Why alignment in D&D sucks

[TheFlatline]

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.

I always ran with paladins being exemplars of their patron god, and thus *usually* was lawful but was always the G/N/E that the god was.

In other words, you're a fucking extremist zealot. You're so crazysauce over your god that you can do shit even clerics can't do.

Then again, several of the paladin abilities, like smite and lay on hands, weren't actually divine spells in my 3e setting but sheer acts of stubborn will: a refusal to accept reality. The universe or your will has to give way, and no way in hell it's going to be your will.

It should be noted that paladins were feared, hated, and despised because they brought so much death and misery and crusade and jihad in the name of their god.

I also dug the morality of In Nomine back in the day. Angels vs demons. Should be cut & dry between good & evil right? Well... not so much... because demons aren't "evil" exactly. They're selfish. Angels were created to be selfless, to exist in the name of God, and demons said "non serviam" and exist for their own purposes now. So you get demons who run orphanages and do charitable work to help ingrain themselves into politics to corrupt things. You have angels who are pricks and can literally boarder on pathological murderers. In fact, most of the celestial movers & shakers on either side aren't exactly what humanity would call "good". They're all assholes that see humanity as both the chess board and the prize.

Anyway, the tome of fiends thing was an interesting read, but I might disagree with the downside of option 4. Instead of balance and neutrality and the idea of utter banality, I might argue that the churning tossing region of conflict between good & evil is what creates and drives life in an abstract sense. In that sense, the overall struggle isn't pointless: the idea isn't to win (even if that's what each side is trying to do ultimately), but it's to struggle. It's the weird idea that Lucifer should be respected because in falling, he gave humanity something to reject in order to be good. And that is in a twisted way admirable. It's the idea that Cain, in murdering Abel, gave us the option to *not* murder someone.

D&D morality is kind of limp to be sure, but in the end players don't want to have philosophy discussions about good & evil: they want to stab shit in the face.

[Gx1080]

@TheFlatline

While interesting, you seem to just swap the white and black hats between sides, which is meaningless and cliche, except for looking "edgy".

Rather have your zealot Paladins against baby-eating-no-you-can't-negociate Demons. That way is consistent.

[TheFlatline]

If you're referring to In Nomine morality, it works because it's basically consistent, and it was an interesting approach to morality.

As far as D&D morality goes though, since it's *such* high fantasy, I'm personally cool with exaggerating morality into something a little less than real.

[tussock]

Re: awesome batman thing. Comic book authors couldn't write a consistent character if their life depended on it.


Meanwhile, alignment "sucks" because people mostly don't being told they're Evil by a game book.

Chaotic? French revolution, bitch: liberty, justice, equality, and rich men's heads on a stick.
Lawful? Doin' it like granddad did it: law, order, tradition, and poor men's heads on a stick.
Neutral? Those other guys are nuggin' futs: can't we all just get along?

Evil? Who cares who gets hurt?
Not-Evil? Leave me out of this!
Good? Behave yourselves, or I'll hurt you.

[Hieronymous Rex]

Slightly off topic, but:

"Neutral" should not be a positive statement. "True Neutral" means that you have no strong feelings one way or the other, not that you "seek balance" (which is nonsensical). There should not be neutral paladins, Talismans of Pure Neutrality, or +2 equivocal longswords. Fortunately, only one of those three are in a published book.

[tzor]

Re: awesome batman thing. Comic book authors couldn't write a consistent character if their life depended on it.

In defense of Comic Book authors The Batman has been around for so long that he is beyond iconic. Each attempt to redefine The Batman brings with it the general theme of the series as well as the prevailing rules of writing at the time (there was a time when there was a strict code on what could be in a comic) as well as considerations for the medium (as in one case where the classic TV series was used which really was more corny than true to the original "The Batman" of "Detective" Comics.

