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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 1912144" data-attributes="member: 7240">- PHB 44: "A paladin who ceases to be lawful good, who willfully commits an evil act or who grossly violates the code of conduct loses all paladin spells and abilities."What I see here is that alignment functions more strictly to circumscribes paladin conduct than the code does.Yes. And this becomes problematic when being lawful is defined as:- "honour, trustworthiness, obedience to authority and reliability."So, you are arguing that because a single transgression of alignment is insufficient to change alignment in your model, alignment is not proscriptive. This is simply illogical. Clearly you must believe, according to your own model, that if some threshold in committing lawful acts is passed, a character's alignment becomes lawful. If the character has a class that is contingient on alignment, crossing that threshold affects them. That is proscriptive. I'm sorry. If no number of lawful acts causes the character to cross this threshold and become lawful, you don't have a system at all. As soon as you establish any kind of threshold, alignment will function proscriptively.Right. That's what I mean. The above is a proscriptive statement.It may be a difference but the statement "there cannot be a lawful bard" is still proscriptive. Alignment still functions to prohibit conduct -- and by that, I mean transgressing alignment can causes severe in-game punishment.This is another sign the alignment mechanic is broken. When even its most ardent supporters are unable or unwilling to enforce the letter of the rules because it is too problematic.If alignment is conduct (not ideology, according to you, despite all the indications in the rules directly contradicting this position), what more would need to know? You know what these people's conduct was.Two problems with this statement:1. It is incomplete. My problems with alignment are as follows:(a) the variable contains both conduct and ideology -- when these conflict or are opposites, the value stored in the variable becomes meaningless(b) the way that ideology is described under alignment is self-contradictory. Belief in the rule of law is lawful and belief in individual rights is chaotic. How can you have individual rights without the rule of law?(c) alignment does function proscriptively as you yourself admit (above). Your solution has been to alter the rules for over 50% of classes in order to prevent this being the case.You can say that because you refuse to look at the Thomas Paine argument on the grounds that he is not a D&D character. If all alignment does is measure conduct/choices and does not measure anything that is specific or unique to the D&D world, why can't you entertain discussion about the alignment of real world people?Yes. But if the system requires that in order to achieve a chaotic goal, you must behave in a lawful way, that is an indication the system is broken.That's a sign the variable is broken; because it ceases telling you anything. What this says is: if I have no goals and do not purse any goals, I will end up with the same alignment as someone with chaotic goals who pursues them efficiently. Variables are useful because they are descriptive. What you indicate above is that while alignment can be calculated from actions, it is not reliably descriptive of anything.No. What I am saying is this: if you follow the letter of the rules on combat, combat works. If you follow the letter of the rules on skills, skills work. If you follow the letter of the rules on alignment, things stop working. That's a problem. A good rules mechanic becomes problematic when you don't follow it to the letter; alignment only becomes problematic when you do.Essentially, you are defending the rule on the grounds that it is not supposed to be applied literally. That is not a defense of a rule -- it in fact discredits the rule.</blockquote>

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