In terms of Alignment: It has not been removed from the system or the world. It is still a very much present and acknowledged feature both in mechanics and in universe.
It has been moved to chapter 4 in the PHB - and is now covered and recorded in the section dealing with role-play aesthetic and character, background and personality, rather than hard statistical features, but it's very much still there.
5e is more about permissiveness and consequences, than it is about restrictions. Your clerical domains give you bonuses, rather than unlocking things that you'd otherwise be barred from. Light domain, for example, the purview of many of our fire and sun deities, gets access to *Extra* spells that suite that theme, which other clerics of different domains don't get.
A cleric of a good god that follows their healing and life folio, CAN ask their deity for Inflict Wounds, certainly, and if they are in good grace with their Deity, the god may well grant it to them under the assumption that it is with good cause. If they then go on to abuse that trust, or use the spell in nefarious or unjustified ways, then there may well be consequences for that between them and their god... because Alignment is NOT gone. It's not mechanically mandated with a hard rule structure, but is instead placed into the flexible space that exists between players, their DM and the role-play space of the world... but it's absolutely a part of the world and the system.
Last edited by Niara; 19/09/21 12:42 AM.
