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The people who are anti-antagonize-as-written aren't always against fighters-having-nice-things.
This keeps getting lost in the conversation.
See all the other versions of antagonize put forth in this thread.
Aye. I would just make antagonizing the enemy a feature of Intimidate or Diplomacy skills, and allow greater flexibility in interpreting how it works based on character and inclination.
Trying to say people know antagonize exist is just like saying they know skill focus exist. All they know is that someone is particularly good at something.
I'm not saying they know the feat exists. I'm saying they know someone especially good at taunting can produce the results involved. There is no need for any in-game reasoning to explain a demonstrable fact of the setting. If the feat is part of the rules of the game, a character in the game world who doesn't accept that people can, in fact, be goaded into attacking in six seconds by a skilled taunter is as silly as the character who denies wizards can cast fireballs.
TheRonin --
Pregnant Bard: "You don't understand I had to stab him the wizards cast this spell on me! {repeats V&S components of the spell}"
Fighter: "I Don't understand, just hearing those words and seeing those gestures didn't make me have to do whatever you want."
Pregnant Bard "S!~!, I can't cast that spell! But next level I will take it and then you will understand."
Fighter: "Okay that makes sense, lets discuss this no more. Also I guess bury the rogue before he smells."
The fighter doesn't understand why magic works, he just understands that it works. Similarly, he doesn't need to know why Antagonize works to understand that it works, even if he is unaware of something specifically called 'Antagonize'. A child might be curious as to why the sky is blue, but a lack of explanation as to why doesn't stop him from seeing that it is blue. If you tell him the sky is orange, he'll correct you immediately.
What you and wraithstrike are complaining about is a lack of verisimilitude. Which is to say, a problem you are having believing it. Which is fine, but it's an out-of-game problem. If your characters in a game where Antagonize works as written had a problem accepting it as real because they don't have an explanation, they're as much idiots as characters who, because nobody's explained to them how gravity works, refuse to believe that rocks will fall.
Is antagonize as written unrealistic? Indubitably. Complain about it all you like. But if you're in a game where the feat exists, and your characters find it unbelievable, they're as insane as a character who refuses to believe in the existence of orcs.
If the feat is part of the accepted rules of the game... I will not play the game. I simply have no desire to sit at a table where Antagonize is neither banned nor house-ruled into something that actually makes sense.
I want to play a character in a world populated by humans, not a character in a world populated by human-like beings with an alien psychology I can't possibly understand. If game rules dictate that characters, as part of normal social interactions, are subject to thoughts and feelings that have no relation to anything I can experience in the real world, I have no ability to relate to those characters and no desire to roleplay them.
I think the sarcasm meter blew up...
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Trying to say people know antagonize exist is just like saying they know skill focus exist. All they know is that someone is particularly good at something.I'm not saying they know the feat exists. I'm saying they know someone especially good at taunting can produce the results involved. There is no need for any in-game reasoning to explain a demonstrable fact of the setting. If the feat is part of the rules of the game, a character in the game world who doesn't accept that people can, in fact, be goaded into attacking in six seconds by a skilled taunter is as silly as the character who denies wizards can cast fireballs.
To that I say this:
If the feat changes the people and the gameworld on such a level that it invalidates certain concepts and ideals, then it is a bad feat. I am not saying everything that anything that can be though of works in the game, but the following should work. There is even a mechanic known as the Vow of Peace to support the following idea.
Player:I would like to play Lee Zun Chu the Elven Tian monk of 234 year. He is a man of peaceful resolve, having not committed an anger based act in 100 of those years. He believes in solving problems through diplomacy, and that violence especially due to is a blight upon the world. Violence is only to be used as a last resort. Even when in combat one must keep the greatest level of discipline for your emotions getting the better for you can cause you to make errors and lead you or your companions into the arms of death.
DM:Sorry. My game has the Antaganize feat. Such concepts can not exist. I also read your other email. Your other idea is also shut down by this feat. If you have to choose to save your friends or fight, you will fight. Now how about you come up with something a little more prone to violence.
edit:Your idea that the GM should just handwave assaults and killing due to the ability being in the game won't go over well in most games. Now people can just kill each other and blame antagonize or the fact that its ability to drive someone into a rage exist.
