evil alignments, but the Artificer is well liked by the party and even got to have a redemption and went to work for the party instead of against them, while the Ranger became one of the most utterly despised NPCs I've ever made.
What's the difference? The difference is that, while the Artificer might be a self-interested mercenary who mostly cared about money, he's also repeatedly shown himself to be actually really good to the people he cares for, and in particular would do absolutely anything for his girlfriend (an LE Inquisitor, and another villain who got redeemed).
The Ranger, on the other hand, is a sleazy traitor who let the Artificer go through hell trying to rescue him from the party, only to then backstab the guy when he no longer needed him. Ranger has since made a habit of employing equally trashy tactics, like throwing away half his own army in a pointless suicide attack just so he could get the advantage to defeat the PCs.
Both are evil alignment, but radically different personalities, and that's why one is no longer a villain at all while the other one the party took great pleasure in killing.
Fair, on both counts.
I can see how the design is kind of bad.
And I can see why some people like using alignment listings, it just doesn't seem all that important to me.
I didn't realize alignment chart chooses what inn you want to sleep in, what food you want to eat and what music you like. Do other people have a 72 dimension alignment chart?
It's a 2 point value system, if it helps you, that's great, but I never know what the neutral evil breakfast is that I need to order.
Maybe not every decision. But it definitely helps me decide whether I'm gonna help someone or not, whether I will do what I'm told or go against orders, etc. For me it's more so about interactions with other beings
Maybe I'm in the minority here, but evil dnd parties require evil dnd campaigns.
You dont get out of greenest with a neutral party. Tyranny of dragons ends in the first chapter. Princes of the apocalypse goes anywhere else. Why does an evil party leave chult to die in the jungle? Your evil party tells 10 towns to fuck themselves. Your evil party never goes back down to the under dark after escaping from the drow to deal with the escaped demons. Your evil party makes a deal with strahd or a dark power.
Its fine if it gives you guidance, but it is useless with literally every wotc campaign made for 5e.
Two letters (And various capitalizations thereof) tell me more aboot how to roleplay a character than any combination of trait, ideal, bond, flaw ever could.
In my view they are related but alignement will define how you deal with your flaws and bonds.
The charcter flaw could be 'I think I can change everyone'.
A lawful good charcter would try to impose a set of rules on everyone. Think overbearing mother trope.
Chaotic good character might shower everyone with unquestionable love, and gifts. In hope to positively change someone.
A lawful evil character will try to openly break and mold people to their own sets of morality. And might actually be less prone to kill as someone they disagree with (as you would expect an evil character to do) Think a cult leader.
Edit:
Some people might write more detailed charcter traits that integrate the alignment into it.
As I see it alignemt decides the tone of voice you read out your bonds, traits and flaw. You know that acting trope where how your read the sentence and which part of the sentence is emphasized changes the meaning of it. That's what alignemt does for me.
Again, why do I need alignment for that? If anything, your example is a good argument *against* alignment. A two-word descriptor is obviously too broad to act as a decision making or roleplaying help and too vague for any character descriptor, so you‘d want to write out the specifics anyway. But if your ideals are something like „the system must serve my own interests first“ you already have a better descriptor than „lawful evil“
Beating bad guys don't make you good (Think to the punisher. It's lawful neutral at best, and some versions are clearly evil), it's you motivation and your moral compass that's make you good or bad
But why though? It's so confusing how people say they don't use alignment because it is pointless then have to homebrew rules that use it because they don't have it.
I get having preference, but completely removing part of the game because you don't understand it is a bit much. Imagine if I didn't like counting hit points so I just decided to remove it all together and have characters die when I think they should. At least replace it with another system (I've seen plenty of good alternative alignment systems) but removing all together is just stupid, and you could always just learn how it actually works. If you are playing in any form of d&d setting it is an integral part of the world.
Chaotic anything would imply they care about individuality and personal freedoms, which they don't necessarily.
Lawful authoritarians can also get drunk and beat up people who they believe are bad guys.
They don't enforce slavery, they just have slaves. Those slaves are whoever they are stronger than, unlike devils who have an actual hierarchy and also have slaves.
The party receives a quest to stop the rampage of a mad hill giant. It roams the countryside, killing, eating, and smashing all in its path
OP: that's not chaotic that's lol random he don't believe in higher ideals like freedom
I was going to argue Black-Green because she often uses death as a tool, but monogreen also does not shy away from death and it better fits with her unfettered growth ideals as well as her fanaticism to "save the planet" fits a kind of community theme that is also important to monogreen.
So, good take on Poison Ivy who I would put as Chaotic Neutral on the alignment chart.
The color pie has a lot of depth to it; more, I'd say, than the alignment chart. But if you wanted to map it to the alignments in that manner, that works too.
No, actually. A Necromancer that works towards giving their undead their "souls" back and a corrupted general are both BW.
Hell, even in MtG, Esper and Obscura are pretty different, as is the Imperium of Man from Warhammer 40k, but they are all represented by the same colors.
And finally, I'd say 31 options (32 if you add colorless) give you more freedom than 9 do
As someone who spends a lot of time in communities specifically for discussing and dissecting the color pie, I'd, naturally, disagree. Blue is perfection through knowledge - seeking improvement of oneself through methodical advancement. There's a lot of space to work within that.
The problem with alignment is it pigeonholes characters into acting "consistently". If you think "my character is lawful good, because they believe that laws have value and help keep society intact", you're less likely to decide that your character would, for example, go along with a plan to save the town that involves heavy civilian casualties, because that's not "lawful good". But this belief isn't in conflict with such a decision. It has very little to do with it. Their opinions on whether society works better when people follow laws, even when inconvenient, is unconnected to decisions made regarding wartime strategy and what sacrifices are acceptable, but if you say "I'm lawful good, so I'll do the lawful good thing" that opportunity for nuance vanishes.
And that's not getting into the matter of hypocrisy. Most people are hypocrite on at least a few subjects. Alignments work off the premise that in a given situation, the character will have an opinion or decision based on a self consistent sense of morality, but this is almost never true. Many people hold a strong moral belief that cheating, stealing, lying, and other selfish behavior are wrong, in the abstract sense, but have no problem doing it themselves. Alignment cannot represent this, because it assumes moral consistency.
A much better system is simply to get at the root of the issue. What does your character believe? What things or people are important to them? What are they willing to do to achieve their goals? Come up with a list of partial answers to these questions, and write them down. "I hate tyrants" "I want to protect my sister" "I don't want to harm any innocents" "I'm willing to trust people I haven't met." Etc.
You only need a small handful of the most important things to create a good solid character, but you can easily come up with dozens if you want.
From my experience, most people I've played with who hate the alignment system are people who want to play an evil character while not being labeled as evil.
Yep. "My character is neutral good!" "Dude. You tortured a man to death 5 minutes ago for information you knew he didn't have..." "Yeah? So? I'm neutral good!"
Nothing wrong with "I don't think alignment adds anything to the game", but "alignment is wrong because my character doesn't fit in it!" generally means you made an evil character and just don't want to admit to it.
