I've found an Alignment system that I think works in my games pretty well. I use my characters alignment for things like boss fights where "only one who is pure of heart(good) may slay this creature!", or magic items that can only be used by those hoping to achieve mischief(chaotic), etc. The catch is my players don't know their alignment, they all start off unaligned and I secretly keep track of it without telling them what it is. My players like it, and I feel like their character become more interesting when they stop worrying about the alignment they wrote on their sheet. Plus it always adds some great drama when the hero can no longer swing his magic sword because he is no longer pure of heart.
cronos245 Well, in Dungeons and Dragons, alignment is specifically about the characters' places in the spectrums of individuality V. community (or the Wilds V. Urbanization, depending on the edition and DM) and Altruism V. Egotism. The whole planar system is designed around these ideas and types of magic comes from them. However, different cultures having different ideas (AYN RAND WOULD JUST LOVE MAGLUBIYET) and different definitions of evil and good is also a thing that's played around with in D&D, although the rules say 'gruumsh is evil' the majority of orcs disagree, seeing him as a valorous underdog, a wise leader who has carved a place for his people in the world where weaker gods could not have. Simply put: if your ideals align with the Rakshasa's, I don't think you should get the extra damage on stabbing it.
This is a really good rule. I think for instant that in Fallout 3 it is so unfortunate that you get s prompt every time you make a good karma decision (or for the bad karma too). That means that you will note what gives you good karma and what does not. In real life that is not how it works. You just have to do your things and then see what kind of karma it comes with (if any). It would make the game so much more interesting to not know.
I imagine lawful good as a Hermione. She wouldn't necessarily rat on her friends (unless they're being overtly bad for no good reason) but she would be disapproving.
I let my players go where they want with their alignment, but if I think that they are consistently straying from one alignment to another, I throw in a deliberate alignment test into the story. Example: I had a rogue player, chaotic Neutral who over time was consistently doing things for others instead of looking out for himself. So I created a scenario where he saw a very poor family barely scraping by and I made it a big deal, pulling on his heart strings. When he looted a large quantity of money shortly after, he passed by the house of the poor family again and he went and snuck some gold into their house. So I asked for his character sheet, crossed out Chaotic Nuetral and wrote in Chaotic Good. The player never knew it was a test and there was no prompting to do the good deed. The family was something used to describe the desolate area of the City, but it was there the entire time and the player chose to return and sneak the money into their house. So it was an alignment test he didn't know was a test. (mind you I've done this at times and not changed the alignment at the end). The good thing about this is that in the case of the rogue it really made the player stop and take stock of their character, everything he had been through and the journey that he had been on. Even when these trials don't end in alignment changes, it usually triggers the player to really stop and think about who their characters are. Most satisfying for me as a DM was that later that the night after we were done playing, the players sat around for two hours talking about everything that their characters had done, what they had gone through, who they were as people and what their characters meant to them outside of game. It was by far the most satisfying moment I've ever had as a DM.
I had a character whose whole life goal was to protect knowledge. My DM forgot that that was his life goal and sent us on a mission to destroy a realm of Forgotten knowledge. So my character became a "evil" character and joined the villains. But originally was lawful good, he only became seen as evil after he disagreed with the party
The guests intro with the three basic alignments was my kind of brilliant. We have been using this unceasingly for decades. It is akin to the Pallidium's alignment system.
Satine's reaction to the name revelation at the end is the cutest thing ever! Also, great episode, right on time for some lecturing on my own party muahahaahhah :D
Our GM gives out alignment points. Good deed 10 good points, a heroic self sacrifice to save the party 25 lawful and 50 good, or if following the law for you own benefit 25 evil and 25 lawful, Tpk for the lolz? Pls don't.
Superb exploration about alignment. It should be organic and naturally flowing around the primary alignment, but flexible in certain encounters and challenges. All makes for good role playing.
I'm a huge fan of using alignment. The way I play it Lawful Good follows the spirit of the law, and will put the good of the group/community over the good of the law makers. The LG person recognizes that there are corrupt rulers and unjust laws. The Lawful Neutral person follows the letter of the law. The law may be unjust or unfair, but it is the law. Lawful Evil uses the law as a weapon. Using loopholes in the law; crafting laws to benefit themselves and their allies. However, if you beat them using their own rules they will submit to judgement and the penalty handed down. Etc.
I see it the same way, having an alignment to follow is part of the character experience. If you want to play a character and not yourself in a tabletop game, it works great to build on the attitude of the character. I have a Lawful Good Paladin that is all about protecting people no matter who they are, as long as they are capable of good they should be protected. She does believe that people who disrupt the order of her empire should be dealt with, however she refuses to kill unless necessary. Now, that isn't me, I personally love Chaotic Neutral that leans evil.
In my games I've been experimenting on replacing PC alignment with 2-3 moral/ethical "descriptors" that describe how a character tends to act in and view situations in as few words as possible. Like "greedy" "courageous" "defends the weak" "self-centered" or "protective of little brother." I try to occasionally introduce situations that taps into a character's descriptor - whether to the character's benefit or otherwise - and see what the player does. If they roleplay their descriptor, or roleplay trying to resist it, I might give some bonus XP or other reward. Depending on how they roleplayed it I might at some point allow them to change the descriptor. If they don't roleplay to it at all, they miss out on roleplay bonuses or I might even force some occasional Will saves. Eg. a "greedy" PC enters the treasure room first - she can pocket an extra gem or handful of coin herself (thus increasing her share and diminishing her allies') and risk causing intra-party tension if caught, or the player might request a Will save to resist the temptation because they are trying to overcome the fault. Or a "courageous" PC might put their friends in danger by refusing to run away from or surrender to a foe the party can't beat. I've found that 5e facilitates this well with the backgrounds and inspiration system.
Of all character I have ever known (outside of D&D) the one who I cannot begin to classify is Littlefinger from ASoIaF/GoT. The best estimate I could make with this system was actually Chaotic-Lawful. It's one of the reasons I stopped using the chart.
I was vile for my character when I got my soul taken out of my character. At first I didn't know what vile meant and then I realize it's evil times a billion. so we are in a blood and sands campaign ( gladiators ) and there is a riot because of the previous game got cancelled and the town's folk was pissed. Now the party was separated into gladitorial houses ( each house is determined by alignment). Some were to protect the town's folk but my house decide to reek utter havoc. My character was basically alone slaughtering woman and children and keeping there heads for "personal use" . I was caught by a religious order and then got decapitated killing my character. Now as a new player I have problems with alignment with characters but I was pushed into new, and disqusting new avenues saw what alignment can actually help a player out sometimes. My gm and other players were applauding because I was successfully rping my character. Also DON'T SELL YOUR SOUL UNLESS YOU GET SOMETHING OUT OF IT. Don't be like me and sell your soul so you can be proficent in posions!
queergaming Did this happen within the past few weeks? If it is I think I am in your game and if you are who was in my group you do deserve thumbs up for giving it 100%
You're conversation about Lawful Good and Paladins is exactly why I have avoided that alignment/class for many years. Now that I've played for awhile, I realize I can have fun with it as long as you have the right DM and they know what your intentions are. Get creative, be inspired and play outside your comfort zone! Because you never know what will happen. Thanks for the amazing video!!
Evil characters are more of an egoistic kind of people. It really does not involve a murderhobo-behavior by default. A sole survivor of a village that was slaughtered, sworn to find enemy who did it may go far to achieve his goal, as well as a poor woman, destroyed by a loss of her child on a quest to find a way to resurrect him/her. They probably won't behave violently and spit poison at everyone they meet, but in those crucial moments of storyline will choose whatever benefits them more, going as far as needed to achieve fulfill their desires.
I really liked this spin on the alignments, totally agreed on how the invading a goblin home is basically just being a murdering thief ETC. It's also why I feel more sympathetic to mobs in Warcraft and other games.
NOOOO lawful does not mean that a person adheres to the law of the land. it means they have a set of rules or a code that they adhere to. this is why a vengeance paladin can still be called lawful good. he doesnt have to follow the written law as long as he is true to his oath.
lawful good: battle medics. People who don't differenciate sides in a war, they just want to save lives. neutral good: firemen. They mean to protect people, but if they have to tear down a building to stop the fire, they will, and they won't care what's left. chaotic good: club bouncers. They're passive, but they're there to protect the place. If they have the slightest suspicion that a fight would break out, they'll rush in, without regards for collateral, and grab whomever is involved. Riot police, or bodyguards, works as well. lawful neutral: referees. They can't take sides on a sports match, and they can't take responsibility for the well-being of the players, but they will protect the players, the team's staff, or the stadium if they believe there's reason for concern. neutral: judges. Plain neutral. They have to abide by the law, only by evidence and testimony, they can't put own judgements into a case. If the winning party wins by finding a loophole in the established law, then loophole it is, even if their cause is flawed. chaotic neutral: show hosts. Comedy entertainment, or dark humor, can be considered chaotic. Bashing everyone for their slip-offs or fails is their reason to be, even if it is offensive or out of place, but they don't personally mean it. lawful evil: professional critics, or audition judges. They have their own set of standards, and they'll bash anyone who doesn't conform to that. They consider "not having what it takes" a sign of imperfection, and a waste of their time. neutral evil: conmen or hustlers. They steal, but without hurting anyone aside from their intended marks, and only monetarily. They rely on robbing from big fish, who are the ones taking from the people, to balance out the act of systematically stealing. chaotic evil: crime lords, or warlords. Self explainatory.
+thisisthemeaning Yep. Members of thieves or assassins guilds for example are often lawful evil. They don't follow the rules of society at large, but they rigorously observe the rules of their organisation.
Alignment is a way of giving you a starting thought on who they are and how they interact with others. If it, or anything you are doing, causes trouble with the game you should rethink it. Alignment isn’t the end all be all of how to play your character. Just like picking your class or race it gives you something to draw from for role playing. That’s why you can change your alignment but in truth there are groups, races or organizations that want those restrictions because that’s the way they are. So use it for role playing and it will help.
