Apparently people love alignments and how they work mechanically but abhor the RP aspect of them, so a Chaotic character who acts selfishly(A.K.A. literally how you play the alignment) is practically anathema and a big no-no.
If the dickish behavior extends out of the party into the world around them then there should be dm consequences that make sense. If the chaotic neutral wizard is going around being a dick then people won’t interact with them or potentially become a target of some evil slaying group.
One campaign in my group, the dm running the campaign setup an evil deity that corrupted our chaotic neutral asshat into chaotic evil and would basically burn him alive from inside out if he didn’t fit the alignment unless we figured out a way to cure him. He would do con rolls to fight off doing evil things or take some fire damage. We ended up finding a fire resistance amulet that basically saves his life until we found a temple of an ice elemental god that could free him of the burning desire to see the world burned. Also there was a kind of punishment in it because the demon gave the guy a level of warlock which sounds fine but he was just about to level up and he was a wizard so he basically was given a shit level but thematically it worked. The level would be removed and replaced if the wizard figured out how to cleanses himself. This is just an example of how alignment can be actively played with. We all enjoyed the scope that this side quest added to the campaign. If players are using it then dms should too.
It is a way in which alignment can played with and I very much like the idea, all I was saying is that rhere were no specific mechanics around alignment in the books (except for a few magic items), so it really is just a vague guidline for roleplay as it is set normally by the books
There are spells that use alignment or affect those of a particular alignment(Protection From Good and Evil being an example), there are planes that react to alignments and GM's make alignment checks to see if a character is still playable or if they become an evil NPC: Yes, there are mechanics for alignment.
Detect Good and Evil is a bit of a misnomer because it specifically detects creatures like fey, abberations, undead, celestials, elementals or fiends, nothing about "good and evil" creatures.
Until the spell ends, one willing creature you touch is protected against certain types of creatures: aberrations, celestials, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead.
Each alignment covers a pretty wide range of behavior. Often times people describe the extreme behavior as normal for each alignment. There are also lots of grey areas where the alignments meet. Just because you are evil doesn't mean you can be nice to your friends.
Another problem is your actions define your alignment not the other way around.
I can think of a reason old players would disagree with that. Chaotics are being compared to lawfuls; they don't like law. If I put them into modern political ideologies (although tothe extremes), chaotics are anarchists, lawfuls are socialists, and neutrals are in between.
Firstly, there is no mechanics about how to roleplay alignments, this is just gatekeeping. Secondly, chaotic =/= selfish. That's evil. Evil is selfish, because it's about putting your wants above other people's wants/needs. Chaotic means you don't want to be constrained or told what to do. You don't like have structure.
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u/Sikloke18 Mar 25 '21
Apparently people love alignments and how they work mechanically but abhor the RP aspect of them, so a Chaotic character who acts selfishly(A.K.A. literally how you play the alignment) is practically anathema and a big no-no.