Tales of the Paladin.

[Doomboy911]

So I've played a Paladin or two and I hear all the comments about how their sticks in the mud or that they kill campaigns or that they're the DM's way of controlling the party. Frankly I've done the opposite most of the time. So I want to hear some other Paladin stories where you've gone above and beyond to be a great hero. Whether it's a random act of kindness or an epic tale I want to hear your story.

[navar100]

2nd Edition game playing the Salt Marsh U1, U2, U3 series. While attacking the pirates on their ship, the pseudodragon befriends me and I become his "mount" as he likes to sit on my shoulder. The party sees a Lizardman jump off the ship during the main battle. We're concerned about why the Lizardman was there and mention his presence when we update the mayor of Salt Marsh.

The mayor is equally concerned. Salt Marsh has been on friendly terms with the Lizardmen. Not BFFs, but good enough to leave each other alone and have some trade. That they would work with the pirates who were terrorizing Salt Marsh with the necromancer hoax was troubling. The party agreed to visit the Lizardmen and speak on their behalf. This became my fondest paladin moment.

Before we left I reminded the party that we're only going to the Lizardmen to talk. They are not our enemy. No doubt they'll probably see us as intruders since they don't know us and we are entering their territory. If they do attack us, we mustn't kill. Do subdual damage only until we can find someone to speak with. The party agreed.

We approached the Lizardmen's cave. Sure enough they attacked. We try to talk but none of them spoke common and none of us spoke their language. We only attacked to subdue. The bard charmed their mounts just to remain docile. After subduing the guards we entered the cave. A couple more attacks. Again we subdued, killing no one. Finally we reached their main chamber. Before any combat commenced in desperation I asked if anyone spoke common. The Lizard King responded yes. Relieved, I immediately dropped my sword (as did the rest of the party) and surrendered, apologizing profusely for entering their home explaining we just want to talk. "We did not kill anyone. Your guards are knocked out, yes, but they will recover and are unharmed. Even your mounts are safe." The Lizard King agreed to parley where we learned of their troubles with the Sahuagin.

[Waker]

I don't care for playing the cop when I make a paladin. My last paladin was actually a paladin who retired, opened an inn and then started adventuring again in his 60s. He was a bit more portly than in his younger days, but that was because he was so full of mercy. His last adventure had the party squaring off against a on-again/off-again villainess who had pretty much been a brainwashed pawn for evil. During the final fight, we're mucking about in Hell, duking it with her and some demons. Much of the party has been knocked out, killed or otherwise incapacitated. Rather than giving into rage, he still believed that she could be redeemed.
After the fight was concluded, the old man dragged out everyone who couldn't walk (and resurrected those who were dead) including the BBEG. While he wasn't afraid to stand up and fight evil when necessary, he thought that she needed saving as much as everyone else.

[dantiesilva]

In my latest campaign I am a prestige paladin who was in a town ruled by a necromancer who had destroyed a whole entire army. Come to find out my Paladins X girlfriend had led the army to battle and feel, being turned into a master vampire (how powerful of a necromancer he was). When he saw her in the battle he froze in mid fight and actually stopped his fellow party members from harming her. She took him prisioner, to protect him oddly enough (mind you she was evil) and to try to prove he still loved he he went above and beyond the paladins code violating it so bad it was not even funny. They ended up having a kid.

Suffice to say she became good necromancer was killed and he did not become a fallen paladin as he redeemed her.

[Doomboy911]

Come now are those all the Paladin tales out there?

[Waker]

Here is a good one.

[Doomboy911]

So, I really feel…cheated of a good, noble death. It’s weird, but…it happened.

Due to setting off a trap, my paladin/crusader and some his comrades were trapped in a solid wall of force that was filling up with a mist that was causing us drowning checks. Our DM was being nice and making it a flat DC 16 fort check instead of a steadily rising con Check, and it took two failure to drop us unconscious.

