Evil but No Good

[hyzmarca]

Okay, I had a silly idea. How about getting rid of the Good alignment and leave just Neutral and Evil?

It seems like an obvious fix for a lot of problems, such as the killing orc babies issue, and why Archons don't just make enough food for every good person on the Material plane so that they no longer have to toil.

I'd further recommend getting rid of chaos for similar reasons.

It seems like an unbalanced alignment system would be more interesting, from a a cosmological perspective.

This also has the benefit of getting rid of Chaotic Evil and Lawful Good, two of the most notoriously difficult alignments.

[Josh_Kablack]

I can se that working as a compromise between making D&D morality in any way intuitive to players andhaving to rewrite every pre-existing Protection from, Magic Circle Against, align weapon, Holy Word, etc spell and effect.

It's still a bunch of houerules though, as you have to decide how class alignment requirements and other mechanics work, so I personally would be likely to go further and actually abolish alignment. There're reasons that games since the late 80s have replaced D&D style alignment with Motivation, Nature & Demeanor, Psychological Limitation, Passions and similar alternatives.

[AcidBlades]

I treat all good characters as just being pretentious neutral aligned characters that get to have loads of divine sex after they die. Versus the miscellaneous effects that happen to actually neutral characters.

[Dogbert]

d&d, like women, needs some glaring contradictions in its life, like putting"good alignments" (or worse, Paladins) as a playable option in a game about murderhobos.

[Mechalich]

The D&D alignment system is a huge mess, but it occupies the foundations of D&D metaphysics and a huge amount of world-building has been piled on top of it over the past few decades. A massive variety of things, from the cosmology, to the fact that demons and devils are functionally different things, to the nature of the druid class, are all wedded to the nine alignment system.

Any major change to the way alignment works cascades through the rest of D&D and you have to massively alter a huge chunk of game effects as a result, almost to the point where you might as well build a whole new system.

More broadly, there is some impetus in a game like D&D - in which the plays can and do interact with beings who are supposed to be expressions of moral forces beyond mortal ken and divine beings explicitly exist and have their own moral considerations - to have an objective morality framework with defined good and evil. Alignment isn't a well-designed objective moral framework, but it is one, whereas most alternative systems are subjective moral frameworks. Alignment also has the beneficial feature of defining evil down. A lot of the murderhobo crap that players pull in D&D gets defined as neutral, while in a system of black and white morality (ex. Star Wars) it gets defined as evil.

[tussock]

Hyzmarca, you've mistaken Good for giving.

3e alignment is relatively sane. Evil is happy to harm innocent people on the way to getting shit done, Neutral does not want to harm innocents but will totally stand aside in their own self-interest, and Good will actually stand between Evil and innocents in order to prevent Evil, with little regard for how important it was that shit get done or what it costs (assuming it could help to do so, suicide is not Good because it doesn't actually stop Evil).

While Chaos is hippy communes that follow whoever is personally awesome enough right now (and gets a bit cultish), and Law is a system of entitlements and rights that tell you who to follow even if they're inept (and gets a bit emperors new clothes).

So Chaotic Evil is George Manson (who will murderhobo local rich folk) and Lawful Good is the FBI (who will murderhobo lawbreaking mobsters and other villains). Both may well hand out food to various people at various times (because it makes George look good, or because it's in statute as part of disaster relief).

[Tannhäuser]

Good start, but half-finished. Get rid of the rest of the alignments, too.

[Username17]

A massive variety of things, from the cosmology, to the fact that demons and devils are functionally different things, to the nature of the druid class, are all wedded to the nine alignment system.

Any major change to the way alignment works cascades through the rest of D&D and you have to massively alter a huge chunk of game effects as a result, almost to the point where you might as well build a whole new system.

This isn't remotely true. Alignment tags exist all over everything, but they don't actually do anything. Demons and Devils are meaningfully different because they come from different planets and the Demons are all immune to electricity and the Devils can all see in darkness. They are not meaningfully different because of their different alignment tags, because the authors can't even decide what those alignment tags mean. Hell, there hasn't been a single book in the entire history of D&D that has given a coherent and usable definition of Law and Chaos.

