[5e] Thorough explanation of why it's terrible?

[TheGreatEvilKing]

So...there's no point having different races and you may as well just be differently dressed humans?

They all play as differently dressed humans anyways.

[Foxwarrior]

If you want races that aren't just differently dressed humans, there's only one place you can find them: me.

[buddy bradley]

I'll stick to the stuff where Orcs are evil, fuck this edition. And remember, this is the edition where there are rangers that can teleport. I expect the 6th edition to have gnomes that harvest laser beams in their eyes and use it to destroy no one because that would be offensive to, well, certainly not the rapists and other pieces of shit they hire to work on their product.

[Stubbazubba]

Recently WotC announced they were going to try to deal with some of the racial determinism by introducing an upcoming product that would let people swap out stat arrays.

So...there's no point having different races and you may as well just be differently dressed humans?

If +2 to one stat over another is the only point of having races to you, then yes, Elves that live 750 years and can't be charmed and don't sleep and are more perceptive are exactly the same as the Half-Orcs who live 75 years and crit harder and pop up from 0 HP once for free and are more intimidating, and those two are exactly like the fucking Aarakocra who live 30 years and have 50' flight speed from level 1, which sounds just like Humans in different outfits to me. I sure wish the Aarakocra got +2 to something so that I would know it's supposed to be a bird man.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

You were correct until you brought up the Aarakocra, which are actually cool and don't play like humans. Bitchin' level 1 flight > Darkvision and fluff shit like "I live 10 times as long as you".

[Foxwarrior]

It's not like average elves are 10x as experienced as average humans, it's not even good fluff, because none of the settings make it matter at all.

[Krusk]

I'll stick to the stuff where Orcs are evil, fuck this edition. And remember, this is the edition where there are rangers that can teleport. I expect the 6th edition to have gnomes that harvest laser beams in their eyes and use it to destroy no one because that would be offensive to, well, certainly not the rapists and other pieces of shit they hire to work on their product.

the fuck are you on about? 4e had teleporting rangers, and 3e had rangers who can tree stride in core, and the horizon walker ranger prestige class who straight teleports. I don't know enough 2e, but I'd bet there is some there too. You're example of why 5e is bad came from, at latest, 2003.

Not to get into the obvious racism of mandating that all orcs are bad guys, but are also free willed and intelligent.

[nockermensch]

Not to get into the obvious racism of mandating that all orcs are bad guys, but are also free willed and intelligent.

What irks me about 5e and "evil races" is that all them have the same reason for being evil: "Their evil gods demands it". Such a lack of creativity on a fantasy game is disgusting.

[RobbyPants]

I don't know enough 2e, but I'd bet there is some there too.

They got Plant and Animal spheres (similar to domains), but only up to 3rd level spells. Transport Via Plants was 6th level.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

The way my kobolds got around the "evil races" problem was by assuming that everyone who wasn't a kobold was evil and would try to kill them on sight (if that was a plausible action, naturally). That's probably still too problematic, but the life of a kobold is a rough, short, and terrifying one. I didn't care at all about the larger society that didn't care about me except as an obstacle for low-level adventurers, and it felt sort of appropriate.
Then my GM had me go through a time portal and wind up in an alternate universe where most of the world was owned by goblins and hobgoblins that had no problems with kobolds whatsoever.

[Cervantes]

"evil races" is a stupid concept, always was and still is. I didn't realize people actually took it seriously. Morality is a complicated thing, something that RPGs can uniquely explore and ask questions about, and having Evil as a Platonic Ideal is lazy.

Kobolds can be violent little bastards, that's fine. But at some point they'll realize that it's better for them to join in on Civilization because society means food and less chance you'll die. If they're sentient and have intelligence, it's unlikely they'd stick to the woods and shoot adventurers.

At the very least, give them some extreme libertarianism/primitivism.

[MGuy]

I'm still being surprised by the number of things people take seriously or at face value. Whenever a thing changes in a piece of media it's interesting to see how many people 'care' about it enough to completely lose their shit over it. There's no limit to what people are willing to assign a crazy amount of worth to. However I think the number of people who 'really' care about these kind of things is a very vocal minority.

Not that I don't car care about the race thing. I've made it a point at my table for years to address the race/species/culture issue but only because those subjects are important to me. The lionshare of the community I am sure don't/didn't think too deeply about the issue. It's probably a good thing though that the conversation is being had a lot right now so more people can consider it.

