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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6112686" data-attributes="member: 42582">I can't really relate to this at all, from the PC perspective. When I'm playing a paladin, there isn't anything worth risking severing my tie with the divine over, because the divine is the first principle of, and the measure of, all value - so nothing can be worth more than it. An appearance that things are otherwise must be illusory, and it's my job (speaking here as the character) to pierce that illusion - with the help of the divinity, of course.I can see how the decision you mention makes sense in an out-of-game way - will I get some mechanical benefit, or some improvement in my fictional positioning (eg access to this awesome keep or alliance or whatever), that is worth trading off my class abilities. But I'm personally not a big fan of that style of play, especially when I'm playing a paladin.I agree with your post, even though personally I'm less interested in Judge Dredd and more interested in the tormented hero.To elaborate: if I (speaking as my paladin PC) deviate from the divine will, in pursuit of some greater good, then there are two possibilities that I can see. One is that I was right, and hence that the divine will wasn't all its cracked up to be. In which case why should I suffer a loss of power? - such a feeble divinity hardly seems the sort of thing able to strip someone as insightful as me of their power! The interesting play here is not in losing my abilities, but rather in dealing with the revelation that the so-called divinity was really a fraud.Alternatively, the divinity was right and I misjudged. In which case realisation of my error is penalty enough (and grist for the playing out of the torment), and there is no need to strip me of my power as well.In other words, and stepping out of character and back into metagame-speak, whichever way I'm interested in going as a player of a tormented hero, I don't need to be stripped of my power - and hence my functionality as a PC - to make it work.That's probably true for most RPGers. But not all consequences have to be mechanical, or otherwise pertain to PC effectiveness, to be relevant.My own view is that the approach you're advocating makes the paladin essentially expedient - they adhere to the code until a better deal comes along! That's probably a fair picture of the actual process of conversion to Christianity of the Germanic proto-knights during the Dark Ages, but for me it's not the Galahadian archetype I want from a paladin.What I'm more interested in is finding out whether or not the paladin is expedient. And to discover that, you have to give the player the option of adhering to the code for no benefit. And conversely, the consequence of breaking the code isn't mechanical disadvantage - it's finding out that, after all, you were expedient and hence not so above the day-to-day fray as you might have thought.This is interesting - and reminds me a bit of MHRP milestones. 4e tackles it in a slightly different way - if you build a paladin, your PC won't really fire on all cylinders unless you start putting yourself in harm's way and otherwise doing things to take the burden (especially the burden of combat) off your friends.To avoid the problem of expedience, you have to frame things in the way you have (or 4e does) - it's take a risk to earn the boon - not trade off this resource (my suite of PC abilities) for a chance at this other, shinier, resource (but I can only get it by breaking the code).</blockquote>

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