Defendant:Sir he said ".............."
Judge:"Case dismissed. I understand. You should have killed him twice."
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Defendant; "the child insulted the honor of the inheritor. i had to avenge her pride as a holy knight."
Judge; "i understand, if some child insulted my religion, and i were as pious as you, i would be driven to smite the child as well. it is clearly the child's fault for insulting your faith so strongly."
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My characters are going to stick with "A feat made me do it!"
Defendant; "the child insulted the honor of the inheritor. i had to avenge her pride as a holy knight."
Judge; "i understand, if some child insulted my religion, and i were as pious as you, i would be driven to smite the child as well. it is clearly the child's fault for insulting your faith so strongly."
I'll remember that from now on I should only play in settings where it's legal to beat anyone you want unconscious the second they say something rude to you.
No god would take the powers of a paladin for such a minor offense. After the time and energy expended to call and train a righteous warrior, 1 unarmed blow would not remove his/her paladinhood.
Any GM that ruled it thus is an assmonkey.
I agree 100% with your statement, It appears that the forum boards are still populated by Paladin haters :S
I'll remember that from now on I should only play in settings where it's legal to beat anyone you want unconscious the second they say something rude to you.Defendant; "the child insulted the honor of the inheritor. i had to avenge her pride as a holy knight."
Judge; "i understand, if some child insulted my religion, and i were as pious as you, i would be driven to smite the child as well. it is clearly the child's fault for insulting your faith so strongly."
or have a political title. this title can be anything from a noble title, which can be simple as being the lord of a small shire, to a religious title, which can be possessed by having 1 level in a divine casting class, or can be a title of knighthood, which can be aqcuired by being so skilled in your profession of murder that a lord has you swear an oath and declares you a knight.
No god would take the powers of a paladin for such a minor offense. After the time and energy expended to call and train a righteous warrior, 1 unarmed blow would not remove his/her paladinhood.
Any GM that ruled it thus is an assmonkey.
Any player that was not biased would not make such a silly blanket statement. If the blow kills someone his powers are gone, and there is no in game justification for it since it is murder, and most GM's see murder as evil.
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murder? evil?
when you sign up to be an adventurer, you effectively declare yourself a bandit.
what do bandits do?
they murder
they pillage
they steal
they plunder
they raid
what do adventurers do?
they murder
they pillage
they steal
they plunder
they raid
if murder, raiding, pillaging, theft and plundering were all evil acts. there would be no such thing as good aligned adventurers due to all the evil acts they perform. there is literally no difference between an adventurer and a bandit.
To the people who say the paladin doesn't lose his powers, tell me this: Suppose you're GMing a game and the party enters a town. The Paladin and her god are big on redemption. She meets some kid in the street who makes some rude comment. The player inexplicably decides that her paladin suddenly flips out, takes out a sword, and slices the kid in half.
Would you take away her powers? I think most of us would.
Antagonize isn't a magical compulsion effect. In the universe of the game world, what I just described is identical to what happens when Antagonize is used. The characters - including the gods - cannot tell the difference between the story I just told and the effect of Antagonize, and so they will react to the two in exactly the same ways - including stripping the paladin of her powers.
After all, what's the paladin supposed to tell her god to justify what she did? That the kid used a feat on her?
or have a political title. this title can be anything from a noble title, which can be simple as being the lord of a small shire, to a religious title, which can be possessed by having 1 level in a divine casting class, or can be a title of knighthood, which can be aqcuired by being so skilled in your profession of murder that a lord has you swear an oath and declares you a knight.
I'm sure my bizarre choice to be a Cleric 1/Actual Class X-1 instead of an Actual Class X just to pick up a cleric's title will be really useful when I violate my teachings and randomly assault children in the street. I can't possibly see that losing me public favor or my congregation or my title in a flash.
those children are merely infidels who slander your faith. a proper priest would gladly smite them. it's proper for a cleric to put their religion's honor above common morality.
murder? evil?
when you sign up to be an adventurer, you effectively declare yourself a bandit.
what do bandits do?
they murder
they pillage
they steal
they plunder
they raidwhat do adventurers do?
they murder
they pillage
they steal
they plunder
they raidif murder, raiding, pillaging, theft and plundering were all evil acts. there would be no such thing as good aligned adventurers due to all the evil acts they perform. there is literally no difference between an adventurer and a bandit.
