Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6114866" data-attributes="member: 42582">This has always been my experience.I don't thinkk anyone disagrees with that. But that has no bearing on whether or not the GM has the power to take away the paladin's powers.I mean, someone who builds a PC with the backstory "I'm an honourable warrior of virtue" who then play a snivelling, cowardly brute is someone who is not serious about the character they're playing. I don't need alignment rules to deal with that player; I can talk to him/her GM-to-player and find out what s/he s looking for in an RPG, and whether or not I want to keep playing with him/her.But if the player doesn't agree that his/her PC is a cowardly brute, why should I as GM have the last word? It's up to my players to play their PCs, not me.  I don't know - you tell me! After all, you're the one who seems worried that, unless the GM has the power to override players' conceptions of their paladin PCs we are going to be overrun with such players.I don't feel the force of this at all. First, I have played games in which either their are no alignments (Rolemaster campaigns) or in which alignment does very little work other than acting as a personality and cosmological descriptor (4e). Yet in these games paladins - honourable, holy warriors who have taken vows of loyalty and dedication - make perfect sense.Second, why would a paladin accept an order to slaughter his/her opponents' village? Or rather, why would the player of a paladin declare such an action for his/her PC? Is it because s/he's not actually interested in playing an honourable holy warrior who has taken a vow of loyalty and dedication? Then see my comments above. Is it because s/he feels railroaded into doing so by the GM? Then giving the GM the power to take over the player's PC is hardly to fix that problem! Is it because s/he takes the view that slaughtering his/her opponents' village is not actually dishonourable (s/he is playing a more historically-influecned Crusader-style paladin rather than a romantic Arthurian-style paladin)? Then why is it my job, as GM, to substitute my judgement for that player's playing of his/her PC?No. It means that I want my character to be a PC, not an NPC. It is my character, not the GM's, and I want to play my own character.And to see how easily well-intentioned persons can disagree on moral and ethical matters, consider this post:I think that "don't lie" is a completely tenable rule for a paladin. It states an important matter of honour. It is consistent with Kant's injunction against all falsehoods. But I also don't think that "don't lie" is remotely equivalent to "answer all questions." When the demon asks the paldin "Where are the farmers?" the paladin is quite entitled to reply "I won't tell you." That is not a lie; in fact, it's a true statement! It doesn't deceive the demon at all, nor seek to. And the requirement of honour is above all a requirement not to deceive; that's why you can't lie, can't poison, can't assassinate and hope to keep your honour.The question is not whether it's inherently evil - as in, something whose occurence makes the world worse than it otherwise would be. The question is whether it nevertheless is sometimes permitted. Some say yes, other say no. Why should the game build an answer to that question into its rules? Particularly when that answer, in any event, has application only to a very narrow category of characters.I addressed this upthread: it doesn't require that the GM be able to strip the player of their paladin abilities. Another way is to give the player some authority over the playing of the deity (ie the diety is not fully an NPC). That is my preferred approach.Nothing wrong with a paladin converting into an anti-paladin. But why should that be a matter of the GM's choice? I prefer the player to take the lead in that sort of character development. Which means, if I'm going to play D&Dnext, it has to make room for my preferences as well as those of others. Which precludes building paladins with a GM-adjudicated alignment/code as a core feature.</blockquote>

Verification