[3.5] The Paladin's Alignment

[Shadowbane]

Now, I am a huge fan of paladins. And I mean huge. Every opportunity I get I play my fixed paladin class below.

However, as I play, I've realized that I prefer the Neutral Good alignment for my paladin than the Lawful Good alignment. I feel it represents the attitude of my paladin, who keeps his word and is a good guy, but puts that good above all else.

What alignment do you like for your paladins? Have you had any memorable experiences with paladins? Share your stories and opinions, I'm curious!

[Prime32]

Obligatory TVTropes link: The Fettered (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheFettered)

[Greenish]

Lawful Good works, once you realize that it includes Sam Vimes.

[Eldonauran]

I play Paladins 'by-the-book' and exalted (close enough to be the same thing). Lawful Good all the way.

I place Good before Law, of course, since commiting a chaotic act doesn't immediately make you fall, and never willingly commiting an evil act even if it lead to the destruction of the universe. Death before the Fall and thus, become an example to all those that may come after!

Disclaimer: The Paladin I play would sacrifice his life in a heart beat to save another (ie, hold off a massive force to allow others to escape) but would not sacrifice his oath to save someone held ransom by an evil force. He might go down fighting to save that person but never willingly give himself over to evil in order to do so. He would be wracked by guilt if he was unable to save that person but he would have to get over it.

[Telonius]

In the games I DM, I houserule that a Paladin takes the alignment of their god or cause. Paladin's Vow is reworked - the Paladin must act as an exemplar of that deity's goals. Paladins of lawful good deities wouldn't be much affected. But things can get interesting when you have something like a Paladin of Garl Glittergold or Boccob.

[Shadowbane]

A paladin of Boccob the uncaring? That would be interesting.

[drengnikrafe]

I play the strait and narrow, Lawful and Good all the way. Annoyingly so, to a degree. Annoying in that most of the people in my game group either start or end (or both) as Chaotic Neutral, so they don't like law and reason interfering with "we do whatever we want to".

[Splendor]

Keep in mind that only evil acts would cause a paladin to fall. The occasional non-lawful act won't, so long as it doesn't change your overall lawful alignment.

There's a feat in the Powers of Faerun called Heretic of the faith but that only applies to clerics.

There's the Paladin variants in DR 310, the Sentinel variant is NG.
1 Aura of good, detect evil, smite evil 1/day
2 Divine grace, resist fiendish lure
3 Aura of courage, celestial fortitude
4 turn outsider
5 smite evil 2/day, celestial minon
8 dispel evil 1/week
10 smite evil 3/day
12 Dispel Evil 2/week
15 Smite evil 4/day
16 Dispel Evil 3/week
20 Smite evil 5/week, Dispel Evil 4/week

resist fiendish lure: +4 vs mind affecting attacks of evil outsiders
Celestial Fort: +2 to all fort saves vs evil outsiders & evil spells, additionally if save is successful and spell normally deals half damage you take none.
Turn outsiders: Like turn undead by vs outsiders. Turn/Destroy
Celestial minion: Medium or smaller celestial animal. (animal with celestial creature template)
Dispel Evil: As spell

[redlock]

I've always just been a fan of reworking Paladins a bit:
The vow changes so that you must pick an alignment at creation/taking 1st level. then you play as a normal Paladin, but read your alignment in place of lawful good. Of course, evil paladins get smite good, etc.

[Lycanthromancer]

I've always just been a fan of reworking Paladins a bit:
The vow changes so that you must pick an alignment at creation/taking 1st level. then you play as a normal Paladin, but read your alignment in place of lawful good. Of course, evil paladins get smite good, etc.Go look in the SRD.

[Soranar]

The most fun I've had roleplaying a Paladin was definitely a Paladin of Tyranny (Lawful Evil). Not willingly committing a good act is very easy to play with (so as not to lose your powers) but pretty complicated when you have to deal with good characters. Considering our plot it made sense since we were on a mission from a Lawful neutral deity's (Hextor) priests to fix a problem caused by heretics. Being a champion of said deity I had to comply and work with/lead the team to fulfil the mission and not lose my powers. Having people that kept getting sidetracked in subplots to save the cat/girl/woman/old man/victim from baddies made for interesting conversations.

[Flickerdart]

The most fun I've had roleplaying a Paladin was definitely a Paladin of Tyranny (Lawful Evil). Not willingly committing a good act is very easy to play with (so as not to lose your powers) but pretty complicated when you have to deal with good characters. Considering our plot it made sense since we were on a mission from a Lawful neutral deity's (Hextor) priests to fix a problem caused by heretics. Being a champion of said deity I had to comply and work with/lead the team to fulfil the mission and not lose my powers. Having people that kept getting sidetracked in subplots to save the cat/girl/woman/old man/victim from baddies made for interesting conversations.
There's only two ways to fix a problem caused by heretics, and the second way is just the first with twice as much fire.

[Soranar]

There's only two ways to fix a problem caused by heretics, and the second way is just the first with twice as much fire.

Actually I spent most of my time terrorizing them through contagion and deadly touch. Torturing them for several hours and then releasing them so they can spread the tale gave me a pretty good circumstance bonus on my intimidate checks.

[Xzeno]

I've always been dramatically opposed to the idea of evil paladins. To me, it isn't sith VS. jedi, it's missing the point entirely.