Alignment's a weird thing. I avoid using it wherever possible, but I do tend to keep it on record in case a situation comes up where it'd be useful. The best part about alignment is breaking it, though. Lawful Neutral and Chaotic Good paladins work well in Good parties, but aren't typical paladins. Lawful bards can be really interesting, especially if they're flavoured as something other than a musician. Lawful or Neutral Good rogues can break the "irresponsible thief" type (Diath Woodrow comes to mind.) Good necromancers, lawful barbarians, evil clerics... they're good ways to make something unique.
Never liked alignments, and have spent some hours trying to revise the concept when it must be used. The one I'm most satisfied with is kinda like this: The chaotic-lawful axis measures impulsivity, dependability, reliability, predictability, that sort of stuff. You know, how much commitments, consequences, etc. matter in routine decision-making. Then there's the good-evil-axis, which is a rough measure of how low the character can stoop. The problem I've always had with evil alignments is that it rips those characters of any positive characteristics; the capacity for love, compassion, charity, mercy, etc. It makes for really one-dimensional characters and cartoonish roleplaying. So what my scale does is it allows a character to have those capacities, but in a less rigorous manner; someone might be the kindest person to their relatives, while being an absolute monster to others. They could even be sincerely concerned for their loves ones, truly empathizing with them, and so forth. Or they might be a generally principled person devoted to justice and order, but sometimes employing extreme measures to maintain those principles. Etc. That all said, I'd rather just not use alignments at all. They feel like a relic from a time when D&D was just about killing monsters and getting loot. I haven't seen such simplistic codes used in a lot of other games, and I think Palladium Books's system has a better implementation; they list a set of behaviors, such as "Will never betray an ally", "Might betray an ally for a good cause" or "Might betray a friend at a whim", or whatever, and then labels those sets as good, neutral or evil. It's also much more informative for the player, than simple "good" or "evil". In the end, the rules should be there to facilitate the story or adventure. What's appropriate behavior for a character of a given personality is for humans to decide.
I often pick Evil as the alignment for my characters, and ironically, those characters often end up being the most level headed/reasonable and dependable members of the group, often being the pillar or even leader of the party, even having good PCs follow them! Granted, that's because I view Evil as a mindset, not just actions. You can be evil without doing evil, because remember, although you may spend your life saving people; if you could allow the world to be consumed by the fires of war to benefit your own personal glory should the situation be different, then you are an evil person, even if you have saved more people than you have killed. If you care more about the king's reward for killing the dragon than the irrelevant villagers you saved by killing the beast, you're probably a bad person :p Generally, pick Evil if you wanna be more free and take whatever options benefit yourself or the party the most.
D&D 3rd Ed's Book of Vile Darkness (other books might bring this up, too) says that evil isn't just about killing. If someone is corrupt, then they're evil. If the have dealings with Demons and Devils, they're evil. There's many ways to be evil than just killing. Like you said, promoting wars can be evil, even though you are not participating in them yourself.
An interesting point, but were you in one of my campaigns you would quickly find yourself simply neutral. I would argue that while it is fine for people to wish to do so to use their characters alignment as a guide, it is the sum of your actions that dictate your alignment, not the reverse. Intent matters for one's actions, but it is not all that matters, and if the sum of your actions combined with an intent as you stated here, you are a selfish person, maybe even a bad person, but an evil one? You are no more evil than a self-righteous, murderous zealot is good because he believes himself to be.
Twilightwyrm I disagree with how you run things, because honestly ethics as consequentialism gives the players very little control over their character sheet, as their alignment then becomes inevitably railroad paradoxed. (Trolley Problem-ed) It also allows you to attach alignments to, say, a forest. Or an avalanche. Or a non-sentient axe. Things without the ability to make decisions suddenly having magically determinable juju put onto them because of something they did and had no control of seems very much against the practical uses of alignment.
twistedironpaw ignoring for the moment that the DMG specifically states that things with below 3 Int are neutral or have no alignment, I would generally agree with you, and were I adhering to a strictly consequentialist DMing paradigm these criticisms would be valid. Hence, why I specifically said that Intent does matter, just that it is not the only, or even primary, measure of moral consequence. Under this paradigm then, alignment is no more out of the player's hands than any other mutable aspect of their character. It means that the characters are morally culpable for their actions, and they do not get a free pass to dodge this culpability by writing evil or chaotic on their character sheet, as I suspect people might often do. Besides, if freedom of action is truly what you are after, is that not a more chaotic mindset than strictly evil one? And, more to the point, if you already know how you want to play the character, what does that character care where they end up in the ethical swing of things? Just play the character as you would, and see where you end up!
sounds a lot to me like you're writing "Evil" in your alignment block and then playing "Good". that's you NOT playing "evil", rather than "evil" proving "level headed and reasonable", and "worthy" of goodly followers. shootin' from the hip on that one, given only this one sentence of information to go on. if you could give more examples of how you worked the "evil" into it though, i think i would begin to doubt the claim of "level headed" and "reasonable". because evil acts tend to be very unreasonable and far from the actions that level headed people would take. again! just my two cents based on the little you gave to go on.
I mostly use alignment as a scale, like if you are Lawful Good sometimes you can stray to NG or LN but if you jump to full on Chaotic or Evil there is a problem.
Whenever I think about alignment, I think about how any person with any alignment could be either a hero or a villain. Look at Superman in Injustice, for example. He’s clearly a lawful good character who always does the right thing, and in Injustice he thinks the “right thing” is to become dictator of the world. On the opposite end of the spectrum, let’s look at Harley Quinn-being The Joker’s right-hand-woman, I think we can all agree that she’s Chaotic Evil. Yet multiple times she has fought The Joker and sometimes even teams up with Batman!
The way I handle alignment in my games is that all (with few exceptions) celestials, fiends and fey must act according to their alignments -- good, evil or neutral respectively. And all monsters -- which includes monstrosities, aberrations, undead, etc -- must act either evil or neutral. Other than that, all players, even NPCs, can choose to act against alignment, but if they do, they feel a twinge of conscience. And if they continue to act against alignment over and over again, they may start to take psychic damage. Or, if they so choose, they can change their alignment and relieve their conscience and take no psychic damage.
That sounds to me like you are kinds forcing players into doing what you want them to do, and it sounds like out of character mechanics without grounding in actual world. Have you considered simply letting them do whatever their characters would in their opinion do, and then come up with reasonable consequences of their actions - like being arrested and put into jail? Thats something what makes sense and can create great adventure in the end. I don't know what your system really looks like in reality, maybe it works perfectly fine, just wanted to throw some suggestion.
It's actually meant to better model reality. In real life people have their own moral compasses, and whenever faced with a situation in which they are forced to compromise their personal ethics they will feel a twinge of conscience (like a mother having to choose between stealing a loaf of bread or letting her child starve). In such cases a person can either continue to go against their personal believes and be racked with guilt, shame and remorse (possibly spiraling into a mental breakdown), or they can decide to change their beliefs and learn to live with it (such as the mother who decides her child's life is more important than respecting property rights). This mechanic is meant to model that.
The main problem with alignment is that it often gets used as a shield to defend dickish behavior at the table, or stupid behavior. Alignment is a great tool for nailing down character motivation, but the reality is these are abstract subjective terms that need to be ironed out in session zero. What I like is simplifying things with objective core motivations instead of arguing over subjective and mutually exclusive definitions of things like good and lawful. Good = Selfless Evil = Selfish Lawful = Dogmatic Chaotic = Shameless Neutral = Pragmatic
I 100% agree with what he was saying about it being so much more fun when you can just get into the adventure without being bogged down by overly complex rules. I started playing a long time ago, about the same time as he was talking about when those rules came in, so I had the experience. - Thank you for saying it for the benefit of others who may not have been around then!
Alignment doesn't limit the character and the roleplaying; the roleplaying and the character determine the alignment. Not all LG characters are "oh my god, you broke the law, you have to go to jail" and not all CE characters kick puppies and steal candy from small children. There are many mindsets and archetypes that fit in each alignment.
Another Jason here, played since the 80's too. I once played in a Homebrew that was totally epic...how epic you may ask? Nothing was "Level" appropriate. Meaning that, some goblins were level 1 some could be level 8. Everything was that way, even NPC's. It was amazing. You really had to be careful who you started a fight with, because it may be your last. I was curious...has anyone else tried this??
I have a character that I think is Chaotic Good. But to me, that just means he doesn't really care about laws, if he thinks he can stop some kind of villainy he will, and it won't stop him from torturing someone to death for information. What is good and what is evil is all about perspective. I'll bet the family of my guys torture victim would see him as evil, but the people I rescued due to the knowledge gained would see me as a hero.
In the RPG I created, characters don't use alignment but "traits" and "purposes" as a base for the player to roleplay. Traits just show a face of they're personality that characterized them through a past event while purposes are a guideline to understand why they chose a life of adventure and what they really seek. This way a character might be an "accademic" human that is searching for "vengeance" against an old enemy. So he does never have the need to abide the rules but he should always be attracted by books and old knowledge and will alway seek justice on his own!
Not counting clerics and paladins. Seems to me that an evil PC can choose to play their characters as "good" for long periods of time when it selfishly benefits them. ("My character is pretending to be 'good' because he is evil and wants to use the good cleric as a healer") Good PCs on the other hand can not choose to be "evil" when it suits them even for the shortest amount of time. What is my motivation to ever pick a good alignment if as an evil person I can be nice, and nurturing, and caring...until that one day when I decide..."today is the day for my party treachery" and there is no negative consequence?
Mike, It all depends on your DM, your characters actions and their intentions. Here is how I view it and run it at my table and maybe you can glean something from it: An evil character can pay a sizeable tithe or donation to a local church who may worship a good deity. An evil character's intentions maybe to call a favor from the church at a later date, or somehow gain leverage from that church, rather than having the intention of donating to help the poor or sick. So long as it's for evil intentions or the character continues committing profane acts, the donation should be overlooked as a possible alignment shift. A good character may have a pure unadulterated hate for goblins, so when the group stumbles upon a goblin camp, and locates innocent goblin women and children, said character strikes them down without thinking. If his intentions were to kill the goblins just because, then that's murder and warrants a possible shift. However, if the character recognizes his mistake, and atones for said mistake, no alignment shift should be necessary. If a character is a repeat offender of their alignment (A website called Easy Damus has a list of "sins" for every alignment) and reaches a -10 on an alignment score then a shift is warranted. In both situations, a character acted in opposition to his alignment, but their intentions aligned with who they are, so their alignment shouldn't shift nor should there be alignment consequences. Characters should be fluid and can have moments outside of their alignment. This is called character development and should be encouraged. A character shouldn't be the same alignment from levels 1-20, but they shouldn't be switched alignments every session though either. That's my two cents.
