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The Trouble With D&D Alignments

When I first began playing Dungeons & Dragons at the tender age of eight, I was fascinated by the alignment chart in the blue Basic Set rulebook. I did not understand it. I asked my father to explain it to me, but not being a gamer, he was unable to shed much illumination on the subject. Now, a little over twenty-four years later, I find I still have not received an explanation of the D&D alignment system to entirely satisfy my curiosity.

I have spoken to many people and have had many discussions and arguments on the subject. What frustrates me most about the D&D alignment system is that experienced gamers seem to have no better handle on it than the greenest newbies.

I read Scorpio's "Alignment Refinement" article, and I found myself shaking my head in disagreement. The same thing happened when I read the alignment archetypes in Aeon Michaels' "Which Star Wars Character Do You Role-Play?" article. Now, both of these guys have been playing D&D about as long as I have. They both seem to be intelligent and educated individuals. Is it possible the three of us have come to three different conclusions about the nature of D&D alignments because we're forcing misguided interpretations on the source material? Is the problem they're both wrong somehow and I've got the "most legitimate" interpretation of the system? Or that one of them is right and the other two of us are wildly off base? I don't think any of these interpretations is accurate. I think the problem is that the source material is fundamentally flawed.

I hate the D&D alignment system. I don't think it works very well, and I'm amazed it has survived with relatively few changes through edition after edition of D&D. It is maddeningly ambiguous, and is conducive to certain very mindless forms of role-play. The d20 system managed to streamline D&D's saving throws, classes, spells, and initiative rolls. These are important mechanics, and they should be interpretable in the same way by different observers, so two people who have never met before might sit down at a table and play an enjoyable game with the same understanding of the rules. That I have yet to meet two D&D gamers with exactly the same perception of a mechanic as fundamental as character alignment says to me that the system has a serious problem.

The Rules Understate The Importance Of Alignment

Part of the problem seems to be the 3rd Edition designers undervalued the importance of alignment as a core mechanic. Both the 3rd Edition and 3.5 Player's Handbooks contain the following passage: "Alignment is a tool for developing your character's identity. It is not a straitjacket for restricting your character."

This attitude is short-sighted, and the statement is misleading. Barbarians, Bards, Clerics, Druids, Monks, and Paladins all suffer some kind of penalty for switching to prohibited alignments. That's over half the classes in the game! In some cases, such as the Cleric and the Paladin, alignment changes can result in the loss of all class-related skills. Clearly, alignment as a game mechanic is more important than just "a tool for developing your character's identity." In a very explicit sense, your character's alignment determines what he can or cannot do.

The creators of AD&D acknowledged this. The AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide penalized alignment-changing characters with the loss of a full level of experience. In addition, involuntary alignment changes required massive atonements to rectify, whereas the negative effects of voluntary alignment changes could not be mitigated at all. Gygax writes, "Although it is possible for a character to allow himself or herself to be blown by the winds as far as alignment is concerned, he or she will pay a penalty which will effectively damn the character to oblivion."

That's strong language. Even though the d20 rules have toned down the penalties associated with switching alignment, such penalties still exist for the majority of all character classes. Strangely, the two-page description of alignment in the most recent versions of the Player's Handbook makes no mention of these penalties at all, nor does the passage on changing alignments in the most recent Dungeon Master's Guides.

Furthermore, there are a slew of alignment-specific spells and magic items that target specific alignments. Powerful spells such as Shield of Law and Dictum can make a player's choice of alignment very significant indeed. Being told alignment is not a straitjacket is cold comfort when your character could be killed without a saving throw.

Alignment is not a minor mechanic to be shunted to the Description chapter with eye-color and favored food. No matter what your choice of alignment, the decision is likely to affect your character in some important way.

Alignments Aren't Tied to Specific Behaviors

In the section titled "Changing Alignment," both of the recent (3rd Edition and 3.5) versions of the Dungeon Master's Guide contain this passage: "If a player says, 'My neutral good character becomes chaotic good,' the appropriate answer is 'prove it.'" In my opinion, the appropriate player response to such a question is, "how?" There are no hard and fast guidelines for D&D alignments.

This is the crux of the problem with D&D alignments: the system gives us insufficient data with regard to what behaviors are associated with specific alignments. "Good," the Player's Handbook tells us, "implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others." But it doesn't tell us what kind of sacrifices, or how often they should be made. Where does a DM draw the line between a good character and a neutral one? The choice is arbitrary.

On the other hand, "Evil implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others." But good characters can certainly hurt, oppress, and kill evil ones. Or can they? Perhaps the difference is, as the Player's Handbook continues, that "Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms. . . others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master." But when you consider a paladin is often expected to kill evil creatures out of duty to some good deity or master, the moral lines start to become muddied. How far can a holy warrior's holy war go? A paladin cannot resort to evil means, or she will no longer be a paladin. We need a strict definition of what makes evil creatures evil, and we just don't have one.

