I'm thinking about playing without characters having an alignment. Obviously this means there is some editing of certain spells and items, but overall not a huge impact on game play. Smite evil is a big concern but could just become "Smite." If you use it in a way your deity wouldn't like, you're still in trouble.
Has anyone done something like this? How did it turn out?
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In the campaign previous to the two I am currently running I started the game with no alignments for characters. Every couple of levels we would have a group discussion about each characters alignment. This isn't quite what you have described, but it was a lot of fun. It made the Paladin player a bit more conscious of his alignment as he didn't want to lose his paladinhood do to alignment issues.
Honestly, other than the paladin and his smite ability, alignment wasn't missed much.
The easiest fix for this I've found is separating supernatural alignment from regular alignment.
What this means is that a Paladin who has "Detect Evil" will have "Detect Supernatural Evil" which is basically "Detect the Powers of Hell" as opposed to "gonna find out who's naughty or nice."
Things that "Detect Evil" as "Detect Supernatural Evil" will ping on:
Fiends
Clerics and Blackguards of any Evil god
Mages with a Fiendish familiar
Anyone who's made a pact with a creature of the lower planes, even if they've since regretted this and realized it was stupid.
Anyone with enough fiendish ancestry to qualify as a warlock or fiendish sorcerer, even if they're not currently following that path.
Magic items that are empowered by fiends and evil gods, even if the effect of these things is neutral or even beneficial.
The Talisman of Ultimate Evil
Things that "Detect Evil" as "Detect Supernatural Evil" will not ping on:
Ordinary Mortals
Lay worshippers of evil gods, no matter how devout, who've failed to receive any infernal blessing or even recognition in this life
Other sinners including, but not limited to, liars, thieves, murderers, poisoners, adulterers, idolaters (meaning people who worship evil gods who are dead or otherwise don't exist), cannibals, people who talk in church or the theatre, children or adults who chew with their mouth open, blasphemers and people who wear white shoes after St. Cuthbert's Day
Crazy people, even the viciously psychotically axe-crazy
Supernatural things which may be Evil but whose Supernaturality is not composed of Evilness, including but not limited to dragons, undead, magical beast, fey, giants, etc.
Cursed items, which are basically traps or badly designed magic
Necromantic magic or necromantic items, no matter how deadly
Note, this interpretation goes with the assumption that the Negative Energy which powers undead is "Death Energy" as opposed to "Pure Evil" and that Death does not equal Evil. There's really not much difference between an ogre who wants to kill you and eat your bones, a ghoul who wants to do the same, a bear who also thinks this is a good plan, and a cannibal who also likes the idea but would like to cook you first. And while you rising up as another ghoul may be evil, it's basically undead rabies and certainly nothing Hell would be interested in, because every soul that rises as undead is another soul that Hell's still not gotten. And a crazed axe murderess who mistakes you for her dead husband, or a crazed ghost who mistakes you for her murderous living husband? Both crazy and therefore dangerous but not supernaturally evil.
This also assumes that the afterlife can be a bit Wild West, and while some souls are immediately greeted by servants of their god or other appropriate psychopomps to bear them to their final reward, whatever the hell that is, others may have multiple otherworldly emissaries arrive for them and battle with swords or legalities, weighing their sins and virtues and arguing whether wearing white shoes after St. Cuthbert's day is really a sin or just bad fashion sense, and still others are left to wander, falling prey to whoever or whatever exists in the otherworldly realm where they are, and having their soul end up with some fate, good or bad, that it didn't deserve but happened to it anyway.
Anyway, that's the best way I've found around the alignment wrangle.
It messes with a ton of cleric spells.
We play that way. Demons, celestials, etc. all have alignments, because they embody certain cosmic principles. Ordinary mortals don't, unless they swear themselves to those principles and/or bind their souls to them. So a paladin is lawful good, but a fighter might or might not have an alignment at all.
What this means, in essence, is that a holy weapon doesn't automatically deal +2d6 damage against nearly every opponent you run across. It also makes for a slightly "grittier" feel, inasfar as people can do stuff without their "alignment" changing -- but that's not to say there are no repercussions, because their companions may react poorly, and even if a whole party goes rogue, the NPCs they meet are likely to catch on pretty quickly that "these adventurers are not to be trusted." (Also, no alignment doesn't mean there aren't any laws, obviously.)
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We play that way. Demons, celestials, etc. all have alignments, because they embody certain cosmic principles. Ordinary mortals don't, unless they swear themselves to those principles and/or bind their souls to them. So a paladin is lawful good, but a fighter might or might not have an alignment at all.
