PDA

View Full Version : Removing alignment, the ramifications of paladins?



Mastikator
2010-04-03, 04:10 PM
If you were to houserule away the entire alignment system out of D&D, many things would have to go with it, such as protection from evil/good/law/chaos, and other spells like blasphemy and word of chaos.
But what about paladins? They are iconic to medieval fantasy, without an alignment system they wouldn't have much to show for, other than the code of conduct, the smite evil ability would be gone. Aura of courage could stay. But they can no longer fall from "associating with evil" since there's no such thing as evil (mechanically at least).

I would fix it by making the paladins explicitly religious warriors, rather than being against anyone who is evil, they'd be against anyone who is an enemy of their religion. A paladin of the dwarven god would be able to smite orcs, and wouldn't be able to associate with those who blaspheme against said deity.
The details of the deity's tolerance is to be worked out for each deity in the campaign. And also if even all deities accept paladins, I doubt a dispassionate and peaceful deity might want their followers to be of the fundamentalist type.

But what are other people's thoughts? Is the alignment system really worth keeping? It seems to create conflict and doesn't make sense. Why even bother having it around?

Mongoose87
2010-04-03, 04:15 PM
Even if you want to remove alignments, you can keep them as paragons. They still have that code of conduct. You can use the Crusader's Smite ability instead of the regular one.

tcrudisi
2010-04-03, 04:19 PM
If you were to houserule away the entire alignment system out of D&D, many things would have to go with it, such as protection from evil/good/law/chaos, and other spells like blasphemy and word of chaos.
But what about paladins? They are iconic to medieval fantasy, without an alignment system they wouldn't have much to show for, other than the code of conduct, the smite evil ability would be gone. Aura of courage could stay. But they can no longer fall from "associating with evil" since there's no such thing as evil (mechanically at least).

I would fix it by making the paladins explicitly religious warriors, rather than being against anyone who is evil, they'd be against anyone who is an enemy of their religion. A paladin of the dwarven god would be able to smite orcs, and wouldn't be able to associate with those who blaspheme against said deity.
The details of the deity's tolerance is to be worked out for each deity in the campaign. And also if even all deities accept paladins, I doubt a dispassionate and peaceful deity might want their followers to be of the fundamentalist type.

But what are other people's thoughts? Is the alignment system really worth keeping? It seems to create conflict and doesn't make sense. Why even bother having it around?

4e has Paladins but they don't have to be good aligned. Really, with a few simple changes you can keep Paladins. First, Smite Evil becomes Smite. Oh noes, now they can smite anything? Well, Pallys could use a small boost in power, as we all know they need it. Actually, you know, that's really the only change I think they would need.

Plus, if you need a flavor reason, think of Unearthed Arcana. They had the rules for CG, LE, and CE pally's ... so it's not as if just removing the alignment system will do much.

I think the alignment system is silly anyway. Good for you for thinking about getting rid of it. I support that decision. Just don't let it impact the weaker classes (Paladin, for instance) in a negative way, since it's certainly not going to hurt Wizards.

I would also ignore alignment restrictions on prestige classes as well. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is the Assassin. Yeah, it might be weird having a good assassin, but I could certainly see a neutral one. And since alignment is gone? Well, it does offer up a lot more character options and roleplay possibilities for everyone and I think would just improve the game overall.

Starbuck_II
2010-04-03, 04:20 PM
If you were to houserule away the entire alignment system out of D&D, many things would have to go with it, such as protection from evil/good/law/chaos, and other spells like blasphemy and word of chaos.
But what about paladins? They are iconic to medieval fantasy, without an alignment system they wouldn't have much to show for, other than the code of conduct, the smite evil ability would be gone. Aura of courage could stay. But they can no longer fall from "associating with evil" since there's no such thing as evil (mechanically at least).

Replace Smite evil with Domain ability Smite. It works regardless of alignment.

Piedmon_Sama
2010-04-03, 04:26 PM
I actually did remove Alignment from my game, and it's worked fine. For aligned attacks (a Chaotic Sword, for example) they merely ignore DR of the appropriate planar type (Inevitables, Slaadi, etc.) and do nothing against mortals. For things like a holy weapon or a smite attack, it's straight-up Bronze Age deific warfare rules: they work on any foe your deity declares to be its enemy.

Zeta Kai
2010-04-03, 04:34 PM
In my games, we still have character alignments, but they aren't tied to any mechanics. Bards can be L, Monks can C, Druids can be extremists, & Paladins can be N (or anything else). The alignments serve as a behavioral shorthand, a rough guide on one's disposition. So far, it hasn't caused any issues. I had to remove the protection from alignment spells & a few other things, but that was no big deal. Plus, Smite (Anybody) is a nice boost for the pally

Flickerdart
2010-04-03, 04:39 PM
In my games, we still have character alignments, but they aren't tied to any mechanics. Bards can be L, Monks can C, Druids can be extremists, & Paladins can be N (or anything else). The alignments serve as a behavioral shorthand, a rough guide on one's disposition. So far, it hasn't caused any issues. I had to remove the protection from alignment spells & a few other things, but that was no big deal. Plus, Smite (Anybody) is a nice boost for the pally
This is also a nice boost for Enchanters since there's no more low-level "no" button against many of their spells.

