Author Topic: Do you feel D&D would be better off without the alignment system?  (Read 6656 times)

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veekie

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Re: Do you feel D&D would be better off without the alignment system?
« Reply #40 on: July 30, 2010, 02:14:50 PM »
^^
Naw, not chaotic evil. RAW chaos, which seeks only to have more chaos.
The end of all creation is sort of a side effect. Same with Law.
It's not immoral, it's amoral.
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The_Mad_Linguist

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Re: Do you feel D&D would be better off without the alignment system?
« Reply #41 on: July 30, 2010, 02:45:52 PM »
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.
To be fair, law is also trying to devour all creation.
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Unbeliever

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Re: Do you feel D&D would be better off without the alignment system?
« Reply #42 on: July 30, 2010, 05:48:27 PM »
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.
To be fair, law is also trying to devour all creation.
In the Elric stuff, which is what I really had in mind (and I think TSR did, too, once upon a time) the forces of Chaos are associated w/ Arioch and the demon princes, etc.  While Law isn't exactly a barrel of roses, and to be honest I'm hard pressed to recall one of its champions in the Elric series, Chaos is, in this instance, at least, explicitly associated w/ Hell and demons and all that.  I can't recall the name of Chaos' apocalyptic champion, but he was a pretty standard rape and pillage the universe type. 

Later authors, Erikson springs to mind, have been more balanced, w/ Law being full of total dickheads who, as TML notes, are also hellbent on their own form of orderly destruction.  So, if you were inclined to use such an axis, maybe that would be the place to look. 

Honestly, I cannot conceive of a single "Chaos as immoral but will destroy our universe as a side effect of its other goals" example in fantasy lit.  Maybe the latter Dragonlance stuff fits the bill, I plead ignorance, and maybe some of the Lovecraftian Yog-Sothoth stuff, but I think that's a stretch.  I'm not saying that makes sense, but Chaos at least tends towards the explicit malevolence.

As a side note, unless one wants to run a whole campaign about the cosmic battle between law and chaos, viz. Elric's stories, I think this whole axis is kind of silly and only comprehensible w/ a sort of fiat.

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Re: Do you feel D&D would be better off without the alignment system?
« Reply #43 on: July 30, 2010, 07:48:55 PM »
Chronicles of Amber, first cycle?
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Re: Do you feel D&D would be better off without the alignment system?
« Reply #44 on: July 30, 2010, 11:42:35 PM »
I think the major problems with the alignment system within D&D is that the writers, players and DMs generally lack the philosophical and theological rigor to grasp at the concepts and the nuance to put them into play.

For example, lets say an angel is a being of pure neutral good.  It is also going to be an inhuman monstrosity because no human can ever be pure good, at best we can attempt to be good.  A being who is infinitely caring, infinitely just, and will never be angered by or judge you by your frailties only your deeds is almost incomprehensible to the average D&Der.  Angels never hate you for your sins even if they must destroy you for them but they also can't have true empathy or sympathy; they don't have a point of reference to understand temptation or imperfection within themselves.  They are unchanging cosmic forces who's very goodness is definitional for them.  And they are slaves to this alignment, they cannot go against it and cannot see outside of it.  They are to the human mind utterly insane.

The thing is that this is conceptually so much more interesting than the bland shit that the Core and Splatbooks try to shove down our throat.  How fascinating would it be if Paladins are trying to be like these angels, beings they can never hope to emulate or even understand?  Instead of being a lawful stupid goody-two-shoes crusader the Paladin would now be an encapsulation of so much of human folly.  Attempting to be something it cannot be and something that if it really stopped to think about the concept it would never want to be.  For the Paladin choice is so necessary, evil doers need to choose to do evil and good people need to choose to do good.  His self-validation comes from the fact that he is overcoming his human tendencies towards selfishness and greed and hedonism at the expense of others and inspires this in others.  Angels don't make this choice, they simply are good.  Angels don't need to inspire others to good, they simply destroy evil and forgive the lesser trespasses.  For all the Paladin tries to be the angel the angel is the antithesis of everything that makes the Paladin good and holy and righteous.  The Paladin struggles and claws towards goodness and wrestles with evil everyday.  The angel simply is.

