drw@sdlvax.UUCP (drw) (05/16/85)
What's the problem with paladins? How can they be adapted to other alignments? The major problem with the religious types of the AD&D system is really distinguishing who and what they should be. No matter how much AD&D pretends to operate with different mythos systems, it really only works with a christian ethic. Just looking at the hodge-podge of cleric spells will tell you that. In order to really play a religious nut of any sort will take a lot of work by the DM just to figure out how to relate the religion to the seemingly arbitrary set of spells that you find in the players handbook. All restrictions placed on the different character classes and races are to try to remove the inherent inbalances between them. Hence clerics have retricted weapons usage and hopefully a few morals to go along, all based on a christian ethos background. Moving away from this causes one massive headache for the DM who has to maintain game balance between the character classes. Most players can find a religion which should entitle them to use edged weapons, bows etc but how do you control them? Assuming some compromise can be found, we then have a further problem in that, if they can have a cleric then usually you can find a suitably fanatical group to act as the paladin's counterpart. The paladin such a potentially strong class that to provide the same power and remove the moral blocks to his success would result in a huge gulf in power between the classes.( c.f. most previous attempts at an 'Anti-Paladin') In my opinion, before you can seriously consider widening paladins to other religions, you need to sit down and attempt to rationalise the clerical system to a more general ethical background. There were some interesting ideas about this in some White Dwarfs (published by Games Workshop, UK) some months ago which anyone considering such an action would find worthwhile reading. The basic idea being to split clerical spells into general ones available to all clerics, and then to add some more spells specific to the type of deity concerned. Once a solid foundation has been built, it should be ( and infact is ) a lot easier to then create a paladin of sorts for each of the religions. The tendency being to give them a slow rate of spell aquisition, much as now, and to provide a some extra frills much in the style of a normal paladin. This is all tyed up with some restricted behaviour in certain circumstances, the stronger the class seems to be the more restricted it has to be. One problem which arises is to try and rationalise the white/black definition of good and evil. Different religions tend to have natural allies and enemies (as with most real mythos) and the accompaning detect/protect spells tend to be in relation to these. One further point, a DM deciding this approach would also be advised to keep as much of the actual statistics ( in the sense of what he gets and when ), from the players, and only let them know only what they would really know if they were the character. Try and get away from that - look a Hobgoblin, that's 1d8 + 1, attacking once a round for 1-8 damage syndrome. The less the players think they know the more interesting it is for everybody concerned - try for some atmosphere!!! Well that should stir things up a bit, thanks for reading this far, any comments? Dave Wilson.
west@cs.reading.UUCP (Jeremy West @ Reading Unversity) (05/18/85)
In article <119@sdlvax.UUCP> drw@sdlvax.UUCP (drw) writes: > >All restrictions placed on the different character classes and races are to >try to remove the inherent inbalances between them. Hence clerics have retricted >weapons usage and hopefully a few morals to go along, all based on a christian >ethos background. Moving away from this causes one massive headache for the DM >who has to maintain game balance between the character classes. Most players >can find a religion which should entitle them to use edged weapons, bows etc >but how do you control them? Try John Sapienza's solution : the limited clerical training only gives them limited weapon damage (ie clerics get d6 with longsword etc). See his articles in A&E, TD etc. Also, I totally agree with the "keep the characters (not the players) in the dark" mode of play, much more realistic to seperate characters from hit points. That way, play can move like a fantasy story "you are struck by a sudden blow and fall to the ground... what is your reaction?" rather than "he hits you for 4 points damage, roll your dice". For example, read the Golden Witchbreed by Mary Gentle and imagine a player character in the heroine's position, the target of at least four assassination attempts, she survives because of luck, circumstance and a good mercenary guard! But she does survive, and this feel CAN be simulated by role-play. -- Jerry