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

[Imaro]

If you are unable to roleplay a paladin unless the game itself has a punishment built into the system to make sure you DO... then the problem doesn't lie within the game, it lies within you as a roleplayer.

Disagree... if part of the archetype of the class the game includes is being punished for certain transactions (as it is with all paladins up to 4e) then I think it is in fact a problem with the game if it doesn't back this up with mechanics.

The game cannot and should not FORCE you to roleplay "correctly". If you and your DM want to put in some consequences for yourself because it makes your story more interesting and exciting for you... that's great! But the game is not meant to force that onto every other player too.

Again I disagree, look at a game like L5R, the mechanics certainly punish you for not conforming to the correct actions of a samurai in Rokugan (of course if you want a little more leeway you can play a monk). The difference is D&D as a game is not concerned with this type of play on a widescale like L5R, however with the classic paladin it allows any particular player who is interested in that type of play to explore it. D&D in turn also gives plenty of other options to those who do not want to deal with such things... that's why I don't understand why having one class that is built around such things is such a big deal to some.

 

[Balesir]

Not if, as many have suggested, we have a well defined code for the paladin...

In thousands of years of history, the closest we have come to a "well defined code" for morality is Kant's categorical imperative - and that has at least a couple of rather serious gaps. Which "code" did you have in mind?

Because the paladin doesn't grant himself power for following the code... if this was the case there would be no fallen paladins or anti-paladins. The paladins power ultimately comes from a higher being (except in 4e) that judges said paladins actions against said code.

So the "code" is actually simply a contract with clauses for moral hazard??

So are clerics of good deities... just self-serving power mongers?

Not usually, no - but not because such agents are being bullied into compliance by jealous principals...

I'm not getting the whole one cannot be virtuous because one receives a gift for it.

Well, it's exactly what you have written, if you read it carefully. No-one is virtuous because they received a gift for it - nor, indeed, because they did not receive a gift for it.

The virtue - if it exists - is independent of the gift.

The gift might be given because of the virtue. It might even be taken away again later if the virtue is found to be lacking in the eyes of the giver of the gift (although then it wouldn't really be a "gift", in the proper meaning of the word). If that is the case, though, treating it as a class ability seems a poor way to handle it, since it isn't really part of the character's training or origins at all. An "item" type boon might be more appropriate. Just like the class of "treasure" there is in 4E called "Boons", for example.

Secondly, as long as the paladin is acting in accordance with the code he is in fact being restrained and since his power has to be used to serve that cause (or he looses it) then it seems more like accepting a burden in return for power.

A criminal who has a cop pointing a gun at him is "being restrained"; that hardly makes him "virtuous". A Sword of Damocles doesn't make someone virtuous - it just makes them careful.

As for proving whether "an ethical and honourable warrior is superior to an unethical, dishonourable warrior" ... it hasn't been proven... Otherwise paladins would always win... anti-paladins and fallen paladins wouldn't exist, no evil warrior could stand against a paladin, and so on... but none of that is the case.

1) 3d6 doesn't always roll higher than 2d6. Nevertheless, rolling 3d6 rather than 2d6, when you want to roll high, is pretty indisputably superior.

2) Being "superior" does not neccessarily mean "winning" - especially when it comes to "virtue". If your paladins are thinking of "virtue" in terms of winning, in fact, I would suggest that you have an issue right there.

 

[Starfox]

So if you don't want the paladin to loose his abilities for the actions he takes... why can't you just ignore it since many other campaigns/worlds/games will want the classic paladin? In other words, why should the default be the free reign paladin as opposed to the restricted one? Especially since only one edition ever presented the paladin as such.

THis question is perfectly viable, and applies to both view points in this issue - Why can't you just add it since many other campaigns/worlds/games will want the paladin that does not lose his powers?

In the end, I think the best way to solve this is to not use a rule, but a sidebar with different ways on how it can be played.

 

[Libramarian]

@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.

I support the idea of something like this in a game module, but I think it's too dependent upon fairly aggressive GM scene-framing to work well for core.

I can see the logic of this in B/X (with its Law, Neutrality, Chaos spectrum) and in 4e (which is pretty similar to B/X except it enriches the spectrum a bit and anchors it more tightly to a cosmology: LG - G - U - E - CE).

