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

[Warbringer]

I believe that AbdulA's point would be that if we haven't managed to clarify alignments in the past 30 years, it's likely never going to happen. If we accept that it's not going to happen, then perhaps moving on to a different system that can work is the next step. At the moment, we cannot change the alignment system as it stands because there is a fairly strong sentiment from some quarters that the problem doesn't even exist.

But is trying to define "Codes" (for example of "new") not the same quagmire with a different name?

 

[Sunseeker]

Why, this is an RPG. The issues are ones to be overcome by the character, not the player.

And from the character's perspective, morality is not a set of rules. You're suggesting a concrete morality(there's an oxymoron) system that is adjudicated by the DM in regards to the PCs actions...that's the exact OPPOSITE of having the moral issue dealt with by the character.

 

[Warbringer]

And from the character's perspective, morality is not a set of rules. You're suggesting a concrete morality(there's an oxymoron) system that is adjudicated by the DM in regards to the PCs actions...that's the exact OPPOSITE of having the moral issue dealt with by the character.

When a morale issue arises at the gaming table the ultimate resolution is going to be the DM, either by consent with what the players think, or by fiat. But ultimately (for the majority of games) a DM will signal resolution. The issue is providing framework to resolve those conflicts, and they don't have to arise just because of "alignment" issues (meaning definition here).

The purpose of rules, especially in a closed system, is to interpret how best to move to the next state in that system. Yes I'm saying that requires a diiferent approach to alignment, mathematical, not fluff, but it does mean the character has access to that model. Their decisions are still made in a vacuum of knowledge of what is truely morale, but on their character sheet their alignment value changes.

I get your point, this doesn't feel like a morale decision is involved, but that's because the player has meta-knowledge of the system, and while we can argue that isn't how morality is determined (especially in a modern society) we don't know that our soul is not a tally system and come the end of the day the big guy in the sky goes "Downstairs for you, you lead an immoral life".

Anyway, as fun as this, I'm not trying to win any converts

-----------------------------------
Only a dictionary definition, but
mo·ral·i·ty
1. conformity to the rules of right conduct; moral or virtuous conduct.
2. moral quality or character.
3. virtue in sexual matters; chastity.
4. a doctrine or system of morals.
5. moral instruction; a moral lesson, precept, discourse, or utterance.

 

[Hussar]

Yes, it was called 1st edition

Even in 1st edition, you got to choose your opening spells by and large. And the fact that that rule didn't even survive into 2e shows just how popular that ruling was. If it was a completely acceptable rule and commonly used at most tables, why eject it in 2e?

Ok, let's change it to cleric then. Would anyone play a cleric if the DM dictated exactly what spells you go per day so that your cleric fit with his image of cleric?

 

[Bluenose]

But is trying to define "Codes" (for example of "new") not the same quagmire with a different name?

I think it would be possible to create a list of things you *must* do and of things that you *can't* do if you want to remain a Paladin of God-X. It wouldn't need more than ten of them. They could be called the Ten Commandments. Once you've got a good idea of what a god cares about, desires, and dislikes it shouldn't be hard. Of course that implies a more serious approach to religion than is common in D&D.

 

[Grydan]

I think it would be possible to create a list of things you *must* do and of things that you *can't* do if you want to remain a Paladin of God-X. It wouldn't need more than ten of them. They could be called the Ten Commandments. Once you've got a good idea of what a god cares about, desires, and dislikes it shouldn't be hard. Of course that implies a more serious approach to religion than is common in D&D.

I can't properly respond to that without violating community rules.

Suffice it to say, significant real world . . . disagreements revolve around differing interpretations of such lists (further complicated by issues of transferring from oral tradition to text, and multiple layers of translation, as well as accrued centuries of interpretation).

A simple "You cannot do X (and remain a Paladin)" will lead to great debate about exactly what constitutes a case of X, which, as [MENTION=14391]Warbringer[/MENTION] says, is the same quagmire with a different name.

"You cannot kill innocent creatures" . . . well, innocent meaning what? In whose judgment? By whose standards?

