Temples, Alignment, and Paladins

[Dcolby]

Perhaps it is a simple matter of faith and selection.

Limiting the number of priests in Birthright or any D&D setting can be easy enough.

1. Very few people have the outright commitment of faith to be favored by their Deity with "Miracles" minor or major to begin with.

2. Not every scribe, acolyte, cloistered priest, confessor, repentent monk, or devoted templar is as favored by his or her Deity as equaly as others either.

If this seems somewhat arbitrary well...heck yeah!

Classical Mythology is filled with people that the Gods love for one reason or another. In some circumstances for fairly petty reasons, (The apple of Discord and the choice of Paris anyone?) in fact Polytheistic faiths tend to assign very human traits to their Gods.

It can also provide great Roleplaying hooks for those Devoted Priests wishing to remain in a Gods' good graces.

If a D.M. was feeling cruel that is...

[ryancaveney]

Actually healing is far more unbalancing than a few battle spells - if no child dies of fever, lost limbs are regrown, battered soldiers healded overnight, etc, etc, than the world becomes a very different place... it's the dirt cheap L1-2 spells that can be learned en masse if people take a few levels of priest that really change the way that the world functions.

Exactly so! You can't have a medieval world if you keep those spells commonplace.

The same thing happens if you make healing spells a skill bonus modifier. A reasonable number of low level priests can aleviate some minor problems, but famines will continue, plagues occur, and child birth and infant mortality remain significant.

This is also a fine plan. Either the spells must be made much less powerful, or the people who cast them must be made much less numerous. Or both, really.


Ryan

[Beruin]

One of the reasons I am especially keen on getting rid of alignment in BR is that it allows me to junk a lot of rules that interact very badly with a campaign setting based heavily on political intrigue. So, forcing the consequent elimination of those rules isn't a bug, it's a feature. =)

I agree in general, but frankly I hadn't considered all of the potential problems when allowing my player to take levels as a paladin (she started out as a fighter). The problem didn't really come up before - I believe that the cleric among my players has never ever used a detect evil spell even once. Well, I guess it's my fault for not really thinking it through, then.
Nevertheless, I still like the general idea behind the alignment-related rules, i.e. being able to detect evil auras in items, places or creatures, being able to ward off evil, being overwhelmed by a very strong evil aura etc. These things are a staple of fantasy literature/games I would like to keep. The problem is that with the rules as written, they are virtually no grey areas - when nearly every antagonist starting with a lowly goblin is defined as evil, these abilities become potentially game-breaking.

Well, what to her is a core character concept? That she has a very rigid moral code? That she demands everyone else adhere to it as well? That she can magically detect or especially harm people who wish her ill? None of these things require that there be a specific alignment system.

Well, I guess her character concept wasn't really that important in this regard, to her it was more a player vs DM thing. I introduced the paladin's player to roleplaying, she had never played before and in a way she started out as I did (though I was much younger back then) as a hack'n slasher or powergamer. Realism, the believability of the setting and "mature" roleplaying (as in really acting her part) were and to a certain extent still are less of a concern to her. As a consequence, she regarded her detect evil abiltiy as a useful tool to be routinely used whenever she met a NPC, regardless of the social situation. That of course really runs contrary to the setting, but when I tried to talk this through with her, she at first seemed to think I was trying to limit a legitimate and 'official' character ability simply to be better able to thwart my players.
In short, taking away an ability after not liking what the player did with it would have made me an "unfair" DM. Well, seems like I had to learn the hard way that it's easier by far to ban something beforehand than to remove it later after it has already been introduced. I could have forged ahead regardless, but chose to compromise instead. By scaling alignment I broadened they grey area a bit, slightly limiting the usefulness of alignment related abilities. More important however was that my player learned that not all evil is the same and that a slight evil aura might not necessarily imply something more sinister than a dishonest shopkeeper.

If you're using a Pendragonesque system in which each person has a numerical rating in various personality characteristics, which change one way or another as they make various choices in their lives, it's really very easy: "you can smite anyone who has a total score of at least X in those traits opposite the ones you are required to have". That works perfectly for paladins of opposing or orthogonal faiths, too.

Sounds good, similar to scaling alignment. Seems I should reread my old Pendragon rules-

I played in a game like this once: to the clerics of the healing god, the clerics of the battle god detected as evil, and vice versa, even though they would have been considered LG/NG and LG/LN in standard D&D alignment. We had both in the party, and it worked pretty well; lots of amusing theological roleplaying. My character was a hunting god pragmatist, who thought both sides were insane. =)

Sounds fun and I still like this idea, but I must say I was reluctant to introduce this into an ongoing campaign, because I did not really feel able to assess how this would work out and how complicated it could possibly get.

[Sorontar]

Quick (well actually verbose) example of Detect Evil in our campaign and how our dynamic alignment system works.

My Druid is facing some mist. He wants to know if the "Awnshegh" the party has been battling is still in there, so he tries Detect Evil. Two problems: 1) He doesn't know if the Awnie is actually evil (but she did ambush the party after all) 2) a party member is also in the cloud. Unbeknownst to the characters, the party member was recently blooded with Azrai bloodline. He was already Chaotic Neutral (or something similar) and now has Chaotic evil or Neutral Evil habits. So what did Detect Evil show the Druid?

