Why Alignment is dumb

Alignment is a core part of the DnD ethos, giving rise to a host of associated memes. It is so deeply integrated into the popular conception of DnD that the terms “lawful good” and “paladin” are often used as synonyms. It is thus unfortunate that the entire concept of alignment is stupid down to it’s very core.

In this post I’ll explore why that is the case, and hopefully prove to you that alignment is dumb from every imaginable perspective, as well as suggest a set of simple houserules that can correct these problems in Pathfinder.

As usual, if you are confused about any terms, make sure to check out the glossary, and if you are looking for other posts, check out the blog map.

1. What is alignment

Let’s start by reviewing how alignment works in Pathfinder.

Broadly speaking, alignment is supposed to represent the moral or ethical philosophies of different creatures, as well as the actions they commit. It has two independent axes - good vs evil, and chaos vs law. On each of these two axes, all creatures reside either at one of the end points, or at “neutral”. This gives us nine possible alignment values, such as “Neutral evil” or “Chaotic good”; instead of “Neutral neutral” we say “Neutral” or “True Neutral”. These terms are often abbreviated, such that “CE” would stand for Chaotic Evil; Neutral is abbreviated as NN or TN.

Alignment is a directly measurable and experimentally verifiable effect within the world. It affects interactions with certain spells (e.g. Holy Word), magical items, and limits the advancement possibilities within specific classes (e.g. clerics must be within 1 alignment step of their god). On top of this, it can be directly measured via spells such as Detect Evil.

When it comes to specifying what it means to be “Good” or “Chaotic”, rules give extremely broad and noncommittal descriptions such as:

• Good characters and creatures protect innocent life, are altruistic, have a respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.

• Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit, and like to hurt, oppress, or kill others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.

Most creatures can be of any alignment, though certain types have limitations - for example demons are always Evil and angels are always Good. Non-sapient creatures are always Neutral because they have no moral agency.

Creature’s alignment can change via shifts in their moral philosophy, or through their actions (kill people -> turn evil). Specifically, casting spells with an evil descriptor changes your alignment pretty quickly. From Horror Adventures:

• The GM decides whether the character’s alignment changes, but typically casting two evil spells is enough to turn a good creature nongood, and three or more evils spells move the caster from nongood to evil. The greater the amount of time between castings, the less likely alignment will change. 

Since this is a mainline book, we should assume this is how alignment works in Pathfinder unless your GM indicates otherwise.

These are all the rules concerning alignment. They may not seem like much, but the effects they have on the entire system are truly profound.

2. Characterization

First and foremost, alignment pigeonholes characterization.

Every character has to have an alignment, and there are only nine possibilities available. If we throw out the evil alignments, there are only six. This is a truly limiting number of basic personalities.

The rules attempt to clarify that of course characters of the same alignment can be extremely different, but at the end of the day, this sort of explanation is nothing but a crutch. Even if every individual alignment will have two or three archetypical models associated with it, the mental pressure to pigeonhole your character into one of a predefined set of boxes will remain.

This is simply a consequence of how human minds work. If you introduce a set of categories, and claim they are important, people will pigeonhole everyone they see into those categories. This is why Japanese people think personality is determined by blood type, as opposed to something sensible like star signs. And once the character has been pigeonholed, their personality and behavior will be strongly based on the “typical” model for their alignment. Personalities that violate this categorization would be rare.

It is absolutely undeniable that the existence of alignment limits the personalities of characters - both players and NPCs - in a major way. It turns people into masks from a Commedia dell’arte show. The extent of this effect will depend on how strictly you enforce the alignment buckets in your game, but it is always there.

I dislike pressures of this kind, and hence I dislike alignment. Even if no other problems existed, this one, by itself, would be sufficient for me to throw alignment out the window in my own games.

The only way to avoid this pigeonholing effect is to write the backstory and personality of the character without thinking about the alignment, and then later try to fit them into one of the boxes. This mediates this problem, but finding a fitting alignment can often be difficult.

