Paladin, a character class that should not be?

[Eloel]

I'm not saying they're overpowered or something like that, I question the morality of this class.

I mean seriously, why would paladins be a core class along side thieves and intellectuals? And really, who would want to go on any sort of trip with a guy who's likely to imprison you? And that's the best case scenario: he could just smite you and walk off with all your belongings, leaving you to rot in the middle of nowhere.

I mean, in all seriousness why would you have a class that is by its very definition a nuisance? Yeah okay, adventurers tend to be self-righteous and essentially genocidal, but at least they aren't a problem to their own alignment.

They kind of fixed this with clerics, and not just with the re-naming. You don't have to be a law-enforcer if you so choose. But it seems that the only reason to bring one along is to deal with healing. And they still reek of 'cops', despite the fact that they can be any alignment.

Not that I'm trying to troll, but I honestly don't see why this is a core class. It seems more like something you would see in the supplements that detailed the assassin and blackguard class - paragons of an alignment.

Why is it that one of the classes by its very nature has to be lawful and righteous? Unless you go with a greater-good character, I don't see anyway you could be useful. I mean seriously, what kind of a useful person would have a skill set like this??? The things you excel in are smiting, the stick you inevitably have engraved, a weak mount, and immunity to fear. Oh, and you can also be a spellcaster.

Is there anyway to play a paladin that isn't an obviously annoying individual? I'm sorry if I offend anyone, but I don't understand why this class is one of the standard options. Barbarians make sense, druids make sense, fighters, sorcerers, wizards, rogues. Yeah, even monks and clerics are iffy, but cleric is more just the stereotype that having divine magic means your character is arrogant. And just because you prefer not hurting anyone in combat doesn't mean you're righteous, its just a different tactic. And besides, monks don't have to be stupid. I mean Bruce Lee himself was fairly clever, and just because you are lawful doesn't mean you can't be compatible with the party. Honestly, you think about it intelligence is kind of a dump-stat, since really the only characters that have high intelligence are wizards, for everyone else its only above charisma on the priority list (unless you're a paladin or sorcerer or bard or something else that relies on charisma). Heh, you think about it there's actually more classes that rely on charisma than there are for intelligence! But that's kind of a tangent...perhaps something for another thread.

[Karl Aegis]

If Frankish Paladin is a class, is Polish Hussar also a class? I don't see a reason why you wouldn't have both.

[Mr.Moron]

I think if you're the kind of person to see investment in society and desire to good as things that make someone inherently "Useless", paladins probably would be rather misplaced in any game you might enjoy.

If you want murderhobo adventures, or a setting that's DarkGrittyGrimBlack yeah their inclusion by default should seem bizzare.

[Hyena]

You disappoint me, people. It's very obviously a parody of this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?409531-Thief-rogues-a-character-class-that-should-not-be).

[nedz]

Yes — Paladins are Nazis

See — parody of the other thread but with half the Goodwin number

[VoxRationis]

Unfortunately, tongue-in-cheek though this might be, there is a significant current running about, at least on this forum, which feels similarly. The idea of someone holding to good and objecting when the rest of the party inevitably does something which we would consider awful if someone did in real life is apparently too restrictive and disruptive to roleplaying for the modern gamer.

[Eloel]

Unfortunately, tongue-in-cheek though this might be, there is a significant current running about, at least on this forum, which feels similarly. The idea of someone holding to good and objecting when the rest of the party inevitably does something which we would consider awful if someone did in real life is apparently too restrictive and disruptive to roleplaying for the modern gamer.

In all honesty, if we wanted to hold up to real life morale codes, we'd go outside instead.

[Ralanr]

You disappoint me, people. It's very obviously a parody of this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?409531-Thief-rogues-a-character-class-that-should-not-be).

Obvious indeed.

[Geddy2112]

Why stop with paladins? Lets just do away with lawful good as an alignment. I don't care what class you are or what your skills are, lawful good people are going to have problems with people who want to do nothing besides murder and steal all the time. In fact, lets do away with good too. True good is going to want to save everybody, and chaotic good wont think twice about killing you to save innocent people. Even law is starting to cramp my style; the LE party face seems to be upset everytime I randomly start a fight and ruin a plan for world domination. The neutrals might even start getting miffed about the body count and pointless treasure horde.

Now we have it- a party of chaotic evil sneaky magic users who kill and steal everything till they are the most powerful thing on earth. If you ever get bored of wandering from bar to bar painting the inside red, there are 8 other alignments and some other classes you might want to consider.

By the way, there is a plot to Skyrim, Fallout 3 and all the other Bethesda games you went through killing everyone in.

[Cluedrew]

"Don't assume that just because someone is unpleasant, that they are also evil."

This "enforcer" view of the Paladin class it valid, but it is not evil. You mentioned the real world non-heroic equitant: the Police. They do a lot of things for the community, we may not always like it, we may not always like them, but it still does make the community a better place*. (In general, not getting into real life details.)

Besides the enforcer is only one view of the paladin. Even within the official paladin flavour you could still play one as a basically a soldier who prays in the evening/morning. Or perhaps a more guild post who leads by example, rarely openly criticizing others but doing the right thing over and over again so that others are reminded what a hero actually is. And there are still other options.

Now, the paladin might have a too narrow flavour range to pick from. Maybe the "heroic knight" flavour should be detached from the "cleric fighter hybrid" class, but that doesn't mean it is an invalid combination. I feel that paladin was always supposed to be the class that was not a mere adventurer but a hero. Whether it ever was that is up for debate.



P.S. Yes I know this is a parody of the other thread, I was considering my reply to that one when I say this and I ignored the points that I just felt were to parody that thread. Also I was consisting asking the same question of the monk. Not for moral reasons, but because it comes from a completely different set of "arch-types" than the other character, most are very western, but the monk very eastern.

[Eloel]

Now, the paladin might have a too narrow flavour range to pick from. Maybe the "heroic knight" flavour should be detached from the "cleric fighter hybrid" class, but that doesn't mean it is an invalid combination. I feel that paladin was always supposed to be the class that was not a mere adventurer but a hero. Whether it ever was that is up for debate.


Forcing a skill-set to be played a very certain way, which usually ends up being a pain for the rest of the characters ("Hey, I'm playing this character, it'll narrow everyone else's choices to 3-4 out of 9 alignments"), is bad design. In 3.5, Incarnate's "Smite Opposition" is understandable. Crusader's "Smite" is understandable. Forcing "Smite Evil"? Not so much.

[Hyena]

Good thing 5e got rid of this stupidity. You know, amongst many others 5e did right.

[kyoryu]

Paladins work a lot better in open table games. In an open table game, being a paladin restricts the choices of the rest of the party *that week*. Next week, you might be playing totally different characters, so it's not a big deal.

In "destined heroes of destiny" style games, it's a lot trickier, as picking a paladin does place significant long-term restrictions on the choices of other players.

[LibraryOgre]

A lot of it comes from the history of the game; personally, I'd argue that any concept that can be played by a paladin can adequately be played as a LG Cleric, and I'd argue that idea starts being true as far back as the 1e Player's Handbook.

Others argue that the "paladin" is a separate idea from a "cleric", in that clerics inherently include ordination, as opposed to a paladin's more general "power gained via virtue"; I think that's erroneous when divorced from the socio-religious context in which "power gained via virtue" was originally conceived around the idea of the Paladin.

Now, Rules Cyclopedia paladins were a different case... essentially, they were a prestige class for high-level fighters.

[Ralanr]

Good thing 5e got rid of this stupidity. You know, amongst many others 5e did right.

I know right?

[VoxRationis]

Forcing a skill-set to be played a very certain way, which usually ends up being a pain for the rest of the characters ("Hey, I'm playing this character, it'll narrow everyone else's choices to 3-4 out of 9 alignments"), is bad design. In 3.5, Incarnate's "Smite Opposition" is understandable. Crusader's "Smite" is understandable. Forcing "Smite Evil"? Not so much.

Frankly, if you're behaving according to character, that restriction in alignment is going to be there anyway, and that's assuming the DM didn't put restrictions in the first place. Only with the most gritted of teeth are LG and NE (or hell, even LG and CN) folks going to work together for any length of time. And this is true even without the alignment system.
As an excellent example of why this is, let's take Dragon Age: Origins. While it is A) a computer game, not D&D, and B) a system lacking in official alignments, the different party members all have (mostly) consistent moral principles that make sense to them, with which they judge your words and actions. Anyone who has played through even the first town in which you have a real party will understand that pleasing all of them is impossible, because of their wide diversity in moralities. Because it is a CRPG, you can get around this by cherry-picking your party setup to include the party members who would favor the same courses of action in a given situation. But in most party setups for D&D, that's not possible: the party is split as little as possible, both because of the headache that causes and because you typically don't have the numbers to be effective in multiple places at once. Therefore, all of the nasty party conflicts that you could avoid in something like Dragon Age with adept manipulation of your party roster will be forced to the forefront, because playing your characters as having reasonably consistent moral principles will cause them to come to the conclusion that their comrades are in fact horrible/goody-two-shoes/libertine/draconian people. Taking the Giant's advice on acting in alternate ways to resolve conflicts can help sometimes, but often means that your characters just appear myopically inconsistent, banding together in spite of differences they would kill NPCs for, no questions asked, even though in-character the party members are people they just met and have no particular reason to trust. Take The Gamers: Dorkness Rising. Daphne, who is thinking from a role-playing perspective rather than a gamist "we stick together and kill monsters" perspective, immediately asks if she should kill the CE sorceress, because she has no good in-character reason to trust her.

[Red Fel]

All thread-parodying aside, as much as I love the Paladin fluff and concept, I kind of agree.

The Paladin has a few somewhat unique abilities (smite, at-will detect evil, and a pony), but is otherwise a watered-down version of other classes (e.g. Fighter, partial-casting Cleric). Moreover, alignment restrictions absolutely cripple him; even if you're in a system that introduces Paladin variants, you're still looking at a uniquely frustrating Code. (Especially if you're playing a Paladin of Slaughter - how exactly can a CE character follow a mandatory and immutable code?)

If memory serves, Paladin wasn't actually a base class option in the early days of D&D. It was a prestige class, a hybrid of the Cleric and the Fighter, or something like that. (I think other partial-casting classes may also have enjoyed this status.) In that respect, it was quite impressive to get to the point where you could play one.

The Paladin that we now have - in 3.5, PF, and other systems that draw from that lineage - is an unfortunate and replaceable throwback to that legacy. And frankly, it's high time we refluffed it. Play a holy spellcaster with melee skill, or a melee beatstick with attachments to a religious order, and be done with it.

... No, I don't have any personal stake in the matter. Why do you ask?

[Mr.Moron]

Forcing a skill-set to be played a very certain way, which usually ends up being a pain for the rest of the characters ("Hey, I'm playing this character, it'll narrow everyone else's choices to 3-4 out of 9 alignments"), is bad design. In 3.5, Incarnate's "Smite Opposition" is understandable. Crusader's "Smite" is understandable. Forcing "Smite Evil"? Not so much.

Except in most games of a standard flavor, 3 of those 9 Alignments are probably off the table to begin with paladin or no paladin. The default assumption of the system isn't an evil game.

Besides it's silly to blame the paladin or the paladin player for introducing a character concept that "Restricts others choices", because that's all on the GM.


If the GM has put forward a game with themes & a tone conducive to having a paladin along, evil characters, anti-heroes or anarchists are going to be invalid concepts regardless of if anyone picks a paladin or not.
If the GM has put forward a game with themes & a tone conducive to having Evil Characters, Anti-Heroes or Anarchists obviously a paladin is going to be an invalid concept regardless of if anyone chooses to play those concepts.
If the GM has put forward a game with guidelines that are too loose or to vague to get a sense of which characters are appropriate or hasn't put out any guidelines at all, it's their failure for giving players nothing to go on.


The Paladin is a heroic archetype that derives power by virtue of being heroic. This means they're appropriate in heroic games, and thus if the GM is doing their job correctly won't appear in games where they're the lone point of sanity in a sea of bloodthirsty thieves.

How much virtue they have as a "Base" class depends on your view of the game:

If you view the default mode of play largely as power fantasy about being murderous tomb robbers, wandering mercenaries, or super-powered trouble makers only out for #1. They probably don't have much merit as a basic option.

If you view the default mode of play largely as being about decent folks out to stop the bad guys and save the day with power fantasy and bit of tomb-robbing on the side they're probably just fine for most games.

However, given the number of the times the words "Hero" and"Heroic" get called out and plastered all over the products it isn't really ambiguous as to what the writers intended.

[Eloel]

Except in most games of a standard flavor, 3 of those 9 Alignments are probably off the table to begin with paladin or no paladin. The default assumption of the system isn't an evil game.

So that is why Blackguard and Assassin are core.

[VoxRationis]

Villains have archetypes too. Keep in mind that both newer and older editions advise strongly against evil parties in the core books, and furthermore that in the core rules (of say, 3e), those options were in the DMG, where prestige classes were noted to be optional content. Also, players weren't necessarily supposed to have their pick of the DMG.