I thought the same thing but then realized it would still work if the situation was reversed. A good PC could play as "evil" in order to survive under an empire for years but secretly helps the rebellion to overthrow evil overlord.
Mike Zimmerman because people remember your trechery.... Look at Game of Thrones, early seasons bad guys get ahead but in the later seasons find themselves with no allies and are having a harder time due to nobody wanting to sign up with dishonorable backstabbers.
In "Basic" D&D, Chaotic was originally "Evil" and Lawful was "Good". It's written right there in the original rules. It's not a misinterpretation, it's the way the alignment system was explicitly written. The two dimensions of alignment were introduced in "Advanced" D&D because DMs and players were observing that the original system didn't model how people approached morality very well. You could have a dastardly knight who was clearly "Lawful" (ie. followed some system of rules), but who was just as clearly evil. You could also have Thieves who robbed from the rich to give to the poor who was clearly "Chaotic" (ie. actively opposed rule-based systems of morality), but who was just as clearly good. Hence, an explicit Good/Evil axis was introduced into the alignment system. You guys are interpreting the Law/Chaos dichotomy in Basic in light of later editions.
One way I like to see the alignment system is not to tell your players to pick an alignment so there is no stress for them to act lawful or chaotic or evil or good. Instead I have them leave the spot blank on their character sheet and every time they make a major decision I make a note of how I felt it was handled from various viewpoints. Kind of like dragon age except rather than Lelliana approving of your actions it may be the Chantry and following off of that afterwards alignment is nothing more than how people see you
Alignment is a very gray situation and there should be some kind of visual for it. I'd make it a hollow ball or something round where there's a plethora of places throughout where your alignment can lie. Like you can be logically Chaotic Good, knowing that doing what you feel is right might not be the best action at the time, or illogical and go charging in to make a statement. You can be the illogical and stereotypical chaotic evil like Satine says and kill randomly, or you can be a cerebral and psychopathic character. Perspective is also a great point, someone could see themselves as a heroic and chaotic good character, only to find out what they've done is evil and have been played by an employer or patron.
Epic "GM us out of here." Satine, I'm also not a huge fan of alignment myself. True, there are ethics, morals, codes and traditions, but there are also experiences, genetic or learned behaviors, and even religious or cultural effects. Add possible magical, divine, infernal or sicknesses, and you have an alignment system that doesn't cover it. Other than the old TMNT game, Alignment exist in no other game (that I know of) for a reason. Thanks again, Satine. Always.
What matters is WHY your character does what he/she does (but taken from objective point of view, never from subjective one). Things you have mentioned can actually be covered by alignment system fairly easily when one knows how is it actually to be used (and how is it not to be used).
Great video :) I've never played D&D myself, but I've seen it played and have heard stories. I have done lots of live action roleplay, though, mostly as a kid/teenager. It was always so much fun to make characters with my cousin, younger brother, and sometimes some friends, and just let loose in a fantasy world we all agreed on the details of. In our longer games, it was interesting to see how our characters would change over time, some growing more noble, some revealing their true colors and only being out for themselves, backstabbing the team at some point. In one, probably our longest ran game (numerous sessions over multiple months), our characters would die off or go missing, and we'd quickly jump back in as a new character with completely different personality traits/quirks, who would become just as developed as our previous character(s).
Can you help me with this scenario? We happened to encounter an Imp that we captured and we had to decide what to do with him. the party decided to kill him because he was chaotic evil,but I opposed so much! being good meant respecting any life no matter what, while killing a helpless creature just because you think is right should be classified as evil. am I seeing this correctly? in this sense, being good means believe that people can change, even when the master itself says that they cannot.
I've occasionally been tempted to substitute Alignment with personality. I've found that 16personalities.com has a startlingly accurate, relatively simple model for classifying people's behavior. Totally helpful at work and with teams I coach. I've started to incorporate it into my writing and into NPC generation as a quick way to realistically define a character. if you are playing the way Satine describes, with a morally relativistic slant and less regard for alignment, it could be a pretty cool alternative way to establish what is "in-character" behavior.
I think lawful can be a lot more interesting than people make them seem. A lawful character doesn't have to follow each and every law, but his own set moral code
One of my characters is Chaotic Good. He means well and likes helping people. He follows the laws until it restricts him for doing what's right. Chaotic DOES NOT MEAN evil it just means he ignores laws. That also does not mean he does not follow them 100%. Your Chaotic character could still follow the law, until the law stops them from doing what they want. I find Chaotic Good being more of a rebellious character. Chaotic Good are people who want to help people no matter what. Well in my mind at least.
I also think that lawful and chaotic could also refer to character personality and their methods. A lawful evil villain may not care about the laws of society like a chaotic personality type, but may be lawful due to their use of organised military or slaves.
the ONLY role of alignment in DnD is to prevent min-maxers from breaking the game through dual classing. for example: Monk/Paladin Monk/Druid Paladin/Druid
The way I see it, all of my characters are true neutral until proven otherwise through in-game character development. (Also, it's a little too perfect that I started this comment with "the way I see it")
Got tired of this three minutes in. A friend of mine has a take on alignments that I agree with wholeheartedly because it accounts for different perspectives on morality, and it's really simple. In basic terms, Good/Evil inform what you do, Lawful/Chaotic inform why you do it. A good character will generally go out of their way to perform actions that benefit others at the expense of themselves. An evil character will generally go out of their way to perform actions that benefit themselves at the expense of others. It's not at all about attitude or outlook. After all, not all evil characters are murderers or psychopaths, and not all good characters are kind or respectful. A lawful character will often have their decisions influenced by the expectations of outside sources, such as law, religious doctrine, tradition, codes of conduct, or family expectations. A chaotic character's decisions will most often be based on their own moral compass. After all, a chaotic character does not necessarily oppose the rule of law if the laws make sense to them.
As far as Lawful Good goes, I don't see it as such a big problem. Even stickler Paladins make great distractions, and Lawful Goods can easily play Good Cop or Bad Cop in my opinion. And for the examples you gave? Is it really so crazy to think that a pally can see past petty offenses if it means taking out some big bad? If they need allies to take out Lord Soth, and they turn in their friends for jaywalking, they're not playing their alignment, they're just being assholes.
I view alignment not as the cause of a character's actions, but as a consequence of the way a character has been acting. It's ideals and beliefs that drive characters to act in whatever way they act and alignment describes how those ideals and beliefs are manifesting.
I agree with what you're saying Satine, great video as usual. (On a different note, I'm currently running a modified version of Storm King's Thunder, and the party have been taken prisoners by the Duke Zalto of Ironslag. And the party needs to escape with other prisoners in the vain of Prison Break. {I don't think that I've seen any campaigns really utilize this. If I'm wrong please let me know.} The catch is, all the parties gear has been taken, because why would you leave your prisoners Armored? What do you guys think?
Philip Hamel from experience there should be a way to get the party's gear as pretty much everyone I've played with gets annoyed or angry when they lose their stuff regardless of why it happens.
Why even bother with alignment? That's something I don't get about DnD. Create your character, come up with a nice and elaborated back story and then *roleplay.* It's as easy as that. And if you just want to hack and slash your way through dungeons... well, same thing: why even bother with alignment? Just roll some dice and have fun.
Alignments are important for some spells and items. What people usually don't understand is that alignments is supposed to describe how your character is roleplayed by you. Not other way around, they are not what determines who your character is, thats up to you, player. So yes, I agree, just make character and roleplay your character. Alignment should be description, nothing more, and should be result of how you have decided to roleplay your character. Its not supposed to get into way, telling people what they can or cannot do, although its often terribly misused in this way, and thats why alignments get so much hate.
Perhaps the game's need for role-play needs some tips. Like a part in a movie, it is what would THIS character that you play would do this or that, NOT you. Many people have played the role of Robin Hood in film, what is your version? Costner, Crow, Elwes.... they each had their interpretation.
I actually disagree with the Lawful good example given by Jason. This would be more of a Lawful Neutral. The Lawful Good would only turn their friend to justice if their action really hurt someone else. The lawful good doesn't only follow the rule, but balances out the good for people as well and would be more forgiving of mistakes, whyle Lawful Neutral would follow the law no matter what.
I ran a session where they encountered a cambion and after defeating it the paladin said he wanted the spear he use and I simply said "would your paladin really use the weapon of a demon?". When I finished something clicked in him and he said "I need to destroy this thing"
well, players are murder hobos in nature, so it's up to time and GM to see to it they play in their character. Whoever, many games "many" GMs run put you in a situation where acting upon your character's alignment/personality will get you killed. The game needs to be flexible and punish both good and bad intentions/acts if that's what happens, but reward them with good story moments in place of usual gold, loot. For example: having your character lose someone, lose a limb, lose a mind or something and recover from, evolving the character itself in some aspect is more rewarding than make the most obvious "right" decision from the start.
I want to make a Character whose lawful goodness has made them dangerous. Imagine a Paladin, Oath of Conquest, who will stop at nothing to establish law and goodness.
I think of this as the way you're raised in a family. Your alignment reflects how you were raised and your birth family's viewpoint instilled into you. It doesn't mean that you are necessarily going to follow those precepts all your life, because your viewpoint will inevitably change, but there will always be those ideals you were raised by in the back of your mind. This can cause internal conflict in a character, and make that character more interesting because of it.
Both of them are projecting their own values on to their descriptions of the Alignment system. The advice about talking about what it means in your game is important. The flow and change of alignment is also important. I really don't like the encouragement of the stereotype of Lawful Stupid.
