Why not just drop Paladins from the game and simply roll thier special abilities into the other classes if they are so needed?

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Original post by Chacko Those who followed Gnossis (yes, pun was intended) received a cross-like symbol that could be used to burn the undead. I'm sorry I can't get the pun, there.... ---- But really to ensure paladins are playing "right" you can do the classic alignment method. Make it where ever living object (npc/player) has an alignment integer between -1000 and 1000, where -1000 is absolute evil, 1000 is epitome of Goodness. Then make it when ever you kill something it gives you a very small movement in the reverse direction of what you killed. You can make some creatures (such as a really wicked Witch) give more then others. So... you set a Ghouls alignment to like (-100) [evil] You would run a check... if(Slain->Alignment() > 0) { Player->AdjustAlignment(random(abs(Slain->Alignment))); } and do the opposite for if they were good... now I'm sure someone else can come up with a faster routine for doing this... Another cool thing to do is to keep an array of the last few dozen monsters a player has killed and make it where when they enter the chapel to train, the statue of their God say, ignores them until they repent for their sins if one of those creatures is said to have been innocent. Now of course with this system you'll need to add an ability to judge (you can go back to the holy symbol) so players can tell what is good/evil/neutral. They can 'hold' the symbol and the hotter it feels to them, or more it glows, the more evil the enemy. Even cooler would be to start Paladins with an Avenger weapon that glows when ever evil creatures are nearby and amplifies in damage. If it spills the blood of innocents, you can make it where the Paladin slowly degenerates into something like a Dark Knight/Anti-Paladin.

I have always advocated the multiple fame counters. First, there is one scale where you get famed for killing animals. This one can affect people sensible to this kind of particular thing. A nature lover may be shocked of being seen discussing with someone famed for chainkilling wolves, as an example.

A second one may be a human-shaped targets scale. The more you kill humans, be they NPCs or mobs, and the more the NPC population will fear you.

A third may be "fame". This one may have either as positive or a negative value. You get positive fame for completing quests (such a kind man!!), for every purchase in classic NPC shops (known for spending lots...) and for probably other things, like showing faith in one of the many Gods (being God abiding is always a plus, everywhere.) Negative fame can be gained by killing PCs (He is the PickAxe Pegasus! He is the madman who singlehandedly killed six armored Knights in Orbatra, last week!), by performing foul deeds like desacrating holy places (holy for ANY God), stealing (if your game permits it), or by fleeing a battle (put on you by your former team mates if they choose to.) This fame is very volatile. You gain sudden buffs of fame for any particular feat, but, on the whole, after the buff wears off, you're stuck with only one(1) point of fame, in one direction or the other. So a particularly GOOD character, known for helping the poor, and never breaking in other people's houses, or looting corpses, would probably get a negative buff in his fame if he killed someone in broad day light, right in the middle of a city, but NPCs may decide afterwards to find him excuses (negative fame buff wearing off) and still like him. If the guy decided to play his character evil from then on, he would get more and more negative buffs, and reduce his good fame gradually, one point at a time.

A fourth scale may be like your Morrowind's factions. It could be with gods, or with factions, but gaining points in one is likely to make you loose points with others. You may gain faction points by completing quests for a particular faction, and you may loose some by failing to complete a quest. But undertaking a quest for a faction would always make you loose points in opposite factions.

I don't feel satisfied just yet.

I'd also like to note that any automatic action forcing the player to play "good" would be done in such a way that seems natural. If a good paladin commits unspeakable evil, he loses his holy abilities. These abilities would come from his/her god, therefore, it would be natural for these abilities to be taken away. Nothing is stopping that paladin from becoming evil, just that they can't have their cake and eat it too. It would be a known consequence that doing evil means losing paladin abilities and becoming a regular warrior, maybe with the option of becoming a black guard.

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But I want to stray from that kind of thinking for the moment as I'm beginning to see how hard it is to capture true alignment. Some things are easy to catch but as mentioned before, and summed up in the court of law, you need both the action AND the motive. Without motive, it's just an accident, without action it's just a thought. together and it's evil. But I doubt i'll be alive when they figure out how to properly capture motive within a game or just a device for that matter.

This means I have to take a different route.

Just looking at the numbers generated by warcraftrealms, there are about 300k paladins. How many are active at one time I dont' know but 300k is a lot. This probably rules out having GM's hover over any holy character and ensuring they stay holy. either that or have the "god" not have time to keep an eye on everyone at once.

Still I bet a lot of the actions deemed as evil will be disputed as they reveal their true motives (even still, they could be lying about it). Like a paladin killing his leader. Only to explain after his powers were gone that he had secret proof that the leader was secretly evil.

But one thing that is beginning to change my mind on the whole alignment issue is as follows. (Sorry for so many WoW references, I've played many other MMO's but the others were all sci-fi). The Scarlet Crusade consisted of many paladins to which were all extremists. If you weren't part of the Crusade, you were an enemy, yet dispite their "fallen" ways, they still had holy powers.

And a real life example are the Templar Knights. Supposed to be holy warriors, they fought and killed for land when the logical thing for their religion was to not even start the war in the first place. Yet they are still seen as holy.


Maybe my one best option is to explain how such a holy character can do such wrong. Maybe they holy person really just has access to holy spells and that the deity doesn't care so much about what they do as long as their powers are being used. Or that they will be judged in the "afterlife" that we will never see. Or that any evil action will just have an NPC response (just words than anything else).

What about if you tracked several virtues (paladins are suposed to be virtious). The higher these virtues are the more powerful the paladin is (limited by skills or class if that is how you are doing it). The lower the score in the virtues, the weaker the paladin is (so it's not a binary on/off condition).

If the virtues are linked to various powers of the paladin (like compassion is linked to their ability to heal, etc) then the player can control how the paladin's abilities manifest to some degree.

When I'm playing crpgs I'm usually really evil only when I play good. Playing good is usually what's expected when you're playing crpgs so that will usually give you the most XP and. This (for me) quickly results in a manipulative way of playing where I know what the npc wants - gives it to him to get xp - and kills everyone that stands in my way. This is not the way I play when playing PnP rpgs but I guess I usually end up "testing" the system when playing rpgs on computers.

I would go for a split solution like Fournicolas suggested. Your god doesn't need to care what other people think of you as long as you do what he tells you to do. A god could think that 100 followers killed to bring down another gods church might be a good trade whereas most humans would see it as slaughter. Killing a lonesome person in a wood CANNOT change how other people perceive you since nobody knows of it (unless it's been investigated) - but your god would see it and act accordingly.

This made me think of how cool it would be to implement rumors and gossip in your game engine. What if people had to talk to each other for the word of your deeds to spread (both inside and outside the town you're in)? This way someone had to see your deeds and stealth might be a more interresting thing to specialize in! And how would you behave when you THINK nobody's looking? Suddenly invisibility spells become more dangerous.