You know what I mean. I am not here to argue semantics. The game makes a difference between killing someone for being mouthy, and killing someone who is the main reason villages have been pillaged and burned to the groud.
edit:If you were being sarcastic then I did not catch it. I just remembered your reply to my last post.
those children are merely infidels who slander your faith. a proper priest would gladly smite them. it's proper for a cleric to put their religion's honor above common morality.
A cleric of Torag, maybe. Not so much a cleric of Sarenrae.
So I guess I'll add "worshipping gods who don't advocate murder as the appropriate response to every slight" to the list of things Antagonize says I'm not allowed to do.
You know what I mean. I am not here to argue semantics. The game makes a difference between killing someone for being mouthy, and killing someone who is the main reason villages have been pillaged and burned to the groud.murder? evil?
when you sign up to be an adventurer, you effectively declare yourself a bandit.
what do bandits do?
they murder
they pillage
they steal
they plunder
they raidwhat do adventurers do?
they murder
they pillage
they steal
they plunder
they raidif murder, raiding, pillaging, theft and plundering were all evil acts. there would be no such thing as good aligned adventurers due to all the evil acts they perform. there is literally no difference between an adventurer and a bandit.
murder is still murder. the only reason high level adventurers aren't arrested for banditry is because they are so badass, the common population fears them and cannot keep up.
those children are merely infidels who slander your faith. a proper priest would gladly smite them. it's proper for a cleric to put their religion's honor above common morality.A cleric of Torag, maybe. Not so much a cleric of Sarenrae.
So I guess I'll add "worshipping gods who don't advocate murder as the appropriate response to every slight" to the list of things Antagonize says I'm not allowed to do.
there is a lot of stuff antagonize doesn't let you do.
the easy way to fix that is to rule that the feat is a supernatural mind affecting compulsion effect.
murder is still murder. the only reason high level adventurers aren't arrested for banditry is because they are so badass, the common population fears them and cannot keep up.
Oh, yeah, I'm sure that when my party saved the city from the evil sorcerer that was sneaking in an army of goblins and had already killed the king's son, the rest of the town would have had us arrested for the vicious crime of saving the city were they not terrified of the magnitude of our evil acts. That feast for saving the city was completely for show and a desperate attempt to appease us into sparing their lives.
FFS, do you play nothing but Evil campaigns or something?
murder is still murder. the only reason high level adventurers aren't arrested for banditry is because they are so badass, the common population fears them and cannot keep up.Oh, yeah, I'm sure that when my party saved the city from the evil sorcerer that was sneaking in an army of goblins and had already killed the king's son, the rest of the town would have had us arrested for the vicious crime of saving the city were they not terrified of the magnitude of our evil acts. That feast for saving the city was completely for show and a desperate attempt to appease us into sparing their lives.
FFS, do you play nothing but Evil campaigns or something?
no, i'm just a very morbid individual.
murder is still murder. the only reason high level adventurers aren't arrested for banditry is because they are so badass, the common population fears them and cannot keep up.You know what I mean. I am not here to argue semantics. The game makes a difference between killing someone for being mouthy, and killing someone who is the main reason villages have been pillaged and burned to the groud.murder? evil?
when you sign up to be an adventurer, you effectively declare yourself a bandit.
what do bandits do?
they murder
they pillage
they steal
they plunder
they raidwhat do adventurers do?
they murder
they pillage
they steal
they plunder
they raidif murder, raiding, pillaging, theft and plundering were all evil acts. there would be no such thing as good aligned adventurers due to all the evil acts they perform. there is literally no difference between an adventurer and a bandit.
