A Primer on Alignment; and, Why Most First-Time Players Are Neutral or Neutral Evil, Not Chaotic Neutral

Alignment is, and always has been, something of a strange way to measure the values of a character. Quantifying morality and methodology is already challenging, and fitting each idea to only one spectrum? It's an odd thing to be sure. But I really like alignment. I think it helps us to understand our characters better, and thereby to roleplay more effectively. It's also especially helpful when a character changes--oftentimes, that comes during complicated times, and alignment can simplify that to reveal whether a character's beliefs are really changing. And along the way, we'll see that due to a misunderstanding about what alignment measures, first time D&D players, who often align themselves as Chaotic Neutral, are much more often True Neutral or Neutral Evil characters. 

Let's start by addressing alignment. Here's an alignment chart, which is set up with morality up and down (good at the top, neutral in the middle, and evil at the bottom) and methodology along the sides (law on the left, neutrality in the middle, and chaos on the right): 

Fun with fonts. 

So let's talk alignment. Morality is relatively simple, but it's even simpler than most people think. Morality is defined in alignment like this: in a standard situation, do you choose to help people, hurt people, or not get involved? It really is that easy. I'll draw on a few of my characters to illustrate these ideas. Early in my gaming career, I played a gnomish wizard--he delighted in harming strangers and went out of his way to make things more painful for his perceived foes. This made him evil in the eyes of alignment, and complicating details wouldn't really change that. On the other hand, there was my very first character, an elven monk who was lawful neutral. He rarely got involved in others' affairs, and when he did take action, it was more often to fix problems or fight wrongdoers than it was to help people. So he was more neutral. Then we have my rogue/cleric I'm playing now. Over the course of the campaign, she's been more and more inclined to act based on helping people and healing the wounded. This is straightforwardly choosing to help people, so she's more of a good character. 

Then there's methodology (law versus chaos). This is the one that's most often misunderstood. Law and chaos are not necessarily outright legal officers versus being random, even if that's the way it's construed by many players. Law and chaos are much more about the way your character thinks and solves problems. For me, the questions here are, "How much do you live by a routine? Do you tend to be organized? How much structure is in your life?" And perhaps most importantly, "Do you live by a code as opposed to judging situations independently?" If your character answers "yes" to these questions, then they live on order and are a lawful character. If they answered "no" to these questions, they are more struck by individual changes moment-to-moment and don't enjoy the structure of the world--they're chaotic. The in-between of this is being neutral--sometimes you do tried-and-true things, and other times you try new things. You're neither organized nor disorganized. Interestingly, I think this definition makes a compelling case that Robin Hood is not chaotic good as popularly argued; rather, because he operates the same strict way at all times (rob from the rich, give to the poor), he is actually lawful good. This is only the beginning of things we can learn when applying alignment. 

Let's review methodology with examples. The gnomish wizard had a strict code: when it's possible to wreak destruction or hurt someone and get away with it, he would. Even when it seemed like a risky idea or was totally unnecessary, he would commit to what his code called for. He was a lawful character. The elven monk, on the other hand, was lawful for a totally different reason: he was a strict monk. His solution to everything in life was to turn to the teachings of his monastic upbringing, which teach him order, balance, and rigor. And so his approach to life was also lawful. My halfling rogue/cleric began as a character who was very balanced in terms of methodology--she sometimes relied on proven tactics, but just as often would take risks with new strategies that felt right at the time. She was true neutral in that regard. But she's been thrust into a crazy world full of surprises, danger, and colossal challenges, and it's all she can do to keep up by rolling with the punches, trying whatever seems like it might work. She's become chaotic as she's changed. 

