The invoker entry, which I read recently, doesn't have the same "once you are ordained you can do as you like" bit as the other divine classes, but that is a bit nit picky.
I disagree with a lot of Grimli's points, but some of them have merit. And I agree with basically all of what Rogue said.
But the key point I wanted to bring up is this:
Thanks Grimli, Rogue and Swmabie for being civil. You all are being excellent examples of what can happen when reasonable folks disagree and discuss their beliefs. It speaks volumnes of you three that you can thank one another for critiques and talk to one another like reasonable adults.
I have a saying:
You can learn more about yourself from an enemy in one day, than you can from a friend in a lifetime.
I'm not trying to say that people here are enemies, it's a form of expression I use when someone apologizes for being honest.
Someone who likes you no matter how honest will usually spare your feelings and not give you proper critizism. Someone who has issue most of the doesn't spare you feelings. They will tell you how they see you. It can be harsh but in the end you get more from that type of conversation.
I was raised to discuss and argue, it what my family does. I have no issue with other people's opinions. If everyone agreed about everything life you be boring to me. I love to be pushed it makes me a better person in the end as long as I have the open mind to accept it.
The invoker entry, which I read recently, doesn't have the same "once you are ordained you can do as you like" bit as the other divine classes, but that is a bit nit picky.
I disagree with a lot of Grimli's points, but some of them have merit. And I agree with basically all of what Rogue said.
But the key point I wanted to bring up is this:
Thanks Grimli, Rogue and Swmabie for being civil. You all are being excellent examples of what can happen when reasonable folks disagree and discuss their beliefs. It speaks volumnes of you three that you can thank one another for critiques and talk to one another like reasonable adults.
The Invokers can have divinity shards in their own right, often have atypical theological understandings, and are expected to be polytheists who fundamentally view all the gods as a single "side", so again, wide theological latitude.
The invoker entry, which I read recently, doesn't have the same "once you are ordained you can do as you like" bit as the other divine classes, but that is a bit nit picky.
I disagree with a lot of Grimli's points, but some of them have merit. And I agree with basically all of what Rogue said.
But the key point I wanted to bring up is this:
Thanks Grimli, Rogue and Swmabie for being civil. You all are being excellent examples of what can happen when reasonable folks disagree and discuss their beliefs. It speaks volumnes of you three that you can thank one another for critiques and talk to one another like reasonable adults.
The Invokers can have divinity shards in their own right, often have atypical theological understandings, and are expected to be polytheists who fundamentally view all the gods as a single "side", so again, wide theological latitude.
Not saying they can't, I just thought it was interesting how it didn't have the little aside that the others did.
Currently working on making a Dex based defender. Check it out here Spoiler:Show
Need a few pre-generated characters for a one-shot you are running? Want to get a baseline for what an effective build for a class you aren't familiar with? Check out the Pregen thread here If ever you are interested what it sounds like to be at my table check out my blog and podcast here Also, I've recently done an episode on "Refluffing". You can check that out here
Another thing to note is that just because alignment itself has no penalty doesn't mean using you're deity given powers to act counter to their teachings will lack consequences.
For example, a Paladin of Bahamut snaps and decides to burn down a courthouse and city hall to try to instill his own twisted sense of justice. He won't get zapped with a bolt from heaven that suddenly zaps his powers, but expect some angry Avengers and other Paladins coming in to either take you in for questioning or simply try to end you right there. Pretty much a story action would have story-related consequences.
Another thing to note is that just because alignment itself has no penalty doesn't mean using you're deity given powers to act counter to their teachings will lack consequences.
For example, a Paladin of Bahamut snaps and decides to burn down a courthouse and city hall to try to instill his own twisted sense of justice. He won't get zapped with a bolt from heaven that suddenly zaps his powers, but expect some angry Avengers and other Paladins coming in to either take you in for questioning or simply try to end you right there. Pretty much a story action would have story-related consequences.
