In my experience, Alignment was never particularly good at anything but getting into arguments about what "Alignment" really meant, and incentivizing players to play stupidly malicious characters whenever they had the word "evil" written on their character sheet. Otherwise people mostly went along with whatever the adventure was about and rarely payed mind to whatever their "alignment" was supposed to be. And even when they were "evil" they still mostly ignored it most of the time, till they suddenly decided to do stupid stuff, because "evil".

Quote from: VisionStorm on August 24, 2023, 03:40:25 PM
In my experience, Alignment was never particularly good at anything but getting into arguments about what "Alignment" really meant, and incentivizing players to play stupidly malicious characters whenever they had the word "evil" written on their character sheet.

Well, play with more intelligent and mature people in the future

I like Alignment when it comes to my D&D style games. No it isn't perfect, no it doesn't fit every morality perfectly...

But the idea that Good and Evil, Law, Chaos, and Neutrality are fundamental forces of the Universe, and have their own realms and magical beings aligned with them, is a very cool and thematic idea.

It also works for roleplaying NPCs as a baseline if you know their alignment, even when you have the majority of folks being Neutral.... saying someone *is* aligned with Law/Chaos, Good/Evil means they are fundamentally *different* in motivations from the majority of those around them.

I love alignment, and even if Pathfinder 2.1 is removing it, I will still use it.

Quote from: Orphan81 on August 24, 2023, 03:57:31 PM
I like Alignment when it comes to my D&D style games. No it isn't perfect, no it doesn't fit every morality perfectly...

But the idea that Good and Evil, Law, Chaos, and Neutrality are fundamental forces of the Universe, and have their own realms and magical beings aligned with them, is a very cool and thematic idea.

It also works for roleplaying NPCs as a baseline if you know their alignment, even when you have the majority of folks being Neutral.... saying someone *is* aligned with Law/Chaos, Good/Evil means they are fundamentally *different* in motivations from the majority of those around them.

I love alignment, and even if Pathfinder 2.1 is removing it, I will still use it.

Paizo does a lot of dunder headed shit like removing slavery from the world and then putting it back in after realizing they went too woke.  Like Paizo's plan to remove ability scores and just leave the modifiers.  So now the +1 to strength if you are 15 strength means nothing, it will be a whole ability point.  Idiotic move on Paizo's part limiting build viability.  I wonder how far will they go, they could streamline it to strength, intelligence and dexterity and call it Skyrim I mean Paizo and dungeons.  All that Paizo and D&D are doing is recreating the alignment system with extra steps.  Its fucking hillarious watching a bunch of race marxist writers trying to come up with a morals system where they don't call out the evil they want done to their fellow man.

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on August 24, 2023, 04:23:16 PM

Paizo does a lot of dunder headed shit like removing slavery from the world and then putting it back in after realizing they went too woke.  Like Paizo's plan to remove ability scores and just leave the modifiers.  So now the +1 to strength if you are 15 strength means nothing, it will be a whole ability point.  Idiotic move on Paizo's part limiting build viability.  I wonder how far will they go, they could streamline it to strength, intelligence and dexterity and call it Skyrim I mean Paizo and dungeons.  All that Paizo and D&D are doing is recreating the alignment system with extra steps.  Its fucking hillarious watching a bunch of race marxist writers trying to come up with a morals system where they don't call out the evil they want done to their fellow man.

Nah, removing ability scores themselves was done by Green Ronin for Mutants and Masterminds 12 years ago, and it's perfect. In the current iterations of D&D going from 3.0 forward, there is no damn reason to have attribute scores. We know every 2 points above 10 gives a +1, every 2 points below 10 gives a -1... So just put the damn Modifier there and be done with it. It's easy enough to rework the system to support this, and in the long run more intuitive, especially for new players to say, "I have a +4 Strength" instead of "I have an 18" strength.

