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

[AbdulAlhazred]

Ahhhhh, another 52 pages burned on the alignment debate, you all have added 0.0000001% to the page count on Enworld dedicated to this topic!

I think its pretty safe to conclude that nobody will EVER agree, and certainly no half a dozen or so people at a table will every agree, as to what alignment means. Clearly the DM and the player of a paladin will only agree by the sheerest luck on the moral valence of any specific morally ambiguous situation. Thus to any player a DM's judgment on such a thing can never be anything but arbitrary. At best it could be arbitrary and consistent, but frankly after reading a smattering of posts on this topic by the major participants I couldn't even guess what any of you would rule on a given situation in an actual game.

Its a highly opaque topic. IME its one that has very little to recommend it as a positive gaming experience. Frankly, the main point of playing a Paladin would be to actually PLAY a character who is an exemplar of moral virtue, not to argue about morals. I didn't see any problems at all with the way the 4e paladin played in any of my groups. The players clearly wanted to be virtuous and played their characters that way. If they ran into a gray area they considered the implications and did something. If the character did something that was deliberately antithetical to their chosen path then it might have implications later on. If they did something that OTHER CHARACTERS found objectionable, then that might have implications as well, but at that point the whole debate can be carried out IN GAME, which means by the characters, which makes it MUCH MUCH easier to deal with. In practice we had no serious issues.

I think it would be far more productive for DDN to adopt the same sort of approach. If people feel it is an issue that needs to be addressed more, then there's nothing wrong with a sidebar explaining that both spiritual and physical harm can come to the paladin who 'falls', but that spiritual harm should be narrative, not ban-hammer silliness. If the DM feels like some greater issue needs to be made of it then he/she should do it via other characters in the game (IE put a price on the character's head or whatever, have them expelled from their order, tried, hunted, down, etc).

 

[JamesonCourage]

there's nothing wrong with a sidebar explaining that both spiritual and physical harm can come to the paladin who 'falls', but that spiritual harm should be narrative, not ban-hammer silliness.

What if I want to play in a campaign setting where falls strip the power away from a Paladin? Your solution doesn't work for me, and my want to play that way is something that is fairly traditional for D&D (so it's not like it's fringe). You calling it "silliness" is amusing, though.

If the DM feels like some greater issue needs to be made of it then he/she should do it via other characters in the game (IE put a price on the character's head or whatever, have them expelled from their order, tried, hunted, down, etc).

But, then, the game was failed to reflect the fiction that I want (fallen Paladin losing his power). Your way completely fails at my table; it's as silly as my suggesting that my way should be the way you have to play. As always, play what you like

 

[gyor]

What if I want to play in a campaign setting where falls strip the power away from a Paladin? Your solution doesn't work for me, and my want to play that way is something that is fairly traditional for D&D (so it's not like it's fringe). You calling it "silliness" is amusing, though.

But, then, the game was failed to reflect the fiction that I want (fallen Paladin losing his power). Your way completely fails at my table; it's as silly as my suggesting that my way should be the way you have to play. As always, play what you like

Hence my earlier suggestion that alignment restrictions be in a rules modual, in the core still. That way you have the rules for the option, but its not forced on anyone else.

Wow 53 pages in this thread, not sure what's left to be said. Who expected it to explode like this?

 

[billd91]

I think its pretty safe to conclude that nobody will EVER agree, and certainly no half a dozen or so people at a table will every agree, as to what alignment means. Clearly the DM and the player of a paladin will only agree by the sheerest luck on the moral valence of any specific morally ambiguous situation. Thus to any player a DM's judgment on such a thing can never be anything but arbitrary. At best it could be arbitrary and consistent, but frankly after reading a smattering of posts on this topic by the major participants I couldn't even guess what any of you would rule on a given situation in an actual game.

Arbitrary and consistent? If it's consistent, it's not arbitrary. The consistency should indicate that it is systematic.

Its a highly opaque topic. IME its one that has very little to recommend it as a positive gaming experience. Frankly, the main point of playing a Paladin would be to actually PLAY a character who is an exemplar of moral virtue, not to argue about morals. I didn't see any problems at all with the way the 4e paladin played in any of my groups. The players clearly wanted to be virtuous and played their characters that way. If they ran into a gray area they considered the implications and did something. If the character did something that was deliberately antithetical to their chosen path then it might have implications later on. If they did something that OTHER CHARACTERS found objectionable, then that might have implications as well, but at that point the whole debate can be carried out IN GAME, which means by the characters, which makes it MUCH MUCH easier to deal with. In practice we had no serious issues.

Frankly, we don't have serious issues nor get into moral arguments with the mechanical approach either. As I posted way above, the DM and player need to discuss the paladin's requirements at character creation time so that they have a common understanding of them and what they mean for that particular campaign. But then, player/DM communication is the solution to the majority of problems I've ever encountered in a role playing game anyway.

 

[tomBitonti]

I'm going to tack here a bit, but through the discussion there seems to be a key issue which is not being addressed. That is, the degree of trust between the player and GM, and the authority granted to the GM.