To cite an example that has plagued me in numerous D&D campaigns, can good creatures torture evil ones? The Player's Handbook is ominously silent on this matter. Or let's say a paladin slays the warriors of an evil tribe of goblins guarding an unholy shrine, and then discovers the goblin women and children cowering behind a tapestry. These creatures detect evil (because the Monster Manual says they do!), but are unarmed and helpless. What does the paladin do in this situation? Does he slaughter them all because they're evil, or must he let them go because they're helpless non-combatants? D&D has led us into the Bermuda Triangle of moral behavior, and our compass has gone haywire.

Furthermore, the Player's Handbook tells us neutral characters have compunctions against the killing of innocents. Leaving the problematic definition of "an innocent" to one side, what about harming innocents? The Player's Handbook doesn't say anything about that. How often, and how severely, can a neutral character harm innocents before she becomes evil?

In AD&D, only evil characters were allowed to use poison. Though 3rd Edition has dropped this prohibition, it illustrates my point: what one observer sees as evil by definition may not be evil at all to another. Though I wonder why AD&D forbade good and neutral characters to use poison (it's ok to hack someone to death with a sword but not ok to poison him?), I am not amused that 3rd Edition removed one of the only specific definitions of evil behavior from the game and did not bother to replace it.

In the movie Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood's character William Munny walks into a saloon where his dead friend Ned Logan lies on display outside the door. Munny asks to know the owner of the bar. When Skinny, the proprietor, identifies himself, Munny shoots him dead. Gene Hackman's character, the Sheriff Little Bill, calls Munny a coward and observes, "You've just shot an unarmed man." Munny replies: "He should've armed himself if he's gonna go decorating his saloon with my friend." Here's a question for all you DMs out there: was Munny's action evil (Skinny was arguably an 'innocent' because he had no weapon and never harmed anyone directly), neutral (Munny is avenging the desecration of his friend's body), or even good (Skinny treats the prostitutes who work for him as his property, and arguably represents the forces of corruption in the town that led to the un-avenged disfigurement of one of the prostitutes and the death by torture of Ned Logan)? My crystal ball tells me different DMs will judge the same action in different ways.

The designers' double use of the word "implies" is significant. The D&D alignment system relies so heavily on implicit information that the arbiter of alignment change can only be the DM. Players have no chance of governing this change unless they know exactly what the DM's interpretation of each alignment is. If the players have merely read the rules, and have never discussed alignment with their DM, they're likely to encounter a difference of opinion when it comes time to judge their characters on the basis of their actions. In any such difference of opinion, it's usually the DM whose interpretation prevails.

Ambiguity Causes Confusion and Dissent

As a player, the ambiguity of the alignment system can be maddening. If one DM allows good characters to torture evil creatures for information and another DM interprets the act of torture as evil enough to cause a change in alignment, players moving between the two are bound to feel frustrated and confused.

In an example from my recent experience, I have a player who prefers to play Chaotic Neutrals. I told her a Chaotic Neutral character was pretty much free to do as she chose. She asked me, "Can I attack other party members if they annoy me?" I said, "Yes, but don't make a habit of it. If you kill another party member without a good reason, I'll shift you over to Chaotic Evil." She accepted this interpretation and played with the group without any disruptive incidents, excepting one time when she threw a fireball at a highly fire-resistant character because he was annoying her. He took no damage, and everybody laughed about it and moved on. Recently, this player and I have joined another campaign as players. The DM has told her flat-out his interpretation of Chaotic Neutral does not allow her to attack another party member under any but the most justified of circumstances (they're under enemy control, they attack her first, etc). The consequence is that she thinks his interpretation of alignment is limp-wristed, and she feels she is not being allowed to play the character she wants to play.

I've encountered similar problems myself. As a DM with a very strict interpretation of what constitutes Good behavior, I take good alignments very seriously when I am a player. Once I joined a game of hack'n'slashers as a Chaotic Good rogue. When I constantly wanted to rescue the prisoners we found and nearly came to blows with a "neutral good" character over whether or not to torture a captive goblin for information, the other players accused me of being more of a goody-two-shoes than the party paladin. The sad thing is that they were right: my rogue was by far the most scrupulous member of the group. Their DM was used to letting them get away with murder (literally!), so they couldn't understand my character's motivations at all.

When Detected Alignment Replaces Moral Choice

In the comments section of my own "How Typical is Stereotypical?" article, Memehunter reminded me of a very annoying and silly phenomenon that arises from the D&D alignment system: the "radar gamer." In her example, good-aligned characters used the Detect Evil spell and paladin ability as a moral litmus test. Whenever an NPC tested positive for evil, they killed him on the spot.

This is the worst kind of systemic exploitation I can imagine, and I'm sad to say it is quite common in my experience. Rather than think about how their characters should behave, many players default to character powers and alignment preconceptions to do their thinking for them.