It's only in older editions of D&D and more OSR style games where a 15 strength versus a 14 strength might actually *Matter*, but if you're going with the D&D system from 3.0 onward, you lose literally nothing by ditching the scores and going straight to the bonuses.

Who benefits?
Newbie players benefit because alignment gives them something to base their role playing around.
Newbie DMs benefit because it provides a nice shortcut on how NPC and monsters will act.

These factors were more important in the 70s than today, but they are still benefits.

Like many other things in D&D, alignment is not an ideal approach, but it works well enough for a game and replacing it with something else is more trouble than its worth. 

One place I do actually find it useful is in monster design.  It's a lot faster to just pick an alignment than to work out the whole psychology of a new monster, especially if it's just meant to be dead on one combat.

Quote from: Orphan81 on August 24, 2023, 04:29:58 PM

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on August 24, 2023, 04:23:16 PM

Paizo does a lot of dunder headed shit like removing slavery from the world and then putting it back in after realizing they went too woke.  Like Paizo's plan to remove ability scores and just leave the modifiers.  So now the +1 to strength if you are 15 strength means nothing, it will be a whole ability point.  Idiotic move on Paizo's part limiting build viability.  I wonder how far will they go, they could streamline it to strength, intelligence and dexterity and call it Skyrim I mean Paizo and dungeons.  All that Paizo and D&D are doing is recreating the alignment system with extra steps.  Its fucking hillarious watching a bunch of race marxist writers trying to come up with a morals system where they don't call out the evil they want done to their fellow man.

Nah, removing ability scores themselves was done by Green Ronin for Mutants and Masterminds 12 years ago, and it's perfect. In the current iterations of D&D going from 3.0 forward, there is no damn reason to have attribute scores. We know every 2 points above 10 gives a +1, every 2 points below 10 gives a -1... So just put the damn Modifier there and be done with it. It's easy enough to rework the system to support this, and in the long run more intuitive, especially for new players to say, "I have a +4 Strength" instead of "I have an 18" strength.

It's only in older editions of D&D and more OSR style games where a 15 strength versus a 14 strength might actually *Matter*, but if you're going with the D&D system from 3.0 onward, you lose literally nothing by ditching the scores and going straight to the bonuses.

It cuts down on builds and magic item distribution.  Again, have a character with a 15 strength who gets a +1  strength ring is good, it takes his modifier up to a +3.  That +1 to strength may or may not change the modifier, but it does allow a character to in the future allocate their +2 to stats in a way more beneficial to them.  Now, its either no bonus or a +1 bonus, there is no half bonus.  Its a poor decision.

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on August 24, 2023, 04:46:23 PM

It cuts down on builds and magic item distribution.  Again, have a character with a 15 strength who gets a +1  strength ring is good, it takes his modifier up to a +3.  That +1 to strength may or may not change the modifier, but it does allow a character to in the future allocate their +2 to stats in a way more beneficial to them.  Now, its either no bonus or a +1 bonus, there is no half bonus.  Its a poor decision.

...

So just have the magic strength ring give a +1 bonus to strength. As in, the modifier.

I've been running D&D since 3rd edition in 1999 my Senior year of high school. I have never once given out an artifact or magic item that gives a bonus to the attribute itself, unless it was already in increments of 2. Making a magic item that only gives a bonus of +1 to a specific attribute is such an edge case item to be functionally useless unless you specifically designed it for a player who has an attribute that's a 11, 13, 15, or 17...

And for that matter...Which of your player characters in any edition of D&D from 3rd on is going to have an odd number in one of their important attributes.... Unless you're forcing something like Standard array, and even then with racial bonuses, chances are their important attributes are already going to be in factors of even numbers to maximize their benefits... Unless it's 5th edition, they didn't plan on taking a Feat and were really hoping to... spread out the +2 attribute bonus to a 1 and 1.... Rather than maxing out their best attribute at +5.

Getting rid of the Attributes and sticking with the Bonuses themselves is far better mathematically and game wise..

