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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Giltonio_Santos" data-source="post: 6316186" data-attributes="member: 36874">The problem is, when you have one and don't have the other (and I'm talking about D&D here, I don't care about what a paladin looks like in other games), we get to the disconnect:We have John, the Paladin. If he truthfully lives by his paladin code, his deep connection to his god will reward him with powerful abilities, like the power to detect the presence of demons, cast divine spells and smite his opponents in combat. The problem is: beginning with 4E, if he fails to truthfully live by his paladin code, this won't be a real problem, because he'll be able to detect demons, cast spells and smite opponents just the same. Either his god doesn't care (and in this case we should ask why he was given powers in the first place) or those powers are coming from somewhere else, and this paladin (or cleric, or druid, whatever) is just an arcane caster with a different spell list (which I believe is ok, as I have said earlier, just not that interesting to me).If those powers are truly a gift from the gods, a moment should come where those gods decide to take them away because John is not living up to his responsibilities as someone bound by a sacred oath. In fact, even if we take the approach where it's John's faith, not the gods, that give him power, we'll arrive at that point where someone will ask: "look, if you really believe in the teachings of Torm, why are you acting like a blackguard in the service of Bane?".Obviously, I'm describing what suits my own game better. I've run D&D for the last 20 years in its various incarnations, and only taken away the powers of a PC once (a 2E ranger that was chaotic good in the character sheet and chaotic evil everywhere else), but I believe it's an important tool, one that I'll certainly houserule back into my 5E game, if I need to.</blockquote>

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