That said, I do tend to like the idea of no alignment restriction on the law/chaos axis, as long as goodness is maintained: A lawful paladin cannot become a tyrant "for the greater good", etc.


Actually I spent most of my time terrorizing them through contagion and deadly touch. Torturing them for several hours and then releasing them so they can spread the tale gave me a pretty good circumstance bonus on my intimidate checks. I get too into role-playing to ever do stuff like that. I guess that's why like the paladin: I can't help but role Neutral Good (and lie about being lawful).

[Renegade Paladin]

I've always just been a fan of reworking Paladins a bit:
The vow changes so that you must pick an alignment at creation/taking 1st level. then you play as a normal Paladin, but read your alignment in place of lawful good. Of course, evil paladins get smite good, etc.
This doesn't really work, first because it completely doesn't fit the archetype, but also because for most of the alignments, having a champion in the mold of the paladin doesn't make any sense. Consider: Why would the embodiment of, say, neutral evil even be a knight at all? If I were designing such a class from the ground up, paladin would be the last thing I would use for my model. In fact, it wouldn't be a martial class at all; I'd derive from the assassin. I've never gotten the urge to make the paladin into something for all alignments when it isn't; he's a square peg, and the other eight alignments are holes that are not square.

Edit: Anyway, why the heck did the thread get sidetracked into this? It's not at all what it's about; he didn't ask about people's house rules. :smalltongue:

[Frosty]

In the games I DM, I houserule that a Paladin takes the alignment of their god or cause. Paladin's Vow is reworked - the Paladin must act as an exemplar of that deity's goals. Paladins of lawful good deities wouldn't be much affected. But things can get interesting when you have something like a Paladin of Garl Glittergold or Boccob.

Don't we call those Crusaders?

[Foryn Gilnith]

My favorite paladin is indeed Neutral Good.
If by "paladin" you mean "incarnate". They can both detect evil; that's close enough.

[Dr.Epic]

Now, I am a huge fan of paladins. And I mean huge. Every opportunity I get I play my fixed paladin class below.

However, as I play, I've realized that I prefer the Neutral Good alignment for my paladin than the Lawful Good alignment. I feel it represents the attitude of my paladin, who keeps his word and is a good guy, but puts that good above all else.

What alignment do you like for your paladins? Have you had any memorable experiences with paladins? Share your stories and opinions, I'm curious!

You're familiar with the paladin variants in Unearthed Arcana right that can be CG, LE, and CE.

[Shadowbane]

Yes, I am. But I've never understood the chaotic good alignment, and I detest playing evil characters, so I've never tried them.

[Roupe]

A paladin of Boccob the uncaring? That would be interesting.

Such A paladin would be similar to the higher Armed Librarians of Bantora (The book of Bantora -anime)& their church organization. They even have a maze library of books.

[hamishspence]

Dragon Magazine has variants for all the other alignments- not just LE, CE, CG, but every one of the 8 besides LG.

[Shadowbane]

Does no one read the original post? *sigh*

[hamishspence]

I haven't played paladins- but the notion of a NG paladin does have merit (and precedent, with Dragon).

"Divine Champion" from Faerun, is a PRC with some similarities to the paladin class, though it isn't the same.

[Cuaqchi]

First, I don't believe in the idea of having paladin's of non-good alignment, as the original definition of a paladin circa 1300 is a man of great virtue and honour, and a beacon of the codes of chivalry. If you want a differant alignment maybe use Complete Divine's Pious Templar PrC or think of a differant name for those classes.

Second, for memorable events there are to many to name them all. I have had some really good DMing and as a result every party has had a paladin that not only was able to continue to act as a paladin and not fall into high levels but was always memorable in combat.

One, in 2nd Ed. AD&D the paladin blinded by a Light spell on his eyes (You could do that back then) turned to his intelligent holy sword, the sword then continued to attack unhindered by the the paladin's temporary blindness and successfully held an entire flank during a seige agaisnt zombies.

Second, in 3.5 is a paladin with a Barbarian Pegasus holy mount, please don't ask... In one fight against a red dragon the paladin actually leapt off of his mount to cling to the dragon as he continued to attack, using the pegasus's speed to effectively corral the dragon where our party could kill it.

Third, the same paladin as number two. Against a nightwalker he charged in while the party was dealing with the undead hordes the creature led. In combat the paladin actually burned his entire lay on hands as an attack, hitting the thing for 128pts of damage with a touch and having already beat the thing a couple of times with his sword blew it up with a massive burst of positive energy.

[qcontinuum]

Where possible (ie: when house rules remove the alignment restrictions), I usually prefer to play NG or CG paladins. I've always felt that Paladins were first and foremost exemplars of Good, not Law, and I've never understood the requirement that in order to take up the mantle of a Paladin a character's basic outlook on life must be Lawful.

That said, I've always viewed alignment as an indication of a character's personal opinions/temperament and not just as the average of their past actions. In games I run so long as you try to abide by the code of the Paladin I don't care what alignment you are on the L-N-C axis. I find it leads to much more interesting characters and situations (the CG character struggling against his instincts to follow the code, the Paladin who leads a rebellion against a tyrannical government) while still retaining the concept of the Paladin as Exemplar of All That Is Good and Virtuous.

[hamishspence]

BoED suggested a paladin is supposed to be Good first, Lawful second.

rebelling against corrupt authority is well within the concept of a paladin.