And speaking of that change, I'd like to draw attention to how alignment played a role in recognizing that change. The halfling rogue/cleric I'm talking about is Asp from the novels I wrote about her as backstory for my playing her. Because I've written so much about her and spent so much time in my head with her, I've been very much too close to the matter to see it clearly. I spent each session trying to gradually show her change from true neutral con artist to chaotic good healer, and to do so in a way that was natural and compelling. It was hard work, and I could never tell if what I was doing was working. But we levelled up after our last session, and I found myself staring at the alignment setting on my character sheet. I kept thinking, "Is my character really true neutral still?" I kept thinking about the ways she behaved in-game recently--stopping conning people to get ahead, healing several people, being more honest--and I couldn't tell if she had changed enough to merit an alignment change. And then I asked myself the above questions about her. "Does she hurt or help people?" She helps as often as possible. "How structured and ordered is her life?" She has no routines and is trying to create a new life. She makes decisions by intuition. No longer was Asp a smooth talker with no claim to values of any type--now she was a new person, and the alignment chart helped me to recognize that and keep the creative process going. 

So, how is it that first-time players, who so often cast themselves as chaotic neutral adventurers, are really true neutral or neutral evil? One more time, let's go back to the alignment questions. These players cast themselves as morally neutral. Does this hold up to scrutiny? Do they actively help or hurt people? I accept neutral as an argument for some of these adventurers--they hurt and help indiscriminately, and the balance makes them more or less neutral. Some do tip, though. Many of us have played with gamers semi-affectionately referred to as "murder-hobos," characters who simply cut a path through the imagined space killing and looting as they see fit. Do they hurt or help? Well, the balance tends to lean more towards hurt than help, and the little help being done is usually for the sake of reward, negating most of the moral reward. If we were using the expanded 5x5 alignment chart that offers half-steps between each choice for more accurate coordinates, I would say that most beginning players end up in the place between true neutral and neutral evil (which uses the term "neutral impure," which I don't like, so just think of a half-step). 

More importantly, though, most beginning players are not chaotic. This is due in part to a misunderstanding of what chaotic means. There are law officers who are chaotic and criminals who are lawful--it's not a measure of obedience of the law. There are eccentric people who are lawful and plain people who are chaotic--it's not a matter of personal expression or "randomness." And there are people who live average lives who are chaotic and people with strange lives who are lawful--it's not a measure of anything but what the character is inclined to. All that matters is how much structure is in the general lived experience of the character. 

So are beginning players chaotic? In a sense, I suppose. They're trying to figure out the game, so they experiment with it, trying new things. At the same time, just as often, players figure out how to attack and roll a few skill checks and stop experimenting--by that measure, beginners are generally neutral as far as law and chaos goes. Very few beginning players live by a code of any type, but neither do they vary their actions unless required; rarely are beginning players fluent enough with the game to be very organized, but their disorganization is not disorganization of the character as the player's own struggles; there's little structure in the life of an adventurer who runs from encounter to encounter, but this is again a meta-choice by the player and not necessarily indicative of a character trait. That's not exactly the portrait of chaos that many players strive for. 

Why should this distinction matter? Alignment can be helpful, as I noted with my changing alignment issue above. It can be a fun point of discussion--I remember on multiple occasions debating whether a character in a party I ran was chaotic neutral or chaotic evil (I was arguing for evil), and those conversations wouldn't have allowed for philosophical debates if not for alignment. And alignment also helps to be familiar with so that the various in-game rules about damage effects based on alignment make sense when they come up. It may be obtuse and bizarre to describe mentality this way, but it can be a fun addition to your experience of the game. (And if you're thinking that alignment sounds kind of off and wouldn't be fun or helpful, you could try these alternate methods to characterize your character's philosophy and values.)

That's all for now. Coming soon: a list of interesting cities to use in your game, an expanded list of thieves cant, and pets by D&D culture in my homebrew setting. Until next time, happy gaming!

