Pathfinder 2's Armor & A Preview of the Paladin!

It was a long bank holiday weekend here in the UK, and I sent most of it in the (rare) sun eating BBQ; there were two big Pathfinder 2 blog posts which went up in the meantime. The first dealt with armour and shields; the other was our first look at the new Paladin class!

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• Armor now affects Touch AC; each has a different bonus for AD and TAC.
  • Studded leather +2 AC, +0 TAC
  • Chain shirt +2 AC, +1 TAC, noisy
• Armor has traits, such as "noisy".
• Armor has a Dex mod cap to AC, penalties to STR/Dex/Con skill checks, a Speed penalty, and a Bulk value.
• Potency Runes -- Items can be enhanced with potency runes.
  • Bonuses to attack rolls, increase on number of damage dice (weapons)
  • Bonus to AC, TAC, and saving throws (armor)
  • Example studded leather with +3 armor potency rune gives +5 AC, +3 TAC, and +3 to your saves.
  • Potency runes can be upgraded.
• Shields -- requires an action to use and gain an AC and TAC bonus for one round.
• Other gear -- gear has quality levels (poor -2, expert +1, master +2)
• Interact -- this is a new action, used for grabbing objects, opening doors, drawing weapons, etc.

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• Paladins! Apparently the most contentious class.
• Core rules have lawful good paladins only (others may appear in other products)
• Paladin's Code -- paladins must follow their code, or lose their Spell Point pool and righteous ally class feature.
• Oaths are feats and include Fiendsbane Oath (constant damage to fiends, block their dimensional travel)
• Class features and feats --
  • Retributive strike (1st level) -- counterattacks and enfeebles a foe
  • Lay on hands (1st level) -- single action healing spell which also gives a one-round AC bonus
  • Divine Grace (2nd level) -- saving throw boost
  • Righteous ally (3rd level) -- house a holy spirit in a weapon or steed
  • Aura of Courage (4th level) -- reduce the frightened condition
  • Attack of Opportunity (6th level) -- presumably the basic AoO action
  • Second Ally (8th level) -- gain a second righteous ally
  • Aura of Righteousness (14th level) -- resist evil damage
  • Hero's defiance (19th level) -- keep standing at 0 HP
• Litanies -- single action spells, verbal, last one round.
  • Litany of righteousness -- weakens enemy to your allies' attacks
  • Litany against sloth -- slows the enemy, costing reactions or actions

[FONT=&quot]Save[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Save[/FONT]​

 

[mellored]

Roughly half the classes in the 3.5 (on which Pathfinder is based) require you to have an alignment. But you don't hear tales about how the Monk got put in a sticky moral dilemma. Or a Druid torn between saving people and saving trees. But you hear numerous stories, from numerous players, at numerous tables about how DMs seem to have a woody for putting Paladins in moral conundrums.

how many other classes lose their powers the moment they stepped over the arbitrary line?
Do you stop being a bard or barbarian the moment you stand in an orderly line to get a licence? Or will no one make a big deal about it?

Because it REALLY matters for paladins.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

People being critical of moral relativism is not the same as debate. Only theological philosophers actually debate it, because nothing else provides an objective standard.
To be sure, people in the philosophy department argue about it all the time. But given the advances in cultural anthropology and psychology, no one really debates it.

Okay. You clearly do know that the arguments are out there, so I don't need to give you a litany of names like Foot, Parfit, Nagel, Railton, Sayre-McCord, and Boyd to convince you that moral realists exist (although perhaps I should point out that none of their arguments are theological). So what on earth makes you think that the ongoing conversation these philosophers are having with their counterparts in the other camp (Ayer, Hare, Mackie, Blackburn, etc.), a conversation in which in which anthropological and psychological discoveries and indeed anthropologists and psychologists themselves weigh in on both sides, does not constitute a "real debate"? What is a "real debate" to you? Are the participants required to be true Scotsmen?

 

[pemerton]

That is your opinion, and you are allowed to have opinions, but it is not an objective criteria unfortunately. Moral philosophy abounds with debate over consequentialism.
Are the results of an action what determine its morality, or the intentions of the actor? Is it a good action to save five instead of one if one of the five is your child? What if the one is someone you hate? Does the actor need to be intentionally trying to help the people for it to be good, or is saving them enough even if unintentional?
There are no good/evil acts in an objective sense, so everything comes down to who is judging and by what criteria.