The answer is nothing. While DM Doyle knows exactly why, I suspect that there were two reasons: 1) The Awnie was no longer there and actually wasn't an Awnie anyway (just a mage who like shapeshifting) 2) The party member was not having evil thoughts at the time. He was more interested in self and party preservation, which is a Neutral/Good approach to life.

So our Detect Evil tends to look at the aura of the moment, rather than the aura of the character. This obviously limits its usage, but think of it like Detect Lie/Discern Lies. That spell only tells you when mistruths are said, not that someone is a pathological liar or is trying to mislead you by leaving out information. If the party member had been thinking evil thoughts, Detect Evil might have identified his presence in the mist.

Sorontar
ps. Isn't this getting a bit off-topic for Avanil? How about someone shift some of these posts to a new Alignment or Paladin based thread?

[geeman]

At 11:23 AM 5/16/2007, Dcolby wrote:

> "Of course I am shocked and dismayed, I don`t think I`m evil!"

That`s a good example of role-playing, but one should bear in mind
that in the D&D (and BR) universe good and evil are palpable
things--at least, by magic. Good/evil and law/chaos can be detected,
protected against and can deny an individual the use of particular
magics. Don`t get me wrong, I`m all for an expansion into a more
useful system of portraying character personality, association and
morality, but keep in mind that the alignment system in D&D is
extrinsic as well as intrinsic.

Gary

[ryancaveney]

Haelyn seems to have not enough negative traits and some of the dark gods few "good" abilities for their followers

Sorry, there's some context missing.

These personality traits were all chosen from a specific list which come from the Pendragon RPG, by Greg Stafford. Quoting from that rulebook, "Traits are dualistic personality factors. A trait and its opposite both exist in every individual. They define a person's feelings and tendencies. Pendragon has thirteen pairs of personality traits which are important. Characters certainly display other traits, but those listed are the ones critical to the Arthurian literature of the game." Each trait is given a numerical score; scores in pairs of opposites are positive numbers which sum to twenty, except in truly exceptional individuals (Lancelot has Valorous 25/Cowardly 0, and King Arthur has Merciful 21/Cruel 0).

The list of opposed pairs is:

Chaste / Lustful
Energetic / Lazy
Forgiving / Vengeful
Generous / Selfish
Honest / Deceitful
Modest / Proud
Just / Arbitrary
Trusting / Suspicious
Merciful / Cruel
Pious / Worldly
Prudent / Reckless
Temperate / Indulgent
Valorous / Cowardly

Actions in the game which examplify those traits cause them to (possibly) increase; for example, "when someone acts jealous, they [may increase] their Suspicious." The reason I made lists for each god is that the power available for spellcasting in Pendragon is determined by the degree to which the caster's own personality accords with the traits their god values, encourages and emphasizes. Each religion (diety in a BR context) is associated with the five (of the 26) personality traits which describe how well each person is following the teachings of that faith.

It is important to note that not all these words mean precisely what one might think at first glance. For example, the place where dcolby and I clearly disagree is the interpretation of Pious/Worldly. He has Pious listed for every cleric, because the dictionary definition is "having or showing a dutiful spirit of reverence for a diety or an earnest wish to fulfill religious obligations." However, as I read the the Pendragon rules, "Pious... should be contrasted with Worship, which is an action rather than a belief... Worldly... might just indicate great pleasure in mundane... delights such as fine clothes, comfortable furnishings, good music and poetry, and the best company. Do not confuse Worldly with Indulgent; the two often go hand-in-hand, but they are not the same." A high Pious score is appropriate for people who are more concerned with ideas than physical things; it fits some philosophers and mathematicians far better than it fits many priests. A high Worldly score, seen this way, is very clearly required by the goddesses Sera and Laerme, and at least encouraged by Eloele, Cuiraecen and Belinik. However, I did not list it for the last three because I don't see it as in their top five. Piety, in the sense of "doing what your god wants" means having a *low* Pious score in Pendragon rules, if your god thinks that parties are more interesting than praying (or, indeed, a *form* of praying). Dionysius is an obvious classical example of a god for whom piety consists in being as close to Pious 0 / Worldly 20 as possible.

My response to "not enough negative" vs. "few good" is twofold. One, Haelyn, Avani and company are supposed to be the heroes while Belinik and Kriesha are supposed to be the villains, so that difference is entirely appropriate. Two, and much more interesting in my opinion, is that what counts as negative or positive depends on your god's moral system. For example, Sera and Erik both teach that people should work hard, so they list Energetic. However, Erik teaches that you should work for the good of the community while Sera teaches that you should keep your profits for your own use; therefore, Erik lists Generous while Sera lists Selfish, which are opposites. Eloele also approves of Selfish, but prefers Lazy to Energetic, since it is better to have other people do the hard work for you, and then take the results from them. Similarly, Haelyn and Cuiraecen both demand that worshippers be Valorous, but I listed Cuiraecen as wanting his worshippers to be Indulgent ("takes pleasure in food and drink, both in quality and in quantity") but Haelyn as wanting his to be the opposite, Temperate ("takes only what he needs... is frugal and abstains from excess") because Haelyn is the god of rulership, an important part of which is careful husbanding of resources, while Cuiraecen is a "party on, dude!" kind of guy.

