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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 9859299" data-attributes="member: 87792">These rules were removed from paladins for a very good reason. Those being that they actively encouraged bad DMing and negative play experiences for the players. And the cleric and paladin actually get their power by levelling up. Warlocks are no different here.Indeed stripping powers the way you indicate is bad storytelling and blocks off plots. For example you actually can't really have a corrupt paladin."Sir, we have reason to believe that one of the paladins is ... a traitor." "You know the drill. Get everyone down to the courtyard and we'll see who can no longer lay on hands"And the old school Paladin codes of conduct in addition to that were mostly used as "gotchas" by bad DMs (something that was particularly bad in the 2e era when paladins would lose their powers if mind controlled into committing evil acts thus making this smart in character villain play to break paladins). What the old style rules meant is that a corruption arc became impossible because it was "bam! you've fallen" so Paladins basically needed to behave like jerks with iron rods up their backside lest they do one single thing the DM considered an evil act (and I know that Gygax and I have very different opinions on what is considered evil). So the Paladin falling mechanics were toxic to roleplaying complex characters.It's also worth mentioning as an aside that at least under Catholicism once someone has been ordained a priest the change is permanent; they are always a priest; not stripping precedent has serious precedent in the real world. Instead the controls are through dreams and through consequences via the other members of their organisation (or other organisations).Power stripping and DM fiat class changes aren't mechanically there even as mechanical suggestions in 5e and consigning those suggestions to the dustbin of history has been a significant improvement to the divine classes in 5e over classic D&D.Yet I write all that and 5e has the best potential paladin falling mechanics of any version of D&D and it's not even close. This is because you don't take away the powers and leave them as crippled or utterly change them. Instead you change the subclass. Switching from Oath of Devotion to Oath of Vengeance is a much more nuanced change than Paladin to Blackguard while changing less but in the right places. (And a big part of it being the best is it's not an actual punishment for the player and is something the player can accept).</blockquote>

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