Summary
InDungeons & Dragons, alignment is something that is decided through how a character acts, not the other way around. However, players will often challenge themselves and try out characters that are outside their comfort zone, like being lawful when they are often chaotic.
To effectively roleplay a specific alignment requires a lot of practice, particularly when you’re used to playing characters in a different way. The following tips will aid you in understanding all alignments, what you should consider when roleplaying, and how to make the most out of it in any given session.
9Have The Character Match The Party
Or Agree To Have Conflicts Beforehand
If you’re thinking of having an alignmentthat conflicts heavilywith the rest of your party, then you should consider talking to them about it beforehand. Opposing alignments tend to have arguments over nearly everything, and while some players love that, others might not be so inclined to that type of roleplay.
An ideal way to try out a given alignment is to have a party where everyone shares it, so everyone helps each other to understand their role. A party of evil characters is far easier to play than a one-off evildoer in a session filled with paladins.
8Consider Why Your Character Is Like That
Background Is Key Here
The people of Dungeons & Dragons aren’t born with their alignment, unless they are a fiend or celestial. For everyone else, their circumstances and life choices are what led them to be who they are, and that very fact can help you shape your character into your desired alignment.
The same backstory can lead to widely different alignments, so it is up to you how tointerpret that story. That interpretation will not only tell you how to follow your alignment, but it will organically lead to moments where that alignment is shattered due to a particular worldview.
7Make Your Combat Build Fit The Alignment
Would A Good Character Use Zombies?
Sometimes, the most effective build doesn’t fit with what alignment you’re going for, so if you are aiming to focus on roleplay, your build should reflect that. This is mostly about good-aligned characters and the spells they use, since many necromantic spells are morally questionable.
Beyond spells, melee-focused characters can still show their alignment by choosing who to focus on and what to kill, since such actions say more about your character than mere words can. In the case of more violent characters, spells and maneuvers that deal a lot of collateral damage are ideal.
6Give Convictions To Neutral Characters
True Neutral Isn’t A Way To Do Anything You Want
Being neutral comes with benefits as well as consequences, depending on how your character reacts to the world. To truly maintain neutrality in a subject, you would need to not get involved at all, something complicated for an adventurer that fights monsters for a living.
Treating monsters as living creatures instead of pools of hit points helps give your character a view of the world.
Your Dungeon Master might decide that your alignment isn’t all that neutral depending on your actions, like overtly bloodthirsty combat moves or being always on the lookout to defend the weak. This doesn’t mean that slaying a monster makes you evil or saving it makes you good; you just have to consider why your character would do that at each interval.
5Roleplay Evil As Selfish
You Don’t Have To Be A Villain
The most non-disruptive way to be an evil-aligned character, beyond the whole party being evil, is to roleplay it as a selfish character rather than a mustache-twirling bad guy. After all, that is what evil alignment is about: your own interests above the ones of other people.
Understanding ‘evil’ in this way can easily have you play such a character with other good-aligned characters and not disrupt too much the status quo. It does mean that you might not be willing to risk your life defending some villagers, but most players aren’t willing to do that without incentive.
4Have Good Characters Be Thoughtful
You Shouldn’t Fall For Every Single Trap
A mistake plenty of players make when roleplaying good characters is to make them too naive, helping others with little care of their own well-being. While that makes for great heroes, it also makes those characters fall into the most obvious traps, even ones the player saw coming.
Roleplaying this is simple, since you just need to have the good character ask a couple more questions before jumping into danger. Of course, a good natured character can still fall for various schemes, but this way you won’t fall for them face-first.
3Spare Enemies More Often
Even Evil Can Choose Not To Kill
If you slay absolutely everything you encounter, particularly when it involves rolling initiative, your character might come off as a trigger-happy person that chooses the blade over words. You can argue that you ‘tried’ to talk to the monster, but negotiations backfired; you can choose not to kill someone and still end combat victorious.
Nearly all melee hits can be declared as non-lethal, but you can also talk to your Dungeon Master about ways to make ranged attacks non-lethal as well. This isn’t only worth it for good characters that want to reduce their body count, it can also come in handy for evil ones that, for whatever nefarious purpose, want to leave one of the cultists alive.
2Make Lawful Characters Masters Of The Law
Don’t Limit Them With It
The lawful alignment tends to be the most limiting one out of them all, since such a character will follow the rules above all. The thing is, what rules you are following are up to you, and what your code dictates can be widely different from what the rules of a city might be.
This way, you may make up the different rules your character has to follow, ones you agree to and have fun abiding by. Of course,paladin charactersalready have a set of rules they have to follow at risk of losing their powers, but roleplaying within set constraints can be as fulfilling as complete freedom.
1Use Chaotic Characters As An Unpredictable Force
Not All Chaotic Characters Are Murderhobos
The most commonly used alignment by adventurers is chaotic good, since they tend to bend the rules for what they understand is the greater good. As such, it is the easiest alignment to roleplay, but one of the hardest ones to do properly is its counterpart, chaotic evil.
Many players assume that chaotic evil is a character that slays anyone it comes across, particularly due to the Demons from the Abyss being the most notable example of the alignment. However, the chaotic alignment is all about following your wants and whims, with the evil part adding a disregard for other people’s opinions.
With that, you can see that all chaotic characters are similar in some ways, and the evil variant doesn’t necessarily go around killing people. In fact, a true chaotic character can be even more disruptive to most parties without drawing a blade, so discretion is advised when choosing this alignment.