Again, Mutants and Masterminds figured this out, ditched the attribute numbers and kept the straight bonuses 12 years ago.

Quote from: Orphan81 on August 24, 2023, 04:52:27 PM

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on August 24, 2023, 04:46:23 PM

It cuts down on builds and magic item distribution.  Again, have a character with a 15 strength who gets a +1  strength ring is good, it takes his modifier up to a +3.  That +1 to strength may or may not change the modifier, but it does allow a character to in the future allocate their +2 to stats in a way more beneficial to them.  Now, its either no bonus or a +1 bonus, there is no half bonus.  Its a poor decision.

...

So just have the magic strength ring give a +1 bonus to strength. As in, the modifier.

I've been running D&D since 3rd edition in 1999 my Senior year of high school. I have never once given out an artifact or magic item that gives a bonus to the attribute itself, unless it was already in increments of 2. Making a magic item that only gives a bonus of +1 to a specific attribute is such an edge case item to be functionally useless unless you specifically designed it for a player who has an attribute that's a 11, 13, 15, or 17...

And for that matter...Which of your player characters in any edition of D&D from 3rd on is going to have an odd number in one of their important attributes.... Unless you're forcing something like Standard array, and even then with racial bonuses, chances are their important attributes are already going to be in factors of even numbers to maximize their benefits... Unless it's 5th edition, they didn't plan on taking a Feat and were really hoping to... spread out the +2 attribute bonus to a 1 and 1.... Rather than maxing out their best attribute at +5.

Getting rid of the Attributes and sticking with the Bonuses themselves is far better mathematically and game wise..

Again, Mutants and Masterminds figured this out, ditched the attribute numbers and kept the straight bonuses 12 years ago.

I do it a fair bit, let players figure out their builds and who will use.  A +2 item for someone with an odd stat number may or may not be good for them, might more sense for another character at even numbers.  Lets put some decisions on the players and let them figure out what works best for the group.  Its fun listening to the discussions.  Or give them a +1 modifier and its decided fairly quick.  I like people haggling with the merchants, over hearing conversations and debating in game who gets the loot.  Removing a half modifier isn't exactly a smart move.  Again it cuts down on build diversity.  You can go with it and that's good for you, not at my tables.

Quote from: VisionStorm on August 24, 2023, 03:40:25 PM
In my experience, Alignment was never particularly good at anything but getting into arguments about what "Alignment" really meant, and incentivizing players to play stupidly malicious characters whenever they had the word "evil" written on their character sheet. Otherwise people mostly went along with whatever the adventure was about and rarely payed mind to whatever their "alignment" was supposed to be. And even when they were "evil" they still mostly ignored it most of the time, till they suddenly decided to do stupid stuff, because "evil".

I made an evil character for my brother's mega-campaign. My concept was a Githyanki who fell in to the party of good character to avoid his enemies. I based him loosely on Garak from Deep Space Nine. The sketchy guy who isn't afraid of the dirty work. We were trying to destroy Keraptis from White Plume Mountain and went through the bulk of the B/X/Advanced modules with the added feature of gathering and destroying Keraptis' various phylacteries. (My brother was never shy about how he was ripping off Harry Potter.)

The phylacteries were various artifacts, and they had to be destroyed. When it came time to destroy the good aligned artifact, my character was like "I got this guys."

Quote from: Ratman_tf on August 24, 2023, 05:52:32 PM

Quote from: VisionStorm on August 24, 2023, 03:40:25 PM
In my experience, Alignment was never particularly good at anything but getting into arguments about what "Alignment" really meant, and incentivizing players to play stupidly malicious characters whenever they had the word "evil" written on their character sheet. Otherwise people mostly went along with whatever the adventure was about and rarely payed mind to whatever their "alignment" was supposed to be. And even when they were "evil" they still mostly ignored it most of the time, till they suddenly decided to do stupid stuff, because "evil".