I usually see the alignment system as a chart and the player is a sort of slider, so the player could be in the true neutral sector but be sliding towards the LG corner of that sector. (Think the custom colour sliders in microsoft paint)
This is exactly how I see it, too. Pure Good, for example, could be given a value of 100, pure Evil a value of -100, with pure Neutral being 0. On that scale, select where you want to be. Now, to make things simplified, let's call all numbers from -100 to -33 "Evil", -32 to +32 "Neutral" and +33 to +100 "Good". Now, a (Lawful) Good Paladin doesn't always have to sit at +100 Good, they could be +33 and still be "Good" but they realise that sometimes you can't be pure good all the time. This scale can, similarly, be applied to the Law/Chaos axis.
On the "a Lawful Good must rat on his friend" I disagree. I always see the Lawful Good as the Superman, he's not gonna say "Hey Luthor, fairness being important too me I have to tell you that Batman is sneaking up on you." Hell when Luthor was president he fight the authority because there's good in lawful good. I always see this alignement as fighting for justice not law and if the law is unjust or tyrannical it has to be confronted.
Just my opinion, but I would rather see less GM tips that are D&D specific, I don't run a D&D campaign I run hero system. there is no alignment in most other role-playing systems.
I don’t get the thing with Lawful Good and paladins. My party has a Chaotic Good paladin of Kord who just smashes things and drinks, but is a really recklessly good person
I liked the shifting alignment system from Dragonlance Adventures AD&D. It was influenced by player actions & reactions. Neat little game mechanic that Mass Effect & Fallout kinda use.
I like having alignment on a character sheet but not strict rules related to how that alignment plays out, instead I kinda prefer if it's just an indicator to my GM and for myself to go, my character is chaotic good and that's how we should expect her to behave but if the situation pushes her... she's willing to commit evil acts to protect the people she loves Chaotic Evil can have a family they love and are very kind to, lawful good can steal a holy relic from the merchant using it as a paperweight Alignment shouldn't be a cage but more like a general guideline... at least that's what I think ^.^
They always use a Lawful Good Paladin doing something evil as the example of alignment breaking. Nobody ever mentions Chaotic Evil Sorcerers saving puppies.
Alignment for me is always just a general guide for roll playing guide for those who are not as comfortable roll playing. So I scrap the mechanics. Even in Paladins, it makes no sense that a Paladin of a chaotic neutral god to be lawful good. So instead be the epitome of that God's ideals. Yes that means I could have a Barbarian mixed Monk, but then I expect you to have a good back story explaining how these two opposing doctrines coexist in one entity.
I can easily imagine chaotic entity to have lawful servants, carrying on their whims to the letter. Its weird, but can work in odd, yet understandable way.
If character believes that she has to follow her deity's orders because its her deity and thus should be obeyed as authority... I'd really say that such character really is lawful. The only way to make someone chaotic work for you is by force. So it depends on why do those servants think that their deity is to be followed. Because they just have to, but don't want to at all? Or because its their deity, and its just as it is supposed to be - its my god, my god says this, so I will do so, orders are to be followed. Someone may obviously argue that serving chaotic deity makes one chaotic. I'd say that making chaotic things for lawful purpouses still makes you lawful. Intentions (but brought to objective point of view) are what really matters. For the same reason executing weaponless prisoner may not be evil act. What if left alive, he'd surely escape (because he has some crazy escape abilities) and murder dozens of innocents? Its tough decision to make, but deciding to execute such person definitely is not an evil act - because of intentions behind it.
AmarothEng And you perfectly explained why regardless in the players are using alignments I as house rules remove the mechanical side of it As with your example that character by lawfully following their diety is now to many steps away from their deity's alignment to continue being a cleric with all their powers.
*Short answer:* Whatever he wants it to be. *Longer answer:* It really depends on why his character is a paladin of a deity that's mostly worshiped out of fear. Maybe because he wants to make sure people don't suffer bad luck, maybe because he enjoys scaring people, maybe just because he was raised to be a paladin of Beshaba and the whole "she's kinda evil" isn't even something the character has thought about because "be evil" was not a course in paladin college. :P TL;DR: The answer to the question "why does he want to be a paladin of Beshaba?" should give you an idea of his alignment. I hope that helped! :)
Alignment is also used by GMs a lot. Don't want to deal with certain things? Rather than make a list of 50 different things that the gm doesn't feel comfortable with, (s)he just says no evil characters. Alignment is also used by PLAYERs a lot. It gives the player a guideline to help with the RP. Also, chaotic evil doesn't mean kill indiscriminately, nor kill the party. The character isn't going to be stupid enough to piss off the party and create a 4v1 situation. Side note: Drizzt is white washed now?
If you like this video, you should check out Matt Colville's Alignment video. Basically, his take on it is that your alignment is a result of your character's actions. You don't have to make the 'lawful good' choice JUST BECAUSE that's what is written on your character sheet. You do what your character would do. But if your alignment is written as 'lawful good' and you start torturing people for information, you may want to change the alignment written on your sheet.
I agree to most of the things said although if you are experienced enough, I don't think that alignment becomes an hardship but more of a challenge. I had a player who is a irl LG playing a racist person in a fallout RPG game and he was enjoying himself quite a lot.
I always HATED alignment. At least the way we use to play it back in the day. Now I have ye to play 5E and I havent played DnD in years because for many reasons you will find GMTips "pit traps" for running a game. TO me alignments always meant straitjackets. "Your character would never do that!" the GM would say. In the yin and yang of it they would test your temperament with NPCs - on one hand testing your character but more so to test my patience. So I always opted for Chaotic Neutral because as a player I felt this was the most freeing way to play. Nope. Our GMs forbid any non good alignments. You HAVE to be of some kind of good. One GM described CN as being insane. I would have to roll randomly for what my character would do - thats how he felt CN should be. One of the many reasons I stopped playing DnD. So if youre new - or even old - take heed to GMTips by Geek and Sundry (Matt and Satine).
I strongly disagree with the internal alignment idea. In my opinion, alignment is simply based on what your character's actions are and not whats going on in his/her mind. For example: a character might think of himself as a rebel that does whatever he wants to do. But if he abides to rules and regulations (even those he thinks are unfounded or stupid) because he's too afraid of the reprecutions should he transgress the law; that makes him a Lawfull Neutral Character regardless of what he thinks.
Its not really about what your character does though, either. Killing baby is evil. Now is it? What if that baby is going to grow into demon which is going to kill thousands of people and is lost already? Is it still that evil to kill that baby? Its more about WHY your character does what he/she does, but those reasons need to be brought into objective light. What your character think in his/her head is indeed completely meaningless when it comes to determining an actual alignment. Noone considers himself to be evil. EDIT: Btw, acting out of fear has absolutely nothing to do with your alignment. By your logic, every single coward in world would be lawful. Thats not the case. Many goblins are cowards, yet they are chaotic. Chaotic person can be controlled - but usually only through strength and fear. You need to beat chaotic person into obedience. That doesn't turn him into lawful person, though, not as long as he wishes to be able to find way to get rid of you and live free and without rules and restrictions yet again.
The example you gave describes a run-of-the-mill goblin to a T. They're Chaotic Evil. They hate rules, want to revel in whatever they fancy but don't because of their own weakness and fear of the larger, more powerful creatures lording over them. Kobolds on the other hand are lawful because they gain comfort from being in a regimented system with a deliberate purpose. If fear is what motivates you, that isn't your nature.
What I meant that if a character abides the law all the time (out of fear or for any other reason), that makes him/her a lawfull character. Thats why only actions count in my opinion. A goblin will "respect" a more powerfull patron out of fear, but will enact great chaotic evil-ness to all that it considers below itself.
Remember last Superman? So is Zod lawfull Evil or Lawfull Good? Depends on perspective, really. So basicaly alignment system are always will be subjective and would not make any sense.
Oh! and to answer the question about the killing of babies ⊙﹏⊙ ... Killing an innocent is, in my opinion, an evil act regardless of context. Killing a demon, provided we assume that it is an embodiement of Evil, should be a good action. This just means that your character will have a couple of years to prevent the baby to become a demon or to prepare for the big fight! ^__^
Good video but I disagree with one thing, at a moment in the vid you said chaotic evil characters are selfish and care about themselves, what I more so imagine is that they will do anything they can to dissatisfy others, seeking revenge on the world for what happened to me knid of mentality, I think true neutral are more selfish because they have a balance of good and evil and will do whatever they can to further their aspirations, what do you think, sis that reasonable or am I misunderstanding
I feel like chaotic evil is more of a pain bringer. They relish inflicting suffering on others, justifying it through whatever means provide them the easiest out. Neutral Evil is more of the selfish path to me
I've found an Alignment system that I think works in my games pretty well. I use my characters alignment for things like boss fights where "only one who is pure of heart(good) may slay this creature!", or magic items that can only be used by those hoping to achieve mischief(chaotic), etc. The catch is my players don't know their alignment, they all start off unaligned and I secretly keep track of it without telling them what it is. My players like it, and I feel like their character become more interesting when they stop worrying about the alignment they wrote on their sheet. Plus it always adds some great drama when the hero can no longer swing his magic sword because he is no longer pure of heart.
cronos245 Well, in Dungeons and Dragons, alignment is specifically about the characters' places in the spectrums of individuality V. community (or the Wilds V. Urbanization, depending on the edition and DM) and Altruism V. Egotism. The whole planar system is designed around these ideas and types of magic comes from them. However, different cultures having different ideas (AYN RAND WOULD JUST LOVE MAGLUBIYET) and different definitions of evil and good is also a thing that's played around with in D&D, although the rules say 'gruumsh is evil' the majority of orcs disagree, seeing him as a valorous underdog, a wise leader who has carved a place for his people in the world where weaker gods could not have.
Simply put: if your ideals align with the Rakshasa's, I don't think you should get the extra damage on stabbing it.
This is a really good rule. I think for instant that in Fallout 3 it is so unfortunate that you get s prompt every time you make a good karma decision (or for the bad karma too). That means that you will note what gives you good karma and what does not. In real life that is not how it works. You just have to do your things and then see what kind of karma it comes with (if any). It would make the game so much more interesting to not know.
Not a fan of not knowing what my alignment would be.
I imagine lawful good as a Hermione. She wouldn't necessarily rat on her friends (unless they're being overtly bad for no good reason) but she would be disapproving.
