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<blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 3139685" data-attributes="member: 3424">Well, I can think of as many reasons as there are paladin class abilities. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue&nbsp; &nbsp; :p"&nbsp; data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> Jokes aside, I agree there should be a moral dimension to playing a paladin. What I take issue with is that many of the &quot;moral challenges&quot; faced by a paladin have no upside, only a downside. When the paladin does the right thing, it is only expected, but when he doesn't do the right thing, it's atonement time. If I didn't get experience points (at least) for winning fights and turning undead, I wouldn't want my fighter to fight, or my cleric to turn undead, either. I wouldn't mind if, by doing the right thing, my paladin character has to face a more difficult challenge, say a CR 4 fight instead of a CR 2 fight, since I'd receive a greater reward for the greater challenge. This is one of the questions I tried to pose in my original post - if you enforce the downsides strictly, what upsides do you give?This is another problem with moral challenges - ensuring that they are appropriate to the character or the player. You wouldn't expect a 1st-level fighter to defeat a hill giant, or a 1st-level cleric to turn a vampire, but there is no equivalent system (apart from the ever-present &quot;DM judgement&quot;) to determine if a specific moral challenge is &quot;too tough&quot; for a particular paladin character or player.So, maybe it's time for another question: As a DM, how do you ensure that the moral challenges you present to your paladin characters and players are fair in terms of the difficulty, potential rewards, and potential consequences?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="FireLance, post: 3139685, member: 3424"] Well, I can think of as many reasons as there are paladin class abilities. :p Jokes aside, I agree there should be a moral dimension to playing a paladin. What I take issue with is that many of the "moral challenges" faced by a paladin have no upside, only a downside. When the paladin does the right thing, it is only expected, but when he doesn't do the right thing, it's [I]atonement[/I] time. If I didn't get experience points (at least) for winning fights and turning undead, I wouldn't want my fighter to fight, or my cleric to turn undead, either. I wouldn't mind if, by doing the right thing, my paladin character has to face a more difficult challenge, say a CR 4 fight instead of a CR 2 fight, since I'd receive a greater reward for the greater challenge. This is one of the questions I tried to pose in my original post - if you enforce the downsides strictly, what upsides do you give? This is another problem with moral challenges - ensuring that they are appropriate to the character or the player. You wouldn't expect a 1st-level fighter to defeat a hill giant, or a 1st-level cleric to turn a vampire, but there is no equivalent system (apart from the ever-present "DM judgement") to determine if a specific moral challenge is "too tough" for a particular paladin character or player. So, maybe it's time for another question: As a DM, how do you ensure that the moral challenges you present to your paladin characters and players are fair in terms of the difficulty, potential rewards, and potential consequences? [/QUOTE]

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