Arguments about what Law and Chaos "really mean" have dominated nerd table talk at 2 AM restaurant meetings for the last thirty eight years. And there has never been a satisfactory conclusion because there cannot be a satisfactory conclusion. Because Law and Chaos are not things that make sense, not even on a "gut level, but don't think about it too hard" like substance dualism or absolute morality.

Alignments are already universally ignored, because that's the only way to get on with the game. Excising a few minor weapon enchantments that don't matter wouldn't be a big deal. The only thing you'd actually notice is the nerfing of Holy Word at high levels. But that spell is broken and also shitty, so it doesn't matter.

-Username17

[maglag]

A chaotic person is somebody who acts on whims and is spontaneous. The kind of people who are always wanting to try new things and always looking for something new and shiny.

A lawful person is someone who adheres to a set of rules. May be society's, may be his own set of rules, but he's gonna stick to them come high or low water. The guy who carefully plans ahead and is extra meticulous about details.

[maglag]

A chaotic person is somebody who acts on whims and is spontaneous. The kind of people who are always wanting to try new things and always looking for something new and shiny.

A lawful person is someone who adheres to a set of rules. May be society's, may be his own set of rules, but he's gonna stick to them come high or low water. The guy who carefully plans ahead and is extra meticulous about details.

[Username17]

A chaotic person is somebody who acts on whims and is spontaneous. The kind of people who are always wanting to try new things and always looking for something new and shiny.

A lawful person is someone who adheres to a set of rules. May be society's, may be his own set of rules, but he's gonna stick to them come high or low water. The guy who carefully plans ahead and is extra meticulous about details.

You are a god damn idiot. Acting on your own set of rules is literally indistinguishable from acting on your own whims. Literally. Those are exactly the same thing. In every respect.

You are doing what you want to do regardless of what other people want you to do. Whether you call that "personal rules" or "personal whims" is totally and completely inconsequential.

This is the fundamental problem with Law and Chaos. Ain't nobody in the history of the universe been able to lay down an explanation where Law and Chaos are even different things. Let alone things that are mutually exclusive or comprehensive in coverage of potential motivations. They are a garbage concept. Totally unsalvageable and philosophically incoherent.

Law and Chaos were known to be bullshit before D&D was even a thing. The concept was exposed as half-assed and incoherent in the fucking Elric books, that predate the first published D&D books by over a decade. People smarter than you have been forced to concede that this is a fruitless conceptual path when your father was a child.

-Username17

[Prak]

Also, to cut through "no no, I mean 'doing whatever I happen to want at that moment,' that's totally different from having a personal choice" refutations, "in any situation, I do what I want" is a personal code.

So don't go there.

[maglag]

I was thinking of math actually.

A lawful person produces predictable outputs. A chaotic person doesn't. The lawful dude is the one you can expect to come to the work he's dedicated to even if there's an alien invasion, the chaotic dude has a thousand excuses for a thousand missed days.

And, you know, that's something that real-world people care quite a lot. The guy who comes to work regularly and completes the objectives he promised to do has a much higher chance to be promoted.

Basically, a "code" that doesn't produce any meaningful outputs is no different from ahw2db4hasbd3bawhiiuanw1in. When people swear oaths to medicine/kings and other stuff, you never hear them swearing to just do whatever they want at the moment. Because it would be fucking meaningless.

[virgil]

If the chaotic dude has a thousand excuses for a thousand missed days, that sounds like a rather predictable output.

[Username17]

A lawful person produces predictable outputs. A chaotic person doesn't. The lawful dude is the one you can expect to come to the work he's dedicated to even if there's an alien invasion, the chaotic dude has a thousand excuses for a thousand missed days.

So your new theory is that having a Lawful alignment gives people a bonus to their sense motive checks to determine what you are going to do?

First of all: that's retarded. Secondly, it doesn't even begin to approximate an ethical disagreement people would be willing to come to blows over. 3d6 is a sharper curve than 1d20, but you'll notice that the only person here ready to throw down or call people names over one being "better" than the other is Phone Lobster. And he just does that because he's an asshole, not because there's any rational or even comprehensible reason to think that a flatter or steeper curve of possibilities has inherent value.

