Alignment in Dungeons and Dragons 5e

Monty can you tell the difference between good and evil Kelly Kelly try to understand there is no black and white good and evil we evolved beyond that we all must have our own personal sense of right and wrong but it's what we're doing evil no no of course not after all evil spelled backwards is live and we all want to do that greetings my name is Monty Martin and I'm Kelly McLaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes welcome to our channel where we discuss everything Dungeons and Dragons including advice for players and guides for Dungeon Master's we upload new videos every Thursday so please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode and if you couldn't guess from our little quote from Rock and rule today we are discussing alignment in Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition use it or lose it today you have to decide which side you're on so let's get rolling in the world of Dungeons & Dragons mortals monsters magic and even entire dimensions can all have their own alignment alignment is used to describe moral ethical spiritual and philosophical attitudes about the world expressed as two factors one describes morality good evil and everything in between and the other describes a creatures attitudes about order and the structure of society whether they are chaotic lawful or again something in between this is expressed in the infamous alignment chart an axis which results in nine different alignments from lawful good to chaotic evil alignment represents everything from a personal philosophy to something similar to the force and Star Wars a fundamental element that combines the cosmos it shapes conflicts which involve entire worlds dimensions gods angels and demons and alignment has really evolved over the lifespan of Dungeon Dragons and it really calls into question whether or not it's something useful to our games something integral to the very essence of Dungeons and Dragons or something that we should just get rid of entirely and never use because it causes so many problems at the table in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons some creatures do not have an alignment like animals or constructs or elemental beings these are creatures of instinct that are really kind of beyond morality entirely on the other hand some creatures are so interwoven with the essence of good evil law and chaos that it defines their very being this would include creatures like angels demons devils other celestial or Fae creatures even sometimes the gods entire planes of existence can be interwoven with good evil lawn chaos indeed in the Great Wheel cosmology the metaphysical order of the planes themselves is arranged in accordance of the alignment of the various outer planes as they revolve around the material world and the elemental planes worlds like Celestia or the nine hells Alicia mechanicus and pandemonium are powerfully infused with one of the nine alignments and the creatures that dwell there are as well the gods themselves may have alignments and will enforce their followers to follow those alignments as the gods are often a real and active force in the worlds and religions of Dungeons and Dragons this can have a powerful impact on the cultures races monsters and people that inhabit the worlds of Dungeons and Dragons as well as they interact with the gods and the plains beyond them throwing alignment into very sharp relief in many campaign settings well it can be a powerful influence for player characters alignment is mostly a moral outlook so now that we have a sense of what alignment is let's look at how it impacts the player characters in Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition alignment doesn't have many mechanic effects on your player character in Dungeons & Dragons but it can influence their ideals bonds and flaws while you're doing character creation this is a pretty specific change in 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons that really began in 4000 D&D many classes such as the cleric and the paladin were powerfully associated with a specific set of alignments depending on their deity and even spells and magic items might also have an alignment that influenced who could and could not use them this was always a little bit of a gap for me because Dungeons & Dragons has never had a clearly defined system that says how many evil or good actions a character can perform before their alignment changes it's always been a subjective decision in the hands of the dungeon master I think that's what makes alignment a little tricky for a lot of people is the idea that if you are a lawful good character and you perform an evil task does that change your alignment what alignment your character is and how that influences their personality and decision-making and the relationships they had with non-player characters and the other characters in the party has always been a topic of great debate in Dungeons & Dragons not just in finishing in fifth edition we've moved away from the idea that certain classes need to be specific alignments an alignment does not affect your class choice so you can have a chaotic evil paladin or a lawful good barbarian or a chaotic monk or a lawful bard these might seem contradictory but they are possible and there's no restrictions in the rules preventing us from exploring what these archetypes might be like alignment can be used in character creation to develop your characters identity along with personality traits flaws bonds and ideals these make up the core of who your player character is some characters are defined by their alignment but other characters can only be described by it and it's really up to each individual player to decide how much their characters alignment that decided character creation has an impact on their actual character in my opinion I think that things like bonds ideals flaws and personality traits really do a lot more to influence how interesting a character is and how I'm gonna roleplay that character then their alignment and increasingly I stopped even thinking about what alignment my characters are for me I can see alignment being a nice base layer to start building off of if you wanted to create a chaotic type of character or a lawful type of character these ideas will start to branch out into your character development but I think that the trap that a lot of people get into is that they put these alignments in a box and think that your character cannot expand outside of that box alignment is only one way of many to explain your characters motivations even a character that's strongly associated with one of the nine alignments can still take contradictory behaviors and actions because they're people and people are complex contradictory beings in general that often say one thing and do another in the words of Stannis Baratheon from Game of Thrones a good act does not wash out the bad nor the bad the good characters are capable of being an equal mix of good and evil right and wrong and often these are very subjective things