This is my favorite part about this system: religions which hate each other can endorse similar behaviors, and close allies can endorse some (but not all, or the alliance will not last) opposing ones. There is also room for some religions to be completely nonintersecting; for example, as I've defined them, whether your personality follows or opposes what Laerme approves bears no relationship to whether your personality follows or opposes what Eloele approves.

how about "overconfident"? For a god whose predecessors signature ability is COURAGE it would seem fitting. e.g. Michael Roele fearing nothing and
taking risks because of it.

There are a couple of responses to this within the Pendragon system. One is that Prudent/Reckless is a separate trait pair from Valorous/Cowardly, so everybody has independent scores in both pairs. Reckless is acting before thinking; Valorous is being willing to face danger. If you act recklessly enough, valor may not even come into it, because you've completed the action before you realize it was dangerous enough to bother being brave about.

The other answer is that since every trait pair is assigned numerical values, "slightly confident", "very confident" and "overconfident" can be expressed simply by putting the right numbers in the slots. That is, Valorous 10 / Cowardly 10 is a person whose bravery level is utterly typical and unremarkable. Someone who is Valorous 15 / Cowardly 5 is mostly brave and usually is willing to face moderate danger. Someone who is Valorous 20 / Cowardly 0 almost never shows fear, even when retreat would be a better idea -- especially if they also are more Reckless than Prudent.

A non-Pendragon, within-BR response is to say that by the available record of his actions, Michael Roele was a rather better example of the kind of behavior Cuiraecen endorses, than that approved by Haelyn.

Cuiraceen could perhaps have "violent". As the godess of the sea Nesierie ought to be perhaps a bit unpredictable. and Beleink "strong"

To me, simultaneous extremes of Valorous, Reckless, Proud and Energetic as encouraged by my view of Cuiraecen's preferred personality traits, together with military training and armament, strongly imply frequent violence. Unpredictability is precisely why I gave Arbitrary to Nesirie; I'd also give Cruel to most sea gods, but not Nesirie, because of her strong connection with grief. I gave Belinik Valorous, Reckless and Proud, which is 60% identical to Cuiraecen and 40% nonoverlapping; in the way I've set things out, it is actually very easy to be a faithful follower of both gods, because although their worshippers don't like each other, they act somewhat similarly.


Ryan

[ShadowMoon]

In regard of Healing: My Priests use a variant rule "Slow Healing" from Unearthed Arcana. It means that number of Health a spell could restore is not removed but converted to nolethal. So basically You need double healing. And we use Wounds and Stamina, so mortality is great. And Priests are channelers in my campaign, so they have to select spells much like sorcerers. Since Priests are now spontaneous casters they loose Spontaneous Energy conversion (cure/harm), which means that if a Priest didn't researched/learned/acquired Healing spell, he would be forced to use Heal skill, making Healing Domain very valuable aspect of a Deity. We use Sanity rules too, so not all harm is physical, and since magic is a mysterious force it harms ones Sanity. So many casters lose their mind, invoking/channeling eldritch power, so thats make casters very careful when castin spells.

Slightly off-topic:
We use Read and Write Language (specific) (Int) and Speak Language (specific) (Cha) in our campaign. Most people are illiterate. Speak Language (Native), or dominant culture language is a class skill for characters. Bards are only one that have all languages (taken separately) as class skills. So no free languages for anyone. Maximum languages that one can know how to speak is Native + Cha bonus. Max Read & Write is Int bonus. After that, one would need to take a Feat that can allow one more Language (both Read & Write, and Speak). Someone mentioned literacy as a possibile requirement for a Priest, well put Read & Write Language (Native) 2-4 and Speak Language (Native) 2-4, and add Celestial or Infernal, and You'll see that there will be not many Priests around.

[irdeggman]

Well, a great restrictor for the priesthood would be a level of literacy - your average peasant isn't going to be literate, and isn't going to have access to a means of becoming literate. Heck, make a literacy in ancient Andu a requirement, as literacy in Latin was a requirement for Medieval priesthood.

Won't work.

The Vos have no written language at all. {The only culture or race in the setting that doesn't by the way.}

So priests of Belnik and Kreisha would pretty much not exist at all if using literacy as a "prequisite".

[Thelandrin]

Don't they have a runic spell language that the priests of Belinik and Kriesha could use?

Failing that, they could learn Infernal/Abyssal and use it as their divine tongue.

[ShadowMoon]

Don't they have a runic spell language that the priests of Belinik and Kriesha could use?

Failing that, they could learn Infernal/Abyssal and use it as their divine tongue.

Those are simple runes for marking someone's property and for simple counting...

But Infernal/Abyssal is needed, at least in my campaign. As wll as Celestial for "light" divine servants.