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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Merlion" data-source="post: 705488" data-attributes="member: 10397">I have posted threads on class alignment restrictions in I think all three of the forums. I've been debating on posting one about alignment in general. But since someone has brought thease things up in house rules, here are some thoughts.  Personaly I'm not really a fan of doing away with alignment entirly. I like it that there are spells and effects that specficialy effect beings of certain alignments...and that there are beings who exemplify certain alignments.  I dont like the Law/Chaos portion of alignment for a lot of reasons. Some of them have to do with my personal views of things, some are more purely game related. Some are against the whole concept, some beefs with how it is portrayed in DnD. To me in this game Law and Chaos especialy in relation to the alignment of relatively "normal" beings, boils down to personality traits, and to a lesser extent political tendencies. This is why I dislike any class having an alignment restriction related to Law/Chaos. Because when it comes right down to it, its essentialy saying, a character of this class has(or cannot have) this kind of personality..with the depth of options depending on the particular restriction.  Monks powers stem from disicpline, therefor all Monks must be Lawful. As the original poster pointed out, firstly disicpline really isnt necessarily a lawful trait. and even if it is...the class implies one lawful trait, so all memembers of that class MUST be lawful. it makes no sense. Especialy since as has been pointed out many monk characteristics would qualify as Chaotic in the nebulous DnD definition of such things.  The Barbarian being barred from Lawful alignment seems to make more sense, but as theoremtank pointed out theres many reasons why it doesnt make sense...the underlying one being simple since Law and Chaos are a set of personality traits in DnD why should any class be limited to or excluded from either one?  The Paladin is a little more complicated, as its a more engrained part of the game and is very bound up with the things that inspired the original desingers of the game. Although, some of those inspirations(the Crusaders for instance) are pretty out of sync with the Paladin class itself anyway. Now if you look at the Paladin as solely being a representation of the Arthurian knight as depicted in more recent fantasy, then I guess the Lawful restriction makes some sense. However taking the Paladin more as it is presented in my opnion, especialy in the current rules, as a warrior of goodness and virtue given favor by the forces thereof to which things like Sir galahad and the Templars were AN inspiration, the Lawful restriction really makes no sense. Why do you have to be Lawful in order to pursue goodness and virtue and the protection of the innocent? Now a case can be made along the lines of Good being the ultimate Law and that makes sense...although to me that concept is exemplfied better by the "Neutral" Good alignment anyway...since if you already have your ultimate Law in Good then no other Law is going to matter much to you...but within the actual explanations of alignments in DnD theres no real meaningful link between goodness/virtue and Law...Chaos is said to encompass the concepts of freedom and openmindedness which are all Good concepts. To me the Paladin has always seemed like a champion of good...with mandatory adherence to the principles of Law tacked on for no clear reason. Even the references to lawfulness in the paladin code seem to have just been thrown in to justify the restriction...the only such references in the code, really are where it repeats that "a paladin must be of lawful good alignment" and when it states that a paladin must respect legitmate authority. Although really respecting legitmate authority really does not preclude alignments other than Lawful. even a chaotic person can have respect for the authority of a government within its own land, or a person within there own home.   I dont really see why Law and Chaos even exist as part of alignment. The words are misleading as to there actual meaning within the game. Chaos and Order are concepts which rarely have a whole lot of direct bearing on most peoples lives...Order lets you know that the sun will most likely rise in the morning, Chaos reminds you that anything can happen at any time. the words "law" and "chaos" only relate to the things they are used to represent in this game in a general way. Many of the things...such as reliability or freespiritedness are simple personality traits. Others, such as wether you feel that the king should remain in power because that is his right by blood regardless of his actions, or that you feel that your baron shouldnt be able to tell you what crops to grow, are political views. I feel that those two things should be decided entirly by the player based on character concept and are equally open to all classes, or at the very least that the terms used to describe them in the framework of the alignment system be clearer.  I realize I'm rambling and some of that might not be as clear as I would like. but those are some of my main thoughts on those issues.</blockquote>

Verification