And by the same token, Evil (big E) is not that bad.  Without choice it is hard to fault evil creatures for their evil.  Sure a devil is attempting to trick you into committing some horrible sin to damn you to his domain, but this is his nature.  You can no more fault him for doing this than you can a lion for eating you when it is hungry.  The fact that the devil will torture you for the rest of eternity is less damning for it that a human torturing you for a single minute.  The devil never had the option not to, it could never look and say "maybe its wrong to torture people."  It does it because its very essence is to be evil.  But the person didn't have to torture you, they either rationalized it or did it for their own perverse pleasure.  And this makes it so much worse.  The vilest deprecations of hell are nothing compared to what people can do to other people.  Devils never got to make the decision while humans always do.

This is the flaw with the alignment system.  It proposes that Good and Evil and Order and Chaos are fundamental cosmic forces and then treats them as passing human philosophical ideas.  The pure forms of any are alien and madness to the human mind which mixes diluted forms of all and attempts to get by best it can.  There is no striving for alignments in D&D, no real struggle to keep ones alignment, no ambiguity about one of the most ambiguous and subjective of all human constructs.  The Paladin should not be about smiting evil but about how any human can go about attempting to advance goodness and order in a universe of uncaring deities, malicious devils and greedy dragons.  The party led by the Paladin shouldn't look at some black dragon extorting tribute from a village as an opportunity for loot and XP, but as an opportunity to right a wrong in the world.  Perhaps a show of force can convince the dragon that he is not as invincible as he believes and a system can be worked out by which the people pay a tax to the dragon and the dragon provides protection to the village.  This advances the cause of the Paladin far more than simply killing the dragon and stealing his ill-gotten gains.  It provides an orderly system by which the villagers get a very powerful defender and the dragon gets his lucre.  And for doing this the players should be rewarded accordingly.  But this will never happen because there is only the barest passing reward for RPing an alignment while the penalties for not are great.  So you kick the dragons ass and call it a day.

If alignment is to be a mechanical system it needs to actually be one.  There should be penalties and rewards for utilizing ones alignment, not some goofy auras and occasional need for random atonement spells.

Unbeliever

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Re: Do you feel D&D would be better off without the alignment system?
« Reply #45 on: July 31, 2010, 12:49:03 AM »
I think the major problems with the alignment system within D&D is that the writers, players and DMs generally lack the philosophical and theological rigor to grasp at the concepts and the nuance to put them into play.
My usual gaming group consists of multiple advanced degrees in Philosophy and Classics, so I think we can kind of manage at least a shot at understanding the nuances of good and evil.  Although, your post makes some pretty strong assumptions about the nature of good and evil, ones that are at the very least debatable. 

The relevant question is whether or not you want them to impact the game.  Ages ago I recall annoying debates about paladins taking various actions, which would be my big worry. 

If you want moral conflict/aspiration/alignment in general to be at the center of your game, then by all means have at it.  My gf actually just said she thought that could be a really interesting idea for a campaign. 

And, I heartily agree w/ this sentiment: 
Quote
If alignment is to be a mechanical system it needs to actually be one.  There should be penalties and rewards for utilizing ones alignment, not some goofy auras and occasional need for random atonement spells.
It'd be hard to figure out how to work it, though.  The Renegade/Angel mechanic common to several video games nowadays (Mass Effect, Fallout 3, etc.) would be extremely hard to implement.  I guess I worry that it will become like Humanity in Vampire -- extremely grainy, not particularly helpful, and more of a headace than it is worth.  I'd probably suggest the same thing I would for Vampire, which is a kind of trait vote mechanism -- at the end of a session you talk about potential changes in Humanity (or alignment in this case) and if people feel that such a change happened, and it should be clear to a bystander otherwise it wasn't that big a deal, then it goes on the sheet.  Maybe just having a really clear sense of what the alignments (or the relevant alignments) mean would be sufficient.