I'm an academic moral philosopher and lawyer.

It is true that there is debate among moral philosophers about some of the things you mention (eg whether or not partilaity to one's own friends and family is morally permissible). There are very few moral philosopher who would think that consequences never matter to the morality of an action eg very few moral philosophers would think that an unsuccessful attempted murder is as culpable as an actual murder. And the view that there is no objective good or evil is a minority one, at least among English-speaking moral philosophers.

I reiterate, however, that the D&D alignment system has never attempted to resolve any of these questions except for the last - it seems to assume some sort of moral realism. D&D's framing of goodness has always been indifferent to issues of partiality, trolley problems, the extent of permitted interpersonal trade-offs, etc. Eg Gygax's AD&D books characterise both "the greatest good for the greatest number" (which is Benthamite utilitarianism, and seems to permit fairly widespread interpersonal trade-offs) and respect for human rights (which obviously puts strict limits on interpersonal trade-offs) as modes of good action.

When it comes to alignment, I don't take that approach. I treat it as a table matter.

That seems untenable. you can't have a game devolve into an argument on moral philosophy every time a character exorcises agency (unless that is what your game is into). Almost any action a player takes can be justified moralistically in one way or another, so I don't see how that would work in mechanical situations (such as with the Paladin).

If a player, in play at the table, struggles with a morally challenging situation, and then reaches a decision and goes with it, taking the view that what his/her character is doing is morally justified or even morally required, then I am not going to second-guess that player's engagement with the game. I personally don't find that that conduces to very egaged or productive play for me as GM to declare otherwise.

Also, I personally don't think that it helps the situation to frame a GM declaration of that sort in NPC terms ("this is your god speaking!"); in a context where the god is meant to be all-good (which is the paladin default), this just means that the player now finds the rug pulled out from under his/her conception of the character and of the character's relatoinship to the divinity.

If a player takes the view that his/her PC has morally erred; or if a player, as his/her PC, wants to contradict the divinity - eg because s/he thinks the divinity is mistaken; that's a different kettle of fish. But these are precisely the sorts of things that will come out of a conversation at the table.

Honest question, outside of systems where classes are tied to alignment and maybe certain spells, how much alignment adjudication is actually happening in people's games?

Well as I posted, in my game none. Issue of adherence to divine commandment, moral requirements etc are table matters, not GM adjudication matters.

 

[pemerton]

Well we already have someone claiming that use of an Atomic bomb is a Good act

Harry Truman, you mean?

 

[pemerton]

The idea of objective good/evil is itself a positive claim. In order to make a positive claim you must have evidence to support it. There is no evidence to support objective good/evil.

People being critical of moral relativism is not the same as debate. Only theological philosophers actually debate it, because nothing else provides an objective standard.
To be sure, people in the philosophy department argue about it all the time. But given the advances in cultural anthropology and psychology, no one really debates it.

This has aready been responded to by [MENTION=6683613]TheCosmicKid[/MENTION], but I'll add something.

First, as a matter of technical detail, I think most contermpoary anti-objectivist/anti-realist moral philosophers would not be relativists but rather some form of expressivist/emotivist/subjectivist. (Though relativism has had something of a resurgence.)

But the mainstream position remains moral objectivism/realism, and not grounded on any sort of theological basis. Anyone who thinks otherwise is (in my view) clearly out of touch with contemorary philosophy departments in the US, UK, Australia and other parts of the analytic philosophical world.

My take would be that the main reason philosophers are objectivists is because (i) moral reasoning is just that - reasoning, and hence constrained and guided by reasons - and (ii) because establishing a plausible non-objectivist semantics is hard (and Blackburn's version, which is the best known, is open to very severe technical objections).

And for the sake of clarity: I have expressed no opinion of my own as to whether moral judgement is objective or not, relativist or not. I have views, and might reply to a PM, but they are OT for this thread. My point is simply that the default opinion among contemporary analytic philosophers is some form of non-theological moral realism.

 

[pemerton]

The overall question in my mind, such as it is, is how one distinguishes the CG and NG paladins from the LG paladin invoking "higher law."

