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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 6688728" data-attributes="member: 32740">A paladin PC who cannot perform the expected actions of his class without inherently ENDANGERING his class by doing so is in a game setting where the class doesn't belong in the first place, and where it would make little sense for the archetype to have ever arisen to be considered as a character class.Information that I give to players is that Lawful has nothing directly to do with king's decrees, legislation, or criminal codes - the opposite of lawful, after all, is not "lawless" or "criminal" but "chaotic" so the implication is far more general.  It's the belief in and usually the promotion of order and structure to life in general.  Having written law is a common product of that but following laws isn't what makes a PC lawful.  A PC would act that way whether written laws told them they had to or not.  Written laws are intended to guide and elicit desired behavior from NON-lawful people.  At most they merely REMIND lawful people of what they probably already believe (keeping in mind that there's lawful EVIL as well as lawful good so OBVIOUSLY the written law produced by those two polar extremes aren't what's going to guide the actions.of the opposite of the spectrum.You need to keep in mind the purpose of alignment in the first place - to guide players choices of actions for their characters; to produce characters whose actions are GENERALLY reasonable and consistent (if not always nice).  It's NOT to create a functional REAL-WORLD religion or philosophy.  A list of permitted and non-permitted COMMONLY encountered actions during play would be far more effective as alignment definition than 1000 words about the ethical nuances of lying.  Can the PC do this/that?  Yes or no?  Great.  Alignment then did it's job and the game moves on WITHOUT the extended debates about morality and ethics.  Alignment is supposed to ELIMINATE that kind of game disruption and time-wasting, not perpetuate it.  It needs to provide quick answers - even if a real world code of morals and ethics would have a hell of a lot more nuance to be expressed about the subject.  If a player can't look at a description of their characters alignment and have a reasonable idea of what a PC might/might not be allowed to do - AND to have the DM agree with that assessment - then, yeah, it probably needs to be reworked.Can you kill things that are "known" to be evil even if you haven't first forensically PROVED that they're evil?  How can you handle prisoners and untrustworthy opponents who surrender?  Can you torture or PERMIT your allies to do so?  Will you tolerate theft with a lecture or cut off the hand of the offender?  In what circumstances can you lie or withhold details of the truth?  THOSE are the kinds of questions that alignment really needs to be answering for both players and PC's.  Answers that will merely SIMULATE a vastly more detailed and well-considered (but USELESSLY complicated) system of religious beliefs and philosophy.  It doesn't have to all make sense in the real world - it only has to work to guide the actions of PC's during play.</blockquote>

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