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

[Imaro]

I thought I answered as well as any who are advocating "the DM must decide when the paladin falls" have; to wit, I think that method is superior because I prefer it.

SO it's just a preference... a preference which can easily be accomodated by ignoring the falling rules for a paladin. I mean what exactly in PF or 3.X breaks if you just say... "no paladins fall unless they want to"?

The paladin is the class that dedicates itself as both a "warrior for good" and a "moral examplar" while relying on powers driven by faith in the divine. In 4E there are actually alternatives to the paladin (the Avenger and Invoker, mainly), but in DDN it looks like it'll just be the paladin.

So is it the divine power keyword you need? Because "warrior for good" and "moral exemplar" are concepts that can be attached to nearly any class if you want. As for divine power... doesn't DDN have the cleric? I mean the cleric can fit everyone of your criteria above if the paladin is to stringent in it's requirements...

Reading the exchanges from this side, that sounds somewhat like pot calling kettle, but I'll try to be more exact and dispassionate - even though that doesn't seem to result in any increase in understanding...

Uhmm... ok, I guess

None of which really resolves the problem. Morality and ethics - even such aspects as 'honour' and the keeping of 'oaths' - are really not amenable to objective judgement. @pemerton put it well: philosophers do not argue about what it means to fall off a bridge, but they have spent over 3,000 years arguing about what it means to break an oath.

This isn't about the intricacies of real morality or ethics... it's about following a pretend code dedicated to a pretend deity or cosmic force in a pretend world and who arbitrates whether you broke that code... you or the guy responsible for all/majority of the fictional world. Unless you are running the deity or cosmic force that you pledged to... how can you decide whether you broke it or not?

That we don't need to take the argument to such fine points as philosophers do is also not the point. The reason they have been arguing about it for 3,000+ years is that it's really not an objective "thing".

It's very much part of the point... since in a fictional world (and the default D&D world) it is an objective thing.

The same applies with "moral authorities". The entire concept is fraught with difficulties; philosophical arguments rage on about what the phrase really even means. It's extremely hard to argue, in a polytheistic setting (as RPG worlds tend to be), that such a thing as a "moral authority" exists at all. The whole concept is, being kind, muddled thinking.

What are you talking about here. There isn't a "moral authority". Again, there is a fictional deity or fictional cosmic force that you have made the choice to pledge your character in the game to. We aren't talking about objective right or wrong... we are talking about whether you have broken the code of that fictional deity or fictional cosmic force. It's not muddled at all... it's objective, tangible and alot more straightforward than the real world.

Oh, and I actually said "an imaginary lifetime second-guessing what the gods/the "powersofgood"/the DM thinks "lawfulness and goodness" means". Such "imaginary lifetimes" typically last only a few game months - perhaps 8-12 levels - so it's really not as extreme as you might have read it to be.

Even with the quicker advancement of 3.x and 4e... I would consider the necessary time to advance 8-12 levels more than a few

If some players want to play without taking account of the realities of their situation good luck to them. I and, I think, most of those I play with simply don't live our lives that way, let alone play games that way.

But the game isn't being made specifically for your table.

1) The same applies the other way about; if you want DM control over paladins falling just say "the DM can decide that you lose all your class abilities when you act in a way that (s/he thinks) is "evil" or "chaotic". Here is a summary guide as to the sort of thing that s/he might consider "evil" or "chaotic", but any actual judgements will necessarily be made on an ad hoc basis as the situation seems to warrant".

Uhm... no. I need to come up with the code (or various codes if the paladin can follow more then one deity) with no examples, I need to come up with rules for atonement, I need to come up with what happens when a paladin falls (do his levels switch to fighter, does he just loose all of his abilities, or something else), and so on. Which is alot more work than ignoring something.

My worry is not, frankly, that the paladin will have a DM-controlled "fall" mechanic - that is, as you say, easily ignored - but that other game features will be designed to suit this. So the paladin, absent a fall, will be more powerful than other characters. And such muddled inanities as "Detect Evil" will be cemented into the class (and the system). These sorts of "features" would make the entire class - possibly even the entire system - unusable to me as written.

So you're arguing against something because you're assuming things. Again, what broke the game when you told a 3.x paladin that they couldn't fall unless they wanted to?

