So I read there is now:
Good
Evil
Unaligned (True Neutral)
Lawful Good
Chaotic Evil
HUH!?
I don't understand. I though they got rid of the "Law-Chaos" philosophy (which was dumb) but they included it anyway and only LG and CE?
That doesn't make sense. Why isn't there LE, CG, just plain Lawful or Chaotic? Are they saying you can't be Lawful Evil or Chaotic Good? That you can't just be plain Lawful or plain Chaotic?
Makes no sense.
If they stick to their guns on this issue, say goodbye to Slaads (probably CE now, the fools) Formians, Modrons, Inevitables and anything regarding the philosophies of Law and Chaos. Which makes no sense to me, maybe it might to someone else.
I'd love to see their half-hearted reasoning on why there's no LE and CG. They're going to end up contradicting themselves no matter what they say considering the existence of LG and CE in 4E.
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So I read there is now:
Good
Evil
Unaligned (True Neutral)
Lawful Good
Chaotic EvilMakes no sense.
I'd love to see their half-hearted reasoning on why there's no LE and CG. They're going to end up contradicting themselves no matter what they say considering the existence of LG and CE in 4E.
hmmm... copy and paste from WarHamster ?
not enough page count, so they had to trim the extras, but they will come back come 5e ?
no wait, are they not planned for the PHB 3 ?
Anyways, this does not impact me that much ... since I was largely ignoring them, except for background effects and Planescape backgrounds (that i can use without alignments).
Unaligned is different from True Neutral, but otherwise your list seems correct. Note however that the Law vs Chaos angle does seem to have been dropped in favor of a God vs Primal (or possibly Creation vs Destruction) aspect of things.
The new alignments, while having the same names, are described slightly differently, and no longer mean the same things. More generally, CG has been subsumed into G and LE has been subsumed into E.
Of course since most (possibly all) mechanical affects of alignment have been stripped away, I'm not sure there is really any reason to use alignment at all. But I guess we'll know for sure in about two weeks.
Cheers! :)
I removed alignments from my 3.5 campaign completely and it has gone quite well so far.
Can't see them being a big deal for 4e, which I am still salivating to get my hands on.
Here is their "half-hearted reasoning":
Also, can someone who thinks he or she doesn't like the alignment system tell me where the line is between neutral good and chaotic good? Lawful evil and neutral evil? I have a hard time drawing those lines definitively.
I have a pretty much neutral opinion about the issue. Like Pop and Stereofm, I'm ignoring alignments for a very long time so it doesn't make any difference to me.
I think the change was made because it seems that the old alignment system is confusing to new players, which aren't accostumed to the "Law vs. Chaos" thing. I have to agree on this point. I and my former comrades spend our first 5 years of D&D discussing what was the difference between the three "evil" alignments without any consensus.
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Hi Razz! It's always so refreshing to see a post from you here in the 4E boards. :-) Keep up the fight!
Think of this as 5 points on a line, with Neutral in the middle.
LG G N E CE
LG/CE are the extremes, both in beliefs and in behavior. The 3 in the middle are a bit more "fuzzy" and what most folks gravitate to.. (both in the game in real life, actually).
Of course, you can always just include the old alignments if you want.
LG = LG
G = CG/NG
N = LN/N/CN
E = LE/NE
CE = CE
Pete
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I like the new system though I would prefer alignment to disappear altogether.
The new system creates a single continuum with two extremes:
LG --- G --- UN --- E --- CE
Alignment can now be placed on a scale and hopefully there will be grey areas between the points along the line. It will allow for a lot more relativism.
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I like the new system though I would prefer alignment to disappear altogether.
The new system creates a single continuum with two extremes:
LG --- G --- UN --- E --- CE
Alignment can now be placed on a scale and hopefully there will be grey areas between the points along the line. It will allow for a lot more relativism.
The proble I have with this simpler system:
Where does Lawful/Chaotic start?
And how to define beings that, in the old days, had LE (Asmodeus & his Devils) or CG alignments?
Is LG more good than simply good and CE more evil than E?