Why I Use a Combination of 3.5 and 5E Rules

It's commonly considered pretty standard to play the current edition of a game. Most current D&D players play 5E and are abuzz about the upcoming new edition. I think that has a lot to do with the current generation of gamers being relatively new to tabletop games, which is in no way a criticism--you have to start somewhere. But as a more long-time gamer, my perspective is different. I was introduced to the tabletop world with D&D 3.5, a revision of the game's third edition. And I became very familiar with the rules of 3.5--so familiar, in fact, that I would entertain friends by referring to exact page numbers and page positions of specific information they were asking for. I had genuinely memorized the players handbook. Learning 5E was a long process; I had many things to unlearn and relearn. But ultimately, they are relatively similar systems, and each has its strengths. That's part of why I use a combination of 3.5 and 5E rules when I run D&D. 

Let's start with some information on 3.5 for those who are unfamiliar. Generally, in its time, it was a beloved system, but many complained that it was overly clunky. This idea is what led to the creation of Pathfinder, a game that set out to "fix" 3.5's flaws. (I haven't played Pathfinder personally, but I own the manual, and I agree that it looks a bit more elegant--you can also see where 5E was inspired by some decisions.) Nevertheless, 3.5 has some strengths that it's hard to ignore. My favorite thing about 3.5 was the way skills were structured. Where in 5E, you choose a few skills (depending on your class) to be boosted by your proficiency bonus, in 3.5, you would be given a bank of skill points at every level, which you would then invest in the skills you saw fit. There was a limit on how many skill points you could put in a skill, linked to your class levels, to prevent entirely broken numbers, but it still got out of control quickly. So what was great about this structure if it already sounds broken? 

It helped players in a number of ways. Firstly, it gave more control over what a character is good at to the player. Instead of a mere proficiency bonus, I could decide that my character had really focused on a few skills. This is incredibly useful for rogues, who need sizable bonus to skills like stealth and deception to be reliably helpful. (Of course, those skills were different things in 3.5--more on that later.) Players could also more easily choose to become fairly talented in multiple things, becoming jacks-of-all-trades in a way that 5E doesn't really allow for. (3.5 also had a system for making skills easier to access for certain classes where it cost double points to invest skill points in a skill that wasn't in the domain of your class. It was something I enjoyed for the added strategy of choosing a class and skills, but I know many people disliked it. I have abandoned it in my homebrew.) This skill system allowed for greater control and creativity with skills. 

Another advantage is the ability to redirect a character in the middle of a campaign. In 5E, when you want to change your character's path, you can change classes, but a lot of your character is set in stone. Your skills remain as they are, and you don't get to add new skill proficiencies. But in 3.5, you had the ability to totally control your skill points. You could then entirely change where your new skill points go, shifting all of your character's focus in the new direction. By way of example, I am currently playing a character who has six levels of rogue as a con artist, but has recanted her dishonest ways and become a healer with four levels of life domain cleric. I lived and died by my skill checks before as a rogue, but now, my skills as healer are very low. I'm playing a healer with a +13 to Deception and only a +4 to Medicine, and I can't really do much about that. If we were using the 3.5 skills system, I could have spent all my level-ups as a cleric putting points into Medicine so that I'd be more suited for my new role. It's worth noting that my situation is driven by role-playing, so this suggests that 3.5's skill system is more attuned to role-playing than 5E's. 

Finally, 3.5's skill system allowed players to become more powerful with specific skills than 5E allows, and I would argue that this does not break the game, but instead allows for more faithful role-playing. As I noted above, it was possible to get pretty crazy numbers for your skills in 3.5 if you were strategic. I played a cross-class Cleric of Boccob (the god of magic)/Wizard when I was first learning to play, and he managed to get a +18 in Bluff (3.5's version of Deception) despite being lower level than my 5E rogue/cleric. In practical game terms, this meant that sometimes, a character was almost guaranteed success on a roll. This happens in D&D, sometimes with the attack rolls of mighty warriors and other times on the Performance checks of talented bards. With this skill system, a sufficiently skilled character could reasonably have +18 to a skill, which would indicate that they're so good at the skill, they would almost never fail at it. I don't see it as a broken game so much as a way to acknowledge that a character is so good at something that they reliably succeed at it. This is especially rewarding as a player--feeling as though you can consistently do well at something is rewarding even when experienced narratively. It empowers your players. 

