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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6078371" data-attributes="member: 42582">It's the cavalier and paladin in Unearthed Arcana.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.")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!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 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.Never was a truer post made on ENworld!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?</blockquote>

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