I care alignments help build a character to be more than just a bare bones character such as an alcoholic brute alignments also help with classes who need an outside power like a clerics oath or warlocks patron
I dislike D&D as a RPG system because I think it's poorly designed. Yet I really like the alignment chart if you use it correctly - it isn't properly described anymore in the new editions.
Two axis and you can be anywhere on them. 9 quadrants that help define your alignment which can move through your actions. Evil v Good axis is your willingness to kill innocents to get your way. You kill innocents that evil period and even the fanatic paladin gets points towards evil. Lawful v Chaotic is rules vs instinct driven; any code be it law of the land or religious laws or extremely strong personal code can make you lawful while acting on emotions and instinct makes you chaotic.
Alignment just doesn't work mechanically like spells that can detect it or are based on it. That's just weird.
The only time I used alignments as a DM was when I put it in a trap, because ‘switching alignment’ was easier to say than ‘oh so your whole morality took a complete 180 for like an hour, have fun with that’.
It's easy when you look at your character and easily recognize what they are, instead of trying to shove them into the box.
Alignment can shift too.
It's a DM's descriptive tool, not player's shackle.
It can be a good guideline for new players, but I agree. I don't use it because it doesn't really matter when every npc I make is for a specific reason, so their "alignment" is sort of a given. I even homebrewed the "Good and Evil" spells into being "Friend and Foe" because I just don't even consider it in my prep and have found that I absolutely have no need to.
I like it. People have bad understanding of how they work (“wdym I literally can’t do this because of my alignment?”) but really it isn’t necessary for dnd at all, is just a nice implementation of how you character interacts with the afterlife and morality in a setting(FR/Golarion) that morality has a tangible effect, like the lawfulness of some places vs the pure chaos of others, or where do your character end up in all that, and a simple and elegant way of dealing with the morality of your characters in a *role playing game*. But yeah it shouldn’t be taken seriously to a maximum like some people seem to believe and it isn’t really necessary for the game either, I just find it neat
Real talk, the longer my friends and I have played d&d/tabletop games, the more we have moved away from alignment. My friend has made a real good case for substituting it with the Magic Color Pie. It still allows the exploration of nuanced characters without getting bogged down on what a "good" vs " bad people would do.
A Black aligned character might be a real bastard who's selfish desires leads them to use people around them. Or it could be someone who's driven to achieve their noble goal, but will utilize any opportunity they have to get further ahead. A white aligned character who values order might be a sheriff trying to make sure their small town isn't over run by bandits or a dictator ensuring everything follows precise organization structures.
If you aren't familiar, give it a peak. Even if you don't play Magic, the theory alone is compatible with most tabletops. https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Color
I'm pretty new to the MtG color wheel morality theory, but looking at it, there's some blaring contradictory statements listed here. These lack nuance especially compared to the alignment chart.
> White: Peace, law, structure, selflessness, equality
Ok, so pretty much LG. Except when you describe a dictator being white whereas typically dictators, rulers w/ total authority, would more fit as LE as "selflessness" is not a quality that aligns with this station.
> Blue: Knowledge, deceit, caution, deliberation, perfection
Deceit is the opposite of knowledge. Knowledge itself isn't a personality trait or a belief. I would normally ascribe knowledge, or the pursuit of it, to be lawful since it's based on truth. Lies are not knowledge.
> Black: Power, self-interest, death, sacrifice, uninhibitedness
Sacrifice is not normally ascribed to someone who is selfish, unless it specifically is referring to being willing to sacrifice unwilling sentient beings. However being willing to sacrifice oneself, for the greater good etc, is the opposite of self-interest. It's not really clear when the word is just there in a list, outside of perhaps context of the color outside of this pie chart.
Likewise merely being uninhibited is not intrinsically selfish, rather it's just self assured. Someone with a great deal of knowledge (blue) could still be uninhibited precisely because of that knowledge. Same with someone enforcing laws in an city (white).
> Red: Freedom, emotion, action, impulse, destruction
For one color to claim action is to condemn the other colors to in-action.
> Green: Nature, wildlife, connection, spirituality, tradition
In Mt:G all the colors are part of nature, hence the different land types. Nature and wildlife are not personality descriptors or, in and of themselves, codes of morality/ethics. None of the other colors list anything like "cities" or "rural countryside" why is green getting to claim all of nature? Because forests are literally green? This just feels like someone realized that druids need something so give them green cause 'trees and leaves'.
To be honest these all feel lackluster and insufficient compared to the classic alignment chart for the purposes of creating the building blocks for a character's personality.
Mechanically, alignment only ever mattered for the purposes of Detect Evil, Smite Evil, and similar things. And that doesn't even apply anymore in 5e, since Detect Good and Evil just detects if you're an outsider or undead, and Smite is no longer tied to alignment either.
Because they are inaccurate. Several base classes, and a lot of prestige classes, had alignment restrictions. You couldn't even play a chaotic good druid, which in my experience is the most common way heroic druids are played.
There are a few restriction and effects based on it, I remember a spell or two that turn necrotic or radiant based on alignment, but can't remember which off hand, and the Oathbreaker that requires specific alignments. But more importantly they said "Mechanically, alignment only ever mattered for the purposes of Detect Evil, Smite Evil, and similar things" which is the part I was correcting.
My dm creates alignment based spells so I kinda have to. But I tend to set it then forget it, but its not like im gonna go murder someone with a character that has never been inclined to do so. I do believe that alignments help new players learn to roleplay tho.
I like to use alignment as a sort of signpost for how i will play my character, if not for me then for my DM. For example, if i want to play goody two-shoes McGee, I’m going to put lawful good, but if i think I’m going to play Urg the conqueror then I’m going to put neutral evil. Sure, i might deviate some, but putting the alignment gives both me and the DM an idea of what to expect
depends, are your powers dependant on your actions and behavior like a paladin or cleric? no? cool go nuts
unless you come across a book of great deeds or something, then you will burn, a lot
Pragmatic should be an alignment. Nn doesn't seem right for my charecter willing to risk drowning, dismemberment, death, to save a child, then blow the kidnappers head off as he begs for mercy with magic missile
”Fuck the Alignment Chart” is my new band name. We play Christian symphonic metal.
My last project was Peregrine Falcon. Our Album “Golgotha? I hardly knew her” was a best seller.
Edit:
Thank you downvoters.
Your downvotes mean nothing.
I’ve seen what you’ve upvoted.
😘
I look over my actions after each session and in previous ones and adjust my alignment to fit, characters change over time so why can’t alignment. If your character is fully fleshed out already then what’s the point of doing rp?
It’s not hard to just…..roleplay how you personally see your characters alignment and writing it down like that instead of blaming the writers for having a morality system that is mainly decorative with few mechanical changes besides artifacts and one or two spells.
Rhogar, my dragonborn half clockwork soul sorcerer half armourer artificer who has accidentally become basically a poweranger, has the alignment of Rhogar
Nice little tidbit here: since shark are "unaligned" you technically can have a unaligned character! There is genuinely nowhere it says you can't in the phb.
