Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Does 5E not have characters select alignment?

To each their own but advantage / disadvantage is a very basic and arbitrary mechanic. It's a game, not real life, the more it looks like real life the less appealing it becomes.

it does and you get to pick the creature type - all those creature types still have alignments too, so alignment isnt as nonexistent as ppl may think - but i agree that alignment isnt as big a character feature as previous dnd editions, more just flavor for your characters roleplay. that said i think having some alignment specific tags, as long as they didnt constrain the player (ie you have x alignment so you must take the x story path) would be a neat feature to have, as i think tag variance among players/playthroughs is what would really make each bg3 experience different.

Good riddance, really. For a videogame at least. In a game that has little to no consequences attached to moral decisions (especially evil) it would have no meaning anyway.

I really hate the move away from alignment -- the cosmology, the gods, much of what makes the world feel magical goes away and we are left with yet another Game of Thrones study in realpolitik. I think there are some people at WotC that would like be working on another game but other systems aren't as popular. (and most successful alternative system, Pathfinder, does more with alignment than 5th ed does)

For some, alignment systems seem less sophisticated but I think that's just a case of it being done well or not. Spartacus: Blood and Pr0n didn't have alignment just realpolitik. Realpolitik done really badly.

It really comes down to a theological question -- what is the nature of evil? Tolkein's answer wasn't any less sophisticated that GRR Martin's, it was just different.

I'm of similar thought.

Like Paladin is no longer limited by alignment from a mechanical view but....

A paladin of Bane would likely still be called a "blackguard" in-universe and a paladin of Tymora would likely be called a "champion" or the like.

In-character uses of "Paladin" would probably still be limited to the traditional holy/good knight types.

I think moving away from Alignment is a good thing. I'd much rather shape my character as I see fit and pick my choices based on my or my roleplayed moral compass - or simply often from a pragmatic standpoint.

Sometimes good choices lead to very obvious grim outcomes and/or evil choices end up saving/preventing more carnage. Same goes for evil side - sometimes good choices simply perfectly align with your personal desires or lust for power and influence given the situation. I much rather be context driven, as opposed to be commanded by that one off choice at level 1.

But this is in itself as question about the nature of morality -- do we judge moral actions by intent or outcome? I've always thought of D&D as intent based -- Silvanus might agree with a consequentialist pov but Lathander wouldn't.

Reactive / contextual morality fits pretty neatly into "neutral" territory and should have implications. If you want to wield a holy sword you should have to give up other choices (like taking the ability score buff from the hag)

D&D's approach is....inconsistent.

Whenever they've printed rules on shifting alignments, its been fairly heavy act-focused because the past systems have never really cared about the intention behind an act just that an act happened because that's easier to build a system around.

But novels and descriptions have been fairly intent-focused.

Such as the difference between just killing someone and murdering someone is the intent behind things. So like, if you kill someone as part of an effort to protect somebody or something then you didn't murder because your goal wasn't to cause death but to prevent harm. But if you're protecting someone partially because you hate their enemies and this is a chance to kill them, that's murder. Neither is good, but one is sin and the other isn't. (note that my upbringing is mostly Catholic American with a bit of oddball philosophy here and there). Anything pointing toward good would be the willingness to put yourself in danger on behalf of someone else.

However, there is no way for D&D alignment to be entirely intent-based because otherwise you couldn't really sell your soul and have it stick on its own....or have your soul damned by having stolen by a demon. Because in an entirely intent-driven morality, it has to be the soul's own choices that condemn it.

On the matter of selling one's soul to a devil or other entity. That's an action and many people enter a deal with devils with the best of intentions. Now, a devilish contract introduces a factor which is going to heavily push someone towards a slippery slope of questionable intent and eventually outright sin, so that could be one explanation if it were not explicit that the contract is binding even if the signer dies with having never done anything they intended to cause harm.

Likewise, you could just be hanging out as a soul waiting to be taken in by your god or judged by the god of death if you have no god (hope you weren't living in Faerun in that case) and some demon can just raid the area and snatch you away for torment. Or you might fall to a succubus's magic and life-draining. Or made into a vampire spawn...or anything else in that general theme of ways you can be damned without committing any sin.

So, from a standpoint of my upbringing, the Upper and Lower Planes aren't so much good and evil because they don't care about your actual intent so much.

I tend to view them as Love vs Hate which are both powerful forces that are still abstract but are closer to being possible to vaguely quantify....and Love is going to heavily encourage behavior and attitudes that are good and same with Hate being something that can heavily push one toward evil actions and behavior.