Your idea isn't new. It was dumb when it was proposed in 1978, and it's still dumb now. I wasn't even born yet when the first person rolled their eyes because your suggestion is so lame.

-Username17

[Leress]

Maglag, you are describing different inputs.

If you wanted different outputs wouldn't the chaotic person sometimes show up to work even when it's that person's day off?

How would your definitions apply in conjunction with the Good and Evil axis?

Does the person stop being lawful when they don't show up to work because of the invasion?

[ishy]

A chaotic person is somebody who acts on whims and is spontaneous. The kind of people who are always wanting to try new things and always looking for something new and shiny.

A lawful person is someone who adheres to a set of rules. May be society's, may be his own set of rules, but he's gonna stick to them come high or low water. The guy who carefully plans ahead and is extra meticulous about details.

So, if chaotic people are the opposite of lawful people, how do chaotic people communicate? What is language if not a set of rules?

- Edit: Giant frog, Giant frog, Ganit ogrf.

[angelfromanotherpin]

If you're going to come up with an even vaguely coherent definition of Law and Chaos, you should probably start with something that is less like feels and more like actual ethical conflicts. For example, you could say that Chaos supports the rights of the individual, while Law supports the rights of the group; the appropriate balance between those two is an ongoing discussion to this day.

[hyzmarca]

A chaotic person is somebody who acts on whims and is spontaneous. The kind of people who are always wanting to try new things and always looking for something new and shiny.

A lawful person is someone who adheres to a set of rules. May be society's, may be his own set of rules, but he's gonna stick to them come high or low water. The guy who carefully plans ahead and is extra meticulous about details.

So, if chaotic people are the opposite of lawful people, how do chaotic people communicate? What is language if not a set of rules?

- Edit: Giant frog, Giant frog, Ganit ogrf.

They have an Alignment Language that all Chaotic people know and can understand.

If they change their alignment, they automagically lose their current Alignment Language and gain the new one.

[vagrant]

The best way to 'fix' the DnD alignment system is, as other have noted, ignore it entirely. This does leave the various 'Protection from <X>' and Paladin shit in the lurch, but ultimately that's a minor problem that can either be ignored or handwaved. If, however, you wanna keep the alignment tags, then just getting rid of 'Good' is sort of useless. We might not be able to agree on what 'good' is in real life, but luckily, in DnD, you have actual deities and entire dimensions dedicated to 'good', so whatever they do is 'good'.

If you keep the alignment luggage (which honestly is so deeply entrenched in DnD that the most rabid fanboi went apeshit when 4e 'simplified' things), then the best way to treat it isn't as actual ethical/moral lines, but tribal tags wherein the individuals associated with the concept act in ways we overall claim is 'good'. So you can totally have a selfish LG celestial who's in it for glory and power, but he'll probably still stab a Tan'ari in the face and not go around randomly torturing mortals for the lulz. Same with Law and Chaos - Giant Frog is Giant Frog, and that doesn't /mean/ anything, and neither does a codified system of laws. For example, the strictly hierarchical matriarchical oligarchy of the Drow is still a Chaotic society, not because they don't have laws, but because they consider themselves to be part of the 'Chaos' tribe.

Granted, that does make alignment tags pretty meaningless, but they were pretty meaningless from the start. At least treating them as political/tribal affiliations lets you keep the inherent conflict of 'angels v demons' and people can still totally argue over what is good, but if you Sense Alignment a dude and he reads 'Good', and so are you, you know that you're on the same political side even if you personally think that dude is a complete dickface.

[deaddmwalking]

I happened to pick up 'Three Hearts and Three Lions' at a used bookstore the other day. It was one of the source books in the original DMG appendix and it is often credited with influencing the alignment decision (along with the D&D style trolls). In the book (note - 50 year old spoilers) a character is transported from World War II to a fantasy world where he helps stop a war in which the forces of Chaos intend to overthrow the world of Law.

Within the novel, the concept is already bonkers. They intimate that the Nazis are a reflection of CHAOS. The fact that they are seen as well-organized usually puts them in the 'Lawful Evil' category in most D&D alignment descriptions.

