Bjørn Røyrvik's page

I know how metamagic works, I'm asking if there is any good reason you couldn't get rid of Heighten Spell and just let other metamagic feats increase spell level in all respects. As pointed out, metamagiced spells are rarely any better than, or even as good as, an actual spell of a given level.

To go off on a bit of a tangent, is there any good reason other metamagic feats shouldn't include Heighten as part of their package? So for instance an Empowered Fireball spell would count as a 5th level spell in all ways.

I had intended to give this one a miss since the characters were possibly the most boring in the MCU. Yes, even more so than Hawkeye. However,t he girl wanted to give it a try and we were pleasantly surprised, mostly because of the retro feel that brought back childhood memories of watching reruns of things like Bewitched. The cringe humor did not go over so well, and it remains to be seen if they can pull this off. I'll keep watching for a bit, at least.

If only my walls weren't filled with bookshelves and other art.
Is there any reason you can't keep one on the wall and the other in some safe place and switch them around every now and then?

Characters SHOULD strive to break enchantments and charms cast against them.

That's what the saving throws are for. Failure is when you do whatever the enchanter tells you to within the limits of the spell until it wears off on its own or Protagonist-chan does the whole "this isn't you, please fight it!" speech casts Break Enchantment.

Characters in books, TV, movies, etc always have that moment when their eyes return to normal, their own personality regains control and they call for help... that's what makes their allies and friends want to help them instead of simply say "oh, well!" and hack them down without mercy.

......?

you/your players routinely kill any dominated PCs?

Yeah, you have a player problem. Many people find any loss of control or freedom to be intolerable, others just shrug and get on with the game. Have a proper discussion with your players about this issue before your next session and clear the air and come to a communal decision. If they are not inherently against it but just super argumentative and require a thick document in legalese to force them to do as they are told, slap them about the head and say the magic enforces the spirit of the command.

Mostly OK here. I have one player who tends to go for stupid interpretations of any orders given, like "kill my friends? my sorcerer picks up a rock instead of using spells" and I continually have to remind him that domination doesn't include loss of brain cells or any knowledge about the world or people ("dude, you know everyone is protected against fire, no casting Fireball").

Other than that they are all pretty good about such things. Some may need a reminder about the difference between charms and compulsions, but they go along with it. The Will saves in this party are high enough and we have two paladins so enchantments that make it through are rare enough it's hardly a problem even in the worst case.

Dullest season in quite some time. I'm sort of watching the spider-girl isekai, and I will probably give the girls in weird land a try when I remember its name, but other than that nothing has piqued my interest and I have run out of older things I want to watch. Right now I'm giving "Occult Academy" a try, but it's borderline. I could rewatch something, but I don't really feel like that.

This is just a roundabout way of saying I would like suggestions about what to watch. I'm willing to give pretty much anything a try, in an attempt to broaden my horizons. Generally I don't like the shounen battle stuff (with two exceptions) or sports anime so unless you have something in that you feel will change my mind on that, maybe leave those out of a list.

Freeport is a modern classic, which has a PF edition and some decent adventures published for it.

You can go old school and dig up a copy of Lankhmar or City-state of the Invincible Overload. for 1e.

For setting specific cities there are a few for SSS's Scarred Lands setting (3.0), like "Hollowfaust - City of necromancers" and "Sharn - City of the Mithral Golem". You should be able to adapt them fairly easily.

I would allow it. I might even allow 2e polymorph durations if the targets were basically inconsequential NPCs.

Read up on the N'djatwa

Might give you some ideas.

I don't understand any GM trying to defend or even opine on the intention of an adventure or campaign world they didn't even create.

Are you saying that people can't have opinions about things they didn't create? Or that GMs can't have accurate understanding of a product they didn't have a hand in making?

If talking doesn't work, scrap it and start something else. If the players are determined to ignore the rails there's no point in trying to lure or force them back on. It will be better for everyone if there is a clean slate with a clearly defined goal and desires from all parties to avoid this sort of unpleasantness in the future.

My game has been well beyond WBL for some time now and it hasn't been an issue encounter-wise, though at one point one player complained they were undergeared (ignoring the fact that I made crafting easier). Some of it is that the players have invested a lot money in domains, and some of it is that I know how powerful they are so I can always adjust encounters to suit them with a great degree of accuracy. Sometimes they surprise me in either direction, but for the most part I get it pretty close. The CR system, never particularly accurate, is not paid attention to at all and I just throw whatever will work at the PCs.