[DigoDragon]

My wife knew how to play Paladins really well. She could work in a party with thieves and evil-aligned characters because she used concepts like "Necessary Evil" and "Enemy of My Enemy". She knew how to play the long game as well when it came to smiting the darkness. She led by example, not by the sword, and she knew a few tricks to get the morally questionable team members to advance her agenda.

It also helps when the evil team mates don't realize they're getting used. :smallbiggrin:

[Hypername]

I always thought that Paladins should be roleplayed like Captain America for some reason :smallcool:

[BayardSPSR]

Parody thread or not, I completely agree. Paladins are inherently out-of-step with what most parties are doing (killing things to take their money), and they're mechanically redundant when Fighters and Clerics exist (especially if multiclassing is a thing).

I wait on, with longing, for the thread "Character class: that should not be?" when I will raise my arms in triumph and pride that someone on the internet agrees with me.


If Frankish Paladin is a class, is Polish Hussar also a class? I don't see a reason why you wouldn't have both.

Automatically casts Fear while charging, random chance of getting bored and going home after a month of adventuring?

[Geddy2112]

I wait on, with longing, for the thread "Character class: that should not be?" when I will raise my arms in triumph and pride that someone on the internet agrees with me.


I second this. I don't go up to people and say "Hello, I am a level 3 chaotic good human bard. My highest stat is intelligence followed by charisma, my dump stat is wisdom, I have the weapon finesse feat and I am probably going to multiclass into barbarian at level 4." even though that is me as an actual person. I have a name, a personality, a career, and interests and hobbies.

Characters are not the sum of their mechanics.

[Mr.Moron]

Parody thread or not, I completely agree. Paladins are inherently out-of-step with what most parties are doing (killing things to take their money)

I've never played in or run a game where this was the main thrust of things. I've never even seen or heard a story about a game where this is the main thrust of things outside these forums.

Certainly parties are always killing things, and treasure is found. However these things are side-effects about pursuing some larger goal. More often than not a noble one. Like you might find a few thousand gold pieces and a book of forgotten spells after killing 20 people in their home. However that's because their home was temple to a dark god, and the people were mad cultists that were sacrificing orphans to summon a demon that was going to kill people (possibly including more orphans).

The traveling murderhobo band seems to be mostly exist in the space of internet horror stories, or beer-and-pretzels games where nobody is going to be taking the Paladin Code/Oath (or any RP considerations) seriously anyway.

[Eloel]

I've never played in or run a game where this was the main thrust of things. I've never even seen or heard a story about a game where this is the main thrust of things outside these forums.


Personal experience can be generalized to everyone, good points all around.

[nedz]

I second this. I don't go up to people and say "Hello, I am a level 3 chaotic good human bard. My highest stat is intelligence followed by charisma, my dump stat is wisdom, I have the weapon finesse feat and I am probably going to multiclass into barbarian at level 4." even though that is me as an actual person. I have a name, a personality, a career, and interests and hobbies.

Characters are not the sum of their mechanics.

It depends on play-style to an extent, but the mechanics should reflect the character being played. You couldn't really pass yourself off as a Bard if you have no performance skills, though you could use the Bard class to model some other character concept perhaps.

Back to the thread:
I haven't seen a Paladin played in any game since the days of 1E; and even then it was a case of when, and not if, they were going to fall — which is a comment on the (two) players really. Though I did run a 2E game with a couple of chaos-paladins, though they were really martial clerics.

[VoxRationis]

I've never played in or run a game where this was the main thrust of things. I've never even seen or heard a story about a game where this is the main thrust of things outside these forums.

Certainly parties are always killing things, and treasure is found. However these things are side-effects about pursuing some larger goal. More often than not a noble one. Like you might find a few thousand gold pieces and a book of forgotten spells after killing 20 people in their home. However that's because their home was temple to a dark god, and the people were mad cultists that were sacrificing orphans to summon a demon that was going to kill people (possibly including more orphans).

The traveling murderhobo band seems to be mostly exist in the space of internet horror stories, or beer-and-pretzels games where nobody is going to be taking the Paladin Code/Oath (or any RP considerations) seriously anyway.

I know, right? GitP seems to assume that plotless sociopathy is the accepted standard for D&D play, but most of the campaigns I remember most were about fulfilling larger, nobler goals, and a lot of the time, my table avoids conflict if it's possible and tries to negotiate before attacking.

[Mr.Moron]

Personal experience can be generalized to everyone, good points all around.

In the absence of rigorous study on the matter, personal experiences are all we have to go on. Given "The tone of D&D Games" is probably not going to get any serious academic attention any time soon, it's safe to assume that personal experience is going to play a large part in the discussion. If it's something to be dismissed out of hand because it can't be universalized than there is little point in having the discussion at all.

If you or others have found your experiences to be different, sharing that fact along with perhaps some thoughts on why or why not you think your experiences might be typical would be a useful to a productive discussion.

That said there are some external indications that the view I'm putting forward is at least something of the design intent:

Going through the official license/endorsed adventure paths usually reveals some higher cause or thread than "Kill things, take their stuff because Screw You, Got Mine". Certainly it's not always stopping cultists from putting babies in juicers but there's something meaningful.

If you look at other media directly inspired in D&D no matter if it's video games, books or movies there is always something more going on. A larger threat being stopped or a meaningful loyalty being upheld. Even most the open-ended of the D&D video games assuming something of a heroic trajectory by default. Trying to play a murderhobo really leaves you fighting the system. This tells me that almost universally the creators of this content must be taking inspiration from a relationship with the game that's more than just dungeon-delves and hair trigger tempers.

[Eloel]

Angels, beings of pure good, have CRs and "Treasure" entries in MM. That should tell enough about what is expected of characters.

[BayardSPSR]

I've never played in or run a game where this was the main thrust of things. I've never even seen or heard a story about a game where this is the main thrust of things outside these forums.

Certainly parties are always killing things, and treasure is found. However these things are side-effects about pursuing some larger goal. More often than not a noble one. Like you might find a few thousand gold pieces and a book of forgotten spells after killing 20 people in their home. However that's because their home was temple to a dark god, and the people were mad cultists that were sacrificing orphans to summon a demon that was going to kill people (possibly including more orphans).

The traveling murderhobo band seems to be mostly exist in the space of internet horror stories, or beer-and-pretzels games where nobody is going to be taking the Paladin Code/Oath (or any RP considerations) seriously anyway.

Sorry, I overreached. I'm not trying to say that all players are sociopaths - I've never been in a game like that either - but that D&D is, mechanically, built around killing things and taking their stuff - mechanics that the Paladin's fluff doesn't jive with (at least for me). What I'm trying to say is that Paladins are a mechanically-redundant way of making large parts of the game harder to justify.

I try to avoid playing D&D partly because the mechanics reward straying from noble goals to make a buck.

[Lord Raziere]

I know, right? GitP seems to assume that plotless sociopathy is the accepted standard for D&D play, but most of the campaigns I remember most were about fulfilling larger, nobler goals, and a lot of the time, my table avoids conflict if it's possible and tries to negotiate before attacking.

Yeah. my view of DnD are y'know real heroes not people who go around murdering for profit. because GitP often removes the alignment/morality part as they talk about it, and go with this garbage post-modern interpretation of it where all the morality and normal restrictions are just plain ignored because they heard so many horror stories of bad games that they forgotten what being heroes should be about, rather than some older definition of hero that is generally horrible and stupid.

our perceptions of DnD is currently the fantasy version of the Iron Age of Comics: all the heroes have no morality, and they just go around killing stuff and taking loot. what grimdark stupidity.

[VoxRationis]

"Taking their stuff," no (at least not for the most part; a paladin probably isn't going to pass up a holy avenger that was lying around the treasure hoard of the marauding dragon they just slew). "Killing things?" A paladin is a knight. In the words of the Hound, "Knights are for killing." The main distinction of the paladin's conduct is that they reserve the killing for the protection of the innocent and the punishment of the guilty, which isn't really that different from any number of non-paladin characters with noble goals and motivations.

[veti]

Except in most games of a standard flavor, 3 of those 9 Alignments are probably off the table to begin with paladin or no paladin. The default assumption of the system isn't an evil game.

Citation needed. There are nine alignments, by the book they're all equally valid for PCs (unless you're playing 4e, of course, then there are only 5, but the point stands.)


Besides it's silly to blame the paladin or the paladin player for introducing a character concept that "Restricts others choices", because that's all on the GM.


If the GM has put forward a game with themes & a tone conducive to having a paladin along, evil characters, anti-heroes or anarchists are going to be invalid concepts regardless of if anyone picks a paladin or not.
If the GM has put forward a game with themes & a tone conducive to having Evil Characters, Anti-Heroes or Anarchists obviously a paladin is going to be an invalid concept regardless of if anyone chooses to play those concepts.
If the GM has put forward a game with guidelines that are too loose or to vague to get a sense of which characters are appropriate or hasn't put out any guidelines at all, it's their failure for giving players nothing to go on.


Err... you seem to put remarkably little store on the players' agency in these matters. My favourite game world is a nasty place, where most authorities are (small-e) evil and most PCs are chaotic purely as a survival measure. But one of our most enjoyable campaigns came when we were "led" by a paladin. Not entirely a by-the-book paladin, I'll grant you, but he was very big on the heroic, noble and virtuous scale. There's plenty of heroism waiting to be done, even in a grimdark world. Especially in a grimdark world. It's just harder to do, that's all.

And it's not "all on the DM" that the rules as written state that a paladin loses her class if she willingly stays in a party with evil characters.


However, given the number of the times the words "Hero" and"Heroic" get called out and plastered all over the products it isn't really ambiguous as to what the writers intended.

Evil characters can be heroes too. Consider Jack Bauer, or James Bond, or Riddick, or Spike (among other Buffyverse characters). Arguably, Thorin Oakenshield. In Jade Empire, Emperor Sun is universally hailed as a hero for ending the Long Drought and bringing two decades of peace and plenty to his land. In His Dark Materials, two approximately-equally-evil but charismatic individuals wage war over the future of "heaven".


The Paladin that we now have - in 3.5, PF, and other systems that draw from that lineage - is an unfortunate and replaceable throwback to that legacy. And frankly, it's high time we refluffed it. Play a holy spellcaster with melee skill, or a melee beatstick with attachments to a religious order, and be done with it.

This I completely agree with.

We're forever reading stories, right here on this very forum, of people having trouble with roleplaying paladins, and the root reason is always the same: a mismatch between the player's idea of what the "paladin code" should require and the DM's idea. Everyone thinks they know what it entails, but no two players actually agree all the way down the line. That means, sooner or later there will be a conflict.

My preferred solution is to redefine "paladin" as a prestige class, available by invitation only and with tightly limited membership. Historically, Charlemagne - emperor of half of Europe - had a total of 12 "paladins". That's the sort of number that should exist, across the combined area of Western Europe, and none of them would be less than about 10th level. And they derived their "special powers" by dint of being the emperor's most trusted henchmen: they could do things and go places that would have been impossible or forbidden to a regular noble. The paladin "falls" when, and only when, he loses the trust of his boss.

[Mr.Moron]

Angels, beings of pure good, have CRs and "Treasure" entries in MM. That should tell enough about what is expected of characters.

Presumably it can mean that:
It's foreseeable that players might come in conflict with them, even when working for common goals.
-or-
It's useful to keep systems convention consistent with the structure of every other creature entry.
-or-
It's useful for as guideline for matching these creatures up with their evil counterparts and/or where they fit as allies.
-or-
It's useful as guideline for indicating when and how much these resources these entities might have to help or engage in other non-adversarial interactions with the PCs.
-or-
It's like with other DM-facing material is provided to support alternative play styles, like with the DMG "Evil" classes.
-or-
It's there in case misunderstanding, magic, impersonation, or decaying stability somehow turns these otherwise good entities hostile.

What I don't think there is a good case for is these entries alone being any basis for broad statements on what is expected of PCs. I certainly don't see it supporting the position that default assumption is that PCs will be murdering them as matter of course in the typical game.

[VoxRationis]

Citation needed. There are nine alignments, by the book they're all equally valid for PCs (unless you're playing 4e, of course, then there are only 5, but the point stands.)

And it's not "all on the DM" that the rules as written state that a paladin loses her class if she willingly stays in a party with evil characters.


3.5 PHB, "Description" chapter says that the evil alignments are for monsters and villains, and generally should be avoided by players. I don't have an exact page number.



In Jade Empire, Emperor Sun is universally hailed as a hero for ending the Long Drought and bringing two decades of peace and plenty to his land. In His Dark Materials, two approximately-equally-evil but charismatic individuals wage war over the future of "heaven".

Being able to manipulate public opinion of you to seem good is not quite the same as being the actual hero of the story. Case in point: Jack of Blades is lauded as a hero in the first Fable game (because everyone in that setting has an IQ of 60 and can't tell a blatant villain when they see one), but he's clearly not the hero, either from the narrative or moral perspective.

[Mr.Moron]

Sorry, I overreached. I'm not trying to say that all players are sociopaths - I've never been in a game like that either - but that D&D is, mechanically, built around killing things and taking their stuff - mechanics that the Paladin's fluff doesn't jive with (at least for me). What I'm trying to say is that Paladins are a mechanically-redundant way of making large parts of the game harder to justify.

I try to avoid playing D&D partly because the mechanics reward straying from noble goals to make a buck.

