Alignment

Alignment in NetHack is a trichotomy: lawful, neutral or chaotic. The following things have an alignment:


 * Monsters
 * Altars
 * Quest artifacts
 * Artifact weapons
 * Dungeon branches
 * Your character

In addition to your character's alignment (whether you are lawful, neutral or chaotic), your character also has an alignment record, the integer u.ualign.record from the source code. Some spoilers refer to this integer as your "alignment", creating ambiguity.

Altars to the evil god Moloch are considered unaligned - that is, not lawful, neutral nor chaotic. Additionally, some artifact weapons are non-aligned. This only means that they express no preference for the alignment of their wielders, not that they are in some way allied to Moloch.

The interactions between objects of different alignments are many and varied. We say that two things are co-aligned when their alignments are the same, but cross-aligned when they are different.

Your alignment
You choose your alignment at the beginning of the game. Some roles or races only follow certain alignments. For example, a Human Monk can start with any alignment, but a Human Barbarian has only the choice of neutral or chaotic. If you choose to play an Elf, then NetHack will offer you no choice of alignment because every elf is chaotic.

Your character does not normally change alignments, but there are two ways. You could wear a helm of opposite alignment for a temporary change. You could also try to convert yourself permanently by sacrificing at a cross-aligned altar under certain circumstances. If you do this before doing your quest, however, the game will be unwinnable.

Advantages

 * Easy access to Excalibur: dip a long sword into a fountain after your reach experience level 5.
 * The Gnomish Mines will have more peaceful monsters, so that branch is easier.
 * Some nasty monsters such as titans and golden nagas are co-aligned and will often be peaceful.
 * Lawful is the only way to play Knights and Samurai.
 * Grayswandir, the coveted artifact silver saber, is lawful.

Disadvantages

 * The mysterious force is harsher.
 * Lawful characters lose intrinsic telepathy and two points of Luck when they commit murder.
 * Lawful characters get a -1 alignment penalty for directly stealing from shops.
 * In SLASH'EM, Lawful characters will anger their gods if they drink a potion of vampire blood.

Advantages

 * Best choice of artifacts to wish for!
 * You have all alignments available with a helm of opposite alignment.

Disadvantages

 * Neutral characters lose intrinsic telepathy and two points of Luck when they commit murder.

Advantages

 * Chaotic is the only way to play an elf. Elven weapons and armour are some of the better common items in the game, and elves start the game with knowledge about them.
 * There is no penalty for murdering peaceful humans.
 * Direct theft from a shop actually gives a +1 alignment bonus (unless you are a Rogue).
 * Chaotic players can sacrifice their own race at altars. When a chaotic player sacrifices in this manner, the chaotic god dispatches a peaceful unique demon lord to the altar, making one less demon to fight in Gehennom.
 * The mysterious force is more merciful.

Disadvantages

 * Angry chaotic gods are more difficult to mollify, demanding better sacrifices to reduce anger points. (Due to the advantages of being chaotic, however, chaotic gods are harder to anger in the first place.)
 * Chaotic artifacts are the most pathetic. Sting and Orcrist are among them and might be sacrifice gifts. There are a few good chaotic artifacts, but lawful and neutral artifacts are better. Most quest artifacts are lawful or neutral, so artifact wishing is less beneficial for chaotic characters.
 * Holy water damages chaotic characters upon quaffing rather than heals them; however, there are better uses for holy water.

Monster alignment
A monster's alignment can determine whether it is peaceful or not towards you. (The formula is in the peaceful_minded function in makemon.c.) Monsters can be lawful, neutral or chaotic. Like your characters, monsters can never be unaligned.

All monsters of the same type really have the same alignment. It is actually the integer maligntyp of struct permonst declared in permonst.h. A positive integer is lawful, 0 is neutral, a negative integer is chaotic, and thus some monsters are more strongly lawful than other lawful monsters, while some monsters are more strongly chaotic than other chaotic monsters. A neutral monster is simply any monster that is neither lawful or chaotic.

(So monster alignment is different from your alignment record. You have an alignment record even if you are neutral. You can also obtain a negative alignment record and have trouble with your god; that would never happen to a monster.)

White, gray, and black unicorns are lawful, neutral and chaotic respectively. Unicorns are especially important. Your god expects you to respect co-aligned unicorns and destroy cross-aligned ones.

Altar alignment
Co-aligned altars can be used to pray and offer things to your god. Cross-aligned altars can be converted, but this is not always possible if there is an attendant priest.

See the altar page for much more information about what you can do with the different alignments of altars.

Artifact alignment
Most artifacts have an alignment. If the artifact is not intelligent, then you have only a 1/4 chance of being blasted if you have a different alignment from the artifact or have a negative alignment record (these two criteria not applying for unaligned artifacts), or are in the form of something the artifact specially attacks; damage is 4d4 (2d4 if you have magic resistance). If you have enough HP to survive the blast, you will be able to use the artifact.

Intelligent artifacts are different. Those can emit much stronger blasts; they might also "evade your grasp" meaning that you can never use them.

Dungeon alignment
Branches of the dungeon can be aligned in the sense that monster generation in that branch is biased towards monsters of that alignment. For example, the Gnomish Mines is lawful, while Vlad's Tower is chaotic.

Commentary
The three alignments of NetHack probably originate from Dungeons and Dragons. D&D gods have a specific alignment, and their worshipers are also of that alignment. D&D has since added a second axis, that of good, neutral or evil. The results are nine combinations like Chaotic Good and True Neutral.

Some D&D players had taken the idea that lawful meant good and chaotic meant evil; games like ADOM do follow this idea. Perhaps this is why D&D added the second axis. Many computer games, like NetHack, did not accept this complication. Then how does one interpret alignment in NetHack?

NetHack is always the same story about taking that Amulet of Yendor from Moloch, not the numerous plots of D&D. The best we can do is to understand alignment in the context of NetHack's story.

For a lawful character, think law and order. Perhaps the surface world has evil Knights and Samurai supporting tyrannical empires, but it is hard to believe that our Knight or Samurai seeking the Amulet is anything but good. They avoid murder and shoplifting, the Knight keeps a code of conduct, and the Samurai maintains honor. Perhaps other lawful roles need not act so good.

The neutral character does not much care about alignment. Most of the special effects of alignment are for lawful or chaotic characters. The neutral character just wants to obtain the best artifacts and win immortality. He or she might be planning from the start to take a helm of opposite alignment to the Astral Plane and just offer the Amulet to the closest high altar.

The chaotic alignment consists of players who aim for convenience and care not for order. In contrast to the lawful characters' like of social settings and orderly group activity, chaotic characters prefer individual action, and are perhaps most suited to a one-player game like NetHack. Chaotic players can own pets as well as lawful and neutral players can, before they take out Stormbringer. (In SLASH'EM, a lawful god will sometimes dispatch a tame monster to defend a lawful player who prays while having low hit points.)

Every elf is chaotic. NetHack's elves may be the size of humans, but they are not of Tolkien or Paolini. Of elves, "there's hundreds of years of tradition of the land of Faerie being one where human concepts of law simply do not apply," writes the rec.games.roguelike.nethack FAQ.

Even the priest(ess) of Moloch is chaotic. You might expect it to be unaligned as Moloch is, but apply a stethoscope and check. The Wizard of Yendor is chaotic, as L noted for the 29 July 2005 comic of Dudley's dungeon.