[Rawbeard]

morality is really not complicated in D&D. good and evil are real forces that exist, not just value judgements based on societal standards. getting bent out of shape over "evil races" when you can literally detect and even measure the evil in them is... weird.

[Omegonthesane]

All that the objective existence of "Good" and "Evil" means is that there are two cosmic forces which hold philosophical positions which you may find more or less agreeable depending on your own views.

If your setting is written by white conservatives, then the sweet old lady who bakes cookies down the road would probably ping to Detect Evil because she hasn't disowned her gay trans son.

[Orion]

Also, disarming. Disarming is actually really useful now, especially since casters can be disarmed of their spellcasting focus.

Isn't picking up a dropped item a free action that doesn't provoke AoOs?

EDIT: And even if you have a free hand to grab the disarmed item, it wouldn't stop a spellcaster who spent 5 gp on a backup focus.

[Chamomile]

morality is really not complicated in D&D. good and evil are real forces that exist, not just value judgements based on societal standards.

It's not actually possible for good and evil to be real forces that exist, any more than it's possible for gravity to be a value judgement. People fool themselves by having real forces that exist and which react to human decisionmaking in a way that matches their personal value judgements, but inventing a force of nature that backs up your personal morals with brute force in a fictional setting doesn't mean those morals are now more correct, not even within the context of the setting. If there were a setting that had only one cosmic force reacting to human decisions that way, and it was a cosmic force that rewarded puppy drowning and punished kindness, you wouldn't say that this was a setting where good was an objectively real force that hates puppies, and that gives the game away: Whether or not a cosmic force trying to enforce morals counts as "good" or "evil" depends entirely on whether or not you agree with the morals being enforced, same as regular real world people and organizations.

[Foxwarrior]

Yeah, back when I ran D&D for a group that cared about alignment, I found plenty of ways to remind players that Good and Evil were defined in the book and had only vague similarities to their own personal ideas of what Good and Evil were supposed to be about.

[Emerald]

It's not actually possible for good and evil to be real forces that exist, any more than it's possible for gravity to be a value judgement.

I mean, technically, it totally is, if the metaphysics support it. Evil can be a tangible thing that exists, has a mass measured in millNazis and an atomic weight of 666, naturally takes on hooked and spiky forms at a molecular level, and condenses out of the air in places where great sins were committed, and gravity can be the active regard of a rather opinionated spirit of attraction who normally pulls everything to the Earth proportionally to its mass but will make an exception for you (and make you immune to gravity for the rest of your very brief life) if you commit the unforgiveable sin of wearing green on Thursday.

Those takes are obviously over-the-top outside of pretty metaphysically quirky settings like Glorantha, but the general idea of "evil is a tangible thing" is a staple in high fantasy settings and "physics is subjective/consensus-based/etc." is a thing in a bunch of settings as well.

People fool themselves by having real forces that exist and which react to human decisionmaking in a way that matches their personal value judgements, but inventing a force of nature that backs up your personal morals with brute force in a fictional setting doesn't mean those morals are now more correct, not even within the context of the setting. If there were a setting that had only one cosmic force reacting to human decisions that way, and it was a cosmic force that rewarded puppy drowning and punished kindness, you wouldn't say that this was a setting where good was an objectively real force that hates puppies, and that gives the game away: Whether or not a cosmic force trying to enforce morals counts as "good" or "evil" depends entirely on whether or not you agree with the morals being enforced, same as regular real world people and organizations.

Something to remember about good and evil in D&D is that actual capital-G Good is distinct from the teachings of various Good-aligned gods and outsiders and such, and likewise for Evil. You can have objective Good as a nebulous Platonic-ideal cosmic force left undefined and untainted by particular DMs' or players' opinions on Goodness, and also have Good gods and exemplar lords promoting their own take on Goodness that matches a DM's or player's views as closely as they're comfortable with (and which might be flawed or less than Good in other players' or characters' views), and the two can coexist without much difficulty.

The target of everyone's ire when it comes to alignment discussions is the Book of Exalted Deeds, 'cause it's full of downright stupid pronouncements about (its view of) goodness, but it's also pretty clear that magical characters powered by Good all serve or exemplify intermediaries of various sorts (gods for clerics, eladrin for bards, guardinals for druids, a specific take on cosmic Lawful Goodness for paladins, etc.). Saying e.g. "using ravages totally-not-poisons is a Good thing and totally kosher with cosmic Good" (bullshit and hypocritical by most readers' standards) is very different from saying "the clergy of the Good gods of Greyhawk are totally find with their priests using ravages" (questionable, but no more so than, say, Corellon's feuds with Gruumsh and Lolth), and you can stipulate the latter without endorsing the former.

