Well, we’re in the home stretch for 4th edition D&D, and just 2 more days until the “D&D Experience.” They are gonna have their hands full, I can tell you. Today I want to focus on the Excerpts article written this week regarding the change in alignments.

As many of you may be aware, alignment has been the stick in the craw of many D&D players for many years. From the over-simplified system of Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic of the first D&D games, to the explained-to-death versions of the later versions, alignment has been seen as either the end-all-be-all of the character’s personality or as a straightjacket confining real role-playing. No one can agree on how an alignment should be portrayed, and there are minute shades of gray and allowable tolerances that many have endured over the years.

Well, the new system promises to relieve all that debate (I’m sure I’ve heard this before somewhere). The new system features five alignments - two of which we are very familiar with and one which they’ve been running with hot-and-cold since 2nd edition.

LAWFUL GOOD - The alignment of the paladins and traditional clerics, this is now the extremist view of good. If you believe in the power of good so much that you are willing to devote yourself body and soul, then this is the alignment for you. Essentially its the same as in previous editions, but I’m sure there will be some other game mechanic tied to it in the future. May also include the previous Lawful Neutral alignment, but I’m not sure about this.

GOOD - The alignment of anyone who believes in the benefits of good but can’t devote themselves in the way that the extremists do. This alignment basically includes the previous Neutral Good and Chaotic Good alignments. This one is gonna piss off all those CG characters that do what they want and don’t give a rat’s ass about the consequences, all while professing to be “good.” You can call this one mildly good; you’ve chosen a side, you just don’t go out of your way to uphold the team motto.

UNALIGNED - Ah, the vagueness of Neutrality was too constraining for some. Oh well. Now you can have NO alignment! Essentially, you don’t want to be on anyone’s team and you wish they would stop their propaganda and smear campaigns. However, unlike previous editions, this alignment is considered benign - overall you ACT good to others (call it common courtesy), but you won’t save someone from death if it means you get hurt or oppose the actions of evil. In other words, this is the alignment of the unwashed masses.

EVIL - This catchall term is what we refer to as “not-good;” it includes the previous alignments of Neutral Evil and Lawful Evil, so this evil has a purpose. I suppose that it would include such groups as cults to an evil god or servants of an evil warlord. It’s a bit vague and only declares a character is on the side of evil, not much else. I guess it’s the mildly aligned version of evil. You’ve selected to be a bad guy but you’re just not as committed to the life of sin as others (think Goth rockers and biker gangs).

CHAOTIC EVIL - This is the granddaddy of all evil, the destructive force that does what it wants for the sake of doing it regardless of the consequences. All the demons and uber-baddies who work for the evil side would have this alignment. This would be considered the ultimate power of evil, as much into evil as paladins are into good.

I notice a few things off the bat. The five alignments make a line from ultimate good to ultimate evil. This would make an alignment detection spell pretty linear in scale, thus eliminating four versions of the same spell such as detect chaos/evil/good/law. You can make a five-result scale from very good to very evil. You only need two versions of the protection from “alignment” spell and there are only two holy/unholy words. Cuts back a lot on the number of spells available, but greatly increases the utility of taking such spells.

Demons are being categorized as Chaotic Evil, devils as Evil, and undead are decidedly Evil (with HD determining aura strength?). Where the other types of aligned creatures are is anyone’s guess. I suppose that Dragons are going to be good or evil only, with only the rare versions being Lawful Good (Bahamut) and Chaotic Evil (Tiamat). It helps the miniatures game, since now you only need to decide how devoted you are to Good vs. Evil (the traditional struggle).

In previous versions of the game, the humanoids were defined more or less by alignment. Gnolls were seen as demon worshipping Chaotic Evil and Orcs and Goblins as martial Lawful Evil types. Nowadays I suppose they will all be lumped under the term Evil. Demi-humans would likewise be lumped under the term Good. Humans would, for the most part, be categorized as Unaligned (or, as I like to call it, “Undecided”). I think they’ve taken the black-and-white of D&D to a new extreme. But, for good or ill, it’s what we’re stuck with. Without solid definitions of the alignment types, behavior is going to be all over the board. If they keep the strict definition of paladins as LAWFUL GOOD, then they have to outline the expected behavior better. Perhaps vows are required; when such are broken, the powers of the paladin are removed until a new vow can be made. A broken vow, spelled out in black-and-white, is easier to adjudicate than an alignment “interpretation” by the player. If they do away with this restriction altogether then I hope they de-power the paladin to the point that another class seems more viable (or remove the class altogether since it is essentially a multi-class fighter/cleric). Better yet, changing the Paladin class to encompass either Lawful Good OR Chaotic Evil may be easier.

Whatever they decide, I hope it works. I’ve often wanted to eliminate the middle alignments myself and only keep Neutral and the extremes (LG, CG, LE, CE), much like they did in the original miniatures game. It’s too hard to track alignment during play since some actions are more extreme than others, and staying truly Neutral in outlook is harder than it seems, since you always follow the majority of the party (which is usually good-aligned in most instances). It’s also interesting to note that the article seems to indicate that the characters are assumed to all be Good to Lawful Good in alignment. Since the Druid and Bard are not present (thus eliminating the supporters of Neutrality), and a few of the other classes have been re-evaluated, I’m not surprised by this move. It does eliminate a lot of the alignment stresses that plague most low-level parties meeting for the first time and deciding how they are to interact. It also assumes that no one will be playing an evil character. Since we don’t yet know the ramifications of alignment (if any), it’s hard to tell how this will play out. It will, however, seriously reduce the number of alignment-based arguments and party cohesion problems stemming from differing morals of the characters (not to mention simplifying the cosmology….).