What would it take for Pelor to abandon a paladin?

Question

I am specifically running a D&D 4e game and am tossing around story ideas to incorporate an old character of mine as a guest star. A brief history of the character is that he is a dwarf who started worshiping Pelor and was exiled from dwarven culture for not worshiping Moradin. He was a strong adventurer who always tried to protect his group.

My idea is that between the time (in game) I stopped playing him and when he shows up as a sullen, drunkard, prize-fighter in my new game; I want his powers to have been revoked by Pelor. Would being frozen in fear in the face of a terrible evil he had never seen before be enough for Pelor to take away his powers, or does it need to be something worse? Keep in mind his moment of fear and inaction was what led directly to the party being killed.

Answer 1

This is a non-starter. Paladins don't get their powers revoked in D&D 4e, nor are they granted by a god to begin with. If you have your PHB1 handy, turn it open to the Paladin class description and take a look at the paragraph in the top-left of the second page.

In short, Paladins receive their powers through training, an initiation rite, their boundless faith, or so on. Once the Paladin has started down the path of being a Paladin, their powers are their own and are theirs to keep. They are not granted daily by a god, but simply the Paladin's own, as an expression and manifestation of their faith. They cannot be revoked any more than a Sorcerer can be robbed of their spells or a Rogue can be robbed of their ability to smuggle knives into peoples' faces. (For the record, the same applies for Clerics and other divine classes.)

This is a pretty significant departure from previous editions. Another significant departure is that the Gods are distant and mysterious, and generally not concerned with interacting with mortals. Mechanically, the Gods are almost entirely irrelevant.

What should happen instead?

Instead, your dwarf would have his divine order turn their back on him. Pelor may do so, but it's highly unlikely he or his order had much contact with Pelor or his servants to begin with. The dwarf would still have his powers, because D&D 4e doesn't have any concept of power-revocation. He may simply be unable or unwilling to use them, possibly out of shame, or out of threats by his order. How you handle that is up to you.

Is there any reason Pelor shouldn't revoke his powers?

Yes: You'd set a precedent that 4e works the way 3.5e did where it does not and should not, and send two clear messages. First, that divine classes should constrain their actions based on alignment under fear of loss of all power, and second, that alignment is mechanically significant.

Neither of these things are the case otherwise, and D&D 4e is designed based on the idea they aren't the case. Classes are designed to be equal and balanced at all levels, and the alignment system is mechanically so insignificant you could remove it and affect almost nothing. 4e doesn't share 3.5e's philosophy of major catastrophic character damage being an OK thing - destruction of levels, attribute scores or unique equipment generally just doesn't happen, and nor does loss of class features.

Overall, in 4e I would strongly advise staying with D&D 4e's philosophy of Divine classes not being god-fuelled or under threat of losing their powers. The consequences suggested - a character's order hunting them down, among other things - are more appropriate for 4th edition, and push the story forward in accordance with its heroic themes.

Answer 2

I think you've already answered your own question in your write-up: your character has lost his faith.

Tragedy and self-doubt have shaken his beliefs and driven him to lose his devotion to his code and his cause. You don't need a god to punish him — the paladin is already punishing himself! Maybe he hates Pelor now. Maybe he just thinks of himself as fundamentally unworthy of Pelor's divine blessing. Either way, he's lost his deep connection to the source of his divine power, so he can't wield it anymore.

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In the case of a PC, it's really up to the group how you want to treat this mechanically. My assumption is that you just wouldn't use your paladin abilities until your character's faith is restored. If you end up not going back at all, it's probably most sensible to rebuild him mechanically as a member of a different class (the gap time between campaigns would be a good way to narratively justify this kind of "retraining").

In the case of a PC returning as an NPC, you'll want to restat him with NPC stats anyway.

Answer 3

I'm going to take the alternate tack on this one. It's your game; you don't need to be constrained by D&D 4e to create the story you want to. You are the one who creates your campaign world. If you want to deviate from the 'canon' of the rulebooks, you have every right to do so. As a DM, you can give an NPC can have whatever back story you would like.

If it were a matter of inflicting this on a player, that might be a different story, as you don't want to punish them and break the game mechanically. But because it's an NPC and you feel it will make for a better story, DO IT!