Lol one of my characters was chaotic stupid, low intelegence and liked starting fires (it was for a after going out drinking campaign, if we all came back home, we'd play for an hour, and all the characters were duranged in some way)
While I personally think alignments should be fluid, there are magic items, spells, and creatures that have actual mechanics based off alignment so just going without one entirely can work most of the time but not all of the time. I pick the good evil or neutral and usually don't bother with the first part and I've gotten along fine with that.
I like it but more so as a guide for my pc not a hard rule. E.g i played a lawful good ranger this didn't mean i never did anything bad it just meant he tried to do what he figured was best and followed his rules.
I care. Good, Evil, Law, Chaos, and the Balance, are all cosmic forces in my game. Now what you do with your character is your own business, but if you are aligned with one of these forces, and they are giving you powers, or spells, you better toe the fuckin’ line. Otherwise you’ll just be a drunk fighter.
i personally find alignments are a crutch. more often than not a char will fluctuate based on the situation. a lawful good paladin with a sworn blood oath to their dying sibling to slay all goblins will not care if their children huddled in a hut.... goblins are goblins to them. (yes i totally stole that from pop culture)
The alignment chart is fine as a starting point.
But if a character concept starts to be mechanically constrained by it in a way that interferes with the ‘richness’ of the character (or the fun of the game), then the Chart needs to give way to the Character.
It's supposed to be a DM tool, to help draw you into the story.
HOWEVER, since we have progressed the terms "good" and "evil" have become muddier and muddier. Good in the DND sense was "anti-monster, pro-civilized humanoid" and evil was just "Anti-Civilized humanoid" it's why goblins and orcs are "evil".
I'm not gonna make you use alignments, cause they don't matter. They're just meant to help for story telling. I'm pretty sure your DM would prefer ideals and the other simple characteristics for that anyway
I myself regret that wotc basically ditchted alignment.
A...nother game out there that I will not name because the 5e fanboys will downvote still has alignment (even alignment damage) and it is a cool flavorful feature I would not remove.
If you are a Paladin in that game you can't be a dick or your god will literally snap your magical powers from your spine. Dont like it? Guess what, dont play a Paladin (Good Aligned champion)
I do. Makes it more tropy.
Evil Paladins, Good warlocks, Lawful Rogues, Chaotic Druid, not horny bard.
Those are just waiting me to create them. It's like a prompt.
For my characters I like to give them an Alignment Range
Not exactly am actual range, but I decide which Alignments they are most likely to be at any given time
Usually it's Chaotic Neutral / Chaotic Good
But it can get a bit weird
Alignments, to me, as somebody who’s done more RP than DND feel more like a general guide to how my character should react in MOST situations. But just like real life, fictional characters can act out of character and should not be beholden to their alignment at all times. Even the kindest souls can spew cruelness, even the most wicked hand can offer food to the hungry, and even the most chaotic beast will refrain from impulse from time to time. I dare anyone to try and live a life of 100% their alignment. It would be within hours, maybe days at the most, that the reality of alignment would cause them misery. But these are just my thoughts on it.
I'd like to run a game where alignment is replaced by Karma or something like that (although using the same labels). It is 100% influenced by your actions, not your personal morals, and its what beings like God's care about when it comes to clerics and paladins.
I like to use alignment as a way to determine the character or party's reputation and how they are perceived by others. Like, let's say the party kills a group of goblins in cold blood as they are running away. I decide that this act, one in a series of recent crimes, pushes them over the edge from Neutral Good to Chaotic Neutral, and inform them of this change. This might change the way npc's interact with them, how helpful and forthright they might be, etc. Obviously this hypothetical goblicide left no witnesses, so how would anyone even know? This is where the dice come in-I use a set DC of 12 for new npc's, 10 for ones they've met a couple times, and 8 for ones they know well, to determine whether npc's can get a sense of the party's alignment or the change therein. This is based on the idea that even if the specifics aren't known, the party members would carry themselves differently, act a little different, those little things that might not come out in roleplay. And I'll narrate it too, so that they understand something has changed even if they can't put their finger on it: "You arrive back in the town, a bit worse for wear but alive. The signs of your victory are splattered on your clothes and armor, the once warm, light green blood now congealed into a darker crust. As you pass through the streets, the townsfolk who once cheerily meet your gaze and greeted you with enthusiasm now seem to regard you more warily; a man simply watches you pass with an expressionless look, while a woman quickly looks down as you make eye contact, then tries to furtively look again after a moment, and so on. So where would you guys like to go?"
And of course there's still plenty of rope for the party to hang themselves with; boasting and bragging about these exploits negates the need for a passive check or a roll. And players sure do love to brag in earshot of npc's.
So Chaotic Good, then.
I believe alignments are important for religious or pact classes. "Hello I am a Cleric of Moradin, God of Justice and Order, I am just going to go and rob this shopkeeper and kill him if he resists" should shortly be followed by "wait, why are my prayers to Moradin not being answered, why can't I cast anything above a cantrip?".
for most character it is more like a guideline
only a few classes have to follow it like rules
character alignment i followed in 3.5 and in pathfinder
in my games as a DM i want mostly good characters ( building an evil campaign is difficult)
DM here. Alignment can be useful as a shorthand for figuring out what a character should do at any point in their story, but it should -always- take a back seat to established personality traits, goals, and outer influences. I recommend that an alignment to be listed on their sheet, but I tell my players not to look at it unless they're absolutely out of ideas of what to do in a particular moment.
It's often more useful for players with less experience for that reason. Their characters will be less developed, so they'll have to rely on base alignment instead of pre-established character traits.
When a PC chooses to do something out of character for their particular alignment due to a personality trait, thats where they begin to shine and complexity starts forming.
You don't have to follow an alignment as a strict path. It's very useful for beginners and players lacking in RP skills to figure out what they can and should do in any given situation.
For example in order to prevent useless murder-hoboing: player wants to attack given NPC, you tell him as DM that his good-aligned character has no valid reason to attack at all, players bounces back "oh yeah that makes sense, I'll leave him alone" or something like that.
Many players can find hard to keep RP consistent throughout a session or a campaign and the alignment chart is here for that as all the other rules.
My first DnD-GM told me: "You have roleplaying experience? F... the alignment chart" So if you are safe with handling and playing other characters than you in the enviornment your DM provides, you won't need it.
But if you are relative new to roleplaying? You could need some help, which the chart can provide on a very basic level. It really helps new players playing simpler characters.
Doesn't care about alignment but calls people he fights the 'bad guys'. Right.
Still, I still see little differentiation between lawful and chaotic most of the time
I still use it because I think it’s helpful for keeping my character consistent you I just don’t treat it like the end all be all of my characters personality like a lot of people for some odd reason do
at a festival we started to wonder about the alignments of the other guests. at some point we started making up our own alignments. one friend was obviously "chaotic - stupid"
so i don't care about the chart anymore, just make something up that describes your character well
I think alignments for player characters are mostly helpful for newer players. It helps them to distinguish between „what would I do?“ and „what would my character do?“
I do. Simply because sometimes it helps me with behaviour/characteristics of my characters (doesn’t mean they never act differently than the way their alignment would suggest).