I bring this up because of a tendency that I've seen in games to grant rules text more authority than the GM, both in cases of fairly non-standard interpretations, but also in cases of mostly standard rulings.

What the issue boils down to is whether the GM should ever be able to impose a ruling on the table. If a player sees a spell or magic item in a book, then chooses that item, can the GM rule that it is not available, or adjust how it works?

This is more basic than taking away a paladin's powers, and is useful to probe player GM interaction since it is more basic. If there is friction in this then the more complex case of the paladin will certainly be a problem.

Thx!

TomB

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

What if I want to play in a campaign setting where falls strip the power away from a Paladin? Your solution doesn't work for me, and my want to play that way is something that is fairly traditional for D&D (so it's not like it's fringe). You calling it "silliness" is amusing, though.

But, then, the game was failed to reflect the fiction that I want (fallen Paladin losing his power). Your way completely fails at my table; it's as silly as my suggesting that my way should be the way you have to play. As always, play what you like

So, there MUST be a hard-coded rule, even though it causes no end of problems out there, otherwise what, mysteriously you can't do what you want? lol. Talk to the players, if they want to have things work that way, then what's the issue? If they don't, then maybe you should rethink your stance...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Arbitrary and consistent? If it's consistent, it's not arbitrary. The consistency should indicate that it is systematic.



Frankly, we don't have serious issues nor get into moral arguments with the mechanical approach either. As I posted way above, the DM and player need to discuss the paladin's requirements at character creation time so that they have a common understanding of them and what they mean for that particular campaign. But then, player/DM communication is the solution to the majority of problems I've ever encountered in a role playing game anyway.

And AGAIN, yes, it is arbitrary, the DM has no more or less reason for how he decides than anyone else at the table. FIFTY THREE PAGES of debate about this clearly shows that there is no consensus. I don't think its unreasonable for people to talk about it ahead of time, but IF THEY HAVE TO NEGOTIATE every aspect of a rule then what's the point? Just get rid of it and NOTHING IS LOST. In fact the people who want to play in various other ways simply feel empowered to do so.

Frankly, in 35 years of running my campaigns I have had very close to zero issues. I bring in new players now and then still and they integrate fine, they don't have problems with whatever, anything really. 4e has certainly operated very smoothly in this fashion, but the lack of conflict in the past was pretty much down to the same thing, we didn't push overly narrow restrictive visions of what player's characters had to do on them. At the same time, I never had some issue where somehow the player of a paladin (there have actually been only a few over the years) couldn't some how RP their character. If it came to conflict, well, there was a 4e paladin that DID stop being a paladin in one of our games, and that was fine, but it wasn't shoved in anyone's face by some game designer. It was SUGGESTED that some types of behavior wouldn't work for a paladin, and indeed when the story turned to a point where the character did things that were highly questionable, the player decided to have his character stop being a paladin, and that was cool.

DMing is not some sort of thing where the DM's or game designer's vision of everything is some sort of rule or law. There is no reason for the game to pretend it is.

 

[billd91]

And AGAIN, yes, it is arbitrary, the DM has no more or less reason for how he decides than anyone else at the table. FIFTY THREE PAGES of debate about this clearly shows that there is no consensus. I don't think its unreasonable for people to talk about it ahead of time, but IF THEY HAVE TO NEGOTIATE every aspect of a rule then what's the point? Just get rid of it and NOTHING IS LOST. In fact the people who want to play in various other ways simply feel empowered to do so.

Or leave it in and, given rule 0, NOTHING IS LOST that way either. Heck, put in a side bar about alternative variations of paladins from other alignments to no alignments and you empower everybody including the traditionalists.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm going to tack here a bit, but through the discussion there seems to be a key issue which is not being addressed. That is, the degree of trust between the player and GM, and the authority granted to the GM.

I bring this up because of a tendency that I've seen in games to grant rules text more authority than the GM, both in cases of fairly non-standard interpretations, but also in cases of mostly standard rulings.

What the issue boils down to is whether the GM should ever be able to impose a ruling on the table. If a player sees a spell or magic item in a book, then chooses that item, can the GM rule that it is not available, or adjust how it works?

This is more basic than taking away a paladin's powers, and is useful to probe player GM interaction since it is more basic. If there is friction in this then the more complex case of the paladin will certainly be a problem.

Thx!

TomB

Well, every group will have its own culture. Gygax was apparently rather authoritarian in terms of envisaging his game as HIS. I'm sure he was also collaborative, but it seems to have always been modeled in OD&D/AD&D as an asymmetrical relationship with Gary deciding what was what and how it would all go. That seems to have been (and IME was to some extent) the model for RPGs for a while in the early period. Game masters made stuff up and players interacted with it. If the player exercised some agency in the game world it was strictly through their character.

