D&D 5E Is Anyone Unhappy About Non-LG Paladins?

[pemerton]

In 4e this never arises when I play a paladin, so for me a character who is struggling with the tenets of paladinhood in 4e... has no reason, IMO, not to take a ride on the dark side when necessary or convenient since there are no consequences.

<snip>

In other words it depends on the personality of the character.

If it depends on the personality of the character, what role is the mechanical threat playing?

In the real world some people make hard choices without the sort of immediate threat hanging over them that you are advocating for the paladin. They do it because they are committed. That commitment provides a reason.

A paladin is committed to honour, virtue etc. Those things are valuable in and of themselves, they are not simply means to power. Because they are valuable in and of themselves, the paladin sticks to them even when it is hard to do so. (And for the player, of course, it isn't hard because all the player is doing is choosing between two action declarations, either of which is a permissible move in the game.)

 

[Imaro]

My response to this is similar to @Hussar's - ie one of surprise and a degree of puzzlement.

It's a game. Whatever action declaration you make for your PC (at least within very broad limits), you get to keep playing the game. So why declare actions for your PC that break the oath? What's the rationale?

I'm having a fairly hard time envisaging the games that you and @DDNFan seem to have in mind. You seem to think it's fun to play a paladin, but also think that you won't actually play a paladin unless the GM is threatening to take away your gamepiece if you don't stick to the oath. I'm not going to say that that is contradictory, but it's not very clear to me what the game looks like that would make sense of this motivational structure.

What I find interesting is that you and [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] have this concept of a paladin (chivalrous, honorable, etc.)... but without alignment restrictions and/or a code... your concept doesn't necessarily apply. A paladin (PHB 1) in 4e is is a Defender who is a divinely inspired/powered warrior... If I am a paladin of a chaotic or evil god, why would I be chivalrous, keep my word or anything else? Or are you saying that paladins, no matter what the ethos is they follow, are always honorable, always chivalrous? In fact, as far as I can remember, nothing in the 4e books even hint that a good paladin has to be honorable all the time or always keep his word or has any type of code outside his gods tenets... so where are you and [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] getting this concept and why should it apply to my paladin?

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

I started this thread to see whether, as I suspected, there are still D&D gamers who associate the paladin with a very narrow archetype. My curiosity is satiated, but now the thread is turning into that unique kind of ENworld back-and-forth, so I'm just going to leave this here:

Why Flexibility Advocates Like the Flexible Paladin

Read my ramble if you like, and take it for what you will.

 

[Imaro]

If it depends on the personality of the character, what role is the mechanical threat playing?

In the real world some people make hard choices without the sort of immediate threat hanging over them that you are advocating for the paladin. They do it because they are committed. That commitment provides a reason.

A paladin is committed to honour, virtue etc. Those things are valuable in and of themselves, they are not simply means to power. Because they are valuable in and of themselves, the paladin sticks to them even when it is hard to do so. (And for the player, of course, it isn't hard because all the player is doing is choosing between two action declarations, either of which is a permissible move in the game.)

The personality of the character may, or may not, consider the consequences worth it depending on the action... and numerous people in the real world make these types of choices... they know the punishment, know they will be caught and still make the choice...

Emphasis mine, where are you getting this concept from? And why do you get to define what a paladin is?

As for it being hard, I've seen players flip out, cry, get mad, etc. when their character is killed so no... I don't believe every action declaration is equal and thus the choices are all equal. that action declaration can matter very much at times.

 

[Ichneumon]

For me, paladin oaths fit into the same category as warlock pacts, cleric ordinations and any other deal a PC might make during their adventuring career. Grist for the DM's mill, to help determine how the world responds to PC actions.

I'm not interested in policing what PCs do so I can catch them acting contrary to their vows. So break an oath in my game, and you might get away with it. But if I notice, the future game content will take it into account. NPC reactions that add flavour and spur the game in interesting new directions are, to me, far preferable than just wielding the old "DM beatstick" & inflicting mechanical penalties in a heavy-handed attempt to make the PC "behave properly".

 

[DDNFan]

As for it being hard, I've seen players flip out, cry, get mad, etc. when their character is killed so no... I don't believe every action declaration is equal and thus the choices are all equal. that action declaration can matter very much at times.

This is exactly why I think there should be all kinds of paladins with different alignments, but with each committed to their own code, fully and without reservation, and expected to live by it or suffer consequences beyond RP ones which, to the types of players who pick the paladin class not to roleplay one, but to "fair weather" roleplay one, and benefit from all the goodies but without any of the painful sacrifice.

Immature players should just be told not to play such a paladin, or the DM can keep the game on easy mode, which the current Basic D&D is, where there are no sticks, only carrots for RP purposes. They even removed detect alignment spells. At least protection from evil is still there. Although they'll probably put "evil" in quotes because it doesn't do what it says it does.

 

[Elf Witch]

It sounds like there are some people saying "Paladins need special rules to cover their allegiance to their god/faith/order." Do these people feel the same way about Clerics? I'd be interested to know why or why not.

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?



.

I most certainly hold clerics to the same standards as paladins I use the Kingdoms of Kalamar rule that clerics have to be the same alignment as their deity. And clerics can lose powers or worse have their powers supplied by an evil deity this putting the taint of evil on them.

