Do you feel D&D would be better off without the alignment system?

[terling]

In my recent campaign, necromancers and their ilk were valuable public servants.  So long as they didn't break any normal laws, they were expected to have mindless undead at their beck and call.  One of them started a waste disposal company, using skeletons wearing gloves.  Various apprentices acted as work crew overseers and everyone had a nice career path.  He also eliminated any rivals that gave necromancy a bad name.  During times of strife, the necromancers and skeleton work crews were enlisted in the city defenses.

Alignment was action-based, not action-forming in that game.  If you wanted to have access to a prestige class that had an alignment restriction, you needed to act appropriately for at least one level prior.  Evil was portrayed as much more self-interested/advancing and Good much more community-building.  Seemed to work fairly well.

[veekie]

Why should angels and demons be made an exception if alignment is going away?  Absolute good and absolute evil can get boring, anyway.  I kind of liked how Tales of Symphonia did it (angel was basically another word for lich, but most people didn't know that).

Mostly because there is a need for such things. Unambiguous good and evil helps certain types of games, as, while lacking depth, they provide an endless stream of opponents where theres no moral conflict in eliminating.
Now, of course, you can make it so that cosmic good and evil are simply defined by various deities, and the angels/fiends serve THEM and their code. So you'd just need an equivalent of the Judeo-Christian god, and an Adversary to spawn the majority of the outsider species. You can even retain the Great Wheel cosmology(simply have each alignment combination and their outsider types be derivative of their pantheons). In these cases, aligned effects(which are mostly divine barring some arcane spells of exceptional cruelty/arbitrary alignment definitions) stem from the god(s) that grant them, and follow the appropriate code, defining Faithful(follows the same rules as you do), Neutral(neither follows nor opposes your code), Infidel(following rules that are opposed to what yours do).
After all, subjective alignment does not mean that a large number of people cannot share the same view of things. This happens in real life all the time.


Possible Faith credo(grossly simplified)
Promote:
Healing
Charity
Light

Banned:
Torture
Undead

Anything which follows the "Promotes" and does not do the "Banned" are counted 'good' by that god's effects. Anything which does the 'Banned' are counted 'evil' by the same metric.
This counts intent above results.

[RobbyPants]

All in all, I think the system would be better without alignment, although it would certainly feel different.  I've been seriously toying with removing alignment from my games, but I haven't run a serious enough game to actually implement this yet.  Regardless, I think that most alignment based prereqs could be nixed entirely and replaced with a code of conduct when applicable.  Just in the PHB alone, we have bards and barbarians that cannot be lawful, and monks that have to be.  The game is only improved by removing these restrictions.

Also, the whole lawful-chaotic axis is confusing as hell.  It's pretty much impossible to give a good definition of either that holds up to scrutiny, and it just ends up creating game-ruining arguments.

And what's cool is, even without alignment, you can still use other things to simulate it, like the Taint mechanic from OA (or the HoH updated version), and have spells like Detect Corruption, and whatnot.

[veekie]

Ah yes, general restrictions definitely should be reduced to codes of conduct, cosmic alignment can simply be the 'big' codes of conduct that angels, fiends,, clerics(of pure Good/Evil), paladins(also of pure Good/Evil) and such call upon for their conditional magic.

The real key thing though, is for the system to remain able to serve those who WANT alignment of some form(see divinely defined CoCs) and also to work just fine for characters and plots not solely revolving around alignment.

Things like bards, monks and barbarians make little sense. 'Free spirited', 'discipline' and 'anger' doesn't relate to alignment close enough to link to law and chaos. Of course, a big part of this is that the designers don't quite grasp the meaning of order and chaos, while Good and Evil have differing quality of representation. Sometimes it's completely arbitrary(see Intuitive Strike, Touch of Golden Ice(how the hell is the ability to petrify anyone nongood Good?), and sometimes it's "Icky = Evil" which leads to the necromancy issue, and any spell that kills in a gruesome/painful manner.

From the original sources(Moorcock's stories and myths in general), Order and Chaos are intended to be cosmic level forces, which no mortal can truly align themselves with. It'd be like trying to ally yourself to gravity or entropy, you might use it, it might use you, but their goals are fundamentally incompatible with being a mortal. They're sentient, but entirely unreasonable.

[weenog]

I don't know, I think Quinn Dexter in the Night's Dawn trilogy did a fairly good job of trying to align himself with entropy.  Seeking to quicken the end of all creation qualifies, aye?

[Beltendu]

If you think about it, alignments ARE giant (if ill-defined and ill-applied) codes of conduct ...

I'm not sure it really needs to be eliminated entirely, particularly if you've got a DM willing to work with you some.  I had a paladin character whose "law" made him closer to what you might call neutral good instead of lawful good, but the DM was cool with it.

I tend to think it's simple enough that it works as long as you don't try to be too rigid with it.  As others have noted, some of the alignment restrictions don't make a whole lot of sense, so if you can talk your DM into ignoring t hem, you're golden.  Others make more sense to me, though, like Paladins (particularly now that they have the variant paladins for differing alignments). 