I even do a bit of what you describe in my 4e game - ie use the ingame cosmological elements as devices to ground the morality debates in the fiction rather than real life, so as to avoid too much real-life confilct (for instance, in the fiction no one cares about the political economy of the Nerathi empire, and so issues of serfdom, economic justice etc just don't figure into the moral conflicts/decisions to which teh game gives rise).

But I think AD&D's 9-point alignment breaks out of the box you describe without anyone needing to push it very hard - look at Gygax's description of "Good", which expressly ties it to certain modern political conceptions related to liberal democracy and human rights. And this is compounded by building, around it, a cosmological structure (the "Great Wheel") which rather than being specific like 4e's, or implicitly specific like B/X's Morcockian framework, claims to be able to incorporate any set of mythical or moral perspectives, finding them a home somewhere or other in the Outer Planes.

I've been thinking a bit today about Margaret Thatcher. In B/X, or 4e, it doesn't make sense to ask what Thatcher's alignment was. The political controversies that defined her career have no foothold in the implied B/X cosmology, or the explict 4e cosmology. But the 9-alignment system, as cosmologically expressed via the Great Wheel, presents itself as having a home for every outlook, including Thatcher's. Which I think is absurd, but which I also think means that the alignment system can't do the "keeping things in a box" job that you describe.

Which is part of why I really really dislike AD&D alignment, and see both the B/X and the 4e systems as not just minor tweaks, but very different and better systems. (Though as I've made clear, I'm just as happy without alignments and getting by on cosmology and mythic history plus character personalities and backstories.)

You're right that the B/X and 4e alignment systems do a better job at this--and I think this is why B/X alignment is broadly favored by the OSR--but I think the fact that AD&D alignment has pretentions to being able to categorize all ethical perspectives ever within its system is only relevant if that's taken seriously, which it definitely isn't in my group. So I think recognizing the absurdity of that is enough for it to function as a box.

This really gets to the nub of my problem with the 'old style' paladin. How can you be virtuous about holding yourself to a set of standards if you will lose power for not meeting those standards? Where's the "virtue" (as opposed to expediency) in that? And what is the point of setting out in the (as yet untested) belief that "an ethical and honourable warrior is superior to an unethical, dishonourable warrior" if the question you are posing the universe has already been answered? The answer is "yes", and that warrior had better stick to the (universe imposed) standards or s/he'll get nerfed...

I don't think that the choices to be made in-game are supposed to be where the admirable decisions are made--it's the commitment at the beginning to be a Paladin (accepting that this limits your options in the coming game) that is the admirable decision. It should be obvious how to play a proper Paladin in-game, because the more restricted your choices are in-game, the more heft your commitment to play one at the beginning of the game has. That's the argument for the traditional Pally anyway. I see how this makes it a gam/sim mechanic rather than a narrativist one, but that works for me and makes sense in the context of 1-3e.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=6688858]Libramarian[/MENTION], just a note to say you do a very good job (for me, anyway) of articulating the OSR approach. Thanks.

I like your account of the paladin - an big starting choice which gets a lot of its heft from the clarity of inplay decision-making.

Your description of that, plus your broader discussion of alignment within an old-school framework, also tends to reinforce for me the big difference between Gygaxian-style play and later 2nd-ed era norms (that I think began to emerge around Dragonlance).

 

[Balesir]

I don't think that the choices to be made in-game are supposed to be where the admirable decisions are made--it's the commitment at the beginning to be a Paladin (accepting that this limits your options in the coming game) that is the admirable decision. It should be obvious how to play a proper Paladin in-game, because the more restricted your choices are in-game, the more heft your commitment to play one at the beginning of the game has. That's the argument for the traditional Pally anyway. I see how this makes it a gam/sim mechanic rather than a narrativist one, but that works for me and makes sense in the context of 1-3e.

Ah, OK - so it's a sort of expression of player sacrifice, in giving up a hostage to fortune to the GM, in return for added powers in the game? Or, from a Sim perspective, it's pre-setting the parameters of the character you intend to play in the game; a statement of intent, as it were?

The first makes some sense - thanks for elucidating.

For the second, though, I still don't see why either (a) enhanced character power is required or (b) the GM stick is needed. Surely, if you set out to play the role of a virtuous character (for the simple experience of doing so), your intention is clear - you don't need an empowered overseer to make sure you stick to the intention?

