Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Primitive Screwhead" data-source="post: 5916868" data-attributes="member: 20805">I don't think that [MENTION=6694221]Haldrik[/MENTION] is recommending mixing opposed ideals into the same bag of tricks. I think the recommendation is to select a few key features that say 'I am Paladin, hear me roar'.. like 'Smite', martial weapons, armor, and limited divine casting. Then have themes, or simply use the domain themes in existance, to flesh out the core ideals. You should be able to see a paladin in play and say 'that is a paladin of Thanos', or 'that is a paladin of Mystra'. This can be done with a core 'this is paladin' set of abilities {class}, and expanding options to layer on top of that. The cool thing is this method would allow for 'follower of Thanos', characters who are not paladins fully, but abide by the dieties precepts in thier own way. I can easily see Mages taking a 'paladin' theme for a god of magic. The other cool thing is that you could tag these themes with the setting they are tied to... and avoid the oddities of having a Paladin of the Mockery {Eberron} wandering around in Dark Sun....Of course, they could also go with 3 variant Paladins, the LG, LN and the LE versions. Three base classes with abilities keyed toward the alignment norms with an example code of conduct. No matter which way they go, I hope they include how to customize a code of conduct and how violations of that code can impact on the character in some way beside 'Poof! you are now a sucky fighter cause you accepted a bribe'[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], a little more on my method.. which is posted in full somewhere in the legacy forums...[sblock] The skills-n-feats idea I stole from Ken Hood. Basically there is an entry level feat 'Disciple of Arms', that granted cross-class access to the 'Devotion' skill. Clerics had a similar class feature that granted class access to this skill. Then there are a number of feats and feat tree's that have prerequisites of levels in Devotion. If you violated your code, you would get a temporary loss of skill which resulted in the inactivation of feats that you no longer met the prerequisite for. Minor breaches lost a point or 2, serious breaches lost 3 or 4, and major breaches could drop you completley to zero points and the loss of all abilities. You would have to quest to regain the lost skill points, or if you walked away from the quest those skill points would permanently dissapear. Changing dieties was simply a matter of proving your worth to the new diety, via a quest, which if very successful brought you over at full strength. If not so successful, you might start with some temporary losses and some more quests to pursue.  Of course failure tended to be a major breach of the code and you would have to start anew with either your previous diety or some other one. Chaotic/Good dieties were more likely to renew a contract with a fallen disciple than lawful/evil ones... but evil dieties love to contract with a fallen disciple of a previously good nature!All in all, it added alot to the game. I just wish I had more time to playtest before 4e came in and my group switched over! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />[/sblock]</blockquote>

Verification