"You cannot tell a lie" . . . well, what constitutes a lie? Is a lie of omission enough, or does it have to be an explicit lie? (I could go on for some time on that one, as what constitutes a lie is quite the can of worms)

"You must show mercy" . . . well, what counts as mercy? Is mercy offering my wounded enemies medical aid, or is it offering them a swift death?

In a game without hard-coded 'do it differently than the DM's interpretation and you lose your stuff' rules, these are questions a character (and their player) might spend some time thinking about, before coming to their own conclusions. Just as in real life, others might dispute their interpretations, but also as in real life, in the end, we'd have no way of knowing who (if anyone) was truly correct. I personally find such things far more interesting than *BZZZT* You got it wrong, go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

But that's just me.

 

[pemerton]

I'll agree that a well rounded character likely doesn't fall under a single alignment 100% of the time. However, I shouldn't be able to ask three different people what the alignment of a character is, and have them give three opposite answers, all of which are supported by the mechanics.

I remember various board discussions talking about the alignment of popular characters, and you see people giving completely opposite interpretations of the same character. I mean, what alignment is James Bond? You can make a very good argument for good or evil, lawful or chaotic.

This is part of why I thnk the AD&D alignments are a huge step backwards from original D&D (to which 4e marks something of a return).

If you're playing 4e, or original Morcockian D&D, it doesn't really make sense to ask about James Bond's alignment - he doesn't exist in a world defined by a struggle between the forces of law and chaos. And in the gameworld itself, you could play a Bondish character as unaligned/neutral easily enough, or Lawful (in classic) or Good (in 4e), assuming that he's aligned with the gods and the "civilised" races against the goblins and hobgoblins and drow and orcs. These systems bring a whole set of cosmological conceits to bear, which give content to the alignment system: for instance, they make it true that altrustic people will generally serve the gods ahead of the primordials, because it is built into the cosmology that the gods pursue human welfare while the primordials are indifferent to it, or even actively oppose it.

Take away that cosmology and 4e/original D&D alignment makes no sense (and so, for intance, I would say that alignment probably has little to no work to do in a Dark Sun game, unless the focus of the game was on restoring the gods to Athas - for instance, it's too simplistic that it must be evil to serve the Sorcerer-Kings because there is no cosmological truth that says they are purely bad - arguably, by preserving the trappings of civilisation, they also make (limited) human flourishing possible).

But AD&D alignment doesn't locate itself within a particular cosmological struggle and set of cosmological truths. In fact, it purports to be a universal framework for the moral classification of behaviour, and purports to be able to judge and catalogue cosmologies!

(Another objection to AD&D alignment, of course, is that it requires that evil people judge what they do as not being good, which verges on irrationality - it's true that Milton's Satan says "Evil be thou my good!" but he is clearly using the word "evil" in some sort of ironic or "inverted commas" sense.)

It all depends on if you think morality is absolute, or relative, and that is a matter of perspective.

The "godly" or "metagame" perspective, the "player" perspective sees the rules as absolute, because they have complete information.

I don't even think you have to go this far.

It's enough that you note that different people have different opinions which history and human experience reveal to us aren't amenable to reconciliation. Whether they're true or false (or all true but in some relativist sense) doesn't matter, for current purposes. Noting that people have different opinions, you have two options: let the GM decide; or let the player decide.

Unilke disagreements about (say) the melting point of lead, there is no shared methodology for resolving moral disputes; hence, even if you believe in objective moral value, the player with whom the GM disagrees has no reason to think that it is the GM, rather than the player, who has ascertained the objective truth here. And unlike disputes about the melting point of lead, moral disputes are likely to go to the heart of a players' conception of his/her PC, or even of his/her own personality. Why should the game rules require the GM to judge these things? For me, that's the bottom line - what does it add? (For clarity - I get what it adds to [MENTION=6688858]Libramarian[/MENTION]'s game - but what does it add to a game in which the paladin's code is not meant to act as a disadvantage in game play?)