I let my players go where they want with their alignment, but if I think that they are consistently straying from one alignment to another, I throw in a deliberate alignment test into the story. Example: I had a rogue player, chaotic Neutral who over time was consistently doing things for others instead of looking out for himself. So I created a scenario where he saw a very poor family barely scraping by and I made it a big deal, pulling on his heart strings. When he looted a large quantity of money shortly after, he passed by the house of the poor family again and he went and snuck some gold into their house. So I asked for his character sheet, crossed out Chaotic Nuetral and wrote in Chaotic Good.
The player never knew it was a test and there was no prompting to do the good deed. The family was something used to describe the desolate area of the City, but it was there the entire time and the player chose to return and sneak the money into their house. So it was an alignment test he didn't know was a test. (mind you I've done this at times and not changed the alignment at the end).
The good thing about this is that in the case of the rogue it really made the player stop and take stock of their character, everything he had been through and the journey that he had been on. Even when these trials don't end in alignment changes, it usually triggers the player to really stop and think about who their characters are. Most satisfying for me as a DM was that later that the night after we were done playing, the players sat around for two hours talking about everything that their characters had done, what they had gone through, who they were as people and what their characters meant to them outside of game. It was by far the most satisfying moment I've ever had as a DM.
I had a character whose whole life goal was to protect knowledge. My DM forgot that that was his life goal and sent us on a mission to destroy a realm of Forgotten knowledge. So my character became a "evil" character and joined the villains. But originally was lawful good, he only became seen as evil after he disagreed with the party
I always love Satine's enthusiasm and passion for Role-playing Games
So love the look she gives at the end.
The guests intro with the three basic alignments was my kind of brilliant. We have been using this unceasingly for decades. It is akin to the Pallidium's alignment system.
she NEEDS to be on an ep of critical role
Would kill for this. lol
Satine's reaction to the name revelation at the end is the cutest thing ever! Also, great episode, right on time for some lecturing on my own party muahahaahhah :D
I believe actions should determine alignment but alignment should not determine actions.
Our GM gives out alignment points. Good deed 10 good points, a heroic self sacrifice to save the party 25 lawful and 50 good, or if following the law for you own benefit 25 evil and 25 lawful, Tpk for the lolz? Pls don't.
Superb exploration about alignment. It should be organic and naturally flowing around the primary alignment, but flexible in certain encounters and challenges. All makes for good role playing.
I'm a huge fan of using alignment. The way I play it Lawful Good follows the spirit of the law, and will put the good of the group/community over the good of the law makers. The LG person recognizes that there are corrupt rulers and unjust laws. The Lawful Neutral person follows the letter of the law. The law may be unjust or unfair, but it is the law. Lawful Evil uses the law as a weapon. Using loopholes in the law; crafting laws to benefit themselves and their allies. However, if you beat them using their own rules they will submit to judgement and the penalty handed down. Etc.
I see it the same way, having an alignment to follow is part of the character experience. If you want to play a character and not yourself in a tabletop game, it works great to build on the attitude of the character. I have a Lawful Good Paladin that is all about protecting people no matter who they are, as long as they are capable of good they should be protected. She does believe that people who disrupt the order of her empire should be dealt with, however she refuses to kill unless necessary. Now, that isn't me, I personally love Chaotic Neutral that leans evil.
In my games I've been experimenting on replacing PC alignment with 2-3 moral/ethical "descriptors" that describe how a character tends to act in and view situations in as few words as possible. Like "greedy" "courageous" "defends the weak" "self-centered" or "protective of little brother." I try to occasionally introduce situations that taps into a character's descriptor - whether to the character's benefit or otherwise - and see what the player does. If they roleplay their descriptor, or roleplay trying to resist it, I might give some bonus XP or other reward. Depending on how they roleplayed it I might at some point allow them to change the descriptor. If they don't roleplay to it at all, they miss out on roleplay bonuses or I might even force some occasional Will saves. Eg. a "greedy" PC enters the treasure room first - she can pocket an extra gem or handful of coin herself (thus increasing her share and diminishing her allies') and risk causing intra-party tension if caught, or the player might request a Will save to resist the temptation because they are trying to overcome the fault. Or a "courageous" PC might put their friends in danger by refusing to run away from or surrender to a foe the party can't beat. I've found that 5e facilitates this well with the backgrounds and inspiration system.
That ending was amazing!!
Of all character I have ever known (outside of D&D) the one who I cannot begin to classify is Littlefinger from ASoIaF/GoT. The best estimate I could make with this system was actually Chaotic-Lawful. It's one of the reasons I stopped using the chart.
That was the best "GM us out of here" moment!
I was vile for my character when I got my soul taken out of my character. At first I didn't know what vile meant and then I realize it's evil times a billion. so we are in a blood and sands campaign ( gladiators ) and there is a riot because of the previous game got cancelled and the town's folk was pissed. Now the party was separated into gladitorial houses ( each house is determined by alignment). Some were to protect the town's folk but my house decide to reek utter havoc. My character was basically alone slaughtering woman and children and keeping there heads for "personal use" . I was caught by a religious order and then got decapitated killing my character.
Now as a new player I have problems with alignment with characters but I was pushed into new, and disqusting new avenues saw what alignment can actually help a player out sometimes. My gm and other players were applauding because I was successfully rping my character.
Also DON'T SELL YOUR SOUL UNLESS YOU GET SOMETHING OUT OF IT. Don't be like me and sell your soul so you can be proficent in posions!
queergaming Did this happen within the past few weeks? If it is I think I am in your game and if you are who was in my group you do deserve thumbs up for giving it 100%
You're conversation about Lawful Good and Paladins is exactly why I have avoided that alignment/class for many years. Now that I've played for awhile, I realize I can have fun with it as long as you have the right DM and they know what your intentions are. Get creative, be inspired and play outside your comfort zone! Because you never know what will happen. Thanks for the amazing video!!
That was the best GM us out moment yet.
Evil characters are more of an egoistic kind of people. It really does not involve a murderhobo-behavior by default.
A sole survivor of a village that was slaughtered, sworn to find enemy who did it may go far to achieve his goal, as well as a poor woman, destroyed by a loss of her child on a quest to find a way to resurrect him/her. They probably won't behave violently and spit poison at everyone they meet, but in those crucial moments of storyline will choose whatever benefits them more, going as far as needed to achieve fulfill their desires.
I really liked this spin on the alignments, totally agreed on how the invading a goblin home is basically just being a murdering thief ETC. It's also why I feel more sympathetic to mobs in Warcraft and other games.
NOOOO lawful does not mean that a person adheres to the law of the land. it means they have a set of rules or a code that they adhere to.
this is why a vengeance paladin can still be called lawful good. he doesnt have to follow the written law as long as he is true to his oath.
thisisthemeaning That's what they believe the alignment is. Each person has their own different interpretations of what each alignment stands for.
lawful good: battle medics. People who don't differenciate sides in a war, they just want to save lives.
neutral good: firemen. They mean to protect people, but if they have to tear down a building to stop the fire, they will, and they won't care what's left.
chaotic good: club bouncers. They're passive, but they're there to protect the place. If they have the slightest suspicion that a fight would break out, they'll rush in, without regards for collateral, and grab whomever is involved. Riot police, or bodyguards, works as well.
lawful neutral: referees. They can't take sides on a sports match, and they can't take responsibility for the well-being of the players, but they will protect the players, the team's staff, or the stadium if they believe there's reason for concern.
neutral: judges. Plain neutral. They have to abide by the law, only by evidence and testimony, they can't put own judgements into a case. If the winning party wins by finding a loophole in the established law, then loophole it is, even if their cause is flawed.
chaotic neutral: show hosts. Comedy entertainment, or dark humor, can be considered chaotic. Bashing everyone for their slip-offs or fails is their reason to be, even if it is offensive or out of place, but they don't personally mean it.
lawful evil: professional critics, or audition judges. They have their own set of standards, and they'll bash anyone who doesn't conform to that. They consider "not having what it takes" a sign of imperfection, and a waste of their time.
neutral evil: conmen or hustlers. They steal, but without hurting anyone aside from their intended marks, and only monetarily. They rely on robbing from big fish, who are the ones taking from the people, to balance out the act of systematically stealing.
chaotic evil: crime lords, or warlords. Self explainatory.
Nighthawk Reviewers are not "lawful evil," did you like Batman v Superman or something?
that'd be lawful neutral no?
+thisisthemeaning
Yep.
Members of thieves or assassins guilds for example are often lawful evil.
They don't follow the rules of society at large, but they rigorously observe the rules of their organisation.
Chaotic Evil, as always the Joker is prolly one of the best character to describe it...
"Wicked cool" She's from New England and I love it
nate the ninja9 A simple Google search proves this wrong
Alignment is a way of giving you a starting thought on who they are and how they interact with others. If it, or anything you are doing, causes trouble with the game you should rethink it. Alignment isn’t the end all be all of how to play your character. Just like picking your class or race it gives you something to draw from for role playing. That’s why you can change your alignment but in truth there are groups, races or organizations that want those restrictions because that’s the way they are. So use it for role playing and it will help.
Alignment's a weird thing. I avoid using it wherever possible, but I do tend to keep it on record in case a situation comes up where it'd be useful. The best part about alignment is breaking it, though. Lawful Neutral and Chaotic Good paladins work well in Good parties, but aren't typical paladins. Lawful bards can be really interesting, especially if they're flavoured as something other than a musician. Lawful or Neutral Good rogues can break the "irresponsible thief" type (Diath Woodrow comes to mind.) Good necromancers, lawful barbarians, evil clerics... they're good ways to make something unique.
Never liked alignments, and have spent some hours trying to revise the concept when it must be used. The one I'm most satisfied with is kinda like this: The chaotic-lawful axis measures impulsivity, dependability, reliability, predictability, that sort of stuff. You know, how much commitments, consequences, etc. matter in routine decision-making.
Then there's the good-evil-axis, which is a rough measure of how low the character can stoop. The problem I've always had with evil alignments is that it rips those characters of any positive characteristics; the capacity for love, compassion, charity, mercy, etc. It makes for really one-dimensional characters and cartoonish roleplaying. So what my scale does is it allows a character to have those capacities, but in a less rigorous manner; someone might be the kindest person to their relatives, while being an absolute monster to others. They could even be sincerely concerned for their loves ones, truly empathizing with them, and so forth. Or they might be a generally principled person devoted to justice and order, but sometimes employing extreme measures to maintain those principles. Etc.