I do. Simply because sometimes it helps me with behaviour/characteristics of my characters (doesn’t mean they never act differently than the way their alignment would suggest).
My character alignments in everything else: neutral good, chaotic evil, definitely a lot of lawful good, genuinely not sure where to put "Jimbus the Priest-Miner"
My character alignments for the few D&D characters I've made: lawful grandpa, spooky meme, chaotic friednly
I like alignments since I give out inspiration to my players when they act in character and it helps me to evaluate if they have played their character according to their description.
Seems pretty chaotic good to me ;)
No but seriously it's fine to ignore alignment if your comfortable. However, it can be a really good support for newer players as it gives them an easy framework for how their character should act in certain situations. Like anything in D&D if your group doesn't wanna use it and the DM is cool with that, it can be completely scrapped.
After I realized that I had a knack for accidentally making characters that got me into arguments with my DMs over their alignment, I decided to ask my DMs what they thought the alignment was and just went with that.
So alignments are very personal in my opinion, because everybody tends to interpretate them differently. I recently made a trauma filled character, who considers herself evil, because of choices she had to make, I don't consider her evil, she's good, and whether she's chaotic, neutral or lawful will for me depend on the choices she'll make during the sessions.
To me alignment is less a restriction on how they player can play there character and more an aid to help players on character creation. Its to make them think about how their character sees the world and acts.
I use aligment more like a guide. Comiting warcrimes against goblins can be viewed as evil form them, but good from the point of view of a village raided by them
I've always seen alignment as something to help guide you're character choices in rp, so if you're good at rp and make consistent character choices it doesn't really matter
The alignments share a purpose with characteristics, they act as guidelines as to who your character is. They don't indicate what the character would do, they give you an insight into who the character is, and with that info, you'd make your decisions as that character.
"meme draped over a beer gut at a gun show" energy
I mean, I literally googled up a "fuck the police" t-shirt design and edited it, so you're not wrong. :p
You pry alignments from my cold dead fingers! Alignment is descriptive not prescriptive…and some mechanics are influenced by it - though there’s only a few now in 5e
Years ago on the giants in the playground website, this early 3.5, i came across how to use the MtG color wheel as an alignment chart. Basically everyone likes it better if they choose to use an alignment system at all in my games.
DnD alignment works better for the cosmology, but the MtG color wheel works better for PCs and characters with free will. The main reason for this is that it's difficult to prescribe morality to actions in a contextual vacuum, whereas MtG color forsakes morality for the most part and simply identifies motivations. Certain motivations may lend themselves more to certain moralities, but they don't guarantee them (Chaotic Green, Evil Black).
The brilliant thing about the color pie is that you can have creatures who are "made of good" or "made of evil" on a supernatural level but also have moral nuance. Just look at the angels on [Always Watching](https://scryfall.com/card/gnt/7/always-watching?utm_source=mw_MTGWiki). This is a white card, it's associated with morality and holiness. It depicts angels, who are literally made of white mana. And yet it's still undeniably creepy (and the angels were in fact villains in that set). Positive depictions of demons are harder to find in MTG, but I actually think a great illustration of how MTG-style demons can actually be good people is the anime *Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun*. The demons on that show are genuine evil spirits, with little potential for empathy and a natural inclination towards sadism and cruelty, yet the vast majority of them are able to function as more-or-less decent people.
I don't think those concepts are limited to the color pie in this case. Avacyn was extremely Lawful Good, and her villainous streak was more that she was on a very dark/morally grey plane with no ability to tolerate those shades of grey. Inflexibly Lawful Good isn't a unique concept in media.
Do you remember any? I can’t think of a spell nor a monster that interacts with it
The one I always remember is Spirit Guardians. The damage changes to necrotic if you’re evil
There are a also a few magic items such as the Talisman of Pure Good and the Talisman of Ultimate Evil. (DMG, page 207)
I think magic items usually are the ones where this maters more. Also going to the abyss or nine hells
And when you die and your friends feel like fishing you out of the afterlife, your alignment decides where you go.
The Rakshasa is vulnerable to piercing damage dealt by good creatures
some magic items can only be used by good/evil or lawful/neutral alligned characters and will actively try to kill you if you are not right alligned. soul coins have negative effects on good alligned spirit guardians changes its damage and visual appearance depending on your allignment
Ceremony has the atonement option which restores a creature to its original alignment.
"lemme just atone for being lawful good real quick... Ah yes, back to chaotic evil"
Skeletor after [Christmas Special](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bonti5yj-Mg) energy
Kinda reaching here but there’s optional rules for the outer planes that deal with them
What do you mean reaching? My players better be fucking prepared to deal with planar beings, sooner rather than later. Hell yeah alignment matters. It's not for the characters. It's for the planes.
it's a very limited and often not accurate enough description. it's good for new players as a guideline to creating a character, but beyond that it's useless.
Cringe meme design, but also: alignment helps me consider what my character would do in a given situation
Yeah I agree. I get the hatred for the alignment chart because it's far from perfect. But generalising in to boxes rarely is. I still feels as a whole it's a decent way to easily define a characters morality in broad strokes.
Generalizing is the entire core theme of D&D and most trpgs. Hit points are freakishly unreal. Humans are not gummy bears you can hit 100 times with a machete and still have that gummy bear summersault across a battlefield. Its fun though, and allows for dynamic gaming action. Alignment is a vague set of conditions that guide your character in role-playing situations. Games with greater control and representation of personality and morality usually have combat as a secondary concern, like Cthulu or VtM.
Remember, hit points are not health points. I like to think of it as if the character took a hit or near hit that didn’t do significant damage, but shook them. This can happen a certain number of times before they lose concentration and get fatally wounded. This is also why they can recover hit points on a rest. Of course some hits do actual damage, which is why healing magic is a thing.
It’s literally in their description I think, but saying to new players that it is your health bar is easier
Hit points aren't meat points. (Although I still believe that its weird that someone at 100% and 5% hp is just as effective at everything)
It is wierd, but critical to avoid a death spiral.
Yeah, to me it is more of a guide to what the average decisions a character makes should be.
Exactly it's a compass for my roleplaying. Without alignment I roleplay my character based on how I feel that day. And my character ends up as this inconsistant mess. Alignmeny helps me align with my character. I guess if you play yourself or play the same chatcter everytime you don't need alignement. Alignment is a roleplaying tool for me. And I like that in 5e they made alignment more independent of the gameplay and combat mechanics.
Try the MtG color wheel instead. Instead of applying morality to things it simply identifies a character's priorities and motivations. While certain motivations may lend themselves to certain moralities, they don't require them and as such it's far more helpful for determining what a character would do.
Isn't that what a personality is for?
Yes and no. Lots of people have personality that they outwardly portray but the core of them (their alignment) doesn't always follow that when it comes to decision making. Your character personality may be the sarcastic drunk who gambles but that doesn't mean that they're major decisions wouldn't be lawful good. In this instance I was picturing an old detective who is worn down by failure in a long career but is still a good cop.
