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Alignment, to me, is a guide that the player chooses at character creation time, to help him decide what sort of behavior is in-character for his character.

The player is free at any time to have his character act out of alignment (or out of character in any other way, but that isn't relevant to this discussion) but will usually only do so if he thinks the character would percieve a compelling reason to do so or is under such severe stress as to potentially disrupt normal mental processes or cause an alignment shift.

Note "usually" there. Any character (or player) is capable of occasional small amounts of atypical-for-him behavior for no reason at all.

I see no straitjacket here.

Now the alignment system itself is another issue. I have yet to see a good one in any game system. I'd say that the 2e/3e system is more playable than most, but it's still a poor model - and badly presented and used by D&D's publishers (TSR and Wizards).

On the latter point specifically, that system was consistently presented as a square, with Good at the top - but treated as a diamond, with LawfulGood at the top, and thorough LawfulEvil abusive coercion was slightly preferable to a peaceful, respectful ChaoticGood anarchy.

And 4E's system, in my opinion, is a further warping of the same distorted poor model - a warping where, to hide the fact that LawfulEvil was regared as preferable to ChaoticGood, they simply crossed out the concepts of LawfulEvil and ChaoticGood.

I see defining 4e alignmment like a multiple choice question:

Lawful Good

Good

Evil

Chaotic Evil

Unaligned (none of the above.)

But to me defining alignment in 4e is far less important than 4e's approach to defining ones characters alignment.  Previously to 4e I always viewed alignment as one characters general moral/ ethical outlook.  For example, all things being equal what would my lawful good dragonborn paladin, Sir Redrum do?  But in 4e a character choosing an aligment is declaring a commitment to one side of the moral ethical spectrum or the other.  In this way alignment becomes a Pc motivation, not just his outlook.

In my opinion, following 5 alignment suggestions of 4e or the 3 or 9 suggestions of previous editions for moral/ ethical guidance works best when characters are faced with morally good or bad choices.  When character are faced with more morally ambiguous choices, then good and evil become more personal, even in a RPG.  It is these morally grey areas I find the most compelling to explore in role playing.  Letting players explore what they believe is a good decision in a morally grey situation.

Oct 22, 2009 -- 7:45PM, n647 wrote:

so where do legal neutral fall into? , they are not good nor bad, they are not unaligned either...

Yes, they are unaligned.  Unaligned doesn't mean "uncommitted".  It means you haven't aligned yourself with Good of Evil.  "legal neutral" as you put it, clearly hasn't aligned itself with Good or Evil, and so is unaligned.  Someone who is unaligned can be a fanatic about law, or chaos, or shoes, or the Phillies.  They are still unaligned from an alignment perspective.

Which raises another problem I always had with alignment in prior editions -- philosophies had to be grouped into alignments because the feelign was if you felt strongly about a cause that meant you had to be something other than True Neutral (unless you felt very strongly about Balance).  So people argued over whether Leninist communism was Lawful Neutral or Lawful Good or Chaotic Good, or Lawful Evil.  It wasn't possible, apparently, to consider that you could have lawful evil Leninists and chaotic good Leninists.  If you felt strongly enough about an -ism, all such followers fell into one of nine boxes (or at least two or three adjacent ones -- never diametrically opposed ones!)

Another issue was that , in prior editions, it was a straitjacket for some classes.  Why?  Because in 1st and 2d edition you lost a character level for changing alignment!  In 3rd edition, you could lose class powers if you were a cleric, paladin, bard, barbarian, assassin, or monk who changed alignment too far.  Most people who liked prior editions either ignored these rules, relished the opportunity to play with one hand tied behind their character's back, or really enjoyed derailing game play with long obtuse discourses on philosophy and morality.

Fortunately for you, it's easy enough to put alignment back in the game... here's how you do it.

1. All charactrs must choose one of the nine original alignments.
2. Any member of a Divine class can detect the presence of an aura of an opposite ethos or morality within their line of effect with a standard action and a DC 20 Religion check (they must choose which).  A second standard action will determine the direction.  A third standard action will determine the specific square in which the aura is located.  If the aura belongs to a creature or object more then 10 levels higher than the character, the character is blinded until the end of its next turn. 
3. Magic Circles can be created to exclude creatures of a specific alignment.
4. Protection From X becomes a Religion-based ritual that lasts 24 hours and gives characters a +2 to defenses and saves against Charm effects imposed by creatures of the X alignment.
5. A new +1 weapon is Aligned with the following property: choose an ethos or morality for the weapon.  Whenever the weapon scores a critical hit on a creature of opposite ethos/morality, the damage from the extra dice rolled for the critical hit is ongoing damage (save ends).
6. Immortal creatures who have an aura inflict 5 hp damage/tier on any creature of opposite ethos or morality who begins their turn in the creature's aura.  This is a separate damage from any other effects of the aura.
7. Divine classes whose alignment shifts more than one step lose all ability to invoke powers with the Divine keyword until they either 1) restore their previous alignment and undergo an Atonement ritual (level 15 ritual), or 2) align themselves with a new church/deity of their new alignment and undergo a Conversion ritual (level 15 ritual).
8. All Paladins must be Lawful Good or Chaotic Evil (in which case they are called blackguards).  If paladins intentionally commit an evil act (or if blackguards intentionally commit a good act) they are unable to use powers with the Divine keyword until they 1) undergo an Atonement ritual (level 15 ritual), or 2) become the opposite alignment (i.e., paladin becomes blackguard or blackguard becomes paladin) and undergo a Conversion ritual (level 15 ritual).  Paladins and blackguards may have other behavioral requirements imposed upon them by their order, violation of which carries the same cosmic consequences.
9. Bards and barbarians who become lawful lose the ability to invoke any bard and barbarian class powers until they restore their alignment.
10. Monks who become non-lawful become unable to learn any monk powers of a level higher than the level they were when their alignment switched until they restore their alignment.  Then they can choose new powers for their empty power slots through Retraining rules.  
11. Primal classes must have a non-extreme alignment (i.e., an alignment where either the morality or ethos is neutrality).  A primal class with an extreme alignment cannot access any powers with the Primal keyword until they shift to a less extreme alignment and undergo an Atonement Ritual.

also is hard toput legal evil and neutral evil in the same evil...

Why?  They are both committed to evil -- just be different methods.  Lawful evil is committed to using the implements of organizations to do their evil (and their commitment generally makes them better at it), while neutral evil is much more pragmatic about how to go about things.

No reason.  I just wrote it on the fly.