Well, if there is one thing clear, its that WotC made right decision, when they decided to remove Alignments ...
People clearly dont understand the concept very well.
This 100%. It just seems like an outdated concept imo. Some people see it as set in stone, some as dynamic, some treat it as the absolute core of a character, some just as tendencies or whatever. It just gets in the way of a more nuanced characterization. I say good riddance, we don't need alignment anymore. Really happy that both DND and Pathfinder move away from it.
It's not just outdated, it's dangerous. You see people using the AD&D alignment system to judge people in the real world.
People use a lot of things to judge people in the real world. This strikes me as dangerously close to the "violence in video games leads to real world violence" argument.
If the alignment system was unclear, then it could have been made more clear instead of simply being removed. A world where the Good and Evil are explicitly associated with certain planes of existence/gods, defines certain creatures (e.g., devils and demons are by definition evil), and can be used to cover the majority of certain creatures' tendencies (mind flayers and goblins are *generally evil, gnomes and halflings are *generally good, githyanki are *generally lawful, etc) can be both useful and interesting. I think D&D will be lesser for their removal, if simply because we've lost word defintion that isn't, afaik, being replaced with anything.
Dude, even the source books break these rules all the time. By strict standards it would likely only be Devils and Modrons who could ever truly be considered lawful since it is innate in their being and they are unable to do otherwise. All other non-programmed beings break at least one law that they agreed to throughout their lifetimes. As soon as that happens they are strictly neutral in perpetuity, unable to regain lawful status.
Any other interpretation becomes moral relativism immediately, thereby invalidating a strict reading of the Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic definitions.
Zariel broke the codes of her heavenly alignment, but is somehow still considered lawful in the books. By a strict reading of what it means to be lawful, she can no longer be classified as such, and therefore the source books are not following the tenants of their own definitions.
They don't even differentiate in the spell literally titled, "Protection from evil and good". Instead of labeling anything as good or bad, they just list out the creatures that have attributes than maybe sorta could be good or bad including celestials, undead, and fiends. I would argue that lesser undead can't even be 'evil' themselves, but only constructed by evil means. At which point shouldn't you be protected from all tieflings and dragonborn who were created by creatures of one alignment or another?
It is all B.S. which is fine to accept for creatures made of the essence of one alignment or another for gaming simplicity, but as soon as you bring free will into the discussion, all rules are out the window. The origin characters are meant to be representations of humanoids with free will, so binding them strictly to an alignment is a detriment to both the storytelling and the philosophical realities of the real life the game is attempting to emulate.
