It seems like they won the skill challenge, which caused the Soul Abattoir to collapse (a new complication of the now complete skill challenge), not like the loss of the familiar somehow related to successes or failures in the skill challenge.
They shut down the final piece of machinery part way through the skill challenge, in the course of the combat that occurred between success 7 and success 8. This caused the Soul Abattoir to commence collapsing. The next five skill checks, including those involving the choice between the Raven Queen and Orcus, led to success in the challenge. One of those checks - a Religion check - began as an attempt to hold back the flow of soul energy. With a successful Insight check, it then became also about allowing Vecna to have that energy, or ensuring its flow to the Raven Queen. A choice was made, and a price paid for that choice. In mechanical terms, I put it in much the same category as spending a healing surge or an action point or a limited-use power as part of making a check in a skill challenge.
you are clearly judging the invoker’s allegiance to Vecna.
No I'm not. I don't think that allegiance has changed from its prior ambiguous status. I'm judging that the PC has pissed Vecna off. That's what the player intended to do. The player didn't think that his PC was somehow furthering Vecna's cause or values by stopping him getting the soul energy.
That's just one reason why this is fundamentally different, by my lights at least, from telling a player who believes that s/he is choosing a proper action that in fact his/her action was improper.
You seem very defensive that the one you chose was the only reasonable approach which could be taken.
I've not asserted that at all. I'm defending it as
a reasonable approach.
Anytime you want to post an actual play example and have it subjected to a tenth of the scrutiny my examples are being subjected to, be my guest! But in the meantime, yes, you can be confident that I will defend my GMing against criticism that I see as unwarranted.
So can the Paladin of the Raven Queen, should he choose to do so, on the assumption his choice is a reasonable outgrowth of play, choose to align with the forces of the Undead (or of Orcus) for some reason that he considers is appropriate within his service to the Raven Queen
Why not?
He pledged service to the vampire Kas, for example.
You are telling me if you want to play an honourable character, you will do so solely because you want to play an honourable character. Then you are telling me you want mechanics that reward you for playing that honourable character.
Correct. I am sure there are players out there who build rogue PCs whose only mechanical capabilities are Stealth and sneak attack, and then play them as honourable characters who never sneak anywhere and never flank an opponent nor attack a flat-footed one. But I am not such a player. If I am going to play an honourable character, I build a character who will be mechanically effective played in that way. To see what one build might look like, you can read the PC sheet for Thurgon
here, at post 6.
So you can decide that Vecna is displeased, but you cannot decide a different deity, or some other cosmological force is displeased.
I'm not sure how I can explain this differently.
"Good" is not a person with desires. "Good" is a value. To say that the force of "good" is displeased by an action doesn't really make sense - but to the extent that the metaphor can be interpreted, what it means is that the action in question is contrary to the requirements of goodness - ie is evil, or at least wrong or inadequate in some fashion.
To suppose that the cosmological force of goodness might be confused about what goodness requires makes no more sense than to say that that cosmological force of gravity might be confused about what is up and what is down. [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] has made this point well about half-a-dozen posts upthread from this one.
And we’re back to the straightjacket.
How is it a "straitjacket" to quote you the definitions from the rulebooks?
Sometimes, the character compromises Respect for Life (itself not a Good act) for the benefit of other tenets of Good, or perhaps other tenets of Law, or perhaps because he slipped up. The question is not “Did the character maintain the absolute ideals of Good at all times”. No one could. The question is whether the compromises he made are, or are not, acceptable in the eyes of the person or force doing the judging. Did he compromise too much?
I see no textual support for this in any edition of D&D. The question asked is not "Is what was done acceptable to St Cuthbert?" The question asked is "Is what was done willingly evil and/or chaotic?"
To the extent that lawful good is a value permitting a multitude of reasonable actions, then this just makes the answer to that question less likely to be yes than if lawful good were monistic. But it doesn't change the fact that the question being asked is "Was that evil?" or "Was that chaotic?"
To elaborate: my point is that the suggestion that "good" somehow means "St Cuthbert's opinion of what is good" has no support in any rulebook I've ever read. Suppose a paladin of St Cuthbert has to make a choice - say about trading off respect against altruism. A child is about to be struck by a cart, and between the paladin and the child is a muddy puddle. If the paladin runs through the puddle it will splash the ermine of the king, who just happens to be passing by. The player of the paladin declares that his PC runs anyway, thus saving the child but splashing the king in mud. St Cuthbert thinks there was a better way of doing things - perhaps the puddle could have been jumped, or the paladin could have thrown his mace to lodge in the spokes of the cart, which would have stopped it moving. Or whatever.
Does St Cuthbert punish the paladin? The impression I get from you and [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION], in your reference to various powers' and divinities' conceptions of what is good, is that this question is to be answered by asking what St Cuthbert believes lawful goodness required on that occasion. My preference is to answer by asking
what did lawful goodness require and/or permit on that occasion. And when the player is sincere in his/her view about the permissibility of what s/he did, I am not going to second guess. And once the idea of second guessing is off the table, mechanical alignment then turns out to be redundant for my purposes.
Ultimately, the Paladin is very much a character who serves Law and Good, and is rewarded with special abilities for doing so.
<snip>
it’s not lost on me that one use of Paladin (Have Gun, Will Travel; the Marvel comics character; the security company) is paid enforcers/mercenaries. Those don’t fit my conception of D&D Paladins either.
I don't see how these sentences are consistent. If the paladin is a character who is rewarded for service to certain powers, how is that any different from being a paid enforcer? For me, the key to the paladin is that s/he is called to the defence and service of one or more values. Values, not powers and desires, are key.
This is the Euthyphro point. Corellon loves beauty because it is valuable; things don't become valuable just because Corellon deems them to be beautiful. It is the value, not Corellon's desires, that motivate paladins of Corellon, and against which their actions are to be judged. Hence their fundamental difference from warlocks, from mercenaries, and from Faust. Hence, also, the connection between players' declarations of action and players' evaluative judgements: a player playing a paladin of Corellon is sharing with the table his/her conception of beauty, and what it permits, and what it requires, and why it is worth caring about. S/he is probably not doing this with the same skill and style as Nobel-prize winning novelist or poet, but that's not the threshold for playing at my table! Frankly, it's not my place, and none of my business, to second-guess that player's theory of beauty, which has been sincerely shared with the rest of us.
This also explains why it is not my place to second-guess the player's conception of what Corellon desires. If the player has put forward his/her theory of beauty, in play, then that also establishes what it is that Corellon values - because we know Corellon values beauty - and there is no need for me as GM to override or second-guess that.
I could probably also point out that the invoker PC, in thwarting Vecna to support the Raven Queen, is not thereby setting out to, or in any way purporting, to serve the value that Vecna professes, namely, the value of secrecy. Furthermore, I know - from conversation with the player - that the PC regards Vecna as flawed in his understanding of that value, and so even if the player
were trying to serve the value of secrecy it would not challenge or invalidate his conception of that value to have Vecna dispute it, because the player
already regards Vecna as corrupted in his understanding of that value. (Arguably, this is what characterises the "evil" gods of 4e - they aim at genuine values, but their approach to those values is corrupted, and their understanding of those values distorted.)
