D&D 5E Is Anyone Unhappy About Non-LG Paladins?
- Thread starter Tequila Sunrise
- Start date
In real life, people break oaths because keeping to them is demanding.
But it is not demanding for a player to keep his/her PC to an oath, because in the context of an RPG it is no more demanding to declare action X for my PC than to declare action Y.
So why are the players in your games not playing their PCs as keeping to their oaths?
Giltonio_Santos
Hero
Sure, but there was a time (back in the good old 2E days) when a paladin's power came not from faith, but from true commitment to the code, and that's why he was not allowed to fail. Probably this is the reason why people are more vigilant of paladins than any other class with a code of conduct.
That said, some of the opinions in this thread clearly show that people don't want divine casters, they want white mages, which I think is ok, but kind of misses the point of playing a divine-related character to me.
If you don't want your powers to be related to some form of behavior, you should be playing classes that are not morally bound in any way, like almost every other class in the game. Not in my game, of course...
Sword of Spirit
Legend
Mike Mearls is soliciting last minute suggestions for optional rules in the DMG via Twitter. Now's your chance to let him know what optional paladin alignment rules you'd like in the book!
What are you saying the player is not entitled to? Are you saying that s/he is not entitled to play the character or class that s/he wants to?
This is confused. If the player is declaring actions, the GM and probably the other players will know. And they can ask the player what his/her conception is of how those actions conform to the requirements of the oath.
I don't understand why a special solution is needed.
When fighter or rogues are played "poorly" (eg poor combat tactics, not thievish enough) it is not the job of the GM to step in and take over. Why are paladins special (and any different from, say, clerics or druids)?
Again, I don't see why a paladin is any different from a cleric or druid. Or, for that matter, any different from a rogue who is a devout worshipper of a god and claims to act in that god's name.
This seems to me to be indicative of the causes of the problems you're experiencing. Why is the GM framing a game in which the only, or best, way for the paladin to get magic arms and armour is by tomb robbery?
The paladins in my game receive their magic arms and armour as blessings from their gods (a bit like Arthur's gift of Excalibur) or by forging them themselves (as Siegfried reforged Notung - though he is perhaps not quite a paladin).
Are you talking about punishing the PC or the player? Points (2) and (3) make it sound like you're talking about punishing the player.
I don't think it's good for the rules to be set up in such a way as to give the GM the job of punishing the player. It's a game, not an institution of moral correction!
If the GM doesn't like how the player is playing his/her PC - be that a paladin, a rogue, a wizard, or whatever - s/he can just talk about it.
In AD&D (Gygax's version) a cleric is as reliant on his/her god as is a paladin. And there are strict rules about clerics having to abide by their alignment or lose their spell abilities (and if they change god more than once, they are instantly killed: DMG p 39).
I think you have misdescribed what people want. You are confusing a "divine caster" who is "morally bound" with the mechanical element "is a character whose aspect to mechanical class features is subject to GM override". The first of these is a story element. The second is a rules/mechanical element. You don't need the second to have the first - and I know this from experience, because I have been GMing RPGs which have one but not the other for around 25 years.
Woosh, that's the sound of a crucial difference flying right over your head.
Let's say, in real life I take a vow as the captain of a ship, to go down with the ship, and I don't. I take the first life raft off and say so long, suckers. That might end up with me facing some kind of legal or personal repercussions after I end up on the shore.
Let's say, as a paladin, I take a vow to my god to defend the kingdom and the king from demons, with my life, but when the time comes, I run away from said demons. In exchange for my vow, I am given powers which ordinary men do not have access to and do not possess.
In this context, since the player is controlling his PC, and choses to make his PC act like a coward and thereby break his Oath, his god should punish him by at the very least, removing his powers and severing all ties to himself. Are you seriously saying that the gods in your worlds can't end a contract which has already been broken? And allow such PCs to continue acting as earthly representatives of their will when they break solemn vows to them, for which they were given tangible rewards and benefits?
You see it as me wanting to punish PCs for playing their characters poorly, I see it as creating a class where it's a pleasure to take on such vows, and I would gladly play my paladin in such a way.
