4th ed MM excerpt: Devils

Other sources such as an audio interview from Sarah Girard I believe, have said that all 9 alignments are still in the game, and that "unaligned" is a different alignment from "neutral".

The statement from EN World comes from a poster that quickly jumped to conclusions from something said by Mearls and the gang trying to be coy and not say too much.

It seems that alignment isn't a partcular relevant feature because it isn't detectable. No more "I detect evil to see if I can trust him" crap.

One is stuck by watching actions, a poor indicator at best.

But I'm freely speculating without the source books. Removing alignment detections was a grand move in the right direction.

Allow me to repectfully disagree. As a PLAYER, having it is a wonderful crutch. As a DM, the detects either ran the risk of derailing the "secret villain" or forced one to continually justify nondetection spells and items to keep things hidden, or a long string of coincidences which short circuited their desires, or just forbid the spell.

And quite frankly, I always hated the mechanic. When Lothar the Bad was thinking charitable thoughts about his grandson, was he evil? When Pirapus the Upright was frustrated into thinking about lopping body parts off a reluctant prisoner, was he lawful good?

A DM had the duty to provide clues about bad-uns and good-uns, but having a FIRST LEVEL spell provide incredibly complex and philosophical analysis of a person seems to be too much.

But as a player, it rocked...except that it took up magic missle slots.

Um, no. Well, yes and no. Yes a DM can change anything they want, either to remove something which troubles you or (ahem) add something back which they thought really rocked but is no longer canon (thus the entire purpose of this website). You cannot have it both ways.

But by making it canon, WOTC is seeking to mute the problems of some rather simplistic and abused notions. And by making it canon, it gets Irwin the Annoying off my back ("Hey, DM. There's a spell in the book I want. You are being SO unfair. If you were a good DM, one little spell wouldn't bother YOU!) Sorry, don't need THAT grief.

And yes, I'll freely stipulate that a good DM can get around inconvienient spells AND punish "chaotic good" free riders. But why make me work that much harder? Why does every Doppolganger have ready access to "nondetection amulets"? How do I intergrate a "lawful evil" NPC who really means the players well as he gives them great info on nuking a ta'annari lair, but who by virtue of a "know alignment" spell, has the whole issue totally derailed? Why are guys who strap suicide bombs to defend their homelands "evil" but a bunch of steroid hopped well armed racists who force their way into a goblin den to kill everything and loot every last copper out of it "good"? In both cases, these definitions might very well be true, but the labels are a bit too self serving.

So I happen to be in favor of, if not scrapping the system, of putting a great whommping governor on the whole mess. Because of the spiritual elements, you cannot get fully away from it.

In some ways, I feel a jerk for having this position, simply because (as noted in my last post), most players would rather put a lot more flash and bang in their slots. BUUUTT...! Better to have it off the table.

If someone is winging arrows at me, I'm not particularly comforted that his aura happens to read Lawful Good really....