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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arial Black" data-source="post: 7490274" data-attributes="member: 6799649">Most players have a story about a DM playing 'gotcha' with a paladin, with fall/fall 'choices' or what-have-you. This is mine:-I'm the only player in a 2e campaign. I'm playing 3 PCs, and the DM is playing 3 DMPCs, because that's what we always did.One of my PCs is a paladin. I'm not one of those guys who plays them lawful/stupid, or tries to get away with as much murderhoboing as I can while claiming innocence; I really play a good guy. In fact, I generally play good guys even if I'm not playing a paladin.So the party is in Sembia. The DM has read the info on this country, and has interpreted that info as this: if the party goes to a restaurant and because we are there some other people dine elsewhere, we get charged for their meals as well as ours. No, it doesn't make sense to me either, but I treat it as just another challenge to negotiate.One morning one of the maids at the inn said something to my paladin about my dwarven friend's lack of manners (the dwarf was one of the DM's DMPCs), and could I do something about it? Sure, says I, I'll have a word.Anyway, before my paladin saw the dwarf, baddies turned up and it all hit the fan. We were running and fighting and running, trying to save the (ungrateful) town. We did. Hooray for us? Not so much, the town charged us for all the damage because obviously the town wouldn't have been attacked if we weren't there!We left town.After a few days in-game (which was a few weeks later in real life at one session per week) my paladin started to lose his powers, one by one. Why? You don't know.It kept happening, and the DM kept refusing to tell me why and all my guesses were wrong.It turned out that I was losing my powers because I had broken my word.What word? What are you talking about?You said you would talk to the dwarf on behalf of the maid, and you never did.I had forgotten all about it. Meaning, as a player I had forgotten, but for me weeks had passed instead of hours between request and my paladin seeing the dwarf (when the fight started and I had more important things to think about). In real life as soon as I saw the dwarf I would've been reminded that I needed to speak with him about the maid, but as a player there is no-one to see, and the thing that's taking my attention is trying to kill me.So I said that surely my character would've remembered! After all, I didn't mention going to the toilet or shaving either but I didn't explode in a hairy mess! We have to assume that the adventure focuses on the exciting bits and lets the mundane bits happen in the background.So, that's how my paladin lost his powers. Because his player has a bad memory.If the DM had said, "this is what happened last week....and you also promised to speak to the dwarf about the maid", I would have done so! And if I knew about it and chose not to speak to the dwarf then, yes, that is not appropriate for a paladin and some form of admonishment (which in 2e could easily mean that his powers stopped working as they should) would be in order. But paladins fall because of bad choices, not bad memory! Even worse, it wasn't the paladin's bad memory, but his player's bad memory. And understandably given the disparity between game time and real time, and actually seeing someone reminds you that you need to talk to them.So I get a knee-jerk reaction whenever paladin powers are taken away. Especially in 5e when that has been deliberately written out of the game! Especially when they are taken away simply because the player wants to multiclass within the rules!</blockquote>

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