Do alignments improve the gaming experience?

[S'mon]

What strikes me is how poorly those words translate to following an unaligned deity.

Behold, to you is given the responsibility to unflinchingly stand before an enemy of indifference's charge, smiting them with your sword while protecting your allies with your sacrifice. Where others waver and wonder, your motivation is pure and simple, and your devotion to the path of unaligned indifference is your strength. Where others scheme and steal, and fight for the values they hold dear you take the high road, refusing to allow the illusions of right or wrong to dissuade you from your obligations to nothing whatsoever.

Take up your indifferent sword and unaligned shield, brave warrior, and charge forward to hallowed glory! . . .

As fervent crusaders in the chosen lack of a cause . . .

Seriously? A fervent crusader for the cause of unalignedness? Nope, not seeing it!

Sounds like you don't understand the Unaligned alignment. Plenty of Unaligned deities have strong causes that are suitable for Paladins. The Raven Queen's war on the undead is a classic
example, others would include Erathis' battle to expand Civilisation, or Kord & Tempus' love of battle itself. To be Unaligned is not to be apathetic or indifferent. Likewise there are Good deities like FR Chauntea who will rarely produce Paladins.

 

[pemerton]

My preference is that a character be honourable because the character is honourable, not because he is bribed to be honourable by having mechanics that result in his best interests being inevitably served by being honourable.

This doesn't make much sense to me - the character doesn't have any mechanics! The character exists in a fiction in which people walk and talk and cast spells like in LotR, not a bizarre d20-verse like OotS!

If you're saying that it's bad design to have a class that gives the player mechanical advantages for playing an honourable character, then why have the paladin class at all? I mean, that's part of what the original class design of the paladin was about - you'll be tougher than a normal fighter, but you have these disadvantages which - under the prevailing play assumptions of the day - will act as a balancing factor. (I even though that you and [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] had argued upthread that allowing the player of a paladin to keep his/her PC abilities while having his/her PC act dishonourably would unbalance the game - which seems to be an argument for bribing players to play honourably!)

But anyway, I don't think it's a bad thing that the design of the paladin class create mechanical incentives for honourable play any more than that the design of the fighter class create mechanical incentives for resolving conflict via violent means, or the design of the MU class create mechanical incentives for overcoming problems by the casting of spells (weren't these things build into the 2nd ed AD&D XP system?).

That's not to say that any system that creates such incentives is desired by me. For instance, I don't want mechanical alignment. But I'm very fond of the way 4e does it.

Much as the loss of a Paladin's abilities outside 4e is inherently capable of occurring based on the rules for that class.

I'm not confused about what the published rules are. I'm saying that I don't like them, and on those occasions when I GM pre-4e D&D (quite rare since the mid-90s) I don't use this particular aspect of them.

it has been stated numerous times upthread that a Paladin's player should not be surprised, but should have ample warning that the actions the character is taking carry the risk of losing Paladin status, so there is no difference here between your adjudication and the adjudication of the Paladin's compliance with his alignment restrictions.

I've already stated, multiple times, what the difference is that matters to me: deciding that Vecna is angry is not an evaluative or expressive judgement; deciding that a player's action declaration is evil is such a judgement; and I don't want to engage in the task of judging my players play in that way as part of refereeing my game.

Upthread, I had this exchange with Imaro:

Alignment mechanics require me to judge whether my player's action declaration for his/her PC was good or evil.

No they require you to determine whether a character's actions are consistent with those a particular deity or cosmological force would deem to be in accordance with their concept of good or evil...

Deciding that Vecna is angered by a decision to thwart him does not require any such judgement.

No but you still determine how this deity feels about a particular action... which is exactly what you are doing with alignment.

These are different things.

How you chose to state them would make them appear to be... but they really aren't that different.

I assume you agree with Imaro - that is, you don't see any meaningful difference between deciding that a god is angry because his desire for power was thwarted, and judging that a player has violated his/her PC's alignment. Perhaps that is because you agree with Imaro that judging alignment violation does not require judging whether a player's declared action is good or evil, but rather requires judging whether a deity or other power would deem it to accord with its concept of good or evil.

I don't have the same conception of alignment as Imaro and (I believe) you. Nowhere in any D&D rulebook that I've read is "good" defined as "What Asmodeus believes to be good" or "What Pelor believes to be good". Nor have I ever seen evil defined in such terms. I have seen it defined as "respect for human (creature) rights", as "just that (ie good)", as "altruism", etc. None of these are words for describing the emotions and preferences of powerful beings. They are words for describing values and valuable things.

