D&D 5E (2014) So what's the problem with restrictions, especially when it comes to the Paladin?

[JamesonCourage]

JamesonCourage, I have fairly well-developed views in the metaphysics of morals, but my understanding is that it would probably be against board rules to share them.

Okay.

 

[billd91]

If the GM - the referee - is arbitrating what counts as compliance with ingame moral requirements, then either (i) those ingame moral requirements are fantasy/fiction morality, or (ii) those ingame moral requirements are expressive of real morality. If the latter - which I thought was what you said upthread - then the GM, by arbitrating the ingame requirements of real moral values, is acting as the moral arbiter for the table.

When I'm the GM, I'm acting as the moral arbiter for what player characters do in the game. That doesn't make me a moral baiter for a table full of people living their real lives nor does it imply that I'm arrogating that role to myself, which you seem to be implying by making the claim that I'm acting as the moral arbiter for the table.

 

[pemerton]

When I'm the GM, I'm acting as the moral arbiter for what player characters do in the game.

Of course - I wasn't assuming you're telling them how to live their lives.

My point is this, though: A player has his/her PC take action X. You, as GM, declare that X is non-good, or even evil. Now if that declaration has meaning only within the fiction - we have some gameworld defined notion of "good" or "evil", then the player's natural response might be "OK, so what?" - something like [MENTION=6668292]JamesonCourage[/MENTION]'s players, as judging from his posts upthread. Which is fine, but in my view undermines the idea of the paladin, which is not to be an exemplar of some or other fictional value but to be an exemplar of honour, valour, chivalry, courtesy etc.

Conversely, if in making your adjudication as GM you mean to say that X is, in some non-fictional sense, non-good or even evil, then you have acted as moral arbiter - you are correcting the players' judgement of what sorts of action are or are not morally permissible.

My own intuition is that tables which start in "real value" mode, in order to avoid hurt feelings and slights against character, are likely to drift to "fantasy value" mode - "It's just a a game, and someone has to have the adjudication task, and that's going to be the GM". Which is fine for managing interpersonal relationships, but as I've explained tends to undermine the thematic heft of classes like the paladin (it's not real honour, it's fantasy honour that the paladin is committed to upholding), or the druid (it's not real nature, it's fantasy nature that the druid is committed to upholding), or the cleric (it's not real mercy, but fantsy mercy that the cleric of the god of mercy is dedicated to upholding), etc.

I should add that my views on this aren't purely speculative. It's a real issue I've encountered in play. Hence my preferred solution, which makes all the issues go away, of abandoning mechanical alignment - which permits characters to be framed by reference to real, not fictional, values and ideals without requiring anyone to act as moral arbiter at the table.

 

[billd91]

Of course - I wasn't assuming you're telling them how to live their lives.

My point is this, though: A player has his/her PC take action X. You, as GM, declare that X is non-good, or even evil. Now if that declaration has meaning only within the fiction - we have some gameworld defined notion of "good" or "evil", then the player's natural response might be "OK, so what?" - something like [MENTION=6668292]JamesonCourage[/MENTION]'s players, as judging from his posts upthread. Which is fine, but in my view undermines the idea of the paladin, which is not to be an exemplar of some or other fictional value but to be an exemplar of honour, valour, chivalry, courtesy etc.

So you're objecting to paladins upholding Good and Law because they're "fictional" rather than honor, valor, chivalry, courtesy, etc? Is there a meaningful difference when all of those - good, evil, law, chaos, valor, honor, chivalry, courtesy - are constructed and given definitions by us anyway?

 

[Sunseeker]

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.

 

[Hussar]

That doesn't make me a moral baiter for a table

But does it make you a master? ((That was totally meant as a joke. ))

So you're objecting to paladins upholding Good and Law because they're "fictional" rather than honor, valor, chivalry, courtesy, etc? Is there a meaningful difference when all of those - good, evil, law, chaos, valor, honor, chivalry, courtesy - are constructed and given definitions by us anyway?

Yes, absolutely. It's already been shown in this thread that the given definitions give us mutually exclusive rulings. The given definitions are not useful. At best, all I can do is play based on what you, the DM, think is the meaning of those things.

A mechanic which can be legitimately interpreted in opposite ways is not a terribly useful mechanic.

 

[adembroski]

You don't think that the same group of players, playing the same module, with the same characters, in the same room, but with two different DM's, would have fairly similar experiences? You think that their experiences would be so radically different that rulings in one would be mutually exclusive from the other?

Gods no! If that's the case, you're not playing an RPG and you may as well do away with the DM and play Monopoly.

 

[pemerton]

So you're objecting to paladins upholding Good and Law because they're "fictional" rather than honor, valor, chivalry, courtesy, etc?

More-or-less, yes. Once you go for those "fictional" ideals, you've severed the connection between the paladin class and its archetype.

(That's not to say that you have to subscribe to those values to play a paladin - I can be a modern Benthamite bureaucrat, for instance, and still enjoy playing a premodern romantic paladin - but once, in play, you are not aiming at those values you've severed the link.)

Is there a meaningful difference when all of those - good, evil, law, chaos, valor, honor, chivalry, courtesy - are constructed and given definitions by us anyway?

Well, as I said to [MENTION=6668292]JamesonCourage[/MENTION] there are board rules in play here that I don't want to violate. But one point to make would be that it is highly contentius to say that values are constructed and given definition by us.

A second point, and I think the more pertinent one, is that GM-arbitrated alignment doesn't involve construction and definition by us. It involves construction and definition by the GM.

Burning Wheel does permit a type of "paladin faling" scenario - a PC with the Faithful trait can have that trait stripped, and/or replaced by the Lost Faith trait. But this can't happen unilaterally. BW handles this process via what is called the "trait vote" - members of the group put forward nominations for changes in a PC's traits (and the player can put forward his/her own nominations for his/her PC), arguments are put, and then a vote taken (the rules leave it to each table to determine whether or not the player gets to vote for his/her own PC).

This is getting closer to the idea of we define and construct - although in this case it is not the value that is being defined and constructed, but rather the group's interpretation of a PC's psychological state - has s/he lost his/her faith?

If the falling of paladins was handled in something like this way in D&D, I would find it less objectionable - though there are enough other differences between D&D and BW that I would still not be a big fan.

 

[pemerton]

By the way, has anyone else looked at the new Githzerai/Githyanki thread? Less than 10 posts in and there's already a debate over whether Githzerai are Chaotic (because individualists) or Lawful (because disciplined). The same debate about samurai is as old as D&D - in Oriental Adventures samurai had to be Lawful (because disciplined, like monks) whereas an early White Dwarf article classified them as Chaotic (because individualists).

As I noted upthread, the same debate arises for libertariansl like Hayek or the Cato Institute. Are they Chaotic (because individualists, albeit in a different fashion from Githzerai and samurai), or Lawful (because strong advocates of the rule of law)?

Law/Chaos makes some sense when applied in the Moorcockian context - which is how pre-AD&D alignment handled it, and also (more or less) how 4e handles it. But taken outside of that fairly distinctive cosmological framework, it really has pretty limited purchase.

 

[pemerton]

I just looked at the 2nd ed AD&D excerpt on the WotC website. Here is what it says about the paladin (AD&D 2nd ed PHB, p 35):

The paladin is a warrior bold and pure, the exemplar of everything good and true.​

In light of this, when a GM tells a player that his/her paladin has fallen, how is s/he not making an evaluative judgement - namely, that the player's play of his/her PC failed to exmemplify goodness and truth?