Does every evil person deserve to die? Clearly, our society doesn't think so, or the concepts of criminal rehabilitation and "not guilty by reason of insanity" would not exist. Moreover, is the honorable but ruthless assassin of the slayer's guild deserving of the same fate as the psychopathic, serial killer priest of the god of murder? D&D characters don't tend to think in these terms. We can attribute part of their mentality to the quasi-medieval setting of high fantasy, but the Player's Handbook must share the blame. I quote from the description of Lawful Good: "A lawful good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished. Alhandra, a paladin who fights evil without mercy and who protects the innocent without hesitation, is lawful good." When players read phrases such as "hates to see the guilty go unpunished" and "fights evil without mercy," what are they supposed to think? The Player's Handbook doesn't supply any specifics or clarification of these phrases, so many players feel quite justified in pursuing a high fantasy brand of instant justice.

What Can Be Done?

If you agree the D&D alignment system is too ambiguous to be useful, you need not despair. After all, the concept of fantasy role-play as made popular by D&D has brought many hours of entertainment to me and countless others over the decades. There are a number of possible solutions to the problem.

Use a different system. This is a painful thing for me to suggest, and many fans of d20 and dyed-in-the-wool D&D players will not seriously consider it. But if D&D is all you know, I encourage you to explore systems that describe behavior in different ways. Some systems, such as the admittedly flawed Palladium system, attempt to solve the problem by providing specific guidelines for each alignment. Other systems, such as GURPS and Call of Cthulhu, ignore the question of player character alignment entirely. GURPS compensates by using character disadvantages that can be assembled in many ways to represent such diverse human characteristics such as truthfulness, codes of honor, intolerance, sadism, and insanity.

Abolish alignments. Why not? If alignment is truly a tool for developing character identity, and not a straitjacket, as the Player's Handbook claims, then it is not necessary to enjoyment of the game. If you abolish alignments, however, you will need to revise the spell and magic items lists and do a little preparation for paladins and clerics. For paladins, take fifteen minutes to write out a "paladin's oath" that specifically outlines the behavioral requirements of the class. For clerics, you must communicate to any cleric PC what her sect expects of her. Where the spell list is concerned, you can simply remove all alignment-specific spells. However, you might want to modify certain spells such as Protection from Evil to become Protection from Outsiders, so they will still function against demons and the like. Alignment-specific magic items can similarly be altered to "bane"-type items affecting specific races or classes.

Use a different alignment system or associate alignments with specific behavior. I have always preferred the Palladium alignment system to the D&D alignment system, for the simple reason that Palladium explicitly states what kinds of behavior are appropriate to each alignment. Though it is not entirely consistent, the Palladium system at least seems headed in the right direction, and is far less prone to abuse and disparate interpretation. To provide a basis of comparison, let me quote the entirety of the Lawful Good entry from the Player's Handbook as well as the Principled alignment from Palladium. These two alignments are more or less equivalent in spirit, but have different applications to actual game mechanics because one is vague and the other specific.

D&D: "Lawful Good, 'Crusader': A lawful good character acts as a good person is expected or required to act. She combines a commitment to oppose evil with the discipline to fight relentlessly. She tells the truth, keeps her word, helps those in need, and speaks out against injustice. A lawful good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished. Alhandra, a paladin who fights evil without mercy and who protects the innocent without hesitation, is lawful good. Lawful good is the best alignment you can be because it combines honor and compassion."

Palladium: "Principled (good). Principled characters are generally the strong moral character[s]. Superman is of a principled alignment with the highest regard for others' lives, well being, truth, and honor. Principled characters will...
1. Always keep [their] word.
2. Avoid lies.
3. Never kill or attack an unarmed foe.
4. Never harm an innocent.
5. Never torture for any reason.
6. Never kill for pleasure.
7. Always help others.
8. Work well in a group.
9. Respect authority, law, self-discipline, and honor.
10. Never betray a friend."

If you don't want to adopt another alignment system wholesale (possibly because of the changes you might have to make to the spell and magic items lists), try using the Palladium example to draw up specific lists of behavior for each of the nine D&D alignments. It would only take an hour or two all told, and would be a small investment to keep your campaign free of ambiguity and frustration.

Limit the use of alignment detection. If your campaign is plagued by "radar gamers" who are using player powers in conjunction with alignment archetypes instead of using their brains, you can interdict the player powers in several ways. First, try increasing the number of alignment concealing devices used by NPCs. There are several items in the Dungeon Master's Guide to suit this purpose, and the Spymaster prestige class actually specializes in it. Second, try having detection-happy players encounter overwhelming signals. For example, if the paladin in your group is driving you mad by detecting evil every sixty feet, have him detect evil so strongly that he becomes ill. If his own power renders him incapacitated a time or two, he won't be so prone to abusing it. Third, enforce the law. The chances are good that the characters are inflicting frontier justice on inhabitants of civilized realms. As a GURPS supplement points out, the King may not understand why you killed the Necromancer in his basement if the Necromancer was a loyal, tax-paying subject. Clap your PCs in irons, and see if that doesn't inform them not everyone shares their interpretation of "justice."

In conclusion, I realize not everyone will share my perspectives on D&D alignments. However, I believe a reduction in the ambiguity level of the Player's Handbook can only have the result of improving the quality of your games and the moods of your players.