Also as I have said upthread, when I play a paladin I don't want to play a Faustian character who has made a pact. I want to play a paladin who is called to honour and to truth. (Not to some flawed or limited being's conception of honour and truth.) And when my players play paladins, I am not playing some NPC entity with whom they have made a pact. I want to see how they, as a fellow human being doing me the great honour of roleplaying with me, play out their conception of honour and truth. I am not going to sit there and judge their judgements as part of my adjudication of the game.

You have consistently opposed removal or reduction of the mechanics which enable the Paladin to impact the fiction, but you are OK with removal or reduction of the mechanics which enable the Invoker to impact the fiction.

Do you also think that I don't use hit points? Or wound penalties/debuffs, when they apply?

We're all adults here, as far as I know, and I assume we're all capable of reading intelligently.

My principle reason for disliking alignment is the one I have just reiterated - it requires making judgements, as part of the refereeing of the game, that I have a strong desire not to make because they significantly impede my enjoyment of the game.

That reason would operate whatever the rulebooks said were the consequences for breaching alignment requirements.

A second reason for disliking alignment is that the actual consequences the rulebooks specify are things like losing XP, losing your class abilities and becoming little better than an NPC-class warrior of equal level (as I read the rules, d10 rather than d8 HD, plus a different but not noticeably better skill list). (You compared these upthread to undead level-draining - that's another mechanic I dislike and believe have never used in more than 30 years of GMing the game. I don't think I've ever come across it as a player either.)

You are now trying to tell me that I am inconsistent because, despite my dislike of these sorts of consequences, I have shut down a player's familiar (a modest game element inherently subject to being shut down under certain conditions as part of its overall balance) and artefact (an overpowered game element inherently subject to being shut down as part of its overall balance), in circumstances in which the player decided that his PC would stick the artefact in the imp rather than himself because he knew implanting it could be bad news! That's like saying I would be inconsistent if I'd had Vecna inflict 6d10 hp of damage on the PC (33 hp being a 25th level-appropriate hit's worth of damage).

I am quite ready to believe that the difference, which is fundamental to me, between deciding that Vecna is angry and deciding that a player has declared an evil action, may be invisible to you and Imaro. It's already obvious to me that you have different aesthetic sensibilities from mine.

But I find it genuinely puzzling that anyone familiar with D&D mechanics would regard shutting down a familiar and an artefact for some (as yet) indeterminate amount of time as on a par with turning a paladin into a fighter (AD&D) or a weapon spec deprived fighter (AD&D 2nd ed) or a warrior with d10 HD (3E).

The 4e PHB pp 89-90 characterises paladins thusly:

Paladins are indomitable warriors who’ve pledged their prowess to something greater than themselves. Paladins smite enemies with divine authority, bolster the courage of nearby companions, and radiate as if a beacon of inextinguishable hope. Paladins are transfigured on the field of battle, exemplars of divine ethos in action.

To you is given the responsibility to unflinchingly stand before an enemy’s charge, smiting them with your sword while protecting your allies with your sacrifice. Where others waver and wonder, your motivation is pure and simple, and your devotion is your strength. Where others scheme and steal, you take the high road, refusing to allow the illusions of temptation to dissuade you from your obligations.

Take up your blessed sword and sanctified shield, brave warrior, and charge forward to hallowed glory! . . .

As fervent crusaders in their chosen cause . . .

What strikes me is how poorly those words translate to following an unaligned deity.

Behold, to you is given the responsibility to unflinchingly stand before an enemy of indifference's charge, smiting them with your sword while protecting your allies with your sacrifice. Where others waver and wonder, your motivation is pure and simple, and your devotion to the path of unaligned indifference is your strength. Where others scheme and steal, and fight for the values they hold dear you take the high road, refusing to allow the illusions of right or wrong to dissuade you from your obligations to nothing whatsoever.

Take up your indifferent sword and unaligned shield, brave warrior, and charge forward to hallowed glory! . . .

As fervent crusaders in the chosen lack of a cause . . .

Seriously? A fervent crusader for the cause of unalignedness?

To me, this suggests that you are not familiar with 4e's actual characterisation of the various unaligned gods, and their injunctions to their followers. Here they are (PHB pp 21-22):

Corellon: Cultivate beauty in all that you do . . . [and t]hwart the followers of Lolth at every opportunity.

Erathis: Defend the light of civilisation against the encroaching darkness. . . Build machines, build cities, build empires.