Now, if you want a game that's more complex and "realistic" from that angle, then I can see tossing the alignment system and working up a more complex code of conduct system ...

[Saxony]

I think it should exist, but be rarer.

This.

I like making alignment official. Giving everyone chaotic or lawful alignment when that really means "trickster" or "anal retentive" makes no sense. That's simple character role play/backstory crap. Giving everyone good or evil alignment actually DOES matter. So its nice to have rules about good-evil alignment in a game about good adventuring to go kill evil until good levels up to 20.

[dither]

I'm of the opinion that Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos belong in splatbooks, but not the core rules.

Characters and monsters should have "motivation" and "demeanor," not "alignment."

"Monstrous hungry." "Prideful trigger-happy." Etc.

[veekie]

I like making alignment official. Giving everyone chaotic or lawful alignment when that really means "trickster" or "anal retentive" makes no sense. That's simple character role play/backstory crap. Giving everyone good or evil alignment actually DOES matter. So its nice to have rules about good-evil alignment in a game about good adventuring to go kill evil until good levels up to 20.

Well, that is mainly the reason for not outright removing it actually. Having suitable types of enemies to battle in a straightforward game without too much quibbling helps gameplay a lot. Hence retaining the capacity to have Always X alignment available is a good thing.

On the quick fix end though, the biggest offenders are mostly class prereqs and icky spells. So you have these, in order of implementation difficulty:
Simple Fix: Remove alignment requirements from most classes that don't need it for a mechanical reason(i.e. paladin has alignment tied features). Bard, Barbarian, Monk, Druid, Assassin get an out. Trivial to implement
Simple Fix +1: Rewrite classes that have alignment tied features to have alternate alignment variants, paladins of X,Y and Z show up here, releasing clerics from alignment related turning as well. Slightly harder to do, but usually it's just clone and retype.
Simple Fix +2: Rewrite spells and feats that are icky, but not otherwise inherently good/evil due to drawing on aligned forces. Most of the necromantic stuff falls under this. Clerics with completely non undead related turning powers may come into play here. This is trickier since you have to dig through a metric crapton of stuff to fix
Advanced Fix: All alignment tied matters are switched to codes of conduct. Clerics, Paladins, Druids, and other divinely inspired classes take after the code of their patron, and all 'aligned' magics are modified to work based off divine order codes of conduct instead. Most spells that have an actual difference between aligned versions may need to be rewritten to suit the new schema of tying them to specific gods/domains. Hard to implement, practically a rewrite project in itself. Potential balance issues.
Advanced Fix +1: Implement incentive/penalty system for following or disobeying your chosen codes of conduct, beyond the binary 'lose all your powers' in play for the current state. Morale effects may be significant, as well as strength of resolve(a warrior worshipping a god is far different from a paladin or cleric, who'd be downright fanatical in comparison). Not quite as big a jump, but still tricky to implement.

EDIT: Readability.

[fuinjutsu]

maybe something like the Paragon/Renegade meters then?

[stanprollyright]

DM awarded "good", "evil", "lawful", or "chaotic" points based on actions.  So "alignment" actually means "X number of points/level on one side of the continuum."

[Bozwevial]

DM awarded "good", "evil", "lawful", or "chaotic" points based on actions.  So "alignment" actually means "X number of points/level on one side of the continuum."

Er, not a good plan. Why? Is killing the necromancer while he's asleep chaotic (since he didn't get a chance to defend himself), lawful (since he was violating several laws by murdering others), good (he killed a baby!), or evil (he was helpless)? What about refusing to jump into a pond to rescue a drowning child on the grounds that it would ruin your suit, which you could instead sell to raise hundreds of children from poverty? Is that a good or evil act? How do personal philosophies come into play--if you believe you're acting for the greater good, are you awarded good points for murdering the innocent farmer?

Plus, it really bogs down play for the DM to have to award points based on every little action that has a moral component. That sort of thing is best left to computer games where moral choices are usually more clearly defined and are flagged by the computer, which never forgets to add three lawful points. Add into that the inevitable argument about what alignment your actions support and your session has ground to a halt.

[veekie]

Yeah, you need a mechanical reason to stick to an alignment, whereas that is just keeping score for the people with aligned class requirements.

Any opinions on the five stages of fixing alignment I posted above?
Fix 3 & 4 are the only ones you wouldn't want to do alone I think, particularly the spell reimaging.

Coming up with clerics who don't have their lives revolving around alignment and the undead is neat though. I mean, what does a cleric of Tempus or Thor give a damn about undead?

[RobbyPants]

DM awarded "good", "evil", "lawful", or "chaotic" points based on actions.  So "alignment" actually means "X number of points/level on one side of the continuum."

I have to agree with Boz for everything he said, plus assigning points is next to impossible.  You can't really do it on the Law/Chaos axis because no one even knows what they mean.  Assigning points on the Good/Evil axis is incredibly dishonest because Good is not the same thing as Evil x -1.  Like it or not, Evil counts for a lot more than Good.