There has been a lot of time and experimentation since those days. Nowadays in a group like mine the players help to drive things. I started a new campaign the other day. One of the players decided her character worshiped the Witch of Fate (basically the Raven Queen) and a desire to hunt undead was expressed. Undead were then forthcoming, and the party is currently trying to sort out Fallcrest's undead problem (which I cleverly built on top of a bunch of events that happened offstage in the last campaign I ran which some of the same players were in). The players are thus 'responsible' for this undead problem, but narratively it is a consequence of some NPC actions. As the DM I've clearly authored a basic outline of the scenario and supplied most of the details, but the players could easily express that the story should go in some other direction. Perhaps the undead will turn out to be a minor threat, or they will tie back into other existing background stuff that is going on in the setting. It really up to the players. They'll probably tell me what they want to do, and so far I've really only been following the lead of one player (the others are on a slaying kick right now, they're all playing strikers and all they want is stuff to kill, lol).

As for the DM 'tweaking' things like spells or items. Yeah, the DM CAN do that, but IMHO the question should be looked at from a higher level. FOR ME I would ask myself why I would feel like this needs to be done. If I'm having an issue with giving the player something they "shouldn't have" that's silly, its a game. I should talk to that player and see what THEY think. Obviously players have a biased point of view, maybe more so than the DM, but there's likely some reason like "lets not make your character a lot stronger than the other characters" or something like that.

 

[Tovec]

As an aside, it might also be easier to give DMs some sort of guideline on the seriousness of a violation. Lying might not mean immediate revocation of paladin powers, but perhaps a reduction in effectiveness, basically the power beginning to wane as the character strays from their Code. More serious violations requiring the Paladin to undergo a "trial" at their nearest church, their powers stricken until they explain their actions and appropriately repent. For the extreme violations the paladin would get a literal godly backhand and be banned from further paladin levels(at least to that god or alignment of gods).
-Include tests of faith, specific actions that can be performed, from saving a kitten to digging ditches. Punish a character's violation of their code in a manner befitting the violation.
--If they lie, make them do confession.
--if they steal, make them do charity work.
--if they kill, make them help save life.
--if the violation is so severe as to warrant it, present them with a specific test, such as recovering a mystical artifact, that if accomplished, would restore them.

DONT:
--give players specific spells to cast. If a 17th-level cleric(or whatever the case requires) is available, it's stupid easy to afford, especially if one is in your party.
--be black and white about things. Not every violation should translate into immediate power loss. Paladins and their players should know when their gods are upset at them before their powers are completely taken away, and Paladins should generally know what's going to get them the stink-eye, and what's going to get them the backhand before they do it.

The key to rules is not simply knowing how to follow them. But how to adapt them, understand them, interpret them, and if necessary, bend them to the situation. Following rules without understanding the rules IMO, is not the point of the paladin, and creates nothing more than "lawful stupid".

We need to clearly delineate to both DMs and players that there are ranges of slipups, and we need to make clear the difference between your god giving you the stink-eye, and your god striking your powers from you in a brazen display of disappointment.

The problem with leaving the DM, or anyone to be arbiter, is that there's no clear statement on how they should rule, only that they should, and their options are "total punishment" or "slap on the wrist". We need to open up that range of options, and "find a 17th level cleric" isn't an option, it's a statement that the cleric class is superior to yours.

This, definitely this. I would add a couple of minor provisos but this is a very good start.

From where I am sitting, it makes perfect sense for a few things to be required if playing a paladin with a code that is enforced, in any sense.

1. That it be understandable and explainable why they lose powers, if they do. This applies to the character, in game, and the player, out of game. They should see a fall coming, unless they are directly tricked. They should know that killing X person is a bad thing to do and they should accept it if they do it. This should cover cases of paladin vs. the evil-babies. The DM and paladin should have an understanding if it is the right thing to do to kill them, or not. And if it is not and the paladin does do it then there should be a way to atone.
2. Atonement, as per above, should not be a spell that is easy to get, making it senseless. I would love to see an act of reparation be atonement. It would be something I would write into the losing section itself, saying things like shidaku did; if you steel you need to repay and so on.
3. I would delay falling to be true and unrepentant contradiction to the code, not simply failure to adhere to it. Meaning, if you steel you need to repay. If it was necessary for you to steel to accomplish some other good then that is understandable but you still need to repay. If you do not feel like repaying then you fall. As a paladin you recognize that repayment is due and so failure to do that necessary thing, to make amends, is the problem. Now, if you willingly murder someone for fun you fall immediately. But that has more to do with giving your deity the middle finger.
4. I would have a difference between a fall (loss of powers and class) and an infraction (where they are sort of on probation). Most of this applies to the infraction. Infraction could have different kind of side effects, loss of mount or smite or lay on hands or something, whereas fall loses you everything. I do not know exactly what those should be yet, that probably depends on the powers they get and what would not completely gimp them. Fall would be closer to the oldschool (at least 3e oldschool) fall where you lose everything and either start over, fully atone (long process and story in itself), or become a blackguard (again in 3e terms).

Once again, I would say all of these things should go in a sidebar or section right along side but not directly included in the paladin. Something like specialty wizards in 3e. That way, when you reference it in the description of the paladin, that they can fall and to refer to the sidebar, that people can easily figure out how that works. It also means that if people want to say screw that and ignore that section they can without feeling they are ignoring the core rule of a class - like spellcasting for a wizard.