That all said, I'd rather just not use alignments at all. They feel like a relic from a time when D&D was just about killing monsters and getting loot. I haven't seen such simplistic codes used in a lot of other games, and I think Palladium Books's system has a better implementation; they list a set of behaviors, such as "Will never betray an ally", "Might betray an ally for a good cause" or "Might betray a friend at a whim", or whatever, and then labels those sets as good, neutral or evil. It's also much more informative for the player, than simple "good" or "evil".
In the end, the rules should be there to facilitate the story or adventure. What's appropriate behavior for a character of a given personality is for humans to decide.
I often pick Evil as the alignment for my characters, and ironically, those characters often end up being the most level headed/reasonable and dependable members of the group, often being the pillar or even leader of the party, even having good PCs follow them!
Granted, that's because I view Evil as a mindset, not just actions.
You can be evil without doing evil, because remember, although you may spend your life saving people; if you could allow the world to be consumed by the fires of war to benefit your own personal glory should the situation be different, then you are an evil person, even if you have saved more people than you have killed.
If you care more about the king's reward for killing the dragon than the irrelevant villagers you saved by killing the beast, you're probably a bad person :p
Generally, pick Evil if you wanna be more free and take whatever options benefit yourself or the party the most.
D&D 3rd Ed's Book of Vile Darkness (other books might bring this up, too) says that evil isn't just about killing. If someone is corrupt, then they're evil. If the have dealings with Demons and Devils, they're evil. There's many ways to be evil than just killing. Like you said, promoting wars can be evil, even though you are not participating in them yourself.
An interesting point, but were you in one of my campaigns you would quickly find yourself simply neutral. I would argue that while it is fine for people to wish to do so to use their characters alignment as a guide, it is the sum of your actions that dictate your alignment, not the reverse. Intent matters for one's actions, but it is not all that matters, and if the sum of your actions combined with an intent as you stated here, you are a selfish person, maybe even a bad person, but an evil one? You are no more evil than a self-righteous, murderous zealot is good because he believes himself to be.
Twilightwyrm I disagree with how you run things, because honestly ethics as consequentialism gives the players very little control over their character sheet, as their alignment then becomes inevitably railroad paradoxed. (Trolley Problem-ed)
It also allows you to attach alignments to, say, a forest. Or an avalanche. Or a non-sentient axe. Things without the ability to make decisions suddenly having magically determinable juju put onto them because of something they did and had no control of seems very much against the practical uses of alignment.
twistedironpaw ignoring for the moment that the DMG specifically states that things with below 3 Int are neutral or have no alignment, I would generally agree with you, and were I adhering to a strictly consequentialist DMing paradigm these criticisms would be valid. Hence, why I specifically said that Intent does matter, just that it is not the only, or even primary, measure of moral consequence. Under this paradigm then, alignment is no more out of the player's hands than any other mutable aspect of their character. It means that the characters are morally culpable for their actions, and they do not get a free pass to dodge this culpability by writing evil or chaotic on their character sheet, as I suspect people might often do. Besides, if freedom of action is truly what you are after, is that not a more chaotic mindset than strictly evil one? And, more to the point, if you already know how you want to play the character, what does that character care where they end up in the ethical swing of things? Just play the character as you would, and see where you end up!
sounds a lot to me like you're writing "Evil" in your alignment block and then playing "Good". that's you NOT playing "evil", rather than "evil" proving "level headed and reasonable", and "worthy" of goodly followers. shootin' from the hip on that one, given only this one sentence of information to go on. if you could give more examples of how you worked the "evil" into it though, i think i would begin to doubt the claim of "level headed" and "reasonable". because evil acts tend to be very unreasonable and far from the actions that level headed people would take. again! just my two cents based on the little you gave to go on.
I mostly use alignment as a scale, like if you are Lawful Good sometimes you can stray to NG or LN but if you jump to full on Chaotic or Evil there is a problem.
Whenever I think about alignment, I think about how any person with any alignment could be either a hero or a villain. Look at Superman in Injustice, for example. He’s clearly a lawful good character who always does the right thing, and in Injustice he thinks the “right thing” is to become dictator of the world. On the opposite end of the spectrum, let’s look at Harley Quinn-being The Joker’s right-hand-woman, I think we can all agree that she’s Chaotic Evil. Yet multiple times she has fought The Joker and sometimes even teams up with Batman!
The way I handle alignment in my games is that all (with few exceptions) celestials, fiends and fey must act according to their alignments -- good, evil or neutral respectively. And all monsters -- which includes monstrosities, aberrations, undead, etc -- must act either evil or neutral. Other than that, all players, even NPCs, can choose to act against alignment, but if they do, they feel a twinge of conscience. And if they continue to act against alignment over and over again, they may start to take psychic damage. Or, if they so choose, they can change their alignment and relieve their conscience and take no psychic damage.
That sounds to me like you are kinds forcing players into doing what you want them to do, and it sounds like out of character mechanics without grounding in actual world. Have you considered simply letting them do whatever their characters would in their opinion do, and then come up with reasonable consequences of their actions - like being arrested and put into jail? Thats something what makes sense and can create great adventure in the end.
I don't know what your system really looks like in reality, maybe it works perfectly fine, just wanted to throw some suggestion.
It's actually meant to better model reality. In real life people have their own moral compasses, and whenever faced with a situation in which they are forced to compromise their personal ethics they will feel a twinge of conscience (like a mother having to choose between stealing a loaf of bread or letting her child starve). In such cases a person can either continue to go against their personal believes and be racked with guilt, shame and remorse (possibly spiraling into a mental breakdown), or they can decide to change their beliefs and learn to live with it (such as the mother who decides her child's life is more important than respecting property rights). This mechanic is meant to model that.
In my opinion, alignment is a descriptive role playing tool. It shouldn't be a restrictive punishment.
The main problem with alignment is that it often gets used as a shield to defend dickish behavior at the table, or stupid behavior. Alignment is a great tool for nailing down character motivation, but the reality is these are abstract subjective terms that need to be ironed out in session zero. What I like is simplifying things with objective core motivations instead of arguing over subjective and mutually exclusive definitions of things like good and lawful.
Good = Selfless
Evil = Selfish
Lawful = Dogmatic
Chaotic = Shameless
Neutral = Pragmatic
I 100% agree with what he was saying about it being so much more fun when you can just get into the adventure without being bogged down by overly complex rules. I started playing a long time ago, about the same time as he was talking about when those rules came in, so I had the experience. - Thank you for saying it for the benefit of others who may not have been around then!
Alignment doesn't limit the character and the roleplaying; the roleplaying and the character determine the alignment. Not all LG characters are "oh my god, you broke the law, you have to go to jail" and not all CE characters kick puppies and steal candy from small children. There are many mindsets and archetypes that fit in each alignment.
Another Jason here, played since the 80's too.
I once played in a Homebrew that was totally epic...how epic you may ask?
Nothing was "Level" appropriate.
Meaning that, some goblins were level 1 some could be level 8. Everything was that way, even NPC's. It was amazing. You really had to be careful who you started a fight with, because it may be your last.
I was curious...has anyone else tried this??
I have a character that I think is Chaotic Good. But to me, that just means he doesn't really care about laws, if he thinks he can stop some kind of villainy he will, and it won't stop him from torturing someone to death for information. What is good and what is evil is all about perspective. I'll bet the family of my guys torture victim would see him as evil, but the people I rescued due to the knowledge gained would see me as a hero.
Would kill to see Jason play D&D as Sundowner
Lawful - Chaotic = Ethics
Good - Evil = Morals
In the RPG I created, characters don't use alignment but "traits" and "purposes" as a base for the player to roleplay. Traits just show a face of they're personality that characterized them through a past event while purposes are a guideline to understand why they chose a life of adventure and what they really seek. This way a character might be an "accademic" human that is searching for "vengeance" against an old enemy. So he does never have the need to abide the rules but he should always be attracted by books and old knowledge and will alway seek justice on his own!
Not counting clerics and paladins.
Seems to me that an evil PC can choose to play their characters as "good" for long periods of time when it selfishly benefits them. ("My character is pretending to be 'good' because he is evil and wants to use the good cleric as a healer")
Good PCs on the other hand can not choose to be "evil" when it suits them even for the shortest amount of time. What is my motivation to ever pick a good alignment if as an evil person I can be nice, and nurturing, and caring...until that one day when I decide..."today is the day for my party treachery" and there is no negative consequence?
Mike Zimmerman None. That's why being Evil is good, and being Good is Stupid.
That goes for real life as well.
Mike,
It all depends on your DM, your characters actions and their intentions.
Here is how I view it and run it at my table and maybe you can glean something from it:
An evil character can pay a sizeable tithe or donation to a local church who may worship a good deity. An evil character's intentions maybe to call a favor from the church at a later date, or somehow gain leverage from that church, rather than having the intention of donating to help the poor or sick. So long as it's for evil intentions or the character continues committing profane acts, the donation should be overlooked as a possible alignment shift.
A good character may have a pure unadulterated hate for goblins, so when the group stumbles upon a goblin camp, and locates innocent goblin women and children, said character strikes them down without thinking. If his intentions were to kill the goblins just because, then that's murder and warrants a possible shift. However, if the character recognizes his mistake, and atones for said mistake, no alignment shift should be necessary.
If a character is a repeat offender of their alignment (A website called Easy Damus has a list of "sins" for every alignment) and reaches a -10 on an alignment score then a shift is warranted.
In both situations, a character acted in opposition to his alignment, but their intentions aligned with who they are, so their alignment shouldn't shift nor should there be alignment consequences. Characters should be fluid and can have moments outside of their alignment. This is called character development and should be encouraged. A character shouldn't be the same alignment from levels 1-20, but they shouldn't be switched alignments every session though either.
That's my two cents.
I thought the same thing but then realized it would still work if the situation was reversed. A good PC could play as "evil" in order to survive under an empire for years but secretly helps the rebellion to overthrow evil overlord.
Mike Zimmerman because people remember your trechery....
