No Alignment?

[nickanney]

In title.

[Boink]

...It was Hasbro / WotC.

Go fire up your client, get Shadow to read the Thay Necromancy book... there's literally a skill check [Evil Cleric] [Wisdom].



Bottom line: Hasbro make cheap plastic toys in sweat shops in Vietnam using materials cheaply sourced from China.


Alignment = Ethics / Morality, it's not something they're interested in.

[ELVIS]

Alignment is just a minor detail in D&D 5e. Monks can be chaotic. Paladins can be evil. Barbarians can be lawful. All alignment restrictions for classes are gone. Alignment is more like a roleplaying guide. It's little more than a tag game mechanics-wise, kinda like your astrological sign in the real world: nice to know but pretty insignificant.

[Diesel]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

It signifies which of the outer planes your soul resonates the most strongly with, and thus where you will be sent to in the event of a long lasting death.

Not even that in some cases. You can be the most generic CE ork warlord who follows Grummushs faith to the letter and spends every day of his life beating up everything in his, until the day were an adventuring party rips him to shreds within two turns.

That guy will neither go to the Abyss, the Limbo or Pandemonium. He goes straight to Acheron, a LE plane, because thats where his god is.

[KaijuDad]

Doing away with alignment is a terrible idea. It removes the RPG elements and reduces the game to Diablo. I play RPG's to Role-Play and I do not believe this is possible without taking into account a characters inner workings i.e. alignment.

[Panic Fire]

Originally posted by Graph_Paper_Architect:

Doing away with alignment is a terrible idea. It removes the RPG elements and reduces the game to Diablo. I play RPG's to Role-Play and I do not believe this is possible without taking into account a characters inner workings i.e. alignment.

So when you say roleplay what you mean is you pick the dialogue options that fit there alignment right?

[Scottx125]

I can get the idea of not having the alignment system. But what about religion? That's a HUGE part of DnD.

[Alealexi]

Originally posted by Graph_Paper_Architect:

Doing away with alignment is a terrible idea. It removes the RPG elements and reduces the game to Diablo. I play RPG's to Role-Play and I do not believe this is possible without taking into account a characters inner workings i.e. alignment.

Why are you necroing year old posts?

The thing is that alignments is never done right in games. Look at Kingmaker for example. When you play a paladin you are only given lawful stupid decisions. You are not given options that play to the character you want to play. Because of this you are only given terrible choices that does not play the way you want your character to play and ruins any sort of role play.

It plays the same with evil alignment. The game decides your dialoge for you and you don't get a choice on how you play the way you want.

Originally posted by Scottx125:

I can get the idea of not having the alignment system. But what about religion? That's a HUGE part of DnD.

That can be given to characters like it is currently given to clerics.

[Alealexi]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

Originally posted by Alealexi:

That can be given to characters like it is currently given to clerics.

See, the problem with that is that religion is also keyed in to the alignment spectrum. Deities will not grant spells to anyone who is more than 2 steps away from that deity's alignment. For example, if your god is chaotic Evil, then their priests must be Chaotic Evil, Neutral Evil, or Chaotic Neutral.

It makes absolutely no sense for Lolth to grant spells to somebody who isn't devoted to her teachings of conquest, subterfuge and betrayal. Just as it makes absolutely no sense for Tyr to grant spells to somebody who constantly violates the law and escapes justice.

Then better to leave it out since choosing a god in 5e doesn't give you spells.

[Lax]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

Originally posted by Alealexi:

Then better to leave it out since choosing a god in 5e doesn't give you spells.

What foolishness is this? That sounds like a retcon.

I am aware that divine magic has different rules across the various settings. For example, in Eberron, divine magic is actually powered by the strength of your faith in whatever power you are trying to channel. It is actually possible to wield divine magic, while being an atheist, if your conviction is strong enough.

But the last time I investigated the situation in regards to the Forgotten Realms, the Clerics wield divine magic by allowing their bodies to serve as a conduit through which their gods channel their spells into the material plane.

Also, from what I've seen in a recent lore video, mortals do not choose to become Clerics. It is the gods themselves who decide which among them is worthy to become one. When they find somebody they deem worthy, they send them dreams and visions to guide and test their abilities. If the mortal holds up to the deity's standards, then they are permitted to become a true Cleric.

So once again, you can not become a Cleric of Lolth, if you don't have a similar mindset to her's. Just as you can't become a Cleric of Tyr, Lathander, Talos, Baal, est.

So in essence, Clerics are basically catalysts for the gods who find them worthy. Or am I misinterpreting?

This thread is fascinating, btw. Nice to see multiple viewpoints.

[Panic Fire]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

Originally posted by Alealexi:

That can be given to characters like it is currently given to clerics.

See, the problem with that is that religion is also keyed in to the alignment spectrum. Deities will not grant spells to anyone who is more than 2 steps away from that deity's alignment. For example, if your god is chaotic Evil, then their priests must be Chaotic Evil, Neutral Evil, or Chaotic Neutral.

It makes absolutely no sense for Lolth to grant spells to somebody who isn't devoted to her teachings of conquest, subterfuge and betrayal. Just as it makes absolutely no sense for Tyr to grant spells to somebody who constantly violates the law and escapes justice.

There is no 2 step rule in 5e. A cleric can be of any alignment with a god of any alignment.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Originally posted by Panic Fire:

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

See, the problem with that is that religion is also keyed in to the alignment spectrum. Deities will not grant spells to anyone who is more than 2 steps away from that deity's alignment. For example, if your god is chaotic Evil, then their priests must be Chaotic Evil, Neutral Evil, or Chaotic Neutral.