Through trial and experimentation, we discovered that my crusaders Foehammer and Mountain Hammer maneuvers would crack the shell long enough to get one person out. So, every turn, I cracked the wall, and one person would squeeze through the opening. First out was the wizard, who had failed two saves and had to be thrown. Then the cleric, to whom the same thing had happened. Because they were lying there inert, I sent the monk (trained in heal) out there to help them. At this point, the fighter who was in there, helping me, dropped unconscious due to failed saves. The DM was not being nice to me…I made save after save trying to figure out a way to strike the wall and hurl the fighter out. It ended in me managing to put the fellow on my shoulder, slam the wall with a warhammer, and toss him out. The round I did that in, I got my first failed fort save, upon which my DM said I could feel my lungs filling with water. Still, I was able to hurl my friend out of the wall of death and pick up the gear I’d dropped. Armed and ready, I make my next fort save.

Nat 1. I drop unconscious. IRL, the group panics. And I mean they PANIC. I have been playing the laid-back moral compass of the group…My paladin didn’t police, but he was kind and noble and to many of them, a bit of an innocent…he was a farm-raised boy and it reflected in the way he treated things and people. They didn’t want him dead. Well, the rogue did, but that’s because the player hates me IRL (he’s the person my inevitable conflict thread was about). The swashbuckler’s player almost started crying. And then we switched to the portion of the party that was pursuing a hag coven.

I sat back and actually smiled, because you know what? How much of a better death can a Paladin 5/Crusader 1 with an utter devotion to his friends and his god ask for? I saved every single person in that orb with my conviction and devotion to my god, hurling a fully armored fighter to safety with my lungs filled with water before giving in. My friends would have seen nothing more than me hurling our friend to safety before the wall closed in and then…nothing but silence. The wizard player gave me a back-thumping man-hug, saying that this was the first time he’d seen a paladin played as he imagined it instead of a fighter with a superiority complex. The monk-player who plays a paladin in another game gave me a salute. All in all, I was proud. In game, enough time had passed that the monk was now flailing at the wall in a panic (his character had grown very close to mine, due to mine saving his life, trusting him, and backing him up in matters of honor) and trying to figure out if he could leap the wall and rig up a pulley system.

I stepped outside to call my girlfriend in our downtime and we talked for a while. When I returned, I was greeted with triumphant shouts of joy and given a beartackle hug by the swashbuckler. They saved me. Thanks to some shenanigans with an elixer of firebreathing and the cleric, having been healed up via wands, charging through the flames to drag my unconscious body through the opened up hole.

The party was ecstatic, I was happy, and the DM gave me a giant grin and a handshake. I was simultaneously ectstatic about this and a little sad. I felt cheated of an amazingly poetic death…while I wasn’t even there. But the party seemed so very happy I didn’t want to say anything about it.

Still, it allowed me to have a bit of a moment of badass. While the cleric and monk and wizard are all thanking me, we hear the swashbuckler’s character scream in the distance. Having recently regained consciousness, I hit myself with lay on hands, charges of a cure mod wand, and start running. The cleric catches up to me and says

Cleric: “Haven’t you done enough heroics for the day?”

Paladin, stonefaced, with water dripping off his face and still coughing up liquid as he runs: “Nope. Paladin.”

The party was really, really happy, though I was a bit disappointed. Still, I’m hoping for a heroic death again.


"Nope, Paladin" Love that part.

[Segev]

The paladin I play in a Planescape game on Thursdays is cheerful and friendly, and generally wants to redeem evil more than smite it. It doesn't stop him from smiting it hardcore if it starts harming the innocent or his friends, but he prefers to give it a chance and to, if he has the luxury, try to show it a better way.

He is, in general, the first to help those in need and he goes out of his way to be friendly. If he has a stick up his rear, it's only in that he won't bend his principles. He doesn't tend to hold others to them except insofar as failing to do so allows those others to harm people. They're his standards, and he'll show that they lead to a better life rather than browbeat people for not doing what HE wants them to.

The DM is actually somewhat generous on the "association" clause; his cohort is a white wyrmling dragon with levels of Dragonfire Adept and an ego bigger than the Takers' combined wealth. The paladin controls the dragon through force of personality and being just plain smarter, and keeps the little guy from doing anything ACTUALLY evil. The dragon is even slowly starting to be polite to people.

[Doomboy911]

Come now we must have more stories. The paladin is a force of justice and good and we have four stories? Unacceptable.