Basically, you can't kill someone in cold blood and later save someone and call yourself neutral.  More so, you can't kill someone and save two people and call yourself good.  You're still a cold blooded killer.  This is hard to put to points that don't end up in some crazy, easy to game system where people stay just "good enough" to be Good.

[Bozwevial]

DM awarded "good", "evil", "lawful", or "chaotic" points based on actions.  So "alignment" actually means "X number of points/level on one side of the continuum."

I have to agree with Boz for everything he said, plus assigning points is next to impossible.  You can't really do it on the Law/Chaos axis because no one even knows what they mean.  Assigning points on the Good/Evil axis is incredibly dishonest because Good is not the same thing as Evil x -1.  Like it or not, Evil counts for a lot more than Good.

Basically, you can't kill someone in cold blood and later save someone and call yourself neutral.  More so, you can't kill someone and save two people and call yourself good.  You're still a cold blooded killer.  This is hard to put to points that don't end up in some crazy, easy to game system where people stay just "good enough" to be Good.

How did Frank and K put it? "If you fix ten roofs, you're Jimmy the Helpful Thatcher. If you eat one farmer's daughter, you're Jimmy the Cannibal, and no amount of carpentry will fix that."

[Endarire]

If after thousands of years, philosophers can't agree on what 'good' is, I'm not arbitrating that at my gaming table.

[veekie]

You could just have say...Pelor enforcing Catholic Goodness, with a host of angels, then make him popular. When the players ask why on the arbitrary or grey areas, it has been resolved by divine edict. Pelor likes it this way.

[weenog]

What about taking Light and Dark beyond being just descriptors that determine how light spells and darkness spells interact with each other?  You could make them energy descriptors as well as creature subtypes (similar to Fire and Cold), fold positive energy effects, good subtypes/aligned spells, and and holy/sacred bonuses and damage into Light, with negative energy effects, evil subtypes and aligned spells, and unholy/profane bonuses and damage going to Dark.

Then lose behavior-based alignment altogether, and leave alignment-affecting spells only functional against creatures with (or lacking, depending on the spell) the appropriate subtypes.  Possibly make it really easy (say, a ritual that takes a day, and costs 1,000 GP and 100 XP) for creatures that don't naturally have them to pick up one or the other subtype, and substantially harder (no specific ideas here, but along the lines of whatever you think would be an appropriate ordeal to redeem a demon) for creatures that have them (whether naturally possessed or voluntarily acquired) to lose them.

You could still have some mechanical alignment effects this way, though not all of them.  You'd be using less charged terminology, which might go some way to easing the bickering.  You wouldn't have to try and arbitrate what's actually good and evil, just what fits better with the Light or Dark descriptor or neither.  (Icky = black magic is rather less idiotic than icky = evil, IMO, being a grim type that works with grim things doesn't mean you aren't a really nice guy.)  You could still have paragons of absolute Light and Darkness, with less silliness when something with the Light subtype turns out to be a bastard, or something Dark is working to save and improve lives.

[RobbyPants]

That's actually a pretty good way to work up a subjective alignment system and to still keep your war between Good Light and Evil Dark.   You can still have angels and demons and Holy Light and Unholy Dark weapons, and people like that.

[Unbeliever]

I have just skimmed this thread, but my group has typically been playing sans alignment for years.  Alignment is helpful and appropriate for some games and for some creatures, though the only one that springs to mind is Planescape, where several of the entities you meet are embodiments of extreme aspects of the alignment axis (e.g., Modrons).  I think it's been about 10 years since I played in a game where alignment was meant to convey anything moral about one's character.  It gets too murky, complicated, and cumbersome for the reasons noted above.

We use 2 fixes somewhat haphazardly: 
#1  All alignment abilities are defined as vs. "enemies" and the alignment-based DRs are converted to either magic or something else, usually to a special material.  In the spoiler I've included a friend's thoughts on it for a campaign he ran, and he has put the most effort into articulating a house rule about it.  This represented a slight power up for things like Protection from Evil, but realistically, it wasn't even noticeable.  The vast majority of one's enemies in a typical D&D game are "evil." 
[spoiler]

[/spoiler]
#2  Define the PCs as "good" for the purposes of game mechanics, ignoring whether or not that is actually the case.  This kind of subverts the definition of "good" to "protagonist" but it keeps all the mechanics in place.  Holy swords are about as valuable (maybe slightly more) as they used to be, Holy Word works about as well, etc.  We've used this in a campaign we have run off and on for years (from 3rd to 15th level now, though it's currently on hiatus), and it has not proven to cause any issues.  It is a Psionics-only campaign, though, so we did dodge a bit of the headache the cleric spells would involve.

I think #1 is probably a better solution overall.  It's not very labor intensive -- it involves changing about 20 DR entries or so -- and it falls along the Light/Dark suggestion above (which is really good and I will probably steal). 

P.S.:  the law/chaos axis, I believe, is a vestige from Michael Moorcock and similar authors where Chaos, which really translates to chaotic evil, is a force trying to devour all creation.