Geiger Counter
2010-04-03, 05:17 PM
I actually did remove Alignment from my game, and it's worked fine. For aligned attacks (a Chaotic Sword, for example) they merely ignore DR of the appropriate planar type (Inevitables, Slaadi, etc.) and do nothing against mortals. For things like a holy weapon or a smite attack, it's straight-up Bronze Age deific warfare rules: they work on any foe your deity declares to be its enemy.

How can you have both no alignment have creatures with their current places on the great wheel?

Kurald Galain
2010-04-03, 05:23 PM
If you were to houserule away the entire alignment system out of D&D, many things would have to go with it, such as protection from evil/good/law/chaos, and other spells like blasphemy and word of chaos.
But what about paladins?
You can easily remove alignment from 3E (or indeed 2E or 1E) without seriously impacting anything. Paladins should instead get a code of conduct from their deity; I would suggest looking up real-life knightly codes and base them on that ("protect the weak, uphold justice, never break your word", stuff like that). You can behave honorably without having LG on your character sheet.

Detect evil can detect undead as well as devout followers of "nasty" deities, which tend to be common antagonists in D&D campaigns anyway.

Mastikator
2010-04-03, 06:20 PM
How can you have both no alignment have creatures with their current places on the great wheel?

The Great Wheel would have to be slightly tuned, each plane is now a plane of a mortal philosophy, aspects of reality and portfolio. The Abyss is now the plane of hate, rage and destruction. Arcadia is the plane of kindness and serenity. Mechanus is the plane of order, planning and bureaucracy (or something).
Each outsider could then be a personification of an aspect of the plane it comes from. An imp could be a personification of the servant who commits any act without question for his master.
I guess you're gonna have to cross that bridge when you get there, but the actual things you have to change isn't that much, I would think. Though there might be a few things that aren't really defined beyond "good/evil/lawful/chaotic", but that just means they aren't actually defined at all, and you'll have to either fill in the void or throw it out.

Darrin
2010-04-03, 06:30 PM
I also removed alignments from my game. The changes I made to paladin:

* Detect Evil replaced with Detect Undead.
* Smite Evil replaced with Smite Whosoever Is Being Naughty In My Sight (basically, smite whoever you like, and if your deity or religious order has a problem with it, then they'll let you know)
* Aura of Good replaced with Aura of Truth, which is mechanically similar to the "Gaze of Truth" Paladin Variant from Dragon #349. Basically discern lies usuable a certain number of times per day.

While paladins can no longer just glance at somebody and conclude "ok, he's evil, I can decapitate him", they can still be something like roving judges/magistrates, and use discern lies to tell if someone is being naughty. Their "code" is handled just with RP. If you're not acting like your Order thinks you should be, then they'll make sure you suffer the consequences.

The alignment-based spells I just remove/ignore, or make them generic. Protection from evil for example just became protection and works against any hostile enemies. (Which may make it a lot more powerful, but so far none of the PCs have picked up on this.)

The real villains in my game are Cthulhu-type nasties from the mind-shattering depths of the Far Realms, inscrutable inhuman alien entities that tags like [good] or [evil] just have no practical meaning. Vampires, for example, are undead but not necessarily evil... yes, they feed on humans, but they really don't want to see their food supply wiped out by sanity-shattering squidfaces.

Piedmon_Sama
2010-04-03, 07:40 PM
How can you have both no alignment have creatures with their current places on the great wheel?

Uh, there's no great wheel. Slaadi and Limbo exist because I use basically Lucretius' cosmology from De Rerum Naturae, in which creation is the elements being hammered into concord out of chaos, but there are still "extra" parts of the cosmos where the elements crash and mix wildly, which is Limbo and the Slaadi are its lords. Inevitables are there to stop Chaos from infecting the Gods' creation (of solid matter and causal time, the universe as we understand it), but they don't have a home-plane like Mechanus or anything.

Whether Gods are personally evil or good, or whether they stick to the rules or do what they feel like, is fairly irrelevant in the cosmic scheme of things. They all want to keep creation running and Chaos at bay. There aren't any "Gods of Chaos" or whatnot like Tharizdun, it's just an impersonal force that would undo existence as we understand it if let loose. The Slaadi are themselves, of course, part of creation albeit one heavily mutated and perverted by entropic energy.

Devils and Demons don't really work in this setting so I haven't used them once, although my friend runs a campaign in another part of the same world, so you never know what he might do.

742
2010-04-03, 08:11 PM
the alignment system is simple and not well thought out, and as such any world based on it has to be simple and something you cant think too hard about without facepalming. anyway ill avoid a rant on the subject and my personal philosophies and just say: its stupid. paladins are a bad attempt at mixing mechanics with flavor and atmosphere, just open up the mechanics and let people make their own character concepts.

GoatToucher
2010-04-04, 12:07 AM
Alignments, like most of DnD, work fine unless you are trying to break them. They are labels players ascribe to their characters that have little in game effect if you are not a religious class. The system is rather like a hammer: a simple and useful tool that, in the hands of a jackass, can be used to make people's lives less pleasant. The issue is not with the tool, but with the one that wields it with ill intent.

I am kind of confounded that the OP considers Paladins too inherent to western medieval fantasy to eliminate, but the idea of a quantifiable supernatural evil is not. I could see eliminating the chaos/law axis, but the whole contest of good vs evil thing is, in my opinion, fairly central to the themes of the genre.

On top of that, removing alignments requires a bit if fine tuning to work around, and gains you approximately nothing.