What rules or powers would break if I remove alignment?

Question

I am planning to run a new campaign using the Zeitgeist Adventure Path. The campaign involves competing ideologies and philosophies, and the players will need to position themselves with regard to those. That can be conflicts between capitalism and communism, between naturalistic old faith and a hierarchical new church, or between modern technology and traditionalists.

In this context I don't really like to attribute simple terms like "good" and "evil" to the competing philosophies. So I was wondering whether I can simply not use any classical D&D alignment at all for my players and NPCs. But I am concerned whether I am overlooking some 4th edition D&D rules which require the alignment system to work. As far as I know there is no "detect evil" spell any more. But are there other rules or powers which will cause problems if nobody has an alignment any more?

Answer 1

The only mechanical reference to Alignment occurs with the Paladin(blackguard) class.

As written Blackguards can only be Neutral or some version of Evil, never good. Alignment is briefly touched upon by how the deities are arranged, but no where in the books or the character builder does it restrict the available deities for a character to match their alignment with the alignment of the deities. As such you can safely remove it from the game and just make a note to a player if they create a Blackguard that they do not need to worry about the alignment restrictions for their class.

In general Alignment in 4e is purely vestigial as a hold-over from previous editions because of how much other things they changed.