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InaVegt
2010-06-03, 08:32 PM
This is a little something I wrote.


As a paladin, I know you loathe me. I know my code, my ideals, are something you can't understand.

But you know what? I don't care. Being a paladin isn't about what others think about you. Only one being's opinion matters, and that is, in my case, Heironeous's. He is the one who chose me for this thankless job, and don't you think I asked for it.

I have begged him to let me be normal, to allow me to walk without smelling the stench of evil wherever I go. To allow me to forget the evil I saw in those I once considered friends. No more, my code doesn't allow it, and even if it did, knowing what they are truly like spoiled my positive feelings for them.

Walking through the city, buying basic supplies. These are horrifying things. The stench of evil is oftentimes overwhelming. I want to get rid of that evil, but I can't. I am not allowed to hurt evil without lawful cause. Not just that, but if I have such a cause, and they ask for mercy, I am still obliged to grant it. I can lock them up, but I can't kill them.

Justice and mercy are terrifying constraints. Enough to drive most people insane. Even I, a hardened paladin, have difficulty constraining myself sometimes. The line between a paladin doing his job, and a paladin falling down from grace is very thin. I've had comrades step over the line by sheer accident.

So then, if this is such a hard job, then why am I still doing it? Is that what you want to know? I know, you're right, if the line is so thin, why don't I cross it on purpose?

Because then some other poor sod would have to take over. And I don't want to force that upon him. I might not like this job, but someone has to do it, and I'd rather have it's me, than force it upon anyone else.

Now, if you don't have any more questions, evil is brooding, and I have to stop it before it is too late.

Marriclay
2010-06-03, 08:49 PM
that right there is an awesome piece of work

Private-Prinny
2010-06-03, 09:02 PM
It's kind of ruined by the fact that Detect Evil isn't a constant ability, so all that nihilism goes straight down the drain.

But then again, I've always hated Paladins.

Escheton
2010-06-03, 09:04 PM
http://goblins.keenspot.com/d/20061223.html

copycat

Marriclay
2010-06-03, 09:08 PM
It's kind of ruined by the fact that Detect Evil isn't a constant ability, so all that nihilism goes straight down the drain

well, many DMs see things like detect evil, or detect magic at will as like constantly being able to feel or see whatever they detect, which adds a cool new level to spells.

Private-Prinny
2010-06-03, 09:11 PM
well, many DMs see things like detect evil, or detect magic at will as like constantly being able to feel or see whatever they detect, which adds a cool new level to spells.

And I don't, partly because it goes against the rules, and partly because, according to the OP, it turns Paladins into that crazy guy at work who's one bad day away from stabbing everyone.

Mando Knight
2010-06-03, 09:58 PM
according to the OP, it turns Paladins into that crazy guy at work who's one bad day away from stabbing everyone.

It's because he plays Paladins as Lawful Batman: not everyone is capable of fighting the darkness, and fewer still have the will necessary to do so. It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.

Private-Prinny
2010-06-03, 10:04 PM
It's because he plays Paladins as Lawful Batman: not everyone is capable of fighting the darkness, and fewer still have the will necessary to do so. It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.

Which, unfortunately, is exactly what I hate about most people's interpretation of Paladins.

Marriclay
2010-06-03, 10:06 PM
Which, unfortunately, is exactly what I hate about most people's interpretation of Paladins.

well then, if you were in some way forced to play a paladin, how would you play it? or lawful good characters in general?

Math_Mage
2010-06-04, 01:38 AM
I think a lawful good character should
(a) think in two dimensions. Sure, it's not as classy to hate on chaos, but it's still there.
(b) consider positive action. Great, so you fight evil. When do you, er, do good?

Lev
2010-06-04, 01:43 AM
Being a paladin isn't about what others think about you.
So no one is intended to read this?

Xuc Xac
2010-06-04, 02:40 AM
well then, if you were in some way forced to play a paladin, how would you play it? or lawful good characters in general?

Mr. Rogers in a blood-stained sweater.