This. The idea of story-related actions having story-related consequences is one of the things I like most about 4e's viewpoint. The idea that the DM has to put more thought into it than the "you've broken your alignment/disobeyed your god, you lose all your Paladin powers!" followed by the inevitable rolling of a new character or atonement plot is far more interesting to me, and it also doesn't divorce the PC from the rest of the group quite as much. That has always been what I viewed as problematic with the atonement concept: it means that the DM has to run an entire separate quest that focuses on one PC in order to make their abilities viable again, should the Paladin fall, or else the DM has to run it "off-screen", in which case it's sort of pointless to have it happen.
I much prefer the idea of dropping in occasional encounters with agents of the church to spice up the plot without completely investing in a separate storyline. It adds another layer, rather than being a whole separate event that takes time away from the major plotline.
I was raised to discuss and argue, it what my family does. I have no issue with other people's opinions. If everyone agreed about everything life you be boring to me. I love to be pushed it makes me a better person in the end as long as I have the open mind to accept it.
Same here. My family (7 people total) would often debate things news-worthy, political, philosophical, and societal, around the dinner table; it taught us to think, be quick on our wits, and not take disagreements personally.
Dealing with Grimli has actually been quite enjoyable. He's well-thought out, doesn't beat dead horses, and is willing to accept the other side of the argument at face value. Some people around here (on both sides) could learn some lessons from him. Thank you, sir (or madam), for being a good debater.
Speaking of thanks.... This was so well written, that I will be adding it to my Sig as soon as I finish posting this. It is the best response to this tired and cliched complaint, and I bow down to your eloquence.
Another thing to note is that just because alignment itself has no penalty doesn't mean using you're deity given powers to act counter to their teachings will lack consequences.
I finally want to support this statement here. For those of us who wish to... divorce Alignment from the Mechanics of the game, is probably the best way to word it, I don't recall a single one of us ever saying that there should never be any consequences for heretical behavior or blasphemy by those who represent particular deities. Quite the contrary; that's the whole purpose of organized religion (in my opinion), is to punish people who are "doing it wrong."
Deities and their intervention in individual lives was recently discussed in DM Experience; if I recall the feedback correctly, most people felt, especially at the Heroic level, such micromanagement issues were beneath the attention of the Divine. Besides, there's plenty of schisms and heresies and differences of opinion in people who follow the same gods elsewhere, why wouldn't there be such things in a fantasy world?
....
Now, to add something new.
I almost never ask my players for their alignments. Instead, I may ask them to use the nine "personality questions" in the PHB, to judge how their characters might react in certain situations — and these answers are more for their own aid than mine; this sort of thing, I feel, helps people to figure how to roleplay their characters far more than picking a point in the alignment star, so to speak.
As for what their actual alignments are? If/when I think it matters, I make those determinations based upon the deeds of their characters, their actions and reactions. The nine-point system is a simple one to use, with two separate axes; I can pretty much place them somewhere on the spectrum, though rarely in the middle of any one area; often they are in the gray, though fairly consistent about it. I find it amusing that people roleplay a more consistent alignment when they don't have to worry about it than they do when they're mandated to have one, at least in my own experiences....