A player should certainly be allowed to play his character anyway he wants to. And as DM I can play how the NPCs react to that character in the way I think makes sense.

I don't need a hard fast rule to give consequences to players. I am very creative at coming up with both good and bad consequences.

I have had the displeasure of playing with players who want all the goodies of a cleric of paladin and then act totally immoral and my experience is that with those type of players you can't reign them in they will throw the biggest tantrum if you try. My solution is to simply not play with them because I am not interested in playing a role playing light style of DnD.

How I handle a player who imo as DM is coming close to facing some kind of consequence is to talk to them out of game about it. If they are willing to continue on the path of falling then they know there will be some kind of role playing consequence.

I rarely have issues with the actual player playing paladins the issues come from other players who feel it is acceptable to tell a paladin how to play. One of my hard fast rules to prevent this is that no one is allowed to question how another player is playing their character at the table. They are to come to me about it privately. Now that does not mean that they can't role play their PCs having an issue with another PC about that PCs actions.

I also never talk about an issue with it in front of everyone that leads to arguments and often makes the player in question fell ganged up on.

And lastly I am the DM I have the final say if you don't like my decision then you are free to leave the game or as my roommate told a player who was arguing with her about the cleric actions being evil " I am playing Herineous in this campaign I don't have a problem with my follower actions when you DM feel free to play Herineous anyway you want".

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

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.

The problem is, when you have one and don't have the other (and I'm talking about D&D here, I don't care about what a paladin looks like in other games), we get to the disconnect:

We have John, the Paladin. If he truthfully lives by his paladin code, his deep connection to his god will reward him with powerful abilities, like the power to detect the presence of demons, cast divine spells and smite his opponents in combat. The problem is: beginning with 4E, if he fails to truthfully live by his paladin code, this won't be a real problem, because he'll be able to detect demons, cast spells and smite opponents just the same. Either his god doesn't care (and in this case we should ask why he was given powers in the first place) or those powers are coming from somewhere else, and this paladin (or cleric, or druid, whatever) is just an arcane caster with a different spell list (which I believe is ok, as I have said earlier, just not that interesting to me).

If those powers are truly a gift from the gods, a moment should come where those gods decide to take them away because John is not living up to his responsibilities as someone bound by a sacred oath. In fact, even if we take the approach where it's John's faith, not the gods, that give him power, we'll arrive at that point where someone will ask: "look, if you really believe in the teachings of Torm, why are you acting like a blackguard in the service of Bane?".

Obviously, I'm describing what suits my own game better. I've run D&D for the last 20 years in its various incarnations, and only taken away the powers of a PC once (a 2E ranger that was chaotic good in the character sheet and chaotic evil everywhere else), but I believe it's an important tool, one that I'll certainly houserule back into my 5E game, if I need to.

 

[Hussar]

If playing a Paladin, ordinarily I would not break my oath. But if circumstances were such that my character had a chrisis of faith, it might be interesting to play that out, however I would like to know what might be the consequences of such an action. I would not want to immediately put the rest of the party in jeopardy by losing all healing abilities right when they are counting on it. But if we are not in a critical situation, the loss of that healing, while it will matter, would not endanger the other characters right away. Then it becomes another challenge to overcome.

If DMing, it is easier on my players if they have it spelled out ahead of time what can happen to oathbreakers. It would be very unfair if the consequences came out of nowhere.

Fair enough. And no one is saying there should be no consequences to oath breaking. That's never been true in any edition of D&D. The issue I have is with the idea that the only reason people would play within the bounds of the character they chose is if the game hangs this big axe over their head to drop if they step out of line.

What's wrong with in-game consequences for in-game actions? If your paladin breaks his oath, surely he would have something of a crisis of faith. So, that becomes the focus of play. And, there are also the issues of consequences for other NPC's as well should the fact that the character broke faith come to light.

 

[Hussar]

What I find interesting is that you and [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] have this concept of a paladin (chivalrous, honorable, etc.)... but without alignment restrictions and/or a code... your concept doesn't necessarily apply. A paladin (PHB 1) in 4e is is a Defender who is a divinely inspired/powered warrior... If I am a paladin of a chaotic or evil god, why would I be chivalrous, keep my word or anything else? Or are you saying that paladins, no matter what the ethos is they follow, are always honorable, always chivalrous? In fact, as far as I can remember, nothing in the 4e books even hint that a good paladin has to be honorable all the time or always keep his word or has any type of code outside his gods tenets... so where are you and [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] getting this concept and why should it apply to my paladin?

You are the only one bringing 4e into this mix, so, I don't know what you're talking about.

The rest of us are talking about the standard LG paladin, and why you don't need "fall" mechanics in order to force people to play that character. Obviously a paladin devoted to different oaths will play differently. That's a good thing. But the basic concept remains the same - if the only reason your paladin (of whatever stripe) follows the strictures of the class is because of the Damocles sword over your head, I'm thinking that's a pretty weak bit of role play.

Like Elf Witch above, I'd much rather play with players who play their characters according to concept and have the maturity to accept the consequences of that play rather than play with players who need to be beaten into shape in order to play a character that I think is good enough.