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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6123304" data-attributes="member: 82106">I think there are a few issues, one, maybe the root one, is the notion that games really consist of an authoritarian DM and subsidiary players who follow the DM's lead. Games may TRY to work that way, but in truth the game is always about the player experience (and the DM is a player, no more or less). Its fine if the players want to put the DM in charge of enforcing RP aspects of their characters, but in that case why does it matter if they are 'rules' or 'guidelines'? Secondly I don't think it is fair to label everyone on "one side" as wanting "no restrictions". I don't think there are two clear sides and I don't think there are very many people who think paladins should just be fighters with different stuff and no RP consequence to their choice of class. At the risk of speaking for other people I doubt there is anyone who holds that view. A paladin is a 'paragon of virtue', we can argue a bit about exactly what that means, and some people will extend the term to include other attributes and causes besides 'virtue', but I think we all understand the basics of what we're going for here. The question is ONLY "what makes that work most effectively". I think there are plenty of ways that restrictions can come into play, but I advance the notion that what we want is a more nuanced approach than "be lawful good or else <mechanical punishment>". Finally I don't agree with your "easier to remove than add" notion. We've seen by examining the AD&D paladin exactly what that lead to, a class that was 'balanced' on top of a role-play disadvantage, which made it exactly very hard to unravel the whole mess. This is ESPECIALLY problematic in a system like DDN which purports to have balanced classes in the 4e sense of balanced. I think it is far more likely that the thing will work out well if there is no default hard-coded set of simplistic rules for this, and instead the designers explain in the rules what the intent is, what the NARRATIVE ramifications of paladinhood are, and what sorts of mechanical realizations might arise from that in various situations. Its then perfectly fine if one of these points is "well, in SOME games the players may feel that there should be hard restrictions and consequences, like this..." That way the extreme end of the spectrum is cast for what it is and the choice is "pick something along this range".</blockquote>

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