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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Morrow" data-source="post: 2218066" data-attributes="member: 27012">Which I addressed earlier.  So what are they doing while these Good Outerplanar beings are trying to destroy the Prime Material Plane?I didn't say it had to be, but I think it's a common and reasonable assuption.  After all, they cast "divine" spells and "divine", according to Merriam-Webster anyway, means "of, relating to, or proceeding directly from God or a god".  But even if the power doesn't come from a deity, it must come from some source that has the ability to know when a Paladin has been naughty and should be shut down, which suggests that at the very least, the universe has a sense of alignment, Good, and Evil and that implies some ability to know and reason.  Even such a pantheist setting would have reason to shut down the power of the Paladin or the Celestials.That's fine, and I'm a monotheist, but neither of those real-world perspectives is the default assumption of D&D.  Otherwise, they'd have something like a Humanism and Ur-Priests hardcover instead of books like Gods of Faerun and Deities and Demigods.  And things like the Outer Planes and Outerplanar creatures wouldn't be such an integral part of the setting.  They emulate a source mythology that is not humanist and not Judeo-Christian.Ur-Priests are considered an special case by the RAW and don't appear in the three core books.  Sure, it's possible to include such things.  Is that the sort of cosmology that is being suggested here?  That's not what I'm seeing.  It sounds very much like every powerful being in the Outer Planes is on a single page -- Destroy the Prime Material Plane. Paladins must be Lawful Good.  And whatever powers a Paladin must have some sense of when a Paladin violates their code or shifts alignment and whether they have atoned.  That generally implies something intelligent is calling the shots, even if the Paladin doesn't refer to it by name.  And even if you dismiss the problem with Paladins, the Cleric class does mention a deity and KM also asked about Good Clerics.It's certainly possible for a GM to create a humanist D&D setting where the Paladin keeps or loses his or her powers based on their own sense of their Paladinhood and Goodness.  And if KM wants to run a game of Ur-Priests and similar humanist characters against crazed Outerplanar deities out to destroy the Prime Material Plane, that could certainly be interesting.  But that's a bit removed from the standard D&D cosmology and alignment system, in my opinion, and not what KM seemed to be asking about.Which is why I think KM needs to answer some more questions about that cosmology.</blockquote>

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