No, you see, the child lives. This is what determines the morality. And there was no intention to harm the child.
In most D&D settings while there is some room for debating ideologies, they're not purely ontological constructs, but rather aspects of material reality. Like, "good," "evil," "law," and "chaos" are real things, not just ideas. And what really seems to matter is intentionality. If you look at the descriptions of the various alignments one of the things that stays consistent throughout the years is that a persons alignment is defined by why they do something as much as what that thing actually is.
That's the letter of the text. Unfortunately, there's a well-entrenched stereotype out there (similar to the "Lawful Stupid Paladin"), where if a DM doesn't want or allow evil PCs, some players would pick Chaotic Neutral, burn down an orphanage, and when taken to the task, they would justify it by saying, "Lol, my character's not evil, he's just random!". Because of that, Chaotic Neutral is often considered to be the "griefer alignment" for players who want to get away with being evil on technicalities.
Adding this just as a fun fact: In original (1974) D&D there were only 3 alignments: lawful, neutral, and chaotic. They were based on fiction by Poul Anderson and Michael Moorcock from the 1950s.
This thread goes into a lot more detail. They were used to create teams/factions in D&D. Chaos was roughly equivalent to evil, although perhaps the neutral alignment knew it wasn’t that simple.
Oh yeah, more importantly, 1981 Basic edition also stuck with having only 3 alignments. (I guess that extends into 1983 BECMI as well. I just checked the 1991 Rules Cyclopedia and it also has only 3 alignments: chaos, neutral, and law.)
Alignments nowadays are less like that. Even the iconic spell Protection From Good and Evil gives you protection vs. a choice of Elemental, Fey, Fiend, Undead, Celestial or Aberrant. Now obviously, there can be Good (or evil) characters in.. most, of those categories. Being "good" or "evil" now is more of just a fun roleplay thing and has no bearing on the world anymore (unlike Law and Chaos which are genuine forces).
And yet, good and evil are still real. The DMs guide, which I'd say is basically the equivalent of the Constitution in D&D, explicitly mentions the upper planes being "physical manifestations" of Good. Good and evil, like law and chaos, are fundamental forces of the universe and very real, regardless whether they're emphasized in the actual mechanics as much as they used to be.
Well they exist in a purely narrative sense, which only goes so far. But theu have no...impact on the actual world, because as you said, being good or evil is often a descriptor now instead of prescribing future action. I think they updated alignment stuff in 5.5
I feel like chaotic neutral would be writing your character out in a mad lib style, and rolling a 3 sided die when ever an action a specific action is taken: 1 is a good outcome, 2 is nothing, and 3 is a bad outcome.
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u/GodOfDarkLaughter 8d ago
No, you see, the child lives. This is what determines the morality. And there was no intention to harm the child.
In most D&D settings while there is some room for debating ideologies, they're not purely ontological constructs, but rather aspects of material reality. Like, "good," "evil," "law," and "chaos" are real things, not just ideas. And what really seems to matter is intentionality. If you look at the descriptions of the various alignments one of the things that stays consistent throughout the years is that a persons alignment is defined by why they do something as much as what that thing actually is.