• Ad Hominem— Attacking the person's circumstances, not addressing the argument. • Ad Hominem Abusive (Personal Attack)— Insulting the person, not addressing the argument. • Ad Hominem Tu Quoque— Saying the person's inconsistent, not addressing the argument. • Appeal to Authority/Belief/Common Practice/Consequence of a Belief/Emotion/Fear/Flattery/Novelty/Pity/Popularity/Ridicule/Spite/Tradition— Using emotion instead of Fact. • Bandwagon— Use of peer pressure. • Begging the Question— Assuming premises which haven't necessarily been agreed to. • Biased Sample— Using a sampling which may not properly represent the whole. • Burden of Proof— Shifting it to the wrong side. • Circumstantial Ad Hominem— Attacking the person's interests in supporting their argument. • Composition— Assuming that the whole has the same qualities as individual parts. • Confusing Cause & Effect— Assuming that one thing causes another because they appear in conjunction. • Division— Assuming that the individual parts have the same qualities as the whole. • False Dilemma— Assuming that only two options exist. • Gambler's Fallacy— Assuming the odds have changed because of past occurances • Genetic— Assuming a perceived defect in the origin of a claim is proof of a defect in the claim. • Guilt by Association— Attacking others who agree with the claim. • Hasty Generalization— Assuming a quality based on too small a sample size. • Ignoring the Common Cause— Assuming there is no outside cause of two connected things. • Middle Ground— Assuming the midpoint of two extremes must be correct. • Misleading Vividness— Assuming a colorful anecdote outweighs statistical evidence. • Poisoning the Well— Using unprovable claims about the person instead of addressing the argument. • Post Hoc— Assuming that something caused something else simply because it happened first. • Questionable Cause— Assuming that one thing causes another. • Red Herring— Using irrelevant evidence to divert a discussion. • Relativist Fallacy— Asserting that a claim may be true for some but not for the speaker. • Slippery Slope— Assuming the inevitability of one event based on another. • Special Pleading— Claiming exemption without justification. • Spotlight— Assuming individuals that get the most attention to be indicative of the whole. • Straw Man— Misrepresenting the opposing argument. • Two Wrongs Make a Right— Justifying something unethical/immoral as response or pre-emption to something else unethical/immoral.
Response to those who like to compare 4e to a Video GameShow
Also, I find that the "D&D 4e is like an MMO" argument is often a sign of someone who is deliberately being obtuse and/or is potentially ignorant of actual MMO play. As someone who only ended a 6-year World of Warcraft addiction a year ago, I can say that most of your bullet points actually don't match up to the truth of it.
In D&D 4e, you can choose a hybrid, you can choose to play one class as though it were another (people played Warlords as Bards frequently, when the edition first came out, and Rangers were refluffed to Monks), you can focus your class on its secondary role (a Warlock who is more controller than striker, for instance), you can multiclass, and you can create a particular concept (a mounted lancer, a charger, etc.) within the mechanics via feats, choice of powers, and choice of skills. You decide which set of stats you use--are you a Chaladin, Straladin, or Baladin?--and you have ultimate influence on how your character turns out in the end. Yes, powers require you to be using a particular weapon within your class's available selection, but the powers are not themselves tied to the gear. Powers tied to weapons or armor are typically powers that belong to the item, not to the character class that's most likely to use it.
Yes, there are only so many powers available, and these will be what you do in battle; this is all that the designers created. Yes, there is a time-frame in which they can be used; this has always been the case, even in the days of Vancian casting. Yes, there are suggested builds, but you can routinely ignore those if it pleases you; the only parts of a class you have to take are the class features, and even those have options at this point. But the only way that this can be considered at all conflatable with MMO character building/playing is if you are deliberately ignoring all of that.
In WoW, you choose a class and you're done. No multiclassing or hybridization, no way to mimic one class with careful building of a different one. There is a firm dividing line on what is a WoW class. No secondary roles or creative concepts, either; you're going to be what the class sets out to be, and that's it. You'll always have the same stat allocation as another of your class, because you get set numbers as you level up, and you've got at best four options--and that's only the Druid class--to build, and if you plan on running dungeons, particularly heroic level ones, or raiding, you'd better not even think of deviating from the single defined best build on the talent tree for what you want to do. It was only recently, with the complete tear-down and recreation of talent trees for Mists of Pandaria, that there was a concept of there being anything but the one best build that people who calculated such mechanical advantages (the folks on Elitist Jerks, for example), and the people who did things like achieve "World First" at various top-tier raids set precedent for.