People hate paladins because of their holier-than-thou attitudes. Paladins shouldn't be holier-than-thou. Instead of saying "I'm better than you", they should be saying "you're better than you think, so try to be better". People should love paladins the way they love Mr. Rogers. If you want to see what high Charisma combined with Lawful Good looks like, go on youtube and search for Mr. Rogers defending PBS funding to congress.

aberratio ictus
2010-06-04, 03:48 AM
http://goblins.keenspot.com/d/20061223.html

copycat

Ah well, come on, the underlying idea is not nearly sophisticated enough to call everyone who thinks of it a copycat.

Serpentine
2010-06-04, 04:08 AM
And I don't, partly because it goes against the rules, and partly because, according to the OP, it turns Paladins into that crazy guy at work who's one bad day away from stabbing everyone.Apparently the OP does consider it to work that way (which hardly seems like an extreme or outrageous houserule to me), and they have not declared that that piece has a rules-lawyering RAW basis. Moreover, that is a long, long way from the point. Deal with it, and quit being such a Negative Nancy.
I think it's an interesting way of looking at the Paladin mindset, if it hardly does much to endear them.

Yora
2010-06-04, 04:15 AM
Mr. Rogers in a blood-stained sweater.

People hate paladins because of their holier-than-thou attitudes. Paladins shouldn't be holier-than-thou. Instead of saying "I'm better than you", they should be saying "you're better than you think, so try to be better". People should love paladins the way they love Mr. Rogers. If you want to see what high Charisma combined with Lawful Good looks like, go on youtube and search for Mr. Rogers defending PBS funding to congress.
As awful as the game was, Casavir from Neverwinter Nights 2 is the only paladin I ever liked. You could mistake him for a Lawful Good Fighter/Cleric. :smallbiggrin:

Cogidubnus
2010-06-04, 04:39 AM
You see, I don't think Paladins should be that much different from any other Lawful Good character. They're still human. Imagine a LG fighter who demands to himself that he sticks to that. Give him Detect Evil and he's the same. Any Good character should oppose Evil where they find it. Lawful Good Clerics should probably HUNT evil in service to their god. Holier-than-thou oughtn't to come into it, but that's how people role-play it to avoid the real challenge. Which one day I will try and probably fail. I don't know if I could hold even a character to such a rigid morality. And I'm not sure I'd be any better as a Paladin of Freedom.
But I think that's not a bad view, and certainly a good spin, on the paladin.

Coidzor
2010-06-04, 04:59 AM
I think it's an interesting way of looking at the Paladin mindset, if it hardly does much to endear them.

The problem here is that it pretty much has nothing to do with working with a party.

Which, let's face it, is what PCs do in a normal game of D&D. Paladins are generally disliked, when one looks deeper into it, because they tend to be anti-party. In much the same way that in earlier editions of D&D, people seemed to have problems avoiding playing thief characters as anti-party. Something about rapid, hostile kleptomania and players repeatedly pointing at the name of the class leading to the name of the class being changed in 3.X...


As a piece of prose, yeah, not half bad. I'll give it a 7.

Cogidubnus
2010-06-04, 05:10 AM
The problem here is that it pretty much has nothing to do with working with a party.

Which, let's face it, is what PCs do in a normal game of D&D. Paladins are generally disliked, when one looks deeper into it, because they tend to be anti-party. In much the same way that in earlier editions of D&D, people seemed to have problems avoiding playing thief characters as anti-party. Something about rapid, hostile kleptomania and players repeatedly pointing at the name of the class leading to the name of the class being changed in 3.X...


As a piece of prose, yeah, not half bad. I'll give it a 7.

This (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150139&highlight=paladin+monk+wall) is one paladin who wasn't anti-party. I was quite impressed when I read it for the first time.

Bharg
2010-06-04, 05:43 AM
I am greatly missing the grace of charity vibes when I am reading this paladin's rant about his right to exist. Paladin's are not the same as inquisitors. I see people are just jumping to conclusions when it comes to the question if a paladin is acting according to his alignment or his code of conduct and if they are supposedly not they fall from grace.
A paladin should be able to do everything other characters can do without getting "outlawed" by society. White lies. :smallsigh:
Of course, he will see the misconducts of the other members of the party, but he doesn't have to intervene all the time and to control the other members. Controlling other people and forcing them to be "good" is also wrong. All he has to do is to help his party not to go astray, help them to make the right decisions.

