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

[Hussar]

You'd be wrong. I play in 2 PF games, 1 3.5 game, and one heavily modified (by the GM) 3.5 game. Nevertheless, I also DM a lot and enjoy doing so. I like that D&D has been a toolkit from both a DM and a player's side. It widens the variety of games and their feel without having to completely learn new rules sets.

I could make a comment about what happens when you assume, like Felix Unger, but I'll leave that as an exercise for people up on their 1970s cultural literacy.

You currently play in 4 different campaigns at the same time? WOW.

 

[billd91]

You currently play in 4 different campaigns at the same time? WOW.

Two are weekly, one's twice a month, the other is occasional but still ongoing and in that one I'm content to play a paladin under the code of conduct rules.

 

[Sunseeker]

The code, the descriptions of alignments, the descriptions of gods, etc. are all guidelines for the player and DM, beyond that it can be discussed... warnings can be given and so on.

Except you've previously stated different gods and belief systems are irrelevant, LG is LG.

well I, and many others didn't so why should we get penalized because some jerk DM's were jerk DM's??

Stop making the argument about you. You're not being penalized for anything.

EDIT: I mean let's be honest here, a DM can strip any character of his "agency" in the game if he wants... impossible DC's, encounters that are 20 levels above and so on. So why are his powers over the paladin falling considered special in all of this?

Because while those things have logic and reason in them, the last one has no logic or reason.

 

[pemerton]

if you've created a situation where a character is no longer allowed to play in a game... you have exerted control over that character.

The character isn't being affected in the slightest, here - it's the player who is being chucked out. That is all the difference in the world.

Exactly what Balesir said. For all that we know, the character might continue to exist in the gameworld as an NPC.

Yes and it's the player's agency being affected by the loss of a paladin's powers not the character, since the character doesn't technically exist

I don't really understand where you're coming from - are you worried that the player can't find or start another group? Are you saying that I have a moral obligation to let people play in my game whom I don't like, and that that obligation is more important than concerns about the GM interfering with their play of the game?

Anyway, I'll come at it in another way. I do quite a bit of co-authoring. Which means that my co-authors and I have to agree on what our papers are going to say. If my co-author rewrote our paper and submitted it under our joint names without consulting with me, that would be one thing: a paper is coming out with my name on it saying things that I never wrote. That's an interference with my agency is an author. If my co-author and I bust up and I have to write my own paper, that's a completely different thing. I might lose a friendship, but I preserve my integrity as an author. (And as a matter of fact, I have a colleague who is currently experiencing this very issue: he is working with a co-author with whom he can't bust up, because of issues of seniority within the school etc, but who insists on dominating the writing process, which my colleague experiences as a heavy burden on his own authorial agency.)

So kicking someone out isn't telling them how to play their character; it's not interfering with their authorial agency or integrity; it's just telling them to go and do it somewhere else. They can do whatever they want to do, but they're going to have to find a different co-author!

 

[pemerton]

I have to disagree with that.


It does not and would not have made a difference in the situation.

Chalk me up as not having any clue why an external and enforceable code, either within the paladin class or the specific religion he's adhering to, would have affected the situation one bit. Did either PC violate their restrictions?

<snip>

So how would the enforceability of an external code be involved at all in the situation, much less wreck it?

Balesir gave part of the answer to why it would make a difference, here:

Well, if I were playing either "religious type" in that situation it would absolutely have made a huge difference, and I'm at a loss to account for why you can't see how, so it's obviously a matter of outlook/point of view.

If no GM judgement is present, I am exploring my character's morality from the inside - immersively - at least if I want to. If it's all, ultimately, up to GM decision then the only thing I can explore is the GM's view of what my character's code actually is. I'm sat there, as a player, wondering what the GM thinks, rather than exploring "what my character thinks" in the imaginary world.

But as well as the "exploratory", imaginative dimension that Balesir discusses here - the player is expressing their view of their PC, not their view of what the GM thinks the PC is required to do in that situation - there is another element present too.

For me, the most important two aspects of what I described are these:

• The dwarf became bound by a promise given not by him, but by those who were reasonably taken to be his agents, which he himself would never have made; and which those agents only made because they thought it wouldn't count (because they would kill the prisoner anyway without the dwarf learning what had been done).
  