Makes sense. Any class that doesn't have an alignment aura mentioned as a class feature (Cleric, Paladin, probably Blackguard) should be fine and dandy. Any monster that doesn't have an alignment subtype (or levels in one of the above classes) would be similarly 'unaligned.'
It makes the specific use of protection from evil, smite evil, holy smite, word of chaos, etc. more limited, but that's an acceptable price to pay, IMO.
This interpretation also makes some spells a hell of a lot more useful.
For example, take Holy Word. Let's say you have a bunch of fiends popped out of the pit attacking villagers, stuffing children into sacks to take them back to hell, etc. Without this interpretation, throwing Holy Word would not only send the fiends back to Hell, it would kill every villager there who wasn't some flavor of Good, and that includes all the children, including and especially the babies who are just beginning to grasp concepts like "My butt is wet" and "I'm hungry" and really haven't gotten around to understanding moral decisions, let alone making them. And depending on interpretation, the Holy Word may even cause spontaneous abortions.
Wow, thanks Father Krispify! You really showed those fiends! Care to make a Knowledge Religion check to have a theological explanation for why this is still a "Good Thing" (TM) followed by a Perform Oratory check to convince the peasants of that?
If you instead go with the "Only Supernatural Evil" interpretation, your Holy World blasts all the fiends as well as the one villager who was actually a secret devil worshipper with a pact and everything, and the only abortion it may perform is on the girl carrying a tiefling over there, which will still be traumatic, but at least is on firmer theological ground. Of course it may also hurt a friendly tiefling who's trying to go against his infernal inheritance, but if you weren't willing to have an occasional bout of "It burns, mommy! It burns!" you shouldn't be playing a tiefling.
And it also follows logically. Holy water does not and should not burn regular children, or even children who might deserve sticks and coal in their stockings. It only burns fiends and fiendish creatures.
For example, take Holy Word. Let's say you have a bunch of fiends popped out of the pit attacking villagers, stuffing children into sacks to take them back to hell, etc. Without this interpretation, throwing Holy Word would not only send the fiends back to Hell, it would kill every villager there who wasn't some flavor of Good, and that includes all the children, including and especially the babies who are just beginning to grasp concepts like "My butt is wet" and "I'm hungry" and really haven't gotten around to understanding moral decisions, let alone making them. And depending on interpretation, the Holy Word may even cause spontaneous abortions.
Hey, if "my butt is wet" doesn't qualify as original sin, I'm no theologian :)
Send those nippers back to hell!
(obviously, I'm also not a parent....)
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We play that way. Demons, celestials, etc. all have alignments, because they embody certain cosmic principles. Ordinary mortals don't, unless they swear themselves to those principles and/or bind their souls to them. So a paladin is lawful good, but a fighter might or might not have an alignment at all.
What this means, in essence, is that a holy weapon doesn't automatically deal +2d6 damage against nearly every opponent you run across. It also makes for a slightly "grittier" feel, inasfar as people can do stuff without their "alignment" changing -- but that's not to say there are no repercussions, because their companions may react poorly, and even if a whole party goes rogue, the NPCs they meet are likely to catch on pretty quickly that "these adventurers are not to be trusted." (Also, no alignment doesn't mean there aren't any laws, obviously.)
Laws? What are those?
Yeah, I don't remember the last time I filled in that line on a character sheet...
We play that way. Demons, celestials, etc. all have alignments, because they embody certain cosmic principles. Ordinary mortals don't, unless they swear themselves to those principles and/or bind their souls to them. So a paladin is lawful good, but a fighter might or might not have an alignment at all.
What this means, in essence, is that a holy weapon doesn't automatically deal +2d6 damage against nearly every opponent you run across. It also makes for a slightly "grittier" feel, inasfar as people can do stuff without their "alignment" changing -- but that's not to say there are no repercussions, because their companions may react poorly, and even if a whole party goes rogue, the NPCs they meet are likely to catch on pretty quickly that "these adventurers are not to be trusted." (Also, no alignment doesn't mean there aren't any laws, obviously.)
This is an issue that I have been wanting to deal with for sometime now. I'm not currently running a Pathfinder/D&D game, but I soon will be and these are the house rules I believe I'll be using.
I usually keep undead in the supernatural evil category, other than that, what Kevin said.
I usually keep undead in the supernatural evil category, other than that, what Kevin said.
I usually refer people to this page:
http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=34248
I'm going with the "Playing with Fire" option for negative energy and the Land of Shadows, as opposed to the "Crawling Darkness" option.
If you go with "the Crawling Darkness" for negative energy, then it definitely gets the "Supernatural Evil" tag as well, and Sense Evil and Protection from Evil should work as well against it as they do fiends.
