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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arlough" data-source="post: 5436812" data-attributes="member: 79335">The alignment system works in a world of black hats and white hats.  But if such a simplistic world was what we desired, we would only be playing modules that never forced our characters to confront any ambiguous situations.  We could just walk into a village of goblins and <s>murder</s> heroicly slay every last <s>man, woman, child, and pet</s> death deserving sack of XP, because they all had the alignment tag "evil". And as we ran a <s>pregnant goblin housewife</s> domestic brood mother through with a longsword we could feel moral, righteous, and unperturbed by the <s>carnage</s> justice we had just <s>wreaked</s> visited upon this <s>village</s> breeding ground of evil.Hell, once you put the "evil" tag on it, any passing paladin would lose his divine favor by not engaging in the <s>wholesale massacre</s> cleansing of evil.....And, if that is what was what most players had wanted, then that is most likely what we would have.  But, upon studying the people playing the game, it was probably found that people were more interested in playing out characters rather than roaming slaughterhouses.And so, after many editions, alignment was dropped as a rule and instead relegated to the players deciding how they would handle it. But that is recent history, and this argument seems to center on less recent history. So...On to the paladin/cleric issue.  If a paladin/cleric is getting his/her powers directly from a deity served, then I would suggest that perhaps a list of commandments, worked out in advance of the character creation and written down in the "thou shall" and "thou shall not" (or "shant" if the god is less formal) format would give clear guidelines to the player so that if an action that would cause the paladin/cleric to lose his/her powers was committed, it would be done with clear and complete knowledge that such an action would be in violation of his faith.Here is why.A paladin/cleric of a deity that is directly involved with what the paladin/cleric does or does not do would have a personal enough relationship with his/her god that s/he would clearly know what would or would not be in violation of his/her god's ideals.So here goes...1) Would those that feel alignment should be something the DM enforces find this to be an acceptable and nuanced alternative to the alignment system?2) Would those who think that a paladin having his powers removed accept this as a way of making the situation less arbitrary?And now finally, putting aside the paladin/cleric with a close relationship with his/her god issue, I ask you this.  A) What is the advantage of the simplistic alignment system being enforced?B) Has anybody here had alignment enforced, and enjoyed play because of it?C) Would the play have been as enjoyable without it?</blockquote>

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