• The paladin of the god of death became bound not to kill someone whom he thought deserved death, because to do so would mean the dwarf going back on a promise that had been made on his behalf.

In each case, then, the giving of the false promise creates a situation where honour and loyalty (the dwarf's sense of obligation to uphold the promise; the paladin's sense of obligation not to make the dwarf go back on his word) mean that someone whom both PCs agree deserves death will not be killed.

When that conclusion is reached by the players, playing their PCs as they see them, and expressing what they take to be important consequences of the values to which they regard their PCs as committed (promise-keeping, for the player of the dwarf; respect for loyal and honourable companions, for the player of the paladin), the event has a certain poignancy, a certain pathos, a certain heft at the table. It's memorable. It mattered. The players were talking to one another about what was required. About what the promise meant. The player of the dwarf was complaining to the other players that they had locked him into a course of action because of the values he's committed to in playing his PC.

Whereas if the situation had been governed by a GM-enforced code, the whole dynamic changes. There is no poignancy, no pathos. The situation becomes one of statutory or contractual interpretation: here are the words of the code; here's what I'm thinking of having my PC do; here's what I know about how the GM is likely to adjudicate and apply the code; so what's the most rational cause of action? Now I'm an academic lawyer as well as philosopher, and I enjoy a good bit of statutory interpretation as much as the next person - but it's not generally a source of poignancy, or pathos, or emotional depth. The players talking to one another about what's expedient, given the rules, is very different from the players talking to one another about what' s permissible, given what has happened in the game and in light of the values to which they are committed.

How does playing a paladin with no mechanical restrictions in any way enhance this type of morality play? I mean what makes him more interesting or a superior choice to any class that is roleplayed as devoted to a code/deity/alignment/etc.

I already posted upthread (or maybe in another recent thread) that there is no difference, archetypically, between the paladin and the warrior-cleric: as is shown by the fact that, in his PHB, Gygax tells us that the cleric class is based on the crusading warrior ideal (Knights Templar et al) and also gives us the paladin, another class based on the crusading warrior ideal.

There is no gap between the ideals to which the Knights Templars ostensibly held themselves, and the ideals to which Roland or Lancelot or Galahad ostensibly held themselves: courtesy, honour, valour, devotion to God.

The different classes make a mechanical difference, but not an archetypical difference.

The difference becomes greater if you have a PC who is devoted to a code or deity but is not drawing upon divine power; because at that point (especially in a fantasy RPG) there is not quite the same intimacy between the character and the object of devotion. But that's a matter of degree, at least in my view. It's not a fundamental difference.

a DM can strip any character of his "agency" in the game if he wants... impossible DC's, encounters that are 20 levels above and so on. So why are his powers over the paladin falling considered special in all of this?

There is a critical difference, though

<snip>

some rules - spells like Charm Person and illusions and things like the "Paladin's fall" rule in older versions of D&D - actually require the GM to make subjective and arbitrary decisions about how a player's character's powers and abilities work in the game world.

In additin to what Balesir says here, there is this point: if you are playing the game because you enjoy the emotional experience; and if part of that emotional experience comes from seeing the participants in the game, including the players of paladins, express via their play their views about what matters, and what doesn't, in a given situation - in short, to express values - then giving the GM the role of prejudging all that defeats that part of the purpose of playing.

Other parts of the game would be left intact, including the intellectual aspect of working out what is or isn't permitted by the GM's interpretation of the code. But a very big part of what I play RPGs for would be gone. That's why, ever since I read the discussion in Dragon #101 (from memory in 1984) which crystalised this issue for me, I have not used AD&D alignment rules in my games.

The game is a role-playing game, there should be rewards and penalties for playing it well.

Well, I thought my players payed well. The reward was that I got to work with them in generating, and experiencing, an emotionally engaging bit of fiction, without anyone actually having sat down with the intention of creating that bit of fiction. For me, that's the genius of RPGing - combining authorship and audience via an allocation of roles that means no one has to set out to be an author.