In any case, I never pay attention to WBL because it is of no interest of use to me other than for making characters at levels above 1st. I run Mystara so you go the the right place and you can get basically any non-artifact item you want. Maybe not immediately, maybe a bit pricier than its book price, but just about anything you can make within the rules is available (Yay! Alphatia!).

Rays are hard. I know there were a couple in 1e/2e that never made it to the d20 system. Other than that there's Eyebite which can be fluffed into a beam attack, but it has sucked since 3.0 rolled around - house rule in the 2e version if you can.

My first bard was allowed to have a special magic item that could transform into any instrument I wished, including a pipe organ (with my explicit assurance that I would only use it for an instrument and not as a cheap way to drop a 150-ton mass on people or block passages or anything).

My second (current) bard prefers light things like small flutes or hand-held drums, in addition to singing.

Recently finished Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts' "Daughter of the Empire", a book that was on my radar decades ago but forgotten before I found it at the local drug dealer place of worship used book store. Quite good and I recommend it for anyone interested in fantasy with more emphasis on personal survival and politics and social issues and less on magic and big threats to the world. A bit heavy on convenient solutions for the MC but nothing too bad.

Tanya Huff's "Scholar of Decay", a Ravenloft novel, was OK. We are in the decline of the series, from a very strong start to rather pedestrian stories.

Philip Jose Farmer's "The Green Odyssey" was a mostly forgettable classic sci-fi romp. Spacer stranded on a primitive world and has to escape captivity and his slave-wife. Entertaining while I read it but nothing to make me want to revisit it.

Just started Charles Stross' "Neptune's Brood", a sequel to "Saturn's Children". Hard sci-fi post-human world. Ever wonder why all robots and AIs seem so human? Because humans found it easier to copy their brain functionings to silicon directly and adjust use from there rather than build it from scratch. Like SC, NB appears to have plenty of intrigue and world-building that is at the same time both frightningly familiar and a bit off due to its lack of actual humans.

As far as I know it's spelled "Ullr" not "Uller".

Late to the party but just to clear things up for current readers since the thread is already raised: the -r suffix (sometimes -er, sometimes -ur) is the strong masculine nominative suffix, not part of the actual name. Modern Scandinvian languages have done away with it, which is why forms like Jormungandr, Fafnir, Ullr, and others are rather pointless to use in (mostly) caseless modern English or Scandinavian. Use of the dictionary forms seems very haphazard (we don't write Thorr or Heimdallr, after all). I can only assume this came about by someone looking at the dictionary form without knowing anything about the grammar.

that Frigga = Freya

I'm sure you mean =/=. Any connection between these two was not at all certain, last I heard.

So far all I have been able to find is this site on Wayback Machine that has a supposed conversion of WotI rules.
The conversion is minimal and unfinished, but it may help. I know I will need to do more when the time comes.

If you want domains and stuff for characters worshipping the Immortals, I suggest Marco Dalmonte's Codex Immortalis

I suppose I should have asked if you wanted rules for domains and stuff for Immortals or Immortal powers.

Not that I know of. I can ask over at the Piazza. I'd like them too since I'm running my players through their Immortality quests and would like to run at least one Immortal level adventure for them. I may have to do it on my own, in which case I would probably use a lot of the 3.0 "Deities and Demigods" stuff.

Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:

MrCharisma wrote:

Anyway yeah I loved that movie. Teaches kids the dangers of smoking - almost as well as Constantine.

That movie was an insult to John Constantine and his fans.

Not all of them, no.

something something true Scotsman something

Seriously. Does noone remember the immense criticism Lucas received for those three turkeys until the clone wars tv series came out? Am I living in an alternate reality? Or were there just a lot of kids who watched ep 1-3 who are older now and zealously defend them because they were the first movies they ever saw?

Oh I remember, I just wasn't one of the ones that hated them. A bit disappointed to be sure but I never felt they were as bad as some people made them out to be.

Thing is, the sequels made a lot of people realize that however much they disliked the prequels, they weren't as bad as the sequels.
And people pretending the OT was perfection were also a bunch of kids who zealously defend their first movies. Case in point, my first movie ever was ROTJ at the age of 4. Guess what that does to a kid.