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I'm going with the "Playing with Fire" option for negative energy and the Land of Shadows, as opposed to the "Crawling Darkness" option.
If you go with "the Crawling Darkness" for negative energy, then it definitely gets the "Supernatural Evil" tag as well, and Sense Evil and Protection from Evil should work as well against it as they do fiends.
Same here, I go with the 3.0 unaligned mindless undead.
If I want to go with negative energy = evil, I'll make skeletons and zombies [Evil] subtyped, life-hating and not-mindless (Int 3, same as a Fiendish animal).
But that would require all sorts of work I don't want to do, since making negative energy = evil would mean that positive energy = good, and evil clerics would no longer be able to cast cure light wounds without risking divine retaliation. I have zero desire to write up a bunch of new spells (necromanctic life-transfers? painful transmutations? some of each?) that allow evil Clerics to heal without using positive energy and 'accidentally becoming good.'
It's just not worth it. Negative and positive energy, the planes thereof, and the creatures therein, remain unaligned (which happens to be RAW, anyway), as do the majority of spells that use them (except obviously evil spells, like death knell!).
A negative = evil, positive = good setting could make an interesting game world, but, since I already have the RAW solution of negative and positive energy being not-evil and not-good, I don't need to bother making up the rules to support it.
Did you know that detect evil doesn't someone of evil alignment with 5HD or less, unless that someone happens to be an undead crature, an outsider or a priest?
That means some selfish jerk (e.g. NE commoner 1) cannot be detected by paladins.
GMs should probably give really evil people (child rapists, mass murderers) an aura regardless of their HD (treat them as priests), but for your everyday person, alignment is a non-issue.
Treat those who do not show up on the Evil Radar as having a non-alignment for other alignment spells as well. Smite evil won't particularly hurt that selfish NE commoner 1 jerk.
Make alignment half-optional: Those who don't want to be particularly evil or good stay neutral. Same for those who don#t want to be particularly law-abiding or anarchic. Or just leave it blank if you want.
If the GM deems it important, he can keep track of their alignment. If they do something that is significantly evil, good, lawful, or chaotic, they wander closer to that. If not, they won't.
My concern is more with what 'good' clerics and paladins are trying to do with their spells, and the general perception of said people about undead. The undead themselves are usually neutral (and rarely, good) but at some point somebody decided negative energy=evil.
My concern is more with what 'good' clerics and paladins are trying to do with their spells, and the general perception of said people about undead. The undead themselves are usually neutral (and rarely, good) but at some point somebody decided negative energy=evil.
Not any more. Compare the detect evil tables in 3.5 and Pathfinder; the Pathfinder version only detects aligned undead. In other words, detect evil now only detects evil undead. Your good baelnorns, archliches, or what-have-you are no longer pinging the pallie-dar.
Yes but we aren't using the pathfinder method here, this is homebrew.
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Perhaps you could keep most of the spells working if you had them worked off the creature's descriptor rather than alignment.
I will eventually work out everything I need to do to run Pathfinder with allegiances rather than alignments. I see the allegiance system as alignments+ rather than a full replacement.
In otherwords I can see people loyal to Chelixax, but not evil. Perhaps having an allegiance to Cheliax, and Law. I Eagle Kight could have an allegiance to Andoran, Eagle Kights and Good.
I do see however that some people think that is over kill. But it works for me. I don't think of alignments as bad, I just want more.
GMs should probably give really evil people (child rapists, mass murderers) an aura regardless of their HD (treat them as priests), but for your everyday person, alignment is a non-issue.
The trouble is, there you get into legalities and definitions: What age is "child," what constitutes "rape," what number is "mass," and what constitutes "murder."
What happens when you get the fifty year old king and the twelve year old child bride? What happens if the king has never slept with a woman (because he's gay) but needs to produce an heir to prevent a civil war, and marrying this girl has prevented another war, and by the standards of her people, any female who's gotten her first menses is a woman? What if the councilors fudged for politics sake (think of the Chinese gymnast scandal) and she's really ten and/or hasn't gotten her period yet, so she's legally a child, but no one's told the king? Who does the DM zap with the "Eeeevil" label?
Ditto mass murder. Who's the biggest murderer: the headsman who simply chops off the head of whoever the king puts on the block, the plotting wazir who orders the death of troublesome families, the mercenary who will kill enemy soldiers until you stop paying him or the war ends, the assassin who will do the same but with civilians in peacetime, the lords and merchants who pay for the aforementioned "services," the crazy guy who thinks bunnies have told him to cut out the hearts of evil witches to stop them from ending the world, the other crazy guy who thinks bats tell him that collecting enough virgin hearts will let him end the world, the woman who's never married an abusive husband she couldn't poison and has progressively looser standards for what she considers "abuse," or the giggling vapid princess who really likes it when men fight for her "honor" and is responsible for more deaths and maimings than all of the above combined?
