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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3439713" data-attributes="member: 4937">I have no assumptions about your intentions except that you intended to correct someone else.  I was merely pointing out that the statement that began, "You do realize..." was not an objective statement, and that it implicitly insulted everyone that disagreed with it because the assumption of the statement was anyone who disagreed with hadn't given thier beliefs any thought.  You said as much as, "This statement is not insulting because I assuming the listeners all agree with it, and therefore its only negatively characterizing people who aren't here."Fine.  But a statement that begins with, "You do in fact realize.." is one in which the speaker believes that he's not offering an opinion, but a fact.Fine.  I wasn't asking you to agree either.  I was asking you to reflect.I think before we can assert either of those things, we first have to assert whether or not we are creating a game universe where what you believe can have a powerful and tangible effect on something material.  If you are creating a universe in which what you believe not only matters, but matters in a very tangible way, where faith is a literal thing with real material impact, then what someone believes is relevant to a mechanical discussion.  In other words, how someone believes and how strongly they believe it might well determine if they are something special on the battlefield.   And further, I thought Joan of Arc relevant to such a discussion, and here I admit to assuming that you did too since you brought her up.This is an area which people will debate, because there has never been a consistant definition of either lawfulness or chaoticness in the rules, but, if you are subject to an internal code of behavior and not some externally imposed duty, you are not lawful in D&D terms.  I agree that you can be lawful without being subject to a particular set of laws of man or diety (a Paladin doesn't necessarily have to follow the laws of the land, and a mafia boss certainly doesn't), but if you aren't subject to some communally shared external code which an observer either within or without the community can judge and condemn you by then you are not lawful but rather chaotic (or at most nuetral).   My distinction between law and chaos is pretty simple.  If the philosophy assumes the primacy of the self, as any philosophy that assumes the primacy of internal belief would be, then its chaotic.  And if the philosophy assumes the secondary status of the self, then its lawful.  I suppose you can claim that that is merely my opinion, though I consider it a well considered and logically consistant opinion, but whether or not it is an opinion doesn't matter here.  What matters is that since this is an area alot of people would debate, writing something into the RAW that alot of people would contend is flat out wrong and when followed to its conclusions is not logically consistant wouldn't help the description of a Paladin be of any more use.</blockquote>

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