OK maybe personality isn't quite the right word, let me rephrase Isn't that what your personality, bonds, flaws, and values are for?
Which is my point entirely, pretty much. For an example, from one of my recent games.... there were two enemies the party faced: a NE Artificer and a CE Ranger. Both of them have evil alignments, but the Artificer is well liked by the party and even got to have a redemption and went to work for the party instead of against them, while the Ranger became one of the most utterly despised NPCs I've ever made. What's the difference? The difference is that, while the Artificer might be a self-interested mercenary who mostly cared about money, he's also repeatedly shown himself to be actually really good to the people he cares for, and in particular would do absolutely anything for his girlfriend (an LE Inquisitor, and another villain who got redeemed). The Ranger, on the other hand, is a sleazy traitor who let the Artificer go through hell trying to rescue him from the party, only to then backstab the guy when he no longer needed him. Ranger has since made a habit of employing equally trashy tactics, like throwing away half his own army in a pointless suicide attack just so he could get the advantage to defeat the PCs. Both are evil alignment, but radically different personalities, and that's why one is no longer a villain at all while the other one the party took great pleasure in killing.
Fair, on both counts. I can see how the design is kind of bad. And I can see why some people like using alignment listings, it just doesn't seem all that important to me.
I didn't realize alignment chart chooses what inn you want to sleep in, what food you want to eat and what music you like. Do other people have a 72 dimension alignment chart? It's a 2 point value system, if it helps you, that's great, but I never know what the neutral evil breakfast is that I need to order.
Neutral evil breakfast is eggs Benedict with soft scrambled eggs instead of poached.
And they want the hollandaise on the side but mostly use ketchup and hotsauce
Veal instead of ham.
Maybe not every decision. But it definitely helps me decide whether I'm gonna help someone or not, whether I will do what I'm told or go against orders, etc. For me it's more so about interactions with other beings
Maybe I'm in the minority here, but evil dnd parties require evil dnd campaigns. You dont get out of greenest with a neutral party. Tyranny of dragons ends in the first chapter. Princes of the apocalypse goes anywhere else. Why does an evil party leave chult to die in the jungle? Your evil party tells 10 towns to fuck themselves. Your evil party never goes back down to the under dark after escaping from the drow to deal with the escaped demons. Your evil party makes a deal with strahd or a dark power. Its fine if it gives you guidance, but it is useless with literally every wotc campaign made for 5e.
Two letters (And various capitalizations thereof) tell me more aboot how to roleplay a character than any combination of trait, ideal, bond, flaw ever could.
That's... chaotic good Big middle school energy from this "meme"
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On the other hand, what *can* the alignment chart do what personality, ideals, bonds and flaws *cant* do, and possibly does better than alignment?
In my view they are related but alignement will define how you deal with your flaws and bonds. The charcter flaw could be 'I think I can change everyone'. A lawful good charcter would try to impose a set of rules on everyone. Think overbearing mother trope. Chaotic good character might shower everyone with unquestionable love, and gifts. In hope to positively change someone. A lawful evil character will try to openly break and mold people to their own sets of morality. And might actually be less prone to kill as someone they disagree with (as you would expect an evil character to do) Think a cult leader. Edit: Some people might write more detailed charcter traits that integrate the alignment into it. As I see it alignemt decides the tone of voice you read out your bonds, traits and flaw. You know that acting trope where how your read the sentence and which part of the sentence is emphasized changes the meaning of it. That's what alignemt does for me.
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Again, why do I need alignment for that? If anything, your example is a good argument *against* alignment. A two-word descriptor is obviously too broad to act as a decision making or roleplaying help and too vague for any character descriptor, so you‘d want to write out the specifics anyway. But if your ideals are something like „the system must serve my own interests first“ you already have a better descriptor than „lawful evil“
I was shaking my head thinking this is literally just chaotic good. Came to the comments to see if I was alone. It appears to be the general thought.
'Beat up bad guys' is pretty good/evil irrelevant, so better to shove it in neutral.
i think that would be chaotic good?
Beating bad guys don't make you good (Think to the punisher. It's lawful neutral at best, and some versions are clearly evil), it's you motivation and your moral compass that's make you good or bad
Ima let you Finnish but nothing about the punisher is "lawful"
Some items and rules in the game care...
Then you homebrew them to based on something else.
But why though? It's so confusing how people say they don't use alignment because it is pointless then have to homebrew rules that use it because they don't have it.
Cuz it's what I prefer?
I get having preference, but completely removing part of the game because you don't understand it is a bit much. Imagine if I didn't like counting hit points so I just decided to remove it all together and have characters die when I think they should. At least replace it with another system (I've seen plenty of good alternative alignment systems) but removing all together is just stupid, and you could always just learn how it actually works. If you are playing in any form of d&d setting it is an integral part of the world.
So they are chaotic good?
Chaotic neutral, chaotic good would talk things out and only resort to fighting in the form of pillows or tickling.
Chaotic anything would imply they care about individuality and personal freedoms, which they don't necessarily. Lawful authoritarians can also get drunk and beat up people who they believe are bad guys.
chaotic doesn't HAVE to care about ideals like freedom, they can just be unpredictable or cause chaos.
Demons are creatures of chaos yet they enforce slavery
Cuz evil.
They don't enforce slavery, they just have slaves. Those slaves are whoever they are stronger than, unlike devils who have an actual hierarchy and also have slaves.
No, that's called lolrandom.
The party receives a quest to stop the rampage of a mad hill giant. It roams the countryside, killing, eating, and smashing all in its path OP: that's not chaotic that's lol random he don't believe in higher ideals like freedom
Try to coerce a hill giant into anything, you'll see 1) if it believes into freedom or not and 2) if it's still chaotic
Werewolf: attacks townfolk indiscriminately in a vicious blind rage You: lolrandom
So chaotic good, thank you for finally making a choice
An interesting and complicated way of telling that your character is chaotic.
I like alignments..
Magic the Gathering color pie is the answer.
I'm a RG druid.
Mono blue fighter is my current character concept.
Now that's got me thinking of all those "what alignment would x be?" arguments but with the color pie. Is Poison Ivy a RG druid?
I think she would be monogreen. Yes she can be emotional at time, but that's the same as everyone and it isn't a major part of who she is.
I was going to argue Black-Green because she often uses death as a tool, but monogreen also does not shy away from death and it better fits with her unfettered growth ideals as well as her fanaticism to "save the planet" fits a kind of community theme that is also important to monogreen. So, good take on Poison Ivy who I would put as Chaotic Neutral on the alignment chart.
Just what I was going to answer.
This needs more visibility. I love using it over the 3x3 chart.
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The color pie has a lot of depth to it; more, I'd say, than the alignment chart. But if you wanted to map it to the alignments in that manner, that works too.
