D&D 5E So what's the problem with restrictions, especially when it comes to the Paladin?

[JamesonCourage]

This is one reason I advocate deity-based codes, because "don't lie" is a terrible rule that leads to paladins who can't adventure properly with regular adventurers, but "don't lie except to protect the innocent and defeat evil." is a much clearer ruing that allows paladins to have some realistici breathing room.

Just popping in to say that "don't lie" isn't the same as "always tell the truth." I'll use your example:

No LG patron of a LG paladin is going to approve of the paladin refusing to lie to the evil demon bent on killing the farmers when the demon asks him "where are the farmers!?" I would expect the paladin to reasonably be able to say "I'll never tell! You must kill me first!" and not get backhanded for not saying "over in the barn."

If the paladin intends to die rather than answer the demon, then he's not lying. He did not break his code. This is a perfectly acceptable response and falls squarely within the paladin code. There's no risk of power loss, here. The paladin is telling the truth, and is not lying; he will never tell the demon where the farmers are. He'd rather die.

Maybe the problem for so many groups is misunderstanding of the code. Not that you can't have reasonable objections; I totally get why people want it removed. That makes sense to me. But so often I see "Lawful Stupid" and "fall" situations about paladins, and it makes me wonder if people understand. Obviously many people do, and still want the code gone, but I don't think the misunderstandings are helping the argument for keeping it around.

Personally, I definitely want the code as default in 5e, and paladins to be Lawful Good (with other names for other alignment variants). But, despite that, I get why people want the code gone. And the misunderstandings certainly aren't helping. As always, play what you like

 

[Gorgoroth]

I don't care how the alignment restriction is put in place, whether directly&explicitly, or indirectly via his oath (to be customizable per god, or per paladin even). But the default, regardless, should be LG otherwise the flavour and purpose of the class is missing. He/She's not just a mercenary for his church, blindly following orders, and I think having to exercise his own judgment about how exactly to follow that code given the messy and conflicting nature of life + adventuring, his own foibles & even his church's, his lieges', and even his deity's shortcomings is precisely the point of playing the class.

I'm thinking more styled of the Greek gods, where they have all too human-seeming vices, even the supposedly good ones, envy, avarice, jealousy, spite, etc. In that case, it could be up to the paladin himself to show the way by being stalwart in the face of church orders. So if you disobey the church, or the orders of a demon-posessed king who tells you to slaughter without mercy his political opponents, do you lose your paladinhood? This could be circumvented by DM fiat, or collaborative DMing with the player, but I'd prefer it was explicit in how the code functions mechanically, i.e. how the "falling" is triggered. If you violate your Oath, it's done. Regardless of how that oath is defined, that should be the trigger, there should be a real, mechanical consequence of violating it, even if your oath isn't directly tied to the alignment of your god (though IMO it should always be).

I mean sure, it's super fun blasting undead and being the hero, but in social situations, your alignment has to matter otherwise your oath makes no sense. Every Oath contains within it, an implied or explicit code of conduct, so if you think being lawful is too restrictive, then why make an oath? You need to be "lawful" towards your oath, at the very least, to follow it. Chaotic people ...do they even make oaths? or even more importantly, do they stick to them? I'm sure some do...but regardless if they also fail to follow their oath, even if they're otherwise completely chaotic in every way, they should have some mechanical consequence triggered.

If you're you're not using alignments at all, it still works, but the default Oaths should include alignment in their descriptor, because that's the classic archetype and I don't want D&D default to be this hard-to-understand, cerebral nonsense where your actions are fluff. I saw in too many 4e games the results of having no alignment : everyone is unrestricted to be lizards and rogues. Some might act decently, but e.g. we had a rogue who's make masks of the faces of our enemies, and as a paladin, it made my skin crawl, but what can you do? Police them? That's an issue about what's a "dealbreaker" to be in someone's company, fine, but because alignment was complete and utter fluff, there was never any consequence of my being allied to such an individual, nor was the DM even allowed to remove my powers, by RAW there is no way to do that, no mention of it at all. The end result of playing in an alignment-less ruleset, or one in which there are virtually no drawbacks for not following said alignment that's written on your sheet, is that nothing really matters. Nothing really matters, at all. Except combat. All you need is kill.

