lol, it took me 90h to notice that there's no alignment in the game

[rumpelstiltskin]

can't say i particularly miss it, but it was such a staple of dnd (dnd 5e raw still has i think?)
i guess it's another "modern" thing, with alignment being "too judgmental". and possibly not contributing much to the mechanics in the current state.

[TunaSamich]

There actually is, how you behave influences your origin companions and they even have different voice lines depending on it. like Asterion in my current playthrough is super bloodthirsty, aggressive, and kind of demented.

[robilar5500]

Originally posted by rumpelstiltskin:

can't say i particularly miss it, but it was such a staple of dnd (dnd 5e raw still has i think?)
i guess it's another "modern" thing, with alignment being "too judgmental". and possibly not contributing much to the mechanics in the current state.

It probably has more to do with people almost never fitting exclusively into one alignment.

[hannibal_pjv]

5e does not have alligments.

[Cruddy]

Alignment can only make sense for Paladins and Monsters, in the case of the former Oath Tenets already cover that aspect well enough, and for monsters its just so players and DMs can get an idea of how they might act and how to use them in a given scenario.


Somewhat of a side rant not directed at anybody in particular.
Behavior from sapient creature can never be pigeonholed into something like Alignment and it's ridiculous to think it's even somewhat realistic if you actually have social experience.

[magritte]

The problem with alignment is not that it's too judgemental is that it tended to be applied too rigidly and arbitrarily that it tended to promote caricatures over characters. Personally, I suspect it was developed primarily to give the DM a tool to prevent players with little inclination or experience in roleplaying from murdering everything in sight and grabbing the treasure. I don't think it's an accident that the D&D games with the best story and characters (Planescape: Torment) minimized the importance of alignment in favour of a faction system.

In any event,most other tabletop RPG systems manage well enough without it. And it's extremely hard for a computer to assess alignment anyway because it only sees the action, not the reasoning behind it.

[Kyutaru]

In short, people misunderstood the purpose of alignment and were using it the wrong way. 2nd edition does a great job detailing the nuances of alignment in its DMG but future editions painted it as another characteristic, a meta decision that affects things you can do and has hard and fast rules that dictate evil characters would never save a puppy for any reason. Since the playerbase was getting confused and creating conflicts over nothing, they purged alignments from the game with recent updates.

You can read all about Jeremy Crawford's explanation of how it's supposed to work.

https://www.enworld.org/threads/wotcs-jeremy-crawford-talks-d-d-alignment-changes.673029/

A year later, an errata removed alignment altogether. People still weren't getting the whole guidelines thing and were treating it like declaring your political allegiance.

[Spikey]

Everyone in this game is just evil, even the characters that seem good, they're evil too. Choatic evil and neutral evil with a couple lawful evil. No one is good, not even your character because the game forces you into making evil choices.

[Murderhobo]

Originally posted by hannibal_pjv:

5e does not have alligments.

It does, page 122 PHB.

Wizards is removing the need for alligments because most people IRL are Evil and they felt self conscious when you told them that going around stealing people stuff and killing them was a bad thing.

I've had a riot about the huge ammount of people crying in Reddit because they became Oathbreaker Paladins within the first 20 minutes of Act 1, people need Jesus, fast.

[Teddy]

Originally posted by SpikeyProtein:

Everyone in this game is just evil, even the characters that seem good, they're evil too. Choatic evil and neutral evil with a couple lawful evil. No one is good, not even your character because the game forces you into making evil choices.

I don't think anyone is evil beside Astarion. Rest can be swayed. Refreshing take on character development compared to your average JRPG where every character is perfect with no flaws and always make the right choice in the name of power of friendship

[kn1ghtsabre]

I think I wanna point out, there still IS alignment even in modern 5e (5.5?) It's just, outside of paladin oaths, there are no mechanics tied to it anymore.

[Noin Trongaz]

Originally posted by rumpelstiltskin:

can't say i particularly miss it, but it was such a staple of dnd (dnd 5e raw still has i think?)
i guess it's another "modern" thing, with alignment being "too judgmental". and possibly not contributing much to the mechanics in the current state.

You can't really simplify human morality to having such a simple alignment system. You can characterize certain actions as "lawful good" or "chaotic neutral", but making a character whose choices are ONLY based on this cathegory means that they become incredibly one-dimensional morality-wise. Basically everyone has good and bad sides.

Some of the best antagonists are morally gray, while the worst antagonists are *just evil*.

[Sentient_Toaster]

Originally posted by kn1ghtsabre:

I think I wanna point out, there still IS alignment even in modern 5e (5.5?) It's just, outside of paladin oaths, there are no mechanics tied to it anymore.

Rakshashas care (but only if you're using magical piercing weapons -- presumably a callback to the days where they'd die instantly to a blessed crossbow bolt), and intelligent artifacts can.

That is just about it, though.

Palladium did it better, anyway.

[Noin Trongaz]

Originally posted by Murderhobo:

Originally posted by hannibal_pjv:

5e does not have alligments.

It does, page 122 PHB.

Wizards is removing the need for alligments because most people IRL are Evil and they felt self conscious when you told them that going around stealing people stuff and killing them was a bad thing.

I've had a riot about the huge ammount of people crying in Reddit because they became Oathbreaker Paladins within the first 20 minutes of Act 1, people need Jesus, fast.

Lol in reality most people will always chose the good path, I literally can't make evil decisions even when I decide to make an evil playthrough, I am like "ok I am gonna do this!" and when faced with the decision I am like "to hell with it! protect the children, everyone!".
If you look at the stats, most popular class is a paladin and absolute majority go for the good path.

[PocketYoda]

I kinda miss alignments myself.

Originally posted by Sentient_Toaster:

Originally posted by kn1ghtsabre:

I think I wanna point out, there still IS alignment even in modern 5e (5.5?) It's just, outside of paladin oaths, there are no mechanics tied to it anymore.

Rakshashas care (but only if you're using magical piercing weapons -- presumably a callback to the days where they'd die instantly to a blessed crossbow bolt), and intelligent artifacts can.

That is just about it, though.

Palladium did it better, anyway.

Agreed Palladium RPG is far superior to DnD 5th.

[SunsetAmethyst]

Wizards of the coast asked them to tone down the alignment, they did not want it to be that black and white anymore. Source can be found here in a Q&A with Sven

https://youtu.be/XJhawYZwvPI?t=6313