 

[pemerton]

it's a sort of expression of player sacrifice, in giving up a hostage to fortune to the GM

I don't think that's quite right (though of course I may have misunderstood [MENTION=6688858]Libramarian[/MENTION]).

Libramarian says "it should be obvious how to play a proper paladin in-game, because the more restricted your choices . . . the more heft your commitment . . . has." The "should" there means "the rules of the game should make it easy to see how to play your paladin". That is, the restrictions are meant to be obvious. The commitment, then, is that you have tied one hand behind your back before play even starts. You're not really a hostage to fortune - the GM's job should just be to remind you about the hand behind your back.

On this theory, an ambiguous code would be poor design, and a GM who set out to frame ambivalent situations would be, if not breaking the rules, at least putting improper pressure on the social contract.

At least, that's my take on it.

 

[pemerton]

I think first, it's interesting to explore the morality of the particular campaign setting that the DM has created

Excellent! By all means play that sort of game. But not everyone wants to. For instance, I have zero interest in exploring the morality of a GM-authored gameworld. I am much more interested in real values.

if part of the archetype of the class the game includes is being punished for certain transactions (as it is with all paladins up to 4e) then I think it is in fact a problem with the game if it doesn't back this up with mechanics.

It's perfectly possible to play out divine sanction and retribution without a mechanic for it - I've posted examples upthread. The mechanic that permits this is the GM's general power to frame scenes and present challenges to the players via their PCs.

Can one of the posters who is against paladins having a code that is enforced by the loss of their abilities, please tell me how a paladin (without the alignment/code/etc. restrictions) is conceptually different from a fighter who decides to fight for a specfic deity's cause?

<snip>

what makes the paladin archetype any different than a mercenary for a particular religion?

I assume by "mercenary" you don't really mean mercenary - if you do then the answer is crystal clear, namely, the paladin acts out of love and loyalty whereas the mercenary acts for pay.

But assuming by "mercenary for a paricular religion" you mean something like "devoted servant of a particular religion", then the principal difference is that the paladin is imbued with divine power and the fighter is not.

I would say play one because you want the alignment challenges and the archetype of the paragon of good

<snip>

why does the fighter-as-divine mercenary not work for those who want to fight for a deity and do as they wish?

I play a paladin not becaues I want alignment challenges - I really don't like D&D's alignment mechanics, though I can tolerate the B/X & 4e approach for the reasons I posted upthread. I play one becaue I want to play an archetype of good (a la Lancelot, Galahad or Aragorn).

As for "doing as they wish" - how is that even relevant? When I play a paladin, I play a character who is bound to resist temptation, remaining loyal and chaste. I think I described upthread how, in one game, this had the consequence that my PC could not marry the woman he loved. I also described another player's paladin (whom I GMed) who, having killed someone by lopping of their head in combat, went out in the wilderness to atone and let himself be beaten near to death by a demon. And I'm pretty sure I described the episode in my 4e game in which the less honourable PCs extracted a concession from an NPC by evoking the figure of the party's fighter/cleric, intending not to honour the commitment they made in his name - but then that PC learned what the others had done, giving a promise in his name, and thereby felt bound to honour it. Even though he hated it, and himself would never have made the promise; and even thought the player didn't like the outcome, and was remonstrating with the other players for letting things get to that point.

If your question is "Why would a player choose to play his/her PC in this fashion, ie accepting story complications rather than pursuing the most expedient path at every opportunity?" the answer, for me at least but I think for the players I'm describing too, is that that is the character they want to play. If they didn't, they'd play an expedient character!

I guess nothing beats the excitement of exploring your own morality that you make the rules for and set the code for and decide if you fail at and suffer no penalties for violating (of course since you created it, how can you violate it just change it)... wait, why is this exciting again, it's like having a conversation with myself

In my own case I RPG with other people, so the conversation is not with myself, it's with them.

I'm a little confounded. This is a tabletop RPG, which means that the other person is sitting right across the room from you. Why wouldn't you talk to them and see what they are trying to do with their character? There's a living breathing human at the other end.

100% this. What you say can be done either in character or out of character - at my table both approaches are used from time to time. It's part of roleplaying.

