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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6129272" data-attributes="member: 82106">I'm not 100% sure I follow you here, but lets see. You have 2 characters, one is a Paladin, and one is a Blackguard. I would assume this means there is a difference between the two classes, blackguards have 'evil' powers and paladins have 'good' powers. I assume your complaint is now that both characters could be evil in alignment and you want to know what makes one a blackguard and one a paladin. Frankly there are a few things I find odd/wrong about this sort of setup. First of all, yes, I would get rid of alignment, clearly in the game in question players are clearly not interested in narrowly pigeonholing their characters so what is the point of using game mechanics that are designed to do what the players don't want to do? It would be like insisting on using magic points when everyone wants to play a Vancian wizard.That aside the question is what are the players trying to do by playing these different classes of character and using them in ways that clearly don't match up with what the designers were thinking about when they wrote them. The Blackguard class, in 4e at least, exists for the very reason of providing a paladin option for 'dark' heroes, anti-heroes, and villains. The basic Paladin class is designed with dedicated do-gooders in mind, but naturally it can potentially accommodate various possibilities. Obviously we can get into semantic arguments about exactly which characters are paladins and what we call the rest. That's fine. My objections to alignment restrictions have far more to do with how that limits what players can do with their RP than it has to do with labels of things. I'll equally object to "all Blackguards must be evil". So, my answer ultimately is its up to the players in a game to decide how they want to RP and it shouldn't be codified in rules how you do that. As for the whole "what if you have bad players, only the rules can ride herd on them" theory you've been developing, posh on it! Its impossibly to enforce good play with rules. Rules should exist in RPGs to adjudicate specific things in play, like combat. The rest of the game is just advice, at best prearranged procedures that can be used to help work out what happens in the game (like say a guideline for building castles or something).</blockquote>

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