Your point about the mechanics is fair. The rules of the game can be somewhat divorced from the intended tone at times, particularly when GM & Player expectations are not aligned.

I can see what you mean about the paladin somewhat, but the fluff is clearly focused on violence to a certain degree. It includes weapons and armor training, magical smiting, and offensive spells as baseline features across almost all portrayals.

Which isn't to say paladins must shoot first and ask questions later, just that their inclusion seems to indication something of an assumption that when they ask questions first "Do you really intended to put those babies in a juicer?", it will not at all be unusual for the answer to be "Yes. I do intended to but these babies in a juicer. No I won't change my mind. Wanna fight about it?"

[BayardSPSR]

What I don't think there is a good case for is these entries alone being any basis for broad statements on what is expected of PCs. I certainly don't see it supporting the position that default assumption is that PCs will be murdering them as matter of course in the typical game.

There is one broad statement supported by the existence of Treasure entries in general: when players kill things, it is expected that the players will take their stuff.


My preferred solution is to redefine "paladin" as a prestige class, available by invitation only and with tightly limited membership. Historically, Charlemagne - emperor of half of Europe - had a total of 12 "paladins". That's the sort of number that should exist, across the combined area of Western Europe, and none of them would be less than about 10th level. And they derived their "special powers" by dint of being the emperor's most trusted henchmen: they could do things and go places that would have been impossible or forbidden to a regular noble. The paladin "falls" when, and only when, he loses the trust of his boss.

Which would bring us back to the edition where it was very hard to become a Paladin, which had to be changed because people wanted to play characters that were capital-P Paladins, heroic paragons of good, but that fluff was limited to a extreme outliers during the character creation phase. People become unhappy calling their Fighter a Paladin when they know there's an actual Paladin class they could be but aren't - the fluff stands in the way of their own character concept.

[veti]

Which would bring us back to the edition where it was very hard to become a Paladin, which had to be changed because people wanted to play characters that were capital-P Paladins, heroic paragons of good, but that fluff was limited to a extreme outliers during the character creation phase. People become unhappy calling their Fighter a Paladin when they know there's an actual Paladin class they could be but aren't - the fluff stands in the way of their own character concept.

Cry me a river. Nobody "wants" to play a 1st level character in any class: they want to play Conan the Barbarian, or the Gray Mouser, or Lancelot - someone who's basically at least mid-level the moment they come onscreen for the first time.

The game is about becoming that archetype, not starting there. I may want to play James Bond, but that doesn't mean I get to build a 10th-level Assassin straight off the bat.

[BayardSPSR]

Cry me a river. Nobody "wants" to play a 1st level character in any class: they want to play Conan the Barbarian, or the Gray Mouser, or Lancelot - someone who's basically at least mid-level the moment they come onscreen for the first time.

The game is about becoming that archetype, not starting there. I may want to play James Bond, but that doesn't mean I get to build a 10th-level Assassin straight off the bat.

Coincidentally, that's another reason I dislike class/level systems. I'm not interested in making anyone play an intern before they can play a field agent, or making playing a field agent a reward for playing an intern. In fact, I've found that players more often prefer low-power games once they've already played high-power games. Nothing wrong with the "I feel stronger" school of gaming, but I find that class/level systems mechanically emphasize that style at the expense of other kinds of fun.

[Eloel]

Coincidentally, that's another reason I dislike class/level systems. I'm not interested in making anyone play an intern before they can play a field agent, or making playing a field agent a reward for playing an intern. In fact, I've found that players more often prefer low-power games once they've already played high-power games. Nothing wrong with the "I feel stronger" school of gaming, but I find that class/level systems mechanically emphasize that style at the expense of other kinds of fun.

You can always start them at field-agent level. I, on the other hand, find it hard to believe that a field agent would have similar skill and expertise to an intern - this tends to be best modeled with a level system, in my opinion. The same goes for classes, though I'm more fond of less classes and more in-class customization (a la Generic Classes of 3.5) than the actual 3.5 classing system.

I'll also concede that the multiplicative improvement as levels increase is probably a bad idea. Probably why my favorite is E6 with everyone starting at 6.

[LibraryOgre]

On the other hand, I very much like playing the beginner... the Tarans-who-will-become-Gwydion, not starting off as Gwydion, Son of Math.

[TheCountAlucard]

Hacker, a character archetype that should not be?

I'm not saying they're overpowered or something like that, I question the morality of this archetype.

I mean seriously, why would hackers be a core shadowrunner archetype alongside faces and street samurai? And really, who would want to go on any sort of 'run with a guy who's likely to brick your cyberware? And that's the best case scenario: he could just hack you and walk off with all your nuyen, leaving you to rot in the back of a LoneStar police car.

I mean, in all seriousness why would you have a role that is by its very definition a nuisance? Yeah okay, shadowrunners tend to be pragmatic and essentially criminal, but at least they aren't a problem to their own team.

They kind of fixed this with riggers, and not just with the re-naming. You don't have to illegally steal other people's data if you so choose. But it seems that the only reason to bring one along is to deal with drones. And they still reek of 'Matrix', despite the fact that they limit themselves to drones.

Not that I'm trying to troll, but I honestly don't see why this is a core role. It seems more like something you would see in the supplements that detailed the HMHVV-infected and drake metatypes - extremes of a sort.

Why is it that one of the roles by its very nature has to use the Matrix to undertake illegal actions? Unless you go with a greater-good character, I don't see anyway you could be useful. I mean seriously, what kind of a useful person would have a skill set like this??? The things you excel in are cracking security systems, cybercombat, programming, and simsense addiction. Oh, and you can also be a rigger on top of that with some work.

Is there anyway to play a hacker that isn't a total wiz data-stealer? I'm sorry if I offend anyone, but I don't understand why this archetype is one of the standard options. Street samurai make sense, faces make sense, street shamans, wage mages, infiltration specialists, adepts. Yeah, even riggers and technomancers are iffy, but technomancer is more just the stereotype that having an always-on Internet connection in your brain means your character is feared and hated by others. And just because you prefer not hacking in combat doesn't mean you're a good guy, its just a different tactic.

I wonder what other stuff this would work for… someone more clever than me needs to do up one for the Happiness Officer in a game of Paranoia.

[goto124]

Would you say that the most important part of being a paladin, is that you lose powers for not acting a certain way?

Yes, it has been applied to other classes, and gives a very similar kind of grief that happens with paladin Falling.

[VoxRationis]

You can always start them at field-agent level. I, on the other hand, find it hard to believe that a field agent would have similar skill and expertise to an intern - this tends to be best modeled with a level system, in my opinion. The same goes for classes, though I'm more fond of less classes and more in-class customization (a la Generic Classes of 3.5) than the actual 3.5 classing system.

I'll also concede that the multiplicative improvement as levels increase is probably a bad idea. Probably why my favorite is E6 with everyone starting at 6.

I too desire a gentler-sloped leveling system. E6 appeals to me for that reason, as does L5R (I'm not sure how steep the slope is for that system in practice, having only played one session, but it looks as though it is quite easy to make a character of significant rank who is nonetheless threatened by challenges they faced at lower ranks). Lots of hit points in particular bug me. There's a "HP != meat" camp which argues that they come from rolling with punches and the like, but that never really intersects well—AC is also dodging/rolling with punches, and wouldn't a high Dexterity contribute to rolling just as much as a high Constitution? What about damage to unsuspecting targets, who aren't going to be able to mitigate the damage? Better to have the swordsman advance from dying in two arrows to dying in five arrows, in my mind, than to have him tanking siege weapon fire.

[russdm]

Taking the Giant's advice on acting in alternate ways to resolve conflicts can help sometimes, but often means that your characters just appear myopically inconsistent, banding together in spite of differences they would kill NPCs for, no questions asked, even though in-character the party members are people they just met and have no particular reason to trust. Take The Gamers: Dorkness Rising. Daphne, who is thinking from a role-playing perspective rather than a gamist "we stick together and kill monsters" perspective, immediately asks if she should kill the CE sorceress, because she has no good in-character reason to trust her.

I think every party ought to watch that movie.

I think one issue with Paladins is that they get used by players intending to mess around with the group and the DM let's the disruptive player have their way. Given that the class has a code of conduct to follow, one would think the designers would have spent some time on actually explaining said code in greater detail than what is done. But they don't, players get different ideas on how to play and DMs get different ones at times, both sides argue, and more posts about horror stories get made.

There are plenty of other classes though that you could argue about having in. Races too.

[erikun]

On the topic of the thread - rather than the parody - I've frequently thought that Paladins, along with Druid, would be better served as organizations rather than base classes. That is, they are something that a character would "join" and gain benefits as long as they are a part of it. This gets rid of some rather silly rules like becoming an "ex-Paladin" through changing classes even though nothing was done to invalidate a Paladin's oath.


I wait on, with longing, for the thread "Character class: that should not be?" when I will raise my arms in triumph and pride that someone on the internet agrees with me.
This is a conversation that's been happening since the 80's, and probably before that.


Cry me a river. Nobody "wants" to play a 1st level character in any class: they want to play Conan the Barbarian, or the Gray Mouser, or Lancelot - someone who's basically at least mid-level the moment they come onscreen for the first time.
I'm not quite sure about that. Starting from nothing and working your way up can be as much fun as starting on top and adventuring from there.

The problem isn't starting as a 1st level lancer and working your way up to Lancelot, though. The problem is starting as a 1st level foot soldier who then needs to learn a feat to ride a horse and then a feat to use a lance and then a feat to spend cross-class skill points on ride in order to enter a prestige class to begin playing something like Lancelot. And while the soldier-to-lancer example is a bit extreme, it is something that I've found happens quite frequently with spellcasters; being unable to play a character concept because there isn't a base class which matches or emulates it well.

[YossarianLives]

Yeah. my view of DnD are y'know real heroes not people who go around murdering for profit. because GitP often removes the alignment/morality part as they talk about it, and go with this garbage post-modern interpretation of it where all the morality and normal restrictions are just plain ignored because they heard so many horror stories of bad games that they forgotten what being heroes should be about, rather than some older definition of hero that is generally horrible and stupid.

our perceptions of DnD is currently the fantasy version of the Iron Age of Comics: all the heroes have no morality, and they just go around killing stuff and taking loot. what grimdark stupidity.
Unfortunately my D&D group can be perfectly summed up as the party massacring everything in sight while I desperately try to roleplay.

[Cluedrew]

OK, I'll admit I'm in the pro-Paladin camp (mostly) and I would like to explain why.

The first argument against the paladin is that it has too narrow flavour options. I agree. Back when there were tons of classes it sort of made sense, but now with the class/sub-class system it might do better severed as a set of sub-classes for the other core classes. So the classic paladin might be a fighter sub-class or of a new knight base class and there could be a "Way of Inner Light" as an unarmed version for the monk, that sort of thing. On the other hand that might be a terrible idea, I just came up with it.

Now that the mistake has been made however I would suggest consisting the flavour text as a starting point rather than anything definitive. Maybe I'm weird like that, but I once made a barbarian who's rage ability was less him getting angry and more him getting high.

The second argument is that paladins are disruptive to party dynamics. Half a point. While it is true that many interpretations of the paladin's code of honor can cause problems that's many not all and can not will. If you are playing a game about edgy vigilantes, don't bring in a paladin who must take the straight and narrow every time and refuses to have anything to do with someone with a criminal record. So it is a bit of a problem but it does have a rather simple solution, see the next point.

The third problem is people disagreeing over what counts as a "fall-worthy" offence for a paladin. I have three words for you, communication, communication, communication. In that order. I have walked into this trap so many times myself, and despite my best efforts I know I will again, everyone needs to talk and make sure they are on the same page before things start happening. It happens for a lot of things, the paladin issue just sticks out a lot because there are mechanical repercussions for a miss-communication in flavour. Personally I believe the player should say "I fall" although the player has to be responsible for that to work. Baring that, run over some guild lines over what can make the paladin fall before the game.

Fourth is that D&D is about murdering and looting and the paladin doesn't fit that. Although your logic is sound I'm going to disagree with your premises. I have also know D&D's gene to be "Heroic Fantasy", so we have dwarves and wizards for fantasy but to complete the image we need heroes and that is where the PCs come in. Now evil party adventuring is a valid alternative, just as a game more focused on diplomacy over combat is, but it has never been the default. Well, maybe to some of you, but not to me, not to many others and (even if judging only by the fact the paladin is a core class and the assassin is not) not to the game's designers.

So yeah, I like the paladin and think it is a good idea. Let's go save the world.

[LudicSavant]

Parodies of disturbingly ethnocentric threads aside, the funny thing is that the Paladin (at least in 3.5e) really is a class that is entirely unnecessary both flavorfully and mechanically, especially with splatbooks. Mechanically, it is a watered down incarnation of a Cleric. No more, no less. It's like if you took a specific melee cleric build, nerfed it heavily, and then called it a core class. None of the Paladin fluff is anything that isn't accomplished by the fluff already in place for the Cleric. Some would even argue that the Cleric has tools available to her that makes her even better at realizing the Paladin fluff than the Paladin class itself.

