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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6056927" data-attributes="member: 42582">I'm not sure that this is true, at least not in all cases.In AD&D the limitation on druid armour are obviously a drawback. But the weapons not so much - they seem to be for flavour as much as anything else, give that the druid gets accesss to a good one-handed weapon in the form of the scimitar.Rangers suffer a disadvantage in being restricted in what they can own, and not being able to have henchmen until 8th level, but its not clear that Good alignment is a penalty - after all, many PCs will be good in any event without particularly suffering as a result. It seems to me to be more about archetype enforcement.When it comes to paladins, the tithing requirement and magic item limits are obviously a disadvantage mechanic. But whether the restrictions on henchmen and acquaintances are a disadvantage or not is very campaign specific. In a traditional dungeon-crawling campaign they might be - because some of the limited supply of henchmen and allies will be evil or neutral - but in a Dragonlance-type campaign they would be no disadvantage at all, given that the game assumes all the PCs will be good in any event.More generally, for an honour requirement to be a constraint on mechanical power requires a particular sort of campaign set up, in which being dishonourable is a regular source of powering up. I am not sure how many D&d campaigns fit that description, but I would be surprised if its a majority of them.In a campaign in which the GM enforces alignment and codes, these are a power limitation for the paladin only if the GM is regularly framing situations in which acting dishonourably or in a chaotic or evil fashion would be mechanically advantageous. How frequent is that in the typical D&D campaign? As I said, I doubt that it is very frequent in a majority of campaigns. It probably is more frequent in a classic Gygaxian campaign. In that sort of campaign, I assume fewer people play paladins!As for smite evil (not actually a feature of any version of D&D except 3E), how much stronger does a paladin PC become if the player gets to decide who is worthy of smiting? To put it another way, how many combats does the typical D&D party have against non-evil antagonists. My guess is, not that many. The typical Monster Manual and typical module is certainly chock full of evil monsters and NPCs!So I have doubts that a paladin who is allowed to smite whomever the player chooses will really gain any sort of noticeable power-up.</blockquote>

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