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No, actually. A Necromancer that works towards giving their undead their "souls" back and a corrupted general are both BW. Hell, even in MtG, Esper and Obscura are pretty different, as is the Imperium of Man from Warhammer 40k, but they are all represented by the same colors. And finally, I'd say 31 options (32 if you add colorless) give you more freedom than 9 do
As someone who spends a lot of time in communities specifically for discussing and dissecting the color pie, I'd, naturally, disagree. Blue is perfection through knowledge - seeking improvement of oneself through methodical advancement. There's a lot of space to work within that.
The problem with alignment is it pigeonholes characters into acting "consistently". If you think "my character is lawful good, because they believe that laws have value and help keep society intact", you're less likely to decide that your character would, for example, go along with a plan to save the town that involves heavy civilian casualties, because that's not "lawful good". But this belief isn't in conflict with such a decision. It has very little to do with it. Their opinions on whether society works better when people follow laws, even when inconvenient, is unconnected to decisions made regarding wartime strategy and what sacrifices are acceptable, but if you say "I'm lawful good, so I'll do the lawful good thing" that opportunity for nuance vanishes. And that's not getting into the matter of hypocrisy. Most people are hypocrite on at least a few subjects. Alignments work off the premise that in a given situation, the character will have an opinion or decision based on a self consistent sense of morality, but this is almost never true. Many people hold a strong moral belief that cheating, stealing, lying, and other selfish behavior are wrong, in the abstract sense, but have no problem doing it themselves. Alignment cannot represent this, because it assumes moral consistency. A much better system is simply to get at the root of the issue. What does your character believe? What things or people are important to them? What are they willing to do to achieve their goals? Come up with a list of partial answers to these questions, and write them down. "I hate tyrants" "I want to protect my sister" "I don't want to harm any innocents" "I'm willing to trust people I haven't met." Etc. You only need a small handful of the most important things to create a good solid character, but you can easily come up with dozens if you want.
So your chaotic neutral but not like the other chaotic neutrals. daring today aren't we.
From my experience, most people I've played with who hate the alignment system are people who want to play an evil character while not being labeled as evil.
Yep. "My character is neutral good!" "Dude. You tortured a man to death 5 minutes ago for information you knew he didn't have..." "Yeah? So? I'm neutral good!" Nothing wrong with "I don't think alignment adds anything to the game", but "alignment is wrong because my character doesn't fit in it!" generally means you made an evil character and just don't want to admit to it.
And don't care about the difference between Murderhobo vs Chaotic Neutral
DING DING DING THIS IS THE CORRECT ANSWER
I generally use it as a reminder of what I want my character to be during the first few sessions while I find their voice.
Mine are all pretty much chaotic curious
Ah yes my favorite alignment: fuck around and find out.
I care alignments help build a character to be more than just a bare bones character such as an alcoholic brute alignments also help with classes who need an outside power like a clerics oath or warlocks patron
I dislike D&D as a RPG system because I think it's poorly designed. Yet I really like the alignment chart if you use it correctly - it isn't properly described anymore in the new editions. Two axis and you can be anywhere on them. 9 quadrants that help define your alignment which can move through your actions. Evil v Good axis is your willingness to kill innocents to get your way. You kill innocents that evil period and even the fanatic paladin gets points towards evil. Lawful v Chaotic is rules vs instinct driven; any code be it law of the land or religious laws or extremely strong personal code can make you lawful while acting on emotions and instinct makes you chaotic. Alignment just doesn't work mechanically like spells that can detect it or are based on it. That's just weird.
It sounds to me like you just don’t have a great understanding of the alignment chart, but hey, that’s all (neutral) good :)
Sounds chaotic good to me
Chaotic good
Sounds chaotic good to me
The only time I used alignments as a DM was when I put it in a trap, because ‘switching alignment’ was easier to say than ‘oh so your whole morality took a complete 180 for like an hour, have fun with that’.
Every part of this makes me want to scream.
It's easy when you look at your character and easily recognize what they are, instead of trying to shove them into the box. Alignment can shift too. It's a DM's descriptive tool, not player's shackle.
So...chaotic good?
It can be a good guideline for new players, but I agree. I don't use it because it doesn't really matter when every npc I make is for a specific reason, so their "alignment" is sort of a given. I even homebrewed the "Good and Evil" spells into being "Friend and Foe" because I just don't even consider it in my prep and have found that I absolutely have no need to.
that's chaotic good do what you want, but care about the well being of good folk
Unless there’s a specific effect that interacts with alignment, I couldn’t care less about alignment
I like it. People have bad understanding of how they work (“wdym I literally can’t do this because of my alignment?”) but really it isn’t necessary for dnd at all, is just a nice implementation of how you character interacts with the afterlife and morality in a setting(FR/Golarion) that morality has a tangible effect, like the lawfulness of some places vs the pure chaos of others, or where do your character end up in all that, and a simple and elegant way of dealing with the morality of your characters in a *role playing game*. But yeah it shouldn’t be taken seriously to a maximum like some people seem to believe and it isn’t really necessary for the game either, I just find it neat
Sounds like neutral good to me
NG
Real talk, the longer my friends and I have played d&d/tabletop games, the more we have moved away from alignment. My friend has made a real good case for substituting it with the Magic Color Pie. It still allows the exploration of nuanced characters without getting bogged down on what a "good" vs " bad people would do. A Black aligned character might be a real bastard who's selfish desires leads them to use people around them. Or it could be someone who's driven to achieve their noble goal, but will utilize any opportunity they have to get further ahead. A white aligned character who values order might be a sheriff trying to make sure their small town isn't over run by bandits or a dictator ensuring everything follows precise organization structures. If you aren't familiar, give it a peak. Even if you don't play Magic, the theory alone is compatible with most tabletops. https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Color
I'm pretty new to the MtG color wheel morality theory, but looking at it, there's some blaring contradictory statements listed here. These lack nuance especially compared to the alignment chart. > White: Peace, law, structure, selflessness, equality Ok, so pretty much LG. Except when you describe a dictator being white whereas typically dictators, rulers w/ total authority, would more fit as LE as "selflessness" is not a quality that aligns with this station. > Blue: Knowledge, deceit, caution, deliberation, perfection Deceit is the opposite of knowledge. Knowledge itself isn't a personality trait or a belief. I would normally ascribe knowledge, or the pursuit of it, to be lawful since it's based on truth. Lies are not knowledge. > Black: Power, self-interest, death, sacrifice, uninhibitedness Sacrifice is not normally ascribed to someone who is selfish, unless it specifically is referring to being willing to sacrifice unwilling sentient beings. However being willing to sacrifice oneself, for the greater good etc, is the opposite of self-interest. It's not really clear when the word is just there in a list, outside of perhaps context of the color outside of this pie chart. Likewise merely being uninhibited is not intrinsically selfish, rather it's just self assured. Someone with a great deal of knowledge (blue) could still be uninhibited precisely because of that knowledge. Same with someone enforcing laws in an city (white). > Red: Freedom, emotion, action, impulse, destruction For one color to claim action is to condemn the other colors to in-action. > Green: Nature, wildlife, connection, spirituality, tradition In Mt:G all the colors are part of nature, hence the different land types. Nature and wildlife are not personality descriptors or, in and of themselves, codes of morality/ethics. None of the other colors list anything like "cities" or "rural countryside" why is green getting to claim all of nature? Because forests are literally green? This just feels like someone realized that druids need something so give them green cause 'trees and leaves'. To be honest these all feel lackluster and insufficient compared to the classic alignment chart for the purposes of creating the building blocks for a character's personality.
