What alignment would a Cleric who slaughtered his own lawful good deity in the middle of the great temple for the entire city to see because said deity told the paladin to execute his half-fiend niece for scratching the King's son be?
How would a non-epic cleric slay a deity off of their home plane? Why would a deity be physically present in a temple? Why would a lawful good deity order a cleric to kill someone for a minor offense? This seems like an absolutely absurd situation that totally misrepresents the idea of divine magic and alignments.
What if You created a class, lets call it the champion for now, and the champion's big schtick is that he has a cause: purge corruption, protect the helpless, spread the light of reason, destroy {insert big scary institution or organization}, something like that. This class gains all sorts of abilities like limited healing, broad weapon and armor selection, the option to call/train a special companion, all that good stuff.
Then at level x, whether by PrC, PP, Theme, or what have you, he can become one of several different things.
A virtuous paladin, a vengeance driven punisher, a mysterious grey cloak, or even a terrifying black knight.
I generally like this idea as I can see if representing both the "holy warrior" and "virtuous knight" archetypes quite well.
Put simply Paladin is a title to be earned, not something a base class should represent. Furthermore in my own little world a Paladin is someone who is willing to tell the rules to go take a hike when the time comes to do the right thing. The way I figure it, if alignment is a part of the game Paladins should be good, everything else is secondary.
To put it more generally, a base class should represent a sufficient range of archetypes that any alignment would be acceptable. Alignment, if it is included, should only restrict things that should be restricted.
Agreed on all points. Paladin seems more like the calling of an experienced adventurer, not someone just starting off on their adventures. And classes, while archetypal, should be capable of breaking out of their default archetype.
Still, why does the way somebody handles themself in a fight have to constraint his entire life philosophy.
There are numerous examples in fiction/history of ferocious, berzerker-like warriors who are loyal to their lord/government system and of brilliant strategists and military commanders who are dedicated to overthrowing the rightful government or sowing chaos.
Got to agree here. If anything, barbarians strike me as more
lawful than anything else, since they have as much self-discipline and control as a monk does: it's just that control is put into a focused kind of feral rage, rather than into quasi-supernatural wuxia abilities. At the end of the day, though, both require a character with a great degree of self-control.
Mind you, lawful does not necessarily equate to self-control - the inverse idea of chaotic characters as id-driven madmen is not a particularly good one - but if we're going to go down the route of combat style = alignment, then I can see barbarians qualifying for lawful as easily as chaotic.
Honestly, barbarian is a silly idea for a class to begin with, based on racist ideas of the Germanic and Celtic warriors of antiquity, but since people want it I wouldn't deny them the option. I'd just like to see it fleshed out a bit more and perhaps reflavored as the berseker class others have described. There should be urban barbarians and rural fighters, too.
I think that's true, but personally I'll take the loss of the great wheel as a fairly easy price for going back to alignments closer to Basic - only instead of L - N - C we have L - G - N - E - C, which is to say the spectrum is the same but the gradation more subtle.
What I like about Basic/4e alignment (if it's going to be in the game at all) is that it presents a particular take on moral/ideological affiliation intended to support a certain flavour of fantasy RPGing. It makes no sense, for example, to ask where Joseph Stalin or Winston Churchill fits in these alignment systems, because neither is a figure in a heroic fantasy story.
Whereas the 9-alignment system purports to be a general system of moral/ethical categorisation, even though as such a thing it is obviously crap. (Evidence: of the many systems of moral evaluation that human beings have produced and defended, and sometimes fought and died for, none of them resembles D&D's 9-alignment system.)
How's this relevant? The nine-alignment system was never meant to represent a real-world code of ethics - that would have been far too controversial and subjective. It's meant to represent a spectrum as well as the kind of cosmic conflicts common to many mythologies. Good vs. evil, per the Abrahamic faiths, and law vs. chaos, which was more common to many of the polytheistic faiths of antiquity such as Babylonian or Norse mythology.
Yes, the definitions can get muddy at times, but it is, IMO, a broader and more interesting take on morality than the black and white of good vs. evil or law vs. chaos on their own.
Perhaps, but as another poster noted this provokes endless debates about what "Lawful" means. A handful of the endless tedious examples:
an early White Dwarf article classified Samurai as "Chaotic [whatever]" because they are individualists in their orientation. Whereas OA classified them as "Lawful [whatever]", because they are disciplined;
The former definition makes no sense. Real-life samurai were very definitely lawful or at least were
supposed to be. Fealty to your social superior was one of the highest virtues of bushido.
I'll answer a strong yes to the second - mechanical alignment is a needless source of game-ending fights - but also yes to the first - if a player wants to try out the idea of a scruffy, disorganised knight errant who, through his adventures, brings much-needed chaos and levity to the world (paladin of Olidammra?), why should anyone playing the game at any other table give a toss?
I think mechanical alignment should be a supplemental option and flavored alignment a flavored option with the core books themselves. However, I agree that in general players should be allowed to play character they want to play. I see alignment as a tool a player can use to guide their roleplaying, not as a requirement or a straightjacket.
The main argument I would see againt this thought is that, by saying that all paladins must be lawful - and thereby, in effect, defining "lawful" as the outlook of (semi-)honourable knighthood (even black knights only strike peasants from behind!), you introduce some content to what you want "lawful" to mean in the game. But on yet the third hand (!), doing this would likely to be controversial to that group of players who already think that they know what "lawful" means, and that it is a distinct notion from that of "honourable".
Honor is a part of D&D "law," not its sole sum, any more than mercy is the sole sum of "good." It's an important component and a lawful character considers it to be a virtue, but it isn't the end-all of the alignment.
And on the basis of this suspicion I have another one, that the popularity of alignment corresponds, to an extent at least, with the phenomena of RPGs as fiction to be read, rather than games to be played - instead of finding out whether demons hate devils love warlocks hate paladins in play, the alignment rules create a fiction we can read in advance of, or independently of, play, in which that question is already answered.
I think you're probably right about this, actually. I think alignment appeals mostly to players who like to immerse themselves in the game's story and setting and is less appealing to those who'd rather just get on with the game.
The Lawful restriction doesn't necessarily have to define what the code of conduct is. The default fluff for the code might be chivalry, honor, etc. and the default cause might be good, but you might change the code to something else like your Raven Queen code.
I'm entirely fine with paladins being, by default flavor, lawful good. And your suggestion seems like a good one, that the game would be flexible enough to allow characters who are playing as paladins but don't want to be LG to change that to reflect a different set of beliefs or values.
However, I'd disagree that it would necessarily have to be a set of "lawful" beliefs or even a code of behavior precisely. A paladin (or whatever) could simply embody a particular outlook on the world. A chaotic paragon, for example, wouldn't obey a code of behavior detailing how to be "chaotic." That's lawful's shtick. Instead, they'd follow their own conscience, believing very strongly in principles like individuality and freedom, opposing all forms to enforce conformity or law.
In other words, the CN paladin would be held to a higher standard of chaos than the LG paladin, but because of the difference in the two alignments the way they'd go about demonstrating that would be markedly different.
Again, though, I'm fine with LG paladins being the default, so long as other options are available.
So if there are any alignment restrictions, I don't see it as a limitation on the player, but as helping to define the essence of why and how the class operates.
This is how I see alignment in general, though I'm a bit more ambivalent about specific class restrictions.