T.G. Oskar
2010-06-04, 07:38 AM
http://goblins.keenspot.com/d/20061223.html

copycat

Not even close.

Look at them closely once again. The OP shows a vision of a Paladin who's, quite frankly, sick and tired of his job, who does his work out of responsibility (to his god, and to no one else) and that, frankly, couldn't care less about what they think of him.

Heck, even the character's "so that others don't have to" sounds highly elitist. Sorta of "perhaps someone unqualified will take the mantle, and fail." No offense to the OP, though; I wouldn't hang with a Paladin like that EVEN IF I WERE a fellow Paladin. Even at the risk of being called weak.

He gives the vibe of a macho Paladin, in any case.

On the contrary, Big Ears' explanation is...unusually kind. That is what makes Ears a favorite character of mine: his paladinhood is composed of kindness, a rare trait in a holy warrior. When he explains how he senses evil (even though he uses the term of "smell", he's not overtly graphic: he mostly leaves evil to interpretation. The smile at the end of his "so others don't have to" leads to the idea that Ears sees his job as a sacrifice; facing, fighting and feeling the worst kinds of Evil so that others don't have to.

And I've played several Paladins in my (short) gaming career, to boot. One of them ended up being stern but stoic, one ended up failing a bit (not falling per se; no reasons to fall) and standing up stronger.

Escheton
2010-06-04, 04:02 PM
on the copycat line: we where not 3 posts in. And besides the OP the tone wasnt that serious yet, and the line "hey, this reminds me of this link" seemed lame.

Paladins detect and loathe evil, they generally are repulsed by it, it's influence and sickened by the people who embrace it and sorry for those who suffer under it.
It might be difficult to understand for people who would be considered neutral if they where converted to the system.
Also the way evil works, especially against those who clearly detect and loathe it, is attack, be it in indirect ways such as subterfuge.
A paladin must be bad-ass and strong or evil will wear him/her down and destroy him/her to further corrupt everything else.

Devils_Advocate
2010-06-04, 08:47 PM
if you were in some way forced to play a paladin, how would you play it? or lawful good characters in general?
Not that this was directed at me, but allow me to repost my analysis from elsewhere.

If Moradin tells a community of dwarves to drive off a nearby tribe of stone giants, not because the giants are doing anything bad, but because Moradin wants the dwarves to expand into that area, it's the job of clerics of Moradin to see that this is accomplished. And it's the job of paladins to prevent it. Even if they worship Moradin.

A situations like this doesn't make it OK for a paladin to break a vow of obedience. Rather, situations like this are why paladins shouldn't swear unconditional vows of obedience in the first place.

Two paladins should not find themselves on opposite sides of the same war unless something very strange is going on. Paladins Are Not Partisans. They're all on the same side: the side of Justice. That's the entire point.

Now, source material may waffle on this in an attempt to be many different things to many different people. And this may serve to make the source material, taken as a whole, a bit incoherent. (This is the case for several issues in D&D.) But it's clear that one of the core concepts of the paladin is that a paladin is always supposed to do what's right. And one upshot of that is that if your friends, your government, your leader, your church, and even your god oppose what's right, then screw them.

So, to be blunt about it, paladins are too principled to be loyal to people (for a certain value of "loyal"). That's why a lot of people hate paladins, and also why a lot of people love them. But love 'em or hate 'em, they are what they are.
"All paladins, regardless of background, recognize in each other an eternal bond that transcends culture, race, and even religion. Any two paladins, even from other sides of the world, consider themselves comrades."
- PHB v.3.5, p. 43

Because alignment is not a straitjacket, Lawful Good characters can still do some jerk things. Lawful Good rulers, organizations, and societies can do some jerk things. And while defending these Lawful Good institutions against rampaging armies of savage humanoids is both a very important job and a job that paladins frequently do, it's also something that, in the grand scheme of things, was probably gonna be taken care of anyway. What's special about paladins is that they go and oppose the jerk things that even Good-aligned people do or at least accept.

