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

[Hussar]

Quote Originally Posted by Bluenose View Post
It's not because a Code won't cover every possible situation - though it won't.

Well, if worded well, it would.

If you could come up with a set of behavioral guidelines that covers every situation and still hold to a single view of "good", I'm thinking you have just managed to do what thousands of years of philosophers have failed to.

That's a pretty high standard to hold game designers to.

 

[Sunseeker]

If you could come up with a set of behavioral guidelines that covers every situation and still hold to a single view of "good", I'm thinking you have just managed to do what thousands of years of philosophers have failed to.

That's a pretty high standard to hold game designers to.

Word. And even if we do have codes(which I haven't objected to, only to a mandatory LG alignment), they don't have to cover anything. That's why codes are cool and alignments aren't. Alignments try to cover everything, and that's impossible. Codes just tell you how to behave in most situations most of the time.

 

[Libramarian]

If you could come up with a set of behavioral guidelines that covers every situation

We should give up the idea that we need to cover every possible situation IMO.

 

[billd91]

If you could come up with a set of behavioral guidelines that covers every situation and still hold to a single view of "good", I'm thinking you have just managed to do what thousands of years of philosophers have failed to.

That's a pretty high standard to hold game designers to.

Why would it need to cover every situation? Not all actions are either good or bad, most are simply morally agnostic. All you need are a few general guidelines to be sufficient.

 

[Sunseeker]

Why would it need to cover every situation? Not all actions are either good or bad, most are simply morally agnostic. All you need are a few general guidelines to be sufficient.

Yep, that's why Codes are good, and alignments are bad. Alignments attempt to apply to EVERY situation, Codes don't, because they realistically can't. And that's good, playing out the times your Code can't apply is much more interesting than playing out the times your Alignment gets you stuck.

 

[Hussar]

Why would it need to cover every situation? Not all actions are either good or bad, most are simply morally agnostic. All you need are a few general guidelines to be sufficient.

If that was true, this thread would not exist. A few general guidelines is what we have now, and we get DM's who give mutually exclusive interpretations based on the same text, both of which is actually supported by the text.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Right. So, I'm all for a less ambiguous code.

Well, what it sounds like is you're going to have to keep creating an ever more elaborate and restrictive set of rules that eventually leaves you with a class which is either so hamstrung as to be uninteresting or so restrictive as to be totally one-dimensional. This is one of MY fundamental issues with the whole idea of a 'code' that is built into the rules of the game. We had this nonsense in smaller forms in 4e where you can see clearly how idiotic it was. The 'Swordmage' class for instance was restricted to using a blade, yet there was no good reason why a player couldn't have made a perfectly interesting character who wielded an axe and used the swordmage rules, except of course there was that entirely arbitrary (IE having no gamist justification at all) rule that you had to use a sword! You could of course go ahead and ignore that, at which point you had to ignore various other things related to swordmage feats, etc. All feasible but it played hell with the CB. In effect the restriction did nothing positive, the game would have been better had the designers left out that restriction and simply put in a sidebar that said "Well, we envisaged this guy as a mystical swordmaster, but hey go ahead and make a mystical dwarf axemaster if you want."

This is what NOT having arbitrary restrictions means to me. The game simply works better AS A GAME and since nobody can define for me anyway any clear advantage to having a strict rules-enforced paladin code you're balancing nothing vs a disadvantage. Plainly the correct design choice is to leave the RP up to the players and just tell them what the concept you're going for is, and then let them interpret that without forcing them to interpret it in certain ways or setting up someone else as the arbiter of their RP.

And again, I'll restate it, the "but without rules-based restrictions there is nothing" has been logical refuted so many times already as to be just redundant to say again, but it seems to always NEED restating, so...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yet there has been no edition that was like this... even 4e had multi-class, and paragon class cheese which could be exploited.

So, your argument amounts to "because a DM sometimes exercises judgment player judgment should never be allowed" and "when games allow for some player agency they aren't perfect, so all player agency should be replaced by rules and DM judgment".

I'm simply not convinced.

 

[JamesonCourage]

If you could come up with a set of behavioral guidelines that covers every situation and still hold to a single view of "good", I'm thinking you have just managed to do what thousands of years of philosophers have failed to.

That's a pretty high standard to hold game designers to.

Of course, that's not what I intended, so luckily we won't have to deal with that.

What I was saying was that we can just define the Paladin's code very concretely; instead of saying "act with honor", we say "only speak the truth as you you perceive it." When Bluenose said "It's not because a Code won't cover every possible situation - though it won't", I disagreed. Now, the Paladin can say what he thinks is true (as he perceives it), but anything else breaks his code. We haven't touched on manipulation, so that's fair game. Hypothetically, we'd cover specific bullet points, and these bullet points are clear to see whether or not the Paladin has broken his code. We now have every situation covered. The Paladin told the truth as he saw it, knowing that the enemy might misinterpret it? Fair game; the code doesn't say "don't manipulate the enemy."

I'm not saying the code needs to be set up with "Paladins as lying wrong, but deception okay", but I am saying that, hypothetically, the code can be set up in such a way that every situation can be answered. In literally every situation, you could look at the code, think "did he tell the truth as he perceives it? Did he willingly break an established and agreed upon rule that he was aware of? etc." Then, if he broke part of the code, it's a lot more clear.

Obviously, the details would be up for debate and refinement, but the idea that the code can't cover every area is odd, to me. If written well (more time put into the quick amount of time I put into it), it can judge the Paladin in every situation he walks into. And that's what I meant. As always, play what you like

Well, what it sounds like is you're going to have to keep creating an ever more elaborate and restrictive set of rules that eventually leaves you with a class which is either so hamstrung as to be uninteresting or so restrictive as to be totally one-dimensional.

Lol, okay. Have a good thread. As always, play what you like

 

[Warbringer]

Personally, the role of alignment and/or code is not to confine the player from interpreting appropriate morale actions and roleplaying the consequences as they see fit, but rather, to provide examples and points of reference for how newer players can judge what the morale code looks like from within the perspective of the DND world.

Yes, that s right, "They're more guidlelines than rules"