Flavorfully, you can build a Cleric that can Smite Evil, kick ass in melee, have an overwhelming Lawful Good aura, summon a mount, detect evil at will, and loses their powers if they don't line up with the philosophy that lends them power. For players who recognize this, the Paladin entry might as well be blank pages in the book.

The best rebalanced Paladin is a cleric that uses melee cleric PrCs. It has more fluffy abilities, allows the exact same fluff as the Paladin class (and more, since you can make up codes for all alignments, religions, etc), and is mechanically both more competitive and more flexible (allowing more creativity in builds).

___

Slightly longer post explaining the issue in better detail:


If you do want to bring out the Paladin's A-Game, you take Smite to Song, Knight of the Arcane Order, Battle Blessing and optimize inspire courage. Then you run around with a bandoleer of wands and sing and use wands as swift actions from wand chambers and charging smite things. You also can cast wizard spells from scrolls of up to ninth level. That's pretty much as good as the core Paladin gets.

However, I feel I should note that I find that it's actually easier to make a Cleric that does everything a Paladin should be able to do than to make a Paladin that does everything a Paladin should be able to do.

Playing a melee cleric built to look like a paladin would mean you could detect evil at will, lay on hands better than the Paladin, get an overwhelming aura of Good just like a Paladin does, smite evil better than the paladin, summon celestial mounts better than the paladin, fight heroically in melee with your deity's favored weapon better than the paladin, shield your allies better than the paladin, tank better than the paladin, or (completely unlike the Paladin, but probably consistent with your fantasy of what you want a paladin to be) go nova with an all-or-nothing epic Surge of Fortune smite that puts all your daily resources (and, if you like, even most of your hp) into one BBEG-killing attack that looks roughly like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHy6-NnIvdg . Feel free to shout something like "The future doesn't belong to you!" I always thought that was more like what a smite should be than doing a little attack boost x/day, but maybe that's just me. If it is, that's still okay, because clerics can build to do that instead too. Oh, and if you just want to be thorough, you can take a 1 level dip into Prestige Paladin to gain full access to the Paladin's spell list.

You also get tons of options for expanding on the flavor of the paladin, or customizing it to your chosen god or philosophy. And, since you aren't necessarily shackled with the default paladin code, you can write your own without any fuss about houseruling, and it's not hard to write a more interesting one. But even if you don't want to do this, you don't have to... Clerics get enough spells on their list from spell levels 1-9 that you seriously never have to cast anything that is out of line with the default paladin flavor (many are basically higher level versions of spells the paladin would cast, or emulate paladin class features but better).

There are also several prestige classes suitable for playing Clerics that are basically Better Paladins, including Ordained Champion, Ruby Knight Vindicator, Church Inquisitor, Knight of Raziel, and more.

Really, in my mind the only reason you wouldn't want to play a melee cleric paladin instead of an actual paladin would be

A) You don't know how to build one, and thus can't take advantage of the fact that a wide variety of cleric builds are both flavorfully and mechanically superior paladins to paladins with the actual paladin class.

or

B) The Miko Isn't a Samurai "Problem" (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0209.html) where some people can't get it through their heads that you can be a Paladin unless your class is actually named paladin. This problem is easily solved by the glorious magic of "not metagaming."



The thing you have to understand is that list of features you just named is essentially a Cleric with 5 less spell levels.

Cleric turn undead is better than Paladin turn undead. The difference between d8 HD and d10 HD is negligible. Difference between 3/4 BAB and full BAB is negligible (and bonuses from spells will outpace the BAB advantage by a significant margin, even if you're not getting rounds to buff ahead of time or people are constantly using Dispel Magic), Special Mount isn't very special and Cleric can get their own, Lay on Hands is inferior to simply having access to better touch healing spells (and flavorfully about the same), and the limited spellcasting is, obviously, limited.

Imagine it like this. You know how Wizards have so many different specializations and ways they can build, like Evoker, Illusionist, and so forth? One could basically be a Dread Necromancer, another could basically be a Beguiler? Well, Paladin is basically like if you took a single possible specialization build for Cleric, then gutted half of its caster levels. It's not a Cleric gish or anything, it's just a worse cleric. Compare a Cleric / Church Inquisitor / Crusader / Ruby Knight Vindicator / Prestige Paladin / I don't know Contemplative or something getting 9th level spells and high level maneuvers, leadership and inspiration auras, detect evil at will, awesome smites, the entire Paladin spell list, brutal melee capabilities, exceptional abilities to make sacrifice plays or protect allies, and so on and so forth.

Honestly, forget homebrewing a "rebalanced paladin," just take one of the many "Paladin 2.0 Cleric Builds" flying around, file off the serial numbers, and name it rebalanced paladin. It's that easy. Really.

[DigoDragon]

I've frequently thought that Paladins, along with Druid, would be better served as organizations rather than base classes. That is, they are something that a character would "join" and gain benefits as long as they are a part of it. This gets rid of some rather silly rules like becoming an "ex-Paladin" through changing classes even though nothing was done to invalidate a Paladin's oath.

Ooh, that's a neat way of looking at it. Could be interesting to stat them as a faction instead of a class. I never did like the ex-Paladin thing for switching classes. If the class switched into required an alignment not compatible with paladins, maybe then, but otherwise...



I'm not quite sure about that. Starting from nothing and working your way up can be as much fun as starting on top and adventuring from there.

I enjoy playing in a low level game quite often.

[Mr.Moron]

Parodies of disturbingly ethnocentric threads aside, the Paladin really is a class that is entirely unnecessary both flavorfully and mechanically, especially with splatbooks. Mechanically, it is a watered down incarnation of a Cleric. No more, no less. It's like if you took a specific melee cleric build, nerfed it heavily, and then called it a core class.

Clerics can't smite at all though without multiclassing, literally the only way is via paladin.They also don't have any access to the Extra Attack feature or a Fighting Style. War Domain gives a good attack bonus but only one action, several of the paladin Oath Features last a whole a fight. I'm not sure how they'd get a mount, only bards can snipe spells like that. There also isn't a ton of overlap in the spell lists, particularly with regards to the paladins unique smite-spells.



Cry me a river. Nobody "wants" to play a 1st level character in any class: they want to play Conan the Barbarian, or the Gray Mouser, or Lancelot - someone who's basically at least mid-level the moment they come onscreen for the first time.

Having played both high level and low level, I prefer low level. Maybe not 1st level but something right at 4th or 5th is probably my ideal. However 1st is certainly closer to that feel than 10th and is a lot of fun in it's own right. Not your average joe, but not 3-4 tiers removed from average joe either.

[LudicSavant]

Clerics can't smite at all though without multiclassing, literally the only way is via paladin.They also don't have any access to the Extra Attack feature or a Fighting Style. War Domain gives a good attack bonus but only one action, several of the paladin Oath Features last a whole a fight. I'm not sure how they'd get a mount, only bards can snipe spells like that. There also isn't a ton of overlap in the spell lists, particularly with regards to the paladins unique smite-spells.

Sorry if it was unclear, but I was referring to 3.5e, not 5e. In 3.5e, there are many, many ways for a Cleric to smite.

[Ashtagon]

My objection to paladins is that, theme-wise, they occupy essentially the same space that a LG cleric does (except not so well). They also occupy a certain space in the setting design field that means a host of prestige classes were created to fulfil the "heroic warrior for deity X" trope. The name "paladin" also conjures up rather specific cultural connotations outside of RPGs.

In my home-brew fantasy heart-breaker, I've divided this space into a "champion" class, which represents holy warriors sworn to advance the cause of deity X, and priests, who represent holy leaders sworn to defend the worshippers of deity X. I'm still looking for a better name that has no awkward cultural connotations.

[Mr.Moron]

Sorry if it was unclear, but I was referring to 3.5e, not 5e. In 3.5e, there are many, many ways for a Cleric to smite.

Well certainly if mechanical strength is the primary determiner of merit, and we focus the discussion only on 3.P despite this not being the 3.P sub-forum then I'd tend to agree the paladin has no right to exist. Certainly anything out of the T1 classes has no right to exist in that context. However, that's a very narrow context. Besides that horse was already beaten to death over a decade a ago.

[Tiri]

Clerics can't smite at all though without multiclassing,

In 3.5, the Destruction Domain gives you a 1/day Smite against anyone. Just take a few Extra Smiting feats if you want to use it more and call it Smite Evil.

[Morty]

The concept of a noble warrior empowered by the ideals of justice, order, compassion and goodwill is a strong archetype that ought to be represented in a heroic fantasy RPG. It does not, however, merit its own class in the way D&D has always used classes.

[LudicSavant]

despite this not being the 3.P sub-forum
It's not the 5e sub-forum either, and last I checked 3.P is still the most played version of D&D by a rather significant margin. I'm not sure why you would automatically assume I was talking about 5e when I clearly indicated in my post that I wasn't (and, since your post, have edited it to make it even more explicitly stated).


Well certainly if mechanical strength is the primary determiner of merit, and we focus the discussion only on 3.P despite this not being the 3.P sub-forum then I'd tend to agree the paladin has no right to exist. Certainly anything out of the T1 classes has no right to exist in that context. However, that's a very narrow context. Besides that horse was already beaten to death over a decade a ago.

Mechanical strength is not the primary determiner of merit. As I explained in my post, I think the Cleric is better suited to realizing Paladin fluff than the actual Paladin class too.

[goto124]

Why doesn't Cleric get the hate that Paladin does?

Sorta related: this thread is great for my concept of the Ur-Paladin :smallbiggrin:

[Eloel]

Why doesn't Cleric get the hate that Paladin does?

Clerics (usually) do not have a code that invalidates half of all character concepts for allies.

[goto124]

Clerics (usually) do not have a code that invalidates half of all character concepts for allies.

What code do clerics get anyway, and why is it never brought up in the forums? Or as much as paladins'?

[GungHo]

The main issue I have with the paladin is its misapplication as either a player or DM opportunity to troll either the player, the other players, or the DM into doing things or getting into arguments that would never have happened if the guy just played a cleric or fighter/cleric.

[goto124]

Would it help if I simply give the paladin a cleric's code? Minimal change, minimal fuss.

Okay, won't really solve the problem of all that baggage the word 'paladin' carries. Cleric codes (anything, really) can be abused by people with the wrong mindsets. OOC problem and all. Bleh.

[Geddy2112]

Why doesn't Cleric get the hate that Paladin does?


Clerics also don't "fall" as easily as a paladin. A LG cleric of a LG god could become NG or LN without penalty. A cleric of a NG good could be LG, NG, CG or N. (Most) Clerics also can't fall by breaking a code. This gives clerics wiggle room to adapt, which paladins don't have.

At least in 3.X

Although in my experience LG clerics have been worse sticks in the mud than LG paladins.

[Mr.Moron]

Clerics (usually) do not have a code that invalidates half of all character concepts for allies.

Since we're apparently pretty hung-up on 3.P


Code of Conduct
A paladin must be of lawful good alignment and loses all class abilities if she ever willingly commits an evil act.

Additionally, a paladin’s code requires that she respect legitimate authority, act with honor (not lying, not cheating, not using poison, and so forth), help those in need (provided they do not use the help for evil or chaotic ends), and punish those who harm or threaten innocents.

Associates
While she may adventure with characters of any good or neutral alignment, a paladin will never knowingly associate with evil characters, nor will she continue an association with someone who consistently offends her moral code. A paladin may accept only henchmen, followers, or cohorts who are lawful good.

So your assertion is half all character concepts are evil? These are the only ones disallowed by the code. If we extrapolate "offends her moral" code to include perhaps the more extreme anarchists of the CG/CN stripe, I'd still have hard to time buying your assertion here.

If we're talking editions other than 3.P, where the codes or oath allow for even more discretion in the matter even when playing the straight-up paladin classic this statement becomes even harder to accept.

[VoxRationis]

Having played both high level and low level, I prefer low level. Maybe 1st level, something right at 4th or 5th is probably my ideal. However 1st is certainly closer to that feel than 10th and is a lot of fun in it's own right. Not your average joe, but not 3-4 tiers removed from average joe either.

I think I favor somewhere between 5 and 9.

The paladin's perceived redundancy with the cleric comes essentially from the fact that the class has taken a direction towards redundancy over the past few editions; increased spell selection, more limited-resource mechanics, fluff increasingly emphasizing the "divine" rather than the "virtuous," etc.. But the perception comes from looking at the class in the wrong way. The paladin did not stem from and was not meant to be compared with the cleric. The paladin is at its roots a modified fighter and if you compare it to another class, you should compare it to the fighter.

And I think cleric doesn't get any of the flak that paladins do because one can cherry-pick cleric gods to allow all the munchkinly behavior one wants, plus 3e made the dubious decision of allowing clerics of nothing at all, enabling complete flexibility of both morality and mechanics. Meanwhile, the paladin is mechanically less flexible (which is an easy attractant of hate on GitP) as well as morally inflexible (which is also an attractant of hate on GitP).

[Eloel]

What code do clerics get anyway, and why is it never brought up in the forums? Or as much as paladins'?
Clerics have some leeway in terms of alignment - they are allowed to be 1-step removed from their god, which lets them have humane actions and not fall immediately as opposed to robotic LG-following ones of Paladin.

This, again, is 3.5e. Though to be honest, I still haven't seen a system with both Cleric and Paladin where Paladin was not way stricter than the Cleric.