If people want to play paladins on the basis of GM-adminstered codes and alignment go to town, but please don't assume that everyone wants that, or build it into the default of the game.

Some people need to accept that if you want a certain ability and the only class that has the ability is one with restrictions then you accept them or play something else.

Why? Given that I have run multiple successful games with interesting paladin episodes in them (some of which I've described above), why do I have to change my playstyle?

Otherwise why have alignments at all? Oh right, because all we are supposed to do is smash monsters in the dungeon and take their stuff, and everything has a modern relativistic morals sheen to it.

If that's really your opinion of the episodes I've described above, we have pretty different notions of what it means to "smash monsters in the dungeon and take their stuff", and also of "modern relativistic morals sheen".

 

[Libramarian]

@Libramarian , just a note to say you do a very good job (for me, anyway) of articulating the OSR approach. Thanks.

I like your account of the paladin - an big starting choice which gets a lot of its heft from the clarity of inplay decision-making.

Your description of that, plus your broader discussion of alignment within an old-school framework, also tends to reinforce for me the big difference between Gygaxian-style play and later 2nd-ed era norms (that I think began to emerge around Dragonlance).

Oh good I came to that comment about the appeal of the classic Paladin not in a theoretical way but just by really trying to think about how it actually works during character creation. Mostly, anyway--I was also reminded of Ron Edwards' discussion of a simulationist samurai vs. a narrativist samurai from one of his essays.

Ah, OK - so it's a sort of expression of player sacrifice, in giving up a hostage to fortune to the GM, in return for added powers in the game? Or, from a Sim perspective, it's pre-setting the parameters of the character you intend to play in the game; a statement of intent, as it were?

The first makes some sense - thanks for elucidating.

For the second, though, I still don't see why either (a) enhanced character power is required or (b) the GM stick is needed. Surely, if you set out to play the role of a virtuous character (for the simple experience of doing so), your intention is clear - you don't need an empowered overseer to make sure you stick to the intention?

I think from a sim perspective it just feels right to have weighty consequences for falling as a Paladin, even though those rules are not ever supposed to actually be used. Sort of like how it feels right to have rules for hunger and thirst in D&D even though I wouldn't be surprised if a D&D character hasn't actually died of hunger since like 1975.

My fantasy reference point for the Paladin is the Night's Watch from A Song of Ice and Fire. It's not admirable to keep doing your duty once you're there, because deserters are hunted down and killed so you don't have much of a choice, but it's very impressive for someone to voluntarily take the black.

I don't think that's quite right (though of course I may have misunderstood @Libramarian ).

Libramarian says "it should be obvious how to play a proper paladin in-game, because the more restricted your choices . . . the more heft your commitment . . . has." The "should" there means "the rules of the game should make it easy to see how to play your paladin". That is, the restrictions are meant to be obvious. The commitment, then, is that you have tied one hand behind your back before play even starts. You're not really a hostage to fortune - the GM's job should just be to remind you about the hand behind your back.

On this theory, an ambiguous code would be poor design, and a GM who set out to frame ambivalent situations would be, if not breaking the rules, at least putting improper pressure on the social contract.

At least, that's my take on it.

That makes sense to me. I prefer an alignment restriction to a specific code of conduct, but only slightly. It's true that the vast majority of the time in the classic D&D sort of game that I like they're basically the same thing because it's so obvious what the proper interpretation is. There are two morally dubious situations that come up all the time: the opportunity to harm or threaten with violence noncombatants, and the oppotunity to lie/deceive for advantage. The first is evil, the second is chaotic. Players who want to play basically ethical characters have to turn down those advantages most of the time. If you want to play a Paladin, you have to make a commitment at the beginning of the game that you will never even consider it, no matter what the advantage is.

 

[Hussar]

Funny thing is, lots of classes in 3e have alignment restrictions, which are every bit as severe as paladins, but they are never enforced.

A barbarian who acts in a lawful manner loses his Rage ability and cannot advance any more as a barbarian. So, if the barbarian player plays his character as always following orders, never acting impulsively, creates elaborate plans, etc. he should be a "fallen" barbarian.

But, it never happens. For some bizarre reason, whenever a player puts Paladin under class, the DM suddenly feels empowered to force his view of how that character "should" be played on that player. But no other class ever has this enforced. It has always boggled my mind.