Look at Game of Thrones, early seasons bad guys get ahead but in the later seasons find themselves with no allies and are having a harder time due to nobody wanting to sign up with dishonorable backstabbers.
and that PC's name was Galen Erso
In "Basic" D&D, Chaotic was originally "Evil" and Lawful was "Good". It's written right there in the original rules. It's not a misinterpretation, it's the way the alignment system was explicitly written.
The two dimensions of alignment were introduced in "Advanced" D&D because DMs and players were observing that the original system didn't model how people approached morality very well. You could have a dastardly knight who was clearly "Lawful" (ie. followed some system of rules), but who was just as clearly evil. You could also have Thieves who robbed from the rich to give to the poor who was clearly "Chaotic" (ie. actively opposed rule-based systems of morality), but who was just as clearly good.
Hence, an explicit Good/Evil axis was introduced into the alignment system.
You guys are interpreting the Law/Chaos dichotomy in Basic in light of later editions.
One way I like to see the alignment system is not to tell your players to pick an alignment so there is no stress for them to act lawful or chaotic or evil or good. Instead I have them leave the spot blank on their character sheet and every time they make a major decision I make a note of how I felt it was handled from various viewpoints. Kind of like dragon age except rather than Lelliana approving of your actions it may be the Chantry and following off of that afterwards alignment is nothing more than how people see you
Alignment is a very gray situation and there should be some kind of visual for it. I'd make it a hollow ball or something round where there's a plethora of places throughout where your alignment can lie. Like you can be logically Chaotic Good, knowing that doing what you feel is right might not be the best action at the time, or illogical and go charging in to make a statement. You can be the illogical and stereotypical chaotic evil like Satine says and kill randomly, or you can be a cerebral and psychopathic character.
Perspective is also a great point, someone could see themselves as a heroic and chaotic good character, only to find out what they've done is evil and have been played by an employer or patron.
Epic "GM us out of here."
Satine, I'm also not a huge fan of alignment myself. True, there are ethics, morals, codes and traditions, but there are also experiences, genetic or learned behaviors, and even religious or cultural effects. Add possible magical, divine, infernal or sicknesses, and you have an alignment system that doesn't cover it.
Other than the old TMNT game, Alignment exist in no other game (that I know of) for a reason.
Thanks again, Satine. Always.
What matters is WHY your character does what he/she does (but taken from objective point of view, never from subjective one). Things you have mentioned can actually be covered by alignment system fairly easily when one knows how is it actually to be used (and how is it not to be used).
How would protection spells or any alignment spells work?
Great video :) I've never played D&D myself, but I've seen it played and have heard stories. I have done lots of live action roleplay, though, mostly as a kid/teenager. It was always so much fun to make characters with my cousin, younger brother, and sometimes some friends, and just let loose in a fantasy world we all agreed on the details of. In our longer games, it was interesting to see how our characters would change over time, some growing more noble, some revealing their true colors and only being out for themselves, backstabbing the team at some point. In one, probably our longest ran game (numerous sessions over multiple months), our characters would die off or go missing, and we'd quickly jump back in as a new character with completely different personality traits/quirks, who would become just as developed as our previous character(s).
Chaotic evil chracters are trolls that sometimes get shanked by their teammates.
Can you help me with this scenario?
We happened to encounter an Imp that we captured and we had to decide what to do with him. the party decided to kill him because he was chaotic evil,but I opposed so much! being good meant respecting any life no matter what, while killing a helpless creature just because you think is right should be classified as evil. am I seeing this correctly?
in this sense, being good means believe that people can change, even when the master itself says that they cannot.
Damn great GM out!
Satine probably helped write Game of Thrones last ep. Change doesnt always happen, or need to, or is good.
I've occasionally been tempted to substitute Alignment with personality. I've found that 16personalities.com has a startlingly accurate, relatively simple model for classifying people's behavior. Totally helpful at work and with teams I coach. I've started to incorporate it into my writing and into NPC generation as a quick way to realistically define a character. if you are playing the way Satine describes, with a morally relativistic slant and less regard for alignment, it could be a pretty cool alternative way to establish what is "in-character" behavior.
That Fantasy Gamer magazine has a picture of Menoly of Pern on the cover!
Dragonsong and Dragonsinger were my favorite books growing up.
Me too! I think that's why I bought it.
I think lawful can be a lot more interesting than people make them seem.
A lawful character doesn't have to follow each and every law, but his own set moral code
One of my characters is Chaotic Good. He means well and likes helping people. He follows the laws until it restricts him for doing what's right. Chaotic DOES NOT MEAN evil it just means he ignores laws. That also does not mean he does not follow them 100%. Your Chaotic character could still follow the law, until the law stops them from doing what they want. I find Chaotic Good being more of a rebellious character. Chaotic Good are people who want to help people no matter what. Well in my mind at least.
No he is a Half Dragon Half Goliath who wants glory. Also Batman does not kill... I do.
I also think that lawful and chaotic could also refer to character personality and their methods. A lawful evil villain may not care about the laws of society like a chaotic personality type, but may be lawful due to their use of organised military or slaves.
When I think of Lawful Evil I think about corrupted Officials.
thats lawful evil in a good area but devils are also lawful evil. you just follow the laws while getting everything you can out of them
the ONLY role of alignment in DnD is to prevent min-maxers from breaking the game through dual classing.
for example:
Monk/Paladin
Monk/Druid
Paladin/Druid
I thought the voice of Drizzt Do'Urden was Victor Bevine. Where does this guy do the voice of Drizzt?
Best "DM Us Outta Here" ever!!! Great ending!!
The way I see it, all of my characters are true neutral until proven otherwise through in-game character development.
(Also, it's a little too perfect that I started this comment with "the way I see it")
#asksatine How can a GM make an NPC liked by the players?
Our post-modern world struggles with the alignment system. ;)
I love how excited Satine gets with everything shes so cute
Got tired of this three minutes in. A friend of mine has a take on alignments that I agree with wholeheartedly because it accounts for different perspectives on morality, and it's really simple. In basic terms, Good/Evil inform what you do, Lawful/Chaotic inform why you do it.
A good character will generally go out of their way to perform actions that benefit others at the expense of themselves. An evil character will generally go out of their way to perform actions that benefit themselves at the expense of others. It's not at all about attitude or outlook. After all, not all evil characters are murderers or psychopaths, and not all good characters are kind or respectful.
A lawful character will often have their decisions influenced by the expectations of outside sources, such as law, religious doctrine, tradition, codes of conduct, or family expectations. A chaotic character's decisions will most often be based on their own moral compass. After all, a chaotic character does not necessarily oppose the rule of law if the laws make sense to them.
Awesome explanation! Thank you!
As far as Lawful Good goes, I don't see it as such a big problem. Even stickler Paladins make great distractions, and Lawful Goods can easily play Good Cop or Bad Cop in my opinion. And for the examples you gave? Is it really so crazy to think that a pally can see past petty offenses if it means taking out some big bad? If they need allies to take out Lord Soth, and they turn in their friends for jaywalking, they're not playing their alignment, they're just being assholes.
I view alignment not as the cause of a character's actions, but as a consequence of the way a character has been acting. It's ideals and beliefs that drive characters to act in whatever way they act and alignment describes how those ideals and beliefs are manifesting.
I agree with what you're saying Satine, great video as usual.
(On a different note, I'm currently running a modified version of Storm King's Thunder, and the party have been taken prisoners by the Duke Zalto of Ironslag. And the party needs to escape with other prisoners in the vain of Prison Break. {I don't think that I've seen any campaigns really utilize this. If I'm wrong please let me know.} The catch is, all the parties gear has been taken, because why would you leave your prisoners Armored? What do you guys think?
Philip Hamel cool
Ayden Sauvageau thank you. I appreciate that.
Philip Hamel I tried a similar thing I would recommend taking their caricter sheet and make a new one without the gear
Ayden Sauvageau that I will.
Philip Hamel from experience there should be a way to get the party's gear as pretty much everyone I've played with gets annoyed or angry when they lose their stuff regardless of why it happens.
I always thought the whole alignment thing was more about role-play.
Still: great beard.
Why even bother with alignment? That's something I don't get about DnD.
Create your character, come up with a nice and elaborated back story and then *roleplay.* It's as easy as that.
And if you just want to hack and slash your way through dungeons... well, same thing: why even bother with alignment? Just roll some dice and have fun.
Max Spleenripper There are certain spells for example which doesn't affect certain alignments
Alignments are important for some spells and items. What people usually don't understand is that alignments is supposed to describe how your character is roleplayed by you. Not other way around, they are not what determines who your character is, thats up to you, player. So yes, I agree, just make character and roleplay your character. Alignment should be description, nothing more, and should be result of how you have decided to roleplay your character. Its not supposed to get into way, telling people what they can or cannot do, although its often terribly misused in this way, and thats why alignments get so much hate.
Perhaps the game's need for role-play needs some tips. Like a part in a movie, it is what would THIS character that you play would do this or that, NOT you. Many people have played the role of Robin Hood in film, what is your version? Costner, Crow, Elwes.... they each had their interpretation.
I actually disagree with the Lawful good example given by Jason. This would be more of a Lawful Neutral. The Lawful Good would only turn their friend to justice if their action really hurt someone else. The lawful good doesn't only follow the rule, but balances out the good for people as well and would be more forgiving of mistakes, whyle Lawful Neutral would follow the law no matter what.
I ran a session where they encountered a cambion and after defeating it the paladin said he wanted the spear he use and I simply said "would your paladin really use the weapon of a demon?". When I finished something clicked in him and he said "I need to destroy this thing"
well, players are murder hobos in nature, so it's up to time and GM to see to it they play in their character. Whoever, many games "many" GMs run put you in a situation where acting upon your character's alignment/personality will get you killed. The game needs to be flexible and punish both good and bad intentions/acts if that's what happens, but reward them with good story moments in place of usual gold, loot. For example: having your character lose someone, lose a limb, lose a mind or something and recover from, evolving the character itself in some aspect is more rewarding than make the most obvious "right" decision from the start.
I want to make a Character whose lawful goodness has made them dangerous. Imagine a Paladin, Oath of Conquest, who will stop at nothing to establish law and goodness.
