Category:Alignment

In the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fantasy role-playing game, the Alignment is a categorization of the ethical (Law/Chaos axis) and moral (Good/Evil axis) perspective of people, creatures and societies.

The earliest edition of D&D allowed players to choose among three alignments when creating a character: lawful, implying honor and respect for society's rules; chaotic, implying the opposite; and neutral, meaning neither. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) introduced a second axis of Good, Neutral and Evil, offering a combination of nine alignments.[1][2] The D&D Basic Set retained the system of three alignments, keeping it through the D&D Rules Cyclopedia.

The nine alignments can be represented in a grid, as follows:

This schema of nine alignments was used throughout the original AD&D and the second edition of AD&D, as well as the successor game, the third edition of D&D. The fourth edition of D&D, released in 2008, reduced the number of alignments to five: Lawful Good, Good, Unaligned, Evil, and Chaotic Evil. The fifth edition of D&D returns to the previous schema of nine alignments.