Like most good questions, I’d have to say the answer is “it depends”.
First off, is the GM acting unilaterally and arbitrarily, with a “Screw the players – my fun comes from taking their fun away!”, the behaviour pattern you commonly seem to expect of GM’s (but never of players)? In this case, it matters little as I will not likely be playing with such a GM. Alternatively, are we discussing the issues, after which he makes a ruling based on the input of the players, as well as the cosmology of his world? In that case, he is doing the GM’s job – running the game. If this is problematic for my vision of the character, then the GM and I need to discuss this. Perhaps this character is not a good fit for this game. If I want to play a Paladin, and the rest of the players want to play hard-bitten cutthroat mercenaries, maybe I need to get on the bus and shelve the Paladin for a more appropriate game (ie compromise for the good of the game).
Next, we come to the thematics of my own character and how they mesh with the game. Perhaps not everything my character has been taught to believe is correct. Perhaps that is a thematic element to my character – is he really following the principals of Good because he is called, and he truly believes, or is he doing what others have taught him is right, and only now beginning to question those teachings? Is, perhaps, his quest for the rightness and wrongness of those teachings a major thematic element of that character? Perhaps he has been brought up in a strict LG culture, raised to be a Paladin as his father was, and his father before him. And perhaps a major theme is Law vs Chaos – Order vs Freedom -and a large part of this character’s persona and personal story relates to whether he will follow the dictates of his upbringing and family loyalty, or perhaps the dictates of his heart, and come to believe freedom is the greater virtue.
Perhaps a central question is whether he will continue acting in accordance with the dictates of Law to retain his power, prestige and position, or whether he will embrace what he has come to know is truly right, and become a champion of freedom at the cost of that power, prestige and position.
Now, here I’m still back to making some changes to the rules, as I think it would be appropriate for such a character to lose his Paladin abilities and gain other abilities to remain balanced in game. But I don’t think those mechanics need to precisely match his old Paladin abilities. Perhaps he gets to replace his former Paladin levels with a mix of Fighter and Cleric levels. Perhaps his embracing of fundamental Chaos results in the release of a primal rage at the core of his being and his Paladin levels shift to Barbarian levels. But as his personal morality and beliefs drift away from LG, I find it quite appropriate for his LG powers to drift away as well. And a period of transition, where he no longer has his LG themed abilities, but has not yet grown into his new abilities, seems like a reasonable transition.
[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] will likely be entertained by my view, which is basically that this question can’t be answered outside the actual play of the character in the game. It would vary depending on the character, the campaign and the GM. However, I do expect that the GM whose adjudication would be problematic is one whose adjudication of other issues would also be problematic.
It’s unfortunate that we can’t assume treating the GM like a reasonable adult will result in him acting like one, though.
I don’t believe I would. However, the fact that the manner in which he is played lacks has vastly reduced consequences may well rob those actions of some of their relevance and importance. And hey, why shouldn’t the character compromise his beliefs a little, and a little more, as it becomes clear that he can maintain his power, prestige and position even with the compromises. After all, those compromises are clearly OK with the cosmological forces that grant him his powers, so his actions must therefore be acceptable.
I’m confused. It seems like they won the skill challenge, which caused the Soul Abattoir to collapse (a new complication of the now complete skill challenge), not like the loss of the familiar somehow related to successes or failures in the skill challenge. I also think the mantra I have heard on other threads that “success is success, period” is not being honoured if success means the character loses a mechanical resource.
Offer you more power for serving him instead? [Direct the souls to me, and I shall reward you thusly.] Wreak unholy vengeance. [“You betray the Master”, says the Imp, turning the full power of the Eye of Vecna upon you, “so you must be destroyed”] Plenty of “something elses” exist. What is going to happen when you sacrifice the power gained from Vecna in the service of the Raven Queen? She’s been pretty silent in all of this. Perhaps the Imp is destroyed in a gout of Dark Energy as Vecna punishes the invoker for his disloyalty, the Eye is nowhere to be found, but at a later point in the story, a new familiar linked to the Raven Queen, with different powers at a comparably level, is bestowed upon the Invoker for his service to the Raven Queen.
IOW, there are numerous possible outcomes. You seem very defensive that the one you chose was the only reasonable approach which could be taken. I don’t disagree that it was a reasonable choice. I do not, however, agree that it was the only choice, that it was (or that there even is) the definitively best choice. I also believe it is in no way consistent with your stated views that GM judgment of player/character behaviour should not reduce the player’s ability to mechanically impact the fiction.
I believe its relevance stands in the fact that the play is dismissed as a “bad player” with the possible rationale for the action being perceived as perfectly in character (“The child will die anyway, my service to the Greater Good demands this of me; I must pursue the greatest good for the greatest number which, sadly, requires this child’s sacrifice for the Greater Good). I’m not going to reiterate the full scenario I set out – you keep asking everyone else to go back through the thread, so you can feel free to seek it out if you wish to.
The rationale painted is one that a player, or PC, could reasonably come to. It is one that requires a pretty extreme, violent, life-ending act. And it is one where, even if the player and PC think the action was perfectly appropriate under the tenets of his faith, I can see the GM reasonably judging is an evil act, with the mechanical results that entails.
