If you’ve ever played Dungeons & Dragons, you probably know how important the alignment system is. It’s a great tool that can give you more insight into how your character would interact with the world around them and therefore help your role-play efforts. There are nine standard alignments in DnD 5e which are the combinations of lawful, neutral, and chaotic coupled up with good, neutral, or evil, and if you want to learn more about them, we have tons of information in our guides. But today, we’re going to delve into alternate alignment systems that you can use in your next campaign to switch things up a little bit.
Different Alignment Systems
These alternative alignments are part of other RPGs or were homebrewed by DMs or players who found the original system a bit redundant. There is a huge variety of these systems already created and a bunch of them are available on the internet, and, in this post, I’m going to mention a few of the most popular ones that can, in my opinion, be a good addition to your next campaign.
Pendragon System
Pendragon is an Arthurian-legend-themed tabletop RPG that doesn’t have alignments per se but has a Personal Traits system that takes their place. In this game, there are 13 pairs of personal traits, each of which has a Virtue and Vice e.g. Energetic/Lazy, Forgiving/Vengeful, Valorous/Cowardly, and the player gets 20 points split between the two (like 10/10, 12/8, or any other possible combination).
When your player wants to commit an action, like sparing an enemy’s life, they will have to roll a d20 to use a Virtue (Merciful) or resist a Vice (Vengeful). If they roll a number equal to or below the value they have, the roll passes. Otherwise, the opposite effect will occur.
This is a great system for people who feel that the standard 5e alignments are too black and white, and wish for a more complex system. Also, this is probably the most widely known and liked alternate alignment system of all.
The Palladium Alignment System
This alignment system is used in the Palladium Fantasy RPG and you can find it online, on their forum. The main difference between this system and the standard DnD one is the lack of Neutral alignments. Also, there are three main categories – good, selfish, and evil which have their own subcategories. Principled and Scrupulous fall under the good category, Unprincipled and Anarchist are selfish, and for the evil ones you have Miscreant, Aberrant, and Diabolic. Each of these has a brief description in the form of eleven “commandments” that show how a character would act in certain situations.
The Book of Hallowed Might
This book, which includes some additional materials for DnD 3.5e, also gives players a variant system that treats alignments as a spectrum rather than an absolute and gives them a rating from 1 to 9. So, for example, if your character trips somebody so they would fall, they would maybe get a 2 on the evil spectrum, if they intentionally kicked a small animal, I’d give them like a 5 or 6, and if they straight up committed murder, I would have to go with a full 9/9.
To make this easier, you can see the proposed statements or descriptions for each rating in this rulebook and rate your character accordingly. But, a DM can also decide to change these descriptions to better fit their campaign.
This system also gives you pointers for alignment requirements, alignment-based effects, and alignments of objects.
World of Darkness
Characters in the old version of World of Darkness TTRPG had Nature and Demeanor characteristics that determine their ethics and motivations in life. And in the new editions, they have Morality which ranges from 1 to 10.
All characters start with a Morality of 7 and they can increase it to 10 through a combination of their roleplay efforts and the use of experience points. Also, if a character commits some type of sin, their morality might be lowered. Many players would agree that this system is way more flexible and interesting than the DnD one.
Dragon Lords of Melnibone
This game that uses the d20 system has an interesting alignment system that doesn’t include Good or Evil, but only Chaos, Law, and Balance. Each character’s loyalty is expected to swing from one force to another at some point in the game. That’s why they added the Allegiance mechanic. In this game, allegiance points are used to reflect a character’s actions during an adventure. Allegiances to each of the three forces (Chaos, Law, and Balance) have their own in-game benefits.
Neverwinter
At first glance, Neverwinter’s alignment system looks exactly like 5e’s because it has the same nine alignments. The difference is that every character has a rating from 0 to 100 in both dimensions of alignment (good/evil and lawful/chaotic). If a character commits an action that affects their alignment, their rating will change by a specific amount.
Alignments in this RPG have no effect on gameplay, and they are simply listed on the character sheet.
In Conclusion
All of these variant systems can be tweaked and used in DnD even if they weren’t originally meant to. So, if you find the standard alignment system stupid or redundant, you can use a different one that’s not present in the original rulebooks. But, if that is the case, you should talk to your DM because it might not fit their vision or ruleset for the current campaign.
