D&D 5E So what's the problem with restrictions, especially when it comes to the Paladin?

[Hussar]

No. You adapt in all sorts of ways to the local table. This is just one of those ways.

So, the fact that mechanics give you exact opposite results doesn't phase you at all? That's just adapting?

I have to admit, I look at a mechanic that gives me diametrically opposed results depending on how the referee interprets the rules as being a very, very bad mechanic.

 

[billd91]

So, the fact that mechanics give you exact opposite results doesn't phase you at all? That's just adapting?

I have to admit, I look at a mechanic that gives me diametrically opposed results depending on how the referee interprets the rules as being a very, very bad mechanic.

Whereas I cheer on the diversity.

 

[Mournblade94]

Morally? Hell yes I'll challenge the DM.

And you should!

 

[Mournblade94]

Note, a paladin in 3e and forward does not have to serve a diety.




Player: I'm going to do X
DM: Your magic widget of evilness starts to vibrate. Your chosen action will result in me stripping you of everything that makes your character unique.
Player: Well, guess I'm not going to do X then.

How is that not the DM telling the player he's playing his character wrong?

A character is only his class abilities?

There are numerous options for you to explore. One option would then be flagged as inappropriate. If you feel you are old enough to police your own character (your words) I am sure you can find another solution that will still keep your character a paladin while keeping to the character you want to play.

If you don't want to play the character with the guideline of a paladin, you are probably in fact not playing a paladin anyway.

 

[Hussar]

A character is only his class abilities?

There are numerous options for you to explore. One option would then be flagged as inappropriate. If you feel you are old enough to police your own character (your words) I am sure you can find another solution that will still keep your character a paladin while keeping to the character you want to play.

If you don't want to play the character with the guideline of a paladin, you are probably in fact not playing a paladin anyway.

I don't want to play a character with your definition of the guidelines of a paladin. That would be the difference. I'm perfectly capable of playing a character without having the DM play Big Brother and watch over how I play my own character.

 

[Mournblade94]

That's certainly a nice spin as well. He's not playing his character wrong, but, if he does what he is planning to do, you are going to strip him of everything mechanically unique about his character because you believe that he is doing something in violation of the concept of his character. That's apparently not telling him he's playing his character wrong, but, simply just applying consequences.

Granted the fact that these consequences are being applied solely because you, the DM, believe that he is in violation of his character concept, has nothing to do with it.

Paladin class is not a character concept, it is a class.

The DM will strip the paladins for violating the class, not the player's character concept.

 

[Mournblade94]

Balesir gave part of the answer to why it would make a difference, here:

• The dwarf became bound by a promise given not by him, but by those who were reasonably taken to be his agents, which he himself would never have made; and which those agents only made because they thought it wouldn't count (because they would kill the prisoner anyway without the dwarf learning what had been done).
• The paladin of the god of death became bound not to kill someone whom he thought deserved death, because to do so would mean the dwarf going back on a promise that had been made on his behalf.

+ more points and good ideas

To this I have to say. using your situation as evidence of the interaction, that there is indeed no difference.

The paladin, monk, and Druid players I have acheive the same level of interaction, where they are caught in moral quandries, or they are in conflict with other players or themsleves. This type of game interaction happens just as easily in the Alignment enforcement game I run. In 25 years of running games I have always enforced alignment, and in those same years I have complex moral quandries.

Also in games without alignment restrictions like MArvel Superheroes, I have seen very complex interaction between players playing Marvel characters IN CHARACTER, and still having situations like you described upthread. Talk about roleplaying restrictions? We played MSH with our own characters but the players often wanted to play the characters (usually in relation to something our characters were doing, to make it feel more incorporated in the MU). Nothing about playing Captain America like he should be played stopped complex character interactions.

Also in Star Wars, the Jedi character was able to have these interactions. Then there is alternity and traveller which I run with no enforceable code whatsoever. All of those games, and many times I would run alternity and D&D alternately with the same group, had the same level of complex interaction with the alignment being enforced in D&D or NO alignment of alternity.

It made no difference. Ofcourse I cannot know what the psychological bounds were, but I know the results and I am capable of evaluating them.

 

[Hussar]

Paladin class is not a character concept, it is a class.

The DM will strip the paladins for violating the class, not the player's character concept.

No, they will not. You cannot violate a class. There is no restrictions in your class. The restrictions are solely conceptual. Thou shalt not do X in the game world has nothing to do with any element of the paladin class. A paladin player has to try to take this very vague bag of commandments that is a Code of Conduct and then is forced, by the mechanics, to interpret that through the eyes of the DM, because if his interpretation is different from the DM, he is stripped of his class with no recourse.

Like I said to Bill91 above. You can play two identical paladins and in one group, have no problem and in the next group, you're a fighter. All because the DM has decided to interpret the Code in a specific way. The way the player interprets the code doesn't matter. The player is absolutely beholden to obey the DM's interpretation of his character or the DM will take away that character.

This is just very, very poor game design. I should not get diametrically opposed results depending on which DM I have today. And, let's not forget, both DM's are considered good DM's. We're not talking about one DM being a jerk and jumping out with an aha-gotcha moment. Both DM's are running good games and are considered to be perfectly fine referees of their games. Yet, because of the mechanics, I get completely opposite rules interpretations.

That is a bad rule. If you ask five different competent DM's and get five contradictory answers on some mechanic? That's a bad rule.

 

[Mournblade94]

I have zero problems with playing a paladin with a code of conduct. Nor, do I think, does anyone have any problem with a paladin having a code.

The problem comes with the idea that the DM is the one who should be the final arbiter on the code.

I mean, heck, Mournblade has flat out stated that if I play one kind of paladin, I can kill things that detect as evil on the spot. You state that doing so will cost me my status. Who's right? Prove it.

That, in a nutshell is the problem with leaving it to the DM. If I play a fighter in your group or in Mournblade's group, my character could be pretty much exactly the same and there would be no problems. But, I cannot play the same paladin in your group as his group. Not because you are using different rules. You are both looking at exactly the same rules yet giving completely opposite rulings.

And you see no problem with this?

I honestly don't see a problem with it because every DM runs their table different.

Its almost like improvised actions. I allow you to slide down on your shield and shoot arrows at the orcs, but Bill won't (I have no idea if he would or not). The fact is if every referee could all be consistent, there would be no reason to "run the tape" in sports.

Evaluations have to be made. It is the same problem in school or university with 2 professers teaching the same subject. Some might grade easily than others, or maybe I take off of your Ecology exam because you (A random student you) write with poor grammar. Maybe I let an arithmetic error go, but the other guy doesn't yet won't penalize you for grammar.

 

[Mournblade94]

That is a bad rule. If you ask five different competent DM's and get five contradictory answers on some mechanic? That's a bad rule.

It is a rule where there can be no black and white answer I agree. Is it a bad rule, is a question of philosophy I suppose. I am Ok with rules that have to be interpreted, I know many people that are not.