4th edition, The fantastic game that everyone hated.

[Evenglare]

*come to enworld and makes a topic about how D&D4 is a solid game , it just didnt perform well as a D&D, but its great as a game*
*comes back*
...61 pages...
/nope

 

[Bedrockgames]

This is "well defined"???

1) The first condition uses the term "evil", which philosophers, both religious and otherwise, have been debating the meaning of for thousands of years and still haven't come up with a firm conclusion..........

I think you are really over thinking it if this sort of thing leads to problems in a game of D&D. I minored in philosophy at college, so I am pretty versed in the philosophical issues around the notion of evil and what it means. But I can take that hat off at a game table and be on the same page as everyone else when it comes to what good and bad people do in the context of a D&D setting. I think if you can't do that, it is usually because you are being deliberately difficult or contrarian (or just deliberately obtuse).

 

[billd91]

AD&D actually doensn't have any mechanics to support acting like a paladin (except perhaps the +2 to saves, which gives you a modest barrier against greater rashness). But a paladin is no different from a fighter or a ranger when surrounded by foes.

3E I don't know as well, but I'm not aware of any paladin-specific mechanic comparable to Valiant Smite.

Why would it need to be paladin-specific? Can't fighters or rangers have a valor-dependent fighting style? I think that has been a significant objection to the class power structure in 4e. Why should access to different fighting styles be so walled off? Couldn't the martial powers mostly exist in a single pool that any character can choose from and leave it up to the player to carve out their specific idiom?

And while we're on the subject of martial powers, aside from the obvious mechanical differences, how is picking a particular martial power conceptually different from picking a particular combat feat in 3e-based editions of D&D/Pathfinder? If you take Power Attack and Cleave, you're going to put yourself in positions to make use of them. That's going to encourage taking the hands-on melee approach because if you stand back and plink away with the bow, you're not gaining the advantages those feats confer.

 

[TwoSix]

But not everyone wants narrative mechanics. For me, I have never really had any of the issues with paladins you raise here. The people I game with come from all different backgrounds, have different world views, but are able to handle paladins following a code of conduct without a problem. I think the key is to not trap the player. It isn't a game of gotcha. As a GM i wont worry too much about cases where there is a lot of doubt. So the paladin challenging local authorities because they do something shady that make them illegitimate in his eyes, I am not going to take away his powers over that. If he tortures prisoners or uses force to bully locals into giving him good armor, then yes I am going to take away his powers. And I am not going to sit up a situation as a trap. If a dillema case does arive, we've already sorted whether that counts or not against him prior to play (and this will vary from setting to setting a bit). I am of the opinion, that if a paladin does something questionable but felt he had to for the greater good (and it wasnt just an excuse to take the easy way out) he will be fine as long as he makes real efforts to repair any harm done by his actions and show his god he regrets having to make that choice.

I guess to me, if what you actually enforce for the paladin boils down to "don't be evil", why is the code such a big deal in the first place? Just put in a rule that says if the paladin is evil, he loses his powers.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Mechanics should reflect what they are trying to represent. If the fluff of the rogue's power is that you're backstabbing someone, then the mechanics should reflect backstabbing. That could mean a variety of things--from only applying while physically behind someone to simply attacking when the target is unaware--but it needs to represent what it claims to represent. It's about being able to associate what happens mechanically with our expectations in-game.

Suppose we were to eliminate an armor bonus to AC and instead gave everyone a bonus to AC based on class and level. Armor is now a texture painted on the models. Does fighting guards wearing chainmail mean anything? Does telling your players that the knight is wearing plate armor indicate anything about his wealth, status, and likelihood of beating you up? Does telling your players that the noble is wearing robes let them know he's vulnerable to physical attacks? No, it means nothing. Everything is just a sprite in the gameworld.

There seems to be a small, but at times vocal, school of thought that somehow the rules have to be used "as intended" in some fashion. I actually had a guy on WotC DDN forum bash on me for DAYS because I told him that there was no reason why a ranger wasn't a perfectly good example of a bow 'fighter' and 4e really just didn't need ANOTHER fighter class option to depict the same thing again. I was told that we were 'perverting' the rules and that the game was 'meaningless trash' if we didn't stick to the exact intent of things (IE that it was a horrible badwrongfun to play the captain of the king's archers using ranger because that HAD to be a 'wilderness warrior' and blah blah blah). The guy literally got perma-banned finally from WotC forums (VERY hard to do, lol).

Anyway, I'm not saying you're that guy. I mean I don't know, but what you've said is certainly somewhat less extreme. Still, fluff IS just fluff. If a piece of mechanics can work just as well as thing X instead of thing Y, there's no reason not to appropriate it. We could 'copy' the ranger and call it "Archer Fighter" class, but its a PITA and easier to just write on my sheet what the books call it so I can look stuff up. So IMHO any statements that are fundamentally "there's a 'correct' way to use a game element" just seem pointless to me. They are nothing but empty semantics really.

You are telling me that I need to be more inclusive of other playstyles while disregarding my own playstyle.