[Tiri]

What code do clerics get anyway, and why is it never brought up in the forums? Or as much as paladins'?

Apart from alignment restrictions, they also have a code of conduct defined by the tenets of whatever religion they belong to. Of course, by RAW they don't need to have a religion.

[goto124]

Clerics also don't "fall" as easily as a paladin. A LG cleric of a LG god could become NG or LN without penalty. A cleric of a NG good could be LG, NG, CG or N. (Most) Clerics also can't fall by breaking a code. This gives clerics wiggle room to adapt, which paladins don't have.

At least in 3.X

Although in my experience LG clerics have been worse sticks in the mud than LG paladins.

Ah. Explains a lot. Clerics don't really have a code do they?

Also, I wonder what 'mud' refers to...

[Eloel]

So your assertion is half all character concepts are evil? These are the only ones disallowed by the code. If we extrapolate "offends her moral" code to include perhaps the more extreme anarchists of the CG/CN stripe, I'd still have hard to time buying your assertion here.

If we're talking editions other than 3.P, where the codes or oath allow for even more discretion in the matter even when playing the straight-up paladin classic this statement becomes even harder to accept.

1/3 of all character concepts is evil, since 3/9 of alignments is. Of the remaining 6, 1/3 of those are Chaotic, with whom the Paladin can associate, but will have problems with. The said paladin also will not associate with any Cleric of an evil god (a considerable amount of neutral clerics), any undead (yay, necromancers), or any other evil creature (oops, the party wizard now can't summon fiends). As a rule of thumb, if your character prevents other people from playing theirs, it shouldn't be on the table.

[LudicSavant]

Why doesn't Cleric get the hate that Paladin does?
If I had to venture a guess...

Because with a Cleric, your character's religion and philosophy take center stage, both for yourself and other player's assumptions about you. With a Paladin, the horrible alignment system and people's mutually incompatible assumptions about it are somewhat more likely to take center stage.

That, and the Paladin is a much more specific archetype than the Cleric, and thus provides a better focal point for hatred (or indeed, any opinion). If people want to say "I hate Clerics" people would be like "What, like, Clerics of Nerull? Which sect? Which writer's version of Nerull?" If people want to say "I hate Paladins" people will at least have a rough idea of what kind of character they're talking about.

[VoxRationis]

1/3 of all character concepts is evil, since 3/9 of alignments is. Of the remaining 6, 1/3 of those are Chaotic, with whom the Paladin can associate, but will have problems with. The said paladin also will not associate with any Cleric of an evil god (a considerable amount of neutral clerics), any undead (yay, necromancers), or any other evil creature (oops, the party wizard now can't summon fiends). As a rule of thumb, if your character prevents other people from playing theirs, it shouldn't be on the table.

A party with a necromancer is obviously going to have difficulties with paladins. But you could argue just as well that the person who brings a necromancer to the table when a paladin's already in the party is the one being disruptive. It's not some sort of God-given right to bring any character in the books to any table you like. There has to be some sort of synergy.

[Mr.Moron]

1/3 of all character concepts is evil, since 3/9 of alignments is. Of the remaining 6, 1/3 of those are Chaotic, with whom the Paladin can associate, but will have problems with. The said paladin also will not associate with any Cleric of an evil god (a considerable amount of neutral clerics), any undead (yay, necromancers), or any other evil creature (oops, the party wizard now can't summon fiends). As a rule of thumb, if your character prevents other people from playing theirs, it shouldn't be on the table.

I find the idea that heroic character concepts are evenly spread among what D&D defines as alignments to be shaky, at best. Let's roll with it anyway though.

So...

Evil characters should be off the table because they'll prevent players from playing characters that won't tolerate murder or other evil.

Rebel characters should be off the table because they'll prevent other people from playing their Lawman characters.

Human characters should be off the table because it'll prevent people from playing their human-hating dwarf.

Good characters should be off the table, because they'll prevent people playing their character concept focused on torturing people to death.

Seriously any character concept is going to be incompatible with or more other character concepts. It's a meaningless observation.

EDIT:

Still if we're so hung up on 3.P raw again:


The first six alignments, lawful good through chaotic neutral, are the standard alignments for player characters. The three evil alignments are for monsters and villains.

Evil alignments aren't intended to be open by default for PCs anyway. This means your "1/3 character concepts are evil" goes to exactly "0/6" character concepts. Evil character concepts aren't PC concepts.

[Eloel]

A party with a necromancer is obviously going to have difficulties with paladins. But you could argue just as well that the person who brings a necromancer to the table when a paladin's already in the party is the one being disruptive. It's not some sort of God-given right to bring any character in the books to any table you like. There has to be some sort of synergy.

Concepts can disrupt other concepts - a Cleric of Pelor wouldn't want to associate with the Necromancer Wizard too. But that is a small issue and should be sorted amongst the players - with minor adjustments to builds. Your class and your mechanical abilities shouldn't force anyone out of their concept.

[VoxRationis]

Concepts can disrupt other concepts - a Cleric of Pelor wouldn't want to associate with the Necromancer Wizard too. But that is an issue and should be sorted amongst the players - with minor adjustments to builds. Your class and your mechanical abilities shouldn't force anyone out of their concept.

So the undead-hating cleric and the undead-creating necromancer can get along "with minor adjustments", but the undead-hating paladin is completely incompatible? The "minor adjustments" in both cases would likely involve a moratorium on the creation of undead (i.e., forcing the necromancer out of their concept), or a change in the cleric to a soft-on-undead kind of god (i.e., forcing the cleric out of their concept), so where's the difference, besides a proud tradition of hate for the paladin?

[Eloel]

So the undead-hating cleric and the undead-creating necromancer can get along "with minor adjustments", but the undead-hating paladin is completely incompatible? The "minor adjustments" in both cases would likely involve a moratorium on the creation of undead (i.e., forcing the necromancer out of their concept), or a change in the cleric to a soft-on-undead kind of god (i.e., forcing the cleric out of their concept), so where's the difference, besides a proud tradition of hate for the paladin?

An argument and roleplay could be made to make the cleric let the clearly-mindless and under-control undead slide because they're beneficial to his cause. The necromancer in return doesn't create intelligent undead, and the issue is solved.

The paladin's story?
Paladin - "Hey, I hate undead but those ones are whacking my enemies and saving my ass, thanks"
Mechanics - You fall, bitch!

[Cluedrew]

So, LudicSavant has brought up a fifth point against the paladin, that it lacks power and is replicate-able by other classes. (I'm continuing the list from my last post.) There are several counter arguments:

The first is that an argument that holds in a single edition of D&D is definitive. Let alone this not being about D&D 3.5, this technically is about all paladin classes everywhere, including the one in Dungeon World (the only other game I can think of off the top of my head that has an explicit paladin class). By the way, the Dungeon World paladin is pretty interesting, with options for a more religious character, one focused on leading, healing or smiting. Or some combination there of. I don't agree with the "Lawful" alignment experience but other it looks pretty good.

The second is "why is that a problem?" Those editions of D&D are [in]famous for the lack of balance. Why does it make the paladin a bad class? A weaker class is not worse over all, just in terms of strength. Unless you are in a high powered came where anything not optimized to the nth degree simply dies without accomplishing anything. People still played 2-6 tier characters even after tiers had generally been agreed upon, which should show that it is not the only consideration.

Third (a new one), is that even if the second point doesn't hold that doesn't mean the class concept is invalid, just that the implementation has to be reworked. And it has many times, before and after LudicSavant's example. Now these reworks may and do have their own problems, but still nothing so bad the class shouldn't exist. The paladin has some very cool pieces to it, even the "fall" mechanic which is misused all two often can be awesome if used properly.

However as I wrote this I had an revelation of sorts (which caused this to take a really long time, I got swordsaged by about dozen people). I love the paladin and I think it should be part of the standard arch-types that games turn into classes. I think that if a character draws strength from a cause (that is the cause they fight for is linked to how they fight for it) then it makes sense that they would change how they fight if their cause changes.

Instead of erasing the paladin I say spread it out, have virtue themed PrC/Sub-Classes/Moves whatever as well as vice based ones, specking only of a simple good vs. evil line right now, that include information on how their powers change if they "fall" or are "enlightened". What exactly both of those things mean are something that should be left up to the group, because it shouldn't be a surprize not for the player at least although maybe for the character.

[Mr.Moron]

An argument and roleplay could be made to make the cleric let the clearly-mindless and under-control undead slide because they're beneficial to his cause. The necromancer in return doesn't create intelligent undead, and the issue is solved.

The paladin's story?
Paladin - "Hey, I hate undead but those ones are whacking my enemies and saving my ass, thanks"
Mechanics - You fall, bitch!



Ex-Clerics
A cleric who grossly violates the code of conduct required by his god loses all spells and class features, except for armor and shield proficiencies and proficiency with simple weapons. He cannot thereafter gain levels as a cleric of that god until he atones (see the atonement spell description).


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelor


Pelor's clergy heal the sick, bless crops, help the needy, and destroy evil and the undead. They are caring and nurturing, with backbones of steel. The Pelorian priesthood attracts many naive youths to his service, but training is rigorous enough to send many of them back to their farms.


A number of Pelor's followers have achieved deity or near-deity status, the most popular being Mayaheine, demigoddess of Protection, Justice, and Valor, and Saint Bane the Scourger, patron saint of those who hunt the undead


His strength is the power of will and hope, the need to face evil in the face of insurmountable odds. Pelor is wrathful against the forces of evil, corruption, and darkness, and is especially opposed to the undead.

I see little space for any interpretation that a cleric of pelor can abide by the undead without losing their powers. There is no space for accepting the undead because they are "beneficial to his cause" when one of Pelor's core causes is "purge the undead".

[Morty]

This back-and-forth debate probably wouldn't be happening if the concept of an unyielding champion of a specific moral code didn't have an entire class dedicated to it. Just sayin'.

[Eloel]

I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that we have Wu Jen, which while an often overlooked class, has implemented the "I have a personal code" behavior better than the paladin ever could.


This back-and-forth debate probably wouldn't be happening if the concept of an unyielding champion of a specific moral code didn't have an entire class dedicated to it. Just sayin'.

And this. Classes are sets of skills - attaching specific moral codes and over-the-top fluff to them is iffy at best.

[Mr.Moron]

I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that we have Wu Jen, which while an often overlooked class, has implemented the "I have a personal code" behavior better than the paladin ever could.


And this. Classes are sets of skills - attaching specific moral codes and over-the-top fluff to them is iffy at best.

You getting tired moving those goalposts all day long?

[Cluedrew]

I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that we have Wu Jen, which while an often overlooked class, has implemented the "I have a personal code" behavior better than the paladin ever could.
How so? I could look it up but I would like to hear your option on why that is.

On a similar note: If the Paladin class implemented "I have a personal code" the same was as the Wu Jen would that make it worthwhile?

[LibraryOgre]

How so? I could look it up but I would like to hear your option on why that is.

On a similar note: If the Paladin class implemented "I have a personal code" the same was as the Wu Jen would that make it worthwhile?

In many ways, the Paladin did... it's just that their restrictions are more "I cannot keep an excess of gold" and "I cannot hang out with evil people" rather than "I cannot cut my hair" or "I must always sit facing north."

[Eloel]

How so? I could look it up but I would like to hear your option on why that is.

On a similar note: If the Paladin class implemented "I have a personal code" the same was as the Wu Jen would that make it worthwhile?

It has options. It doesn't tie down a fluff, an alignment and a particular party composition to the class. You can still play the "can't touch undead / can't lie / can't steal" Wu Jen, but you don't have to. Your skill-set is not tied down to a fixed ideal. There are concepts that can be created with Wu Jen that'd put other players' concepts at odds, but it's not due to engraved mechanics - just choices.

On the flip-side, you can't play a Paladin who sees mindless undead as weapons and lets them be used against the opposition. You are stuck with a fluff just because you want a particular skill set. And that is dumb.

[LibraryOgre]

On the flip-side, you can't play a Paladin who sees mindless undead as weapons and lets them be used against the opposition. You are stuck with a fluff just because you want a particular skill set. And that is dumb.

...why not? Not being able to use mindless undead isn't in 1st edition or 2nd edition, both of which classify zombies and skeletons as neutral. Even 3.5 doesn't say that they can't have mindless undead around; they can't cast the spell themselves, but there's nothing that specifically forbids it.

[Brookshw]

...why not? Not being able to use mindless undead isn't in 1st edition or 2nd edition, both of which classify zombies and skeletons as neutral. Even 3.5 doesn't say that they can't have mindless undead around; they can't cast the spell themselves, but there's nothing that specifically forbids it.

Ehhhh, that starts to move into iffy territory pretty quickly with older editions holding to the creation of undead is almost entirely evil (not to mention BoVD's comments on them). Who made them and how were they made? Likely soaked in evil which the paladin shouldn't be around unless its in a punch-on-the-face kind of being around. But I don't really want to get into the undead/evil can of worms so moving on.

Also I'll mention I'm on a phone so quoting various posts is a pain, sorry the rest doesn't directly quote what its in reference to.