Or is it the more the Morcock definition with the Chaos versus Law angle? In that case LG is a sign of stagnation and un-change while Chaos would be ever-change.
Or, if CE is ultimate destruction, can LG be creation?
My old shool alignment mind is confused.
I like the new system though I would prefer alignment to disappear altogether.
The new system creates a single continuum with two extremes:
LG --- G --- UN --- E --- CE
Alignment can now be placed on a scale and hopefully there will be grey areas between the points along the line. It will allow for a lot more relativism.
The proble I have with this simpler system:
Where does Lawful/Chaotic start?
And how to define beings that, in the old days, had LE (Asmodeus & his Devils) or CG alignments?
Is LG more good than simply good and CE more evil than E?
Or is it the more the Morcock definition with the Chaos versus Law angle? In that case LG is a sign of stagnation and un-change while Chaos would be ever-change.
Or, if CE is ultimate destruction, can LG be creation?My old shool alignment mind is confused.
I'm 91% sure that "Lawful Good" and "Chaotic Evil" have different meanings than before.
On previous editions, "Lawful" was associated with discipline, organization, respect to authority, and loyalty. "Chaotic", was, well, the opposite of it.
On 4E, Demons are chaotic evil and yes, they are undisciplined, unorganized, rebel and unreliable. However, Archons are also chaotic evil, but they are disciplined, organized, obedient, and loyal.
The only thing we know is that the Primordials - and most beings associated with them - are chaotic evil. This gives me the impression that "chaotic evil" on 4E, rather than "unorganized evil",means "disruptive, destructive, cruel evil", which is clearly different, even for a D&D newbie, from the more common "selfish evil".
So, chaotic evil beings aren't particularly concerned with wealth, power, or even their well-beign. They desire to destroy, to kill, to torture because they have pleasure or unsatiable drive to do so - not because they believe they will gain something by doing that.
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I'm just glad to see that things are so hopeful for the continuing debate over the definitions of alignments under 4e. :D
Well, to further please you I keep th thread going!
I'm 91% sure that "Lawful Good" and "Chaotic Evil" have different meanings than before.
On previous editions, "Lawful" was associated with discipline, organization, respect to authority, and loyalty. "Chaotic", was, well, the opposite of it.
On 4E, Demons are chaotic evil and yes, they are undisciplined, unorganized, rebel and unreliable. However, Archons are also chaotic evil, but they are disciplined, organized, obedient, and loyal.
The only thing we know is that the Primordials - and most beings associated with them - are chaotic evil. This gives me the impression that "chaotic evil" on 4E, rather than "unorganized evil",means "disruptive, destructive, cruel evil", which is clearly different, even for a D&D newbie, from the more common "selfish evil".
So, chaotic evil beings aren't particularly concerned with wealth, power, or even their well-beign. They desire to destroy, to kill, to torture because they have pleasure or unsatiable drive to do so - not because they believe they will gain something by doing that.
That explanation makes sense.
I'd imagine that we'd see slaads, modrons, formians and inevitables as unaligned. Unaligned seems to be the place for creatures that follow their own philosophy, but don't necessarily do so in a good or evil way.
I'm pretty ambivalent towards the alignment change. But, while I'm talking about it, what's with slaads anyways? The PHB says that chaotic-aligned creatures are all about freedom, but I'm not really seeing that in the slaads. In fact, since a lot of their abilities are focused on killing, infecting and implanting other sentient beings, it's not really a stretch to say that, by the alignment definitions, they're actually evil.
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The proble I have with this simpler system:
Where does Lawful/Chaotic start?
They are the extremists on the continuum so the more dedicated an individual is to E or G the more likely they are to be CE or LG
And how to define beings that, in the old days, had LE (Asmodeus & his Devils) or CG alignments?
I would say that LE is a shade of E and CG is just a shade of G.
Is LG more good than simply good and CE more evil than E?
Yep - I think that's it.
Or, if CE is ultimate destruction, can LG be creation?
That sounds good to me.
I imagine that the evil necromancer who is dedicated to unleashing a nightmarish kingdom of undead upon an unsuspecting population by sacrificing superhot virgins is CE.