Another feature of 3.5 worth considering was its handling of feats. In 5E, you get the choice of a feat or something else (an ability score improvement when leveling, for instance). In 3.5, you get a feat independently of the ability score improvement every three levels. These feats are, as they are in 5E, exciting ways to boost your character. But in my experience with 5E, no one really takes the feats. Ability score improvements are generally more helpful, and the feats come off as optional. In 3.5, the feats were a regular and enjoyable part of the game. Every three levels, you would get to build on your character with powerful abilities, some which unlocked more powerful abilities down the line. These feats, made a proper part of the game, were very rewarding and helped make characters feel more heroic and exciting. 

I have one last thing that I borrow from 3.5 in my games, but it's not exactly a rules consideration. I really like that 5E includes multiple very distinct pantheons of deities in the appendices--I think that it allows DMs and players a wide range of possible experiences. However, in my experience, that list of pantheons is misunderstood. Many of the players I have run games for use the entire list as a roster of deities instead of using each individual list of deities as the group. It's the kind of small detail I'm loath to correct, but it ends up kind of breaking the game for me. On the other hand, I've written quite a bit about the 3.5 deities in my homebrew setting, so I choose to keep this more limited range of gods. Part of the reason, too, is that some players appeal to gods randomly and strike them from the list when the interaction goes sour. A smaller group means that strategy runs out of gas more quickly. Remember that your comfort zone as a DM is important too!

Beyond those things, 5E is either an updated, smoothed out version of 3.5 or an expansion on it, and I don't make many further distinctions. I do need to add, though, that although I prefer the 3.5 skill system, I do not prefer the 3.5 list of skills. As many people decried back in the day, making "Move Silently" and "Hide" different skills only meant that sneaking characters were twice as likely to fail. "Spot" and "Listen" were similarly frustrating distinctions, as was "Spot" and "Search" to many players. It wasn't that the list was bad--it was just too broad to be able to be strategic in-game, and it was hard to spread your skill points when some skills had a required balanced skill. So I use the much cleaner, more refined list from 5E, but with the 3.5 system of skill points. 

What is that system? I've reproduced it below for your use in your own homebrew games:

Class	1st-Level Skill Points	Higher-Level Skill Points
Barbarian	(4 + INT modifier) x 4	4 + INT modifier
Bard	(6 + INT modifier) x 4	6 + INT modifier
Cleric	(2 + INT modifier) x4	2 + INT modifier
Druid	(4 + INT modifier) x 4	4 + INT modifier
Fighter	(2 + INT modifier) x4	2 + INT modifier
Monk	(4 + INT modifier) x 4	4 + INT modifier
Paladin	(2 + INT modifier) x 4	2 + INT modifier
Ranger	(6 + INT modifier) x 4	6 + INT modifier
Rogue	(8 + INT modifier) x 4	8 + INT modifier
Sorcerer	(2 + INT modifier) x 4	2 + INT modifier
Warlock	(2 + INT modifier) x 4	2 + INT modifier
Wizard	(2 + INT modifier) x 4	2 + INT modifier

I've added Warlock to this table with the same skills as the other main spellcasters, but feel free to adjust any of these numbers to suit your needs best. Every time a character levels up, have them spend their earned points to increase it. If you're using a digital character sheet maker, you may need to override the settings to get this to work--I've employed magical items with the same effect to get it to show up right on a character sheet in similar situations. 

So, I recommend that you give this skill system, the old feats rules, and whatever worldbuilding details suit you best a try. You may find that your players enjoy the increased sense of empowerment and improvement as characters. And remember--gaming inspiration can come from anywhere: the past, present, or future, inside or outside the gaming world. Whatever it is for you, find it. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: why most first-time D&D players are more Neutral than Chaotic-Neutral, a list of interesting cities to use in your game, and an expanded list of thieves cant. Until next time, happy gaming!