1) nobody likes playing a first level game? I'll disagree with you there in that I'm generally fine with them just as I'm fine with a level 20 game. It's a matter of what game and system your using, and there's something to be said for games where the party isn't exactly powerful and big hulking monsters.....stay big hulking monsters. It's just a type of game with its own strengths and weaknesses.

2) on invalidating other players characters, this already had a good response but I wanted to mention it was too broad of a statement. The example is a sword that cuts both ways, we can't objectively say a paladin is a no go for invalidating the necromancer but the necromancer gets a free pass for invalidating the paladin. Double standard and all that.

3) on mechanical power. Nuts to it. A practical consideration in some instances but its a measuring stick that only work on a theoretical axis while does not measure an application axis, i.e., how things will actually play out at a table in regards to how much fun people will have and participate in a game.

4) distinguish social interaction from intrinsic elements, what people choose to do with the game is often more disruptive than the game.

Back to the op, meh, I'm okay with paladins.

[Cluedrew]

Mr. Moron's comment about goal posts made me think of something. What qualities does a class have to have to derive to be a class? Furthermore what qualities should a class have to be included as a core class?

To be a class:

It should be playable. First and foremost it has to be usable before any other considerations. The paladin may require be a little rough where flavour meets mechanics (the oath and falling) but it is far from unplayable.
It should be different. You can make clerics seem like paladins, but the default is different both mechanically and in flavour. Since it should take the same effort to change the paladin into something new as to change clerics into paladins I don't think it is a problem.
It should suit the game. I agree that the paladin doesn't suit every game of D&D, but neither does the chaotic neutral pyromaniac, the necromancer or the fast-talking bard.


To be core:

It should be iconic. This one is very subjective, but I would say that the paladin is second only to the wizard. I would also like to use the number of demotivators (positive ones) about paladins as a metric, but that is rather random.
It should be broad. This here is what I feel is the paladin's short coming is, but it is not more so than the monk or druid. In fact I think the druid might be the worst perpetrator or the core classes here. But a holy warrior that draws strength from above or within is broad enough to get by, even if it could use a little bit of work.


So from this perspective, the paladin definitely deserves to be a class and is a good candidate for core. Sure there are other ways you could go about representing it, but the class option seems good. Feel free to reply to my criteria or how the paladin fills them.

[SiuiS]

I'm not saying they're overpowered or something like that, I question the morality of this class.

I mean seriously, why would paladins be a core class along side thieves and intellectuals? And really, who would want to go on any sort of trip with a guy who's likely to imprison you? And that's the best case scenario: he could just smite you and walk off with all your belongings, leaving you to rot in the middle of nowhere.

I mean, in all seriousness why would you have a class that is by its very definition a nuisance? Yeah okay, adventurers tend to be self-righteous and essentially genocidal, but at least they aren't a problem to their own alignment.

Because Paladins are an exemplar you can't get outside of the class itself, and are designed both to guide the zeitgeist of the game (heroic and good people crusading diligently against evil) and also alter the direction of the game they're in towards that.

Paladins are the original player railroad power, as compared to all the DM railroad powers. It's as close as D&D got to giving any narrative control to other people at the table, and right under the nose of the Dungeon Master Fraternity.

[Morty]

I think that features such as the paladin's code are best served as a class-neutral, level-neutral extra feature of a character. If the DM allows, you can take on a strict code of behaviour that grants you some boons in return. If you want it to use up character-building resources, it can be a feat chain. Or a background. Or some new category you could come up with. Building an entire class around it is inefficient.

[Mr.Moron]

I think that features such as the paladin's code are best served as a class-neutral, level-neutral extra feature of a character. If the DM allows, you can take on a strict code of behaviour that grants you some boons in return. If you want it to use up character-building resources, it can be a feat chain. Or a background. Or some new category you could come up with. Building an entire class around it is inefficient.

Please define efficiency and give some kind of guideline as to how to quantify the relative efficiency of classes such that this statement can be evaluated.

What are the resources being expended and the benefits being gained?
How are these measured and related to one another?
What is an example of class design that is efficient and by what are the metrics that allow it to meet that standard?
How does paladin fail to live up those standards?
Where do other class concepts designs fit on that scale?
Are different levels of efficiency suitable for "Core" and "Non-Core" concepts? If so, what are they and why?

EDIT: What are some of the alternatives to this model of class design, and what are the benefits of this one over those?

[endur]

I mean, in all seriousness why would you have a class that is by its very definition a nuisance?
Yeah okay, adventurers tend to be self-righteous and essentially genocidal, but at least they aren't a problem to their own alignment.


I normally try to avoid responding to trolls, but here I will respond...

The poster appears to take the perspective that the class is a "nuisance."

Some posters believe rogues and thieves are "nuisances" because they steal from other party members.

Some posters believe elves are "arrogant" because they are "better than everyone else."

And this poster has an issue with Paladins.

In all of the above cases, I think the issue is that the posters had issues with other players who role-played in a way that the poster did not like.

[Lord Raziere]

oh, new idea for a character:

Elven Paladin/Rogue. I'll go 5e, make him an Oath of Ancients and totally be this awesome chill moral dude with some cool skills on the side. too paladin to steal, too rogue to be arrogant, too elf to be a stick in the mud.

[Morty]

Please define efficiency and give some kind of guideline as to how to quantify the relative efficiency of classes such that this statement can be evaluated.

What are the resources being expended and the benefits being gained?
How are these measured and related to one another?
What is an example of class design that is efficient and by what are the metrics that allow it to meet that standard?
How does paladin fail to live up those standards?
Where do other class concepts designs fit on that scale?
Are different levels of efficiency suitable for "Core" and "Non-Core" concepts? If so, what are they and why?

EDIT: What are some of the alternatives to this model of class design, and what are the benefits of this one over those?

It's simple. There's only so much time and effort you have to design classes, and only so much room in a rulebook. Also, the breadth of concept offered by classes should be roughly similar. There needs to be a degree of consistency in what you can reasonably expect a class to give you. By devoting an entire class to a concept as narrow as "paladin" in the way D&D has always understood it, you spend time, effort and space in a book by devoting an entire class's worth of rules to something that doesn't merit it or need it. In addition, you needlessly narrow down what "class" means. A paladin has no place in the same book as fighter - they're on the opposite sides of the same problem.

If, instead, you simply design a code of conduct you can attach to any class (by a feat, background or simply for free), you can have what the D&D paladin represents a lot more easily, while also opening the possibility of other classes devoting themselves to this code. After all, why can't an arcane spell-caster follow it? Or an archer? Or a duellist?

[Eloel]

If, instead, you simply design a code of conduct you can attach to any class (by a feat, background or simply for free), you can have what the D&D paladin represents a lot more easily, while also opening the possibility of other classes devoting themselves to this code. After all, why can't an arcane spell-caster follow it? Or an archer? Or a duellist?

3.5 BoED has Sacred Vow and all of its children. As bad as they can be crunch-wise, they seem to be what you're suggesting, and I'm inclined to agree.

[goto124]

I think the issue is that the posters had issues with other players who role-played in a way that the poster did not like.

Did anyone argue that the paladin class encourages 'bad behavior' and 'abuse' of the rules?

I heard that argument with alignment itself...

[ReaderAt2046]

Angels, beings of pure good, have CRs and "Treasure" entries in MM. That should tell enough about what is expected of characters.

That only shows that players can play CE murderhoboes if they so choose. It does not in any way prove that players cannot play anything but CE murderhoboes.

A paladin will be suitable for some campaigns and parties, and not suitable for others.

[Twice]

My wife knew how to play Paladins really well. She could work in a party with thieves and evil-aligned characters because she used concepts like "Necessary Evil" and "Enemy of My Enemy". She knew how to play the long game as well when it came to smiting the darkness. She led by example, not by the sword, and she knew a few tricks to get the morally questionable team members to advance her agenda.

It also helps when the evil team mates don't realize they're getting used. :smallbiggrin:
This is, will likely will always be, my own take on playing the paladin class. At least, if I've learned anything from reading OOTS.

[goto124]

:miko: Huh....

[erikun]

I've found that a LOT of complaints about the Paladin class are really just complaints about the having good-aligned characters in general, regardless of if its an actual Paladin or a good-aligned Cleric or even just a LG Fighter who raises an objection to torturing every goblin the party runs across. I do run into some valid complaints about lawfulness or the Paladin code against Paladins as well, although the vast majority of the problems I see people having with Paladins involves the party wanting to do questionably-evil or outright-evil things and not worry about the consequences.

I've also seen complaints about Paladins railroading the party with their alignment restrictions, although I haven't seen it in person. At least, I've seen the same problems with just standard LG characters as I've heard about the Paladin class.

[BWR]

The biggest complaint against paladins I've heard in person is "you have to be realistic about things", by which this person means any sort of compunction against dishonesty, stealth, cheating, and to a degree stealing, often times taking prisoners, extending mercy to beaten foes, handling things by the book etc., is stupid. Any sort of action that a lawful character, esp a LG one, is likely to make is probably a 'stupid' or at least needlessly complicated one in his book. At one point he tried arguing that stealing from people was a good action because he'd put whatever he stole to better use 'for the greater good' than the owner, though this argument hasn't been brought up since that one character.

The idea that paladins are terrible people is one I was blissfully unaware of until I came to these boards.

[mig el pig]

The idea that paladins are terrible people is one I was blissfully unaware of until I came to these boards.

It depends on the person's interpretation. I mean if they were called Battle-Clerics they wouldn't receive half the flack they get now. For me a paladin can be many diffrent things but for me the main concept is a elite knightly warrior with a strong inner conviction.

[BWR]

It depends on the person's interpretation. I mean if they were called Battle-Clerics they wouldn't receive half the flack they get now. For me a paladin can be many diffrent things but for me the main concept is a elite knightly warrior with a strong inner conviction.

What's in a name? Considering the people I've seen who complain complain about the perceived faults of being moral police and ruining fun and not their name, I doubt calling them anything different would make the slightest difference.

[GungHo]

Did anyone argue that the paladin class encourages 'bad behavior' and 'abuse' of the rules?

I heard that argument with alignment itself...

Abuse of rules, no. Not at all.

Bad behavior, I wouldn't use the word "encourage". It provides a lever, however, and the lever is double-ended. And some people just gotta pull that damn lever. I don't know why they just gotta pull the lever, as I'm not a lever puller. But, I have seen people who absolutely cannot resist that lever. I can never get a real "this is why I pull the lever" out of them. There's nothing within the game that says "pull the lever". There's nothing within the context of the game that says pull the lever. Yet, people yank on that thing like they're on Freemont Street on the hottest penny slot in town before the pit boss runs over and pulls the cord.

[Mr.Moron]

I've found that a LOT of complaints about the Paladin class are really just complaints about the having good-aligned characters in general, regardless of if its an actual Paladin or a good-aligned Cleric or even just a LG Fighter who raises an objection to torturing every goblin the party runs across. I do run into some valid complaints about lawfulness or the Paladin code against Paladins as well, although the vast majority of the problems I see people having with Paladins involves the party wanting to do questionably-evil or outright-evil things and not worry about the consequences.

I've also seen complaints about Paladins railroading the party with their alignment restrictions, although I haven't seen it in person. At least, I've seen the same problems with just standard LG characters as I've heard about the Paladin class.


The biggest complaint against paladins I've heard in person is "you have to be realistic about things", by which this person means any sort of compunction against dishonesty, stealth, cheating, and to a degree stealing, often times taking prisoners, extending mercy to beaten foes, handling things by the book etc., is stupid. Any sort of action that a lawful character, esp a LG one, is likely to make is probably a 'stupid' or at least needlessly complicated one in his book. At one point he tried arguing that stealing from people was a good action because ----->>>>> he'd put whatever he stole to better use 'for the greater good' than the owner, <<<------though this argument hasn't been brought up since that one character.

The idea that paladins are terrible people is one I was blissfully unaware of until I came to these boards.

DingDingDingDingDingDing. Our winners everybody.

There is just a certain segment of the gaming population so frustrated with their lot in the real life that they want to escape with a power fantasy where they're too badass to suffer any others having rights. The fantasy is playing a character that does what they want, when they want by virtue that they can. While the real world refuses to recognize how great they are, they can for sure make the fantasy world contend with how great their character is.

[SimonMoon6]

I read the thread title and expected something else.

Here's what I was expecting to see:
--------------------
Paladins are nothing but fighters with powers from their deities. This is a pointless class since you can already do both of those things. If you want to be a holy warrior, a guy wearing armor and smiting his god's foes, you should be a cleric. If you want to sacrifice a lot of spell-casting for a tiny bit of extra fighting ability (as the paladin class does), you can be a fighter/cleric. There's no need for paladin to be a "class"; it should be a character concept... or at best, a prestige class.

And I mean, really, a base class that's limited to only one alignment? That's a little weird. At least the other base classes allow at least three different alignments (or more).

Sure, a fighter/cleric loses some BAB (but who needs it anyway if you've got spells?) and a magic horse (which is useless) and some save bonuses (just multiclass more to get more), but fighter/cleric is still a reasonable substitute.

And the paladin concept is also a poor fit to a world with a non-Judeo-Christian mythology anyway.
--------------------------

But instead, the thread is instead "Wah! I want to be evil! Paladins don't let me be evil! Heroes should always be EVIL!"?