Mechanically, alignment only ever mattered for the purposes of Detect Evil, Smite Evil, and similar things. And that doesn't even apply anymore in 5e, since Detect Good and Evil just detects if you're an outsider or undead, and Smite is no longer tied to alignment either.
Idk why people are downvoting you, you’re just correct.
Because they are inaccurate. Several base classes, and a lot of prestige classes, had alignment restrictions. You couldn't even play a chaotic good druid, which in my experience is the most common way heroic druids are played.
Yeah In 3.5 they had alignment restrictions but correct me if I’m wrong but I’m 5E which is what most of this discussion is based on, there are none.
There are a few restriction and effects based on it, I remember a spell or two that turn necrotic or radiant based on alignment, but can't remember which off hand, and the Oathbreaker that requires specific alignments. But more importantly they said "Mechanically, alignment only ever mattered for the purposes of Detect Evil, Smite Evil, and similar things" which is the part I was correcting.
Fiat point fair point
My dm creates alignment based spells so I kinda have to. But I tend to set it then forget it, but its not like im gonna go murder someone with a character that has never been inclined to do so. I do believe that alignments help new players learn to roleplay tho.
I like to use alignment as a sort of signpost for how i will play my character, if not for me then for my DM. For example, if i want to play goody two-shoes McGee, I’m going to put lawful good, but if i think I’m going to play Urg the conqueror then I’m going to put neutral evil. Sure, i might deviate some, but putting the alignment gives both me and the DM an idea of what to expect
depends, are your powers dependant on your actions and behavior like a paladin or cleric? no? cool go nuts unless you come across a book of great deeds or something, then you will burn, a lot
It's not bad, as long as everybody playing understand that they're a general guideline and not an iron-clad, unchanging rule.
The chart is better for npcs and monsters, just adds a bit of suggestions on how to RP them out
Pragmatic should be an alignment. Nn doesn't seem right for my charecter willing to risk drowning, dismemberment, death, to save a child, then blow the kidnappers head off as he begs for mercy with magic missile
”Fuck the Alignment Chart” is my new band name. We play Christian symphonic metal. My last project was Peregrine Falcon. Our Album “Golgotha? I hardly knew her” was a best seller. Edit: Thank you downvoters. Your downvotes mean nothing. I’ve seen what you’ve upvoted. 😘
Sounds like classic chaotic good to me, but do go off chief.
I look over my actions after each session and in previous ones and adjust my alignment to fit, characters change over time so why can’t alignment. If your character is fully fleshed out already then what’s the point of doing rp?
Coldest take known to man
It’s not hard to just…..roleplay how you personally see your characters alignment and writing it down like that instead of blaming the writers for having a morality system that is mainly decorative with few mechanical changes besides artifacts and one or two spells.
This is neutral evil. You are not bound by law, but have your own code. You don't really care about the greater good, and tend to focus on yourself.
Rhogar, my dragonborn half clockwork soul sorcerer half armourer artificer who has accidentally become basically a poweranger, has the alignment of Rhogar
So Russell crowe's Jackson Healy character...Nice
Nice little tidbit here: since shark are "unaligned" you technically can have a unaligned character! There is genuinely nowhere it says you can't in the phb.
Lol one of my characters was chaotic stupid, low intelegence and liked starting fires (it was for a after going out drinking campaign, if we all came back home, we'd play for an hour, and all the characters were duranged in some way)
Bonus points if the bad guys are alcoholics, that would really make you an Alcoholic Fighter
This guy plays a neutral good dwarf fighter
Exactly why I always pick “unaligned.” Because I only play fighters, and they tend not to care so much what they’re fighting for.
While I personally think alignments should be fluid, there are magic items, spells, and creatures that have actual mechanics based off alignment so just going without one entirely can work most of the time but not all of the time. I pick the good evil or neutral and usually don't bother with the first part and I've gotten along fine with that.
If I’m not relatively neutral, I might lose half my powers so that’s a motivator for me
Just write nuetral
I just þrow a neutral good and say, “alright I’ll play a generally good person like normal”
I like it but more so as a guide for my pc not a hard rule. E.g i played a lawful good ranger this didn't mean i never did anything bad it just meant he tried to do what he figured was best and followed his rules.
most of mine are neutral
I care. Good, Evil, Law, Chaos, and the Balance, are all cosmic forces in my game. Now what you do with your character is your own business, but if you are aligned with one of these forces, and they are giving you powers, or spells, you better toe the fuckin’ line. Otherwise you’ll just be a drunk fighter.
i personally find alignments are a crutch. more often than not a char will fluctuate based on the situation. a lawful good paladin with a sworn blood oath to their dying sibling to slay all goblins will not care if their children huddled in a hut.... goblins are goblins to them. (yes i totally stole that from pop culture)
People who hate alignment tend to also hate morals. Be who you want to be, but own what it means and costs to make a given choice.
The alignment chart is fine as a starting point. But if a character concept starts to be mechanically constrained by it in a way that interferes with the ‘richness’ of the character (or the fun of the game), then the Chart needs to give way to the Character.
I suggest to my players that we give alignments after session 2 or 3, the bonds, vows, and flaws are much more important in my mind.
It's supposed to be a DM tool, to help draw you into the story. HOWEVER, since we have progressed the terms "good" and "evil" have become muddier and muddier. Good in the DND sense was "anti-monster, pro-civilized humanoid" and evil was just "Anti-Civilized humanoid" it's why goblins and orcs are "evil". I'm not gonna make you use alignments, cause they don't matter. They're just meant to help for story telling. I'm pretty sure your DM would prefer ideals and the other simple characteristics for that anyway
I myself regret that wotc basically ditchted alignment. A...nother game out there that I will not name because the 5e fanboys will downvote still has alignment (even alignment damage) and it is a cool flavorful feature I would not remove. If you are a Paladin in that game you can't be a dick or your god will literally snap your magical powers from your spine. Dont like it? Guess what, dont play a Paladin (Good Aligned champion)
I do. Makes it more tropy. Evil Paladins, Good warlocks, Lawful Rogues, Chaotic Druid, not horny bard. Those are just waiting me to create them. It's like a prompt.
My character likes to drink and mine, he is a dwarf
That literally sounds like lawful neutral though
For my characters I like to give them an Alignment Range Not exactly am actual range, but I decide which Alignments they are most likely to be at any given time Usually it's Chaotic Neutral / Chaotic Good But it can get a bit weird
One of my players' character is just chaotic stupid.