DC was also prone to "alternate earth" scenarios, so over time every DC hero got torn into a million pieces of vastly differing alignments. There was a DC alternate earth scenario, for example, where Superman was the villian and Lex Luthor was the hero.

[Chamomile]

I rather enjoy reimaginings of my favorite super heroes, particularly Batman. It works best when they're honest about it, though, coming out and saying "yes, this is a totally different Batman from an alternate universe to the other ones."

[tzor]

"Neutral" should not be a positive statement.

I definitely agree. The original problem was that under 1E AD&D there was technically speaking no "True Neutral" at all. (No TN Gods, no TN alignment tongue etc.) Instead there was the "Druid" who sat in the middle and was half crazy. Anyone who claimed to be "TN" was assumed to be either a Driud supporter or too stupid to know what alignments were (that would have been animals). It's the one real problem of Gygax's original AD&D system.

[Stubbazubba]

Slightly off topic, but:

"Neutral" should not be a positive statement. "True Neutral" means that you have no strong feelings one way or the other, not that you "seek balance" (which is nonsensical). There should not be neutral paladins, Talismans of Pure Neutrality, or +2 equivocal longswords. Fortunately, only one of those three are in a published book.

Indeed. When "balance" is something you want to maximize in the world, it simply becomes your brand of "Good." Neutrality should only be defined in relation to Good and Evil in D&D.

[fectin]

Some people seriously advocate normative relativism. I don't think that is a sane position, but it is a real one.
Near as I can tell, that's True Neutral as a positive position.

[tzor]

Remember the 1E AD&D Druid is ... strange. In the druid's mindset, an act of kindness was just as abhorent as an act of violence. An act of law was just as abhorent as an act of chaos.

As an example: An evil preson could care less if a paladin wasted his power on curing some peasant's disease. In fact, helping the person provides a more fortunate person to steal from later on. A druid would find this as vile (actually more so) than killing that person for no reason other than personal gain.

[Stubbazubba]

Some people seriously advocate normative relativism. I don't think that is a sane position, but it is a real one.
Near as I can tell, that's True Neutral as a positive position.

Yes, but they've just taken that set of behaviors and called it their own kind of "Good." The fact that no behavior is independent of its external environment and circumstances, etc., etc., just means it's a more complex model of "Good," not something that exists alongside notions of intrinsic Good. Because they reject objective Good as "good," you know that they see themselves to be the "true" good, all others are Evil masquerading as Good, to put it in a very basic, watered-down-to-D&D's-level way.

In order to be True Neutral, you'd have to recognize Good as good and Evil as evil and for some reason actively desire neither. The nearest thing I could think of is Eastern religion's doctrine about escaping the cycle of samsara to Nirvana, but even then it's just another Good, on a more cosmic level, and all earthly existence, be it valiant, honorable, and chaste or self-serving, cruel, and lustful, it's all reduced to suffering, to use the Buddha's wording. So now all the world is "evil" and Nirvana (or whatever you do to get to it) is "good." There is no third moral entity.

[Wrathzog]

Alignment exists as an ABSOLUTE system. It is not necessary for you to recognize Shit. You just do what you do and someone else will label you through your actions and motivations.

This isn't complicated. Really. If you think Alignment is complicated, it's because you're thinking too much.

As for the normative relativism stuff, it's a belief system that does not necessarily align itself with D&D alignment (even if they used to push it as TN, they were fucking wrong).
Most people who follow it are going to end up with an alignment that is diametrically opposed to their surroundings.

[Emerald]

In order to be True Neutral, you'd have to recognize Good as good and Evil as evil and for some reason actively desire neither. [...] So now all the world is "evil" and Nirvana (or whatever you do to get to it) is "good." There is no third moral entity.

Considering in D&D you have a Team Good and a Team Evil representing those absolute alignments which both have some fairly extreme viewpoints, you could easily see Team Neutral as being good and Team Good as being as evil as Team Evil. A TN person would be justified in saying "Over there we have a bunch of paladins smiting kobold babies and anything else that pings on their evil-dar, and over there we have a bunch of cultists sacrificing kobold babies to dark gods while twirling their mustaches evilly. They're both fucking insane, so I'mma just sit here in the middle and hope neither one notices me, k?"