 

[pemerton]

In Deities and Demigods, which included a section on Arthurian heroes, Lancelot was a fallen paladin. His fall may have been before the events written in de Troyes's version, but Lancelot's flaws weren't exactly unknown to the game designers. Fallen paladin in 1e fits him pretty well.

He fell because of his betrayal of Arthur and his lust for Guinevere (at least on one standard reading). Not for killing those 6 or so knights. You can retcon that back in, I guess, but I think it's crystal clear that de Troyes doesn't regard that as questionable behaviour.

Much the same point could be made about Viking law codes: what they called "murder" we would tend to call "assassination" - poisonings, killing someone under cover of darkness or while they're asleep, etc. Whereas picking a fight with someone and killing him in the street was not a criminal act (there may be duties of reparation to the family, but that's a different matter).

Premodern moral practices don't approach life and death in the same way as Bentham or human rights scholars. Nor do they approach political authority, democracy, freedom or equality in the same way. Concepts like honour, valour, courtesy and even truth play little role in modern moral thought. The idea of loyalty, for instance, becomes replaced by interest-based notions like reliance or legitimate expectations (see, for instance, Dworkin's discussion of the value of integrity in Law's Empire).

Whereas honour, valour, courtesy and truth are (in my view) at the very heart of paladinhood.

This is also why I think it's essentially unfair, if a player is playing a paladin, to introduce into the game examples of political conflict or strife that speak to modern concerns. In the same way that the X-Men comics never raise the question why Storm isn't using her powers to alleviate drought the world over - her heroism is framed in a fictional space where those sorts of real-world issues are just bracketed away - so I think the default D&D game should bracket the issues of serfdom, political oppression and the like.

Of course if the table is up for it then remove the brackets - but at that point a paladin is not going to look like Lancelot or Galahad or a Knight Templar. And D&D alignment concepts still won't help anyone solve moral quandries. (Who was lawful - the French revolutionaries, who were committed to doing away with arbitrary political power and replacing it with government under law in accordance with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen? or Burke, who attacked the revolutionaries for disregarding and destroying all the real social relations that made communal life possible and worthwhile? Or, to give another example: individualists tend, in alignment debates, to get labelled as chaotic; yet who is a bigger advocate of the rule of law than Hayek? Those are the sorts of questions that a game focused on modern moral and political concerns will throw up, and D&D alignment rules don't even begin to help us understand them, let alone resolve them.)

 

[Libramarian]

Again, the fall mechanics isn't the main issue, here. It's a problem player whether or not the fall mechanic is there, just like a GM who sets up "gotcha" moments for the Paladin PC is a problem GM whether or not the fall mechanic is there.

I think @pemerton (correct me if I'm wrong) DOES want to set up "gotcha" moments for a Paladin PC, in order to provoke character change and development. But he wants the player to be able to determine the path their Paladin takes through it and what it means, so he doesn't want a mechanic where the game and/or GM immediately determines the morality of the Paladin's action.*

I think pemerton would like the type of the mechanic @Manbearcat suggested to me earlier in the thread, where the paladin oaths are all bimodal--you get a bennie whether you stick to your oath or renege on it, because it can lead to an interesting story development either way. My concern with that as the core Paladin mechanic (besides the fact that it would replace a game mechanic that I like) is that I would feel obligated to set up the Paladin player in these situations, when I ordinarily don't do much very much scene-framing at all. Someone earlier in the thread said that their Paladin player was upset because they expected more spotlight and attention--this could definitely happen in my game. I don't want to have to make the campaign about Paladinhood just because a player chose a Paladin. It's an interesting idea for a modular option that requires player-DM coordination before switching it on, though.

I think the Paladin class could be written to accomodate both the gamist oath-as-challenge Paladin and the narrativist oath-as-premise Paladin with two modules. That would be a really interesting. However I don't see that happening. I foresee a compromise being made where there is no mechanical incentive to throw the Paladin into conflict, and no serious mechanical consequences for failing to follow their restrictions. The Paladin is perfectly balanced and becomes indistinguishable from a Fighter/Cleric. This is the process where D&D loses it flavor and gets blander and blander.

*So a gotcha for the character, not for the player.

