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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6268306" data-attributes="member: 4937">Which I why I think that from a level of artful game mastery, the real rule here is that you should never be playing 'Gotcha!' with the PCs.  Whatever you rule, the PC needs to be expecting you to rule that way.If the player wants to be the Champion of The Red God, Blind Izenzan the Merciless, God of Slaughter, He of the Many Limbs you need to fully specify to the PC what standards Izenzan expects him to uphold and whether that literally includes, "No retreat.  No mercy.  No failure.  Come back with your shield and the head of your enemy or not at all.", so that he must atone every time he loses a battle - including having fled involuntarily because someone threw out a Symbol of Fear that didn't even allow him a saving throw.   You want fairness, justice, and compassion, well then weakling, you are serving the wrong deity.   Izenzan wants blood, and he'll take yours if nothing else is being offered.But whatever the rules of the Champion's code, you have to make it really clear what the deity demands and what consitutes 'gross misconduct' before the player even gets into the game.  Good DMs talk to their players and clearly communicate so that the player understands the world they are living in and the precepts it works under. Good players, really great RPGers IMO, are trying to get into the head of their Champion and understand that the Champion is a champion precisely because he's on the same wavelength as the diety, sees things from the deities perspective, so that a really good player is, "Crap, I've just failed to live up to expectations, woe is me I'm going to be justly punished", or whatever a True Follower of the deity is going to do in such a situation (after all, the code of the God of Pride might include, "Never admit, even to yourself, that you have been in error.").   If you don't want to occassionally RP out these existential crisis of faith and conflict and dont' want to be occassionally having to Atone through whatever method is required, don't play a champion.   Pick something less demanding from a RP perspective.   If you picked 'Champion' because you were greedy for the mechanical benefits, IMO you are doing it wrong.   You should have picked it because you were greedy to experience and explore stuggle, failure and insufficiency.  You should have picked it  because you wanted something hard and wanted to be held to a very high, maybe even impossibly high, standard.   Exploring the boundaries of just how close to an ideal a mortal can get is where this experience is at.   After we spent hours hashing out the code, don't come whining to me when you are held to it.  Losing your powers temporarily is not a big deal.   You are a slightly weak fighter for a short duration.  Find someone that can provide you penance, play out your penance, and so forth.   You only get bit hard if you make choices that makes it look like (to me) you aren't even trying, and I'm going to try to give you the benefit of the doubt until I run out of wiggle room.   Heck, even if you get banned by your deity, I'm fully into the idea some other deity picks you up.   I don't want to crush your game, but if you are complaining how this rigorous standard isn't fun, maybe the class isn't for you.</blockquote>

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