Dark Sun.
'nuff said.

But when you get right down to it, most of the big settings are post apocalyptic.
Forgotten Realms - Karsus' Folly
Dragonlance - Cataclysm
Greyhawk - Invoked Devastation/Rain of Colorless Fire
Mystara - Great Rain of Fire
Even Golarion is post-apocalyptic.

Dark Sun is the most obvious of the lot.
Art by Brom, barren wastelands, evil warlords ruling over slave empires, no great battles between good and evil, just shades of s*&+ty.

I did fiddle around with an idea of a world that was the site of a Blood War skirmish. The fiends fought each other and the world was just collateral damage. When the battle moved on there wasn't much left of the world. A bunch of straggler fiends, in their hundreds, perhaps thousands, but nothing like the millions that fought what amounted to a footnote in planar history.
The luckiest parts of the world pulled themselves together and a strict theocracy formed with a focus on fiendslaying. I think some of my inspiration was to take something I deplore (theocracies) and see if I could make a good reason for it to exist and be better than the alternative. It never got beyond a couple of pages, gathering dust in some file somewhere on my hard drive.

On a related note I had a paladin have to face a coming apocalypse in two different eras and not do anything. Protecting preferred timelines is a b#%~$.

Anyway yeah I loved that movie. Teaches kids the dangers of smoking - almost as well as Constantine.

That movie was an insult to John Constantine and his fans.

Colonists can only bring with them what they can carry, which will put a crimp in the colonization plans unless you have some nifty von Neumann machines...which you could probably make with the rest of the gold.

The first rule of magic item crafting is to find a similar item. Boots of Teleportation are a good start, the only other item I could find with anything useful is the WAYFINDER OF THE STARS. It's a 1/day Interplanetary Teleport, but is keyed to 13 planets, so not as useful for galactic exploration.

It's midnight here now and my google-fu is failing me so I'm gonna go to bed, but how does that compare as a 1/day interplanetary teleport item vs your at-will item?

Once per day should be 55 080 gp ((17x9x1800)/5). The Wayfinder of the Stars is 70 200 but I can't figure out how they calculated the cost for this. I get it to be 66380. 55080 + 500 for base Wayfinder + (2x3+1800 = 10800)for Locate Object at will on command.

I'm not 100% convinced an at-will Interplanetary teleport item would be that cheap. Remember if there's a similar item you have to check that price first, and I feel like there are way-gates or something that would count for that.

Boots of Teleportation cost 49000 for Teleport 3/day, and the calculation gave me 48 600 ((spell level x caster level x 1800) x 3/5) for a command word activated item. I'm not sure where the last 400 gp came from, but I'd argue that it's close enough.

I chose at-will rather than 1/day because pretty much everyhwere in the universe that isn't Earth is going to be immensely hostile, usually fatal in very little time, to us that even with protection, such as the aforementioned Survival spell, chances are you don't want to hang around for any length of time. Plus on a personal note, you could make a mint in quick transportation of high value low weight goods, could take friends and family out for a quick trip to anywhere in the world, and avoid so much travel time and transportation issues that there is little else that can compare for pure utility.

The only thing I've seen on this list so far that rivals perpetual motion is Bjørn Røyrvik's idea of a Ring of INTERPLANETARY TELEPORT (which he said was 306,000gp, meaning we could get 2 if we wanted to). Having the ability to teleport to other planets - or even Galaxies would ABSOLUTELY change the world. With 2 rings you could have 2 people teleport there, then 1 come back with both rings, meaning we could potentially colonize space. It sounds slow (1 person per day) but it'd be thousands of times faster and millions of times more efficient than anything we currently have.

It's better than that. IP works like Teleport so you can bring 5 people along and this cost is for an at-will item.

The problem with the Decanters is increased greenhouse effect and too much water on the planet. It would take some time but it would f*#$ us over.

Pure cash is wasteful.
The obvious choice would be something cheesy like Ring of Wishes 2/day, assuming they won't be corrupted on a regular basis. That's about 600k, which leaves a nice amount for various other things. What I would do with 2 wishes per day! Let's just say that world politics would get very interesting. Dark Side, here we come!