 

[Obryn]

If you're you're not using alignments at all, it still works, but the default Oaths should include alignment in their descriptor, because that's the classic archetype and I don't want D&D default to be this hard-to-understand, cerebral nonsense where your actions are fluff. I saw in too many 4e games the results of having no alignment : everyone is unrestricted to be lizards and rogues. Some might act decently, but e.g. we had a rogue who's make masks of the faces of our enemies, and as a paladin, it made my skin crawl, but what can you do? Police them? That's an issue about what's a "dealbreaker" to be in someone's company, fine, but because alignment was complete and utter fluff, there was never any consequence of my being allied to such an individual, nor was the DM even allowed to remove my powers, by RAW there is no way to do that, no mention of it at all. The end result of playing in an alignment-less ruleset, or one in which there are virtually no drawbacks for not following said alignment that's written on your sheet, is that nothing really matters. Nothing really matters, at all. Except combat. All you need is kill.

First off - lizards?

Second, I can't remotely see how the DM stripping your paladin of his powers would have improved this? Do you need that to roleplay conflict? Do you need alignment to disapprove and/or confront what you see as wrongdoing? What would really have happened here, differently, other than having the DM's finger on the scale of your intra-party conflict?

Third, I run a no-alignment Dark Sun game, and we have interpersonal moral quandaries regularly. Right now, in fact, just last session. It's a long story, but it's tied to three major arcs which have come into direct conflict. If you decide that only combat matters, that's on you and your group, and it's gotten tiresome how you're blaming the system for your roleplaying choices.

-O

 

[Gorgoroth]

I have played a paladins and have seen many paladins played, in 1st ed, AD&D, 3.0, and 4.0. As soon as the ability to lose your paladin status is removed, the behavior of the player is changed. There is no disincentive to acting a certain way.

Yes, I do blame the system for removing this constraint. 4e reduced paladins to just another set of bland power cards where their alignment was mere fluff, and much weaker than, e.g. rangers even in an undead-only campaign. Without it, the class is little different than a fighter/cleric. I find it tiresome that so many people are anti-alignment, and yes, I do think it's in Dark Sun one can run alignment-free campaigns easier, since there are no gods. And yes, I stand by my assertion that humanity is largely reptilian (selfish and amoral) in nature, all one has to do is turn on the news or read a little history. The evidence to support this assertion is overwhelming.

Try playing a paladin in Dark Sun. oh wait, there aren't any. QED

 

[Obryn]

I have played a paladins and have seen many paladins played, in 1st ed, AD&D, 3.0, and 4.0. As soon as the ability to lose your paladin status is removed, the behavior of the player is changed. There is no disincentive to acting a certain way.

Yes, I do blame the system for removing this constraint. 4e reduced paladins to just another set of bland power cards where their alignment was mere fluff, and much weaker than, e.g. rangers even in an undead-only campaign. Without it, the class is little different than a fighter/cleric. I find it tiresome that so many people are anti-alignment, and yes, I do think it's in Dark Sun one can run alignment-free campaigns easier, since there are no gods. And yes, I stand by my assertion that humanity is largely reptilian (selfish and amoral) in nature, all one has to do is turn on the news or read a little history. The evidence to support this assertion is overwhelming.

Try playing a paladin in Dark Sun. oh wait, there aren't any. QED

Well, in my campaign there are gods. Now, anyways, though they're not really traditional. But it's still some really flawed logic, you have going here. You can have all these good, juicy conflicts without alignments. If I can do it in Dark Sun, I can do it every game. The nature of those conflicts may change, but that isn't a bad thing.

Alignments' presence or absence makes no difference - if you can roleplay a conflict with an invisible sword of damocles threatening to ruin your pc, you can do it without. You chose how to roleplay your character. You made those decisions.

What you seem to be saying is that you didn't want to because you didn't see any mechanical consequences to your actions. And that's your choice, not the system's. I know you hate 4e - you don't go a single post without digging at it - and that's fine. But come on - unless you think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], Nemesis Destiny, others, and I are all lying, it's certainly possible to roleplay moral choices or Paladins in it.

-O

 

[Mournblade94]

Why should it scream "munchkin" if gods don't strip clerics of their power? You're acknowledging that arcane and martial classes don't have similar limits.

-O

I have played with a solid houserule for clerics as well. You play outside of your god's ideals and your powers don't work...

Or another god is granting them.