The main antagonists are fey creatures that can only live in twilight - not real sunlight. So their plan to 'spread darkness over the entire world' is intended to make the world more comfortable for their own existence.

It appears that the author was trying to use the label 'Chaos' to avoid calling them 'Evil'. If he called them Evil, it would have been somewhat harder to justify the protagonist shacking up with one of the fey creatures.

In the novel, the 'chaotic creatures' are just as capable of working together as the 'lawful creatures'. In fact, they make allies with other creatures that are typically seen as 'evil' - like trolls and goblins and such - most of which aren't themselves fey or limited to living in darkness.

So, in summary, in Three Hearts and Three Lions the term 'chaos' was used to paint the bad guys with a similar brush but it was clear that the term was not inclusive or well-defined. But ultimately, people that wanted to live in human villages were lawful and anyone who didn't could be murder-hoboized without remorse.

[RadiantPhoenix]

You are a god damn idiot. Acting on your own set of rules is literally indistinguishable from acting on your own whims. Literally. Those are exactly the same thing. In every respect.

You are doing what you want to do regardless of what other people want you to do. Whether you call that "personal rules" or "personal whims" is totally and completely inconsequential.

This is the fundamental problem with Law and Chaos. Ain't nobody in the history of the universe been able to lay down an explanation where Law and Chaos are even different things. Let alone things that are mutually exclusive or comprehensive in coverage of potential motivations. They are a garbage concept. Totally unsalvageable and philosophically incoherent.

Law and Chaos were known to be bullshit before D&D was even a thing. The concept was exposed as half-assed and incoherent in the fucking Elric books, that predate the first published D&D books by over a decade. People smarter than you have been forced to concede that this is a fruitless conceptual path when your father was a child.

-Username17

My definition: Law (Order) is believing the Leviathan is good, Chaos is believing it is bad.

Law tends to crush Chaos, because it's actually organized, and Chaos just kind of whines and tries to convince people to become sovereign citizens.

[schpeelah]

My definition: Law (Order) is believing the Leviathan is good, Chaos is believing it is bad.

Law tends to crush Chaos, because it's actually organized, and Chaos just kind of whines and tries to convince people to become sovereign citizens.

You'll find quite a lot of very organized and "lawful" people and systems who think Leviathan is total crap, being opposed to any of the aspects of the system in it. For instance, anyone who really believes in and upholds US law.

[Prak]

If the chaotic dude has a thousand excuses for a thousand missed days, that sounds like a rather predictable output.

Honestly, even without that, the chaotic guy gives a predictable output- he will do whatever he wants.

Now, here's the thing- the lawful guy also does whatever he wants, he's just given you insight into his desires by writing "lawful" on his character sheet. You know that he wants to be loyal and dependable (or thinks he does).

Meanwhile, the chaotic person hasn't given you that insight. However, if you know the chaotic person, you can still predict their outputs because you know they'll always do whatever they want to do.

Coercion changes things to some extent, but it's sort of just another layer to their desires you need to be aware of.

Lets take two hypothetical roommates- Lawful Dave and Chaotic Dave.
Both Daves want to sit on their asses and partake in their preferred past times, and not do the stack of dishes in the sink. You might think that Lawful Dave will do them when he says he'll do them, and he probably will, but ultimately he's still doing what he wants, because being lawful is really just an expression of Lawful Dave's greater overall desire to be accountable, dependable, and hold to his word, which he calls being lawful. If it's not Lawful Dave's turn to do the dishes, don't count on him doing them.
Chaotic Dave really doesn't want to do them. But if you know that he wants coffee, and the pot for the maker is in the rank dishwater, and the stack of plates prevents cleaning just that one thing, then you could predict Chaotic Dave doing the dishes- not because he wants to do dishes, but because he wants coffee. Chaotic Dave may also do the dishes if Lawful Dave threatens physical violence in the event he doesn't do them, and you could predict that Chaotic Dave will do the dishes based on a desire to not be hurt.

Both roommates have predictable outputs, and both do what they want to do. Lawful Dave just gives you a short hand for part of his decision making process.