I wanna play in one of your games. =D
...Bad people, for sure. I imagine that the evil necromancer who is dedicated to unleashing a nightmarish kingdom of undead upon an unsuspecting population by sacrificing superhot virgins is CE.
Definitely.
Anyone wasting superhot virgins is evil, stupid, and insane :P
Honestly, I thought the April Fool's day character sheet's "Autobot" and "Deception" alignments were pretty good.
But in all seriousness, I'm having a hard time working up any NERD RAGE over alignments; it's not like anybody could ever agree on what constituted "chaotic neutral" anyways.
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People really had that hard a time telling the difference between Chaotic Good and Neutral Good/Neutral Evil and Lawful Evil? Wha?
I really dislike this arrangement, especially the uneven weight of Chaos and Law on the Good/Evil scale and Good and Evil on the Chaos/Law scale. It just seems too blatant a case of avoiding symmetry for the sake of avoiding it.
No offence but did they mean;
Fanatic-Good-Unaligned-Evil-Insane
That is what I'm hearing so far.
Wouldn't it have been better stated as;
Law-Good-Unaligned-Evil-Chaos
So if whats been stated is accurate (and I assume so) they tried to remove the problems of stupidly played paladins and are now reintroducing it?
Is that right or am I missing something here?
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No offence but did they mean;
Fanatic-Good-Unaligned-Evil-Insane
That is what I'm hearing so far.
Wouldn't it have been better stated as;
Law-Good-Unaligned-Evil-Chaos
So if whats been stated is accurate (and I assume so) they tried to remove the problems of stupidly played paladins and are now reintroducing it?
Is that right or am I missing something here?
Your continuum is correct:
Lawful Good: Civilization and order.
Good: Freedom and kindness.
Unaligned: Having no alignment; not taking a stand
Evil: Tyranny and hatred.
Chaotic Evil: Entropy and destruction.
Can you ellaborate on the stupid paladin issue? Not sure I get what you are asking.
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I think one thing that may be misleading people is still thinking in terms of 3E (and 2E) alignment axises (axisii? axii?). I'd say 4E doesn't really have a setup like that, and the way they are listed in the book seems to be a deliberate attempt to make you NOT think of it that way.
Chaotic Evil isn't just Evil turned up to 11. An Evil guy looks out for himself, over everyone else, but he isn't crazy or sociopathic. He isn't going to work with the Chaotic Evil guy, because hey, we're Evil and we fight against Good.
But of course people have ALWAYS argued over alignment, and I don't think anything could ever stop them.
Cheers! :)
People really had that hard a time telling the difference between Chaotic Good and Neutral Good/Neutral Evil and Lawful Evil? Wha?
You have no idea. I almost started this post with "Nobody ever really had a hard time with the good/evil axis", but then I remembered the classic "orc babies" controversy, and so on and so forth.
What it boils down to is this: Trained philosophers have been arguing about alignment for 2,000 years, and they still can't agree about anything; nothing good can come of having mechanical effects based on it.
Yes, it is that confusing. Is eating babies an evil act? Thank god it doesn't matter anymore!
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I think one thing that may be misleading people is still thinking in terms of 3E (and 2E) alignment axises (axisii? axii?). I'd say 4E doesn't really have a setup like that, and the way they are listed in the book seems to be a deliberate attempt to make you NOT think of it that way.
Chaotic Evil isn't just Evil turned up to 11. An Evil guy looks out for himself, over everyone else, but he isn't crazy or sociopathic. He isn't going to work with the Chaotic Evil guy, because hey, we're Evil and we fight against Good.
But of course people have ALWAYS argued over alignment, and I don't think anything could ever stop them.
Cheers! :)
This actually helped me work through this a bit in order to have it clarified. Let me give an example of how I would role play it.
Lawful Good battles "Evil". He would not knowingly cooperate with Evil or Chaotic Evil. "You don't make that compromise"
Good might (if needs require) cooperate with an Evil person for a common goal. Especially if it helped other folks out in the end.
Evil might (if needs require) cooperate with a Good person for a common goal. Especially if it helped himself out in the end.