[Draconi Redfir]

one time my paladin who was level... somewhere between five and eight i think, entered a room with the party rogue, to find the entire thing pitch black and hearing the door slam behind us. Turns out, there was a black dragon in the room! the Rogue succumbs to a fear effect and props herself up on the wall, trying to pull open the "push" door and effectively locking the rest of the group outside,whereas my paladin runs to the opposite end of the room to get attention away from her/a flanking bonus whenever the rest of the party showed up, and was able to use his Detect Evil ability to see the glowing evil outline of the dragon, allowing him to fight the dragon one-on-one for several rounds before the rest of the party broke down the door and came in to help, at which point the dragon decided he'd had enough, and flew away, nobody else managed to get a hit in.


Just last session, my paladin is still alive and doing some shopping with a cleric and a gunslinger. around the corner comes a half-black dragon minotaur, claiming i killed his father (the same dragon as before) and wanting revenge. I managed to keep him calm for a few rounds with high diplomacy rolls, buut then i rolled low, he drew his weapon to attack, and then got hit with an explosive arrow from the other side of the city fired by the party's sharpshooting arcane archer, who actually fired that thing BEFORE the half-dragon minotaur drew his weapon, and just did it because it was a half dragon minotaur. Needless to say the explosion blew up all of his potions, causing him to die instantly and leave a large crater behind. My paladin was upset at the whole thing dispute the fact that the guy was trying to kill him, as he still believed it could have been settled diplomatically, and he tried to get the poor minotaur who was just looking for his missing dad a proper burial, buuut apparently the best he could do was get a cleric to perform some last rites on the corpse before some construction workers re-filled the explosion crater with the corpse still inside.

[Doomboy911]

How do you think a paladin should act when he knows he will die but he still has duties to perform?

[Draconi Redfir]

I’m actually pseudo planning for that. My campaign has a system where you can spend exp points to enchant your own weapons and armour with a piece of your soul and fully customize them and not need to depend on finding them randomly or buying them etc. one of the side effects of this is that if somebody has something i enchanted, they can use it to track me down. So, using this to my advantage, i plan to enchant a dagger or two with a piece of my soul, make them at least +1, maybe lawful maybe holy idk yet, and give it/them to other members of the party. That way, if there ever comes a time where an army of demons and/or devils coming towards us and we need to get away, my paladin can hold them off for as long as he can, and then (if we're lucky) the DM can make it so that the demons/devils corrupt his soul and twist him against the party, creating a recurring villain for awhile which my party members can use the dagger(s) to detect him, and possibly, since the daggers will hold an un-corrupted peice of his soul, they might be able to purify him with them to get him back.

[Doomboy911]

I’m actually pseudo planning for that. My campaign has a system where you can spend exp points to enchant your own weapons and armour with a piece of your soul and fully customize them and not need to depend on finding them randomly or buying them etc. one of the side effects of this is that if somebody has something i enchanted, they can use it to track me down. So, using this to my advantage, i plan to enchant a dagger or two with a piece of my soul, make them at least +1, maybe lawful maybe holy idk yet, and give it/them to other members of the party. That way, if there ever comes a time where an army of demons and/or devils coming towards us and we need to get away, my paladin can hold them off for as long as he can, and then (if we're lucky) the DM can make it so that the demons/devils corrupt his soul and twist him against the party, creating a recurring villain for awhile which my party members can use the dagger(s) to detect him, and possibly, since the daggers will hold an un-corrupted peice of his soul, they might be able to purify him with them to get him back.

Sir you are honour bound by the paladin's code to share that story should it come to fruition.

I don't want to start telling my paladin tales for I fear that will be the end of the thread but should this thread need one last bump I will.

This isn't mine but I did hear it. Essentially the dm ran what two experienced players called a perfect game. Which was funny because it was the absolute opposite of what the dm intended. I might be able to get the guy who told me this story to tell it here so I won't say anymore. I'll leave you all wanting more.

[Sith_Happens]

Obligatory (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?58227-Tales-of-Wyre). Not my story, but definitely the best you'll ever read. WARNING: DOORSTOPPER.