D&D General Deleted

[Hussar]

Rangers have a historical connotation. The military in the United States and the Texas rangers. It’s also beside my point.

Other than sharing a name, the Texas Rangers have virtually nothing to do with the class. And frankly have very few connotations outside of the US. And very few negative ones as well.

So I’m obviously missing your point then. It is impossible to claim that there is one and only one source of connotation for paladins. There are early DnD images of paladins with literal crosses on their shields! Pretty hard to avoid Cristian Crusade connotations when the pictures used for iconic paladins are literally pictures of Crusaders.

 

[Cadence]

Other than sharing a name, the Texas Rangers have virtually nothing to do with the class.

The classic "Tales of the Texas Rangers" radio show (1950-1952) had lots of tracking!

 

[Vaalingrade]

Other than sharing a name, the Texas Rangers have virtually nothing to do with the class.

The ranger is Frankenstein'd out fo so many disparate parts that don't go together already, why not give them gun, roundhouse kicks and a hard cap of 100 members?

 

[teitan]

Other than sharing a name, the Texas Rangers have virtually nothing to do with the class. And frankly have very few connotations outside of the US. And very few negative ones as well.

So I’m obviously missing your point then. It is impossible to claim that there is one and only one source of connotation for paladins. There are early DnD images of paladins with literal crosses on their shields! Pretty hard to avoid Cristian Crusade connotations when the pictures used for iconic paladins are literally pictures of Crusaders.

Ok Man. You have a nice day. Bye.

 

[Baron Opal II]

"You realize your character is Lawful Good, right?" I asked?
"No way. He's CN! He has to be CN!"
"But, he's never done anything even remotely chaotic and he's always acted good. He's organized and never impetuous. He works very well with others and always has the group's interest at heart. This guy is textbook LG. Maybe NG? He's the opposite of CN though," I replied.
"NO! Absolutely not. This character MUST be CN because I do not ever want you to tell me what my character will do because of his alignment."

I had a similar experience. After that I recontextualized alignment as more cosmic sides or energy sources. A character's alignment, if we even bother with it, says little to nothing about the character's behavior or morals.

In 2024, all spells names that refer to alignment should refer to planes instead.

Protection from Evil or Good renames as Planar Protection.

Interesting idea. I've made it simply protective ward and circle of protection. The point always seemed to be to me a method of gaining some good luck with some side bennies.

But rangers are the aragorn class. Full stop. They don't have any historical connotations.

Paladins most certainly DO.

Actually, I find the Canadian voyageurs to be strongly analogous to the ranger. Was Gary aware of them? Maybe, the Wisconsin area was part of their stomping grounds.

 

[Hussar]

Actually, I find the Canadian voyageurs to be strongly analogous to the ranger. Was Gary aware of them? Maybe, the Wisconsin area was part of their stomping grounds.

I mean, sure, you're going to find analogues if you look. And, that does tend to play into my point about connotation. Rangers connote voyageurs to you. Fine, I can see that. And, since AFAIK, there's no real negative elements there (at least, none that spring to mind, I'm sure there are some, because, well, people suck) there's no problem there.

I would point out though, that the link is more simply thematic - people who live out in the bush dealing with stuff out in the bush are going to share certain concepts - trapping, hunting, traveling, that sort of thing. It's more a case of parallel evolution than any real direct influence.

OTOH, something like this:

or this:

with a honking big cross on his chest is pretty hard to ignore. And it's hardly like this sort of imagery was rare or hard to find. This was pretty common for a long time.

Which does bring up my second point. While the imagery and concepts of the early versions of the paladin, combined with some really... questionable definitions of good and evil in the game, could certainly point to some icky parts of history, the game really has left that long behind. I mean, take the PHB image of a paladin that was quoted in the OP:

I mean, sure, you can kinda, sorta see medieval knight there. But, that's just more that there's only so many ways to draw a person in heavy armor with a sword and a shield. There's zero Christian or any real world iconography there. Sure, there's a holy symbol of Torm on the shield, but, a paladin is a holy knight. That's kinda to be expected. Heraldry on a shield is kinda part of the package. Ludicrous pauldrons aside, this is a pretty decent picture of an armored holy warrior. You really, really have to squint to see any connection between paladin as written and presented in 2014 (or soon 2024) and a crusading Christian knight.

 

[pemerton]

I'm certainly not defending 2e! But it feels like it was a darn sight better than 1e in this regard.

Here we disagree. I think Gygax's PHB and DMG are more coherent than 2nd ed AD&D. As I posted upthread, they identify a contest between law and chaos as to the best means to achieve good. (And as I also noted, good is taken to be something we're already able to identify. Gygax's alignment system assumes this; it doesn't inform us about what good is.)