anyways that there's a lot of room for debate and that's what makes them interesting a lawful good paladin might see an opportunity to steal something but it will benefit more people in the long run is this an act of evil is this outside of their character personality if you can justify it based on their personality traits and that they deem that this is overall a good act I don't see why it has to be against their alignment and again it is up to the players and the dungeon masters together to decide how you're gonna play out alignment in the game because while the rules of D&D intimate that clerics and paladin's and other classes might have a code of conduct fifth edition D&D does not include any specific visions that cause a character to lose their class abilities when they violate their alignment or oath or code of conduct all those things are very explicitly within the rules of the game left up to the dungeon master and the players to decide if those things are going to happen or not and so I do think it is important as a player character that you talk to your dungeon master about their expectations because ultimately the dungeon master is the one that gets to decide what good and evil are in the game they're the arbiter of it and if the dungeon master does want to decide hey your palette install things so you lose all your powers that's up to them Ayana Klee the rules of Dungeons and Dragons are a little bit of a gray area here because they don't give a lot of specific rules or guidelines on how a cleric or paladin should fall or lose their powers and how exactly they might redeem them there's a few spells abilities and other options that hinted this in the dungeon masters guide but there's not a lot of specific concrete things and the rules really give you as players in Dungeon Master's the freedom and flexibility to decide personally I'm more interested in characters that live in a gray area and make choices from moment to moment that might change the alignment that they're in I think that people are often put into drastic situations especially in a D&D campaign where they're made to act outside of their normal capacity and do things that they might have never done you never know when you're gonna be put into a crazy situation that will cause you to have to kill somebody in D&D or to run away or to steal and to say I'm a lawful good character and then put yourself in a box I find to be problematic if you're arguing my character can't do that it's not in his alignment then are you really engaging with the story presented to you I find this to be one of the hardest things about alignment which is why I like to think of alignment as a loose base layer but characters can jut out in all sorts of different directions from that alignment but returning to that as their base of operations for their personality I do think that there should be consequences and repercussions for the player's actions but those need to bear out in the narrative rather than necessarily having these puppet strings that are policing the player's behavior I'm really interested in contradictory archetypes and complex characters that have motivations that are both good evil right and wrong and leave a lot of room for debate about whether those things were right or wrong and don't really come down on one side or another of what the truth is I really love how in the ever on campaign world for example clerics can be of any alignment regardless of their deity or religion I think that this reflects a lot of the contradictions and paradoxes that are found in religious dogma doctrine and actions that are really really refreshing and interesting to explore in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign and they enable archetypes like the stalwart Crusader or the zealous Inquisitor characters who have certain principles behind the really horrendous acts that they commit or people that do really really good things but for all the wrong reasons I'm really interested in exploring those grey zones of alignment and those questions and having a god hanging over the entire equation that makes the decision and says no if you do that you'll lose your powers often feels just as arbitrary anyways it is important to have consequences for actions but those can bear out in the narrative in other interesting ways on the other side of the screen looking at alignment as a DM there are a few things to keep in mind one thing that I always try to keep in mind is not to use alignment to police the characters to do what I think they should do it's fine as a dungeon master to ask your player characters not to play evil characters that's completely legit you want them to be heroes and that's fine but then if you're a response to that and how you enforce it in your game is that you're gonna seize control of a character and retire them if they even try one evil act or do something that's outside the bonds of total and perfect heroism that might be over stretching things a little bit as well punishing player characters or expecting them to behave and act in certain ways because they have a given alignment is often a very unpredictable way to try to think about what your characters are gonna do and I rely on it less and less those moments when a character does act outside of their alignment can actually be looked upon as a great moment of character development it changes that character in the story and the story progresses them further perhaps changing their alignment or perhaps just in that moment causing them to do something they wouldn't otherwise think to do on the other hand you also don't need to bend over backwards with players using explanations like I'm chaotic neutral or I'm lawful evil to justify disruptive behavior at your table it's still important to recognize that players are playing characters and if they're trying to use their alignment as an excuse for why they're doing something mean to another player or doing something disruptive or heavily derail into the campaign itself that's actually not a moment to punish the player character or explore why that player character is that alignment or taking that action but rather an opportunity to talk to the player about why they think their characters alignment gives them a justification to be a jerk to the other players at the table on the other hand alignment could be a really useful tool for DMS for world building and a narrative aid alignment is a really useful shorthand to use alongside your NPCs bonds ideals flaws and personality traits to help you figure out how you're gonna roleplay a character and recognizing that there are so many variations but within the nine alignments is a really powerful way to make several NPCs that share the same alignment come into conflict with each other or just feel different when your players interact with them I also find alignment to be a very helpful tool when I'm planning to run a certain monster in my D&D campaign if I looked out at the monster stat block and see that it's chaotic evil versus lawful evil that gives me a very different idea on