Chaotic Evil battles "Good". He would not knowingly cooperate with Good or Lawful Good. They might even just outright kill Evil people if they annoy them too much.
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Chaotic Evil battles "Good". He would not knowingly cooperate with Good or Lawful Good. They might even just outright kill Evil people if they annoy them too much.
I would also add that Evil battle Chaotic Evil if CE threatens to blindly destroy the holds and gains made by E.
Good may often come into conflict with LG if freedoms are curtailed and the restrictive nature of LG is imposed on the populace.
I would think an evil character wouldn't see their actions as evil. There would always be a rationale (perhaps self-serving, perhaps for the 'greater good') for everything they do. A chaotic evil character undoubtedly knows exactly what they are about.
Let me give an example of how I would role play it.
myself I think
I would think
This fairly well proves my point. Everybody has a different idea of what any given alignment constitutes.
What me and my friends are trying to figure out, still, is why can't you allow Lawful Evil, Lawful, Chaotic, and Chaotic Good? Why allow LG and CE, what exactly is preventing the existence of LE and CG? (and just plain L and C, for that matter)
Obviously, it's being stated that Lawful and Chaotic are still cosmic forces in the D&D universe, but Lawful sides only with Good and Chaotic only with Evil? It's like saying being Lawful is a good thing (which it always isn't) and vice versa with Chaotic. It doesn't make sense.
And you can be Lawful or Chaotic while being unaligned in Evil and Good. Creatures like Formians and Slaad and Modrons are prime examples. After all, I highly doubt what the modrons or definitely the formians do is Lawful Good. And creatures of chaos aren't necessarily evil, either.
Weird.
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Razz, I know your general views and I must agree with you again here. The coherancy of the Gygaxian alignment system seems to have been lost, along with so much else in game that claims to be a legitimate edition...
I am doubly disappointed in the quote from Sims that was posted above. I'm shocked that a game designer like Chris can't wrap his mind around the game's alignment system after all these years.
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Razz, I know your general views and I must agree with you again here. The coherancy of the Gygaxian alignment system seems to have been lost, along with so much else in game that claims to be a legitimate edition...
I am doubly disappointed in the quote from Sims that was posted above. I'm shocked that a game designer like Chris can't wrap his mind around the game's alignment system after all these years.
Perhaps you can explain exactly what has been "lost".
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Why don't you take a look at your pirated copies and find out, Crosswired?
Nah, that's just a dig. I know you said you deleted them.
Crosswired, you can't miss what you never had.
Ok. So you dodged the question pretty good.
I'll ask it again anyway - what is actually missing from the new alignment structure? CG and NG are there but rolled up into G. E now includes NG and LG. Alignment is not as mechanical as it was in 3e.
So what's missing?
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Why don't you take a look at your pirated copies and find out, Crosswired?
Nah, that's just a dig. I know you said you deleted them.
Crosswired, you can't miss what you never had.
Ok. So you dodged the question pretty good.
I'll ask it again anyway - what is actually missing from the new alignment structure? CG and NG are there but rolled up into G. E now includes NG and LG. Alignment is not as mechanical as it was in 3e.
So what's missing?
Well, obviously Chaotic Neutral and Lawful Neutral.
My turn to ask a question? What's gained by removing and amalgamating the alignments? You haven't resolved the problem of when is an action Lawful Good and when is it just Good, so the main stated reason for the change doesn't hold up. So, what was the point of removing some alignments. Remove htem all or don't, but piecemeal doesn't make a lot of sense
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Why don't you take a look at your pirated copies and find out, Crosswired?
Nah, that's just a dig. I know you said you deleted them.
Crosswired, you can't miss what you never had.
Ok. So you dodged the question pretty good.
I'll ask it again anyway - what is actually missing from the new alignment structure? CG and NG are there but rolled up into G. E now includes NG and LG. Alignment is not as mechanical as it was in 3e.
So what's missing?
Well, obviously Chaotic Neutral and Lawful Neutral.
