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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 1875922" data-attributes="member: 7240">Certainly, that's a matter of taste when it comes to running a campaign. The degree to which one de-couples a character class from the mythic tradition it is attached to is up to the GM and player. But, for me, character classes tend to be rooted in the mythic or historical traditions that inspired them. Many of the arguments you employ regarding paladins I see employed to justify the monk class outside of East and South Asian cultures. And the rules certainly permit that but when I GM, monks are not acceptable characters. My argument is simply that, based on the best data we have about mythic and historical paladin archetypes, paladins conceiving a bunch of kids does not really fit with the class.Also, I think that you may want to rethink how extended family units work. While it is true that extended family units, be they matrilocal or patrilocal, tend to decentralize responsibility for child-rearing, I think it is a mistake to see these units as equally willing to raise children conceived out of the context of marriage as it is to raise children conceived within that context. Whether you want to look at modern Hindu or medieval Slavic extended family units, neither appears adapted to or approving of (a) a male member of the family wandering around, knocking up women and sending their offspring home to be cared-for or (b) a female family member conceiving a child out of wedlock. Regardless of the resources a culture deploys to raise a child, few if any Eurasian cultures of which there is an historical record approve of children being conceived outside of marraige.Nonetheless, this happens. But my point is not that paladins don't have kids but that when they have kids, it is because something has gone wrong -- they have failed to embody the ideal towards which they strive.Now, if a paladin wants to marry each of the diverse women with whom he conceives a child, one would have to look to polygamous/polygynous traditions for appropriate behaviour. And what I see in the polygamous/polygynous cultures I have studied is that men who have multiple wives take on the role of patriarch of a household. What I am getting at here is that it seems near-universal that when a good man has a large number of children, he becomes the centre of a household, even if he had a crusading past. Thus, my declaration that a paladin who established a household would need to switch classes.</blockquote>

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