Ioun: Be watchful at all times for the followers of Vecna, . . . [o]ppose their schemes, unmask their secrets, and blind them with the light of truth and reason.

Kord: Be stong, . . . Be brave and scorn cowardice . . . Prove your might in battle to win glory and renown.

Melora: Protect the wild places of the world from destruction . . . [and h]unt aberrant monsters and other abominations of nature.

The Raven Queen: Bring down the proud who try to cast off the chains of fate . . . [and w]atch for the cults of Orcus and stamp them out whenever they arise.​

The only unaligned god for whom I find it at all hard to imagine a paladin based on their injunctions to worshippers is this one:

Sehanine: Follow your goals and seek your own destiny . . . avoiding the blazing light of zealous good and the utter darkness of evil. . . [L]et nothing tie you down.​

But pp 22, 62 and 90 of the PHB also identify Sehanine as the god of love, and I can easily imagine a paladin dedicated to love.

None of these gods is a paragon of indifference. They all stand for values of some sort or another: beauty, civilisation, truth, prowess, nature, fate and love. Within the context of a fantasy adventure game, it makes sense to me that any of these might be worth fighting for.

if the players are role playing their professed alignments, mechanical alignment simply fades into the background, to be applied only where there is a problem that, really, should not exist. Now, that may well mean it does not add to play where all around the table are skilled role players, but all players are not equal in that skill, and even the best of us can certainly have our off days.

This is a pretty good characterisation of why I don't like mechanical alignment. It doesn't matter except when it is called upon to supplant the GM's judgement for the player's. (On the assumption that the "application" to those who "are not equal in that skill" comes from the GM.)

I notice though that you are still using DM judgement in deciding whether someone is playing their character well enough that they be allowed to remain at the table with you and your group

I noticed this when I was checking some posts upthread.

Deciding that I want to roleplay with someone is in much the same general category of decision-making as deciding whether I want to go to dinner with them, or accept their party invitation, or go to a movie with them. I will bring to bear all relevant considerations about the desirability of their company. This sort of judgement has - as far as I can see - no bearing on or relation to the judgements that are involved in adjudicating mechanical alignment.

In deciding whether or not to go to a gallery with someone I might take into account his/her taste in art. (Eg I would be hesitant to go to MoMA with someone who professes to hate all 20th century art.) Once we're there, though, I am not going to oblige him/her to filter all his/her comments on the works we're looking at through my own preferences before deeming those comments acceptable or not.

 

[Hussar]

I have a buddy who plays in a regular game where the DM has let a non-mechanical alignment system be used. Care to guess how the Paladin the party acts? He lies, cheats, and steals more than the Rogue in party does and the Rogue is a catburglar. Why you might be asking? Because he won't be punished for acting out of alignment as the non-mechanical alignment system dictates he can't.
There are asshats out there who will take advantage of every situation a DM allows them and without an alignment system (even a relatively fast and loose one), they'll play a Paladin who does bad things, a Druid who burns down forests, or a Barbarian who won't cross the street unless there is a clearly defined crosswalk.
Alignments work and are necessary to a point. Don't for a second believe otherwise.

I'd lik to thank you for showing exactly what I've been saying. Alignment is the tool for enforcing player behaviour.

 

[pemerton]

Apparently a lot of you people don't play with "Smite" or even "Outsiders" because, beside alignments being a guiding force on what a character will or will not do, Smite Evil does additional damage against "Evil" aligned entities. Also, if the Paladin (who we all know very well is LAWFUL GOOD) does anything that isn't true and just, he loses his powers. Alignment usage in D&D is important for hundreds of reasons, not just so the DM can say, "A Neutral Good Fighter would never steal candy from a baby."

Why am I even posting this? Obviously these words will fall on the deaf ears of people who never even bothered to read the "Alignment Rules".

The "alignment rules" you describe are primarily an artefact of 3E. The fact that it is a bit of a headache to strip mechanical alignment out of 3E is one of the (less important) reasons why I don't really play it.

But pointing out that, per the rulebooks from Gygax through 3E, paladins must be LG, isn't going to persuade me to enjoy or use alignment. I've read that part of the rules. I just don't care for it.