Also, no class will ever not have a specific set of powers; all Priests in WoW have the same baseline, with deviation only based upon their talent tree specialization, where a D&D4e player could take whatever power in their class pleases them. Any Retribution Paladin will be the same as any other in terms of powers, because that is what a RetPally is. Any Assassination Rogue will always have the same powers as another, etc. All powers are always on specific cool-downs, but will always be there when they start a battle, where a 4e PC might enter an encounter with only At-Wills, or without their Daily powers due to what plot has done up until that point. Furthermore, no power that is not already specifically tied to an item will ever "require" you have that item, to my recollection. Classes get all their powers based on class; gear only gives bonuses to stats, possibly cuts down cast times for abilities or cooldowns, grants temporary extra bonuses to stats (the latter two most often on the raid tier equipment), and on rare occassions an extra power that may or may not be valuable, as some are only special effects instead of valuable abilities.
Most honest/open response on why DDN needs to be InclusiveShow
I've always felt it is in the best interests of D&D to be as inclusive across the playerbase as they can be and still have a game. I've never felt though that making a game that was inclusive within a group was very useful or even desirable. DM's and players can decide amongst themselves what options or restrictions they want for their games. I tend to lean to the DM to make most of those decisions but again that is a group specific thing.
Having said that. I get the distinct impression that there are a lot of players on these boards who come from groups that generally ruled against their own desires. It's almost like they are an oppressed minority from a gaming perspective. I also get the impression that they tend to advocate against things that if available their fellow group members might like and vote them down on.
Do a lot of you feel this way?
Just for clarification...here are some examples... 1. Alignment restrictions as an option. 2. Alignment Mechanics 3. Martial healing 4. Races being included or not.
I know my perspective is not that I often play at tables where my likes are not represented. Instead, my perspective comes from the many years I spent being a bad DM. I was a bad DM because my guidance came from the books, and the books gave bad advice. The books told me that alignment was a useful approach to roleplaying, so I went with it even though it felt kind of weird to me. Now I know that, at least in my style of running games, alignment destroys rp. I trusted the books to give good advice, and it messed up my game. Now I'm much more mature as a DM, so I know how to take advice with a grain of salt. And I still learn new stuff every session I run.
I don't want future DMs to go through my problems again. There's a big enough DM shortage as it is. DMing well is hard.
The biggest thing I had to unlearn in my process of becoming a good DM was the idea that the game is a simulation of a world. I understand many DMs prefer a more simulationist approach, although I am always skeptical simply because I would have said the same thing until I learned and grew as a DM. This doesn't mean their approach is completely invalid, but it still gives me a personal twinge when I see a regression back to 3e era sim style gaming.
I also have noticed many groups where one or two old-school players run a whole group's playstyle because the newer players aren't even aware there are other ways of doing things. The newer players tell me stories of things they hated in the session, and I end up explaining to them how those things they hate are very fixable, and in fact are fixed in the newer edition of the game their older players have told them is terrible.
In regard to things like martial healing, I don't think it's necessary for it to be in the game for the game to be fun. However, the attitude that says martial healing is terrible and shouldn't exist is an attitude that, to me, reveals a wrongheaded approach to the game. Therefore, my fight for it to be an option is to help legitimize the more narrative approach that I think is what most players want, but many don't know is possible, because they've never been exposed to it.
Another thing to note is that just because alignment itself has no penalty doesn't mean using you're deity given powers to act counter to their teachings will lack consequences.
For example, a Paladin of Bahamut snaps and decides to burn down a courthouse and city hall to try to instill his own twisted sense of justice. He won't get zapped with a bolt from heaven that suddenly zaps his powers, but expect some angry Avengers and other Paladins coming in to either take you in for questioning or simply try to end you right there. Pretty much a story action would have story-related consequences.
This. The idea of story-related actions having story-related consequences is one of the things I like most about 4e's viewpoint. The idea that the DM has to put more thought into it than the "you've broken your alignment/disobeyed your god, you lose all your Paladin powers!" followed by the inevitable rolling of a new character or atonement plot is far more interesting to me, and it also doesn't divorce the PC from the rest of the group quite as much. That has always been what I viewed as problematic with the atonement concept: it means that the DM has to run an entire separate quest that focuses on one PC in order to make their abilities viable again, should the Paladin fall, or else the DM has to run it "off-screen", in which case it's sort of pointless to have it happen.