Unbeliever

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Re: Do you feel D&D would be better off without the alignment system?
« Reply #46 on: July 31, 2010, 12:53:54 AM »
Chronicles of Amber, first cycle?
That is a damn good series, first of all.  I hate to admit this, but it's been a long time since I've read them.  I am a little hazy on what Chaos' motivation really was in that series.  I recall them wanting to supplant Amber at the center of the universe, or were they just trying to wipe out the Pattern and return everything to Chaos?  That would be the non-malevolent Chaos example, then, although I do stand by my surmise that the Moorcock/Lovecraft thing was what D&D first had in mind w/ its Law/Chaos axis.  But, if this gloss on Chaos works for anyone's game, and it does seem to be a more modern sentiment (I'm thinking of Erikson's series, where Chaos played a plot point for one book, but that's about all you can expect in that universe) then I could certainly see it working.

Absent a specific campaign world or campaign concept, though, I tend towards more personal and conceptually tidier motivations for characters.  Hence why my group tends to dispense w/ alignments.  I can see some gloss on them being an interesting campaign, but for my usual games it just rarely proves to be a helpful heuristic.  On occasion I'll say something like "he's a lawful good type" which helps signal things to the other people at the table, but that's pretty rare and not worth ginning up the whole alignment system. 

Saxony

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Re: Do you feel D&D would be better off without the alignment system?
« Reply #47 on: July 31, 2010, 01:03:35 AM »
Good stuff.

...

If alignment is to be a mechanical system it needs to actually be one.  There should be penalties and rewards for utilizing ones alignment, not some goofy auras and occasional need for random atonement spells.

Considering everything else you said, I think this is the biggest problem with DnD's alignment system. There are no rules which encourage or discourage player behavior based on alignment. In blunt terms, playing one's alignment is worthless. You could have a Rogue which proactively does evil things to earn their alignment or you could have a Rogue which acts evilly only given the chance by the DM. Both gain the same amount of swag and cool abilities.

So perhaps obeying one's alignment would give more XP (Don't want to mess with GP... ugh...). Charge in an kill the corrupt leader grants 777 XP. Kidnap the corrupt leader and asking them to list their crimes, then fixing those crimes (by building an orphanage), and THEN killing the corrupt leader with a public execution to relieve the people harmed gives 3000 XP.

More work should give more XP.

But that's just a flaw with DnD's "Overcoming Monsters" XP system. Doing stuff other than overcoming monsters doesn't give XP in the rules.

There has to be some reward. Even if a player has to work at being a certain alignment, it doesn't matter unless they get something out of their work. Alignments can't be cosmetic and work.
« Last Edit: July 31, 2010, 01:12:37 AM by Saxony »
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Littha

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Re: Do you feel D&D would be better off without the alignment system?
« Reply #48 on: July 31, 2010, 01:19:05 AM »
I think the major problems with the alignment system within D&D is that the writers, players and DMs generally lack the philosophical and theological rigor to grasp at the concepts and the nuance to put them into play.

For example, lets say an angel is a being of pure neutral good.  It is also going to be an inhuman monstrosity because no human can ever be pure good, at best we can attempt to be good.  A being who is infinitely caring, infinitely just, and will never be angered by or judge you by your frailties only your deeds is almost incomprehensible to the average D&Der.  Angels never hate you for your sins even if they must destroy you for them but they also can't have true empathy or sympathy; they don't have a point of reference to understand temptation or imperfection within themselves.  They are unchanging cosmic forces who's very goodness is definitional for them.  And they are slaves to this alignment, they cannot go against it and cannot see outside of it.  They are to the human mind utterly insane.