My turn to ask a question? What's gained by removing and amalgamating the alignments? You haven't resolved the problem of when is an action Lawful Good and when is it just Good, so the main stated reason for the change doesn't hold up. So, what was the point of removing some alignments. Remove htem all or don't, but piecemeal doesn't make a lot of sense
Well - CN and LN are now just unaligned.
Alignment IMO is not about actions. Alignment is about motivation. Now that alignment is not a big game mechanic it can be more of a guide.
What do nine alignments provide that the 4e continuum does not?
That question is still unanswered.
One of my favorite demotivational posters is a photo of the running of the bulls in Spain that says TRADITION just because you've always done it that way doesn't mean it's not incredibly stupid.
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Why don't you take a look at your pirated copies and find out, Crosswired?
Nah, that's just a dig. I know you said you deleted them.
Crosswired, you can't miss what you never had.
Ok. So you dodged the question pretty good.
I'll ask it again anyway - what is actually missing from the new alignment structure? CG and NG are there but rolled up into G. E now includes NG and LG. Alignment is not as mechanical as it was in 3e.
So what's missing?
Well, obviously Chaotic Neutral and Lawful Neutral.
My turn to ask a question? What's gained by removing and amalgamating the alignments? You haven't resolved the problem of when is an action Lawful Good and when is it just Good, so the main stated reason for the change doesn't hold up. So, what was the point of removing some alignments. Remove htem all or don't, but piecemeal doesn't make a lot of sense
Well - CN and LN are now just unaligned.
Alignment IMO is not about actions. Alignment is about motivation. Now that alignment is not a big game mechanic it can be more of a guide.
What do nine alignments provide that the 4e continuum does not?
That question is still unanswered.
One of my favorite demotivational posters is a photo of the running of the bulls in Spain that says TRADITION just because you've always done it that way doesn't mean it's not incredibly stupid.
And just because something's new, doesn't make it better either. Are we done with the traditional slanging? Or is this where you call me a grognard and I compare 4E to an MMORPG?
What I meant was why keep one Lawful and one Chaotic alignment? Why isn't CE part of E and why isn't LG part of G? What purpose does that serve?
Simple ...
4e E = 3e LE and NG
4e G = 3e CG and NGIn 4e you can act as LE as you want but you sheet say E.
In 4e you can act as CG as you want but you sheet says G.
Why is that so hard to understand?
As someone else stated already, then why isn't acting as much LG rolled up into Good, or acting as much CE rolled up into E?
I think what they screwed up on was one of two things:
1) They should've never touched the alignment system in the first place. It was perfected in 3rd Edition already and hardly anyone had any problems with it, really, other than arguments with other people about which character from "Heroes" is what alignment. (I still say HRG was Lawful Neutral his entire time with the Company and eventually went Neutral, but to me these arguments are fun, and I will now leave this tangent of the topic)
2) They should've done what they originally said they'd do, which was just leave alignment at G, Unaligned, and E. (other things they should've stuck with but didn't was prestige classes and multiclassing).
In all honesty, they should've just ditched alignment completely. It has no purpose in 4E. The deities, powers, abilities, D&D canon lore, etc. don't rely on it for any sort of mechanic whatsoever. I see nothing in there that specifically works for or against Evil creatures or Unaligned or anything mechanical. What's the true purpose for throwing alignment in there in the first place?
Why not simply state in the character creation chapter: "Goals, Motiviations, and Personality" and just simply state that your character should be good, these are what good people do and non-good people do and leave it at that? The alignment thing in 4E, if anything, is now worse than what people claimed it to be in 3E.
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I see your points there Razz. In some ways by sticking with the previous names of the aligments, they carry their baggage. Something new would have been better.
I will say though that not everyone liked the 2.x/3.x alignments. I was especially not interested in a separate plane for each of them. I was perfectly fine with 1st edition G/N/E. And when I'm playing 4th edition I probably will treat them basically like that.
The good thing here is that I don't see any reason you couldn't just use the 3.5 alignment system in the game. It's not going to really do much as far as I can tell, so if it helps your group role play better, I say use it.