Now, we could argue each case until the cows come home, but personally, for my world, I've decided that everything is for the gods to decide, and the gods have decided that they leave this business up to the Judges of the Dead. And the Judges of the Dead make it their policy to not pronounce judgement before someone, you know, dies, and even then, the paperwork can be backed up for years.
But surely, you ask, aren't there some low level people so Eeeevil that they should get the Eeeevil flag early? Like, for example, when Santa is going through his "Naughty" list and finds three successful murderers under the age of eight, and one of them already getting into the multiples? Should he maybe--rather than just coal and sticks in their stockings and a visit by Black Peter to smack then around a little--go a little it further? Dip them in an inkwell or something, or at least do the same thing metaphysically so they radiate Eeevil for all the Paladins who might be looking and they blow up if someone throws a Holy Word?
Yeah, he can do that. He's a saint, and being cursed by a celestial being counts just as well as gaining the blessing of an infernal one for getting the "Team Evil" T-shirt. But even then, he should probably put in a personal appearance to let them repent, but which one is the worst? The dead blackguard's son who once went along with dad for a "take your kid to the office" day, and is now out to be just like daddy, and is making a pretty impressive start? The daughter of the still living cannibal highwaymen who helps mommy fix dinner when she isn't serving as lure? Little Rhoda who killed Claude for the spelling medal all on her lonesome? Should he maybe have lunch with the Judges of the Dead before he goes to get their advice on these matters? And what should he do about the tiefling kids who keep calling Black Peter "daddy" and cry if they get put on the "Nice" list? And what insane bard though his list only needed to be checked "twice"? Ho-ho-ho! Yeah, right.
Ergo, I generally rule that being cursed by the Celestial powers is about as likely as being blessed by the Infernal ones. Which is to say, yeah, maybe, but they generally don't bother with the mortal world that much.
Interestingly enough, our group has been playing without alignments for the last 3+ years. Our DM ditched alignments because he feels that without them we're capable of playing more fluid, human characters who aren't straight-jacketed into their decisions by two letters on your character sheet. Anything with an alignment subtype still keeps that subtype, mindless undead are inherently neutral (they have no souls), and paladins detect intention rather than alignment.
The best change about this is that Paladins now have wildly different flavor when it comes to the gods. A paladin of the healer goddess would see warfare and destruction as evil acts, while a paladin of the law god would see acts to bring about social anarchy as evil. It also means that you've got a more flexible sense of what lawful even means- Paladins of the god of law would be forced to obey every law of the realms, while the healer goddess's paladins need only conform to her specific tenants.
As players we still write down our alignment, but it's only for quick reference.
On a side note, I'm currently playing a neutral good necromancer with a fleet of mindless undead minions. It's pretty fantastic.
On the topic of Alignments, I personally am strongly for using them, since I like to run games that have a bit of a supernatural feel, meaning that the real heroes are REALLY good and the real villains are REALLY bad.
I however often have players who basically would prefer to remove alignments to the trashcan.
My usual solution is to run with an alignment system based on the 3.5 planar alignment, meaning you can be strongly or mildly good/evil/lawful/chaotic... so if you're "just" a bit selfish and such you're mildly evil and if you're a sadistic murderer you're definitely strongly evil. I never let this influence actual game statistics. It's only for the flavour of it, but actually that's often what people in my gaming group feel like needs alteration anyway.
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A character who casts an evil spell will have an evil aura which lingers for a few rounds. While the aura lingers they will be especially susceptible to spells like holy word.
This rule can apply whether or not you use alignments. IIRC detect magic gives rules for how long magic lingers.
That's a clever idea! Very cool!
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Alignments are totaly irrelevant!
The only time i've bothered myself with alignment in the last 20 years are:
#1 when i run a Ravenloft campaign because the dark powers just want you to do nasty things! Ravenloft is not just a trek out in the country side to smith undeads and mad weirdos (that is fun nonetheless)
but its also a trip down into the most hidden and dark nature of living beings!
#2 when someone is playing a paly or some sort of heavy moraly aligned toon. Even then i juge the paly's act on an overall basis instead of scrying each and every moves and thoughts of that said paladin.
I don't mind a paladin falling in a fit of rage caused by anger and sadness when he finally confront the evil doer that killed countless innoncents to further his rise to power!
Imagine you finally confront the "Hitler level like" vilain at the end of the story arc... you have 2 options:
A) Offering him to surrender peacefully and having breakfast on the way to the prison.
B) Just smithing the crap out of that bastard once and for all in the memories of all those dead innocents.