I am not telling anyone how to play, but when people say for instance that a set of rules to a game are poor because said person won't extrapolate fluff even the tiny bit needed to call their 'archer' a 'ranger' I would say they might be cutting out some good fun. Its your game to play as you wish. I only offer advice, can't make anyone do anything, and don't want to.

If fluff is mutable, then by your own admission your objections to the barbarian class don't matter. The implied background of the barbarian doesn't matter.

Well, my objection to using the barbarian class instead of the paladin class was "the mechanics are less suited to showing how the character acts". My objection to the barbarian class always being hooked to 'anger problems' is more just a quibble I have with the way the archetype is usually implemented. It may well be more semantic than anything. I would call the 4e barbarian a "berzerker" and relegate the concept of 'barbarian' to theme/background/rp where it seems to belong. However, it is not that big a deal, my non-raging-barbarian-warrior can be made using ranger or fighter classes, or even rogue perhaps.

 

[Sunseeker]

I think you are really over thinking it if this sort of thing leads to problems in a game of D&D. I minored in philosophy at college, so I am pretty versed in the philosophical issues around the notion of evil and what it means. But I can take that hat off at a game table and be on the same page as everyone else when it comes to what good and bad people do in the context of a D&D setting. I think if you can't do that, it is usually because you are being deliberately difficult or contrarian (or just deliberately obtuse).

Sure, if the game is set up that way. But when a game demands that your PC consider thorny moral issues, for people who deal in thorny issues, it becomes difficult to remove that hat. I've played both sorts of games, where morality is obvious and where it isn't. Personally I leave morality out of the majority of my situations. I create a situation which may seem morally reprehensible to some, and not to others, I find it far more interesting to leave the moral judgements up to my players than attempt to God-fist it into my game.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I guess to me, if what you actually enforce for the paladin boils down to "don't be evil", why is the code such a big deal in the first place? Just put in a rule that says if the paladin is evil, he loses his powers.

Because it isn't just about not being evil. It is about following a code of conduct and these can vary from camapign setting to campaign setting. My point was the violation of the code should be clear, not murky. If part of the code is "don't be a corward", and the PC leaves an innocent person to die at the hands of an ogre because he doesnt want to get hurt, I would take his powers away for that.

 

[billd91]

Yes there are, the cavalier and the blackguard come to mind. Each of the builds in divine power also cover more "themes". It might not be here nor there, but it's interesting that you have at least 6 different flavors of the paladin with 4e, and people complain that 4e is too narrow.

We used to see lots of different flavors of paladins even back in 1e and that's with less mechanical variety. Don't get me wrong, having different mechanical variation can be fun, but it's no proof of significantly greater flavor in an RPG given the imaginations of the people involved.

 

[Imaro]

Maybe I'm missing something how does being an LG Paladin mean that you follow an ethos. Anyone can follow an ethos, a peasant that is LG also follows that ethos. The restriction makes no sense in 4e, because in 4e a Paladin is a "Champion of an Ethos", not a "Champion of just this very narrow ethos that somebody decided was the only one appropriate for the class".

Wait, so a paladin can't be defined by a narrow ethos?? I'm sorry 4e must have not gotten that memo either since some of it's paladins are defined by a "narrow" ethos as well... valiance, sacrifice, domination, fury?

If the only ethos espoused is that of LG, then there is no differentiation between Paladins in 3.x or earlier. They ALL espouse the ideals of LG.

Unless you use one of the various options found in 3.5 that allows you to play a non-LG paladin...

You keep saying punished, and I can't see how anyone could regard what we have discussed in 4e as punishment. I know you'd like it to be that way, to lend credence to the argument, but it falls extremely short of it.

I love how you just declare it "not punishment" and it's so... even though I have demonstrated how you are punished (if you consider the loss of powers due to alignment violation a punishment) if you try to play the paladin as anything but a melee defender guardian type.

That is exactly how a 4e Paladin that chooses not to use his "effective" powers works. No punishment. If he needs to shoot someone with an arrow, he can. He doesn't suddenly get smacked by his god because he's being dishonorable. His attacks with a bow are simply not as effective as his attacks with a melee weapon. No punishment there. It's the same as a PC that has decided to max his abilities tied to Strength. When shooting a bow, he will be less effective because Dexterity is not what he invested his efforts in. How is that punishment?

Then how is loosing your powers because you chose to go against one of the key tenets of the class archetype any different? Your character doesn't keel over and die or get taken out of the game... he looses effectiveness for making that choice to play against archetype.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Sure, if the game is set up that way. But when a game demands that your PC consider thorny moral issues, for people who deal in thorny issues, it becomes difficult to remove that hat. I've played both sorts of games, where morality is obvious and where it isn't. Personally I leave morality out of the majority of my situations. I create a situation which may seem morally reprehensible to some, and not to others, I find it far more interesting to leave the moral judgements up to my players than attempt to God-fist it into my game.

i really dont have that problem. I am not there to win a philosophy debate, explore complicated ethical questions or give people lessons on things like the law of double effect. D&D morality is simple, not complex. I operate by consensus with the group. As long as everyone is on the same page about what being a LG paladin means, were fine. No God-fisting required. I am just as capable of running a system or game where morality is a lot more ambiguous and gray. But D&D just never struck me as a game well suited to that stuff.