This is totally wrong sorry. You should be RPing your character as your alignment. This issue arises when you don't have out-of-character conversations about it. Intra-party conflict is fine for some groups and can be really fun, but you have to square it with the other players first.
For example: I'm currently playing a LE paladin. I just whipped up a crowd into a frenzy to execute someone with a show trial. The victim was definitely a bad dude (Red Wizard bent on stealing powerful artifacts) but the rest of the party showed up right before the beheading and insisted on a fair trial etc, etc. I was a little bummed that I didn't get to have a really cool RP moment but the party's barbarian player pulled me aside afterwards and asked if that was ok... how I was feeling about my RP moment being ruined, if I felt ok with how he had handled it.
These sorts of conversations are essential for happy groups unless everyone is really firmly of the same alignment. I applaud him for this and more people in more groups should do this kind of thing.
There is no need to make blanket statements like this post.
Alignment has taken a backseat in this edition to the point that, for mortal characters at least, it is basically meaningless.
In 5E discussions, alignment seems to just be shorthand for character personality and morals. I agree with basically everything else you are saying though.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying but not your conclusions.
I personally wouldn't even bother playing an LE character if my fun RP is gonna get cockblocked.
Sure, it wasn't super fun to have a cool RP moment ruined, but such is life. At the end of the day, these are my friends and I care a lot more about maintaining good relationships with them and keeping the game moving than I do about specific successes in-game. If it became a running theme of being foiled, then sure I might be upset.
that would've been a good opportunity for your DM to create consequences for your party interrupting
I agree, but he's a first time DM. He's competent and he tries and I really like him, but going off-script isn't his strong suit yet and that's ok. I'm committed to improving our experiences together and I don't expect to be an expert off-the-cuff narrative builder right away.
I think it's more about making a CE character, then stealing from the party and being a murder hobo, while saying "I'm CE, it's what I am supposed to do."
That's fine too as long as you clear it with the other players first. A player who values the experience of the other players and of the DM (i.e. not a narcissist) will understand that certain character behaviors have the potential to disrupt group play but some groups might like intra-party conflict. Some groups might like looking over their shoulder and having a potential wildcard nutjob in the mix.
The key, as always, is communication and coordination with other players rather than labeling certain alignments or personality traits as unplayable. CE characters are challenging to run in a party sure, but not impossible and potentially incredibly fun - especially if you are open to having an arc that modifies your alignment down the road. The party paladin setting a CE assassin rogue on a redemption arc can be incredibly satisfying for both players.
I agree to some extent. It is certainly a session zero (or pre-session 1) conversation to have with the players, but it really is on the players to follow-through with this. As a frequent DM, I don't see it as part of my job to referee players. Characters, yes. Players, no.
With purely what PHB says the alignments mean, I managed to make a CE character that isn't an asshole who steals from the party and murder hobos his way through the game.
You can easily play a CE character who doesn't steal from their party and is a general nuisance. You just need to come up with a proper motivation. I would go as far as to say that a CE character whose loyalty has been earned and whose goals align with those of the party might be one of the best assets in said party as you can convince that type of character to pretty much anything.
Not really, a CE character may be a lot more deceptive by having big schemes in which you need to be under some cover like helping the paladin in doing good deeds but because now he owns you one and you can deceive it more easily into helping you in your personal goals.
Good is more selfless while evil is selfish, if literally everything you do is for your own profit and don't hesitate doing it even if you know people will get hurt, that's evil.
You should be RPing your character as your alignment.
Nobody in the real world thinks like this. Nobody wakes up and says "I'm going to do lawful evil today, because that's my alignment". Player-set alignment is a ridiculous premise that makes absolutely no sense in the real world, never mind in a shared, fictional one.
If you decide to play a character, all of whose actions are made in service to a meta attribute that only exists in your head, you have to play a crazy person, because sane people don't think like that. Anything else is playing the character dishonestly to the shared fictional world for meta reasons, and that often makes for shitty RP.
The reason people agree with OP is that if you are using your Alignment to justify your actions, you are playing a crazy person that nobody else in the group can reason with, because you're not playing a character whose motivations are tied to the fiction, you're playing a character whose motivation can be reduced to "play the alignment I chose in advance", and you might as well play solo for all that other players get to be involved.
You have decided the story you're going to play, and everyone else is along for the ride.
I don’t see any contradiction there, if you gave an actor stage directions of “go be evil” you wouldn’t expect a standout performance from them, that’s not how playing a role works.
People have actual motivations, that’s what you play out when you play a character, not one-note meta abstractions from a 9-grid alignment system.
They are playing out their character, that's what places them within their alignment. You're treating alignment like it's totally isolated from context and the only thing people consider when it's not either of those.
If I'm playing a paladin that will accomplish his goal of ridding the realm of evil by any means necessary, even those contradicting tradutuonal values or institutions, then the actions my character takes will probably fall into the chaotic good category. It's expected that my actions will then remain consistent with behaviors typical of that alignment unless narrative reasons compel me otherwise, at which point an alignment shift is possible.
You're not playing the alignment, you're playing a character that loosely fits into an alignment. It's just a useful designator to help guide the scope of reasonable values and behaviors that a character might take. Nobody is suggesting that you simply play an alignment and arbitrarily do things that someone in said alignment would do.
I’m treating alignment like that (without context) because as OP stated, players often use “I do X because it’s my alignment!” as a excuse to do shit that doesn’t fit their characters because they as players want to do that thing and have no better excuse for doing it, and there’s no fix for this mechanically that I can see other than stopping players from setting their own alignment arbitrarily based on what they think of their own character.