I'm goin B!
Paladins are champions of good.. not champions of stupidity!
Smite Evil (or Smite X) should be defined by the religion, possibly even the worldy church leaders. Particularly harsh churches could be "Smite Infidel", working on anyone not of their faith. A war god could be "Smite Enemy", working on anyone loyal to whomever war was declared on. Some may be "Smite (someone)", where (someone) is the person/group/descriptor/quality the high priest decried last sermon (and possibly changing every week).
This is definitley a more "real world"-like approach, and could certainly lead to interesting tests for a paladin, especially if he is a paladin of a religion that isn't necessarily good. A good example is the church of Menoth in the Iron Kingdoms. Officially LN, the church is mostly ran by the LE branch. Paladins exist, but are rarer, and sometimes their faith is considered suspect by the LN & LE elements.
The trouble is, there you get into legalities and definitions: What age is "child," what constitutes "rape," what number is "mass," and what constitutes "murder."
God does. It's his right, he grants you that spell, after all.
Either that, or GM.
For example, if I'm GMing and someone tries to weasel his way out of something with semantics about rape, he suddenly has all alignments at once, and everyone else in the world can smite his opposite alignment (even true neutral), and everyone hates him for some reason.
Interestingly enough, our group has been playing without alignments for the last 3+ years. Our DM ditched alignments because he feels that without them we're capable of playing more fluid, human characters who aren't straight-jacketed into their decisions by two letters on your character sheet.
I feel the same way.
But instead of playing without alignments, I just play without children ;-P
Alignments are totaly irrelevant!
The only time i've bothered myself with alignment in the last 20 years are:
#1 when i run a Ravenloft campaign because the dark powers just want you to do nasty things! Ravenloft is not just a trek out in the country side to smith undeads and mad weirdos (that is fun nonetheless)
but its also a trip down into the most hidden and dark nature of living beings!#2 when someone is playing a paly or some sort of heavy moraly aligned toon. Even then i juge the paly's act on an overall basis instead of scrying each and every moves and thoughts of that said paladin.
I don't mind a paladin falling in a fit of rage caused by anger and sadness when he finally confront the evil doer that killed countless innoncents to further his rise to power!Imagine you finally confront the "Hitler level like" vilain at the end of the story arc... you have 2 options:
A) Offering him to surrender peacefully and having breakfast on the way to the prison.
B) Just smithing the crap out of that bastard once and for all in the memories of all those dead innocents.
I'm goin B!
Paladins are champions of good.. not champions of stupidity!
Question is, is this prison one that's going to include a trial as well as possible execution for war crimes? And is the paladin reasonably certain that the wheels of justice in this place actually work, rather than being, shall we say, greased or overgreased?
As champions of law, paladins are supposed to uphold the legal system, not make it up as they go along. As champions of good, they're supposed to uphold goodness, whatever the hell goodness is. It's kind of schizophrenic, honestly. It's supposed to include Mercy whereas Vengeance is supposed to be one of the hallmarks of Team Evil, and "smiting the crap out of that bastard once and for all in the memories of all those dead innocents" really does sound an awful lot like vengeance to me.
Now, you could doll up that Vengeance as Righteous Fury instead (though how one can tell Righteous Fury from the deadly sin of Wrath is a bit of a pickle too) and smite the genocidal bastard's head off which may of course be all well and good and a matter between you and your goddess until of course you find that you just smote the head off the Fuhrer's charmed body double who was just some poor farm kid who was conscripted, ensorcelled, and ultimately punked by you. Do you get to count him as one of "those dead innocents" too? Does any of this crime go on your conscience? How many tears do you shed over this, and the same question for your goddess and all of her angels, and are any of these tears appreciably different from those said to be shed by crocodiles?
If you want your paladins to be Inglourious Basterds, that's fine, but personally I hold them to a higher standard and ditto the goddesses and gods that empower them. There's a line in the Quran somewhere which I think says "If you kill one innocent, it's the same as if you murdered the whole world" which basically comes down to saying so far as Goodness goes, sanctioning genocide versus murdering one poor charmed farmboy? Yep, pretty much the same thing. You've just done a deed for Team Evil and you should lose your paladinhood.
Wait, what's that you say? Your goddess backs you up? Can we get an Angel of Truth to witness that? Great! The Ecumenical Council of the Gods of Good, though greatly saddened by this event, have unanimously voted to expel your goddess from Their august body. They've had some qualms about Her actions in the past, but this one is the straw that's broken the celestial donkey's back. They wish Her well in her future endeavors as a Lawful Neutral goddess of vengeance. If She could check Her Good domain with the Angel of Temperance at the door, it would be appreciated.