Ignoring that, how about:

Item of Mass Heal at will. 306 000 gp
A drop in the ocean for what humanity needs, but it salves the conscience a bit to be able to heal up about 100 people per round of any number of horrible afflictions. Once proper infrastructure is in place, this will reduce human suffering basically as fast as you can transport people to the site. When you could in ideal conditions heal over 1 million people per day...

Ring of Interplanetary Teleport at will 306 000 gp
Go anywhere in the universe. 'nuff said.

Spectacles of Understanding 3000 gp
I want to be able to read everything, especially untranslated languages like Linear A.

Amulet of Tongues 30 000 gp
Self explanatory.

If we allow spells from previous editions- Belt of Survival 1/day 61 000 gp
(Survival is a 9th level spell from BECMI which allows complete survival, protection from injury, and freedom of movement in any environment, such as the interior of a star or outside a pulsar, etc.)
I want to survive going anywhere in the universe, and Life Bubble just doesn't cut it.

That gets me about 700k on the way. I could probably think up some other lesser items for emergencies, like Cloak of Etherealness or certain potions, but this is the most important stuff.

i prefer well-defined settings and cultures I can base a character off of, and mechanics sort of naturally follow once the concept is in place. Does that count as aesthetics?
Lacking that, I'll go for what is mechanically interesting and adapt it to whatever comes our way in the game. I don't have one specific interpretation of look or behavior for any given class or alignment.

On the one had, Patti Jenkins, on the other hand, Disney. I suspect they'll throw out Stackpole's books and make something bland and disappointing, like Solo was.

I love this developing pattern ...

Everyone posts all the things the love about each new episode, and generally give the episode in question (and show in general) praise ... and then a certain curmudgeon pops in each week to call it a ‘crap’ episode.

If you're referring to me, I suggest you look back over my previous comments. It's about 50/50.

Not sure why you think that a design look and feel change on the Dark Troopers in any way invalidates their history in the Dark Forces game, or Kyle Katarn's possibility of showing up. Things often change their look some when migrating from games or animation to live action. In the case of the Dark Troopers, the fact that they're mostly machines means the ones in Mandalorian are simply a design upgrade (clearly they needed an upgrade since Kyle beat them, the Dark Troopers MkII however will surely be invincible!)

I think their inclusion in Mandalorian means the odds of Kyle showing up increase dramatically. He could very well be the Jedi who hears the signal that Grogu sent from the stone circle.

I doubt this. They've already nixed Katarn as the procurer of the Death Star plans, and I can't see how he could be a Jedi, since the events of JK II and III really do not fit in with D-canon. JK I might possibly work if you squint, but at that point he has no contact with any Jedi outside whatsisface who died.

A more likely explanation is one I've heard on another board: they're gonna give Grogu to Maz Kanata (the orange discount Yoda in TFA), tying this even more firmly into the sequels. Either that or the idiots from Rebels. Or yet another Jedi, hithertoo unrevealed, who miraculously survived the purge along with seemingly half the Order. I didn't like that aspect of old canon and I'm not pleased that D-canon is continuing this trend.

Easter eggs re: Kyle Katarn - who is Kyle Katarn?

Protagonist of a series of video games. Dark Forces, where he steals the Death Star plans and takes out the Dark Trooper project; DF2: Jedi Knight where he faces off against an Inquisitor and his posse (when they were cool and not the s#%$ in Rebels) and becomes a Jedi; and JK2: Jedi Outcast, where he takes out the Reborn, Dark side Force sensitives created through magic crystals by yet another failed student of Luke's - great game stupid plot. Kyle is also your mentor in JK3: Jedi Academy - the best Jedi-based game ever as far as game play is concerned.

I use Firefox and have been quite pleased. I wasn't aware DDG hada browser, but I switched to using DDG as my default search engine. There are a few cases (mostly really niche and rare stuff) where Google will do better simply by having more information about you, but for almost everything I need DDG does just fine.

Crap episode. Old Boba was OK, but how did he lose his armor but not his ship?

I really wish Stormtroopers were allowed to be something other than a joke. I will never understand the reasoning of certain directors of trying to make some people look cool by having them take out hordes of idiots who shouldn't be out of grown-up diapers.

The Dark Troopers look OK around the mask, but the body looks a bit off. I'm pissed because this probably means we won't get any mention of Kyle Katarn. First they retcon his stealing of the death Star plans, now they steal the rest of his game from him. While technically possible that they could come up with some line about how General Mohc can't supply any more because some Rebel operative blew everything to hell, I doubt this will happen.
F&+!ing Disney canon.