Being constantly victimized by personified Hate can push you to hate as well. And being soothed by personified Love can heal you.

So it sort of works to read D&D Good as Love and D&D Evil as Hate.

Law and Chaos are equally poorly named but I've ranted enough.

Interesting perspective although I think the question of being damned by demon grabbing you while waiting for your god or not speaks to the fundamental fairness of the system rather than to the alignment system itself. If you kept to your alignment you get your place in line.

So you are neutral good servant of Selune and demon grabs you then one of Selune's champions should try to rescue your soul from hell. Sin also would have a different meaning in polytheistic universe. What Selune and Shar would consider sins would differ. The Selunite cleric who counsels her faithful to maintain hope is adhering to the tenets of her faith and a Sharran would counsels the faithful to accept loss in the hopes that Shar will wipe the painful memories from one's mind. The Sharran 'sins' when she hopes for a better tomorrow, the Selunite when she accepts losses.

I guess I always assumed that the gods perceived your intent.

And yes WotC is inconsistent because different authors have different views of morality. The love / hate works somewhat with the Deities of Fury but what about Hoar and Severash both of whom come out be chaotic neutral?

I guess it comes down to whether you like thinking about the theologies of the different gods -- if you don't and just prefer to use real morality that's fine but I want the option to play my alignment.

Except "real morality" is also anything but consistent. There are some things that we're pretty universal on. But there's a lot of flex. There are some people that believe you're evil for having certain sexual attitudes. There are some people who think any sexual desire whatsoever is evil. And different cultures determine ethics and morality on vastly different core values and axes.

I agree. I think people who are happy to see alignment removed are people who want to be able to play as evil as they want without being called out for it as being evil.

Well, I can say that's not me. I have absolutely no fun playing "evil" and I absolutely hate the alignment system because the only thing I've seen it used for in practice is being used to justify asshole decisions as "what my character would do" or an excuse to tell people how they're playing their character wrong. No, this was not always directed at me, I don't care when someone else's fun is ruined it ruins mine. Every time alignment has come up in gameplay in the 30 or so years I've been playing, it's done nothing but stop the game and create arguments between somebody.

Also, there are literally hundreds of RPGs with absolutely no alignment system whatsoever, and people play them just fine without turning into murderhobos or being jerks in character.

My favorite campaigns are the ones where nobody mentioned alignment unless it was absolutely necessary.

I know that's more about some of the people I've played than the system, and the fact that I probably sought out other people that also found alignment to be annoying. But to be honest. Alignment at its best is a mediocre roleplay guide for people new to roleplaying and there are better ones available in 5e in the forms of Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws.

+1 all of this. I hate the rigid alignment system of older editions (mostly where it unnecessarily imposed race and class restrictions) and I am usually neutral good.

In table top alignments hardly matter because you are actively playing your role and there aren't any restrictions to paths you might want to take or questions you might want to ask. In video games however I think it helps you flesh out the character a little more if there are rules that your character must adhere to. A video game is limited and the more options you have to build up your character the easier it is to role play that character.

Soo...if I'm "good" then will protection from good work on me if cast by an evil NPC

It seems to me that Shadow Heart could not choose a alignments for itself, even if it were available

Not unless you're an aberration, celestial, elemental, fey, fiend, or undead.

Protection from Evil and Good has nothing to do with alignment in 5e.

If we consider that Larian is a studio from the Western Hemisphere, we can assume that this set of contemporary morals is applied into the development of the game, which is hinted at by the fact that we can, for example, romance any race or gender. This has been the case for the predecessors and many other RPGs as well. Social structures and the culture might differ, but the PC is generally disconnected from that and/or is participant in reshaping that structure accordingly (like in the trope where the PC helps villagers overthrow the feudal rule of a greedy lord, or the general easy access for the PC to all parts of the society and culture). Many universal morals have been true and unchanged for many, many years and worldwide, too. This does not mean that differences or opposition does not exist in-game or in our contemporary society, but that these are statistical outliers, aided by the fact that there are social, professional and personal consequences for not complying.
This however is something the game (and many games at that) severely lack. Only when there are no consequences moral flexibility is really a thing. That is why evil or "pragmatic" actions are much more prevalent in games.

It's impossible to do right, morality is subjective. I know this is a fantasy game, but the fantasy of morality being objective is not something I am interested in.

About whether morality is subjective - depends on who you ask (which Ironically makes it subjective I guess? lol).
About Alignment - I don't mind it as long it doesn't do anything other than being a line in my character sheet.