I agree. I like how they did it in BG2. There was *one* way, and you could do it *once*. Fall again, or already done that quest? You're now a crappy fighter for the rest of the game.
In BG1 you could slaughter everyone in the Friendly Arm Inn, getting a villainous reputation in the process, walk across the courtyard to the church and donate enough money to be a hero again.
Money for redemption is a BG tradition.
I think the distinction there is one is gaming what is widely criticized as one of the Original Saga's weakest (and fairly abstracted, narratively) systems, actually redeeming a fallen paladin in those games was a whole questline IIRC.
And in regards to BG III on the other hand is
THE FIRST OATHBREAKER dramatically showing up to inform you that he is the arbiter of Oathbreakers, and that only throguh him can a paladin be redeemed, by paying a very specific amount of money, because that's the amount of money he decided it should be, and that this is apparently just how it is (and presumably always has been?) in the Forgotten Realms. But he'll also make you a blackguard/oathbreaker/whatever because that's *also* what he does. For free. No quest for that either. Apparently falling isn't really that big a deal, and becoming an oathbreaker isn't really much of a change from a normal paladin either.
It basically completely rewrites the foundations of the class as it relates to the setting. In addition to being comparable mechanically to one of the weakest systems of the original saga.
