4th edition, The fantastic game that everyone hated.

[pemerton]

the only paladin who isn't expected to run up and get beat on to protect everyone else is the Blackguard (striker)... so while my paladin might be unaligned, selfish or even evil... he still seems to enjoy taking the beatdown and protecting others no matter what his personality and ethos are...

I've somewhat lost track of what your beef is with 4e.

Upthread a number of posters, including me, suggested that the 4e PC build rules tend to produce PCs whose mechanical capabilities express their thematic/story orientation. The paladin's Valiant Strike power was mentioned as a particuarly clear example of this: +1 to hit per adjacent enemy, which thereby incentivises the player of the paladin to play his/her PC as valiant.

I thought you were disagreeing with this claim about 4e - but in the post I've quoted, you seem to be complaining that 4e's mechanical PC builds incentivise and establish theme/story in just the way that I and others said they do! (As @Talifer has posted, if you don't want to play a knightly defender, why are you building a palain?)

As to the paladin "enjoying taking the beatdown" - if you're playing a fantasy RPG, and you build a PC whose salient class features include heavy armour and shields, melee weapons, and bucketloads of resilience, why would you object to your PC frequently being in the centre of melee? If you didn't want to play a melee fighting PC, why build a knight? (Of course there are answers to that question, but most of them make more sense in a game like Burning Wheel than D&D, which has never had a particularly ironic streak.)

As for damage levels, the paladin in my game is actually the third-most damaging of 5 PCs - not as much as the sorcerer or archer-ranger, but more than the fighter or wizard. Enfeebling strike plus Winter domain plus frost cheese plus a lot of effecs that make him better against bloodied foes take him to low striker level damage. Which seems to fit a grim devotee of the Raven Queen.

Why would it need to be paladin-specific? Can't fighters or rangers have a valor-dependent fighting style? I think that has been a significant objection to the class power structure in 4e. Why should access to different fighting styles be so walled off?

This seems to be another post that accepts the characterisation of 4e being advanced by me and others, but objects to it.

The answer to the question "why" is because you want a game that generates, more-or-less effortlessly, PCs with a strong thematic and story focus. I think 4e achieves this. That's one reason why I like it.

the barbarian-paladin debate is moot if the fluff is mutable.

Multiple posters upthread have pointed out that this is not true. The barbarian and paladin have different mechanics which mean that you can't just reflavour one as the other (eg barbarians wear light armour, paladin's heavy armour - and that's one of the most minor of their differences).

 

[pemerton]

I don't have my books with me and maybe I'm misremembering. It might have been the original Cavalier, and not the Paladin.

It's the cavalier and paladin in Unearthed Arcana.

just because the "rules" don't have any consequences it doesn't mean that the DM and player can't work together on those areas which become questionable - according to the "Ethos".

Just because the game doesn't spell everything out doesn't mean that a DM, and player can't come up with interesting things in their game. The best part about this is that the "ethos" acknowledgement is being made by the best people to do so; the players at a particular table.

I agree with this. It also means that the "ethos" issues can be dealt with in a variety of ways, reflecting the mecanical and stroy preferences of those at the table. (In my case, for instance, I prefer to bring this sort of stuff into the framing of scenes and the adjudication of action resolution, rather than just telling the player "Here's what your god has done to you as punishment.")

All those issues are AWESOME fodder for a roleplaying game. But the mechanic of "figure out these thorny moral issues, because if you don't, you lose your cool powers" seems to be directly inferior to a narrative game where raising those complications actually gives you mechanical feedback and rewards.

In my experience they're also inferior to an intermediate approach which is mechanically vanilla but uses those things to support scene framing and action adjudication by the GM (which is how I have generally approached it). I find that, even if there are no mechanical incentives, once you make it clear to the players that tackiling these sorts of issues in game won't hose their PCs, but rather will drive the game in potentially interesting directions, they will take them up simply because they want to have a fun and interesting time playing!

I think players who kill orc babies and DMs who deliberately put them in lose-lose scenarios so they'll fall are douchebags, so that's a non-issue for me.