I’m not arguing for removing alignment completely, just for stopping players from being able to set their own as they see fit and then use that as a guide to their actions. DM-set alignment is realistic and portrays the world honestly, and if a player wants to know how they are regarded with respect to alignment all they have to do is ask an NPC.
I think you got it backwards. You're alignment should be based around your roleplaying, not the other way around. And this is mostly about people who excuse shitty behavior that ruins the game for others by saying "My alignment is _____ so I get to do that"
Also... your first 2 sentences are just as much of a blanket statement as the original post, if not more so...
This is what I don't understand. You want to play a character one way but the group prevents you from doing because they will feel "uncomfortable". I thought the game is about exploring new options and having a world unfurled before you. There should be things in this that can make you laugh, cry, and be upset. I simply don't know what the group gets out of taking away a specific person's fun (unless it's really gross and disgusting of the character ala Game of Thrones). Getting railroaded by the groups' alignment and being dictated on what you should do
Kinda reminds me of my “life” cleric that took the life domain a little to serious and played him as a necromancer. And his god was the only real god . He framed a priest in a town for being part of the werewolf gang and that the priest was the origin. This was after defeating all the werewolfs. So the other 3 party members didn’t believe me (because I was lying) but it was a really good RP. Sadly my character got killed by the party that session because they were all good alligned and I was lawful evil and I had shown my true colors.
There are not rules for this in 5E really, but if I was your DM I would have probably talked to you about the possibility of having your spells and powers restricted if your god didn't agree with your behavior unless you atoned.
I would have also opened the possibility of you swapping patron deities or even subclasses if you wanted.
If it's working for you and your group, more power to you. As long as your games are working for everything you definitely should ignore the input of reddit randos like me
In my view, alignment no longer has any effect on mortal party members. Alignment is essentially only a measure of extraplanar metaphysical creatures or an allegiance to a specific set of universal prerogatives. Devils are lawful evil for example. Worshipping devils doesn't even necessarily make you lawful evil because as a mortal, you don't have an inherent alignment.
I think it worked well in early D&D. The manuals described what the alignments meant, and, since they were the only manuals, there was only one way to define one alignment. Modern manuals have confusing definitions that contradict the early manuals, creating a separation in definition of alignment between new and old players, making people not understand what alignment means.
I think they work fine as a loose roleplaying scaffold. The problem is that a lot of people have very unbaked/juvenile notions about good and evil and playing a game like this is the first time they've been examined or tested. Another problem is that no morality or roleplaying system will fix a player with a crappy attitude.
Agreed. PC conflict should be vetted beforehand, even immediately beforehand. For instance:
We are currently running the following party:
LE Tiefling Paladin (me)
LG/NG Dwarf Barbarian
NE/CE Elf Rogue (now a revenant)
NG Tiefling Cleric who has become increasingly under my evil sway.
We have lots of conflicts. There have been a lot of times where I've jumped out of character and said something like "I think my character would do X here (where X is some violent or upsetting thing) are you guys ok with that"
Occassionally the answer leads to a brief discussion but normally what I get is along the lines of "my character won't be ok with this, but I totally am. Go for it and let's see what happens". This has let me get a ton of great RP moments like when I tortured a guy by forcibly converting him to Asmodeus worship by branding him with my holy symbol and when he screamed I casually commented "Oh you already know the hymns". A+ moment that would never have occured if the players at the table were too scared about having their characters be upset with each other.
These are you friends or, at very least, people you should respect. Trust them to express their discomforts with you and check in on them. Don't limit your RP by requiring the characters to get along.
No, but they can be adversarial in other ways. They should almost never work with the villain, it's just not the point of most campaigns and it's more disruptive than anything else. However, no matter what anyone says these days the E-alignments are there to be picked and played. Like all things in these games it's about table comfort and what everyone's OK with.
But GL with finding someone cool with you screwing over their character.
I know quite a few 'character masochists' that get their drives and enjoyment from seeing their brainchild go through hardship to come out on the other end changed, in ways they expected and ways that they didn't. It's an entire 'type' of player that certainly exists and you see it more often in veterans who have been there and done that, they're looking for something more unexpected or something that keeps them on their toes. Wheras usually newer players have the more basic drives of wanting to learn the system and see everything for the first time, though not always of course. I have known some character masochists who were sitting down to P&P for the first time already ready to go through Hell just for the thrill of it.
It's especially true of tighter groups that have played campaigns together before rather than say pick-up groups or first time groups. You have people who know each other who are absolutely down for a little bit of an adversarial party dynamic, excited to see where that sort of thing leads them while they're on their overarching journey to save the world or whathaveyou. Like you said, this is all about approval and what everyone's comfortable with.
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u/retroman1987 Mar 25 '21
This is totally wrong sorry. You should be RPing your character as your alignment. This issue arises when you don't have out-of-character conversations about it. Intra-party conflict is fine for some groups and can be really fun, but you have to square it with the other players first.
For example: I'm currently playing a LE paladin. I just whipped up a crowd into a frenzy to execute someone with a show trial. The victim was definitely a bad dude (Red Wizard bent on stealing powerful artifacts) but the rest of the party showed up right before the beheading and insisted on a fair trial etc, etc. I was a little bummed that I didn't get to have a really cool RP moment but the party's barbarian player pulled me aside afterwards and asked if that was ok... how I was feeling about my RP moment being ruined, if I felt ok with how he had handled it.
These sorts of conversations are essential for happy groups unless everyone is really firmly of the same alignment. I applaud him for this and more people in more groups should do this kind of thing.
There is no need to make blanket statements like this post.