[Milo v3]

I think the paladin is a class that should not be simply because it has such an annoyingly large focus on alignment, when alignment is such a flawed system.

... And then they shove the "no your fellow players can't be 1/3 of character concepts"

[Morty]

3.5 BoED has Sacred Vow and all of its children. As bad as they can be crunch-wise, they seem to be what you're suggesting, and I'm inclined to agree.

Something like that except worthwhile, yes. It'd be important to make sure the benefits are unique, rather than something divine magic can easily replicate.

Either way, "paladin" becomes a concept just like an anarchist, fierce protector of nature, or anything else that involves a deep conviction which might be at odds with party members who don't share it.

[BWR]

... And then they shove the "no your fellow players can't be 1/3 of character concepts"

That's not a paladin problem (or indeed any class), that's a player problem. If everyone else wants to play probably-slightly-evil murderhobos and you bring in a paladin and wreck their fun, you're a ****. If everyone else wants to play an upstanding bastion of all that is good and you bring in a murder-thief-rapist-kitten kicker and expect them to not stop you, you're a ****.
Making compatible characters and meshing with the group is an OOC issue, a metagame issue, not a character concept or mechanical one.

[Mr.Moron]

I think the paladin is a class that should not be simply because it has such an annoyingly large focus on alignment, when alignment is such a flawed system.

... And then they shove the "no your fellow players can't be 1/3 of character concepts"

Other issues with alignment aside:

Again if the only restriction is on evil characters, and the game disallows evil characters by default how does this "You can't be 1/3rd of character concepts" thing creep up? The only alignments they're barred from working with are also the alignments the game bars from as PC choices to begin with.

Even assuming evil PCs were considered to be a part of the default game as designed (and they're not), is "A bad person" really a full 3rd of the concepts people would otherwise be bringing to the table? I doubt it.

[Milo v3]

That's not a paladin problem (or indeed any class), that's a player problem. If everyone else wants to play probably-slightly-evil murderhobos and you bring in a paladin and wreck their fun, you're a ****. If everyone else wants to play an upstanding bastion of all that is good and you bring in a murder-thief-rapist-kitten kicker and expect them to not stop you, you're a ****.
Making compatible characters and meshing with the group is an OOC issue, a metagame issue, not a character concept or mechanical one.

You can play an evil character without being a murder-thief-rapist-kitten kicker. You can play an evil character in the same party as a cleric of heinousness without the rules going no, and if you roleplay well, without the cleric or GM going "no".

It doesn't Have to be an issue, but with paladins, regardless of how the characters are roleplayed, mechanically an issue is created where there wouldn't otherwise be one.

Edit:

Other issues with alignment aside:

Again if the only restriction is on evil characters, and the game disallows evil characters by default how does this "You can't be 1/3rd of character concepts" thing creep up? The only alignments they're barred from working with are also the alignments the game bars from as PC choices to begin with.

Even assuming evil PCs were considered to be a part of the default game as designed (and they're not), is "A bad person" really a full 3rd of the concepts people would otherwise be bringing to the table? I doubt it.
The game doesn't bar evil alignments though, so I'm unsure where it is coming from? All alignments are acceptable by default, despite the assumption being that most games will be good and non-evil. It's not like the evil alignments are in the DMG.

And considering it's 1/3 of the ethical/mental "natures" of the characters, yes I'd say about a third of the potential concepts would probably be evil. Though I would assume that good-aligned concepts get more use.

[BWR]

You can play an evil character without being a murder-thief-rapist-kitten kicker. You can play an evil character in the same party as a cleric of heinousness without the rules going no, and if you roleplay well, without the cleric or GM going "no".

It doesn't Have to be an issue, but with paladins, regardless of how the characters are roleplayed, mechanically an issue is created where there wouldn't otherwise be one.


I would contend that any good character, not just paladins, will not willingly associate with evil if at all possible (except at weapon-point). If an evil PC is hiding their alignment and actions from good PCs then there is no problem, at least to the point where any good characters get hints that their comrade might be not so nice and they intentionally turn a blind eye. This applies to paladins as well. Some good people might make temporary pacts of what they consider necessity for the greater good but there is nothing saying that only paladins can hold themselves to higher standards of behavior than that and nothing saying that other divine characters like clerics will not suffer mechanically for compromise. After all, if a cleric does something her god doesn't like she can instantly lose all powers, and I don't see how this isn't exactly as 'restrictive' or 'mechanically unfair' as a paladin's code.

[Mr.Moron]

The game doesn't bar evil alignments though, so I'm unsure where it is coming from? .

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/description.htm#alignment

The first six alignments, lawful good through chaotic neutral, are the standard alignments for player characters. The three evil alignments are for monsters and villains.


http://www.d20pfsrd.com/alignment-description/additional-rules

The first six alignments, lawful good through chaotic neutral, are standard alignments for player characters. The three evil alignments are usually for monsters and villains. With the GM's permission, a player may assign an evil alignment to his PC, but such characters are often a source of disruption and conflict with good and neutral party members. GMs are encouraged to carefully consider how evil PCs might affect the campaign before allowing them.


http://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads/dnd/PlayerDnDBasicRules_v0.2.pdf

As an evil character, Artemis is not an ideal adventurer. He
began his career as a villain, and only cooperates with heroes
when he must—and when it’s in his own best interests. In
most games, evil adventurers cause problems in groups
alongside others who don’t share their interests and objectives.
Generally, evil alignments are for villains and monsters

If I could readily find the 4e Alignment rules I'm sure they'd list evil as "Not a standard option. For monsters/villians. With special GM permission only" too. The default assumption is no evil, evil is a special case.

You'll also note that all the promotional material, all the introductions to "What is D&D?" in the books, and all the descriptions of adventures frame the characters as "Heroes" or "Fighting Evil" or similar language. There is no space in default D&D as designed (by rules or by thematic intention), for evil characters.

The option is left in the game as something GMs can do if the group is really dedicated to it, but that's it.

EVIL: It's not how the game is meant to be played, it's not what the game is sold as, and that's plastered all over the product in multiple places *INCLUDING* the character generation rules as I quoted.

[Milo v3]

I would contend that any good character, not just paladins, will not willingly associate with evil if at all possible (except at weapon-point).
Your definition of good is rather small then. It happens throughout many examples in fiction; Belkar, Reaver, and Raistlin are the first to come to my sleep depraved mind as evil party members of a good aligned group (though I suppose the hero of fable can be evil if the player does evil stuff). Sometimes, it helps the greater good to have a powerful evil guy helping you as you do good stuff.


After all, if a cleric does something her god doesn't like she can instantly lose all powers, and I don't see how this isn't exactly as 'restrictive' or 'mechanically unfair' as a paladin's code.
I'd say that's more a flavour based restriction, since exceptions can be made and the whole thing is based on Dm and player judgement on what the divine power would and wouldn't allow, rather than a uncompromising, NEVER OR YOU LOSE ALL YOUR POWERS EVEN IF IT IS TO SERVE THE GREATER GOOD OR TO REDEEM THEM.


http://www.d20srd.org/srd/description.htm#alignment


http://www.d20pfsrd.com/alignment-description/additional-rules



http://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads/dnd/PlayerDnDBasicRules_v0.2.pdf

If I could readily find the 4e Alignment rules I'm sure they'd list evil as "Not a standard option. For monsters/villians. With special GM permission only" too. The default assumption is no evil, evil is a special case.

You'll also note that all the promotional material, all the introductions to "What is D&D?" in the books, and all the descriptions of adventures frame the characters as "Heroes" or "Fighting Evil" or similar language. There is no space in default D&D as designed (by rules or by thematic intention), for evil characters.

The option is left in the game as something GMs can do if the group is really dedicated to it, but that's it.

EVIL: It's not how the game is meant to be played, it's not what the game is sold as, and that's plastered all over the product in multiple places *INCLUDING* the character generation rules as I quoted.
I wouldn't consider those proper restrictions, but I can see what your getting at. Still, I'm not sure why "playing evil" would be considered a restriction when there are so many evil options in games (though 5e is rather explicit in intended NPC-ness of it's evil options in the DMG) from blackguards, to archetypes specifically for antipaladins, to tonnes of PrC's, to Evil player races in the BoVD.

So yes it is assumed your going to play the heroes. But it's not like there isn't specific mechanical options for evil PC's in D&D and it's derivatives, being evil IS an option. Also, you can be an evil hero who dedicates his life to fighting evil.

[Mr.Moron]

Your definition of good is rather small then. It happens throughout many examples in fiction; Belkar, Reaver, and Raistlin are the first to come to my sleep depraved mind as evil party members of a good aligned group (though I suppose the hero of fable can be evil if the player does evil stuff). Sometimes, it helps the greater good to have a powerful evil guy helping you as you do good stuff.


I'd say that's more a flavour based restriction, since exceptions can be made and the whole thing is based on Dm and player judgement on what the divine power would and wouldn't allow, rather than a uncompromising, NEVER OR YOU LOSE ALL YOUR POWERS EVEN IF IT IS TO SERVE THE GREATER GOOD OR TO REDEEM THEM.


I wouldn't consider those proper restrictions, but I can see what your getting at. Still, I'm not sure why "playing evil" would be considered a restriction when there are so many evil options in games (though 5e is rather explicit in intended NPC-ness of it's evil options in the DMG) from blackguards, to archetypes specifically for antipaladins, to tonnes of PrC's, to Evil player races in the BoVD.

So yes it is assumed your going to play the heroes. But it's not like there isn't specific mechanical options for evil PC's in D&D and it's derivatives, being evil IS an option. Also, you can be an evil hero who dedicates his life to fighting evil.

Do I really need to go through all the various PDFs and quote where they constantly put "This thing is evil. it's not standard, ask your GM first.", or "This book isn't for the typical campaign, it's a unique case" in the introductory sections of most of that junk?

iirc, Blackgaurds and the like were all originally in DM-facing materials anyway not any of the PHBs. The SRDs happen to pull that information out in a broadly visible way but that's because they do that with all the system information.

Even if you don't buy those restrictions as RAW somehow, the rest of the product is screaming the intentions on every page. "They won't work with evil characters" just can't stand up as an honest criticism of paladins in a D&D context, because the text of the products so clearly and frequently call out the game as being about playing good guys.


EDIT: Which isn't to say the evil-included play style has no right to exist, but lets not pretend core designs should be held accountable to something that they weren't designed with in mind in the first place.

[Eloel]

We finally managed to get an actual Fluff-As-Written discussion. I am proud of you guys.

[Cluedrew]

Fluff-As-Written
I laughed so much here, FAW joins RAW and RAI.

Still I find myself wondering why people as so unwilling to ignore some of the cumbersome parts of the paladin code. Which works find in when playing a true "heroic fantasy" game (black & white, good vs. evil, hack slash fireball) that seems to be the default mode of play in Dungeons and Dragons. Problems do come up in evil campaigns or even ones with more social slant to them where you might have to negotiate with the BBEG. But why not just adjust the rules to fit the game you are now playing.

[VoxRationis]

I'd say that's more a flavour based restriction, since exceptions can be made and the whole thing is based on Dm and player judgement on what the divine power would and wouldn't allow, rather than a uncompromising, NEVER OR YOU LOSE ALL YOUR POWERS EVEN IF IT IS TO SERVE THE GREATER GOOD OR TO REDEEM THEM.


How is a cleric falling (which is just as much a mechanical thing that can happen) any more "flavor-based" (with all of the bizarre contempt for the source material that implies) than a paladin falling? The cleric as a class has looser codes on conduct simply because that one class is supposed to apply to a wide variety of different religions, each with their own code, which may or may not be as strict as that of a paladin. A cleric of, say, the oft-forgotten Heironeous may have a code which is functionally the same as a paladin's.

[Hypername]

Well a paladin would fit amazingly well in a campaign like Wrath of the Righteous where it's black and white, no morally grey choices, just us vs them.
However a paladin unless his alignment is interpreted extremely liberally causes a lot of issues as it restricts many choices.
A paladin would not really like to cooperate with a rogue, who had little sense of honor and would rather backstab his enemies than fight fairly. He wouldn't really like a LE character who would deceive and cheat to reach his goal of a perfect order. NE and CE is a big NOPE but that's the case in most games tbh.

Thing is that the Alignment system is pretty flawed as in real life there more than 9 alignments. Basing a class around one of those alignments is not a good idea. A Paladin would never use deceit to win, and would despise doing anything that go against tradition and honour. A Paladin is essentialy a crusader. And unless roleplayed extremely good he comes of as self-righteous, holier-than-thou and overall annoying.

[Brookshw]

We finally managed to get an actual Fluff-As-Written discussion. I am proud of you guys.

bwah? Clearly dark sun is a land where people love each other so much they cuddle up in remote cities so they can spend more alone time together and willingly devote their lives to serving the masters who they love so much while the head honchos are benevolent rulers.

[Cluedrew]

A paladin would not really like to cooperate with a rogue, who had little sense of honor and would rather backstab his enemies than fight fairly.
[...]
Thing is that the Alignment system is pretty flawed as in real life there more than 9 alignments.

OK, the first part is just quoted because I wonder what happened to the "honourable rogue" arch-type? And honestly, if the guy is twice as big as you and has a broadsword to your tooth pick, how is fighting him face-to-face and more fair?

