Actually, no my point us not yours. Alignment has never been straightjacket. They were from day one established as reactive to sctions, choices and changeable.
Rules about what one class can do and another cant are, if you will, straight jackets. There is no rule that says a nature cleric can suddenly decide to cast bard spells - they have to do that by some other means. They cannot just decide all their cleric spells now cast spontaneously instead of requiring morning prayers or preparation.
Paladin path rents express what they try to do but the paladin class **rules** make it clear they can fail at these. They can not get there. They can make wrong choices, other choices.
It's not just that it establishes punishments, it establishes that paladins can go against these oath tenets.
There is no such rule for druids in the RAW for their armor proficiencies. Its has neither the "reactive" definition of alignment or the clear notations that they can choose to not do that.
Obviously a GM can choose to add that, by ruling or case by case or whatever and frankly I wholly endorse that just as much as i support exotic medium armors to open options even more.
But it's well past my time to stop feeding the troll socks.
As Max and I have both stated many times, you're still comparing a hard mechanic that a character cannot control to something a character could literally choose to do at any point in time during gameplay. On that note, it's important to remind you that we agree that the rules about what one class can and can't do are indeed straight-jackets (if you don't have multi-attack then you can't attack more than once per attack action). This is why it's important to note that the Druid class says
will not, not
cannot, and the clarification on Druids in the Sage Advice practically states that not removing their ability to was intentional. If they wanted to remove their ability to, it would have taken them seconds to add that to the errata instead of clarifying the contrary in Sage Advice, and the fact that they addressed it in Sage Advice is enough to know they had been made aware of the issue and could have opted to errata it, but chose not to change it.
Not sure how many ways this needs to be explained, but I'll try again anyway. A player cannot randomly choose spells for their character that fall outside of their class, and a character cannot attack twice in one attack action without multi-attack, because their character lacks the ability to do so. However, a character can choose in the middle of the game as to whether or not they want to put on something they've found. It's literally in their hands, and there's nothing in the game system that stops them from making a choice with it. If someone hands a Druid metal armor, the Druid could put it on at any point in time, unless something is literally restraining them or otherwise making it impossible to do so. To further exemplify how possible this is, even if they were dead set on maintaining their taboo, someone could pin them down and put the armor on them, a suggestion spell could force them to put it on, or a good deception could convince the Druid it's not metal. Unlike preparing spells of a different class, there's no mechanical barrier preventing them from donning the armor except their choice, and players always have full control over their character's choices.
Also, the rules never actually gives the Paladin permission to break their oaths. It merely states in a side box that they're fallible, which should already be known to everyone by default, and then adds three sample situations that may cause the Paladin to break their oath (I've added sample situations above that may cause the Druid to break their taboo, even if they don't want to). Providing samples of situations that may cause an oath to be broken, and granting explicit permission to break an oath, are two very different things. It's merely assumed they're allowed to break their oath, because regardless of the class's tenets, the player is allowed to control the character's actions in any way they wish.
It's effectively worded as "Paladins must follow these tenets, but if they don't, this is a potential penalty." It's practically the same way it's worded in 3E. Paladins in that edition must not only be lawful good, but it also states all Paladins "
swear to follow a code of conduct that is in line with lawfulness and goodness." They then explain the Code of Conduct, but never once does it say they're allowed to break this code of conduct, or that it's optional to follow. Later it proceeds to list the punishment for a Paladin that grossly violates the code of conduct anyway, but a lack of punishment for violation would not inherently make the code any more binding, but rather it would weaken how necessary it is to follow.
Side note, if someone wants to argue Druids are not fallible because they don't have a box stating they are, then I refuse to accept that a Druid could ever fail a check that it could possibly succeed on, because it doesn't make mistakes (that means especially no natural 1s), and I expect it to always know the right answers because it's never erroneous. If I'm ruled not fallible, then I demand the benefits of my infallibility.