<snip>

It's best left to the DM's discretion, perhaps with a few examples and guidelines thrown in.

Whereas my very strong preference is for it to be played out in the game, inthe sort of way TwoSix has described, so then it becomes not a GM matter but a table matter (in something like the way D'Karr has described).

I think you are really over thinking it if this sort of thing leads to problems in a game of D&D. I minored in philosophy at college, so I am pretty versed in the philosophical issues around the notion of evil and what it means. But I can take that hat off at a game table and be on the same page as everyone else when it comes to what good and bad people do in the context of a D&D setting. I think if you can't do that, it is usually because you are being deliberately difficult or contrarian (or just deliberately obtuse).

I think you might be projecting your own preferences here.

I am an academic who teaches and researches in philosophy and law. Questions of personal and political morality tend to be pretty central to the fantasy RPG games I run. In my last Rolemaster campaign, for instance, the players ended up allying with a dead god and an exiled god against the rest of the heavens, in order to prevent the souls of many innocent people being destroyed despite their being an ancient pact between the heavens and the lords of karma preventing such interference.

One of the PCs was a paladin - a Buddhist warrior monk - who, in the course of play, took the view that the emperor of heaven and the lrds of karma were morally misguided, and that true compassion required him to turn against their dictates.

Another PC was a fox spirit, exiled from heaven and progressing from fox to human form contrary to the terms of his banishment - when the constables of heaven came to capture and punish him, the PCs defended their friend and fought the constables, the first of their steps on an indendent path contrary to the dictates of karma.

Other PCs were samurai, in various complicated relationships to one another, their families, the daimyo to whom their families owed fealty, etc. One of these spent most of the campaign courting a celestial dragon who was caught between the politic conflicts of her parents, one a sea lord and the other a storm lord, as well as the complexities of romancing a mortal when your loyaties are to the heavens.

This game was driven by questions of loyalty, duty, authority, legitimacy, freedom and justice. The application of pre-4e paladin code mechanics, or AD&D Oriental Adventures honour mechanics, would have killed it stone dead for no benefit at all.

QFT.

Yet another reason to dump alignments.

Never was a truer post made on ENworld!

So I am more effective if I play to the valiant archetype, just like if I play to the LG archetype, correct? Also if I choose to use archery as a valiant paladin... don't I loose the ability to use my melee based powers when I am attacking? Now granted one is player controlled and one is DM controlled.. but you are punished and loosing out on something in your character class either way.

<snip>

Point 2- happens in previous editions and 4e if you play against archetype... your main distinction seems to be DM decides in previous editions and player decides in 4e

I'm not really sure that you have captured the essence of [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION]'s point - but even if you had, do you really think the difference between GM authority and player authority is a meaningless one in RPG design and play?

 

[pemerton]

Indeed (although I might say "notable" rather than "noticeable", its not like there's a chance you'd miss it).

Which is both strength and weakness, depending on your desires and need for those "certain things" and that level of detail. For me, the overhead is a little much (so was 3e's), but not so much that I find it terribly odious.

Thanks for the notable reply!

And yes, the "certain things" and the mechanical detail and heaviness that yields them are clearly just a matter of taste. My group comes out of classic D&D play and then Rolemaster, so has certain preferences (or even just default assumptions about what RPGing involves) that 4e satisfies. It's only natural that others would like different things.

One of the things I find strange about the "D&D" hacks for MHRP is that, if you didn't know the D&D fluff for the various races&classes etc., you couldn't really run the character. Even the Marvel datafiles include verbose character bios, to help players who might not be as familiar with the character (or the version of the character for that "Event".) At the table, when running similar games, this isn't a concern, because the player/group are defining their terms as they are created.

I'm guessing that a number-one table issue in MHRP play is going to be canon-fidelity in PC portrayal! ( That's just a guess based on no evidence but my own familiarity with RPGers and canon-fanatics.)