I much prefer the idea of dropping in occasional encounters with agents of the church to spice up the plot without completely investing in a separate storyline. It adds another layer, rather than being a whole separate event that takes time away from the major plotline.
Consequences are appropriate as long as the consequences are interesting, and not punitive or manipulative, and not part of some vicious cycle. If you send some avengers or something to capture or "end" the character and the player isn't into the idea then either the PC kills them (leading to another, stronger intervention team), is killed (boring), or is captured (boring). If they player is on-board with this approach, any of those outcomes could be interesting, but as punishment or manipulation they are likely to cause further in-game issues and lead to a less interesting game.
[N]o difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions. - L. Tolstoy
If you remove alignment from Dungeons and Dragons then it is gone. You have your way, but I don't have mine, and what is more important to me my PLAYERS don't have their way.
Nope, that's a lie. You can add all the personal houserules you want, and you know it. The actual concern is that you know that if they're removed from the default system, then you'll have no authority to appeal to when attempting to inflict the system on people who dislike it.
First of all, there isn't any authority needed. If a DM decides that the Paladin loses his class abilities after, say, using local orphans for troll-bait, then the Paladin loses his class abilities.
How about adding this for a personal houserule, for those of us who dislike alignment:
Alignment doesn't exist. No PC, NPC, monster or intelligent item may have behavior or preferences which can be defined as good or evil. No player character, monster, NPC or intelligent item can be indifferent in terms of morality, either in thought or deed. No character may exhibit any consistency in how they behave. No PC, NPC, monster or intelligent item may undergo a spiritual crisis. Deities, if any, do not have a preference. Their mythologies, if any, may not contain anything which hints toward a preference for a type of behavior or moral code.
This seems much more restrictive to me, than saying a character of a class defined by his/her morality will have some sort of consequences if he/she doesn't uphold his/her stated moral code.
A rogue with a bowl of slop can be a controller.
WIZARD PC: Can I substitute Celestial Roc Guano for my fireball spells? DM: Awesome. Yes.
Centauri: But I don't like bread, I prefer pita. STOP TELLING ME HOW TO PLAY MY ALIGNMENT.
---------------- Pita IS bread. Call it what you want. Actions can be described in terms of good and evil. It doesn't matter if anyone tells you that or not. It doesn't matter if the book explicitly writes it down or not.
And I prefer salad dressing on my tuna sandwich. And boiled eggs and onions. Mmmm-hmmm... smell that dragon-breath!
A rogue with a bowl of slop can be a controller.
WIZARD PC: Can I substitute Celestial Roc Guano for my fireball spells? DM: Awesome. Yes.
Centauri: Consequences are appropriate as long as the consequences are interesting, and not punitive or manipulative, and not part of some vicious cycle. --- If a character buys stuff and eventually comes to a point where he runs out of money, is that punitive? This is along the same lines as the Paladin stops being such a good guy and loses powers. I think those of us on the keep-alignment-in side of the debate see character actions as having consequences as a good thing, not as some sort of punishment.
I personally don't think a player playing a holy warrior who has been granted abilities BECAUSE he is a paragon of virtue as well as a paragon of the ideals of chivalry at its best should be so danged shocked when he suddenly loses some of that sweet divine favor and grace after he/she begins doing vile and despicable acts or ignores his chivalric code and sacred vows. The player playing such a character seems, frankly, a bit paranoid to think that the DM is being a control freak when he decides it has become fairly obvious that the character is not really all that virtous and chivalrous and rules that he no longer gets the benefits that come with being so virtuous and chivalrous.
Especially since the character can now go Blackguard... which is much more fun than some stuffy do-gooder, anyway.
A rogue with a bowl of slop can be a controller.
WIZARD PC: Can I substitute Celestial Roc Guano for my fireball spells? DM: Awesome. Yes.
He's well-thought out, doesn't beat dead horses, and is willing to accept the other side of the argument at face value. Some people around here (on both sides) could learn some lessons from him. 