2.1. Can this be a good thing?

Some people say that pigeonholing could be a good thing: it can give novice players, ones not familiar with roleplaying, an easy set of archetypes to start with. Having several clear options to start with will make teaching players how to roleplay easier. Alternatively, it can give you quick insight into the personality of the character you haven’t played in a while.

I do not think this is a convincing argument. For one, it would be bizarre to permanently hobble the entire system just to introduce a set of training wheels. For another, there are dozens, hundreds of archetypes in easy reach that do not rely on alignment - such as characters in famous books or movies. Finding a basis for a character is simply not a problem that needs to be solved.

3. Ethics

Second problem caused by alignment is an ethical one. Alignment, as a concept, enshrines a single ethical system in the universal laws, prioritizing it over every alternative. This is very problematic.

Let’s start with a theoretical argument. We can classify popular ethical systems into three broad groups. First one is deontology - ethical systems based on a set of inviolable rules, such as “do not lie”. Next we have virtue ethics - any ethical system based on how your conscience feels internally, and which actions it endorses, falls into this group. Final option is consequentialism - systems that determine morality based on the outcomes of your actions.

I consider myself to be a consequentialist utilitarian. Not only do I believe that my ethical system is correct; I also believe that all other coherent and internally consistent systems are mathematically equivalent to mine, if you dig into them deeply enough. The idea of a single system of morality being superior to all others isn’t foreign to me. I could even accept that the universe, for whatever reason, cares about some non-utilitarian system of ethics.

But alignment is just so bad as far as ethics go! It doesn’t fit into any of the above classifications, and instead haphazardly includes elements from all of them. On top of this, explicit measures of goodness of certain actions (such as how much individual castings of evil spells move your alignment) make the problem worse, as they are fundamentally incompatible with a lot of perspectives on alignment. This makes the implicit system of morality all but impossible to reason about, and plain ugly from a theoretical perspective.

On top of the theoretical ugliness, existence of a single objectively correct ethical system makes ethical quandaries of characters - players or NPCs - much less interesting. Instead of debating what is the right action in a particular scenario, this entire set of problems is reframed as finding the option most consistent with the Good alignment.

This isn’t to say that the characters could necessarily measure which action is the Good one: unless alignment hit is overwhelming, methods like Detect Evil will not pick up on it. But this still reframes the core problem. Characters would start to reason about known features of alignment ethics to figure out what sort of action is consistent with them, instead of trying to figure out what they should do within their own ethical system.

Of course, characters may claim that they do not care about the universal alignment - it is simply something outsiders care about, while they have other beliefs. However, it’s hard to argue that the universe itself calling them Evil will sap strength from their ethical arguments. Likewise, characters may attempt to doublethink, and argue that “Good” actions are not always “good” because “balance” is required. However, I do not see any strong internally-consistent arguments for this position.

4. Logical inconsistencies

On top of the ethical problems, alignment isn’t even logically consistent! Take the following two statements:

1. Creatures with an evil subtype (generally outsiders) are creatures that are fundamentally evil: devils, daemons, and demons, for instance. Their redemption is rare, if it is even possible. They are evil to their very core, and commit evil acts perpetually and persistently.

2. Animals and other creatures incapable of moral action are neutral. Even deadly vipers and tigers that eat people are neutral because they lack the capacity for morally right or wrong behavior. Dogs may be obedient and cats free-spirited, but they do not have the moral capacity to be truly lawful or chaotic.

Let’s follow the argument here. Animals are Neutral because they are not capable of acting otherwise, outside of rare exceptions: eating people is just how they are, it’s in their nature. Sapients, on the other hand, possess free will and can make conscious decisions, leading to alignment. So far so good.

Demons are also incapable of acting otherwise: torturing or eating people is just in their nature. But this time, we say that they are always inherently evil. So in one case a creature incapable of acting otherwise is Neutral, and in another it’s Evil. How come?

This cannot be because evil outsiders are sapient, and are simply always choosing to be evil. For example, Lemure is a devil so dumb that it does not have an INT score. The only reasonable explanation I can see here is that alignment is based on your morality and also on whether or not you are a demon or devil, in a very arbitrary case of universal racism.

Let’s consider another case.

