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Message: <blockquote data-quote="phindar" data-source="post: 3295427" data-attributes="member: 37198">I acutally just got done playing a paladin in Eberron, but I had the opposite problem.  My GM leaves the tough alignment stuff to the player, in that as the player of the paladin, I would be the final arbiter of whether my character did right or wrong, and whether I would keep or lose my abilities.  (Our group is mainly GM's, and there's a lot of player/Gm trust, so we're cool with that.)  If my paladin wanted to punt babies from the fo'c'astle of a skyship, I could, providing I could justify that action to myself as something a paladin would do.  (I cannot, for the record, but I'm just listing it as an example that my baby-punter's would lose his class abs because I thought it was evil, not because my GM did.  Also, there was no baby punting.)  The fun part of playing a moral character in an amoral world was precisely the act of figuring out what I thought the right thing to do would be.  (Paladins, I'd like to point out, don't have a monopoly of being moral.  They are the most famous example of it in D&D, but I think that playing any character will involve figuring out what is the right thing for that character to do.)  I ended up switching out my paladin for a half orc barbarian/fighter because after awhile, that game fell into a more traditional series of adventures.  To vastly simplify things, when you are being exposed to a series of encounters that can be reduced to, "You see Evil People attacking Innocent People," there's not a lot to figure out.  Playing a paladin shouldn't just be the GM asking you over and over, "Are you doing the right thing?  What about now?"  At that point, the rp'ing is just you replying, "Doin' the right thing... still doin' it.  Still shaking the bush, boss."  I think paladins (like any character) should be put into lose-lose situations; or morally grey areas where there is no easy answer.  Because for me, figuring out what the character believes the right thing to do is far more interesting than the GM telling me or setting it up beforehand.  I don't think a lose-lose situation should lead to the loss of class abilities, only that decisions aren't always black and white, and doing the right thing will necessarily entail some cost.  In this particular situation, it sounds like you know what the character believes the right thing to do is, and as the player of said character that gives you some authority.  (It doesn't supercede the GM perhaps, but you're still the final arbiter of what is in your character's heart.)  Also, mad props to Man in the Funny Hat for the whack-a-mole line.  The GM should either let you decide what the right thing is, or he should be upfront about what he expects of you.  DM-Mind Reading is not a class ab of the Paladin.</blockquote>

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