Unearthed Arcana: Honor

[Klaus]

The new Honor system is up! Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (A Matter of Honor)

The article is part of the Kara-Tur setting, but offers advice on introducing Honor to other settings. It includes codes for Bushido, Nerathi chivalry, FR's Harpers and a Thieves' Guild, expanding the usefulness of the rules.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I liked this article, particularly in that it does focus on non-Asian elements as well as the flavour-of-the-month.

I enjoyed the feats and powers for those who want to make honour an integral part of their characters with real mechanical benefits. Overall, a good article.

 

[Kzach]

Unimaginative power bloat that will cause arguments at the table. It's just rehashing old mechanics, giving more power to PC's and creating more headaches (but beating the tied-up, helpless prisoner to death IS part of my honour code!) for the DM.

I see no redeeming factors about this concept or its execution.


EDIT: I should point out that I'm solely talking about the mechanics of this article. I haven't read any of the fluff which may or may not be any good.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

It's an Unearthed Arcana article - if DMs don't want to allow it, they don't have to. Purely optional. And for those so inclined, they have something to go on now.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm likely going to use Honor in my Planescape games as a way to measure adherence to a philosophy (either a faction, or simply an alignment). It's a pretty cool mechanic! A good way to make a character's convictions matter mechanically, which is vital to many of my games.

It's kind of a shame that as an Unearthed Arcana article, it won't pop up in the CB or anything. A bit of a logistical hassle. Overall, quite nice, and I'm looking forward to using it!

 

[Shroomy]

Unimaginative power bloat that will cause arguments at the table. It's just rehashing old mechanics, giving more power to PC's and creating more headaches (but beating the tied-up, helpless prisoner to death IS part of my honour code!) for the DM.

I see no redeeming factors about this concept or its execution.

I think this is a good article. However, I wouldn't allow my players to use it if I didn't think they were mature enough to handle it; then again, I probably wouldn't game with them if they weren't.

 

[generalchaos34]

Well, i for one welcome any mechanics that actually promote players to RP more, then so bet it, sure its a bit overpowered in some respects, but a hardlined honor bound player would be just as disadvantaged as a normal character who did not have the powers when it came to an opportunity to relax the morals a bit to get some extra gold or a few less than noble favors

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is pretty solid. If a DM doesn't want to deal with it, he just doesn't use it. If a player doesn't want to deal with it, he just doesn't take the feat. If you do take the feat, well, you get a fairly modest benefit. I can see some hand wringing possible with Honorable Action and deciding exactly what is an action in support of one's honor, but it will be pretty clear in a lot of cases. Even if a player wheedles the DM into letting him use it left and right he's only got 3 honor points to play with. The DM gets to give them out, so it isn't likely to get out of line. The fact that Honor-Bound requires a feat slot puts it even more in the realm of a trade-off to start with.

I'm thinking of doing a sort of medieval chivalric epic sort of game, so maybe we'll give this thing a run through and see how it works out, since something like this seems almost required for that sort of setup.

 

[Matt James]

There's exactly two powers in this article. What a horrible response, Kzach.

 

[Klaus]

I think this article would go great with many settings:

- Dragonlance: gives a real benefit to being a Knight of Solamnia, code and all.
- Red Steel: we have the entire Honorbound archetype, to gunslinging duelists in Cimarron County to katana-wielding rakasta samurai.
- Ravenloft: yes, Ravenloft! Give your PCs a reward for sticking to the straight and narrow. In many gothic stories, a character who is pure of heart can stave off the forces of darkness.
- Forgotten Realms: there are the Harpers and Kara-Tur itself.
- Planescape: as mentioned above, this gives some teeth to the setting's assumption that your beliefs are important.