As players we have the luxury our characters dont...meta-game knowledge. We know more about the gods's motivation and plots than they do. This means what our characters take on faith, we take as fact when we created them.
To return to my example, the paladin of Sarenrae who smites an enemy he knows to be evil is bwing both lawful and good. He is destroying evil and carrying out the laws of his god. Also in this case, destruction of those who will not repent their evil is mandated by the church and deity. Sarenrae is neutral good which often supports and is in turn supported by a "repent or fall" mindset even more than lawful good at times and is often willing to go to greater extremes than a lawful good faith is. If the paladin refused to carry out part of the basic doctrine of the deity that could endanger their lawful aspect.
You're skipping over my example: What happens when the paladin, thinking he's caught the unrepentant BBEG, smites him, only realizing after he's dead and they've started to go into Speak with Dead to find where he's hidden the McGuffin, the Princess, and the Thousand Virgins, does the paladin find out that he's instead terminally smote the innocent body double, who was subject to a little Charm Person, a little Misdirection and not much else? What happens when the BBEG frames some other patsy? Does the paladin kill him too? And what exactly is Sarenrae doing about this guy creating a river of blood in Her name because the BBEG is frankly more clever than Her paladin?
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What happens when the BBEG frames some other patsy? Does the paladin kill him too? And what exactly is Sarenrae doing about this guy creating a river of blood in Her name because the BBEG is frankly more clever than Her paladin?
The first time is a 'fool me once, shame on you' situation. Yeah, bad, but if the smite worked in the first place, then the patsy still wasn't a nice person, and, ultimately, the bad-guy was the one who got the patsy killed by putting him in that position.
But if the Paladin starts making a habit of 'accidentally' killing secondary targets or (relatively) innocent bystanders, that's his bad, and Sarenrae is gonna do some smiting of her own. Blindess seems particularly appropriate as a punishment from the sun-goddess for someone who keeps smiting before looking.
I wouldn't punish a Paladin for getting suckered, once. If he makes a habit of getting led around like a bull in a china shop, then yeah, that's a problem and he needs to learn a little temperance.
The first time is a 'fool me once, shame on you' situation. Yeah, bad, but if the smite worked in the first place, then the patsy still wasn't a nice person, and, ultimately, the bad-guy was the one who got the patsy killed by putting him in that position.
Oh, he could have been a perfectly nice person. If he was low level (and why charm someone who wasn't, if you want an expendable patsy?), the regular blow would have been enough to kill him even before the Smite portion of the program failed.
Hell, what BBEG would bother killing even a low level evil minion when there's a good patsy available? Why not make it a devout worshipper of Sarenrae while you're at it? Won't the look on Her face be priceless when one of the innocents Her paladin was supposed to rescue shows up at Her pearly gates, brutally stabinated by Her paladin?
And will Sarenrae, upon receiving the brutally slain innocent, admit even the slightest bit of fault on Her part for having chosen a smite-happy idiot as Her paladin?
But if the Paladin starts making a habit of 'accidentally' killing secondary targets or (relatively) innocent bystanders, that's his bad, and Sarenrae is gonna do some smiting of her own. Blindess seems particularly appropriate as a punishment from the sun-goddess for someone who keeps smiting before looking.
So how many strikes does he get before She yanks the Paladinhood?
I wouldn't punish a Paladin for getting suckered, once. If he makes a habit of getting led around like a bull in a china shop, then yeah, that's a problem and he needs to learn a little temperance.
Does Sarenrae tell the brutally murdered innocent that She allows all Her paladins one free screw-up, and She's so sorry that he had to be this one's? Does the innocent get a special martyr's crown and a nicer seat in the heavenly choir to mark the occasion?
And won't it make for fun heavenly politics if some of the other stabinated innocents are devotees of other good gods?
It messes with a ton of cleric spells.
Nonsense and you know it.
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Won't the look on Her face be priceless when one of the innocents Her paladin was supposed to rescue shows up at Her pearly gates, brutally stabinated by Her paladin?
Considering that her church dominates an empire founded on slavery, that happily has raided neighboring Sarenrae-worshipping countries to take slaves, I'm pretty sure 'that look' has set into her face by now.
Sarenrae has got to be a very disappointed goddess.
Random Jesuit musing; If a saint has the patience of a saint, how many saints worth of patience does a goddess have? Please show your work.
And will Sarenrae, upon receiving the brutally slain innocent, admit even the slightest bit of fault on Her part for having chosen a smite-happy idiot as Her paladin?
If he died fast enough that the Paladin didn't notice his smite going off, it probably didn't hurt long. And anyway, she's a goddess. Being a god means never having to say you're sorry, and it's only hubris when a mortal acts that way.
