Dragon 404Unearthed Arcana: A Matter of Honor
By Chris Sims
Honor is integrity. It is a state of balance between one’s values and deeds. A person of honor behaves according to what he or she believes is right, fulfilling duty and destiny in a quantifiable way.
Talk about this article here.
This just seems like more of the same.
That having been said, the idea of giving people mechanical benefits for adhering to a code isn't a bad one. I suppose it's a YMMV situation.
I really liked this article. It was great to provide a mix of honor codes so it was applicable to more settings and useful as just pure RP or a system you could approve with your DM. It has tremendous RP potential. And, it can be the basis of a far-East setting where the DM uses the system to reflect the culture and its intricacies.
DarkSpiral, it could be fun to work with a DM to create a personal honor code, but set it so it is hard to achieve. It is your own code, but one you must work hard to fulfill and which may be contrary to campaign goals. Having others tell you that your PC is doing it wrong would be a feature and expected (and part of the challenge) rather than some out-of-character judgement on you as a player.
I also actually came up with a similar mechanics with my players as an experiment to encourage them having a bit more personality in their characters, though abandoned it when they didn't show much interest in even picking the traits that they wanted to use.
I like that 4e decided to drop mechanics for alignment, but this seems like a nice way to reintroduce it if people want to use something similar.
Explicit mechanical effects are probably better-suited to settings in which they make some thematic sense - which is probably true if you're dealing with a game that leans heavily on the Kara-Tur theme, or (for a more obscure example) Honorbound characters in the Red Steel/Savage Coast setting.
Of course, you can ignore the mechanics and look at it as a narrative guideline instead. That should work reasonably well in any context.
I like the idea of having a personal code or an orgaizational code.
For me personally, I'll give this a try next week and see how it works out.
I like this article, its pretty good and as an UA article its entirely optional.
I like the idea of having a personal code or an orgaizational code.
But why does it need to be codified and mechanical? You just go 'my character believes this' or 'this organization supports this' and RP it.
I like this article, its pretty good and as an UA article its entirely optional.
I like the idea of having a personal code or an orgaizational code.
But why does it need to be codified and mechanical? You just go 'my character believes this' or 'this organization supports this' and RP it.
It doesn't need to be codified and mechanical, but some people want it to be. So now there's a way laid out for them to do that. And it''s Unearthed Arcana, so you aren't being told that you ought to accept it an use it along with everything else; it's explicitly option.
I like this article, its pretty good and as an UA article its entirely optional.
I like the idea of having a personal code or an orgaizational code.
But why does it need to be codified and mechanical? You just go 'my character believes this' or 'this organization supports this' and RP it.
I would say because sometimes you want mechanics for stuff. And if you havent noticed, its a UA article, you dont need to use it.
much like all of the other UA articles.
Isnt it better to have optional rules and not need them than to need them and not have them?
But why does it need to be codified and mechanical? You just go 'my character believes this' or 'this organization supports this' and RP it.
The mechanics are there only if you want it to be. If you just want to RP, this can give you some ideas and then you just RP your following the code.
There is usually a big difference between saying "My paladin fights for honor, justice, and fighting against evil," and having a setting-backed code that you must honor. With pure RP, if the paladin makes a hard choice and lets the evil orc go, he RPs the result and there is no effect beyond a self-imposed one. If we have mechanics, that becomes part of the consideration, with the effect extending beyond RP. While for some that carries no "fun" benefit, for many it means there are more "teeth" to the decision. Other players are likely to monitor it more closely, the paladin's player may take it more seriously, and it can have quantifiable ramifications for the future (when another decision would also have effects).
For example, in Legend of the Five Rings (which has a point-measured honor code) I find that players often start with some idea around how their PC will be honor-wise. You might think "this character doesn't care about honor much", or "this character will be extremely honorable." And yet, as play progresses the PCs encounter situations that challenge that basis. You lose or gain honor and find yourself re-examining how the PC feels about honor. The high-honor PC may find they have made choices that cost them honor and thus can no longer realistically consider themselves virtuous in that regard. The low-honor PC has accumulated a surprising amount of honor and now sees themselves as reformed. The tracking of honor on a point system is what really helps the player measure that change and react to it. Without it the RP is "just" RP and can be interpreted such that the assumptions aren't so easily challenged.
My own Dragon Mirumoto swordsman started as a character that suffered internally from a past decision. I saw a potential for high honor but figured instead I would stress the "wounded" aspect. However, decisions in adventures led to a high amount of honor, amongst the highest in our group. The mental wound (having to do with a decision between love and honoring his clan) became a secret wound that was a stain upon an otherwise apparently immaculate person. I hinted at his problem with a stutter (something I added after playing a few sessions) for which there was no reason (and which he never had when speaking to his brother, who knew his secret). I credit the point system in helping me make that decision and giving a nice contrast between my RP concept and the societal way samurai are measured (mechanically).
This should be an entirely roleplaying consideration. As stated above, it bears the distinct stench of pre-4e alignment.
Not necessarily. Honor is something based on outward assumptions. It is something placed on a person by society and it has absolutely nothing to do with what your character or even you as a player feel is right or wrong (as long as you as the player knows what society thinks that is). In fact, in settings where honor is important enough to give game mechanical considerations (which by definition highlights to the players how important it is as Alphastream commented), creating situations that challenge that honor is part and parcel of the story. Obviously, this is not something a DM should use without concent from the players just as a DM should not run a dungeon crawl when the players want cloak-and-dagger ;)
Alignment on the other hand was rather vaguely defined based on some unknown universal powers where motivations are just as important as the actual acts. Not to mention that characters could loose class powers, and even in a game like Legend of the Five Rings honor impacts how others react, but not your own skills and powers ;)