I made an evil character for my brother's mega-campaign. My concept was a Githyanki who fell in to the party of good character to avoid his enemies. I based him loosely on Garak from Deep Space Nine. The sketchy guy who isn't afraid of the dirty work. We were trying to destroy Keraptis from White Plume Mountain and went through the bulk of the B/X/Advanced modules with the added feature of gathering and destroying Keraptis' various phylacteries. (My brother was never shy about how he was ripping off Harry Potter.)

The phylacteries were various artifacts, and they had to be destroyed. When it came time to destroy the good aligned artifact, my character was like "I got this guys."

Absolutely *LOVE* Garak, but Deep Space Nine is the best Star Trek out of all of them.

Lawful Evil is the only evil I'll allow in a mixed party with Good characters when I run... Since the 'Lawful' part means they have some kind of an honor code and can be trusted to not betray the party once they've aligned with them... It just means they're willing to do the sorts of things Good characters won't allow themselves to do to get shit done.

"You may have just saved the Entire Alpha Quadrant and all it cost was the life of One Romulan Senator, One Criminal, and the self respect of a Star Fleet Officer. I don't know about you but I'd call that, a bargain."

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on August 24, 2023, 02:33:14 PM

Quote from: VisionStorm on August 24, 2023, 06:00:12 AM

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on August 24, 2023, 04:59:52 AM
The point of "9 ways to think of morality" isn't that there is only 9 ways, but that alignment captures 9 different fantasy archetypes it would make sense to place into a fantasy game like D&D. It serves as a template for the player to build off of, just like classes do, for their roleplaying.

Except that there are no such archetypes and Gary Gygax made those up by adding Good, Neutral and Evil to the Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic used in OG D&D and mashing them together. The 9 alignments didn't exist before AD&D. They're a BS made up D&Dism.

Whatever the source, they work well and do the job in D&D. They aren't supposed to be the complete picture of morality but encapsulate good adventuring archetypes for gameplay.

Did you read the response? It doesn't encapsulate any real archetypes. Players are forced into those roles because that's how the game was written. The community just made up tons of bullshit to justify it by claiming this nonsense is real archetypes. I could invent my own moral axis of bacon vs necktie, but that doesn't make the options archetypes. It means I made shit up.

Since the alignments aren't actually based on any real value system but on vague notions that differ between individuals, they bleed into the adjacent squares and become difficult to quantify in meaningful terms. They simultaneously make unnecessary distinctions while ignoring tons of necessary distinctions.

For example, an obstructive bureaucrat isn't Lawful Neutral. He's either Lawful Evil because he gets sick jollies from being obstructive, or he's Lawful Good and Stupid because he thinks laws are just inherently good no matter how stupid. Lawful Good and Stupid types are everywhere in real life and they're so obnoxious.

Scarred Lands is the only campaign setting that I've seen bother to try assigning coherent values to alignments. It distinguishes Lawful Neutral by making the LN God and his holy city execute homosexuals. Um... I'm pretty sure that nobody on Earth thinks "execute homosexuals" is a neutral act. This is exactly the kind of stupid that alignment encourages with its asinine distinctions.

There's no such thing as moral neutrality in real life. It's a fundamentally stupid concept. Everyone has the capacity for good and evil and most people think of themselves as good people. No real person thinks of themself as morally neutral. Again, it's fundamentally stupid. Trying to maintain harmony and balance against hostile extremes is inherently good according to all real moral systems. Look at Ma'at, Tao, etc. In real belief systems, Order is synonymous with Good.

But D&D assigns Norsemen to Chaotic Good or Chaotic Neutral. Nevermind that their religion distinguished between the orderly Aesir and the chaotic everything else.

Or take Robin Hood. He's commonly assigned to Chaotic Good, but the entire reason he's rebelling is because the law has been corrupted. He's not against law, he's against bad laws that hurt the populace. But alignment doesn't make distinctions like that. So Chaotic Good becomes this bizarre morass that includes tribal people, small villages, communist nations, Robin Hood, vikings, and so on.