• Law implies honor, trustworthiness, obedience to authority, and reliability.

Zero in on the word “Authority”. It is generally defined as a person or organization with legitimate power over a group of people. But isn’t this term extremely arbitrary?

Consider a simple case: rebellion against the state. From the perspective of the loyalists, the state has authority: it is the legitimate local power. It is thus Lawful to support it. But from the perspective of the rebels, this isn’t the case. They aren’t rebelling against the legitimate authority of the state: they are implicitly stating that the state has no authority, it is not a legitimate power. The only legitimate power around is, naturally, the rebellion; therefore, supporting the rebellion is Lawful, and the loyalists are chaotic.

It is completely impossible to square this circle: what counts as authority is dependent on the culture and society of the person making the decision. But it must be squared! Alignment is not subjective, it is objective, it is one of the laws of the universe. By including such vague terms in the definitions of alignment, the system forces either the players or the GM to make these arbitrary choices. In turn, it distracts from the much more important and much more interesting discussions about the actual morality of their actions.

5. Interpersonal tensions

The issues of characterization, ethics and logic collide with one another, combine, meld, and become something more: they lead to interpersonal tensions. The core issue here is that alignment claims that it is an objective moral system while leaving a lot of space for interpretation. This means that every player (GM included) will interpret alignment in accordance with their own biases, leading to disagreement.

Disagreement, in itself, is not a critical problem, but alignment happens to be an ethical system, something incredibly personal. It is completely natural that people will interpret alignment as agreeing with their own morality. An argument over alignment then risks becoming about real-world philosophy or religion, which is a famously contentious topic. Mechanical effects of alignment will intensify this disagreement further.

For example, imagine that a player and a GM disagree over wherever a specific decision will be Good or Evil. Let’s further assume that this player is a Paladin, and so they may lose their powers if it is, in fact, Evil. You are now sitting on a powderkeg!

If you go on tabletop RPG forums, arguments over alignment and stories of games destroyed by it are going to be omnipresent. Arguments over how to assign an alignment to a movie character are likewise - I have seen reasonable arguments assigning Batman to all nine possibilities. This is not a coincidence.

Don’t believe me about how different people’s perspectives can be on alignment? Here is Gary Gygax, the original designer of the system, describing what it means to be Lawful Good.

From an interpersonal perspective, alignment is a bear trap. As you look over the forest of DnD rules for the first time, it lies silently in wait, hiding under an innocuous pile of leaves. And then, at a critical moment, you step right into it. The jaws slam shut and you are caught: there is no escape now.

The illusion of free choice. Bear trap image taken from here, and is licensed from Minnesota Historical Society under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Of course, in addition to the fights themselves being bad, the mere threat of them will cause players and GMs to shy away from moral dilemmas in general.

I’ve already written about a similar trap when discussing stealing worldbuilding from other people. However, unlike when borrowing a setting, there is no benefit to including alignment in your games besides tradition.

Alignment is an arbitrary system of ethics. By choosing to include it in your games, you are driving a stake in between your players, creating a fissure that may explode at the worst possible moment. Designers of the game, by including alignment in the rules, are choosing to create these fissures all across the playerbase. Even if this explosion happens in only 1% of games, it is an entirely unnecessary risk, and every consequent collapse of some gaming group resides squarely on the shoulders of the designers.

6. Cosmology

But not all sins of alignment have to do with the players. Some of them are much broader in scope.

Consider the cosmology of Golarion, probably the single most popular Pathfinder setting. Besides the real world, there are other planes, such as Hell and Nirvana. Out of all major planes, one half are determined by alignment, and that’s the half that gets all the published content. Likewise, everything about the occupants of those planes - outsiders - is heavily determined by their respective alignment.

This produces an extremely simplistic cosmology. Instead of having a broad set of factions competing for power, with different motivations and goals, you are locked into one of three sides: Good, Evil, or Neutral. All of the actors involved are literally incapable of changing their minds or switching sides: their faction is their nature. Furthermore, none of the factions can ever score a permanent win: alignment is inherent to the world, and so existence of these factions is all but assured. Even scoring significant wins is effectively impossible: there is no real competition for resources or territory or manpower. It is a completely static and thus boring conflict.