 

[Imaro]

There is a critical difference, though, between the GM being able to take arbitrary and uncalled for actions ad hoc and rules that require the GM to make arbitrary decisions and distinctions ad hoc, in my view.

Can the GM say "the sky falls, everyone dies"? Sure - but it's pretty clearly an A-hole move.

But some rules - spells like Charm Person and illusions and things like the "Paladin's fall" rule in older versions of D&D - actually require the GM to make subjective and arbitrary decisions about how a player's character's powers and abilities work in the game world. Those are rules I am very glad to be without, and any such rules will make me at best unenthusiastic about using any rule set that includes them. I will certainly never GM using such a set of rules in future, since rule sets are (now) available without such 'features'.

No, ultimately it's the same effect, I would think advocates of effect-based games would get that. If I as DM want to arbitrarely take away a PC's powers... I can, plain and simple. The method is irrelevant as long as the outcome is achieved.

 

[Imaro]

The issue I see is that "human rights" and Benthamite morality are essentially modern moral/political notions; whereas the paladin is an essentialy pre-modern archetype.

In Chretien de Troyes's version of Arthur, Lancelot - upon fleeing Camelot - kills half-a-dozen odd knights, his friends and former comrades in arms, in making his escape. Under either human rights or Bethamite conceptins of lawful good, this would be flagrantly evil, and perhaps also chaotic. In de Troyes, it is barely worth a comment - it simply exhibits Lancelot's prowess. No honourable person would regard it as a wrong to be killed by Lancelot in that way.

Yet taking Gygax at his word, what Lancelot did - killing those knights without cause - should deprive him of paladinhood.

That's the problem.

Why is it a problem? This isn't the Pendragon rpg, it's D&D... and D&D diverges from classsic arthurian tales, greek myths, sword and sorcery and various other fantasy in numerous other ways... And as others have pointed out, Lancelot is a fallen paladin.

 

[Imaro]

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

He still has a code he must follolw and is still pledged to Lawful Good which is a cosmological and tangible force.

 

[Imaro]

Except you've previously stated different gods and belief systems are irrelevant, LG is LG.

I didn't state this. You're assuming because I said LG is LG that it in turn means different gods and belief systems are irrelevant... which is something I never actually said. Those deities and belief systems can be different aspects of the overall cosmological force that is LG... nothing stops a paladin from focusing on one aspect of LG over others, in doing so he still remains LG... just as a warrior who specializes in a particular weapon is still a warrior.

As an example from literature... in Michael Moorcock's Elric stories, chaos is a tangible and cosmological force... that doesn't preclude his Lords of Chaos from existing and doesn't make them "not matter". They embody particualar aspects of chaos and readily promote that aspect(s) over others they do not embody. In choosing to follow or worship a specific one, a servant is declaring his or her focus on the particular aspect that their chosen Chaos Lord embodies... yet they are still followers of chaos.

Stop making the argument about you. You're not being penalized for anything.

I don't even understand this... the ENTIRE thread is about preferences and thus is about each individuals wants... Even Balesir admits it's a debate entirely about individual preferences... or are you trying to claim you are arguing from some superior position not concerned with what you want personally at your table?

Because while those things have logic and reason in them, the last one has no logic or reason.

You missed my point entirely... the "logic" or "reason" you are claiming exists can be easily discarded by the DM if he reall wants to take away the agency of all or any one player...

 

[Starfox]

I don't want to have to make the campaign about Paladinhood just because a player chose a Paladin. It's an interesting idea for a modular option that requires player-DM coordination before switching it on, though.

I think the Paladin class could be written to accomodate both the gamist oath-as-challenge Paladin and the narrativist oath-as-premise Paladin with two modules. That would be a really interesting. However I don't see that happening. I foresee a compromise being made where there is no mechanical incentive to throw the Paladin into conflict, and no serious mechanical consequences for failing to follow their restrictions. The Paladin is perfectly balanced and becomes indistinguishable from a Fighter/Cleric. This is the process where D&D loses it flavor and gets blander and blander.

If Next really is modular, this could be an interesting module - Advanced Alignment or some such. Sadly, the modular approach in Next seems to be an utopia that's just too hard to achieve.