The alignment system is just fundamentally nonsense, but because "it's tradition!" countless people make up excuses to justify keeping it. Blindly following tradition is stupid. You don't know why it's tradition or if it's still relevant unless you apply critical analysis. Some traditions may have lost relevance, while others were always stupid nonsense. Alignment was always stupid nonsense.

You don't need it. Keep using it if you like, but I'm chucking it out in my games.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 24, 2023, 06:47:09 PM

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on August 24, 2023, 02:33:14 PM

Quote from: VisionStorm on August 24, 2023, 06:00:12 AM

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on August 24, 2023, 04:59:52 AM
The point of "9 ways to think of morality" isn't that there is only 9 ways, but that alignment captures 9 different fantasy archetypes it would make sense to place into a fantasy game like D&D. It serves as a template for the player to build off of, just like classes do, for their roleplaying.

Except that there are no such archetypes and Gary Gygax made those up by adding Good, Neutral and Evil to the Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic used in OG D&D and mashing them together. The 9 alignments didn't exist before AD&D. They're a BS made up D&Dism.

Whatever the source, they work well and do the job in D&D. They aren't supposed to be the complete picture of morality but encapsulate good adventuring archetypes for gameplay.

Did you read the response? It doesn't encapsulate any real archetypes. Players are forced into those roles because that's how the game was written. The community just made up tons of bullshit to justify it by claiming this nonsense is real archetypes. I could invent my own moral axis of bacon vs necktie, but that doesn't make the options archetypes. It means I made shit up.

Since the alignments aren't actually based on any real value system but on vague notions that differ between individuals, they bleed into the adjacent squares and become difficult to quantify in meaningful terms. They simultaneously make unnecessary distinctions while ignoring tons of necessary distinctions.

For example, an obstructive bureaucrat isn't Lawful Neutral. He's either Lawful Evil because he gets sick jollies from being obstructive, or he's Lawful Good and Stupid because he thinks laws are just inherently good no matter how stupid. Lawful Good and Stupid types are everywhere in real life and they're so obnoxious.

Scarred Lands is the only campaign setting that I've seen bother to try assigning coherent values to alignments. It distinguishes Lawful Neutral by making the LN God and his holy city execute homosexuals. Um... I'm pretty sure that nobody on Earth thinks "execute homosexuals" is a neutral act. This is exactly the kind of stupid that alignment encourages with its asinine distinctions.

There's no such thing as moral neutrality in real life. It's a fundamentally stupid concept. Everyone has the capacity for good and evil and most people think of themselves as good people. No real person thinks of themself as morally neutral. Again, it's fundamentally stupid. Trying to maintain harmony and balance against hostile extremes is inherently good according to all real moral systems. Look at Ma'at, Tao, etc. In real belief systems, Order is synonymous with Good.

But D&D assigns Norsemen to Chaotic Good or Chaotic Neutral. Nevermind that their religion distinguished between the orderly Aesir and the chaotic everything else.

Or take Robin Hood. He's commonly assigned to Chaotic Good, but the entire reason he's rebelling is because the law has been corrupted. He's not against law, he's against bad laws that hurt the populace. But alignment doesn't make distinctions like that. So Chaotic Good becomes this bizarre morass that includes tribal people, small villages, communist nations, Robin Hood, vikings, and so on.

The alignment system is just fundamentally nonsense, but because "it's tradition!" countless people make up excuses to justify keeping it. Blindly following tradition is stupid. You don't know why it's tradition or if it's still relevant unless you apply critical analysis. Some traditions may have lost relevance, while others were always stupid nonsense. Alignment was always stupid nonsense.

You don't need it. Keep using it if you like, but I'm chucking it out in my games.