I have a buddy who plays in a regular game where the DM has let a non-mechanical alignment system be used. Care to guess how the Paladin the party acts? He lies, cheats, and steals more than the Rogue in party does and the Rogue is a catburglar. Why you might be asking? Because he won't be punished for acting out of alignment as the non-mechanical alignment system dictates he can't.
There are asshats out there who will take advantage of every situation a DM allows them and without an alignment system (even a relatively fast and loose one), they'll play a Paladin who does bad thing

Upthread [MENTION=22574]The Human Target[/MENTION] asks "Why does it matter if a Paladin lies?"

When I read that post I took the question as rhetorical. But now that I'm reflecting I think it might be genuine. Why does it matter to the game if the paladin lies, cheats and steals?

Presumably it doesn't unbalance the game; no matter how much a paladin lies, cheats and steals I doubt s/he can have as big an impact on the gameworld as a magic-user, even an honest one.

So I assume the objection is aesthetic: the GM and the other players don't like the tone of a game in which the "paladin" is a crook.

In my experience, the easiest way to fix the tone of this sort of game is (i) don't play with asshats, and (ii) as a GM, don't adjudicate your game in such a way that the player of the paladin is better off playing a crook than an honourable warrior. If, after implementing (ii), you still need the threat of alignment violations, then see (i). [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] just upthread points out a major way in which 4e implements (ii), namely via its treasure rules. But there are lots of other little changes here and there also, and system-neutral GMing techniques that can be used too.

Of course, for some games - like Gygaxian dungeon crawling - then implementing (ii) is impractical. At that point you probably do need the threat of alignment violations. But now that's not necessary for preserving tone, it's part of the balance of paladins. A weird thing about 3E, in my view, is that it keeps a mechanic which was invented as a balancing mechanic but strips out the reason for needing that balance. (2nd ed has this feature too, but perhaps to a somewhat lesser extent.)

 

[pemerton]

In post 752 I reiterated two reasons why mechanical alignment is an impediment to my enjoyment of the game, and hence why I don't use it.

This thread is a third, although this particular reason - and all the related things, like whether a LG succubus can still damage angels or can speak a Holy Word without targeting herself - is basically confined to 3E.

 

[pemerton]

Descriptive Alignment: law-neutral-chaos and good-neutral-evil serve as short hand descriptors <insert ways there used that way from previous editions for creatures, characters, and societies>. A given player may find another short descriptor more useful in summarizing their characters moral/ethical tendencies and views for themselves, GM, and fellow players. This aspect of alignment has no direct mechanical implications and should be kept updated to match the characters persona.

This strikes me as completely innocuous. I would expect that, in practice, it is more useful for GM shorthand than for players, and many player wouldn't bother to update.

Cosmological Alignment: Law, Good, Chaos, and Evil are also names that describe the collective commonality of several groups of gods, outsiders, and divine concepts - other names in some campaigns might be Lords of Order, Lords of Light, Lords of Entropy, and Lords of Darkness. The deities and outsiders with these descriptors typically have views in rough correspondence with the descriptive version of alignment above - but just because two deities share the same cosmological alignment does not mean they will necessarily usually agree on what is an appropriate except in the most blatantly obvious of situations.

This strikes me as a pretty harmless default cosmology. It has good fit both with D&D tradition and the broader fantasy canon, I think. I see 4e as being like this, and classic L-N-C alignment as easy to play in this style (and I think plenty did, back in the day).

Spells such as Detect Evil, Circle Against Good, etc... are based on cosmological alignment and affect only beings that have that cosmological alignment and not simply creatures with descriptive alignments. Beings with cosmological alignment include outsiders of the Good, Lawful, Chaotic, or Evil types; Undead(?); and beings granted divine powers by deities or concepts strongly associated with cosmological alignments (typically those using aligned outsiders as servants or those granting the alignment domains) or collections of like-aligned deities. These include many clerics and all paladins.

Whether a character maintains their cosmological alignment is judged by their individual deity (or associated group of deities in the case of a concept) and how well they serve that particular purpose - not on how they necessarily fit the descriptive alignment stereotypes.

This is no good for me - of the three reasons I've stated in the above few posts, it hits the 3rd (having to juggle interactions between alignment and mechanics) plus the 1st, or some version thereof - either judging a cleric or paladin's deviation is expressing evaluative judgement, or else "good" and "evil" have been redefined so that (from my perspective) all clerics and paladins are really warlocks who have made pacts with other-worldly beings.

That's not a reason not to go this way with a PF revision, of course. I'm not really the target market for PF anyway, and if I were it would be no harder for me to disregard this 3rd component of your alignment mechanics than it would be for me to ignore it if I were playing 3E/PF at the moment.