So how many strikes does he get before She yanks the Paladinhood?
Hard and fast rules are for suckers. She can decide whether or not the Paladin had a chance to detect the subterfuge and just bulled on into manslaughter 1 anyway, or if he was well and truly snookered by a very clever and very naughty man.
Does Sarenrae tell the brutally murdered innocent that She allows all Her paladins one free screw-up, and She's so sorry that he had to be this one's? Does the innocent get a special martyr's crown and a nicer seat in the heavenly choir to mark the occasion?
He gets to be in heaven. Some would even call that a reward. If he's not happy with the decor, he can take it up with the man downstairs. Upgrades to your accomodations cost extra, but downgrades are complimentary.
Does she also have to apologize to all of the Osirioni and Taldan Sarenrae-worshippers who have died at the hands of Kelish and Qadiran Sarenrae-worshipping imperialists? Or does she just say, "Yeah, I didn't kill you. Another human did, and you would have killed him if you'd had any idea how to use that sword, and then he'd be here asking me the same question. You humans kill each other all the time, without any help from me, and you lived down there all your life, so you had plenty of time to figure that out. Here's your harp and birkenstocks, get over it."
In-game, if the Paladin has been tricked by an evil jerk, the evil jerk is the one who'se done the evil jerkitude. If he's lax and allowed himself to get played (or, worse, was warned of the possibility of a bait-n-switch, but ignored it and went in like a head-choppin' fool anyway), then he's got 'splainin' to do. If nobody at the table had a clue and it was truly a cunning plan, worthy of putting a tail on and calling a weasel, then the bad-guy deserves all the credit for his evil shenanigans (and by credit, I mean blame).
Ideally, the Paladin will learn that this sort of thing can happen, and be a little more careful in the future. On the other hand, if he's paralyzed with doubt and refuses to ever stick a sword in a bad-guy again, for fear that they might be a charmed do-gooder, he's pretty darn useless as a holy warrior anyway, and might as well shave his head and go join the Penitent Brotherhood of Not Stabbing Stuff Anymore 'Cause of That One Time I Stabbed the Wrong Stuff and Felt Really Bad About It.
Out-of-game, if the DM is setting traps for the Paladin, *trying* to make him fall from grace, then the DM should grow a pair and tell this player whom he hates so much that he sits around fantasizing ways to dick him over that he's no longer welcome at his games.
Or just say, 'no Paladins,' if it's Paladins he hates enough to be constantly attempting to strip of their class abilities, and not a personal problem with the player of said Paladin, rather than starting an arms race that is only going to lead to those personal problems mentioned above.
One tragic mistake can be good role-playing fodder. Playing that card multiple times, however, is just needlessly adversarial, and player / DM strife of that sort is better handled *before* the group sits down at the gaming table, not by obsessively plotting clever ways to frustrate and punish the player 'in-game.'
And there's no reason that tragic mistake can't happen to the party Rogue, who gets an assignment to backstabbinate someone, and finds out that she's just been snookered by the evil dude who wants to take over the guild into backstabbinating the guild-leader's daughter, which leads him to going nuts and instigating a shadowy civil war of thieves and assassins that throws the city into chaos! Or she could be tricked into stealing a holy relic that keeps Ghouls out of the undercity. Whoops! Thieves Highway is now closed for business, and, oh yeah, rampant Ghoul attacks! Bad Rogue! What do you mean you *sold* Saint Ghoul-Be-Gone's Holy Femur! [Note to self; use this someday. Snooker party into stealing something that protects the city and have their theft allow it to be invaded!]
There's no reason for the Paladins to get all the drama.
Oh, it's not just for paladins. The factotum in my game (and if there's a class that should have known better, this is the one) when exploring a ruined villa discovered the petrified remains of a basilisk's victims, including a couple babies. He took the petrified babies with him and later encountered a gnome taking a display card full of magic compasses off to the Tiend Faire in Fairyland--that fair where the elves pay the rent to the devils every seven years in the form of beautiful and stupid young mortals. While bargaining for one of the compasses, he offered various things in trade, including the marble "statues" of the two babies. The gnome accepted the two statues for one of the compasses, but since the player was taking time figuring out which one he wanted, scarpered off with the (easily unpetrified and extremely saleable) babies and left the factotum with the entire sample case of compasses.
By the time the party found the gnome, he'd long since sold the babies and was getting fabulously drunk. The party has not let the factotum live down "that time you sold babies to the elves."
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Kevin... poor Kevin!
In my exemple it assume the evil was clearly evil. I'm not waisting my time always setting traps on paly and if i did it would be a major turning event in the story arc and the trap would be set to the whole party!