I like this post, I really do, and agree with most of it. But I cannot agree with the last part. Making the Paladin a balanced class in no way makes it bland to me. But I think that is because we have different ideas of what classes are. To me, they are building blocks from which you build a character. Tools used to manifest an archetype. Perhaps to you classes are more like archetypes in themselves?

For this reason, I'd also like a paladin class that works with multiclassing - unlike the present Pathfinder paladin that does allow a dip for the early bonuses, but if you are a serious paladin it is just too costly to even dip into another class, much less seriously multiclass. With my approach to classes, multiclassing is a natural tool to use, and I sort of dislike how Pathfinder made multiclassing less attractive. This is a tangent to this thread, however. A serious discussion of this would need its own thread.

 

[Mournblade94]

For this reason, I'd also like a paladin class that works with multiclassing - unlike the present Pathfinder paladin that does allow a dip for the early bonuses, but if you are a serious paladin it is just too costly to even dip into another class, much less seriously multiclass. With my approach to classes, multiclassing is a natural tool to use, and I sort of dislike how Pathfinder made multiclassing less attractive. This is a tangent to this thread, however. A serious discussion of this would need its own thread.

Fair enough, but many of the core classes are designed in PAthfinder so that one is satisfied with just that class (Not saying you should be). One thing I like in PF over 3rd edition is that staying in a class over 20 levels is definitely worth it and not just for the 20th level class ability.

I could not imagine multiclassing a paladin for any sort of mechanical advantage. I agree with you from a 3rd edition standpoint, but for me, in my group only one of them has multiclassed. Funny enough he is a paladin of Mystra so he multiclassed Paladin/Magus.

And no I haven't had to speak to him about staying in bounds of paladinhood. Even when he wore the head of the Blackguard ogre around his neck.

 

[billd91]

I could not imagine multiclassing a paladin for any sort of mechanical advantage. I agree with you from a 3rd edition standpoint, but for me, in my group only one of them has multiclassed. Funny enough he is a paladin of Mystra so he multiclassed Paladin/Magus.

I'm currently planning on it. Halfling paladin of Sarenrae, PFS-Andoran Faction, seriously thinking of taking 3rd level as a bard in order to pick up some broader class skills. But then, I'm not really concerned about not picking up the 20th level capstone abilities since the organized play campaign only goes to 12th level.

 

[Imaro]

Exactly what Balesir said. For all that we know, the character might continue to exist in the gameworld as an NPC.

So you've altered the character in the game world and taken away his protagonism and agency... The actual character has still been affected.

I don't really understand where you're coming from - are you worried that the player can't find or start another group? Are you saying that I have a moral obligation to let people play in my game whom I don't like, and that that obligation is more important than concerns about the GM interfering with their play of the game?

I'm saying having the power to eject a player from the game, and thus his character from the gameworld is the ultimate in power over said character and makes the ability to take away some of his abilities in-game pale in comparison. It seems pretty straightforward as long as we quit trying to pretend like the character exists independently of the player.

Anyway, I'll come at it in another way. I do quite a bit of co-authoring. Which means that my co-authors and I have to agree on what our papers are going to say. If my co-author rewrote our paper and submitted it under our joint names without consulting with me, that would be one thing: a paper is coming out with my name on it saying things that I never wrote. That's an interference with my agency is an author. If my co-author and I bust up and I have to write my own paper, that's a completely different thing. I might lose a friendship, but I preserve my integrity as an author. (And as a matter of fact, I have a colleague who is currently experiencing this very issue: he is working with a co-author with whom he can't bust up, because of issues of seniority within the school etc, but who insists on dominating the writing process, which my colleague experiences as a heavy burden on his own authorial agency.)

So kicking someone out isn't telling them how to play their character; it's not interfering with their authorial agency or integrity; it's just telling them to go and do it somewhere else. They can do whatever they want to do, but they're going to have to find a different co-author!

I never said it was telling them how to play their character... since you aren't technically doing that with the paladin falling rules either (you're telling them how not to play the character). IMO... in telling them they can't play their character in your world you are telling them how they can't play their character (mainly in your campaign/world/game/etc.).

 

[billd91]

So you've altered the character in the game world and taken away his protagonism and agency... The actual character has still been affected.

...Maybe. But the player's gone, so what does it matter?