Law and Chaos as fundamental concepts of the universe existed before Dungeons and Dragons, they come from Michael Morecock's stories. If you want to get even further back than that, they show up as concepts in Conan as well.

Gary Gygax didn't 'make up' Law, Chaos, and Neutrality... He took a bunch of Fantasy Tropes that existed... Like Law and Chaos from Morcock, Lovecraft, and Howard... and combined them with the concepts of "Good" and "Evil" existing in High Fantasy along the lines of Tolkein.

Trying to claim that "Law" and "Chaos" and "Good" and "Evil" don't exist or never existed in fantasy stories before D&D is just outright wrong, completely wrong in every single manner.

You might not like it, you might find yourself 'straight jacketed to it' but that's on you.

Neutral characters aren't characters that completely stay away from Good and Evil, it means they tend to follow the laws of a society, generally look out for their friends and family only, and mainly want to be left alone.

A character aligned to "Good" is someone who fundamentally supports and is an advocate of the very supernatural concept of "Good" as it exists in the Universe... given Good is an actual energy within the Fantasy Universe. They might not consciously know they're supporting the element of "Good", but their actions fundamentally buoy and increase this energy in the world.

Characters that are "evil" engage in acts that support, encourage, and increase the energy of "Evil" in the universe... A Lawful Evil character might support a Kingdom that has fundamentally good rules... But they're willing to support that Kingdom in ways that Good characters would find reprehensible, and Neutral characters would balk at as well.

The alignments fit a Universe where these forces exist and are real and embodied by Literal Gods made up of them. Getting rid of alignment is where you go down the road of "No race is fundamentally evil"... Except in a Universe where there are Gods that are *Evil* who can make their own races, there can be races and beings that are *evil*

You're welcome to chuck it from your games... Nobody is stopping you, but your understanding of how Alignment works is completely fucking wrong and borked on every level you should shut up now before you keep making a bigger fool of yourself.

Quote from: Orphan81 on August 24, 2023, 06:06:37 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on August 24, 2023, 05:52:32 PM

Quote from: VisionStorm on August 24, 2023, 03:40:25 PM
In my experience, Alignment was never particularly good at anything but getting into arguments about what "Alignment" really meant, and incentivizing players to play stupidly malicious characters whenever they had the word "evil" written on their character sheet. Otherwise people mostly went along with whatever the adventure was about and rarely payed mind to whatever their "alignment" was supposed to be. And even when they were "evil" they still mostly ignored it most of the time, till they suddenly decided to do stupid stuff, because "evil".

I made an evil character for my brother's mega-campaign. My concept was a Githyanki who fell in to the party of good character to avoid his enemies. I based him loosely on Garak from Deep Space Nine. The sketchy guy who isn't afraid of the dirty work. We were trying to destroy Keraptis from White Plume Mountain and went through the bulk of the B/X/Advanced modules with the added feature of gathering and destroying Keraptis' various phylacteries. (My brother was never shy about how he was ripping off Harry Potter.)

The phylacteries were various artifacts, and they had to be destroyed. When it came time to destroy the good aligned artifact, my character was like "I got this guys."

Absolutely *LOVE* Garak, but Deep Space Nine is the best Star Trek out of all of them.

Lawful Evil is the only evil I'll allow in a mixed party with Good characters when I run... Since the 'Lawful' part means they have some kind of an honor code and can be trusted to not betray the party once they've aligned with them... It just means they're willing to do the sorts of things Good characters won't allow themselves to do to get shit done.

"You may have just saved the Entire Alpha Quadrant and all it cost was the life of One Romulan Senator, One Criminal, and the self respect of a Star Fleet Officer. I don't know about you but I'd call that, a bargain."

People are right to question an evil character in a group of good characters. It does usually mean they want to be an asshole. If a player wanted to play an evil character in a mostly good campagin, I'd have a short convo wtih them and make sure they're on board and not just disrupting the game for their own enjoyment.