So do some of you with the more flexible ever challenge you players' aliments in games where they are playing classes like paladins or druids?
In my games I have players make there codes for there paladins for them to follow keeps them from losing their paladin powers from events that where not expecting.
*side note sorry MSword kick my butt, I meant "lack" obviously
Personally I think the terms Good, Evil, Lawful, Chaotic, and Neutral are a bit too ambiguous and 'loaded' these days.
I find the following attributions to be somewhat more objective guidelines...
Moral Axis:
Good: Altruistic, Self-Sacrificing
Neutral: Self-Interested, Minds their own business
Evil: Antisocial, Predatory
Ethical Axis:
Lawful: Traditional, Authoritarian
Neutral: Indifferent , Democratic
Chaotic: Individualistic, Anarchistic
So do some of you with the more flexible ever challenge you players' aliments in games where they are playing classes like paladins or druids?
I treat paladins like clerics; so long as a paladin is within one step of his deity's alignment, he's golden. (And he can follow any deity.) If a paladin or cleric does manage to permanently fall from his god's good graces, he can choose another deific patron. So in practice, alignment has never been an issue.
And outside of divine classes, I don't even enforce alignment restrictions. (Or MCing restrictions, for that matter.) I've got no business telling my players how to role play.
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So do some of you with the more flexible ever challenge you players' aliments in games where they are playing classes like paladins or druids?
In my games I have players make there codes for there paladins for them to follow keeps them from losing their paladin powers from events that where not expecting.*side note sorry MSword kick my butt, I meant "lack" obviously
I might, depending on the player. My regular group often has a paladin in it (because they kill very effectively). Three Pal's ago, one player wrote out a code for Cayden, and he and the subsequent pal were both following that code. Only once (over probably 35-40 total gaming sessions) did I have to send either of them a bad omen dream when their behavior was starting to move more toward a neutral area.
To be fair, though, I play with the same group 95% of the time, and they are aware of how I view expectations for Pal behavior, and how not to stray too far from their god's alignment restrictions if a cleric or inquisitor.
I personally find the whole alignment challenge on paladins trope to be amongst the most hackneyed and least fun "rites of passage" in tabletop RPGs. I have assiduously avoided them, and the one time a paladin player seemed hell-bent on forcing the issue I sat down with him and explained that I did not want to run several sessions where his moral crises dominated the table at the expense of the rest of the group's fun. We ended up playing most of that out off-line so that it did not dominate our group play time, which I think was best.
But this is one of the reasons I am not a fan of paladins in the first place.
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Note that plenty of Evil folks do good things, and most of them firmly believe that they're fighting the Good fight. But whenever I find myself asking... "Well this character does some Good things and some Evil things...," the Evil acts take precedence and so the character defaults to Evil.
When it comes down to a character's believing they are doing good when they're not, I divide it like this:
Believing you are doing good because someone intentionally deceived you into thinking so, when in reality you did an evil act = Good (or at worst, Neutral), but you're going to feel really crappy when you find out the truth.
Believing you are doing good because your world view is so twisted that you can't see what you are doing is Evil (e.g. "I must cleanse the world of these evil... kittens!") = Evil.
In other words, intent matters, but only in as much as the action you intended. The good/evilness of that action still gets weighted up in the celestial "Good/Evil Meter" rather than the individual's own opinion.
E.g. If Bob intends to feed the starving orphans, but finds out later the grain was poisoned and they all died, what matters is the "feed the starving orphans" part, and that action then gets judged as Good as his intention was "feed the orphans", and that's a Good act.
However, if Bob truly believes that orphans are a dangerous threat to society (without being externally fooled into it via brainwashing/illusion/etc) and we really are better off without them, and so intentionally poisons them, his alignment is judged on the "poisoning orphans" action as that was his intent (and he also has a truly sick mind). Whether he believes it to be Good or Evil never comes into it, it's the alignment of that specific action(as determined by the Cosmic Overseer of Good and Evil[tm]) that matters (and that's an Evil act, for anyone that isn't sure ;) )
When weighing up the overall Good/Evil (or Lawful/Chaotic) position, I not only count the scale of the action but also how recent it was - someone that has performed endless good deeds for years, but over the past month has murdered half a dozen innocents in cold blood, is looking at an Evil alignment. The first murder they get away with as a glitch in behavior, the second gets them the "continuing down this path is going to change your alignment" warning, the third is likely to shift them to neutral, and by the fifth they're decidedly Evil.
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My Short hand Alignment Breakdown.
Good = Altruistic, concerned for others, values life
Evil = Self-Centered, Values Self, does not value life
Neutral (Most People) = Concerned for others, but not necessarily willing to risk self unless their is extreme value. Self is the main drive, but not at the extreme risk of harm to someone else.
Lawful = The Means is just as important as the End. They like to codify how to get it done.
Chaotic = The Means Justifies the End. How it gets done does not matter, what matters is it is the desired result.
Neutral = Usually likes some kind of pattern, rules, or some kind of paradigm for day to day living, but the End is pretty important and they will color outside of the lines if they cannot achieve it the standard way.
The End in the above is usually determined from the Good/Evil/Neutral axis.
In the end I see the Lawful/Chaos axis is about How someone goes about doing something; whereas the Good/Evil axis is about What they are trying to achieve. Both are also motive based.
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E.g. If Bob intends to feed the starving orphans, but finds out later the grain was poisoned and they all died, what matters is the "feed the starving orphans" part, and that action then gets judged as Good as his intention was "feed the orphans", and that's a Good act.
However, if Bob truly believes that orphans are a dangerous threat to society (without being externally fooled into it via brainwashing/illusion/etc) and we really are better off without them, and so intentionally poisons them, his alignment is judged on the "poisoning orphans" action as that was his intent (and he also has a truly sick mind). Whether he believes it to be Good or Evil never comes into it, it's the alignment of that specific action(as determined by the Cosmic Overseer of Good and Evil[tm]) that matters (and that's an Evil act, for anyone that isn't sure ;) )
Great example, and I couldn't agree more.
Non-neutral alignments require more than intent, but intentions are nevertheless very relevant.