Lord Of Darkness's page

It´s about roleplay, not stats. At least it should be. For me the story and the basic concept of the character comes first. Then I decide which classes I need for this concept. If the character is powerful, fine. If not, it´s okay, because it´s about the fun I have while roleplaying this character.

I generally agree with you. In most cases both as a player and a GM I tend to either design, or encourage the design of character concepts over the numbers game. After all, a good GM tailors the game to keep it challenging and fun for the players regardless of their power level.

However, this thread does appear to be very much a min-max, power gaming question. Which has its place as well.

As it states above, every build I read on here about multiclassing says don't do it, but if you did what's the best build?

It depends on what you are looking to get out of the build, really. If you are looking to maximize feats/combat survivability it is usually good for most characters to pick up a few levels of Fighter regardless of the main class.

So the general idea of this thread is that I want to record and score any things that might be considered and evil act. Mainly for the purpose of keeping an eye on actions and their affects on any given PC's alignment.

I am currently trying to fully wrap my head around a reasonable Paladin, with a realistic ethics, and morality code.

The scoring system has a range from 1 - 5
1- Least evil act, would generally seem reasonable with a bit of logic or explanation, ex- Lying to the magistrate to protect a friend.

5- Most vile, disgusting act a PC could possibly engage in, ex- Cold blooded murder and rape, possible torture and sadism.

The format should be as follows
Score 1-5/"Evil act described"

This is very much a participation thread so chip in as much as you dare or like :D

In terms of a game it actually depends on whether you want to run low or high fantasy. In a high fantasy setting, things tend to be fairly clear cut black and white. You have the good guys and bad guys and they are generally very easy to distinguish, as high fantasy is based upon archetypes. Low fantasy is quite different, as it cleaves to shades of grey in which no decision is ever morally pure.

In terms of the game, you must also take into consideration the faith to which the paladin adheres. The "Lawful" component of a paladin's alignment indicates their strong preference for justice, order, and the rule or law. Those laws are the laws of their god(ess) first, and rulers second. The "Good" component of a paladin's alignment indicates their preference for mercy, compasion, and sacrifice in the name of their faith and service to others.

To that point, a true paladin is not a smiting machine, but a defender of the faith, and protector of the weak. To go into more details, requires that we actually contentextualize the conversation with setting details.

So how do you STOP players from playing clerics?

I'm not sure that is the correct question. Rather the question should be, if the party wants to play all clerics, how do I shape a campaign around that?

After all, if they aren't all worshipers of the same diety, then there is plenty of room for interesting party conflict. Similarly, with that much concentration of "(un)holiness" in a band of adventurers, then they are bound to attract special attention either from outsiders, or from followers of rival dieties; nevermind the (anti-)paladins.

Also keep in mind, that clerics do have role playing limitations that the GM can lay down on them. If the players are not faithful adherents of the faith, why would the god(ess) reward them with spells and powers?

I find that coordination in a group tends to actually depends very heavily on the group mechanic at play and the experience of the players.

For instance, an inexperienced group tends to approach a game with only base concepts and very little idea of how teamwork is required to succeed in the game. As a result, if given no guidance, they either follow standard archetypes or generated disjointed parties that are completely missing certain abilities. Most commonly nobody wants to play the cleric.

On the other end, very experienced players tend to be pragmatic. They tend to approach the game wanting to have the campaign concept in mind in advance and develop characters that work with the campaign, the party, and their own concepts. This is not to say that somebody will play the cleric if nobody wants to do so. But the party will tend to compensate by self selecting skills and abilities so that their characters will survive.