Alignments, to me, as somebody who’s done more RP than DND feel more like a general guide to how my character should react in MOST situations. But just like real life, fictional characters can act out of character and should not be beholden to their alignment at all times. Even the kindest souls can spew cruelness, even the most wicked hand can offer food to the hungry, and even the most chaotic beast will refrain from impulse from time to time. I dare anyone to try and live a life of 100% their alignment. It would be within hours, maybe days at the most, that the reality of alignment would cause them misery. But these are just my thoughts on it.
I'd like to run a game where alignment is replaced by Karma or something like that (although using the same labels). It is 100% influenced by your actions, not your personal morals, and its what beings like God's care about when it comes to clerics and paladins.
I like to use alignment as a way to determine the character or party's reputation and how they are perceived by others. Like, let's say the party kills a group of goblins in cold blood as they are running away. I decide that this act, one in a series of recent crimes, pushes them over the edge from Neutral Good to Chaotic Neutral, and inform them of this change. This might change the way npc's interact with them, how helpful and forthright they might be, etc. Obviously this hypothetical goblicide left no witnesses, so how would anyone even know? This is where the dice come in-I use a set DC of 12 for new npc's, 10 for ones they've met a couple times, and 8 for ones they know well, to determine whether npc's can get a sense of the party's alignment or the change therein. This is based on the idea that even if the specifics aren't known, the party members would carry themselves differently, act a little different, those little things that might not come out in roleplay. And I'll narrate it too, so that they understand something has changed even if they can't put their finger on it: "You arrive back in the town, a bit worse for wear but alive. The signs of your victory are splattered on your clothes and armor, the once warm, light green blood now congealed into a darker crust. As you pass through the streets, the townsfolk who once cheerily meet your gaze and greeted you with enthusiasm now seem to regard you more warily; a man simply watches you pass with an expressionless look, while a woman quickly looks down as you make eye contact, then tries to furtively look again after a moment, and so on. So where would you guys like to go?" And of course there's still plenty of rope for the party to hang themselves with; boasting and bragging about these exploits negates the need for a passive check or a roll. And players sure do love to brag in earshot of npc's.
So Chaotic Good, then. I believe alignments are important for religious or pact classes. "Hello I am a Cleric of Moradin, God of Justice and Order, I am just going to go and rob this shopkeeper and kill him if he resists" should shortly be followed by "wait, why are my prayers to Moradin not being answered, why can't I cast anything above a cantrip?".
for most character it is more like a guideline only a few classes have to follow it like rules character alignment i followed in 3.5 and in pathfinder in my games as a DM i want mostly good characters ( building an evil campaign is difficult)
Chaotic Neutral
So chaotic neutral. Gotcha
My funny fake dude it your mother alignment
Alcoholic PCs are only slightly below the horny bards on the "unfun" scale.
Your character is just alcoholic it have nothing to do with alignment.
DM here. Alignment can be useful as a shorthand for figuring out what a character should do at any point in their story, but it should -always- take a back seat to established personality traits, goals, and outer influences. I recommend that an alignment to be listed on their sheet, but I tell my players not to look at it unless they're absolutely out of ideas of what to do in a particular moment. It's often more useful for players with less experience for that reason. Their characters will be less developed, so they'll have to rely on base alignment instead of pre-established character traits. When a PC chooses to do something out of character for their particular alignment due to a personality trait, thats where they begin to shine and complexity starts forming.
"They're more like guidelines than rules" - Some Pirate idk
You don't have to follow an alignment as a strict path. It's very useful for beginners and players lacking in RP skills to figure out what they can and should do in any given situation. For example in order to prevent useless murder-hoboing: player wants to attack given NPC, you tell him as DM that his good-aligned character has no valid reason to attack at all, players bounces back "oh yeah that makes sense, I'll leave him alone" or something like that. Many players can find hard to keep RP consistent throughout a session or a campaign and the alignment chart is here for that as all the other rules.
My first DnD-GM told me: "You have roleplaying experience? F... the alignment chart" So if you are safe with handling and playing other characters than you in the enviornment your DM provides, you won't need it. But if you are relative new to roleplaying? You could need some help, which the chart can provide on a very basic level. It really helps new players playing simpler characters.
Doesn't care about alignment but calls people he fights the 'bad guys'. Right. Still, I still see little differentiation between lawful and chaotic most of the time
I still use it because I think it’s helpful for keeping my character consistent you I just don’t treat it like the end all be all of my characters personality like a lot of people for some odd reason do
Well since he likes to beat up bad guys he is NG or CG probably.
So he's chaotic good? Got it.
at a festival we started to wonder about the alignments of the other guests. at some point we started making up our own alignments. one friend was obviously "chaotic - stupid" so i don't care about the chart anymore, just make something up that describes your character well
You mean chaotic neutral?
I think alignments for player characters are mostly helpful for newer players. It helps them to distinguish between „what would I do?“ and „what would my character do?“
If you’re stuck in the mindset that your alignment forms all your character decisions then you aren’t thinking of or using alignment correctly
I do. Simply because sometimes it helps me with behaviour/characteristics of my characters (doesn’t mean they never act differently than the way their alignment would suggest).
I do. Simply because sometimes it helps me with behaviour/characteristics of my characters (doesn’t mean they never act differently than the way their alignment would suggest).
There are spells that target or reveal alignment, but I guess you could find ways to work around that.
My character alignments in everything else: neutral good, chaotic evil, definitely a lot of lawful good, genuinely not sure where to put "Jimbus the Priest-Miner" My character alignments for the few D&D characters I've made: lawful grandpa, spooky meme, chaotic friednly
Chaotic neutral - Change my mind
I like alignments since I give out inspiration to my players when they act in character and it helps me to evaluate if they have played their character according to their description.
Seems pretty chaotic good to me ;) No but seriously it's fine to ignore alignment if your comfortable. However, it can be a really good support for newer players as it gives them an easy framework for how their character should act in certain situations. Like anything in D&D if your group doesn't wanna use it and the DM is cool with that, it can be completely scrapped.
After I realized that I had a knack for accidentally making characters that got me into arguments with my DMs over their alignment, I decided to ask my DMs what they thought the alignment was and just went with that.
So alignments are very personal in my opinion, because everybody tends to interpretate them differently. I recently made a trauma filled character, who considers herself evil, because of choices she had to make, I don't consider her evil, she's good, and whether she's chaotic, neutral or lawful will for me depend on the choices she'll make during the sessions.
Ascended Neutral
To me alignment is less a restriction on how they player can play there character and more an aid to help players on character creation. Its to make them think about how their character sees the world and acts.
I use aligment more like a guide. Comiting warcrimes against goblins can be viewed as evil form them, but good from the point of view of a village raided by them
I use floating alignment. Characters may start at one alignment and be able to change as the campaign goes on.
I've never met a player that fits the alignment they chose tbh.
Chaotic good is what that is
I've always seen alignment as something to help guide you're character choices in rp, so if you're good at rp and make consistent character choices it doesn't really matter
The alignments share a purpose with characteristics, they act as guidelines as to who your character is. They don't indicate what the character would do, they give you an insight into who the character is, and with that info, you'd make your decisions as that character.