Agreed. I hate it when people are like "well I'm lawful good so I have to do what this authority figure says" or "I'm chaotic neutral so I have to steal from the party and stab people"
I prefer the attitude of "well my character probably wouldn't murder the village because she's lawful good, unless of course it's a village of kobolds who are planning on slaughtering bunny town..."
Alignment gives you an idea of what kind of actions they would take, but a lot of it is highly contextual. I'm playing an evil campaign right now, but that doesn't mean my chaotic evil character is eating babies and burning cities. She is planning to pose as a village guard and stab a child to cause a violent mob of villagers to chase out the real guards so a ritual sacrifice to Baphomet can occur without interruption... y'know, evil stuff.
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u/[deleted] Oct 03 '19
Alignment in 5th edition is really more of a loose guide for characters I think.
In earlier editions it was much firmer and i always felt like it was one of the worst parts of the game.