It's all about how the DM view things in his campaign. I value as much the paly as you are doin but i see them in a different role. Of course he as to shine by exemple like showing mercy, honour, valor, truthfullness and the whole bucket of chevalric things.
What i'm talking about are those rare occasions where, i as a DM, i totaly agree with the paly goin nuts and making sure that the only sentence possible is taken care of wich is a swift but brutal death in the name of goodness with the voices of all those who have been killed, enslaved or wronged saying "good lord thank you paly... that was about damn time!"
I'm not talking about smithing a peasant that stole a pig and one dozen of eggs... i'm talking about beating the crap out of someone who is the embodiment of evil!
anyway like someone said "arguing over the net is like special olympics... "even if you win you're still retarded! "
It messes with a ton of cleric spells.Nonsense and you know it.
No, it isn't, and you know it because you ceded the point on the other thread. Stop trolling.
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No, it isn't, and you know it because you ceded the point on the other thread. Stop trolling.It messes with a ton of cleric spells.Nonsense and you know it.
Can you point me to that other thread? I'm thinking that saying 'all characters are neutral' solves most of the spells problem, but I'll like to read up and see if anyone can change my mind.
Kevin... poor Kevin!
In my exemple it assume the evil was clearly evil. I'm not waisting my time always setting traps on paly and if i did it would be a major turning event in the story arc and the trap would be set to the whole party!
It's all about how the DM view things in his campaign. I value as much the paly as you are doin but i see them in a different role. Of course he as to shine by exemple like showing mercy, honour, valor, truthfullness and the whole bucket of chevalric things.
What i'm talking about are those rare occasions where, i as a DM, i totaly agree with the paly goin nuts and making sure that the only sentence possible is taken care of wich is a swift but brutal death in the name of goodness with the voices of all those who have been killed, enslaved or wronged saying "good lord thank you paly... that was about damn time!"
I'm not talking about smithing a peasant that stole a pig and one dozen of eggs... i'm talking about beating the crap out of someone who is the embodiment of evil!anyway like someone said "arguing over the net is like special olympics... "even if you win you're still retarded! "
Well, the example was someone like Hitler. The fact is, you can't commit genocide on your lonesome. If you tried to sacrifice every single innocent personally on the altar of Asmodeus, your wrist would fall off from carpal tunnel syndrome long before you reached your first million. So that means you need help: either mooks and minions and armies, or plagues, or some magical means to gack a whole race. And the last three generally mean someone with a lot of cleverness, a lot of resources, and no scruples about using every last one of them in his defense.
Having your villain say "Yes! Yes! I am the BBEG! And I'd do it again, ha-ha!" and paly gets a clear swing at him with no ambiguity or trickery? That's Hitler as Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain.
I simply go with a more complex world where all the evil overlords have actually read the Evil Overlord's List and are willing to play every dirty trick in their arsenal if it saves their skin. And the same way that an anti-magic field screws with mages, moral ambiguity screws with paladins. Keep a few dewy-eyed innocents around you for just such occasions. If kissing babies was good enough for Hitler, it's good enough for you, and having a palace daycare center means that those with moral compunctions about killing innocents can't just meteor swarm the building. And even the Greek choruses of murdered innocents cheering paly on and wailing for vengeance are going to be given pause by the ghosts of a bunch of slain toddlers whose only opinion of the evil overlord is that he was the nice man who gave them lollies.
And in a world with magic, only an evil overlord who qualifies for the special olympics would not think to use a little disguise, a little Misdirection, and a Teleport spell or two to exit an area that's become insecure.
EDIT: Nevermind, you found it.
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Alignments work well as guidelines not as absolutes.
Chaotic characters do not have to be continually on the run from the law. They don't have to break every rule, social custom or taboo of society either. I feel that chaotic characters just don't put much faith in a grand plan for the universe. Chaotic characters follow their heart and don't think too far ahead. They can follow orders and work with a team when they must but they don't feel compelled to do so.
Lawful characters generally follow the rules, social customs and taboos of society because they generally feel there is a purpose to the universe and acting in concert with the whole provides harmony and stability. Lawful characters can abide cruelty or benevolence. They just become uneasy and restless when they do not know what to expect.
Now to me, the moral axis (good, neutral, evil) does outweigh the ethical axis (chaos, neutrality, law) to a slight degree. A paladin in Cheliax would not participate in Devil worship, sacrifces or support slavery. Paladins would try to work within the law to reform the system and would resort to force of arms if needed to protect innocents and those not strong enough to defend themselves. Paladins respect authority and try to work with the system but are not tied to the system and bound by it like a Lawful Neutral character would be.