By the reasons they put forward, and the outcomes they defend.

A LG paladin who rejects a command (say) to execute an innocent person, on grounds that the giving of the command reveals the one who gave it as unfit to hold office, does not object to holding office in general, to the notion of command, etc. His/her objection is that (eg) the would-be ruler is, in fact, destroying the community whose welfare s/he is expected to foster by giving commands of that sort.

This paladin will, eg, seek out the true holder of the office (which, in a suitably dramatic fantasy adventure scenario, might be someone who was usurped, or overlooked for the throne, etc) and seek to restore that person, thus restoring justice in the realm.

Whereas a CG paladin will not be interested in the integrity of the office, its proper holder, etc - indeed, this person would want scare quotes around "integrity" (of the office), "proper" (holder of the office) and the like because s/he thinks that these social structures, hierarchies etc are burdens on human self-realisation and flourishing, not means to it.

 

[pemerton]

The uphill battle is usually against unreasonable burdens. Like, you catch your friend stealing from the party, friend apologizes, returns the item, but that's not how the law works, the law says he has to go to court, go to jail. The Paladin is only the enforcer, not the judge and jury, so the Paladin has the choice between letting the criminal go (breaking the law) or packing up their stuff in the middle of a dungeon and attempting to escort a party member all the way back to town. If he does the former, he loses his powers, if he doesn't do the latter (because it's absurd), he loses his powers.

These are not unusual situations for paladins to be placed in.

If that's not an unusual situation, then it seems like there's a lot of awful RPGing going on. Because what you describe to me is awful - there's no other word for it.

Within the fiction it seems bizarrely at odds with the archetype. Eg in Excalibur, when Uriens knights Arthur he declares "In the name of God, St Michael and St George I give you the right to bear arms and the power to mete justice." One of the level titles for an AD&D paladin is "justiciar". So the archtypical paladin does have the power to forgive wrongdoing, especially against himself and his friends who join in the forgiveness.

The idea that D&D villages also have magistrates courts of the modern sort, with public prosecutors just sitting around waiting to hear these matters, is also bizarre. Not to mention that, if in real life a police officer or magistrate can bail someone on their own recognisance, why can the paladin not do the same in the example you give?

But turning from the fiction to the play at the table, what does a GM think s/he is doing in the example you give? There's been some intra-party friction; the players - as I understand it - have resolved the matter between themselves, by way of in-character play; and now the GM is doing what? Deciding to punish one of the players for it? That's terrible GMing even if you don't have the broader objection that I do to GM-adjudication of alignment.

you hear numerous stories, from numerous players, at numerous tables about how DMs seem to have a woody for putting Paladins in moral conundrums.

<snip>

a point of irritation among Paladin players (speaking as one here) is that Paladins often get the short end of the stick when it comes to alignment issues. When another class violates their alignment, even grossly, DMs are often slow to respond, if they do at all.

Well, for me at least part of the point of playing a paladin is to engage situations that will test my (in-character) courage, resolve, moral sensibility, etc. But I'm not remotely interested in learning whether the GM thinks my answers to these questions are the right ones!

This also goes back to a comment I've made repeatedly in this thread - I would have zero interest in playing a paladin with a GM who takes the view from the outset, and/or builds into the framework of the gameworld or system, the impossibility of a paladin's aspirations and convictions.

I mean, the example you give - of the thief who is forgiven, which the GM then uses as a stick to beat the paladin with - doesn't seem to me like a "moral conundrum" at all, and certainly not a clever one. It's just awful GMing.

 

[Yaarel]

how many other classes lose their powers the moment they stepped over the arbitrary line?
Do you stop being a bard or barbarian the moment you stand in an orderly line to get a licence? Or will no one make a big deal about it?

Because it REALLY matters for paladins.

Yeah, remove alignment from the *mechanics*, and suddenly the paladin alignment behaves narratively, the same way that the druid alignment does.

 

[Shasarak]

Harry Truman, you mean?

You could blame the guy for many things, but posting on a forum after he has died?

 

[pemerton]

You could blame the guy for many things, but posting on a forum after he has died?

Who do you think posted on this forum that the atomic bombing of Japan was good?