That is not true at all, well maybe in your games, but not in other people's games. In most cases the PC's are not the most powerful people around. They are just the only ones willing to deal with the issue, since the game assumes there are other NPC's with class levels in the world. From a realism point of view that kind of fails, but if an NPC did the job then the PC would have nothing to do. There are threads on this. If "the game" considered it to be murder when they took out the bad guys then the paladin would lose his powers due to killing others. That is why I mentioned "game makes a difference".
those children are merely infidels who slander your faith. a proper priest would gladly smite them. it's proper for a cleric to put their religion's honor above common morality.A cleric of Torag, maybe. Not so much a cleric of Sarenrae.
So I guess I'll add "worshipping gods who don't advocate murder as the appropriate response to every slight" to the list of things Antagonize says I'm not allowed to do.
there is a lot of stuff antagonize doesn't let you do.
the easy way to fix that is to rule that the feat is a supernatural mind affecting compulsion effect.
Actually the easiest thing to do is to ban of the feat. The next thing to do is to apply a penalty for not attacking to other activities.
That is not true at all, well maybe in your games, but not in other people's games. In most cases the PC's are not the most powerful people around. They are just the only ones willing to deal with the issue, since the game assumes there are other NPC's with class levels in the world. From a realism point of view that kind of fails, but if an NPC did the job then the PC would have nothing to do. There are threads on this. If "the game" considered it to be murder when they took out the bad guys then the paladin would lose his powers due to killing others. That is why I mentioned "game makes a difference".murder is still murder. the only reason high level adventurers aren't arrested for banditry is because they are so badass, the common population fears them and cannot keep up.You know what I mean. I am not here to argue semantics. The game makes a difference between killing someone for being mouthy, and killing someone who is the main reason villages have been pillaged and burned to the groud.murder? evil?
when you sign up to be an adventurer, you effectively declare yourself a bandit.
what do bandits do?
they murder
they pillage
they steal
they plunder
they raidwhat do adventurers do?
they murder
they pillage
they steal
they plunder
they raidif murder, raiding, pillaging, theft and plundering were all evil acts. there would be no such thing as good aligned adventurers due to all the evil acts they perform. there is literally no difference between an adventurer and a bandit.
you have to differentiate between the types of murder or else paladins wouldn't exist.
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you have to differentiate between the types of murder or else paladins wouldn't exist.
A tip from people who don't consider Chaotic Evil the default alignment of all PCs: butchering random children in the street for being impolite is the bad type of killing that you're not supposed to do.
you have to differentiate between the types of murder or else paladins wouldn't exist.That is not true at all, well maybe in your games, but not in other people's games. In most cases the PC's are not the most powerful people around. They are just the only ones willing to deal with the issue, since the game assumes there are other NPC's with class levels in the world. From a realism point of view that kind of fails, but if an NPC did the job then the PC would have nothing to do. There are threads on this. If "the game" considered it to be murder when they took out the bad guys then the paladin would lose his powers due to killing others. That is why I mentioned "game makes a difference".murder is still murder. the only reason high level adventurers aren't arrested for banditry is because they are so badass, the common population fears them and cannot keep up.You know what I mean. I am not here to argue semantics. The game makes a difference between killing someone for being mouthy, and killing someone who is the main reason villages have been pillaged and burned to the groud.murder? evil?
when you sign up to be an adventurer, you effectively declare yourself a bandit.
what do bandits do?
they murder
they pillage
they steal
they plunder
they raidwhat do adventurers do?
they murder
they pillage
they steal
they plunder
they raidif murder, raiding, pillaging, theft and plundering were all evil acts. there would be no such thing as good aligned adventurers due to all the evil acts they perform. there is literally no difference between an adventurer and a bandit.
I thought I was doing that by giving the example of killing the village pillager vs killing the mouthy person who has not done anything evil.
If that does not work then you might need to give me examples.
player characters, regardless of alignment are pillagers. even if it isn't humans they pillage.
for some reason it's okay to slaughter hordes of orcs and steal their stuff but not okay to do the same to a human.
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player characters, regardless of alignment are pillagers. even if it isn't humans they pillage.
for some reason it's okay to slaughter hordes of orcs and steal their stuff but not okay to do the same to a human.
Not every group plays that way.
If it's evil to do to a human, it's evil to do to an orc.
Most games don't involve the PCs murdering innocents. They fight evil creatures who are a threat to others. A tribe of orcs raiding and killing nearby townsfolk are not innocent, killing them is not murder, and the PCs are not evil for doing it.
Murder is unlawful, killing hostile orcs generally isn't. Killing innocents is evil, killing enemies who intend to kill innocent people generally isn't. That's the difference.
They generally aren't pillagers either. There is a difference between looting the dead and pillaging (intent and method).
player characters, regardless of alignment are pillagers. even if it isn't humans they pillage.
for some reason it's okay to slaughter hordes of orcs and steal their stuff but not okay to do the same to a human.
That is just your view on it. I never said it was ok to kill orcs. In my games they have personalities and emotions just like dwarves and elves do. It seems you have seen to many "NPC's are stat block" games and trying to apply the argument to everyone. Your silly notion that slaughtering orcs is ok, when nobody has made such a statement, supports that. If you want to equate walking into an orc tribe's home and killing them, which would be a slaughter, with killing them because they are the ones leading an assault then go ahead. However there is a difference between killing for your own greed aka pillaging, and killing to defend yourself or your country men.
If you are going to equate the adventurers killing the bad guys who are trying to destroy the village/town/world with killing some random individual then you are playing a different version of the game than we are.
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The current argument in favor of Antagonize not being broken:
"It's okay that it turns your character into a psychotic murderer who kills everything in sight, that's how I play mine anyhow!"
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The current argument in favor of Antagonize not being broken:
"It's okay that it turns your character into a psychotic murderer who kills everything in sight, that's how I play mine anyhow!"
Okay, but the only argument in favor of Antagonize being broken remains:
"I might want play a pacifist, and they can't be goaded into attacking people that quickly."
You are forgetting that fact that it causes characters to behave in unrealistic ways for no particular reason at all. That was another argument against it.
It's not that I forgot, Ronin, it's just that I think the unrealistic part is the 6 second combat round; given how much goes on, it's way too short an amount of time for everything that happens in one round to occur.
I've said it before, I'll say it again, I don't think Antagonize is game-breaking. I have also said before, and will again, that no one's required to use it in their games if they don't like it. As a DM, I don't bother to give my npcs Antagonize, and my players don't take it when they have the option.
It isn't worth the feat slot it uses, but that doesn't mean it's broken and should never have been put in the game.
Oh, yeah, I'm sure that when my party saved the city from the evil sorcerer that was sneaking in an army of goblins and had already killed the king's son, the rest of the town would have had us arrested for the vicious crime of saving the city were they not terrified of the magnitude of our evil acts. That feast for saving the city was completely for show and a desperate attempt to appease us into sparing their lives.
FFS, do you play nothing but Evil campaigns or something?
This pretty much happened in my game.
The heroes discovered that the demonic incursions they had fought off in their hometown for the last few weeks were the result of their own town's much loved healer, herbalist, and midwife.
She began to fear death in her old age, and began experimenting with witch craft and calling circles in hopes of finding a means of staving off death. She wasn't powerful enough to control them though, and they ran amok, burning half the town to the ground.
In the end, the heroes slew the demons, traced it back to the witch, and confronted and killed her.
Once it was reported, the towns folk were outraged. They formed a mob and ran the heroes out of town under pain of death, believing that they had summoned the demons and had murdered a much loved elder (along with a great many others).
Why did they do this? Because the witch never showed any magical ability to the public whatsoever. The heroes on the other hand frequently made extravagant magical displays without provocation or cause.
So yeah, let up on the snarky attitude. If people really played their games with an ounce of story and sense, ignorant villagers would be running off magical heroes left and right out of nothing more than misplaced fear quite often--to say nothing of the attitudes and behavior they really do often exhibit (charming women to bed, ie rape, stealing from shop keeps, and s~+! like that).
As it is, many heroes literally get away with cold-blooded murder in most games. It's a shame, as many GMs encourage the behavior by not doing anything about it, calling it "adventuring."
Being a hero is not breaking your way into a goblin's den and slaying all the men, women, and children. Being a hero is slaying the goblin that hovers over your baby's crib with a knife. Or jumping overboard to save a sailor who has fallen into the sea. Or fighting your way through a demonic hoard to close the portal that allows them into the mortal realm.
Good-aligned adventurers (and nearly all neutral ones) kill only when they have to, to defend themselves or others. Not because there is treasure or XP in it for them.
The world is so f*!#ed up most people don't even know the difference between right and wrong anymore.
I recently played a game in which our characters KNEW that people were being controlled by sentient weapons, and forced to do horrible things. We knew this precisely because many of our own party members had been similarly dominated for a time.
And yet when we were attacked by controlled pawns of these sentient weapons, I was the only one who bothered to do nonlethal damage. No one else even attempted to rescue anyone by disarming them or taking similar actions.
I had a long talk with the GM after that about how I thought he should consider shifting alignments. Even brought it up with the party barbarian, asking him how he could cleave a woman in half even though he knew she was innocent.
"She attacked me. It is the way of our tribe."
"It's the way of your tribe to kill women who need your help?"
What is this world coming to? It's so bad its effecting the game.
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It's not that I forgot, Ronin, it's just that I think the unrealistic part is the 6 second combat round; given how much goes on, it's way too short an amount of time for everything that happens in one round to occur.
I've said it before, I'll say it again, I don't think Antagonize is game-breaking. I have also said before, and will again, that no one's required to use it in their games if they don't like it. As a DM, I don't bother to give my npcs Antagonize, and my players don't take it when they have the option.
It isn't worth the feat slot it uses, but that doesn't mean it's broken and should never have been put in the game.
Just to be clear once again broken does not always mean overpowered. It often also means a feat/spell/etc is badly written, such as this one. The fact that it is so unrealistic is the issue. The pacifist idea is just used to demonstrate that. You don't even need to be someone with that level of dedication to nonviolence to be able to reasonably avoid being goaded into an illogical attack in 6 seconds.
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Just to be clear once again broken does not always mean overpowered. It often also means a feat/spell/etc is badly written, such as this one. The fact that it is so unrealistic is the issue. The pacifist idea is just used to demonstrate that. You don't even need to be someone with that level of dedication to nonviolence to be able to reasonably avoid being goaded into an illogical attack in 6 seconds.It's not that I forgot, Ronin, it's just that I think the unrealistic part is the 6 second combat round; given how much goes on, it's way too short an amount of time for everything that happens in one round to occur.
I've said it before, I'll say it again, I don't think Antagonize is game-breaking. I have also said before, and will again, that no one's required to use it in their games if they don't like it. As a DM, I don't bother to give my npcs Antagonize, and my players don't take it when they have the option.
It isn't worth the feat slot it uses, but that doesn't mean it's broken and should never have been put in the game.
Which several random scenarios already given have shown. Some of which included no Paladins or Pacifists!
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If the feat is part of the rules of the game, a character in the game world who doesn't accept that people can, in fact, be goaded into attacking in six seconds by a skilled taunter is as silly as the character who denies wizards can cast fireballs.If the feat is part of the accepted rules of the game... I will not play the game. I simply have no desire to sit at a table where Antagonize is neither banned nor house-ruled into something that actually makes sense.
I want to play a character in a world populated by humans, not a character in a world populated by human-like beings with an alien psychology I can't possibly understand. If game rules dictate that characters, as part of normal social interactions, are subject to thoughts and feelings that have no relation to anything I can experience in the real world, I have no ability to relate to those characters and no desire to roleplay them.
TLDR version:
Paizo antagonized Epic Meepo.
Heck normal people for the most part don't fly into a murderous rage at 6 secs worth of insults.
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So yeah, let up on the snarky attitude. If people really played their games with an ounce of story and sense, ignorant villagers would be running off magical heroes left and right out of nothing more than misplaced fear quite often--to say nothing of the attitudes and behavior they really do often exhibit (charming women to bed, ie rape, stealing from shop keeps, and s!!% like that).