It makes absolutely no sense for Lolth to grant spells to somebody who isn't devoted to her teachings of conquest, subterfuge and betrayal. Just as it makes absolutely no sense for Tyr to grant spells to somebody who constantly violates the law and escapes justice.

There is no 2 step rule in 5e. A cleric can be of any alignment with a god of any alignment.

That's not quite true. The role of alignment appears to be going away, but the servants of the gods (priests/clerics) must still be aligned with that god's interests - it's just that it isn't labeled any long with an "alignment". A person who champions the poor and innocent would not knowingly become a devotee of Bane, as not only would they not choose to in the first place, but Bane would reject them (unless the god thought they could be turned/corrupted I suppose). The point really being that the person's motivations must still be in step with the god's motivations, whatever they may be. Drastic mismatches don't really happen between a god and their followers because the gods have divine means of knowing who their followers are and people tend to worship gods that reflect their own value system.

The only thing that's changed is that the strict label system of alignment has been dropped and now players and DM's have to pay more attention to the nuance of actual behavior instead of relying on a restrictive, yet convenient "box" that they can place all characters in.

Alignment is, and always was, just a lazy short cut for people that didn't want to actually put the time in to roleplay their characters realistically. It was a convenient way for the DM to say, "No, you probably wouldn't do that since it doesn't match your alignment." And it was a way to keep players from just doing whatever willy nilly thing they felt like within each moment - consistency. Good, law abiding characters tended to stay that way because their Lawful Good alignment told them they were that way and evil, backstabbing Chaotic Evil characters stayed that way because their alignment told them to. But now, players have to actually think about who their characters are what really motivates them.

Outside of a very small set of restrictions, alignment was always an overly simplistic, infantile system of morality and motivation, but it sorta made sense in a game that was born from a miniatures wargame - it wasn't meant to be particularly deep at the time. It was meant to show everyone what type of character you were at a glance, without a ton of reflection. Games and rpg's have come a long way since then, and pruning the alignment system away is one of the best changes to come to D&D in a long time.

[Alealexi]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

Originally posted by pandariuskairos:

Alignment is, and always was, just a lazy short cut for people that didn't want to actually put the time in to roleplay their characters realistically. It was a convenient way for the DM to say, "No, you probably wouldn't do that since it doesn't match your alignment." And it was a way to keep players from just doing whatever willy nilly thing they felt like within each moment - consistency. Good, law abiding characters tended to stay that way because their Lawful Good alignment told them they were that way and evil, backstabbing Chaotic Evil characters stayed that way because their alignment told them to. But now, players have to actually think about who their characters are what really motivates them.

Once again, Alignment served as a foundation for your character's moral outlook on the world. It was never the pre-programmed set of instructions that you people keep accusing it of being.

A person can be forced to act outside their alignment when under duress. But that does not mean they cease to be that alignment. A person who is good natured and abhors violence is going to feel guilty and remorseful about being forced to kill someone, even if it was in self defense. Conversely, a hardened criminal is going to chafe at the idea of being forced to perform community service during their time in prison.

Shifting your alignment should be treated as a major, life changing event that causes your character to reevaluate their entire sense of morality. That is something which dialogue options in video games was supposed to represent. If you kept choosing Chaotic Neutral options, while you were Neutral Good, then the game would logically assume your character has started to embrace a more CN focused outlook on life.

This is true but what we are saying is that it is always poorly implemented in pc games. In the table top setting it is more fluid and easier to represent. In video games it is harder. Which is why I used kingmaker as a perfect example on how poorly implemented it is. You can only play lawful stupid paladin as it only gives you terrible choices.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Getting rid of alignment is almost as good as getting rid of THAC0.

[Scottx125]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

Originally posted by Alealexi:

That can be given to characters like it is currently given to clerics.

See, the problem with that is that religion is also keyed in to the alignment spectrum. Deities will not grant spells to anyone who is more than 2 steps away from that deity's alignment. For example, if your god is chaotic Evil, then their priests must be Chaotic Evil, Neutral Evil, or Chaotic Neutral.

It makes absolutely no sense for Lolth to grant spells to somebody who isn't devoted to her teachings of conquest, subterfuge and betrayal. Just as it makes absolutely no sense for Tyr to grant spells to somebody who constantly violates the law and escapes justice.

Yes and no, you can differentiate the deities and actions. You don't need to have the players be good or evil. But their decisions can be good or evil. For example If I'm a Paladin which follows a god of charity and protection, and I refuse to protect someone or give charity. I'd be betraying my oath and patron deity. It's pretty simple. Obviously there are also some options for neutral choices, but again that should also have a consequence, remaining neutral too many times when you should be taking action should act as a negative.

[Linde]

I don't get the problem.

When I played BG1 and BG2 I made a character and played the game. Alignment didn't affect me. I don't remember alignment shown in dialogue options. And I picked the options I felt my characters would pick based on how I envisioned my characters. Sure, some spells and magic items were restricted, but now they ain't.

That someone playing the game want to go murder hobo with a paladin or be a nice guy playing a warlock doesn't restrict me in my ability to play my characters the way I want and envision them. And Should I meet people who play the game too silly for my style in multiplayer I'd simply not play with them again.

In BG1 and BG2 companions left or stayed with my main character based on reputation, not alignment. So if I played evil and wanted good guys in my group I just had to pay some gold to a temple to increase my reputation. No roleplay, no character development, just loot.

In BG3 it seems that each companion has an attitude towards my player based on my dialogue choices. This is waay more advanced than simple alignment or reputation in BG 1 & 2, so I really don't think Larian has dropped the ball.

On the subject of the outer planes: Where my characters goes when they die means nothing to me. They get resurrected or forgotten.

So I won't miss the alignment system.