But this poison even seeps into unrelated planes. For example, take Dimension of Time. This is a very cool concept: a place where mortals can go to review their life. It is populated by Iriis, a species of time people. And this is what the worldbuilding says about them:

• They are divided into two variants: the lawful neutral Fates, who view time as rigid and immutable, and the chaotic neutral Fortunes, who view time as elastic and entropic. The two irii sub-races are locked in a civil war over their differing philosophies.

Why is this a thing? Why does this new idea, this incredibly high-concept creation, have to be dumbed down to essentially an ethnic conflict? The answer is very simple: once you have designed 100 creatures and locations along these lines, it is very easy to fall into the same pattern, to use the same source of fake conflict one more time.

Existence of alignment poisons everything. It must be removed at the source.

7. Worldbuilding

Diving back down to Earth, we must consider the implications of alignment on the other facets of worldbuilding, such as the ethical systems that will exist within your world.

In much the same way that alignment simplifies the ethical perspectives of your characters, it also simplifies the ethical and political systems of the states in your world. After all, you can quite literally detect which policies are Good and which ones aren’t. The argument that “Good” and “Evil” are meaningless labels will not work at the scale of societies - one of them is associated with torturing devils and the other one with beautiful healing angels, ensuring that Halo effect will massively bias the perspectives of the population.

In real life, slave owners lied to themselves in order to justify their actions. They told fairy tales about slavery helping the enslaved people. This is impossible in a world with alignment - the slavers would get an immediate feedback that what they are doing is Evil, and I don’t think there is enough doublethink in the mind of an average person to ignore that.

Practically speaking, I think that the vast majority of societies in a world with alignment will start to lean in the Good direction. This means that if you want a conflict with a properly evil nation, then their entire society has to essentially be composed of psychopaths.

On a more local level, we can expect to see regular morality checkups of powerful individuals. There is no way to keep your alignment hidden for a prolonged period of time under observation, so any society with half a brain would make sure various underlings all got checked for being evil occasionally. This would make all sorts of intrigues much less interesting.

These implications limit the potential set of stories you can tell in the world, and are yet another reason why alignment is bad.

8. Game design

Finally, let us go over one last problem: game design.

Consider a class like Paladin. One of its central features is Smite Evil: a strong targeted ability that works really well against evil creatures. Because this ability is alignment-based, it’s power differs widely based on the kind of campaign you are running. If it is primarily about fighting evil, then paladin is strong; if it’s about more human affairs, they are significantly weaker.

This isn’t a huge problem: I do not believe that all features should be viable in all situations. It is fine for something to have niche uses. But once we add this on top of all the other ones, it only makes sense to address it as well. From a game design perspective, we probably want to smooth over such huge jumps in power wherever we find them. That way, your character would not feel nerfed if the campaign suddenly pivots to a different topic.

9. Suggested house rules

I hope I have proved that alignment is a menace and should be removed if at all possible. The only remaining question is how to cut out something that spreads it’s slimy tentacles throughout the entire system.

When it comes to cosmology, there is very little we can do. It is very difficult to rework factions once writing for them has been finalized. But the other problems are fairly easy to correct, for example by using these rules. To summarize:

• Alignment no longer represents morality, but rather one of two sources of divine power corresponding to two cosmological factions (Good & Evil).

• All creatures are always True Neutral, unless they are drawing on one of aforementioned  power sources (e.g. clerics or paladins), or have an aligned type or subtype (e.g. Demon, Celestial, etc)

• Alignment restrictions on classes or mechanical features do not exist.

• Aligned effects (e.g. Smite Evil) work at half power on Neutral creatures (e.g. half dice). This makes those effects more broadly applicable.

These modifications are very minimal and can be applied in any edition of DnD, but they completely solve almost all problems mentioned in this article.

I hope this explains why I consider alignment to be as meaningful as a horoscope, and equally useful. If you are looking for other posts on my blog, check out this list of all other posts, and if you enjoy what I write, you can subscribe to receive updates by email: