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If a player is looking for an experience that only a home campaign can provide, then organized play environments will not be able to give that player what he is looking for.
I'm not sure that constitutes a chronic failing. If I want an off-road BMX experience, a roller coaster won't be able to provide that. But we still have a lot of people who like to ride roller coasters.
Yea, that came out a little bit critical of organized play in general didn't it?
Organized play makes up for it's deficiencies in depth and customizability by being far less demanding on one's schedule and that is a perfectly reasonable trade. That is the strength that PFS gets to play to, and I am grateful for those strengths and the fact that PFS makes an effort to be relevant beyond cons and stuff since I really live out in the stix when it comes to gaming.
The reason that I characterized it as a failing is that while light casual fare is great, it does lack that depth and ability to make great characters that a real campaign offers.
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When someone chooses to take up the oath of a paladin, and live by the code of their deity, they are choosing to dedicate their life to serving a higher purpose.
That means making sacrifices.
Humans have a natural ability to lie, cheat, and steal. If one becomes a paladin, he foregoes those skills in favor of a lawful, honor bound lifestyle. I see a Nagaji giving up his or her poison ability as no different.
Humans have a natural ability to lie, cheat, and steal. If one becomes a paladin, he foregoes those skills in favor of a lawful, honor bound lifestyle. I see a Nagaji giving up his or her poison ability as no different.
Everyone has a natural ability to lie, cheat, and steal. Its not a huge sacrifice. Now if you told them to give up their bonus feat or arms... Only a paladin is a big enough jerk to tell every member of his race that using their natural weapons to disable foes is doing it wrong, and then claim its because he serves a higher purpose. Vishkanya paladins must be in an awkward position in life.
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Humans have a natural ability to lie, cheat, and steal. If one becomes a paladin, he foregoes those skills in favor of a lawful, honor bound lifestyle. I see a Nagaji giving up his or her poison ability as no different.Everyone has a natural ability to lie, cheat, and steal. Its not a huge sacrifice. Now if you told them to give up their bonus feat or arms... Only a paladin is a big enough jerk to tell every member of his race that using their natural weapons to disable foes is doing it wrong, and then claim its because he serves a higher purpose. Vishkanya paladins must be in an awkward position in life.
And again with the paladin hate, once again based on completely misunderstanding the entire concept of the class. Contrary to what seems to be popular opinion, paladin is not another word for jerk, and paladins aren't required to be lawful stupid.
No, paladins don't go around telling everyone else they have to follow their code of conduct. Paladins hold themselves to a code of conduct, not anyone else.
I was exaggerating. I know not all paladins are like that. However the idea of not using something that the rest of your peoples can, seems rather awkward. In particular for the Vishkanya who seem to lose most of their racial features if they wanted to be a paladin. It also brings up the question on how the character is going to think of their own people.
the idea of not using something that the rest of your peoples can, seems rather awkward.Then it seems that you are at odds with the Paladin class as a whole.
Have a problem with a class that tells you how to play and doesn't have as many options? Possibly, but probably off topic. I was more noting that its odd to tell you not to use something a racial trait or a natural attack. Which is very different than telling someone no to lie, cheat, or steal I feel like. Opinions vary greatly of course.
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Thanks to everyone who chipped in with their thoughts. I totally get that organized play has to favor a limited rule set for purposes of consistency and ease of judging.
I also do think what is written in the CRB about the Paladin code of honor is a very narrow viewpoint - and this is not the first time that parenthetical text (which often indicates only an example or partial list) has been taken as the end all of interpretations for PFSOP.
If the PFSOP coordinators decide to keep it that way and not add exceptions or FAQ posts to clarify other options, that's their call and players and GMs have to deal with that in the PFSOP campaign.
In a home game I would most definitely adapt a code of honor to reflect the cultural norms of the PCs race and homeland, or any other code concept that was plausible and didn't create game imbalance. As long as it made sense to the player and the code still came into play frequently as a control on PC choice of action, a different flavor to the sense of "what's honorable" would be no big deal. If you allowed spitting poison, you might need to disallow something else - maybe eating anything other than the meat of something you killed personally.
Note that the Nagaji feat is called "Spit Venom", but the description refers to it as a poison that causes temporary blindness. It is different from many other poisons in terms of effect, but as long as it has the word poison in the description and there is nothing written regarding an exception for Naga worshippers, I can see how many GMs might rule the act as "unpaladinly" or against the code. I would like to see something added to the additional resources regarding Nagaji paladins, but I really don't expect that to be on the near-term development list. But if we knew what the Guardian Nagas thought about the ways poison spittle could be used without dishonor...