Canonically, dark troopers are made from phrik, yet another blaster/lightsaber resistant material, but they'll probably turn it into beskar.
F%%%ing beskar everywhere.

They also got Tython's location wrong. It's in the Deep Core, not the Outer Rim.

Powerful? If you are a Summoner or a Wizard specialized in summoning. Not for a standard spellcaster.

Like druids and SNA? Widely considered one of their more powerful abilities, at least at low level. Plus increased action economy and bodies on the battlefield is almost always very useful. And a single spell granting you lots of spells, many not even on your list, is overly powerful almost no matter what,

A good number of summoned creatures can be stopped by Protection from (alignment) if you know their alignment.

True...but there are many that can't, and many enemies that don't necessarily have access to those spells. Still comes out in favor of the summoner on average.

The spells they can use normally are well below what a caster of that level can cast and you need to be able to speak with them to have the summoned creatures do something different than using them to fight the nearest enemy.

So? Flexibility and utility are powerful tools, especially if, as already noted, a single spell can grant you access to multiple spells not normally available to you. Talking is a free action so if you can communicate, no problem.

Sure, if you can speak with the creatures or direct them to do something different than fight they can be useful, but that requires a further expenditure of resources, be them spells or skill points.

A minimal cost compared to the benefits. And many summoned creatures, at least the problematic ones, can speak your language already.

You have an example of a Summon spell that summons a creature with spells that are higher than the spell used to Summon them?

Embarrassingly enough, some of the examples I had turned out to be nothing but my imagination. Still, many creatures like Hound Archons (SM 5) get Greater Teleport at will. Self only, but still immensely useful.

SoS/D? I...I'm not sure I should ask.

Save or Suck/Die

Also, I realized I have to take back what I said before. Goofy/joke characters have their place. In a goofy/joke game.

My friend and I are working on a setting based on the fantasy style of Pendleton Ward. Want to be a minotaur cowboy? Done. Fight with a magic talking sword and a high-tech talking laser gun that argue with each other? Cool.
The dwarves are all heavy metal head bangers, there's a city that's also a megadungeon where the locals thrive on adventuring-tourism.

This stuff would fit right in in Mystara. The latter is literally part of a country there.

I guess what I should say is that the only sort of character I refuse to play is the kind that doesn't fit in the world they're supposedly from.

A player after my own heart.

I don't really pay attention to WBL. At best it's a general guideline for creating characters above level 1, at worst it's a shackle that gets in the way of the game when you have GMs that try to follow it slavishly (and yes, I've suffered under this. I've also suffered under those that give way too much treasure).

I like summoning but I dislike how it's done in d20. Far too powerful and far too easy. When one single spell at least doubles your action economy and grants you a ton of spells, some of which may be of higher level than the one you used to summon, things are overpowered.
Reintroduction of 1e/2e assumptions and some other steps and it will become much better.

1. Each type of creature has its own summoning spell.
For simplicity's sake they can be listed as SNA/SM and organized according to level, but if you want to summon an astral deva, you need that specific spell.
2. Cost. Add material components of value so that casting a summoning spell is not free power.
3. Make summons of intelligent creatures work along the lines of Planar ally/Planar Binding. The first time you cast any given spell you are making contact with a specific entity which you then must bargain with or try to coerce into aiding you. If you come to an agreement, each time you summon you do so within the bounds of an agreement and pay for their services, while coerced creatures need expensive materials to make the spell work by forcing them.
So VM could play a summoner without the coercion aspect. Heck you can use the current system and fluff it that way if you wish.
4. This adds roleplaying opportunities by introducing NPCss, and adventure hooks as parts of a bargain. This also works far better in line with many summoners from literature, like Elric.

Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:

I could easily see myself playing a session or so of FATAL just to revel in its ridiculousness, as long as everyone else was in on the joke.

Was that the game where you roll for the diameter of your character's vagina or something like that?

Yes. It also had Anal Circumference, which could go into the negatives and....let's just leave it at that.

Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:

...But if you think that's bad, don't go looking up RaHoWa. Seriously. It's worse.

I'm vaguely familiar with the general acronym "RaHoWa" (stands for Racial Holy War, or something, yeah?), but...is it also the name of a ttrpg? Because if so...is it cool if I accuse people of wrong/bad fun when they're playing neo-Nazi D&D?