The thing is that this is conceptually so much more interesting than the bland shit that the Core and Splatbooks try to shove down our throat.  How fascinating would it be if Paladins are trying to be like these angels, beings they can never hope to emulate or even understand?  Instead of being a lawful stupid goody-two-shoes crusader the Paladin would now be an encapsulation of so much of human folly.  Attempting to be something it cannot be and something that if it really stopped to think about the concept it would never want to be.  For the Paladin choice is so necessary, evil doers need to choose to do evil and good people need to choose to do good.  His self-validation comes from the fact that he is overcoming his human tendencies towards selfishness and greed and hedonism at the expense of others and inspires this in others.  Angels don't make this choice, they simply are good.  Angels don't need to inspire others to good, they simply destroy evil and forgive the lesser trespasses.  For all the Paladin tries to be the angel the angel is the antithesis of everything that makes the Paladin good and holy and righteous.  The Paladin struggles and claws towards goodness and wrestles with evil everyday.  The angel simply is.

And by the same token, Evil (big E) is not that bad.  Without choice it is hard to fault evil creatures for their evil.  Sure a devil is attempting to trick you into committing some horrible sin to damn you to his domain, but this is his nature.  You can no more fault him for doing this than you can a lion for eating you when it is hungry.  The fact that the devil will torture you for the rest of eternity is less damning for it that a human torturing you for a single minute.  The devil never had the option not to, it could never look and say "maybe its wrong to torture people."  It does it because its very essence is to be evil.  But the person didn't have to torture you, they either rationalized it or did it for their own perverse pleasure.  And this makes it so much worse.  The vilest deprecations of hell are nothing compared to what people can do to other people.  Devils never got to make the decision while humans always do.

This is the flaw with the alignment system.  It proposes that Good and Evil and Order and Chaos are fundamental cosmic forces and then treats them as passing human philosophical ideas.  The pure forms of any are alien and madness to the human mind which mixes diluted forms of all and attempts to get by best it can.  There is no striving for alignments in D&D, no real struggle to keep ones alignment, no ambiguity about one of the most ambiguous and subjective of all human constructs.  The Paladin should not be about smiting evil but about how any human can go about attempting to advance goodness and order in a universe of uncaring deities, malicious devils and greedy dragons.  The party led by the Paladin shouldn't look at some black dragon extorting tribute from a village as an opportunity for loot and XP, but as an opportunity to right a wrong in the world.  Perhaps a show of force can convince the dragon that he is not as invincible as he believes and a system can be worked out by which the people pay a tax to the dragon and the dragon provides protection to the village.  This advances the cause of the Paladin far more than simply killing the dragon and stealing his ill-gotten gains.  It provides an orderly system by which the villagers get a very powerful defender and the dragon gets his lucre.  And for doing this the players should be rewarded accordingly.  But this will never happen because there is only the barest passing reward for RPing an alignment while the penalties for not are great.  So you kick the dragons ass and call it a day.

If alignment is to be a mechanical system it needs to actually be one.  There should be penalties and rewards for utilizing ones alignment, not some goofy auras and occasional need for random atonement spells.

The problem with this view in D&D is it is fairly contradictory to the way the writers seem to have wanted to portray the setting. Outsiders rebelling against their alignment is at least passingly common in D&D (I can think of 2 off the top of my head; a solar that worships and elder evil and a succubus paladin) and are several examples of this rebellion in the myths and legends IRL (Lucifer or Promethius) which should be represented in a fantasy game.

The rebellion of a creature that is an exemplar of its ideals is interesting concept to explore, one of my favourite of wizards pre written NPCs is the succubus paladin though a lot of people hate the idea I find the idea that a creature that is literally chaos and evil made manifest can 'fall' into goodness an interesting idea. To say that an Angel could never conceive of rebellion (chaotic) would deny the possibility of interesting characters like these.

There has to be some reward. Even if a player has to work at being a certain alignment, it doesn't matter unless they get something out of their work. Alignments can't be cosmetic and work.