 

[pemerton]

I think pemerton (correct me if I'm wrong) DOES want to set up "gotcha" moments for a Paladin PC, in order to provoke character change and development. But he wants the player to be able to determine the path their Paladin takes through it and what it means, so he doesn't want a mechanic where the game and/or GM immediately determines the morality of the Paladin's action.

That's right. Sometimes they're deliberate. Sometimes they unfold more-or-less organically, like the example of the interrogation I posted a bit upthread - the players of both paladins have to choose between honour/loyalty, and justice.

I think pemerton would like the type of the mechanic Manbearcat suggested to me earlier in the thread, where the paladin oaths are all bimodal--you get a bennie whether you stick to your oath or renege on it, because it can lead to an interesting story development either way.

Yep, that wouldn't bother me. I'd have to get a feel for it - I'm used to running a game where the narrativist/character change stuff sits pretty much above the mechanics (which is why I follow the Forge in calling it "vanilla narrativism"), but am certainly up for an approach that builds in mechanical rewards of various sorts.

My concern with that as the core Paladin mechanic (besides the fact that it would replace a game mechanic that I like) is that I would feel obligated to set up the Paladin player in these situations, when I ordinarily don't do much very much scene-framing at all. Someone earlier in the thread said that their Paladin player was upset because they expected more spotlight and attention--this could definitely happen in my game. I don't want to have to make the campaign about Paladinhood just because a player chose a Paladin.

All fair enough. There's a lot of different ways of playing D&D!

I think the Paladin class could be written to accomodate both the gamist oath-as-challenge Paladin and the narrativist oath-as-premise Paladin with two modules. That would be a really interesting.

Agreed. This is exactly the sort of thing I'm asking for, and others who talk about "sidebars" with various options are I think gesturing towards the same sort of idea. You'd set out the basic idea of the class - chivarly, honour, oaths, etc - and then you'd have some discussion of the different ways of handling it and how these play out in different sorts of games.

However I don't see that happening. I foresee a compromise being made where there is no mechanical incentive to throw the Paladin into conflict, and no serious mechanical consequences for failing to follow their restrictions. The Paladin is perfectly balanced and becomes indistinguishable from a Fighter/Cleric. This is the process where D&D loses it flavor and gets blander and blander.

For me, what you say here resonated with the stuff you said in the Burning Wheel thread a little while ago about 4e not having the courage to put the idea of hard choices front-and-centre; that the game is just drifting into an emotionally light, high concept, fantasy hero simulator. If I'm reading you in this way am I on the right track?

 

[Hussar]

Two are weekly, one's twice a month, the other is occasional but still ongoing and in that one I'm content to play a paladin under the code of conduct rules.

I have zero problems with playing a paladin with a code of conduct. Nor, do I think, does anyone have any problem with a paladin having a code.

The problem comes with the idea that the DM is the one who should be the final arbiter on the code.

I mean, heck, Mournblade has flat out stated that if I play one kind of paladin, I can kill things that detect as evil on the spot. You state that doing so will cost me my status. Who's right? Prove it.

That, in a nutshell is the problem with leaving it to the DM. If I play a fighter in your group or in Mournblade's group, my character could be pretty much exactly the same and there would be no problems. But, I cannot play the same paladin in your group as his group. Not because you are using different rules. You are both looking at exactly the same rules yet giving completely opposite rulings.

And you see no problem with this?

 

[billd91]

I have zero problems with playing a paladin with a code of conduct. Nor, do I think, does anyone have any problem with a paladin having a code.

The problem comes with the idea that the DM is the one who should be the final arbiter on the code.

I mean, heck, Mournblade has flat out stated that if I play one kind of paladin, I can kill things that detect as evil on the spot. You state that doing so will cost me my status. Who's right? Prove it.

That, in a nutshell is the problem with leaving it to the DM. If I play a fighter in your group or in Mournblade's group, my character could be pretty much exactly the same and there would be no problems. But, I cannot play the same paladin in your group as his group. Not because you are using different rules. You are both looking at exactly the same rules yet giving completely opposite rulings.

And you see no problem with this?

No. You adapt in all sorts of ways to the local table. This is just one of those ways.