One aspect of Cortex + that seems to be often overlooked in people's blog hacks is the scene structures. Leverage has a special type of "flashback" scene that mimics the way the show can retconn things as a reveal to the audience, and no special scenes for a fight. Marvel only makes a distinction between Action and not-Action. I figure a dungeon-crawling game would need Fight, Exploration/Dungeoneering, and some kind of Recuperation non-adventurous scene. If you wanted a less dungeon-crawley version, you might get away with Combat and Non-combat.

Interesting observations and suggestions.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I always said I'd play an Essentials-based 4e game. I generally like the direction Essentials took 4e, both in tone (embracing some of the old names like Thief and Mage) and rules. I just don't know any 4e players in my area.

I like Essentials in a lot of ways, but I'm not sure it really fundamentally addressed the issues I saw in the way that I wanted it addressed. For one thing it killed the player's choices away from the table. Its great that a Slayer only has to choose a stance and if he'll use his power boost or not, but gosh can't he have a choice of boosts or stances or something? I mean you get a couple choices, but choice in build time isn't the problem, so why did they take that away?

I'd rather see a design where you have fewer and more straightforward choices during combat and more interesting choices and more flexibility outside combat to pick which options you will have available. AEDU was GOOD for that. I think it failed in a few ways, but I'm not convinced Essentials breaking from it was the best answer (though they were constrained by existing design). Maybe ultimately it was all they could do within the limits of 4e compatibility, but I'd SURE like to see another cut at it.

 

[Hussar]

If it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for you. And if you can't see the payoff, then you it is probably not your style. For me this approach is far more rewarding than the 4E approach. It is not a matter of good approach versus not good approach. They are just different approaches for different taste. For what it is worth, paladins never really became a matter of high philosophical debate at our table. We never really had mamy problems deciding what would be okay and not okay for the paladin to do.

However, we're not really talking about my or your table though BRG. Is there a more problematic class in D&D than a paladin? Has any class caused anywhere near as much drama at tables? About the only thing I can think comes close is the party stealing thief. And even that's usually not as big of an issue. Maybe a Kender thief might come close to causing as much table drama.

But a paladin? Good grief, I would think that the paladin should be the poster child for how NOT to design classes in a class based game. Anything that causes that many problems at a table should not be part of the game.

 

[JamesonCourage]

I've somewhat lost track of what your beef is with 4e.

Well, there's a couple extra conversations going on at once, in regards to paladins. The one I'm most interested in is the whole "4e doesn't punish you, it encourages you" thing. I think it's valid in one sense, in that there is a certain "carrot and the stick" thing going on, here. On the other hand, both the 3e and the 4e have mechanics that encourage you to act certain ways. In 4e, you have Valiant Strike, etc., and in 3e, you have the code, the aura (stay close to allies), turn undead (fight undead), and smite evil (fight against evil). There's definitely a theme in 3e, but I'm not sure it's "theme" in the sense that you use the word on these boards.

But, to be fair, I don't think most posters using "theme" are using the word the same way you may be, even if they're "agreeing" with you, so I think that just jumbles up this conversation even more.

Upthread a number of posters, including me, suggested that the 4e PC build rules tend to produce PCs whose mechanical capabilities express their thematic/story orientation. The paladin's Valiant Strike power was mentioned as a particuarly clear example of this: +1 to hit per adjacent enemy, which thereby incentivises the player of the paladin to play his/her PC as valiant.

Well, again, not necessarily. It could be overconfident or arrogant (running into enemies you think you can handle). Or survivalist (I can fight harder when I'm surrounded, even if I don't run into it). Or guard-like (let myself get surrounded to keep things off other people). If it was "+1 to hit per adjacent enemy, but only if you charge" or something, I could see "valiant" or "arrogant" more strongly emphasized.

These might all seem "brave" in a sense, but, the thing is, while the power is encouraging you to take a particular action, it's not commenting on the motivation for that action. For example, take a Paladin with Valiant Strike, who is surrounded by 4 enemies that can move slightly faster than he can. He can move away (provoking attacks), and they can move after him. This might repeat over and over, and is a losing proposition for him. So, fight is smarter than flight, right now. He attacks with Valiant Strike, but it's not because he wants to stay; he simply attacks because running is suicide.