D&D seems to take the opposite view, for characters whose alignment is important they are actively punished for failing. Paladins, Clerics, Druids and Monks are all examples of this. Not all characters should be completely defined by their alignment, a rogue is more defined by his class rather that if he is chaotic good or chaotic evil whereas a Paladin is defined by his alignment.
« Last Edit: July 31, 2010, 01:25:45 AM by Littha »

veekie

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Re: Do you feel D&D would be better off without the alignment system?
« Reply #49 on: July 31, 2010, 04:50:39 AM »
There has to be some reward. Even if a player has to work at being a certain alignment, it doesn't matter unless they get something out of their work. Alignments can't be cosmetic and work.
Definitely a good idea, but impacting permanent stuff like xp and wealth is not a good way to do it.
If using an action point system, you could award/deduct points for playing or opposing your alignment.
Or you could give a morale penalty/bonus for breaching/exemplifying the same.
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It's also a little cold because of that.
Please get it a blanket.

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I can barely read mine.

"Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. At 2:15, it begins rolling up characters."

[spoiler]
"Just what do you think the moon up in the sky is? Everyone sees that big, round shiny thing and thinks there must be something round up there, right? That's just silly. The truth is much more awesome than that. You can almost never see the real Moon, and its appearance is death to humans. You can only see the Moon when it's reflected in things. And the things it reflects in, like water or glass, can all be broken, right? Since the moon you see in the sky is just being reflected in the heavens, if you tear open the heavens it's easy to break it~"
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To sumbolaion diakoneto moi, basilisk ouranionon.
Epigenentheto, apoleia keraune hos timeis pteirei.
Hekatonkatis kai khiliakis astrapsato.
Khiliarkhou Astrape!
[/spoiler]

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Endarire

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Re: Do you feel D&D would be better off without the alignment system?
« Reply #50 on: July 31, 2010, 07:00:59 PM »
One question the rules don't state clearly enough for me is whether alignment is meant to be DEFINING of my character or INDICATIVE of him.

How easily should alignments change?  What happens if I change alignment?
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The_Mad_Linguist

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Re: Do you feel D&D would be better off without the alignment system?
« Reply #51 on: July 31, 2010, 07:21:01 PM »
One question the rules don't state clearly enough for me is whether alignment is meant to be DEFINING of my character or INDICATIVE of him.

Six of one half dozen of the other.  

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Re: Do you feel D&D would be better off without the alignment system?
« Reply #52 on: August 01, 2010, 12:19:55 PM »
One question the rules don't state clearly enough for me is whether alignment is meant to be DEFINING of my character or INDICATIVE of him.

Six of one half dozen of the other. 

If you're a dick who doesn't play by the rules, you probably were a dick who doesn't play by the rules in the past, and will be a dick who doesn't play by the rules in the future.
The PHB indicates it should be Indicative, but many DMs feel it should be Defining. Both the PHB and DMG state that if a player's character isn't acting much like their listed alignment, the DM and player should discuss changing it to reflect how the character is acting. Most DMs I know instead treat any actions a player takes outside of their listed alignment to not be valid because "That's not something an xy would do", and only force alignment changes when they are severe to straightjacket the player's character's actions. Which is ludicrous.

I don't even bother writing an alignment anymore on my character sheets. If the DM really wants to adjudicate one of the very few effects that require alignments on me, then I'll pick one that's relevant to how I've been playing the character to that point, but it's not something I bother with otherwise. Especially considering the shitty and contradicting definitions they give to the alignments.
[Spoiler]
A gygaxian dungeon is like the world's most messed up game show.

Behind door number one: INSTANT DEATH!
Behind door number 2: A magic crown!
Behind door number 3: 4d6 giant bees, and THREE HUNDRED POUNDS OF HONEY!
They don't/haven't, was the point. 3.5 is as dead as people not liking nice tits.

Sometimes, their tits (3.5) get enhancements (houserules), but that doesn't mean people don't like nice tits.