You are a god damn idiot. Acting on your own set of rules is literally indistinguishable from acting on your own whims. Literally. Those are exactly the same thing. In every respect.

You are doing what you want to do regardless of what other people want you to do. Whether you call that "personal rules" or "personal whims" is totally and completely inconsequential.

This is the fundamental problem with Law and Chaos. Ain't nobody in the history of the universe been able to lay down an explanation where Law and Chaos are even different things. Let alone things that are mutually exclusive or comprehensive in coverage of potential motivations. They are a garbage concept. Totally unsalvageable and philosophically incoherent.

Law and Chaos were known to be bullshit before D&D was even a thing. The concept was exposed as half-assed and incoherent in the fucking Elric books, that predate the first published D&D books by over a decade. People smarter than you have been forced to concede that this is a fruitless conceptual path when your father was a child.

-Username17

My definition: Law (Order) is believing the Leviathan is good, Chaos is believing it is bad.

Law tends to crush Chaos, because it's actually organized, and Chaos just kind of whines and tries to convince people to become sovereign citizens.

Have you read Tome of Fiends?

Ethics Option 1: A level of Organization.

Optimal span of control is 3 to 5 people. Maybe Chaotic characters demand to personally control more units than that themselves and their lack of delegation ends up with a quagmire of incomprehensible proportions. Maybe Chaotic characters refuse to bow to authority at all and end up in units of one. Whatever the case, some DMs will have Law be well organized and Chaos be poorly organized. In this case, Law is objectively a virtue and Chaos is objectively a flaw.

Being disorganized doesn't mean that you're more creative or interesting, it just means that you accomplish less with the same inputs. In this model pure Chaos is a destructive, but more importantly incompetent force.

I worked up a meaning for the alignment tags in my last campaign that worked for me and tried to make it fit established material to some extent (all extents is impossible- established material doesn't fit established material).

I'm sure it's still at best dumb, if not also full of holes, but it functioned. In case anyone's interested-

The closest you get to Law and Chaos being workable is a matter of subscription to external codes.
Law is really, then, about conformity. A lawful person has a philosophy they live by which they think is so awesome that everyone should follow it, and they will tell you. Loudly. This may be something they came up with themselves, or something that someone else told them and they bought into, the important thing is that they believe everyone should live one specific way. This is fine when that one specific way is “have clothes, shelter, and as much food as they need to survive,” but when it’s “abstain from sex until a special social ritual has been performed, and then only with a pre-approved category of partners, and don’t get too kinky, and don’t try to prevent conception” a lot of people are going to have a problem with it.
Lawful extras are people who keep their heads down and follow the laws they live under as best they can, without complaint or protest. The only reason they might not follow the law of the region they live in is if they’ve decided some other law, perhaps a divine law, supersedes it, and even then, they are following someone else’s laws. A lawful luminary is a person who will try to get other people to live by the same code as them.
Lawful characters are likely to take prisoners and try to convert them. Killing an enemy is essentially admitting that you could not convince them to change their ways.

Chaos, in contrast, is about individuality. A chaotic person believes that each person gets to chose their own way, and what’s right for one person might be right for another, but not necessarily. This does not, necessarily, mean that chaotic people are Anarchists. A chaotic person can agree that laws are necessary, but they may prefer that laws be restricted to only necessities. This all well and good when applied to things like “Well, I personally think it would be detrimental to have sex before I’m married to someone, but I’m not going to assume the same is true for you,” but problematic when applied to things like “Well, it’s cool that you want to go on living and all that. Good on you for choosing that. Personally, I think I’d really like to stab you and take your shiny necklace.”
A chaotic extra is a person who probably generally follows the laws to avoid legal repercussions, but flouts minor ones, like going to another county to buy alcohol to bring back to their dry county, or hiring a prostitute despite it being illegal. A chaotic luminary however obeys the laws they see the necessity of, but breaks laws they find inconvenient, like owning a weapon in a land where such is illegal.
Chaotic characters usually only take prisoners if it furthers their goals, not to convert. They may seek information, believe the person is a danger, or simply need to turn them over alive to collect a bounty. They will seldom try to tell a person they should change ideologies, at least apart from advocating the independence of chaos. They respect the demon’s right to choose to murder and rampage, but that just means they won’t try to change the demon’s mind, just kill them to protect others.

