D&D General Holding non-Paladins to their class vows

[LordEntrails]

Well, the poll says otherwise for now

Yea, but the poll is poorly worded if that is the conclusion you want to draw from it.

 

[Salthorae]

Yea, but the poll is poorly worded if that is the conclusion you want to draw from it.

Well, I didn't make the poll, but how is it worded poorly? The question is: Do you discipline/take powers for not following devotions/oaths/whatever. Then there is a list of options for classes that have powers taken from them by people who have responded to the poll.

The only thing I could see is an "I don't take them from anyone" option, but that is up to Blue if he wants to get that kind of response on his poll or not.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Why Paladins are so code bound and not clerics always seemed dodgy to me.

 

[Celebrim]

@Celebrim , thanks for the information about the Shaman and their taboos. As 3rd party I didn't have a poll option for it, but it's interesting to see where it does come into play. One of the points I brought up in the the paladin discussison was about how having defined Oaths vs. vague fluff descriptions was part of what made the paladin more "open" to violations. Your example with the shaman's taboos is a great example of that.

Yeah, it's always harder to follow a code precisely than vague guidelines, simply because it's easier to see when you're off the path. When you have vague guidelines and axioms to follow, it's by design open to some interpretation and not as open (or open at all) to external review. Basically, only the character can know when they've broken their own internal code in some places and betrayed themselves, and there are few exceptions to that - all of which are pretty easy to keep for a player whose primary motivation is advancing their character.

But when you are sworn to something external that can judge you, it gets a lot harder because everyone can see when you failed as a mostly objective fact.

I don't actually have 'Paladins' any more in my game, though you'd be welcome to play one that is more or less exactly that. I have a homebrew class called 'Champion' which works for any alignment or any combination of beliefs, which in the class are called 'portfolios'. The current Champion in my group is the Champion of a deity called Aravar, whose is the god of travelers and in particular in his role of guardian of travelers is the god charged with protecting souls of the dead on their journey to their afterlife. So when the player created the character, we worked out like 5 things that Aravar would absolutely require of his mortal representative, which are things like - "Always provide protection to travelers.", "Never refuse hospitality to a traveler.", "Always see that the dead are respected and properly interned.", etc., along with a general prescription that alignment could not stray from Aravar's alignment of LG. No doing any thing that is obviously chaotic evil in result or motive. And so yeah, every time they kill someone, he's got to stop afterward and do his RIP thing, and provide for a proper burial. The thing is, it's not really a burden for this player, because honestly he is Lawful Good. He's more or less incapable of playing a character that isn't putting the considerations of others before himself, striving to establish justice in the world, taking on other peoples burdens as his own, and protecting the innocent.

 

[Celebrim]

Why Paladins are so code bound and not clerics always seemed dodgy to me.

It's because clerics are so diverse but originally Paladins were all the same. Any cleric oath right from the start would have been a negotiated thing between the player and the DM. So mechanically that's always been treated at least officially as just, "have to maintain your alignment strictly".

In practice, over the years, there has been a lot of attempt to make religion more interesting, some of which are well conceived and some of which aren't.

The cleric in my campaign currently is a cleric of Showna the goddess of the Sun, and so aside from needing to stay mostly Neutral Good, the cleric generally is expected to advance Showna's interests and be a "light" in the world. Right when we put the campaign on hold, things were reaching a point where the cleric and paladin and the shaman were about to come to difficulties with each other - both because I'm currently tracking the Shaman's alignment as CE and the Shaman has just entered into a bargain with a decidedly unclean spirit (ironically, to save the life of the Champion). So I'll be curious to see how all parties react to this when we get back to the game, as we're going to I suspect get into a situation where something will have to give.

If it does, I'll probably resort to fiat to give options to keep the game going.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

I am a strong believer in anything the PC's can do that can cause celestials, fiends, elementals, fey, or aberrations to have a beef with the party. So go ahead, devotion paladin, burn down that orphanage, and the druid can clear cut a forest for a textile mill (because the PC was a dwarf and "the nature of dwarves is to love gold", so anything that got the dwarf gold was "revering nature").

Don't be too shocked when something comes along and is mad at you. I figure you can get xp and gold from an angry angel the same as anything else.

 

[Celebrim]

Don't be too shocked when something comes along and is mad at you. I figure you can get xp and gold from an angry angel the same as anything else.

Sure, but does this angry angel keep having to deliver your spells to you every day?

 

[Blue]

The only thing I could see is an "I don't take them from anyone" option, but that is up to Blue if he wants to get that kind of response on his poll or not.

Well, I don't think that the poll is worded poorly, but in fairness, there should be an option for "No" or "I don't take them from anyone" to give you a baseline to compare the affirmative answers to.

It's not that the poll is worded poorly, it's that it's hard to understand the results without an extra response category.

I see what you are saying and agree. I was thinking that since it's multichoice that people just don't click - but there's no record of that. I've added it now, but there are probably people who have read the poll, clicked nothing and won't be back. It looks like 9 people responding so far, so it's still pretty early.

 

[Blue]

I see the lowest example is currently Monks. Anyone want to share an actual play issue where they had to discipline a monk for not following their vows or devotion?