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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 2691110" data-attributes="member: 3146">I disagree. For a number of classes, dependency on role-playing is essential to their design. The paladin, cleric, monk, wizard, and druid are all examples of this. Among non-core classes, the archivist is another example of it. Whatever else a paladin may be, she is a champion of law and good and a smiter of evil through the power of righteousness. The paladin is not a smiter of evil through the her personal skill, discipline, and prowess. It is the paladin's holiness that makes her effective and her devotion that makes her deadly. If you remove the role-playing dependency of the paladin's powers, she is no longer a paladin. Now, her holiness and devotion have no relationship to her effectiveness. Similarly, a cleric is a mortal who serves as a conduit for his god's power. He may be the high priest of a wicked religion or a humble servant of a good god, but either way, the power is his deity's and not his own. If the power were not dependent upon role-played piety--if the cleric had no interaction with his god, then the class would not model what it is designed to model. Since it's gods that seem to be at the root of the objection in a lot of cases, let's take another look at the wizard class. What if you wanted to play a wizard who wasn't into "book lernin'" and hated every moment he spent seeking knowledge with his head buried in a dusty tome? That wouldn't match the powers of a wizard very well, would it? In fact, you might say that a wizard's power depends upon a role-played affinity for books and learning. (Certainly, a wizard who role-plays an aversion to either thing is not going to be a very good one).The point of so called role playing hinderances is not that they balance a character's mechanical power. The point of role-playing hinderances is that they define a character class and give them a role to play.</blockquote>

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