While Valiant Strike can definitely be used to show a form of bravery, I don't think the mechanic encourages anything more than a particular action -fighting multiple enemies. The motivations for engaging in that action are yet to be decided, and thus divorced from an inherent "theme". At least, that's how I see it.

I thought you were disagreeing with this claim about 4e - but in the post I've quoted, you seem to be complaining that 4e's mechanical PC builds incentivise and establish theme/story in just the way that I and others said they do! (As @Talifer has posted, if you don't want to play a knightly defender, why are you building a palain?)

I think he was saying that 3e and 4e were the same in this respect -they both encourage particular actions, giving you mechanical incentives to act in a particular way in-game when playing that class. 4e and Valiant Strike, 3e and fight evil, etc. As always, play what you like

 

[billd91]

NOW, in 1e the situation is CLEARLY different. A 1e paladin IS being rewarded simply for being a paladin. The character is superior in EVERY SINGLE RESPECT to a fighter. HOWEVER the paladin is also punished for violating his alignment in a way that is FAR more severe than for any other character.

He also has limits on the magic items he can keep, he has to tithe, and he has a noticeably slower XP advancement table, on top of some other behavioral requirements. So it's not like he's really better in every single respect to a fighter. He's better in some ways but pays for it in others. It's not appropriate to try to say, from a game theoretic perspective, that the paladin dominates the fighter in every way because there are ways in which the fighter's lot is better than the paladin's.

 

[Hussar]

Well, again, not necessarily. It could be overconfident or arrogant (running into enemies you think you can handle). Or survivalist (I can fight harder when I'm surrounded, even if I don't run into it). Or guard-like (let myself get surrounded to keep things off other people). If it was "+1 to hit per adjacent enemy, but only if you charge" or something, I could see "valiant" or "arrogant" more strongly emphasized.

But, let's not forget, you're talking about one power out of the dozen or more that this character is going to have. Let's not get too focused on one thing. Most of the powers a paladin can choose to take follow along this theme that he should be "brave" ((or perhaps arrogant)) but, you are right, the powers in and of themselves do not tie themselves to a very specific notion to the exclusion of anything else.

So, yes, your paladin could be any of the above you listed. The player would decide that, rather than having a code handed down to him on high. But, once he makes that determination, the powers he chooses should likely follow from that decision.

In earlier editions, the player got very few choices. All paladins were pretty much mechanically the same. Granted feats were where the class was customized in 3e, but, apart from that, one paladin was going to look very much the same as another.

I mean, just in the PHB, there are two very distinctly different playing paladins, one melee and one ranged. That, right off the bat, is one more paladin than ever existed in the game previously.

 

[Manbearcat]

I don't think you need "douchebag" players or DMs to see a way in which "act honorably" or "respect legitimate authority" could be interpreted in multiple ways.

Is a government which allows behavior that the paladin finds abhorrent a "legitimate authority"?

Is doing something underhanded to save the life of another an honorable or dishonorable act? Is fulfilling your honor to the point where an innocent is killed due to your inaction evil?

Are there creatures that are inherently wicked? Even if they are currently not an active threat to others? Like, say, orc babies?

How much is the paladin obligated to do to help the needy? His magic sword could fetch enough gold to feed a starving village, is he obligated to give it up, despite now being weaker against further dangers?

Here's the thing. All those issues are AWESOME fodder for a roleplaying game. But the mechanic of "figure out these thorny moral issues, because if you don't, you lose your cool powers" seems to be directly inferior to a narrative game where raising those complications actually gives you mechanical feedback and rewards.

Working my way back up from where I left off. There have been so many absolutely excellent posts in the intervening period that its hard to get through it and I only have so much xp to go around it seems. I just wanted to reiterate this post here because the moment TwoSix layed his hands on his keyboard it was probably clear to him that the last paragraph was divinely inspired. You mark the internet until the end of your next turn.

 

[Hussar]

A thought on the paladin. Here's a question:

If a paladin detects evil on a human subject, and that subject is evil, is the paladin obligated to either kill or take that target into custody? Or can he ignore that target, knowing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the target is, indeed, evil?​

Now, prove it using only the PHB.