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Holding non-Paladins to their class vows
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7822235" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>In my most recent campaign, which at this point has spanned like a decade, it is not the 'Paladin' that has had a hard time keeping up with their oaths and maintaining their moral purity. The class that has most often found itself in need to atone for failings is the Shaman, a class based off of the Green Ronin Shaman from their 'Shaman's Handbook'. This is because the Shaman's oath is based more on a letter of the law agreement not to violate specific taboos, and accidental violation of those taboos is reasonably common, leading to regular needs to apologize to the spirits and atone.</p><p></p><p>In general, I can't recall ever having a Paladin willfully violate an oath in any game I ran or was a player in, nor can I recall a cleric willfully violating the tenants of their deity. Fundamentally, it's not a problem I suspect if the following are true:</p><p></p><p>a) The player is sincerely committed to playing out the strictures of his chosen character, and doesn't in fact view those strictures as some sort of disadvantage on the class to avoid and metagame his way around. If the player sees the RP requirements of the class as some sort of disadvantage, then I'd strongly discourage the player from playing the class.</p><p>b) The DM is not actively trying to put the paladin in no win, gotcha situations. It's quite possible that a Paladin could find himself in a situation where the only way he could keep the code is death, but if you aren't actually trying to contrive that situation IME it would rarely come up and the sort of player that can play the class well would probably see it as a "good death". However, I have heard of GMs that so dislike the very notion of Paladins, that they play with a sort of "The GM is Satan" stance, where they endeavor to prove that good is stupid, evil is smart, that life is pain, that the only hope is to be ruthless, and that it's perfectly realistic for anyone trying to be good to be just smashed by the reality of the impossibility of good. I know that these GMs are out there because I occasionally get players that are refugees from those tables, who expect me to essentially be a jerk and metagame against them at every opportunity, and the only way to be successful while playing D&D is to be a ruthless bastard that the DM can't get any sort of edge on. </p><p></p><p>But if the DM is not trying to prove anything, and the player is sincerely trying to live up to the code and do the right thing, I think table issues around loss of paladin status will be vanishingly rare.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7822235, member: 4937"] In my most recent campaign, which at this point has spanned like a decade, it is not the 'Paladin' that has had a hard time keeping up with their oaths and maintaining their moral purity. The class that has most often found itself in need to atone for failings is the Shaman, a class based off of the Green Ronin Shaman from their 'Shaman's Handbook'. This is because the Shaman's oath is based more on a letter of the law agreement not to violate specific taboos, and accidental violation of those taboos is reasonably common, leading to regular needs to apologize to the spirits and atone. In general, I can't recall ever having a Paladin willfully violate an oath in any game I ran or was a player in, nor can I recall a cleric willfully violating the tenants of their deity. Fundamentally, it's not a problem I suspect if the following are true: a) The player is sincerely committed to playing out the strictures of his chosen character, and doesn't in fact view those strictures as some sort of disadvantage on the class to avoid and metagame his way around. If the player sees the RP requirements of the class as some sort of disadvantage, then I'd strongly discourage the player from playing the class. b) The DM is not actively trying to put the paladin in no win, gotcha situations. It's quite possible that a Paladin could find himself in a situation where the only way he could keep the code is death, but if you aren't actually trying to contrive that situation IME it would rarely come up and the sort of player that can play the class well would probably see it as a "good death". However, I have heard of GMs that so dislike the very notion of Paladins, that they play with a sort of "The GM is Satan" stance, where they endeavor to prove that good is stupid, evil is smart, that life is pain, that the only hope is to be ruthless, and that it's perfectly realistic for anyone trying to be good to be just smashed by the reality of the impossibility of good. I know that these GMs are out there because I occasionally get players that are refugees from those tables, who expect me to essentially be a jerk and metagame against them at every opportunity, and the only way to be successful while playing D&D is to be a ruthless bastard that the DM can't get any sort of edge on. But if the DM is not trying to prove anything, and the player is sincerely trying to live up to the code and do the right thing, I think table issues around loss of paladin status will be vanishingly rare. [/QUOTE]
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