*Sigh* Alignment.

[Prak]

*headdesk*

So.. cutting out Law and Chaos is actually a fairly minor change on the face of things. Especially in Tome. No alignment requirement for monks, paladins have their codes, which is really all they need, so on and so forth.

Then I realized it does kind of screw up a few metaphysical things, like planes and magic...

So how well would it work to just replace them with "Civiliz(ed/ation)" and "Wild(erness)"? This makes the planes work relatively well, the Beastlands are the Wild good plane, and the Abyss is the Wild evil plane, and Celestia and Hell are Civilized, and so forth. It would mean that the Druid should have their alignment requirement changed slightly, but other than that, I'm not seeing too many problems here...

[Crissa]

Are bees civilized or wilderness? Civilizations don't generally like each other. Invasive species damage wildernesses...

I dunno.

-Crissa

[Username17]

Well, you'd still be boned about the fact that lions, tigers, and bears aren't Chaotic.

-Username17

[IGTN]

Well, you'd still be boned about the fact that lions, tigers, and bears aren't Chaotic.

-Username17

There's a simple fix for that: "they are now."

Of course, all the complicated fixes start from a simple fix, and then another simple fix, and then another one to fix the bugs caused by those until you've lost your "simple."

[Maxus]

I tend to handle them with renaming Law "Order" and having them be physical forces. Both necessary for everything to run, but both some seriously bad stuff in large amounts.

Being hit with a burst of Chaos will change the afflicted area of your body into...pineapple pudding, or chalk, or some other random stuff. That's nasty.

Just as nasty is a chunk of your body going in stasis because it got hit with a lot of Order. There. You can now have Anarchic and Axiomatic weapons.

The two forces work with and against each other. You could totally rip off the yin-yang symbol for them. There's always a little mixed in with the other--even Mechanus and Limbo have -some- small amounts of Chaos and Order working upon them, respectively.

But as physical forces, the idea of Order is that things come together to form big systems. Chaos is that those system flow and change and are destroyed. That can totally cover matter and atoms and the whole "every atom in your body is changed out every seven years" situation. On a larger scale, take empires. They're formed, they work for a time, and then they fall. After a while, something comes along to replace them.

So, anyone see a problem with Order and Chaos being physical forces and Good and Evil being moral ones?

[Ganbare Gincun]

Throw out alignment for everyone and everything. You can keep Chaos Beasts and Modrons without giving them Lawful or Chaotic subtypes, which is just as well, because "Lawful" and "Chaotic" behavior is totally subjective.

[CatharzGodfoot]

I think that 4e did a decent job of reconciling the D&D alignment system with the meaninglessness of Law and Chaos. You can still have Limbo, Mechanus, Pandemonium, and so forth. They don't have to be aligned.

Alternatively, alignment could be planar allegiance rather than vive-versa. You could be Shadow aligned, Celestia aligned, Beastlands aligned (like most animals), Mechanus aligned (like bees), Abyss aligned, Fire aligned (like fire elementals), and so forth.

I'm not sure that your Order/Chaos or Civilization/Wilderness system is much more meaningful to the conduct of individual characters than Law/Chaos. Civilization/Wilderness might be useful, but you need to make a better case for it.

[Artless]

Throw out alignment for everyone and everything. You can keep Chaos Beasts and Modrons without giving them Lawful or Chaotic subtypes, which is just as well, because "Lawful" and "Chaotic" behavior is totally subjective.

I'm in favor of this. It doesn't take much to just cut alignment out of the equation, considering players very rarely agree on what it means and rarer still do they actually try to follow it. Nobody knows what being Lawful Good or Chaotic Neutral or whatever means anymore because the definition of those terms is too broad to be of any use. I think if alignments absolutely have to be in the game, it'd probably make a lot more sense for writers and players to just replace it with something like a Factions system. No one can argue about what it means to be a Red Knight, because it says so right in their charter.

Hell, anything more literal and concrete than current alignment would be fine. Considering that every setting varies, the only thing anyone has to do as DM is make sure the players understand what the terms mean and how they can be applied in the game.

[Crissa]

Who cares if they have subtypes or not? I don't care if they have arbitrary subtypes. Elements/alignments are arbitrary.

-Crissa

[CatharzGodfoot]

Subtypes are super useful. They may be somewhat arbitrary, but being able to command fire creatures or smite reptiles is still made a lot easier by not making it completely arbitrary.

[Crissa]

Yeah, but I don't care if things have Byzantium or Niobium as subtypes. I don't care if the elements are air water fire earth or void steel and wood - or all of the above. Their existence is entirely based upon the story and power that interact thereof.

-Crissa

[TheWorid]

I tend to handle them with renaming Law "Order" and having them be physical forces. Both necessary for everything to run, but both some seriously bad stuff in large amounts.

Being hit with a burst of Chaos will change the afflicted area of your body into...pineapple pudding, or chalk, or some other random stuff. That's nasty.

Just as nasty is a chunk of your body going in stasis because it got hit with a lot of Order. There. You can now have Anarchic and Axiomatic weapons.

I could totally see things for which alignment is a big deal (such as Law for modrons or Evil for demons) could have an alignment subtype without screwing around with morality. There don't have to be moral/ethical/personality/whatever alignments in the traditional sense, just some tags which matter for certain abilities.