Actually in most stories the commoners know who the troublemakers are, and who the heroes are by the time the heroes have succeeded. If the commoners don't know, then the heroes should make it a point to gather evidence so I doubt anyone playing with common sense will be run off on a regular basis. As for you demon story I see it as a corner case. It is quiet illogical for people to release demons and then kill the demons, and a random townsperson. If they(your party) were evil it would make sense to just kill the demons and leave as heroes.
I do agree about people often playing Neutral and Good characters in an evil manner though. It does not happen in with majority of players I have seen, but it still happens way to often. Roberta's arugment makes more sense than Shuriken's in any case. He is basically saying paladins(fill in any other class as needed) can just go around killing people for no good reason at all, and it is the exact same as killing for the purpose of defense.
From your story I am sure you would not allow such things in your game so I have no idea as to why are defending Shiruken. In his world all killings are equally valid.
Case 1:
Judge:Why did you kill this orc.
PC:Sir it is an orc.
Judge:I sentence you to death by hanging.
Case 2:
Judge:Why did you kill this orc.
PC:He was one of many that assaulted and killed many of the people of the town of North River. By killing him I was able to break their spirit, and save many lives.
Judge:I sentence you to death by hanging. Killing is killing. Darn adventures you think you can just go around saving lives, well not on my watch.
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murder? evil?
when you sign up to be an adventurer, you effectively declare yourself a bandit.
what do bandits do?
they murder
they pillage
they steal
they plunder
they raidwhat do adventurers do?
they murder
they pillage
they steal
they plunder
they raidif murder, raiding, pillaging, theft and plundering were all evil acts. there would be no such thing as good aligned adventurers due to all the evil acts they perform. there is literally no difference between an adventurer and a bandit.
Which is why paladins have such a hard time meshing well with a group that doesn't also wholly consist of holier-than-thou twits.
That, or the paladin spends a LOT of time admiring the local architecture while the other characters do what needs to be done.
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My what fine rustic aritecture I think I shall have a closer look.
Defendant; "the child insulted the honor of the inheritor. i had to avenge her pride as a holy knight."
Judge; "i understand, if some child insulted my religion, and i were as pious as you, i would be driven to smite the child as well. it is clearly the child's fault for insulting your faith so strongly."
And right now people are killing, burning down houses and such things because a film insults their faith.
Suddenly this doesn't sound so sarcastic any more.
However if the judge and jury aren't as zealous about your faith as you are your still headed to jail.
Besides: A paladin antagonized by a child could by the rules just cast a cure light wounds on the child and hope feeling better makes her become more peaceful.
you have to differentiate between the types of murder or else paladins wouldn't exist.That is not true at all, well maybe in your games, but not in other people's games. In most cases the PC's are not the most powerful people around. They are just the only ones willing to deal with the issue, since the game assumes there are other NPC's with class levels in the world. From a realism point of view that kind of fails, but if an NPC did the job then the PC would have nothing to do. There are threads on this. If "the game" considered it to be murder when they took out the bad guys then the paladin would lose his powers due to killing others. That is why I mentioned "game makes a difference".murder is still murder. the only reason high level adventurers aren't arrested for banditry is because they are so badass, the common population fears them and cannot keep up.You know what I mean. I am not here to argue semantics. The game makes a difference between killing someone for being mouthy, and killing someone who is the main reason villages have been pillaged and burned to the groud.murder? evil?
when you sign up to be an adventurer, you effectively declare yourself a bandit.
what do bandits do?
they murder
they pillage
they steal
they plunder
they raidwhat do adventurers do?
they murder
they pillage
they steal
they plunder
they raidif murder, raiding, pillaging, theft and plundering were all evil acts. there would be no such thing as good aligned adventurers due to all the evil acts they perform. there is literally no difference between an adventurer and a bandit.
Stick to killing outlaws (outside the law / legal protections), monsters and other socially undesirable beasties and, technically, it's not murder :) Some smart mouthed kid on the street... yeah, that's murder. Killing is not necessarily murder although they may share mechanical similarities ("by jove, nice cut there Geofferey"). If you take the modern "don't hurt them, they're just misunderstood" trope into your game, well nobody said being a pacifist wasn't an adventurous life. A short, adventurous life.