I decouple the morality and values of the gameworld from real life by creating the morale boundaries as absolutes in the game world.

<snip>

In short, we can create a set or maorale absolutes that define morality within the context of the game, and by doing so create a framework that the relative moralty of the character can be judged.

Two responses.

First, as I replied to [MENTION=6668292]JamesonCourage[/MENTION] upthread, your statements of "absolute morality" are going to require interpretation, and it is very easy to come up with plausible situations that might arise ingame that apply interpretive pressure. This will be all the worse because it's likely that some of the words that require interpretation will carry, as part of their ordinary language meaning, ideas or elements that get their content from ordinary evaluative languages and practices - so the process of interpretation will undo the decoupling.

Second, decoupling means that the paladin is no longer an examplar of truth and goodness. Rather, s/he is an examplar of X and Y, where X and Y are some fictional constructs at best related in some fashion to the GM's conception of truth and goodness. Which, for me at least, pretty much defeats the purposes of having PCs ilke the paladin in the agme (as [MENTION=93444]shidaku[/MENTION] pointed out).

Why, this is an RPG. The issues are ones to be overcome by the character, not the player.

If you want to play a game that does allow for "allows for the dramatic and thematic impact of actual real questions of good and evil" then yes they are useless, but no more so than any other rule when put up against the test of "in real life"

Well, I play a game in which some of the issues are to be overcome by the players, using their PCs as vehicles. And I know from experience that I can have a perfeclty good game which "allows for the dramatic and thematic impact of actual real questions of good and evil" provided only that I drop AD&D-style mechanical alignment rules. Therefore, I would prefer a version of D&D that allows me to run that sort of game - ie one which doesn't bake notions of a GM-enforced code or GM-enforced alignment into classes like the monk or the paladin.

If there's a sidebar or option or whatever telling you how to run an AD&D-alignment-style game, go to town! I'm just saying I don't want it built in (as it is in AD&D and 3E).

When a morale issue arises at the gaming table the ultimate resolution is going to be the DM, either by consent with what the players think, or by fiat.

This may be true of your game. It is not true of mine, though. Moral issues arise at my table all the time; they are "resolved" by the players playing their PCs.

 

[pemerton]

[/U]mo·ral·i·ty
1. conformity to the rules of right conduct; moral or virtuous conduct.
2. moral quality or character.
3. virtue in sexual matters; chastity.
4. a doctrine or system of morals.
5. moral instruction; a moral lesson, precept, discourse, or utterance.

This raises particular issues in relation to the paladin.

At least arguably, the modern notion of morality as a system of rules is attributable to the tradition of which Kant is the exemplar. There is a line of attack on this tradition, though (and associated ideas like the priority of the right to the good) found in anti-modernists like GEM Anscombe ("Modern Moral Philosophy"), Alasdair MacIntyre ("After Virtue"), Michael Sandel (in his critique of Rawls), John Carroll ("humanism"), etc. This general line of criticism (influenced in part by Aristotle) emphasises the importance of values, and of a virtuous character that exemplifies those values, over compliance to universally binding rules.

There is at least a good argument that the paladin, in important ways, is better framed in that earlier tradition - s/he is an exemplar of certain values, not an ideal follower of certain rules.

I think it would be possible to create a list of things you *must* do and of things that you *can't* do if you want to remain a Paladin of God-X.

My concern with this is that those rules end up being mere geases or taboos. Which makes perfect sense for druids, say (and hence I have nothing against the rule that druids can't wear metal armour - a geas like that makes perfect sense for a druid).

But (for me, at least) a paladin's code isn't meant to be a mere geas, some magical limit which if violated will cost the paladin his/her power. The paladin isn't a faerie, or a Celtic warrior empowered by some magician.

The paladin's code is meant to express certain values - valour, honour, justice, truth, etc. Those are the key to paladinhood. That's what's going on with Sturm Brightblade in Dragonlance, for instance - the Measure is important not as a geas, but as a set of rules that he has sworn to obey - and when he departs from those rules because he thinks that justice or charity demands it the reason he is in a pickle is not because there is a conflict between the Measure and the demands of justice/charity/etc. The pickle arises because there is a conflict between the demands of two equally salient values - honour (he swore to uphold the Measure) and justice/charity/etc.