His Word is Law and if you cross him he'll end you but ultimately his goal is good
I guess this would be Lawful good
I think of this as the way you're raised in a family. Your alignment reflects how you were raised and your birth family's viewpoint instilled into you. It doesn't mean that you are necessarily going to follow those precepts all your life, because your viewpoint will inevitably change, but there will always be those ideals you were raised by in the back of your mind. This can cause internal conflict in a character, and make that character more interesting because of it.
I have never not watched a video this hard except maybe that one about adding a 'looks' score to the six ability scores.
Both of them are projecting their own values on to their descriptions of the Alignment system. The advice about talking about what it means in your game is important. The flow and change of alignment is also important. I really don't like the encouragement of the stereotype of Lawful Stupid.
I usually see the alignment system as a chart and the player is a sort of slider, so the player could be in the true neutral sector but be sliding towards the LG corner of that sector. (Think the custom colour sliders in microsoft paint)
This is exactly how I see it, too. Pure Good, for example, could be given a value of 100, pure Evil a value of -100, with pure Neutral being 0. On that scale, select where you want to be. Now, to make things simplified, let's call all numbers from -100 to -33 "Evil", -32 to +32 "Neutral" and +33 to +100 "Good". Now, a (Lawful) Good Paladin doesn't always have to sit at +100 Good, they could be +33 and still be "Good" but they realise that sometimes you can't be pure good all the time. This scale can, similarly, be applied to the Law/Chaos axis.
Evil quest givers: Abercrombie the embalmer.
On the "a Lawful Good must rat on his friend" I disagree. I always see the Lawful Good as the Superman, he's not gonna say "Hey Luthor, fairness being important too me I have to tell you that Batman is sneaking up on you." Hell when Luthor was president he fight the authority because there's good in lawful good. I always see this alignement as fighting for justice not law and if the law is unjust or tyrannical it has to be confronted.
Just my opinion, but I would rather see less GM tips that are D&D specific, I don't run a D&D campaign I run hero system. there is no alignment in most other role-playing systems.
I love Satin! She is amazing.
I use Alignment as a guide line or a tool for roleplaying. It's a great way to try and summarize a PCs, or and NPCs, motivations.
If you don't use alignments then how do you handle paladins and smite?
I don’t get the thing with Lawful Good and paladins. My party has a Chaotic Good paladin of Kord who just smashes things and drinks, but is a really recklessly good person
I liked the shifting alignment system from Dragonlance Adventures AD&D. It was influenced by player actions & reactions. Neat little game mechanic that Mass Effect & Fallout kinda use.
they are so dam close together lol
Am I the only one that thought origin of the name Godhead was going to be something dirty. Hey god needs loving also.
GM us out A+
I like having alignment on a character sheet but not strict rules related to how that alignment plays out, instead I kinda prefer if it's just an indicator to my GM and for myself to go, my character is chaotic good and that's how we should expect her to behave but if the situation pushes her... she's willing to commit evil acts to protect the people she loves
Chaotic Evil can have a family they love and are very kind to, lawful good can steal a holy relic from the merchant using it as a paperweight
Alignment shouldn't be a cage but more like a general guideline... at least that's what I think ^.^
They always use a Lawful Good Paladin doing something evil as the example of alignment breaking. Nobody ever mentions Chaotic Evil Sorcerers saving puppies.
We are basically gods..
WHO SENT YOU?
is it just me or does Jason Charles Miller sound a lot like Mark Hamill??
Alignment for me is always just a general guide for roll playing guide for those who are not as comfortable roll playing. So I scrap the mechanics. Even in Paladins, it makes no sense that a Paladin of a chaotic neutral god to be lawful good. So instead be the epitome of that God's ideals. Yes that means I could have a Barbarian mixed Monk, but then I expect you to have a good back story explaining how these two opposing doctrines coexist in one entity.
I can easily imagine chaotic entity to have lawful servants, carrying on their whims to the letter. Its weird, but can work in odd, yet understandable way.
AmarothEng Yes completely then you have to ask if the character is chaotic but acting by the law of their deity are they lawful or chaotic?
If character believes that she has to follow her deity's orders because its her deity and thus should be obeyed as authority... I'd really say that such character really is lawful. The only way to make someone chaotic work for you is by force. So it depends on why do those servants think that their deity is to be followed. Because they just have to, but don't want to at all? Or because its their deity, and its just as it is supposed to be - its my god, my god says this, so I will do so, orders are to be followed.
Someone may obviously argue that serving chaotic deity makes one chaotic. I'd say that making chaotic things for lawful purpouses still makes you lawful. Intentions (but brought to objective point of view) are what really matters. For the same reason executing weaponless prisoner may not be evil act. What if left alive, he'd surely escape (because he has some crazy escape abilities) and murder dozens of innocents? Its tough decision to make, but deciding to execute such person definitely is not an evil act - because of intentions behind it.
AmarothEng And you perfectly explained why regardless in the players are using alignments I as house rules remove the mechanical side of it As with your example that character by lawfully following their diety is now to many steps away from their deity's alignment to continue being a cleric with all their powers.
My players wants to be a paladin of Beshaba from Forgotten Realms, what's his alignment?
*Short answer:* Whatever he wants it to be.
*Longer answer:* It really depends on why his character is a paladin of a deity that's mostly worshiped out of fear. Maybe because he wants to make sure people don't suffer bad luck, maybe because he enjoys scaring people, maybe just because he was raised to be a paladin of Beshaba and the whole "she's kinda evil" isn't even something the character has thought about because "be evil" was not a course in paladin college. :P
TL;DR: The answer to the question "why does he want to be a paladin of Beshaba?" should give you an idea of his alignment. I hope that helped! :)
Alignment is also used by GMs a lot. Don't want to deal with certain things? Rather than make a list of 50 different things that the gm doesn't feel comfortable with, (s)he just says no evil characters.
Alignment is also used by PLAYERs a lot. It gives the player a guideline to help with the RP. Also, chaotic evil doesn't mean kill indiscriminately, nor kill the party. The character isn't going to be stupid enough to piss off the party and create a 4v1 situation.
Side note: Drizzt is white washed now?
If you like this video, you should check out Matt Colville's Alignment video. Basically, his take on it is that your alignment is a result of your character's actions. You don't have to make the 'lawful good' choice JUST BECAUSE that's what is written on your character sheet. You do what your character would do. But if your alignment is written as 'lawful good' and you start torturing people for information, you may want to change the alignment written on your sheet.
I agree to most of the things said although if you are experienced enough, I don't think that alignment becomes an hardship but more of a challenge. I had a player who is a irl LG playing a racist person in a fallout RPG game and he was enjoying himself quite a lot.
I always HATED alignment. At least the way we use to play it back in the day. Now I have ye to play 5E and I havent played DnD in years because for many reasons you will find GMTips "pit traps" for running a game. TO me alignments always meant straitjackets. "Your character would never do that!" the GM would say. In the yin and yang of it they would test your temperament with NPCs - on one hand testing your character but more so to test my patience. So I always opted for Chaotic Neutral because as a player I felt this was the most freeing way to play. Nope. Our GMs forbid any non good alignments. You HAVE to be of some kind of good. One GM described CN as being insane. I would have to roll randomly for what my character would do - thats how he felt CN should be. One of the many reasons I stopped playing DnD. So if youre new - or even old - take heed to GMTips by Geek and Sundry (Matt and Satine).
A lot of tabletop youtubers posting alignment videos recently
I strongly disagree with the internal alignment idea. In my opinion, alignment is simply based on what your character's actions are and not whats going on in his/her mind.
For example: a character might think of himself as a rebel that does whatever he wants to do. But if he abides to rules and regulations (even those he thinks are unfounded or stupid) because he's too afraid of the reprecutions should he transgress the law; that makes him a Lawfull Neutral Character regardless of what he thinks.
Its not really about what your character does though, either. Killing baby is evil. Now is it? What if that baby is going to grow into demon which is going to kill thousands of people and is lost already? Is it still that evil to kill that baby?
Its more about WHY your character does what he/she does, but those reasons need to be brought into objective light. What your character think in his/her head is indeed completely meaningless when it comes to determining an actual alignment. Noone considers himself to be evil.
EDIT: Btw, acting out of fear has absolutely nothing to do with your alignment. By your logic, every single coward in world would be lawful. Thats not the case. Many goblins are cowards, yet they are chaotic. Chaotic person can be controlled - but usually only through strength and fear. You need to beat chaotic person into obedience. That doesn't turn him into lawful person, though, not as long as he wishes to be able to find way to get rid of you and live free and without rules and restrictions yet again.
The example you gave describes a run-of-the-mill goblin to a T. They're Chaotic Evil. They hate rules, want to revel in whatever they fancy but don't because of their own weakness and fear of the larger, more powerful creatures lording over them.
Kobolds on the other hand are lawful because they gain comfort from being in a regimented system with a deliberate purpose.
If fear is what motivates you, that isn't your nature.
What I meant that if a character abides the law all the time (out of fear or for any other reason), that makes him/her a lawfull character. Thats why only actions count in my opinion. A goblin will "respect" a more powerfull patron out of fear, but will enact great chaotic evil-ness to all that it considers below itself.
Remember last Superman? So is Zod lawfull Evil or Lawfull Good? Depends on perspective, really. So basicaly alignment system are always will be subjective and would not make any sense.
Oh! and to answer the question about the killing of babies ⊙﹏⊙ ... Killing an innocent is, in my opinion, an evil act regardless of context. Killing a demon, provided we assume that it is an embodiement of Evil, should be a good action.
This just means that your character will have a couple of years to prevent the baby to become a demon or to prepare for the big fight! ^__^
Good video but I disagree with one thing, at a moment in the vid you said chaotic evil characters are selfish and care about themselves, what I more so imagine is that they will do anything they can to dissatisfy others, seeking revenge on the world for what happened to me knid of mentality, I think true neutral are more selfish because they have a balance of good and evil and will do whatever they can to further their aspirations, what do you think, sis that reasonable or am I misunderstanding
I feel like chaotic evil is more of a pain bringer. They relish inflicting suffering on others, justifying it through whatever means provide them the easiest out. Neutral Evil is more of the selfish path to me