Example. Eberron campaign setting. Elemental binding. Loads of sentient beings trapped in Khyber dragonshards, used to power magic items. Perfectly respectable work. Humanoids don't really care about (http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html) elementals. Not remarkably cruel. Elementals don't like it, but do get used to it. (Note: Humanoids would get used to not having their fancy bound-elemental items, too.)

The Church of the Silver Flame opposes this. That probably isn't specifically stated in any sourcebook. Doesn't have to be. They don't tolerate Evil. Not even everyday, relatively minor, socially acceptable Evil. They may not be making a big fuss about this now, but it's on their list of Evil to eliminate. Certainly higher up than greedy innkeepers (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebds/20041115a), but they're on there too. Because while the big supernatural Evil is the obvious threat, it's tolerance of Evil -- the idea that certain forms of cruelty are OK -- that allows Evil to take root in society and harm and corrupt relatively decent people in a disturbingly routine fashion. All that's required for it to flourish is for Good men, women, warforged, etc. to do nothing.

So that's an example of the sort of banal Evil that paladins (and the Silver Flame, which is decidedly paladin-like) oppose, at least on a philosophical level. They may not be doing anything about it right now, because there are depressingly many greater Evils to confront, but rest assured that they dislike it. Certainly, they won't participate in it.

Private-Prinny
2010-06-04, 08:57 PM
well then, if you were in some way forced to play a paladin, how would you play it? or lawful good characters in general?

I like to think of Paladins as the Knight in Shining Armor archetype. They don't do what they do because they are genuinely good people, and believe that others can be as well. They protect the innocent, and redeem the guilty. Smite is the last resort, not the go to tactic.

The problem I have with most people's mindset of a Paladin is that it crosses the line to Lawful Stupid a lot of the time. My Paladin mindset is someone who does good, not someone who stops evil, like what Math Mage said.

Of course, that only applies to the LG version. If I played a Paladin, it would probably be a 2 level dip into Paladin of Freedom as part of a gish.

DragoonWraith
2010-06-04, 09:03 PM
The Church of the Silver Flame opposes this. That probably isn't specifically stated in any sourcebook. Doesn't have to be. They don't tolerate Evil. Not even everyday, relatively minor, socially acceptable Evil. They may not be making a big fuss about this now, but it's on their list of Evil to eliminate.
An excellent post, but I think you're giving the Church of the Silver Flame far too much credit. Yes, they are after "Evil", but the quotation marks are very necessary here - they are after what they think is "Evil". Paladins, on the other hand, are expected to have the supernatural ability to recognize true Evil, no quotes. They're blessed and cursed with that ability, but most of the Church isn't, and the higher-ups honestly couldn't care less anyway (especially since at least one of them is, in fact, Evil himself).

AstralFire
2010-06-04, 09:09 PM
Random note - when differentiating my CG and LG characters, my LG characters follow a code that either mandates redemption or punishment in certain circumstances, while my CG just go based on intuition. As they often have very high Wis, this intuition is a good one many times, but they don't adhere to a code. I feel both LG and CG can go either way, and usually my CGs tend to be both more harsh and more gentle than my LGs as a result of their mercuriality.

hamishspence
2010-06-05, 01:56 PM
Faiths of Eberron goes into the Church of the Silver Flame in much more detail- emphasing that while they oppose "ordinary human evil" it's much lower on their priority list, than undead, aberrations, and so on.

And they tend to oppose it in less violent ways- like giving the aforementioned greedy innkeeper a lecture, rather than cutting him down on the spot.

That said, there isn't much said about elemental binding, and the feelings of paladins of the Silver Flame for it.

Somehow, I can't imagine a paladin sneaking into a shipyard and smashing all the elemental bindings, allowing the elementals to flee to their home plane.

Or a paladin refusing to take ship on one of these because "it runs on enslaved elementals"

They may be idealistic, but perhaps not that idealistic.