Goodly Forces Options

[Patch]

What are the limits on the choice of miracle tree for a paladin, particularly regarding alignment?

The Spiritual Innates ability in En Garde just says "may select a single spiritual tree" without any qualifiers that apply to the class. It's pretty clear a paladin can't pick an evil tree, and Grey Knights and Unholy Champions both get a de facto "own alignment only" from the fact that they have to match their 1st-8th stairway, but paladins have no such restriction written - are they restricted to Goodly trees only, or can I pick Forces as my paladin's first tree of innates?

They have to be goodly.

Lee

I would imagine it should be possible to put in an App that lets you take the forces tree, but effectively say they are "goodly" versions that only work against evil, in a similar manner to pathing priests all the forces tree is on the goodly path list...

Patch

[LizWeir]

Oddly enough I've been thinking along approximately these lines!

My inclination for the specific character in question is to be a bit more ambitious - my idea of her particular angle on the Paladin lightest-of-the-light thing is a bit more "it doesn't matter what I fight against, it matters what I'm fighting for," so I'm trying to keep away from too much "against Evil only" in my abilities. If I do go for something in this general region I'd probably be looking at "forces, no restriction on targets because it's no worse for me to spirit-bolt someone than hit them with a sword, but they're goodly spirits (so they're blocked by a prot and so on) and if I ever break my paladin restrictions they immediately spirit-bolt me to death."

I'd also wondered about some "but because I have a relationship with goodly versions of neutral spirits, I can no longer benefit from miracles cast by people who can cast evil miracles" - no spirit shields from the evil priests!

I wouldn't be too surprised to see "no - if you want this MC spirit warrior" come back, but I figure it might be worth a shot - has anyone tried anything similar? Any ideas for restrictions that might help balance it out?

(Justifications in mind are in the general area of "it's totally consistent with my paladin restrictions and Goodly ethos to Halt an LN guard to help someone escape so they can clear their name after they were framed by a villain, throw some bolts when fighting an honour duel with the Goodly champion of an enemy society because that was the only way we could find to satisfy the demands of honour and our incompatible-but-still-Good goals without open warfare and a lot more bloodshed, or VoP a hospitaller to run away and stop interfering with my attempts to fight through an evil cult and rescue some prisoners.")

If not, there's always total heal.

[JonMace]

(Justifications in mind are in the general area of "it's totally consistent with my paladin restrictions and Goodly ethos to Halt an LN guard to help someone escape so they can clear their name after they were framed by a villain, throw some bolts when fighting an honour duel with the Goodly champion of an enemy society because that was the only way we could find to satisfy the demands of honour and our incompatible-but-still-Good goals without open warfare and a lot more bloodshed, or VoP a hospitaller to run away and stop interfering with my attempts to fight through an evil cult and rescue some prisoners.")

If not, there's always total heal.

Carefull of the VOP on the hospie, if you VOP Die / Sleep etc, then you forget to release or he gets killed as a result you are in black mark / losing paladinhood territory

[LizWeir]

Carefull of the VOP on the hospie, if you VOP Die / Sleep etc, then you forget to release or he gets killed as a result you are in black mark / losing paladinhood territory

Extremely here for this - "this solves my problem but replaces it with the easier but still interesting problem of making sure I clean up after myself" is just the sort of thing I enjoy!

I'd been thinking I'd need to make sure I took enough Remove VoP innates to cover that, but it's releasable so I'd only need those for other people's, right?

(I'd also be expecting to need to make sure anyone I did the "I don't want to hurt you so I'm going to use non-damaging Forces on you instead" routine on didn't get stabbed in the back while I wasn't looking, because that's also got some juicy responsibility on it - particularly if I'm getting something a paladin doesn't get as published, the flipside of "I can bolt anyone I can hit with a sword" really has to be "I have to take responsibility for the consequences!")

[JonMace]

Extremely here for this - "this solves my problem but replaces it with the easier but still interesting problem of making sure I clean up after myself" is just the sort of thing I enjoy!

I'd been thinking I'd need to make sure I took enough Remove VoP innates to cover that, but it's releasable so I'd only need those for other people's, right?

(I'd also be expecting to need to make sure anyone I did the "I don't want to hurt you so I'm going to use non-damaging Forces on you instead" routine on didn't get stabbed in the back while I wasn't looking, because that's also got some juicy responsibility on it - particularly if I'm getting something a paladin doesn't get as published, the flipside of "I can bolt anyone I can hit with a sword" really has to be "I have to take responsibility for the consequences!")

Yous are releasable, what other people do as a paladin gets difficult, if a godly priest, vop dies a goodly peasant, and refuses to release it what do you do?

[Fionamullin]

Cast remove voice of power?

[TimTreadwell]

Have a version of VOP which releases after an hour or if target takes damage.