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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6320428" data-attributes="member: 42582">My comment was probably a bit negative, and your reply is very civil! So I thought I'd say a bit more (hopefully not more negativity).I get the sense, from reading others' posts and from back when I used to play in wider circles than I do now, plus even earlier accounts from Dragon and White Dwarf, that various players have quite varying conceptions of paladins and (trad, armour-and-mace) clerics.I think you're right that for some they are primarily healers (perhaps secondary undead slayers) - so their role in the game is basically defined by function, and if someone else can perform that function then clerics et al aren't needed any more.I think some see clerics and paladins as almost contracted servants and agents of deities, who set adherence to codes and alignments as part of the contractual terms. The player's job, assuming s/he wants to keep his/her PC in its current form, is to stick to the contract. The GM's role is to play the "boss" who gets to decide whether or not the PC has adhered to the contract, and hence whether or not the PC keeps the job. This is, for me, probably the least appealing way of approaching these sorts of characters (whether as player or GM).In my case, and several of my players, I see the cleric or paladin as an exemplar, who adheres to the code/alignment not out of duty, but out of deep conviction that it is right and proper (there is nothing analogous to a contractual or promissory obligation operating on otherwise morally optional subject-matter). The relationship to the deity, therefore, is more like one of being called. Because it is the player who is choosing to play this PC, and to determine this PC's conception of what it means to honour these convictions and this calling, it has to be primarily the player who takes responsibility for expressing that during play. The GM has a role, of course, in applying pressure or asking questions, but that is no different from the GM's role in applying pressure to a player who wants to play a brave fighter or a scholarly wizard or a sharp rogue. It's about testing the player's depth of commitment to the issues the player has brought into the game via his/her PC (especially where there are conflicts). But unless the player him-/herself wants to make loyalty to the gods one of those issues, I don't see any reason to put that particular issue under pressure.So, for instance, if a player's PC is (ostensibly) devoted to both honour and justice, I'm happy to frame situations that force hard choices between the two. (<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?312367-Actual-play-another-combat-free-session-with-intra-party-dyanmics" target="_blank">Here's an example</a> from my 4e game.) But if the player reaches a conclusion as to how to resolve the situation (in my example, the player sacrificed justice to the demands of honour), I am not then going to second-guess that decision by suddenly asking the question "But does your god agree with you?" That would be nothing but a pointless distraction from the roleplaying that just took place at the table, and which (at least for my group) was relatively intense by our (modest) standards.Anyway, that is (what I hope is) a less curt way of trying to explain my views about the nerfhammer, and how it relates to my way of approaching the play of these sorts of PCs.</blockquote>

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