The paladin in the original PHB is also quite coherent, in my view (pp 22, 24):

Law and good deeds are the meat and drink of paladins. If they ever knowingly perform an act which is chaotic in nature, they must seek a high level (7th or above) cleric of lawful good alignment, confess their sin, and do penance as prescribed by the cleric. If a paladin should ever knowingly and willingly perform on evil act, he or she loses the status of paladinhood immediately and irrevocably All benefits are then lost, and no deed or magic can restore the character to paladinhood; he or she is everafter a fighter. . . .

An immediate tithe (10%) of all income - be it treasure, wages, or whatever - must be given to whatever charitable religious institution (not a clerical player character) of lawful good alignment the paladin selects.

Paladins will have henchmen of lawful good alignment and none other; they will associate only with characters and creatures of good alignment; paladins can join a company of adventurers which contains non-evil neutrals only on a single expedition basis, and only if some end which will further the cause of lawful good is purposed.

If possible, paladins will take service or form an alliance with lawful good characters, whether players or not, who are clerics or fighters (of noble status).​

This paints a fairly clear picture: they are holy knights, who seek out service under righteous nobles and kings. They only associate with others who are trustworthy and aspire to righteousness. And they aspire to perform righteous, valiant deeds.

What is missing is an account of what happens if the paladin performs an evil act knowingly but not willingly (the 2nd ed write-up covers that; in the original AD&D context, I'd probably treat it the same as knowingly performing a chaotic act).

What is an evil act is assumed to be known - sacrificing someone's interest or wellbeing, or trampling on value, in pursuit of one's own selfish end. There is less clarity over what amounts to a chaotic act - favouring one's individualism, over duty and hierarchy, seems a natural enough interpretation.

The two big problems, in my view, endure into later versions of D&D: (i) how does this character fit into the standard tropes of D&D play (eg dungeon delving and looting); (ii) if the GM is expected to judge what counts as chaotic and/or evil, than the player is in effect subject to direction from the GM as to how they should play their PC. I prefer the player to be the judge of these things, in discussion with the GM.

 

[Hussar]

@pemerton - if Paladins and alignment were actually coherent, they would not have been the source of more table drama than any other element in the game. Heck, I'd probably say more drama than all other elements in the game combined.

So, no, I do not believe it was coherent or easily understood. If it was, it wouldn't have caused so many problems and would still be part of the game instead of paladins ejecting virtually every restriction that AD&D placed on them and alignment being relegated to a vestigial tag that most players don't even bother reading and that has virtually zero impact on the game overall.

Certainly far, far less impact than it did in the AD&D days.

 

[pemerton]

To me this feels like doing real world moral philosophy though. This argument goes beyond not being able to imagine evil objects and good objets and seems to extend to not being able to imagine evil gods or good gods. Unless I am misunderstanding the point you are making.

The conceit of a D&D cosmology is that it isn't a subjective moral system. It is a world where morality exists objectively. One doesn't have to subscribe to that worldview to imagine it. I mean we can all imagine the ring of power being an evil object that corrupts people.

I'm pretty sure that a majority of real-world mainstream English-language moral philosophers (the one's you find in philosophy departments) are moral objectivists. This is mostly because defending some sort of subjectivist, relativist or expressivist position requires overcoming some challenging technical objections that come mostly out of philosophy of language.

But these objectivists wouldn't have any easier time making sense of the ring of power being "made of evil" than any one else. The point about being "made of evil" isn't that it requires conceiving of morality as objective: it's that it requires treating a property of desires, actions and consequences - which is probably a type of supervenient property and possibly an abstract one - as if it was a concrete material constituent of an object.

JRRT doesn't generate this problem, because he doesn't posit that the ring is made of evil. It is made of metal. But it has a will, which is the imbued will of its master and creator. And a will is the sort of thing that can be evil, in virtue of the things that it aims at. Stormbringer is similar, as best I understand it.

In D&D, what makes a demon evil is not its material constitution but its will. Whether that will can be changed, say by a profound example of mercy, is a further question.

 

[pemerton]

@pemerton - if Paladins and alignment were actually coherent, they would not have been the source of more table drama than any other element in the game. Heck, I'd probably say more drama than all other elements in the game combined.

So, no, I do not believe it was coherent or easily understood. If it was, it wouldn't have caused so many problems and would still be part of the game instead of paladins ejecting virtually every restriction that AD&D placed on them and alignment being relegated to a vestigial tag that most players don't even bother reading and that has virtually zero impact on the game overall.

Certainly far, far less impact than it did in the AD&D days.

In my view the problem is not the lack of coherence, but my points (i) and (ii). Trying to play a righteous knight errant in a dungeon crawl is absurd, doubly so if - as is the case for most D&D games as best I can tell - the assumed cosmology is nihilistic rather than providential. (I know that most D&D campaigns use gods. So did REH in his Conan stories, at least sometimes. That doesn't stop the cosmology being nihilistic.)

The terrible fit between archetype and default setting and tropes is only reinforced by the GM making unilateral judgements about alignment.

In my experience, across various players, once it is understood that the character is a knight-errant and the setting and tropes make room for that character, and once the GM lets the player take charge of what their vision of righteous knight errantry requires, then it is fine.