Why alignment in D&D sucks

[mrzero]

Why alignment in D&D sucks :

0. The descriptor neutral both in the L-C and G-E is confusing and shows the laziness of the creators how difficult is it to invent another word that is not "neutral" in the L-C ? How about balanced ? Is this really so difficult ?

1. Law and Chaos makes no sense whatsoever they are meaningless words that are ultimately nonsensical. What is a lawful character supposed to be ? Blindly obey the laws ? Only obey his personal laws ? Sometimes it’s one sometimes it’s the other , D&D treats these things like they are interchangeable however they are not.

2. G-E is idiotic while not so bad like L-C it’s undefined. Palladium is far superior with its actual 10 point list of what a given alignment can do. D&D alignment is nothing more then insanity on a stick. Can I torture this character ? Is my ethics consequentialist or deontological ? Can I lie ? Can I steal ? Can I be a prick ?

[souran]

Mrzero, you made one of the classic blunders! The first is obviously never start a land war in asia. However, only slightly less well known is that you never argue something in PALLADIUM is far superior!

D&D alignrment is not a particularly good system. However the palladium 10 points is even dumber and just puts more hard coding into what is actually a soft character description.

Honeslty, the alignment selected by the player is fairly meaningless (except for clerics and paladins who have to at least somewhat represent their faith). Player alignment will be demonstrated almost exclusively by action.

The real problem with alignment is that it is so broad and has so much overlap that it doesn't do what it is supposed to do which is to act as a shorthand stage direction/phsyc profile and clue you into how the NPC/PC will act in a partidcular situation.

D&D does not need humanity or a hard system for determining who is good and evil. What it needs is a system that looks at dominate traits and movtivation.

Yes, we will be assigning these to whole races of being and some people might find a certain squick factor to that, but it really is much more useful to have something like

Goblins:
Motivation: Greed
Traits: Cowrdly, (Agressive when they outnumber the opposition)

Than "Lawful Evil"

[Fuchs]

Alignment is a result of the character's actions and intentions, not the other way around.

[mrzero]

Mrzero, you made one of the classic blunders! The first is obviously never start a land war in asia. However, only slightly less well known is that you never argue something in PALLADIUM is far superior!

Well I don’t play Palladium however after I looked their morality system its far less ambiguous. I don’t really think there are massive debates amongst Palladium players if their alignment is right or they changed alignment.

I have no problem giving whole races a alignment .

However the problem is consistency and repeatabilityif the rules tell you that X spell creates 5 damage to character HP there is no discussion what this means. Everyone understands that player ALFA gets -5 to HP. However if the HP system worked like aliment then 1 player would proclaim that getting X spell will give him a instant level up another will interpret it to be a armor downgrade and another will interpret this to be a summon monster spell while another will interpret X spell to give -5 HP to target player.

The problem is that Lawful Evil is meaningless its self contradictory and if independent people would be asked to make a test who is Lawful Evil based on behavior completely different answers would result. Unlike the damage system where everyone understands what X spell is doing and will answer -5 to targeted players HP.

And if someone would ask “how to make it better “or “why don’t you invent something better” I have given Palladium’s alignment system for a quick response or a example I’m not endorsing it only giving a quick response with a example. Besides its good evidence of why D&D alignment is broken because if there are other RPG examples of alignments that are made to be good and workable then this shows D&D is not actually paying attention to what is going on and is terribly behind the times.

[Wrathzog]

Dude makes one post; it is about D&D Alignment.
Smells trolly to me.

Anyhow, alignments are just generalized labels and no longer have any gameplay ramifications. It's pretty unimportant.

[Kaelik]

Protip, read the Tome of Necromancy and Fiends sections on alignment before talking about alignment here.

You might find out that your entire first post was a waste of everyone's time.

[mrzero]

Anyhow, alignments are just generalized labels and no longer have any gameplay ramifications. It's pretty unimportant.

Really that’s new to me?

So every alignment can be a:

Druid
Barbarian
Paladin

Can I play a Chaotic Evil Paladin? If not how is it going to impact the game play if the GM has radically different interpretations of what Chaotic and Evil is ? Especially that chaotic is a meaningless phrase so the ambiguity of the alignment is going to hurt game play or I suffer alignment shift penalties.

And even if its house ruled away shouldn’t we criticize bad ideas and understand why they are wrong ?

Protip, read the Tome of Necromancy and Fiends sections on alignment before talking about alignment here.

You might find out that your entire first post was a waste of everyone's time.

I don’t own Tome of Necromancy however I looked it up online and I don’t have a problem with rules like “necromancy is always evil”. That’s OK however the real problem is not if necromancy is evil but the absolute insanity of law VS chaos because law and chaos aren’t really actual consistent definitions.

The real question is what is a chaotic behavior ?
What is a lawful behavior ?
However i can argue that every decision is lawful or chaotic because all the examples of chaotic and lawful behaviors are self contradictory.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Yeah, this argument has been done before, and more eloquently.

To sum it up, Good and Evil can usually be agreed upon by the group with little arguments, but law and chaos is basically "whatever the DM says it is", because any viewpoint could be argued because the terms aren't well defined.

[mrzero]

To sum it up, Good and Evil can usually be agreed upon by the group with little arguments, but law and chaos is basically "whatever the DM says it is", because any viewpoint could be argued because the terms aren't well defined.