As for the feat, I don't allow it because it allows you to control another PC / NPC without any more traditional (fantasy / D&D) reason (i.e. magic) and to compel their behavior. If you want to tick off somebody, feel free to yell insults at them and I, as DM, will tell you if it has any effect based on the situation, their personality, etc. Things like this don't, imo, need to be feats. There are a number of feats that do this type of thing (although I think Antagonize is perhaps the most annoying -- living up to it's name I guess). I'm not a fan.
One suggestion -- no DM should ever assign the Antagonize feat to a child. This feat should be reserved for somebody who has studied how to choose his words carefully in order to goad people into violence -- not for any little brat who mouths off to his elders. NPCs generally select feats that help them live, not those that can get them killed for stupidity. Any NPC with this feat should be designed so that he can survive the initial attack that he is likely to provoke. He should also be given a background that gives him a reason to want to use this feat against the player characeters.
Provocations such as the Antagonize feat should normally be judged by the standard of how a reasonable average person in that setting would react -- which means that you would go by its chance to beat DC 11 (1st level commoner with wisdom of 10). Only if the player characters are being judged by people who are highly biased against them should they suffer for briefly losing their tempers in this way -- for example, if the NPC using the Antagonize feat is an obnoxious, villainous, and high ranking noble who uses that feat to provoke his enemies into starting fights with him so that he can then kill them and claim self-defense or, if he fails to defeat them, charge them with unprovoked assaults on him.
However, if the NPC with the Antagonize feat is not a villain whose higher social position would let him get away with such shenanigans, then he probably would not want to get the party hauled into a court where he is at least as likely to be charged with a serious crime as his target is. Medieval history is filled with cases where people were put to death for saying the wrong thing.
I agree 100% with your statement, It appears that the forum boards are still populated by Paladin haters :SNo god would take the powers of a paladin for such a minor offense. After the time and energy expended to call and train a righteous warrior, 1 unarmed blow would not remove his/her paladinhood.
Any GM that ruled it thus is an assmonkey.
No, they are populated by people who use hyperbole.
Actually the easiest thing to do is to ban of the feat. The next thing to do is to apply a penalty for not attacking to other activities.
I favour option 1.
player characters, regardless of alignment are pillagers. even if it isn't humans they pillage.
for some reason it's okay to slaughter hordes of orcs and steal their stuff but not okay to do the same to a human.
It's OK to kill people intent on killing your children, stealing your men and raping your livestock; it's not like the orcs are 'innocently minding their own business peacefully in the remains of the burned out human village' is it?
The current argument in favor of Antagonize not being broken:
"It's okay that it turns your character into a psychotic murderer who kills everything in sight, that's how I play mine anyhow!"
See? Hyperbole!
Okay, but the only argument in favor of Antagonize being broken remains:
"I might want play a pacifist, and they can't be goaded into attacking people that quickly."
More hyperbole!
murder? evil?
when you sign up to be an adventurer, you effectively declare yourself a bandit.
what do bandits do?
they murder
they pillage
they steal
they plunder
they raidwhat do adventurers do?
Allow me to correct this list slightly:
they avenge murder, deliver justice to the slain, and safeguard the innocent.
they liberate pillage taken unlawfully by others and claim it as right-of-conquest
they repatriate stolen goods
they seek out buried treasure no longer owned
they launch pre-emptive strikes against those who would murder, pillage, steal, plunder, raid and conquer their own homes and loved ones.
It's all a matter of perspective, and that is why paladins can adventure.
murder? evil?
when you sign up to be an adventurer, you effectively declare yourself a bandit.
what do bandits do?
they murder
they pillage
they steal
they plunder
they raidwhat do adventurers do?
they murder
they pillage
they steal
they plunder
they raidif murder, raiding, pillaging, theft and plundering were all evil acts. there would be no such thing as good aligned adventurers due to all the evil acts they perform. there is literally no difference between an adventurer and a bandit.
Yeah, sometimes I've played a bandit adventurer with ranks in profession: bandit just so this is nice and clear.