 

[Abraxas]

That's been my experience with 4e Paladins, yes - the players have always chosen to play LG Paladins, and they have played them very well, with no GM intervention or oversight needed. They resemble literary paladins more closely than the paladins I've seen in other editions.

One factor might be that loot is less important in 4e, especially when using Inherent bonuses. But I do see mercenary, loot-oriented PCs and players, eg the Slayer PC in my
group. They just don't play Paladins.

Is it the same people playing Paladins in each edition?

edit: IOW, treat people as adults and they'll behave as adults.

This I agree with - it's also why alignment isn't a "straight jacket" to playing a character.

I also like it that a 4e player can play a lying cheating scumbag Paladin if they want, and the GM is ok with such characters in the game. They could be a Paladin of Cyric in FR, say, or maybe one of the Evil gods in core 4e (Bane, Vecna, Asmodeus are all possibilities). It wouldn't do any violence to the setting.

I wouldn't classify them as being a Paladin tho. They may be a divine champion, but I prefer my Paladins to only be the LG type. I would have much preferred 4e simply had a class called Divine Champion and you could build the LG Paladin from the options presented.

Of course I also wouldn't want to DM for, or game with, a player who wants to run a lying, cheating, scumbag character no matter what class.

 

[Imaro]

So, in other words Imaro, one of the purposes of mechanical alignment is to enforce player behaviour. Is that a reasonable reading of your response?

No it's not. It can be one of the uses of mechanical alignment... however if one is gaming with adults who are honestly playing to the thematic archetype of a paladin (you know all the things we assume about paladins in 4e bu not in other editions for some reason), that usage of mechanical alignment may rarely or never come about.

 

[Bedrockgames]

But how is stripping class benefits a game world consequence? Kicked out of his church? Fair enough. Deemed a criminal? Cool. Can't detect evil anymore? Huh?

Taking powers from a thief doesn't make much sense to me, but a paladin or cleric no longer in good standing with their deity, that makes sense. It is like the scene in constantine when gabriel tries to smite but God no longer has his back. The setting isn't just the physical land the characters inhabit, it is also the the gods and other cosmic forces. If you are running ravenloft for example, setting consequences frequently involve the Dark powers. The GM is essentially playing the dark powers as a major npc.

 

[Imaro]

They won the skill challenge.

To win a skill challenge requires making skill checks.

Making skill checks requires locating the PC within the fictional position - the situation - framed by the GM.

In this particular case, I stated that - the last bit of machinery having been destroyed - the Soul Abattoir started to collapse. One of the players - of the paladin, I think, who had (as a Questing Knight) just completed his quest of the last 10 or so levels - said "Cool!" The players as a group started to consider how they might escape etc. I asked whether they were running, whether anyone was trying to hold back the flow of soul energy, etc. The player of the invoker decided that his PC would make a Religion check to try and do this; the player of the fighter decided to have his PC stay back and try and shield him. The others ran/flew out.

I then invited the player of the invoker to make an Insight check. He succeeded. He therefore noticed that Vecna, acting through the invoker's imp and its/Vecna's Eye, was diverting the soul energy away from the Raven Queen. I asked him whether, with his Religion success, he wanted to let Vecna have the soul energy or send it to the Raven Queen. He chose the Raven Queen. The consequence was that Vecna punished him as best he could, by shutting down his imp.

I did not explicitly state the stakes in advance of the player making his choice - we don't always play so formally, when the stakes are fairly obvious as in this case. But the player was not at all surprised that Vecna should strike down the traitor imp. What else is going to happen when Vecna is using your imp as a vector for his power, and you thwart him?

So you took away character build resources through DM fiat... Because you judged that the actions of the player where not in accordance with what this deity expected of him and thus you stripped him of (some of) his power... got it. What if the player felt like Vecna should have enticed him with more power as opposed to punishing him so that he would turn more towards his service, you know carrot insteasd of stick?? Or since you tend towards an improvisational type game perhaps (seeing how Vecna is the god of secrets) the player did exactly what Vecna wanted for some esoteric reason and Vecna rewards him for it and he doesn't know exactly why... in other words if you're not down for making evaluative judgements... why or how do you justify evaluating his behavior for good or bad as Vecna in this instance?

I have used those words - especially "judge" and "judgement". I haven't talked much about punishment. The only reason I hypothesised that @N'raac used alignment mechanics to deal with baby-throat-tearing paladins was he kept brining up the example, so I assumed it must have some relevance to his play experience. (It has no relevance to mine. If it has no relevance to his either, then why keep brining it up?)