how to roleplay that monster and how it might interact with the party and whether or not it's willing to listen to reason again it also gives you the opportunity to think about what contradictions might be within that monster or character as an example many evil creatures such as Cobalts orcs hobgoblins knowles could still have very close familial relationships with members of their own kind and might even have a really nice society it's just that they have really evil ambitions on that note we have to be careful applying an alignment as a blanket to a group of people or a culture or everyone within a group of monsters and acting like that makes them behave like a monolithic group where everyone thinks and acts the same because again even within social groups people act differently and there are always exceptions as a matter of fact flipping the alignment for one NPC of an evil type of character is actually always a rewarding experience the players love finding that cobalt who's willing to help them and it's actually like I don't want to be an evil Cobalt I'm gonna help you get into this dungeon every time I've seen the players be like I love this guy because he's different it's fun what you can actually do is flip that NPC on only one step in the alignment chart so if you have a lawful evil kobold society what happens if there's one cobalt in that society that is lawful neutral or neutral evil or perhaps even flipped completely around and is chaotic good what does that say about that person and are they an outsider within that society are they a trend setter are they a leader who they might be can really create a more diverse and complex society than one that is just completely the same are we talking about the rat Prince no the right Prince is totally chaotic evil oh the the flip side of this too is also having the one NPC that completely embodies that alignment a really interesting strategy for devising a group of NPCs really really quick is having a bunch of regular towns folk and saying I'm gonna make sure that I use all nine of the alignments for these nine everyday NPCs and see what you get we have really common tropes like the blacksmith is always lawful neutral or the town Bard is chaotic good what happens if you spin that around and the local innkeeper is chaotic evil and the local Bard is lawful neutral what kind of NPCs do you get there and that's actually a really easy way to create NPCs just throw a bunch of people into a town or setting and give them all a different alignment and then kind of decide how they're gonna gel together when it comes to evil characters there's a difference between being evil and being a sociopath it's completely possible to have a social chaotic evil person but we have to think about who that person is in relation to their culture society and what their goals and bonds are to figure out whether they are a rampant murderer or maybe just a self-serving social climber that thrives on chaos it's also interesting to keep in mind that just because a creature or monster says that it is chaotic evil and maybe it is a sociopath does not necessarily mean that it will try to murder the party all the time Trust also plays into alignment in a really really weird way because just because someone is lawful good doesn't mean that they're going to inherently trust everybody that they meet and just because someone is chaotic evil doesn't mean that they think that everybody is out to stab them in the back and they could actually be pretty naive and trusting so playing with how characters respond to each other in terms of trustworthiness and their alignments I don't even you can't even count on it a lawful character might still be a liar and a chaotic character might still be completely truthful because I don't think that truth and lies have any connection to alignment I also think that fixating on alignment often encourages this weird meta game psychology to occur where everyone acts like an amateur psychologist and search using alignment to predict behaviors in a way that feels kind of metagaming to me so like you you get it into your mind that this creature is a demon so it's chaotic evil and therefore because it's a chaotic evil demon it must be planning to betray me but that's a that's a really metagame conclusion to draw that doesn't that isn't based on any of the motivations of that demon so you don't know whether or not that demon actually thinks it's going to benefit from lying to you or why it's going to hold that information back back from you because again truth and lies can be as valuable to lawful and good characters as they are to chaotic and evil characters as well just because somebody is chaotic good doesn't necessarily mean that they're gonna join your rebellion yeah a local farmer who's chaotic good may not want to stop being a local farmer just because it's the right thing to do yeah so in summary I think personally that alignment as a player character should be used as an inspiration to design your personality traits flaws bonds and ideals which then will shape who your character is it should not be a box that you're confined to on the flip side of that if you're a DM alignment can be an excellent way for you to look down at a creature you're about to put on the table and decide what way to roleplay them but once again they could change their ways they could be talked out of something just because you see a certain alignment doesn't mean that they need to act specifically the first thing that pops into your head when you see chaotic evil or lawful good alignment is part of the legacy of Dungeons & Dragons and it's a fun little descriptor that we can use when describing our NPCs player characters planner realms organizations and more I try not to fixate on the alignment of my player characters too much and I certainly don't use that to police my player characters behavior I rather view it as a tool that I can use to round out flesh out or define a character or just help shore up a little bit more context when I need some idea alignment is a tool not a set of shackles so this has been our views on alignment in Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition tell us about how alignment works at your game table in the comments below if you're enjoying the show consider supporting our work on patreon follow the links in the description below to learn how you can contribute to our work and don't forget to check out our live play dungeons of dragon hime which airs Tuesday nights at 6 p.m. Eastern on Twitch you can find all the previous episodes right up over here and we've got lots of great tips and advice for Dungeon Master's and another playlist right over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

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Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book, alignment, lawful evil, chaotic good, chaotic evil, lawful good, chaotic neutral, chaos, evil, good, law, great wheel, chart

Id: PkVVrIJzEpY

Length: 22min 54sec (1374 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 25 2019