Most alignment systems tend not to hard-lock to one alignment outside individuals.
Warriors, Mages, Rogues and Hunters could be any alignment from LG to CE.
Monks would be hard-locked to lawful, most lawful good but some lawful neutral.
Priests depends entirely on which power they serve. Light-worshippers would be LG/NG for the most part, whereas Shadow Priests would be CN/CE.
Paladins are almost always going to be LG/LN depending on where they get their powers from, though technically there have been cases of LE Paladins (Blood Knights mostly).
Shamans and Druids getting their power from nature tends to put them in the Neutral category. Though WoW does have some wiggle-room there compared to most interpretations of the class, since weâve had examples of Shamans gaining power through contracts (Goblins), which is much more a lawful move than neutral.
Death Knights are Evil. Mostly Neutral Evil, they donât really have a particular code they have to go by, but thereâd be some LE/CE DKâs out there.
Demon Hunters are probably the only class that has to be Chaotic due to where they get their power from, but I wouldnât put them as inherently evil. Iâd argue most are probably CN with CG/CE split being between whether they actively fight or supported the Legion.
Warlocks have the most flexibility of the âevilâ classes since their powers arenât inherently tied to either evil (necromancy) or chaotic (fel). Warlocks could be anything except good, though most would probably fit in the LE/NE scale.
But again, thatâs not referencing player behaviour. Players in WoW are universally Chaotic Neutral, even for classes which arenât really allowed to be chaotic.
Weâre just a bunch of murder-hobos murdering and hoboing our way across the multiverse.
Most ânaturalâ activities like hunting for food or to maintain the ecosystem fall into a neutral category, with wild animals usually being universally true neutral.
This. And they use necromantic powers they gained cause they were forced against their will to serve Arthas. They fought against and broke free from Arthas but retain powers from their transformation to undead. They are quite literally good as represented by lore.
But I agree that it is the player that chooses good or evil and defines their own toons moral character.
I always had a problem with paladins being Lawful Good due to them usually following codes of divinities, rather than the exact same laws. I guess it could be called lawful good, but that good could also be evil in some otherâs mind, like the Scarlet Crusade, which ended up chaotic evil. Ugh, discussing DnD alignments is just an overall mess.
Druids, I believe, never strived from their DnD counterpart, and have always been neutral and preferably true neutral. They seek balance, they kill when it benefits balance, and they prevent killing when it benefits balance.
I think a common misunderstanding with alignments is âLawful = following the law of the landâ and âgood = good guyâ.
In the TTRPG context, âgoodâ and âevilâ usually refer to where they side on the planes. Upper planes are where angels and whatnot reside, whereas lower planes are where devils and demons are.
âLawfulâ and âchaoticâ typically refer to the internal code of the individual. You can have Lawful characters who follow their own code, even if theyâre criminals, and you can have chaotic characters who arenât criminals because they donât want to break the law.
In the context of WoW, you could still classify the Scarlet Crusade as âLawfulâ, because theyâre following the tenets of the Church of Light, albeit an incredibly strict extremist version of it, and theyâre âgoodâ because destroying the undead is an inherently good act.
If you go too Lawful Good, you end up being a zealot where everything is evil and thus needs some righteous smiting.
Absolutely. In the context of Azeroth, Necromancy is an inherently evil magic that tortures and enslaves the soul to the bidding.
Sylvanas didnât say âwhat are we if slaves to this tormentâ because being an undead is a fun experience that people willingly choose.
And that is why the alignment system in general is just a mess, also the reason why alignment do not mean much overall in DnDs 5th edition, which I love.
The way you also describe chaotic could easily be applied to paladins, considering that they follow the codes of deities, which the paladins claim as their own, I mean, it isnât too hard to find someone that shares your code, so the claim that the code is yours alone is just silly. So the paladins could be chaotic good or chaotic evil as a result.
Not on a cosmic scale, which is where good and evil actually matter on the alignment chart.
Though technically WoW Paladins are ordered around Order and Chaos than Good and Evil.
Technically you could have a Chaotic Evil Paladin mechanically, but theyâd be called something else depending on what format you play.
Lawful characters do something because theyâre obliged to do something. Chaotic characters can do that as well, but they donât have the same obligation.
Itâs not just âbreaking the law makes you chaotic and not breaking it makes you lawfulâ, a Paladin wouldnât suddenly become chaotic because they found themselves somewhere where Necromancy was legal and started smiting necromancers and the undead.
But a Paladin, being a Lawful character with one of the tenets they MUST uphold would be obligated to smite the undead, whereas a Chaotic character could CHOOSE to destroy the undead or not.