I was addressing [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s continuous use of the word "punish"... I'm not sure why you are bringing your actions into this, since it wasn't a reply to anything you said.

Well, one of the level titles for fighters in both Moldvay Basic and AD&D is "warrior". And one of those for cleric is "priest". Maybe those words were being used in some non-standard fashion?

Anyway, I have posted numerous times that the classic D&D cleric and the AD&D paladin are basically the same archetype - a heavily armoured holy warrior called to the divine. And in 4e both the STR cleric (and the Essentials WIS cleric) and the paladin are this same archetype. All are modelled after mediaeval warrior-saints like the crusading orders, Arthur, Lancelot, Aragorn etc. Taken at that level of generality, there is nothing to choose between them. But in that case there is no more need to place an alignment restriction on the paladin than on the cleric.

Again "need" isn't what's being discussed here, preference is... so I'm not sure why you are couching the discussions in terms of "need".

But to the extent that the archetypes have different mechanical instantiations, the paladin has always been more of a warrior: better THACO (prior to 4e, at least), better hp, fewer miracles per day. So once you factor in the mechanical details, then I prefer to play a paladin. Over time, the cleric has also accreted a degree of priestliness - even AD&D clerics gain followers as if they were preachers leading a congregation - that has little appeal to me personally. Again, this is a reason for me to favour the paladin.

In other word - taken at the level of archetype, the (trad/STR) cleric and paladin are the same, and there is no greater need for one than the other to have special alignment rules. And taken at the level of mechanical implementation, the paladin is more warrior-ish than the cleric, and less of a miracle worker, which is what I prefer. And I am not interested in playing a cleric rather than a paladin - and so moving my emphasis slightly from warrior to miracle worker - just to avoid irritating alignment rules. If the cleric version of the archetype can work without alignment - which it can - then so can the paladin version.

Wait, how does the cleric work without alignment rules in any edition except 4e?? Also again in 3e there were alternate paladin classes which meet all your criteria for wanting a paladin and even had abilities custom designed around the alternate alignment/codes they followed.

Other than a whole suite of powers, none. It is part of the fiction. Hence part of the paladin's fictional positioning. In some games that matters; perhaps in others it doesn't. I don't have advice for the latter; I play a version of the former, and I haven't found the absence of mechanical alignment makes it hard for the players of the paladins in my game (one literally a paladin, the other a fighter/cleric) to play their PCs as pledged to higher powers.

Aren't these powers, for the vast majority of paladins, the exact same regardless of who or what you are pledged to? If so how do they represent any particular pledge?

I think Hussar is probably talking about the people he actually plays with. I know that I am.

Well, unlike you, Hussar doesn't state that... he tends to make wide sweeping generalizations.

I agree with Hussar, to the extent that I don't see how the mechanics can reinforce the fiction of being beholden unless the player is subject to the possibility of the GM judging an action declared for his/her PC to be evil, and inflicting punishment as a consequence.

For some people that is the point, that the deity/force/etc. they have faith in is not infallible (as even cosmic forces can have an agenda and prejudices just look to the eternal champion books by Moorcock for examples), is not necessarily comprehensible and is outside of themselves. I'm not being "punished"if this is the type of play I am looking for... I am being judged by the force that bestowed my powers upon me because that is the type of experience I want from the game.

Who's game do you think this describes? Mine? Hussar's? I have expressly denied that this describes my game. I think Hussar has at least by implication made the same denial.

There's some weird assumption here, that unless the players are told what they may or may not do by the GM, they will be incapable of exercising any discipline or self-control, and will just play their PCs like some wild id.

No this is how you are interpreting what we are saying... At the end of the day your players (including paladins) are doing what they want not what a higher being or cosmological force wants them to do. You've said as much so I'm not sure why this causes contention?

So is part of the reason that you like alignment because it stops players from doing this?

I've stated (numerous times now) why I enjoy mechanical alignment... but I also recognize it can serve a variety of purposes for different player and DM's (as opposed to thinking people only play like me and thus the game should be designed specifically for my playstyle)...

Here's a novel idea... how about you accept that I like the paladin with mechanical alignment because of the reasons I gave earlier instead of trying to push/cajole/trick/whatever me into saying I like alignment to punish people... seriously I've given you the benefit of stating that I accept your reason(s) for not liking mechanical alignment (though I may not agree with them)... how about instead of trying to put words in my mouth you and [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] accept what I'm saying??