 

[pemerton]

the default Oaths should include alignment in their descriptor, because that's the classic archetype and I don't want D&D default to be this hard-to-understand, cerebral nonsense where your actions are fluff.

I don't understand what you mean by "your actions are fluff".

But as to "cerebral nonsense", which of these is easier to understand: "A paladin is a LG warrior"; or "A paladin is an honourable and chivalric warrior"? I think the second - it uses ordinary English, rather than an inherently incoherent technical term.

I saw in too many 4e games the results of having no alignment : everyone is unrestricted to be lizards and rogues. Some might act decently, but e.g. we had a rogue who's make masks of the faces of our enemies, and as a paladin, it made my skin crawl, but what can you do?

This makes no sense to me. Why was the rogue doing that? There is no mechanical advantage, in 4e, to turning the faces of your enemies into masks. So it sounds like the player of the rogue was roleplaying. So why can't you roleplay your paladin's disgust? As to what you can do, you (playing your paladin) can tell the rogue that it is wrong, and disgusting.

I don't understand what difference alignment rule, or a defined code, would make in this case.

 

[Libramarian]

Honestly I see the restrictiveness and artificiality of the D&D morality system as a good thing--it allows you to do a little bit of moral reasoning but it puts it into a D&D-labelled box so you don't forget that you're just playing a game rather than actually debating these issues irl. It also pushes you to do it, when it very rarely comes up on its own in the only styles of D&D play that I have ever personally seen (goal-oriented gamism, either for treasure/XP or for some sort of "macguffin" that nobody actually cares about and is just a framing device for the challenge gauntlet).

It's a middle ground between having the interpretation of moral issues in the game be completely wide open and having a defined code of conduct.

If anybody has an alternative morality framework (to stimulate and guide interpretation but not determine it exactly) to suggest rather than 2-axis alignment I would like to hear it. But I don't think the standard system is so bad at what it sets out to do.

 

[Manbearcat]

@Libramarian Something akin to MHRP's Milestone system that I wrote upthread would do the job quite well. You could set it up one of two ways but both would be premised upon a system of (lets say) maybe 3 Virtues/Oaths that are specific. For instance:

Loyalty - Gain (a Thematic Boon or a 'Virtue' point) when backing a friend/ally's play puts you or something precious to you in danger or when you refuse to back your friend/ally's play because doing so would violate your your God's trust.

Sacrifice - Gain (a Thematic Boon or a 'Virtue' point) when you either put yourself in mortal danger for your allies or when you find yourself the last man standing.

Vengeance - Gain (a Thematic Boon or a 'Virtue' point) when you slay the target of your Oath or when your target slips through your grasp because you deem the cost of pursuit too great to continue.

This works because you have specific, focused thematic material that the GM can set up challenging situations around. You can have a dial that plays to several different playstyles.

1 - You can have the GM make this call on each of these oaths/virtues and award a predetermined thematic boon associated with the oath/virtue (a diplomacy or charm bonus, a use of some kind of heroic intercession ability, a use of holy smite).

2 - You can have the player set these up each time they invoke one of their oaths in play and use it in one of the ways above, instead of gaining a specific thematic boon, the player can earn a "Virtue Point". There could be a Virtue Point Economy that they can cash in during conflicts with a prayer for divine intervention or invocation of the favor of their God in the way of coincidental assets for their group or complications for the enemy, luck/favor, or raw divine power.

That, to me, would make for thematically rich Paladin play that rewards the tension and duty of lining up with a specific ethos. And the second version would give a Paladin player a fun ethos mini-game to play and narrative authority to impose upon the fiction by the creation of thematic content/advantage.

 

[Hussar]

All right. Let's accept for a moment that a Paladin must act in a manner consistent with Lawful Good. If he strays, he will fall. Fair enough.

Now, paladin detects evil on someone and that someone is, in fact evil. Can that someone be killed?

Thing is, you can make a very good argument either way. So, who decides? The DM gets final say? So, the player, despite truly believing that he has not done anything evil, is forced to lose his status because the DM decides so? What if it's the other way? The DM feels that whatever the player has done isn't worthy of losing status, but the player does?

This is just a recipe for disaster and has been for thirty years.
[MENTION=6674889]Gorgoroth[/MENTION] - if the only reason that your paladin players were playing paladins in a certain way was because of the stick, then perhaps the problem isn't with the rules.