In article <slrnerfm50.rl2.neelk@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
Neelakantan Krishnaswami <neelk@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>In article <ep89db$b6j$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, Mary K. Kuhner wrote:
>> Even Charis sees this. Paladins who fall from grace traditionally
>> end up chaotic evil, but I think this one could end up lawful evil.
>Heh. In most of the games I've played in, fallen paladins were
>typically still good-aligned -- they just had performed one sin they
>thought wasn't wrong. So: we have a fighter without bonus feats with
>all the evil enemies made back when he or she had superpowers, a sense
>of obligation to still oppose them, and just for kicks the holy
>inquisition was also after them.
You found paladins to have superpowers? I'm continually frustrated
with the class. SCAP (very appropriately, I think) has paladins as
very rare and individually significant people, and I really like that
flavor. But in play they just aren't, unless you load them up with
special-purpose equipment.
Arcanus Unearthed has the exact same problem with the Champion class.
They are dedicated champions of a person, place, organization or
ideal, and they should be *impressive* as such. But they are so
darned weak, you just feel sorry for them: they would have been
much better off as warmains (the heavy fighter equivalent).
I doubt Charis will ever lose her sense of obligation, but I could
see her giving up on her principles and deciding that the ends
justify the means, and I think that would make her, in this case,
closer to lawful evil than lawful good. She has never been very
solidly good anyway; she's a Law-paladin rather than a Good-paladin.
At the moment Fritz is saying to her, "I think this prisoner can
be redeemed. I know she's too dangerous to turn loose and too
difficult to keep, but I have a Plan for dealing with that." It
is hard for Charis to say "No, I don't care if she can be redeemed--
kill her." But if she agrees to Fritz' plan, well, it's blackest
necromancy to start with, and the odds are quite good that rather
than redeeming the NPC, it will corrupt Fritz. Fritz is the big
chink in Charis' personal ethics anyway; he's not a nice person at
all, but he's her older brother and she doesn't want to lose him,
no matter how badly she needs to.
I have been surprised at how hard it's been for Charis to maintain
her personal standards in this setting. Much harder than for any
paladin I'd played before, even though nothing has tried to corrupt
her directly at all. (At least, I don't think so.)
Mary Kuhner mkkuhner@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
|
