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Message: <blockquote data-quote="moritheil" data-source="post: 2463380" data-attributes="member: 30610">How does he or she know that?  How does he or she know that victory is absolutely certain, that the powers will be restored or increased the next day, and that there really is nothing to worry about, without a metagame reassurance by the DM?Paladins are devoted, perhaps even zealotous, but that does not mean they are necessarily without brains or worries.  (If, in your campaign, they are, please skip the rest of this paragraph.)  The DnD multiverse is full of warring deities, just as you said, but all of them have limited powers.  It's pretty hard to be a cleric or paladin of a good deity without acknowledging that.  It's especially hard to be a paladin out in the world - the very existence of evil has to be a continuing reminder that the power of your deity has limits.   (If your deity hates evil so much that he creates an avenging order of holy knights to violently eradicate it, and his power is not limited, don't you think he would have gotten around to scouring the world of evil?)  As such, since your deity has limits, simple logic dictates that there exists the chance for him to be defeated - by trickery, by an alliance of hostile deities, by unknown outside deities that arrive and contest the portfolio, etc.  Even if your deity isn't defeated, can you always believe that his or her power is continually getting stronger?  Don't a lot of battles fought to standstills weaken both contestants?  Isn't that how war works?  Aren't paladins experts in warfare out of necessity?Furthermore, isn't a paladin supposed to be a needed soldier?  Won't they be frustrated at not getting to fight where it really counts?  I mean, if power had to be withdrawn from them in order to fight elsewhere, doesn't that really mean that their role in things is unimportant and that the power was better used elsewhere?  Wouldn't that suck, to devote your entire life to something only to be useless at it when the time came?Mind you, this is a stylistic thing now.  If it works IYC, I'm happy for you.  I personally can't see a truly RPing paladin player NOT freaking out at the sudden loss of her continuing paladin powers without a message from her deity explaining that everything was fine.  (And why would she rate a message?  Is she that special?  Isn't she just one of thousands of paladins?)  But, your world is your world, right?IMC, a paladin's permanent powers are granted permanently, not as a temporary "charge" as spells are. (This is also the case for certain obscure nonpaladin classes such as the savants created by Laduguer, according to the 2ed material, but I digress.)When a paladin falls from grace, those powers are actively revoked - stripped from his being - rather than simply not granted the next day.  This explains why there is no "gap" in coverage for abilities such as Divine Grace or Aura of Courage.  The paladin radiates the aura continuously and forevermore; it is not something that changes with the times.  Falling from grace is the only reason for such things to cease.As such, a paladin losing his or her abilities will immediately fear that he or she has somehow displeased his or her deity.  Obviously, for someone devoted to their deity as a paladin is, this is just about as bad as it gets.That's why I say that it's probably the biggest way to ruin a paladin's day.</blockquote>

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