Would you allow this paladin in your game? (new fiction added 11/11/08)

[S'mon]

Dragon #101 is September 1985 - a decade after D&D's original publication, and over 25 years ago.

And alignment had been questioned before then. And not all versions of D&D have mechanical alignment of the same force as AD&D or 3E (eg B/X, and I believe OD&D, is less definite on exactly what, if any, the mechanical meaning of alignment is - to the extent that in an early White Dwarf Lewis Pulsipher was advocating the introduction of rules to make alignment more mechanically significant).

Not having Alignment in the game is one thing. A small step from RAW.
Not having Paladins subject to an External-to-the-Player code is a much bigger step away from RAW. Letting the player decide on his power source's morality IMO means you're turning your game away from Gamist/Sim to Dogs in the Vinyard style story-creation Narrativism.

 

[delericho]

FWIW...

The character described in the OP would absolutely be permitted in my campaign. The paladin described in the OP would not.

He's a fine character. In-world he may be referred to as a paladin, he may be a member of an organisation called 'paladins', he may even think that he's a paladin. Mechanically, though, he's not. IMC, at least.

 

[Aurondarklord]

Not having Alignment in the game is one thing. A small step from RAW.
Not having Paladins subject to an External-to-the-Player code is a much bigger step away from RAW. Letting the player decide on his power source's morality IMO means you're turning your game away from Gamist/Sim to Dogs in the Vinyard style story-creation Narrativism.

It seems important to me to point out that for paladins, druids, clerics, and really any class subject to an alignment limitation or a behavioral code, these restrictions exist not only to try to enforce a class archetype for role playing purposes, but as mechanical limitations, often meant to be a trade off to a power advantage for balance purposes (whether paladins or any given class subject to such a limitation actually NEEDS it to avoid being overpowered is a separate issue outside the scope of this discussion), but that is the intended purpose, the code is a mechanically enforced drawback on the class. Allowing the player to define their own morality effectively removes the code as a mechanical limitation, since, even ignoring the question of power gamers who would deliberately abuse this to justify any behavior they deem advantageous, most players who have even a basic interest in optimizing their combat play to play the "game" aspect of D&D, wherein their goal is to defeat the monsters in combat, will not intentionally take actions they believe will violate the code and gimp their character.

So this is in fact as significant a mechanics change to the paladin class and the rules as written as if you were to add to the spell list, remove Smite Evil, or decide by DM fiat that paladins are allowed two extra feats.

And for that matter, it is impossible to remove mechanical alignment and externally enforced objective morality without severely messing up the paladin class's balance anyway, I mean, what do you do with detect evil and smite evil then? those are key class features, especially smite evil, which is the paladin's primary situational damage source. If it is impossible to objectively determine from a mechanical perspective that a creature is or is not evil, you must rework these abilities for them to remain valid, either removing them entirely, limiting them in some other mechanical way (perhaps they only function on undead and evil outsiders?) or allowing the paladin to smite whomever HE considers evil, and all of those options considerably impact a paladin's combat effectiveness.

 

[pemerton]

Letting the player decide on his power source's morality IMO means you're turning your game away from Gamist/Sim to Dogs in the Vinyard style story-creation Narrativism.

No argument from me on that score!

But I'm not as sure that it's as big a step in play as it can look on paper. I suspect that in many groups, even though they are playing a game which, on paper, subjects the paladin to an external-to-the-player code, in practice the morality of the paladin is negotiated (mostly informally, I would think) between participants in the course of play.

Which is to say, I think there is much more drift to vanilla narrativism in play then the written rules of some games would suggest.

My evidence for this hypothesis is the ridiculously large numbers of discussions about alignment in general, and paladins in particular, in all gaming forums for ever. Those discussions result mostly from clashes between participants: what I'm adding to get to my own hypothesis is that for every disaster that leads to a letter to the Forum or a thread on ENworld, there are many more groups going in the same direction as caused the clash, but motoring along happy with their play because they reached a happy accommodation within the group.

Or, to put it even more bluntly: I find it hard to believe that my own GMing trajectory was unique, or even radically atypical, in the history of the hobby!

 

[S'mon]

Or, to put it even more bluntly: I find it hard to believe that my own GMing trajectory was unique, or even radically atypical, in the history of the hobby!

Hmm; my gut feeling would be that it is pretty radically atypical for people who are still playing D&D. I'd suspect that originally it may have been more common to drift some Sim games like Runequest or Pendragon (70s/'80s) or Vampire ('90s) in that direction. And that now many people who want that are playing Indie games.

 

[Dordledum]

Great character, but defenitely no Lawful Good paladin. As a Paladin of Freedom (UA) it'd be fine.

 

[dm3.5swva]

Love it! So much controversy with a pig paladin! So much to do with this its AWESOME! Really though would you get rid of a paladin for flaws? Could Hieronous smack him around a little bit to straighten him out? Start losing divine power for straying to far. Run with it! Remind him his alignment can be altered for deeds to far off the wall. Great for the Game and Taboo!

​

 

[Aurondarklord]

For all of the people objecting to Cedric because he drinks, wenches, and speaks crudely....

Would we even be having this conversation if Shilsen had created him as a dwarf instead of a human?

 

[Narse]

I was in favor of a character in this style, and was actually just reading this thread to help in research to argue a character much in this style to the DM of a campaign I am about to start playing in. In gathering information for my argument, I found this in the Book of Exalted Deeds, p. 10:

There is nothing inherently evil about human (or humanoid)
sexuality, and being a good character doesn’t necessarily mean
remaining a virgin. Certain religions and cultures in the D&D
universe encourage or at least condone some people taking
vows of chastity, but these are similar to vows of poverty or abstinence—
rooted in the belief that giving up the enjoyment of a
good and natural thing can have positive spiritual benefits, not
derived from an attitude that sex is evil. However, a good character
is bound to realize that sexuality is laden with traditions of
exploitation and abuse, an area of interpersonal relationships
where power dynamics are often manifested in unfortunate—
really, evil—ways. A good character is not opposed to sex in
principle, but will not condone exploitative or coercive relationships
such as prostitution, the use of slaves for sex, or sexual
contact with children or others without the power to enter
freely and willingly into a relationship of mutual respect.

While having sex in and of itself wouldn't disqualify the character from being a Paladin, it seems that engaging in prostitution would.

 

[Aurondarklord]

Note the language used in describing the prostitution they're talking about, terms like "exploitative or coercive relationships", "without the power to enter freely and willingly", this is the context that describes their mention of prostitution on that list of evil sexual behaviors, it is evil IN THAT CONTEXT, for the reasons they listed, much as the book of exalted deeds explains why poison is against the paladin's code, and then explains the exceptions and offers ravages as an alternative. It's not going to go into that kind of detail on prostitution because it's the book of exalted deeds, not the book of erotic fantasy, but similarly, it can be logically inferred that if you strip away the evil context, by presenting an example of prostitution that is not exploitative or coercive, being entered into by willing participants (which you can do in a fantasy setting, and which represents the example Cedric was involved in), then the prohibition would no longer apply, elsewise why give context explaining why it's wrong, if it's wrong as an absolute irrespective of context?