I find it interesting that the responses have all been quite judgmental. No one (besides myself) has made any attempt to suggest there might be a justification for the play in question. So clearly you ARE judging the morality of the character. The only question is how that judgment plays out – is it truly more extreme to rule the Paladin has committed an evil act and loses his powers than to toss the player out on his ear? From the comments, it seems like “I would not game with such a player” is the most common response, especially from the anti-alignment posters.
Does that mean that, at all other levels, the fighter is not a Warrior and the cleric loses the status of Priest?
So can the Paladin of the Raven Queen, should he choose to do so, on the assumption his choice is a reasonable outgrowth of play, choose to align with the forces of the Undead (or of Orcus) for some reason that he considers is appropriate within his service to the Raven Queen and be guaranteed there will be no mechanical consequences to the powers granted him by the Raven Queen? As a simplistic example, if it were the Paladin, or the Fighter/Cleric, redirecting the Soul Energy, and he decided to let it continue to flow to Vecna (perhaps believing that this would reduce the risk to his teammates’ escape, including the Raven Queen’s other servant(s)), would he be exempt from any repercussions on the abilities granted him by the Raven Queen?
You are telling me if you want to play an honourable character, you will do so solely because you want to play an honourable character. Then you are telling me you want mechanics that reward you for playing that honourable character. Why is it desirable that you get a bonus for playing an honourable character but undesirable there should be any penalty for failing to maintain that honour? Why does Honour need to always work to your advantage, and never to your detriment? Why can you not just play that honourable character, with whatever mechanical and fictional positioning benefits or drawbacks that may have at any given point in time, because you wanted to play an honourable character?
So you can decide that Vecna is displeased, but you cannot decide a different deity, or some other cosmological force is displeased. Vecna is a deity which is an NPC, but for some reason the Raven Queen is not, nor are any cosmological forces of Good which exist in earlier editions but, it seems, not in 4e.
And we’re back to the straightjacket. Respect for Life is good. Sometimes, the character compromises Respect for Life (itself not a Good act) for the benefit of other tenets of Good, or perhaps other tenets of Law, or perhaps because he slipped up. The question is not “Did the character maintain the absolute ideals of Good at all times”. No one could. The question is whether the compromises he made are, or are not, acceptable in the eyes of the person or force doing the judging. Did he compromise too much?
Faustian seems a loaded term, as it implies a deal with the Devil rather than a deal with the Angels. Ultimately, the Paladin is very much a character who serves Law and Good, and is rewarded with special abilities for doing so. If he ceases to serve Law and Good, he loses those rewards. If, to you, that is a Faustian Pact, then yes, Paladins are Faustian. To me, the Paladin serves of his own will, not because he wants the powers, but if the Paladin behaves in conformance with the ideals of Law and Good because he wants the powers, not because he believes in the ideals, then he is effectively entering in a Faustian Pact.
Yes, I am saying I find your interpretations inconsistent. I don’t want to hear about the difference in mechanics, that the rules say the familiar can be shut down The rules aren’t the question. They also say the Paladin’s powers, pre-4e, can be taken away.
You have repeatedly stated you consider that a bad rule for your game, because you do not believe the player’s role playing choices should impact their influence over the game fiction. That is where your objection started. Now, it seems the issue is not whether a judgement of whether characters are acting in conformance with their stated allegiances to higher powers (be they Raven Queen, Vecna or Cosmological LG), but the severity of the sanctions which should be imposed.
So we seem no longer to be discussing the philosophy of whether the character’s consistency with their stated allegiances should be judged by the GM - you are clearly judging the invoker’s allegiance to Vecna.
We seem no longer to be discussing whether it is inappropriate to deny the player access to character mechanics, reducing his influence on the fiction, as a consequence of the judgment you reach – you clearly consider it fully appropriate to deny access to a character resource to the invoker.
The issue now seems only to be how severe and long-lasting the loss of mechanical resources arising from judgment of the consistency of play with the stated allegiances should appropriately be. That is a very different question than whether such judgment should be made at all, or whether the result of such judgment should have mechanical consequences.
Here I agree – I have stated repeatedly that the change should result in no more than a temporary reduction of mechanical abilities (like loss of the familiar) and/or a transition of mechanics leaving the character with a more or less similar ability to influence the fiction. But I don’t agree that with your perception that judging consistency with alignment is a clearly different order of judgment set apart from all other judgments.
Not reprinted. And then, I would expect a Paladin of the deity in question would suffer consequences if they choose to act in a manner inconsistent with the tenets of the deity – the “injunctions to their followers”. As an example, a Paladin of
Who decides the punishment for followers of Lolth should be ritual scarring to render them hideous seems to violate the cultivation of beauty, and I therefore question whether he should be perceived as a True Servant of Corellon. All this becomes, or should become, is a focus on different tenets, not a removal of judgment or consequences – in my view. If 4e doesn’t reflect any such consequences…well, I’m not playing 4e anyway, so no impact on me.
I think that’s a preferable approach. But it’s not lost on me that one use of Paladin (Have Gun, Will Travel; the Marvel comics character; the security company) is paid enforcers/mercenaries. Those don’t fit my conception of D&D Paladins either.