This is also why I find the idea, canvassed by multiple posters upthread, of the paladin choosing to break the code in pursuit of a greater good, hard to process. Because it is presented as if the paladin is choosing to breach his/her geas to pursue a greater good. And of course that would make sense, for a character under a geas (eg a druid has to disguise as a knight to make some plan work, and temporarily loses power as a result).

But a paladin who chooses to break the code isn't breaking a geas - s/he is breaking an oath in pursuit of some other value, and so the real conflict is between two values equally important to a paladin - honour and truthfulness (which require upholding one's oath) vs whatever the "greater good" is (typically, in D&D, it will be justice or charity). And so however clear the code, and therefore however clear the breach, why should it be the GM who decides whether honour or justice is the more important virtue for a paladin? Why can't that be the player's decision, to be explored and settled via play?

In a game without hard-coded 'do it differently than the DM's interpretation and you lose your stuff' rules, these are questions a character (and their player) might spend some time thinking about, before coming to their own conclusions. Just as in real life, others might dispute their interpretations, but also as in real life, in the end, we'd have no way of knowing who (if anyone) was truly correct. I personally find such things far more interesting than *BZZZT* You got it wrong, go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

Agreed.

 

[Bluenose]

I can't properly respond to that without violating community rules.

Suffice it to say, significant real world . . . disagreements revolve around differing interpretations of such lists (further complicated by issues of transferring from oral tradition to text, and multiple layers of translation, as well as accrued centuries of interpretation).

A simple "You cannot do X (and remain a Paladin)" will lead to great debate about exactly what constitutes a case of X, which, as @Warbringer says, is the same quagmire with a different name.

One option is to avoid vague statements about "Mercy" or "innocent", to use your examples. A rule that the only interaction you can have with goblins or hobgoblins is to kill them or die trying isn't vague. A rule that you can't kill or allow someone else to kill people who surrender to you isn't vague. A rule not to eat fish except at religious ceremonies is only vague if there's some argument about what a fish is.

Or you can be strict. The Code says you have to show mercy, then you show as much mercy as you can. There's a joke in Gloranthan circles about a particular cult and their beliefs/geases. What is going on when you see three people with the relevant holy symbol on display standing in the middle of the path with their swords drawn? They're ambushing you. Because one of the common geases is not to participate in an ambush, and that's the best way they can think of to be sure they aren't. Not participating in an ambush is vague in the sense that it doesn't define an ambush, or what it means to participate in one. So don't take any chances about what you're doing.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

If there's another option in the books, awesome. Feel free to lobby for that; I'm okay with it, as long as the nine alignments are in there as an option, in the general form found in pre-4e books. Heck, have 4e's alignment system in there as an option. As always, play what you like

There are just VASTLY better systems, 9 way specified alignment has been so left behind by the progress of the art of designing RPGs that it is just silly. For instance how about a paladin which uses a carrot-based mechanic where when the character wants to do something extraordinary they spend a 'coupon', which are acquired by carrying out 'paladin-like' activities. In other words when my paladin tells the truth even though it has negative consequences for himself he can earn a chip. When he wants to lay on hands he can spend that chip. This can be carried further into basically a system like BW uses where the characters could get 'moral attributes' which they invoke to add bonuses in specific situations. These can have values which wax and wane as the character behaves in appropriate ways. Paladins could simply have added ways to leverage these in support of their code.

Such a system would be MUCH stronger than the klunky alignment system as it exists now. In fact you could emulate alignment as closely as you wanted to with it, but it would only be one possible approach. You could instead do something very similar to 13a's system of goals, background, contacts, etc. Any sort of moral code or other code of conduct could easily be supported with such a system. It could even be extended to apply to curses, geases, diseases, wounds, etc.

If you had a system like that what would be the point of having a whole separate alignment system that is effectively redundant to it?