What makes [the most] sense is for good and evil to be a matter of priorities.
Evil prioritizes the self above others. An evil person is interested first and foremost in their own well being and benefit. Given a scenario where an evil person must choose to save themselves or any number of other people, they will generally choose to save themselves (this of course isn’t universal—suicidal evil people, evil people who suffer from chronic debilitating pain, and evil people who stubbornly dislike ultimatums and seek a third option all might defy this generalization). This is not to say that evil cannot have friends. All social creatures mentally benefit from friendship. The evil person is just the person who, when chased by a zombie, is more concerned with outrunning their friends than the actual zombie. Some evil creatures, however, do actually hold a circle of people in regard that is close to or even equal to that which they hold themselves in. They may see the continued existence and well being as a preferential outcome, or they may see the people as a part of themselves, in a way, and consider the well being of a friend as they might consider the continued function of a major, if not vital, organ. Some particularly social evil creatures will even see people in something like concentric rings of “closeness to self,” with friends and at least some family occupying a conceptual ring that is either close to or containing their own, then a circle which encompasses their immediate community, then their city, their nation, and so on, to the point where they might even protect their world from threats to it. “I’m saving the world because that’s where I keep my stuff/that’s where I live/that’s where the people I care about are” is not an uncommon motivation for an evil “hero.”
Evil will usually pursue the course of action which best furthers their goals, which actually means that they are quite likely to work in groups, at least if they understand combined efforts at all. The fact that working by yourself both gives your enemy fewer targets, and means that you have no one to fall back on when your own talents fail, means that evil creatures will try to have minions if not allies. This does mean, however, that those an evil creature surrounds themselves with may be coerced if they cannot find people willing to join them.

Good, then, prioritizes others first, and considers the self either secondary, or only important as part of others. The typical aim of a good character is to ensure the best outcome or further the interests of the greatest number of people. A good character put in a scenario where they must decide between the death of themselves and one other person will frequently volunteer their own life so that the other may live, but, if put in a position to decide between the death of one person, or their own party, may decide to offer the life of the one that more may live (they may or may not try to offer their own life that their party and the other may live, and a party of good characters might collectively offer their own lives, but these are tangents).
The most important thing to good is to protect others. This leads to problems when a good character fails to respect another’s right to make their own decision about their life, such as a man telling his wife to stay at home where it’s safe while he goes to war when perhaps the wife wants to fight too.
Good, almost paradoxically, may try to work alone. Rather than out of social ineptness, or arrogance, it is because they feel that having allies or followers endangers others. However, the best of the Good will respect others’ right to risk their lives, and so they a good person with followers or allies likely has not coerced any of them (enemies press ganged into service for their talents not withstanding), and a good person without allies or followers is probably a jerk who actually can’t keep friends.

[virgil]

For RPGs, if the genre expects there to be an Order/Chaos dichotomy, I prefer to follow one of two definitions…

• Alignment of Hats Law and Chaos are political affiliations on a cosmic scale, and the overall difference between the two in actuality is difficult to discern, especially by mortals. Both will kill you for nonsensical reasons, and there are different interpretations on each side (motivation is important). They follow a theme, but it’s purely aesthetic rather than any objective difference. While at the same time, these hats are serious business, and good/evil conflict almost takes a back seat to their conflict.
  Anthropocentric Order is another word for Humanoid Civilization. The farther you move from densely populated and highly organized cities of medium-sized bipeds, the more on the side of Chaos you are. Racial tension between elves and dwarfs (or humans/orcs), especially within the same city, is generally separate from the Law/Chaos angle. Monstrous humanoids are those tainted with Chaos, and everything else is Chaos; even if they form cities and cultures, they are fundamentally different from anything a humanoid would produce and thus be grouped with Chaos.

Neither truly produce a set of behavioral guidelines to differentiate between a lawful person and a chaotic person were you to meet them in a bar, but they certainly permit philosophical debates and general theme of the conflict for the campaign.