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Good, unaligned, and Evil would not have worked. I agree the optimal solution would have been to remove it altogether, but short of that you need to account for extremes of good and evil. CE and LG complete the continuum as the polar opposites that may even conflict with their immediate neighbors on the scale as well as those on the opposite side of the divide.
I'll ask it again anyway - what is actually missing from the new alignment structure? CG and NG are there but rolled up into G. E now includes NG and LG. Alignment is not as mechanical as it was in 3e... So what's missing?
The law/chaos axis describing motivation.
I think that's an obvious answer. Whether or not you like (or think useful) group vs individual ideology, it was a component of the D&D rules, with in-game consequences. Now it isn't.
You can say (and probably easily argue) it wasn't a useful mechanic. You can't say it's not missing.
Good, unaligned, and Evil would not have worked.
Why?
Is there an in-game mechanic that would not survive such a scheme?
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In most games I've mostly ignored alignment in general, and found the rigid definitions annoying. 3E was the first time that I really used it because it became so much more tied to the rules than it ever had before, with all of the alignment based spells and effects. Otherwise I just used it as a shorthand role-playing guideline for npcs.
I'm not exactly thrilled with the new system, but at least I can mostly ignore it again (because it has less mechanical impact on the game), and as far as I've seen, I don't have to worry about paladins walking around town detecting evil to get a short list of suspects in a mystery.
However, I would like to mention that for a long time now, I've viewed the alignment grid as a diamond rather than a square, with LG at the top and CE at the bottom, and LE-N-CG on a shorter almost horizontal axis. Why? Because even though I get the differences between LE, N and CG, I believe that they have more in common in many ways than other alignments. At the very least, I would call those the alignments with the most grey.
It looks to me like 4E took my version of the grid and flattened it into a line. Of course, that interpretation works for me, because I was already thinking in that direction anyways.
Everything that was old is new again...
Let's just go back to Law/Neutral/Chaos from days of yore and be done with it! I always knew those new fangled Good/Neutral/Evil wouldn't last.
One more edition and we can get back to playing elves and magic users again... :)
What it boils down to is this: Trained philosophers have been arguing about alignment for 2,000 years, and they still can't agree about anything; nothing good can come of having mechanical effects based on it.
Hey, now, don't belittle philosophy that way. ;) As a trained philosopher, what the field of philosophy is arguing over now is most certainly NOT what was being argued about 2000 years ago. Yes, even in philosophy there's progress. (Note: What is argued about in intro philosophy courses is probably the stuff that was argued about 2000 years ago, but that's just because we're being gentle on the newbies.) ;)
Personally, I never had a problem with the original* style of alignment and really enjoyed it. To me this is over-simplified (NOT "dumbed down", but taking out some complexity that my groups enjoy). Unlike Chris Sims I have never had trouble differentiating between NG and CG, and NE and LE, and I even have a hard time comprehending how that distinction isn't clear. (Not meant as an insult, just I literally can't wrap my brain around NOT understanding that difference. It seems obvious to my brain.) :)
Personally, I'd rather see either alignment completely removed or left as it was. This sort of half-removal doesn't seem to really solve many problems. But if people like it, then more power to them. It's also easy enough to add the 9 alignments back in if anyone wants.
* Note: If I recall, 4e alignment is actually closer to the original original alignment of Law-Neutral-Chaos. But it's been decades, so I might not be remembering correctly. I'm referring to the traditional alignment that's been around for all this time.
I wonder if somewhere in the first few pages it still states something to the effect of ...
These books are only a guideline. Feel free to use or ignore any rule that doesn't fit in your game.
Bah!
We NEED Structure!
We Need Order!
Must have a Hard and Fast rule for Everything!
NO FREE THINKING ALOUD!!! ...... *Salute*
It's a Game: Enjoy it as is, change it to fit your needs, or move on to a different game.
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Good, unaligned, and Evil would not have worked.Why?
Is there an in-game mechanic that would not survive such a scheme?
If alignment must be present then the D&D cosmology requires more differentiation to account for demons and devils or the rigid law of a God like Moradin and the free flowing nature of the elven pantheon.
I would prefer alignment to disappear altogether. I hope the next incarnation of D&D drops it like a rock.