That's not to say that I only want LG paladins because I don't. I want other types, including anti-paladins aka deathknights or blackguards as well as champions of freedom and whatever else people can come up with. But if you're a champion of freedom, and you put someone in chains, yes, same thing, you deserve to lose your god-given powers because in D&D, gods are real and they bestow real powers, and it is beyond absurd to imagine that the gods can't or wouldn't remove those powers.
The fiction is there for a long time, fallen knight, fallen paladin. I'm not even asking for it to be in the Basic Rules, but for people to imply that it shouldn't be in the DMG either, or that there aren't very good reasons why we want it there, is just missing the point entirely.
Lots of people want paladins with alignment restrictions, and see the class as missing its soul without it. But I don't have a twitter account and have no intention of creating one.
If someone else would mention something like "Paladins should have optional rules for atonement / fallen after breaking their Vows", that would be much appreciated. But twitter, no I just can't.
What difference?
Does the "him" in the last sentence refer to the player or the PC?
And, stepping back a bit, what is happening in your game such that the player has (i) built a valiant knight PC, and (ii) is playing that PC as a coward? You might want to take a closer look at that.
In that case, why does the GM need the rules to authorise him/her to take away your PC's mechanical capabilities?
Good, Gygax knew what he was doing. It's absurd for a god to give magic to his followers on a daily basis and not demand they obey his edicts. That goes back in fiction all the way back to the beginning. Since D&D gods actually can and do provide spells like Heal, Regeneration, Resurrection, and Miracles, which are castable and verifiable, I don't see why anyone would doubt their existence in the game world (any reasonable person), given the evidence before their eyes. Since the gods are real and their powers are real and their clerics can ask them questions and get responses back, each and every time (Augury, etc), I don't see how or why a God wouldn't demand every bit as much devotion from his or her priests as from their more martial focused melee champions.
Because without a rule that states a cleric or paladin can get excommunicated, it would be unfair to players to play their characters or even chose to play those classes, if the DM suddenly and for the first time in his world's history, apply a more harsh punishment directly to that player from out of the blue.
It's a contract, nobody is forcing you to play a paladin or a cleric, but if you do, you are supposed to act according to your church or your god's wishes, and if you don't, you could get away with it with respect to his other followers if they are unaware, but with spells like detect thoughts or commune spells, I don't see how. And certainly not hide your ill deeds from your own god, that is just totally absurd. It's not like it's the church that holds the power in D&D, it's the actual god that grants it. If the church isn't following his will, what kind of god is it? What kind of god isn't even aware of what his followers are doing with the miracles he's given them?
It would be beyond irresponsible to not take a direct hand in that. I wouldn't even cast Cure Wounds on allies in my own group who I believe have acted in an evil way, and I'm playing a chaotic good ranger!
Players often say they want to play a holy knight who helps the poor and is brave, but when the time comes, fail to do that and act selfish and cowardly like any knave, thinking only of their own hides while pretending otherwise. That might not result in permanent loss of abilities, but at least temporary ones, given the severity. It might strike people as odd that people would act cowardly if their character sheet says "brave" on it, but this happens all the time. People are not perfect roleplayers, their own attachment to their characters and even their own immersion could make their own real life sense of self-preservation take a higher precedence than some abstract vow, especially if there is no consequence for breaking it. That's the crucial part.
If there were no laws, no prisons, what kind of society would exist? This is getting philosophical, but it's the same point. If there is no penalty for breaking your oath, oaths will be broken like there's no tomorrow, at the most critical time, namely when your character's life is at stake. Would you sacrifice your character to save a random NPC of no consequence? It should depend on the specifics of your oath, your god, and his rules. What you're saying it seems to be, is that rules don't matter, because nobody should break them in the first place.
Rules without consequence aren't worth the paper they're printed on. As as things like idle threats, for example. If you make a threat and don't follow through, then in the future no one will take them seriously.
If there's a class based on Oathtaking, I expect them to be taken seriously. Oaths without consequence of violation are not to be taken seriously. Actually cannot be.
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