I agree totally the real problem are not the good Vs evil axis however the law VS chaos axis. A actual list of what consists in lawful or chaotic behavior would be something good however I don’t think wizards will ever do this because they know its ultimately a indefinable nonsense. Removing law and chaos would be some great help in gaming.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Are you trying to start an argument? Because stating things that were said years ago on this board and were unopposed aren't going to really start arguments.

[A Man In Black]

I don't see any reason you couldn't use the paladin class as written from any of the 3e varieties for whatever alignment you want. Nor do I particular see any reason that a druid should have to be neutral, and the bard and barbarian alignment restrictions were always insane.

[mrzero]

Nor do I particular see any reason that a druid should have to be neutral, and the bard and barbarian alignment restrictions were always insane.

Yes I agree on this however sometimes you can find alignment fanatics who don’t want to house rule this insanity.

[Chamomile]

Ooh, ooh, let me play!

I agree with you! Not only that, by your tone I can tell that I agree more than you do.

[shadzar]

alignment in D&D works.....
<EOL>

[fectin]

http://www.dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Tome_of_Fi ... and_Fiends

Go there. Read it. Come back and talk about what you disagree with.
Right now, it's like you've come here and made a persuasive post about how the ocean is both large and wet. It's totally true, but it's making folks nervous about where you're going with this.

Edit: parentheses in URL.

[Kobajagrande]

I made it work. I am far more surperior to you.

[tzor]

0. The descriptor neutral both in the L-C and G-E is confusing and shows the laziness of the creators how difficult is it to invent another word that is not "neutral" in the L-C ? How about balanced ? Is this really so difficult ?

Did someone just call the great Gygax lazy? Where is my sword of sharpness?

The only "class" that worried about "blance" was the AD&D (1E) Druid. In every other case the word neutral is appropriate. It's not that the Neutral Good person spends the day trying to balace acts of law and chaos; instead they don't care one way or the other. They pick and choose which ideas of law and which ideas of chaos they follow.

The fact that there was an active TN (druid) and a passive TN (animals) was a problem with the system; but I never saw a solution that didn't give me more problems than it solved.

(I bet you would have really "loved" alignment languages.)

[TOZ]

You can cut alignment out of D&D pretty easily, so it's not even that important to the game. It's just kept around for old times sake.

[Josh_Kablack]

You can cut alignment out of D&D pretty easily,.

As someone who generally plays with groups where "alignment is ignored as much as possible ", we can easily ignore alignment restrictions on class, allow Smite abilities to work on anyone and not expect alignment detections to provide info more meaningful that an OK Cupid quiz, but each MC still has to deal with

• How does Protection vs Evil work here? What about Magic Circles and to a lesser extent calling spells? Fortunately Chaos Hammer and Blasphemy and the like are high enough level that they can usually be ignored.
• What overcomes DR/alignment?
• Do strong auras stun people using detections - and if so why?
• and a number of other little items integrated into the rules. bane weapons, planar cosmologies, etc, etc

[TOZ]

Treat every character without an alignment subtype or aura as Neutral for all mechanical interactions. Done.

Edit: You can change every instance of 'Good/Evil/Lawful/Chaotic' to 'Light/Dark/Order/Giant Frog' and not have it make a difference. Auras stun people because the guy getting stunned is that much weaker than the dude with an aura. Think Bleach and spiritual pressure or whatever you want to call it. DR? Choose a special material, silver or cold iron.

[Kaelik]

Protip, read the Tome of Necromancy and Fiends sections on alignment before talking about alignment here.

You might find out that your entire first post was a waste of everyone's time.

I don’t own Tome of Necromancy however I looked it up online and I don’t have a problem with rules like “necromancy is always evil”. That’s OK however the real problem is not if necromancy is evil but the absolute insanity of law VS chaos because law and chaos aren’t really actual consistent definitions.

The real question is what is a chaotic behavior ?
What is a lawful behavior ?
However i can argue that every decision is lawful or chaotic because all the examples of chaotic and lawful behaviors are self contradictory.

You are an idiot. Go to the top of this forum you are posting in, and find the three stickied threads. Click on the one that is called "List of Frank and K Tome threads." From there click on the one called "Tome of Fiends" You will notice that it is a thread on this forum, and that it is stickied. Everyone but you has read it. It is from sometime in 2004-5 I think. Notice the section titled "Law and Chaos: Your Rules or Mine." Read the entire fucking second post, the first post not counting the Table of Contents.

Once you have read that, you can continue posting. Technically, you can just not read that and still keep posting.

However, most of the people on this forum will continue treating you like an idiot if you do not do so. I personally will just put you on ignore if your next post in this thread doesn't:

1) Specify certain parts of that analysis that you disagree with.
2) Make a specific admission that your post was pretty pointless, since it was on this forum, where we already went over this way more in depth.

[shadzar]

From there click on the one called "Tome of Fiends" You will notice that it is a thread on this forum, and that it is stickied. Everyone but you has read it.

No they havent.

[...You Lost Me]

From there click on the one called "Tome of Fiends" You will notice that it is a thread on this forum, and that it is stickied. Everyone but you has read it.

No they havent.

CORRECTION: "Everyone who contributes mildly constructively to this forum has read it."

[A Man In Black]

[Almaz]

Why alignment in D&D sucks :

People keep making new threads about it when it is a tired, old, and retreaded discussion several times over.

I can understand a discussion derailing into an alignment flamewar, but really? Making a new thread for it? This is not some new insight here.