Of course, many DMs do declare that Ultimate Cosmic Good is whatever they say it is and cause many alignment debates to constantly and spontaneously break out as a side effect, but many DMs also go out of their way to try to make paladins fall because it's funny; that's a sign of dickish DMs and/or poor guidance and examples from developers, not evidence that the underlying concept doesn't or can't work.

[Rawbeard]

It's not actually possible for good and evil to be real forces that exist, any more than it's possible for gravity to be a value judgement.

are you argueing that magic, gods, elves, halflings cannot exist in fantasy games? because you seem to. or you are missing the point so hard, it makes me want to poke you with a stick to see what happens next.

alignment can literally be detected AND measured in D&D. this is not about "in the real world", dummy.

[Omegonthesane]

It's not actually possible for good and evil to be real forces that exist, any more than it's possible for gravity to be a value judgement.

are you argueing that magic, gods, elves, halflings cannot exist in fantasy games? because you seem to. or you are missing the point so hard, it makes me want to poke you with a stick to see what happens next.

alignment can literally be detected AND measured in D&D. this is not about "in the real world", dummy.

People fool themselves by having real forces that exist and which react to human decisionmaking in a way that matches their personal value judgements, but inventing a force of nature that backs up your personal morals with brute force in a fictional setting doesn't mean those morals are now more correct, not even within the context of the setting.

[Cervantes]

You can call the cosmic forces Good and Evil, and they might correlate with some moral systems, but that doesn't show that these forces are literal objective moral fonts. We can call them "Force A" and "Force B", say they're opposed, point out correlations to moral judgments, but it's still a value judgment to go on to say "so Force A = Good".

Alignments are just relations to these forces. The forces objectively exist. But it's just a naming thing to call them Good and Evil.

[merxa]

I know 'alignment' is a sore subject for various roleplayers, but attempts to rewrite history or apply some sophmorphic logic doesn't recreate reality.

Good, Evil, Law, Chaos, are objective metaphysical and physical truths in d&d of editions past and present. They have physical manifestations and are absolutely moral and ethical truths.

Of course these concepts aren't especially logical, and even become contradictory if examined too closely, but they were presented as truths that absolutely mapped to moral concerns. Kavitching doesn't change that.

[Omegonthesane]

I know 'alignment' is a sore subject for various roleplayers, but attempts to rewrite history or apply some sophmorphic logic doesn't recreate reality.

Good, Evil, Law, Chaos, are objective metaphysical and physical truths in d&d of editions past and present. They have physical manifestations and are absolutely moral and ethical truths.

Of course these concepts aren't especially logical, and even become contradictory if examined too closely, but they were presented as truths that absolutely mapped to moral concerns. Kavitching doesn't change that.

God saying it's Good to kill goblins doesn't make it good to kill goblins. It only means that God will look kindly on you if you kill goblins.

That doesn't change if you swap out the presumably sapient God for a presumably non-sapient underlying law of the universe.

It is literally impossible for "objective Good" to mean anything more deep and profound than "objectively the set of behaviours most likely to let you keep and grow your Paladin powers".

[MGuy]

I know 'alignment' is a sore subject for various roleplayers, but attempts to rewrite history or apply some sophmorphic logic doesn't recreate reality.

Good, Evil, Law, Chaos, are objective metaphysical and physical truths in d&d of editions past and present. They have physical manifestations and are absolutely moral and ethical truths.

Of course these concepts aren't especially logical, and even become contradictory if examined too closely, but they were presented as truths that absolutely mapped to moral concerns. Kavitching doesn't change that.

No? In the setting those four things are labels given to in universe forces. If you were to say it is 'just by the in universe laws every goblin born reads purple on this aura radar' that would be fine and true. To then go 'beyond' that and claim that 'then' this speaks to a moral and ethical truth is where you go waaaaaaay off into talking nonsense. The fact that alignment was 'meant' to map to moral concerns is one of the major reasons WHY people can very easily find that the alignment wheel doesn't work.

[Thaluikhain]

It is literally impossible for "objective Good" to mean anything more deep and profound than "objectively the set of behaviours most likely to let you keep and grow your Paladin powers".

Hmmm...does that mean that "objective Good" can mean something different for different Paladins, depending on who they worship? Some of them kill goblins babies, some don't?