[tzor]

The whole “team” system is BS. Alignment basically describes how an individual stacks up to an absolute externally framed reference system. There is as much a “team good” as there is a “team left handed.” A creature may be “good” and he may be “left handed.” There are practical reasons why good people associate with other good people and why left handed people associate with other left handed people but that is different from the notion that the association drives everything.

[Stubbazubba]

In order to be True Neutral, you'd have to recognize Good as good and Evil as evil and for some reason actively desire neither. [...] So now all the world is "evil" and Nirvana (or whatever you do to get to it) is "good." There is no third moral entity.

Considering in D&D you have a Team Good and a Team Evil representing those absolute alignments which both have some fairly extreme viewpoints, you could easily see Team Neutral as being good and Team Good as being as evil as Team Evil. A TN person would be justified in saying "Over there we have a bunch of paladins smiting kobold babies and anything else that pings on their evil-dar, and over there we have a bunch of cultists sacrificing kobold babies to dark gods while twirling their mustaches evilly. They're both fucking insane, so I'mma just sit here in the middle and hope neither one notices me, k?"

Exactly; Good and Evil are indistinguishable, whatever their justifications are, or at best insignificantly distinguishable. So all that matters is that TNs are the best way to go and everything else is an equally bad option. All TNs do is invent a new, third axis with TN at one end and everything else at varying degrees further down. It's still a dichotomy to Team Neutral. They don't see themselves as somewhere between Good and Evil, they see themselves as on the opposite end of the spectrum from both of them. This goes for the Powers That Be who analyze your alignment as well as it is for mortals living it.

[Emerald]

The whole “team” system is BS. Alignment basically describes how an individual stacks up to an absolute externally framed reference system. There is as much a “team good” as there is a “team left handed.” A creature may be “good” and he may be “left handed.” There are practical reasons why good people associate with other good people and why left handed people associate with other left handed people but that is different from the notion that the association drives everything.

If all left-handed people came from different planes of existence, you could cast detect southpaw to determine someone's handedness, and there was special stuff in a Book of Sinister Handedness that only lefties could use, your comparison would be more apt. As you said, though, alignment describes how you stack up against an absolute frame of reference. You can be ambidextrous, or mostly left-handed except when opening pickle jars, or any other point on a spectrum between pure left-handedness and pure right-handedness...but when it comes to alignment there's Team Good, Team Morally Neutral, and Team Evil, and you're on one of those three whether you like it or not, there's no Team Good-Except-On-Tuesdays.

[tzor]

Again the term "team" implies an organization and a association of loyalty so by definition there is no such thing as "team" good, or "team" evil, and there is certainly not in any manner a team neutral.

Unless you want to limit yourself to 1E AD&D, where alignment tongues and "know alignment" were common, the whole notion of good and evil is a lot more sloppy than most people think or want it to be. I've studied the detect spells ad nauseum, mostly in order to support Paladin moralty arguments about why detect evil should not be used as an immediate excuse to attack. Simply put, unless you are getting your mojo from a higher power (clerics) or the negative material plane (undead) or are a native to a major astral plane you won't show up as anything other than "faint" until you become a name level character. Add that to the notion that most humanoids are generally neutral and the whole three shell alignment monte system falls flat on its face.

The fact that there are things that only good people can use, or things that only evil people can use, doesn't form a team either, anymore than there are things that only a wizard can use, and things only a cleric can use. Once again, that doesn't make it a team!

Evil constantly fights evil (they fight everyone) and even Good can fight Good. This is especially true on the law / chaos side but really you can have any solid reason for people to not be a "team." While there are a few exceptional Good and Evil characters, most often tend to be either "Good enough" or "Bad enough."