Though sometimes, the surgeon (DM) botches them pretty bad...
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[/spoiler]

Unbeliever

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Re: Do you feel D&D would be better off without the alignment system?
« Reply #53 on: August 01, 2010, 07:29:25 PM »
One question the rules don't state clearly enough for me is whether alignment is meant to be DEFINING of my character or INDICATIVE of him.

Six of one half dozen of the other. 

If you're a dick who doesn't play by the rules, you probably were a dick who doesn't play by the rules in the past, and will be a dick who doesn't play by the rules in the future.
The PHB indicates it should be Indicative, but many DMs feel it should be Defining. Both the PHB and DMG state that if a player's character isn't acting much like their listed alignment, the DM and player should discuss changing it to reflect how the character is acting. Most DMs I know instead treat any actions a player takes outside of their listed alignment to not be valid because "That's not something an xy would do", and only force alignment changes when they are severe to straightjacket the player's character's actions. Which is ludicrous.

I don't even bother writing an alignment anymore on my character sheets. If the DM really wants to adjudicate one of the very few effects that require alignments on me, then I'll pick one that's relevant to how I've been playing the character to that point, but it's not something I bother with otherwise. Especially considering the shitty and contradicting definitions they give to the alignments.
Despite my earlier post as to my group's house rules, which was admittedly a bit of backfilling on our part, this is how it works in practice for us.  I cannot recall the last time my character's alignment mattered.  I occasionally write it down to help me RP, but sometimes I even write very un-D&D things down for the same purpose. 

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Re: Do you feel D&D would be better off without the alignment system?
« Reply #54 on: August 02, 2010, 09:02:17 AM »
One question the rules don't state clearly enough for me is whether alignment is meant to be DEFINING of my character or INDICATIVE of him.

Six of one half dozen of the other. 

If you're a dick who doesn't play by the rules, you probably were a dick who doesn't play by the rules in the past, and will be a dick who doesn't play by the rules in the future.
The PHB indicates it should be Indicative, but many DMs feel it should be Defining. Both the PHB and DMG state that if a player's character isn't acting much like their listed alignment, the DM and player should discuss changing it to reflect how the character is acting. Most DMs I know instead treat any actions a player takes outside of their listed alignment to not be valid because "That's not something an xy would do", and only force alignment changes when they are severe to straightjacket the player's character's actions. Which is ludicrous.

I don't even bother writing an alignment anymore on my character sheets. If the DM really wants to adjudicate one of the very few effects that require alignments on me, then I'll pick one that's relevant to how I've been playing the character to that point, but it's not something I bother with otherwise. Especially considering the shitty and contradicting definitions they give to the alignments.
Despite my earlier post as to my group's house rules, which was admittedly a bit of backfilling on our part, this is how it works in practice for us.  I cannot recall the last time my character's alignment mattered.  I occasionally write it down to help me RP, but sometimes I even write very un-D&D things down for the same purpose. 
I think my last alignment I wrote down was "lololofuckyourself, asshole"
[Spoiler]
A gygaxian dungeon is like the world's most messed up game show.

Behind door number one: INSTANT DEATH!
Behind door number 2: A magic crown!
Behind door number 3: 4d6 giant bees, and THREE HUNDRED POUNDS OF HONEY!
They don't/haven't, was the point. 3.5 is as dead as people not liking nice tits.

Sometimes, their tits (3.5) get enhancements (houserules), but that doesn't mean people don't like nice tits.

Though sometimes, the surgeon (DM) botches them pretty bad...
Best metaphor I have seen in a long time.  I give you much fu.
Three Errata for the Mage-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Barbarian-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Monks doomed to die,
One for the Wizard on his dark throne
In the Land of Charop where the Shadows lie.
[/spoiler]

The_Mad_Linguist

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Re: Do you feel D&D would be better off without the alignment system?
« Reply #55 on: August 02, 2010, 12:15:58 PM »
I think my last alignment I wrote down was "lololofuckyourself, asshole"
So, basically chaotic evil?
Linguist, Mad, Unique, none of these things am I
My custom class: The Priest of the Unseen Host
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