Yes and yes.

FATAL's horribleness is, if not exactly redeemable, at least the type of horrible you can make fun of. RaHoWa has nothing that can in anyway be seen as amusing by anyone with a shred of moral decency.

Oh, and add SoS/D to my previous list of 'things people consider terrible which I've never had a problem with'.

There's a difference between a kid getting scared in scary situations (like the mudhorn and Cara) and trauma. Even those are weird since he shows little to no fear in any other situations like blasters going off all over the place.
Grogu's cheetful and happy and trusting around strangers all the time otherwise.

Should have said the Dream Pod 9 deluxe version of d20 Mecha, not GOO. Mixed them up.

Quixote wrote:

Wow. I'd never heard of FATAL before. So I looked it up.

...I was having a pretty good day, too.

Same... now I feel dirty.

What can I say?

I wish I got to play enough to have a preferred sort of character.

How far afield do you want to go mechanically?
A refluffed Syntehsist Summoner is probably the easiest route to go.
Using PF-based mecha rules will require a lot more work. I would suggest getting hold of d20 Mecha, the Guardians of Order version. Simple rules to build a wide variety of things and I think it should be easily enough adapted to PF (been a while since I read through it)

People keep saying X is problematic and I haven't had a problem with it in 30 years of gaming. Paladins, time travel, Wishes, teleportation, mind control, DoMT, etc.
Mind control has never been a sticking point in games I've played. A problem sometimes, but never insurmountable. I've had a bigger problem with mind controlled players trying to interpret 'kill your friends' as 'do stuff that might technically after a few years lead to death but don't try very hard'.
And a vampire's charm isn't domination - you can't force people to kill their friends and loved ones unless they are very inclined to do so normally.

As for moving outside my comfort zone, this hasn't been an issue so far. I would feel super awkward if for some reason the group got into graphic sex scenes unless it was thoroughly Sexy Losers/Oglaf/Ghastly territory, and as far as general unpleasantness, Kult is one of my favorite games ever so no worries there. I could easily see myself playing a session or so of FATAL just to revel in its ridiculousness, as long as everyone else was in on the joke. I think you'd have to go to the lengths of RaHoWa, or anything actually approving of real world horribleness, to make me pass on something.

Mechanically, there are things I like and things I don't like, but this doesn't really count as preference.

Bleh. Not good. Fair warning, I hate Ahsoka Tano so my opinion is probably a bit colored by that.

For starters, Tano's headstuff is still a child's rather than that of an adult togruta. Makes her look really weird.

The HK droids don't even look like the meatbag killer and are barely a step up from B1s, not even up to the standard of B2s. Embarrassingly bad.

Grogu at least had some training, which was better than him knowing all this stuff instinctively, but Tano says he's full of anger and fear, and we haven't seen any evidence of that.

F!*%ing beskar everywhere. Has no one heard of cortosis? Or phrik?
Headcanon: beskar is merely cortosis-enhanced durasteel which Mandalorians think they invented and have a monopoly on.

The rest of the episode wasn't particularly interesting or impactful, but not too bad.

If you say you want X and there is already a product that does X quite well, it's natural that people will suggest it.

I don't really see how Corefinder could do that since that pretty much goes against the entire core assumption of the d20 version of D&D.

I'm of the opinion that the short story is the purest form of SF. You get the ideas and 'point' of the story without having to have a lot of worldbuilding and characters and plot get in the way. Not that those things are bad, but they are more necessary in longer works.

Just finished Charlie Stross' "Dead lies dreaming", the latest Laundry Files novel, though we don't actually see the Laundry. Cultists, deviants and life under the New Management; quite entertaining.

I'm guessing there are a bunch of Easter eggs for fans of the SW Expanded Universe, and if so, they're all going over my head. But I'm still really enjoying this space Western!

A ton. Sadly, they're going with new canon so we're gonna get a bunch of First Order build-up and s*$~ like that.

Would I allow it? Depends on the game.

I would not allow it in a game where the PCs are supposed to be heroes or where other players are playing non-evil characters, unless everyone wanted the play out the drama that would inevitably occur from this match.

I like them because of the flavor.
Go read "The Deed of Paksenarrion" for a good example of a druid (and a better example of a paladin).