Having played a Paladin through two runs, the Oath system feels arbitrary and irrational. I've had my Oath broken for pushing a goblin off a cliff from sneaking while she was jabbering about torturing a druid. Okay, I'll accept that I attacked a helpless psychopath as breaking my oath....but.....
Raising Myrna's husband? Really. She's crying, and I'm trying to comfort her. Oh, but I can resurrect my allies with no penalty. And I can cast the spell animate dead, again with no penalty. I can bring up the dead to talk to them, and that's fine. There is no consistency here.
Now, I'm in the prison, and I'm trying to free the Gnomes, so I steal the hammer. Apparently stealing is fine. No one sees me, but somehow, by magic, when I descend the ladder the Warden confronts me and attacks me. I kill her in self defense and get the dreaded Oathbreaker message. So, trying to break prisoners out of Moonrise towers constitutes breaking my oath?
This is a fun concept, but there really needs to be some firm lines. Stealing is fine but looting a corpse is not. Killing thousands of enemies is fine but is wrong when they are confronting your for taking something that is not even theirs to help someone escape captivity?
This is why some sort of reputation system would be helpful. So you can see the effect that your actions are having. As things stand, you can slaughter a whole room full of people, and the people next door have nothing to say about it. I appreciate that the conventional Alignment system was rigid and restrictive, but this feels absurd and capricious. If nothing else, it is frustrating. I know that many will rush to defend the system and rationalize the above scenarios, but that is my point. It shouldn't take sophistry to justify these gameplay consequences. They should be clear and reasonable to anyone who adopts the Paladin mindset. I've gone through the game stealing nothing, protecting the helpless, doing things that the game does not require because they are CONSISTENT with my character, and then I get hit with something like the above. It ruins the role playing.
Also, I've seen posts on this topic, but none covering exactly what I want to discuss here, so I'd appreciate not being redirected to any of those threads, thank you.