The second main part it a little comment about the 9 alignments. What real life "alignment" is not covered by the alignment system? My understanding is: All moral codes are covered by the alignment system and the "flaws" (or perhaps limitations) of the system come up when we try to figure out exactly which of the 9 groups on particular moral outlook is in.

[Hypername]

OK, the first part is just quoted because I wonder what happened to the "honourable rogue" arch-type? And honestly, if the guy is twice as big as you and has a broadsword to your tooth pick, how is fighting him face-to-face and more fair?

The second main part it a little comment about the 9 alignments. What real life "alignment" is not covered by the alignment system? My understanding is: All moral codes are covered by the alignment system and the "flaws" (or perhaps limitations) of the system come up when we try to figure out exactly which of the 9 groups on particular moral outlook is in.

The rogue as I see him, is the guy who will sneak around the enemy camp and assassinate the enemy leader when he least expects it. A paladin would never assassinate anyone. A paladin is like Superman . Honour, tradition, giving the other a chance to fight. A rogue is more like Han Solo. He wants to get the job done as quietly and as fast as possible.

In real life there are grey zones, so alignments can't apply. In real life you can't label someone with an alignment, but you can judge his actions. Search the expanded alignments for more info.

[Mr.Moron]

The rogue as I see him, is the guy who will sneak around the enemy camp and assassinate the enemy leader when he least expects it. A paladin would never assassinate anyone. A paladin is like Superman . Honour, tradition, giving the other a chance to fight. A rogue is more like Han Solo. He wants to get the job done as quietly and as fast as possible.

In real life there are grey zones, so alignments can't apply. In real life you can't label someone with an alignment, but you can judge his actions. Search the expanded alignments for more info.

So who's the guy who will disguise himself, infiltrate the enemy fort to give them misdirected Intel that will cause them to miss the key battle entirely, and effectively ending the war? Doing so will required the following skill set: Stealth, Disguise Deception, Lock-picking, Forgery, Trap Disabling (various security devices) and Poison Use (for a higly effective but non-lethal sedative).

Note: The character in question is doing this not only because it's effective but primarily because they value life and it's the way forward that will end the immediate conflict with the least bloodshed on both sides? Also assume the infiltration mission carries far greater personal risk for the infiltrator than any other option and that there is some other fast option on the table with low risk (like poisoning the camp with a deadly toxin in the water).

It's certainly not a paladin, the motivation/values probably align but the skill set doesn't. It (apparently) can't be a rogue either, because he isn't slitting throats for expedience sake though the skill set is spot-on. So which of the "Core" concepts is that guy?

[Hypername]

So who's the guy who will disguise himself, infiltrate the enemy fort to give them misdirected Intel that will cause them to miss the key battle entirely, and effectively ending the war? Doing so will required the following skill set: Stealth, Disguise Deception, Lock-picking, Forgery, Trap Disabling (various security devices) and Poison Use (for a higly effective but non-lethal sedative).

Note: The character in question is doing this not only because it's effective but primarily because they value life and it's the way forward that will end the immediate conflict with the least bloodshed on both sides? Also assume the infiltration mission carries far greater personal risk for the infiltrator than any other option and that there is some other fast option on the table with low risk (like poisoning the camp with a deadly toxin in the water).

It's certainly not a paladin, the motivation/values probably align but the skill set doesn't. It (apparently) can't be a rogue either, because he isn't slitting throats for expedience sake though the skill set is spot-on. So which of the "Core" concepts is that guy?

It is the rogue who is more chaotic in nature. If a Paladin does something like that he is violating the Lawful part. There go his powers. A rogue doesn't just slit throats. He is an inflitrator and a guy who can get things done. That's why I compared him to Han Solo or Robin Hood.

[BayardSPSR]

The second main part it a little comment about the 9 alignments. What real life "alignment" is not covered by the alignment system? My understanding is: All moral codes are covered by the alignment system and the "flaws" (or perhaps limitations) of the system come up when we try to figure out exactly which of the 9 groups on particular moral outlook is in.

There are no real-life alignments. The alignment system does not cover real moral codes, it looks at them through a blurry, misshapen, out-of-focus lens in the dark. "Alignment" is an oversimplification intended to distinguish "good guys" from "bad guys." Real philosophies are complex, and don't fall into teams.

Rhetorical question: is [insert well-known political philosophy]ism CG, LG, LE, CE, or something with Neutral in it? It depends on who you ask, and which version they think you're referring to. It doesn't fit in a box.


NIXON: And the far right?

MAO: True Marxism is called that by the extreme left. Occasionally the true left calls a spade a spade and tells the left it’s right.

[Milo v3]

Do I really need to go through all the various PDFs and quote where they constantly put "This thing is evil. it's not standard, ask your GM first.", or "This book isn't for the typical campaign, it's a unique case" in the introductory sections of most of that junk?

iirc, Blackgaurds and the like were all originally in DM-facing materials anyway not any of the PHBs. The SRDs happen to pull that information out in a broadly visible way but that's because they do that with all the system information.

Even if you don't buy those restrictions as RAW somehow, the rest of the product is screaming the intentions on every page. "They won't work with evil characters" just can't stand up as an honest criticism of paladins in a D&D context, because the text of the products so clearly and frequently call out the game as being about playing good guys.


EDIT: Which isn't to say the evil-included play style has no right to exist, but lets not pretend core designs should be held accountable to something that they weren't designed with in mind in the first place.

That is why I said I saw your point (though, your severely over-exaggerating the omnipresence of those disclaimers, they anywhere close to always there), it is assumed by the designers that the game will be basically always used to play out as heroes fighting evil and saving the world, but in many instances, they gave material to players that is specifically for evil characters so they are aware that some people will play evil characters, it's not some aberrant idea to them. A very blatant example would be the Dread Necromancer class, which practices evil over and over and over, since the game defines animating undead as an evil practice, has alignment restrictions forbidding it from being Good in alignment, and it's capstone involves commiting an act of unspeakable evil, and yet it is a player oriented base class, it is not an NPC class, it was not intended for NPCs.

As for it not being RAW to be evil because it has a "ask your GM", that's just blatantly wrong, it's no less RAW than prestige classes in 3.5 (which also had such a restriction).


We finally managed to get an actual Fluff-As-Written discussion. I am proud of you guys.
Hah, that is actually pretty awesome.


How is a cleric falling (which is just as much a mechanical thing that can happen) any more "flavor-based" (with all of the bizarre contempt for the source material that implies) than a paladin falling? The cleric as a class has looser codes on conduct simply because that one class is supposed to apply to a wide variety of different religions, each with their own code, which may or may not be as strict as that of a paladin. A cleric of, say, the oft-forgotten Heironeous may have a code which is functionally the same as a paladin's.
Because whether or not the cleric would fall is subjective and based on the flavour of the deity, rather than based on mechanics. Yes, a cleric of Heironeous may have a code which is functionally the same as a paladins, but that was caused by the DM or player flavouring heironeous in such a way, as there is no rule stating "Good deities have the following restrictions: blah blah etc. etc." Every religion will likely have a different code of conduct based on the flavour of the religion, which makes it flavour based, rather than mechanical.

[VoxRationis]

Yes, but within a given context, that code is just as hard and fast as the paladin's. Take Forgotten Realms, for example. The 3e book for it gave codes for most of the important gods' clerics, each with multiple tenets. How easy is it for a priestess of Lolth to fall? Very: it's not hard to kill a spider by mistake, and the "don't harm spiders" thing is non-negotiable. So yes, in the nebulous, Hemingwayesque "give only a small amount of flavor to the setting, and little concrete" writing of the core books, the paladin faces restrictions harsher than other classes (though at least they don't have equipment material restrictions like the druid—and yet people don't complain about that nearly so much, in part I suspect because you can still play a a**hole druid), but in an actual coherent setting, clerics are going to face similar behavioral restrictions.

[LudicSavant]

There are no real-life alignments. The alignment system does not cover real moral codes, it looks at them through a blurry, misshapen, out-of-focus lens in the dark. "Alignment" is an oversimplification intended to distinguish "good guys" from "bad guys." Real philosophies are complex, and don't fall into teams.

It's even worse than that, really. D&D has never had an alignment system where Good even resembled virtue. D&D usually (though not always) takes the position that ugly things are Evil and pretty things are Good and tends to stop right there and call it a day. Rarely does it rise above the cartoonish convention of identifying the bad guy by color coding of their special effects or similar tells, and Good-aligned characters are depicted committing atrocities all the time.

When elves use ambushes and guerilla tactics they're clever and wise and glorious, but when goblins do the exact same thing it's cowardly and deceitful and wretched. Corellon Larethian has a holiday called Agelong that is literally celebrated by initiating pogroms. Poisons are super-Evil regardless of who they're used on because they cause terrible pain (even the ones that are totally painless or just put you to sleep or something), except if they are Ravages, in which case they're Good because they... cause unbearable pain, but only to certain people. Numerous creatures that literally aren't even capable of decisionmaking get saddled with the Good and Evil tags. This is the tip of the iceberg for examples here.

Equating good and Good in D&D tends to require a certain level of Orwellian doublethink where players identify something as Good or Evil just because it is labelled or signalled as such through tells like color coding or "otherness" or ugliness or using negative/positive connotation synonyms for the same actions for each side.

[Milo v3]

Yes, but within a given context, that code is just as hard and fast as the paladin's. Take Forgotten Realms, for example. The 3e book for it gave codes for most of the important gods' clerics, each with multiple tenets. How easy is it for a priestess of Lolth to fall? Very: it's not hard to kill a spider by mistake, and the "don't harm spiders" thing is non-negotiable. So yes, in the nebulous, Hemingwayesque "give only a small amount of flavor to the setting, and little concrete" writing of the core books, the paladin faces restrictions harsher than other classes (though at least they don't have equipment material restrictions like the druid—and yet people don't complain about that nearly so much, in part I suspect because you can still play a a**hole druid), but in an actual coherent setting, clerics are going to face similar behavioral restrictions.

It doesn't matter whether or not it's as hard and fast as the paladins, it can be more it could be less. It depends on the flavour of the god. It is Flavour based. The difficultly of it is irrelevant. I am honestly confused on how this is hard to understand.

As for druids, I hate how their restrictions work (equipment, alignment, and language-wise) and generally hate the whole class's implementation.

[VoxRationis]

If you define "flavor" as "anything that's not numerical," yes, I suppose it is flavor-based, but god and domain choice is, though qualitative rather than quantitative, both discrete and mechanical, as are actions, the sorts of actions that the discrete, mechanical god/domain choice are going to encourage or prohibit. The capacity for a class to "fall" at all is entirely in-play, which means that it takes place in-character, in-game, as a consequence of in-game, in-character actions, which are inherently tied to what you disdainfully sniff at as "flavor." You can only even bring up the question of falling or going against alignment or violating codes of conduct once you're already in play, at which point your character's god and domains are already set in stone. At that point, "I do/do not commit X" becomes a very discrete, mechanical, binary choice. Not numerical, but you're going to fall or not fall in a mechanical fashion.
Even Neutral gods are going to have some sort of standard of conduct for their priests to uphold. They might not care about alignment per se, but they'll have something they're a god of, and codes of conduct are going to be viewed through that light. If they didn't have some standard, then everyone would be as pious and devoted to that god's teachings as the clerics, which is to say not at all, and at that point one starts to wonder why some people get cleric levels and not others. Is it to advance the god's interests? Well, then, the clerics just got a code of "Do What I Say; Advance My Interests." So when the party temple-robber thief archetype walks by, says "Ooh, doesn't that gold idol look expensive," and the cleric says "Don't even think about it," they're just as much shutting down a fellow player for the sake of an in-game code of conduct as a paladin would, and would probably fall if they didn't.

[Cluedrew]

I'm going to withdraw my alignment comment because it is a little off topic. Plus my interpretation of the alignment system is not actually the "official" one, rather one I have created to that it can be applied to real life morality. And that is really complicated and I'm still working on it. Thanks to those who replied to it regardless.

Also I believe that Mr. Moron is saying not that evil is against the rules but that it is not the default mode of play as decided by the game developers.

And rule 0 is in the rules as well, so why don't you use that to tweak the paladin's code so that it fits your character concept. For a darker version have a code where the only real restriction is working for the greater good, the means are almost completely open. I think the default for is invalid, although I will agree it is rather narrow, but why not just change it if you want something similar yet different (say a paladin who is can perform assassinations). Maybe the paladin should be better, but should not be at all, not in my book.

[Milo v3]

If you define "flavor" as "anything that's not numerical," yes, I suppose it is flavor-based, but god and domain choice is, though qualitative rather than quantitative, both discrete and mechanical, as are actions, the sorts of actions that the discrete, mechanical god/domain choice are going to encourage or prohibit. The capacity for a class to "fall" at all is entirely in-play, which means that it takes place in-character, in-game, as a consequence of in-game, in-character actions, which are inherently tied to what you disdainfully sniff at as "flavor." You can only even bring up the question of falling or going against alignment or violating codes of conduct once you're already in play, at which point your character's god and domains are already set in stone. At that point, "I do/do not commit X" becomes a very discrete, mechanical, binary choice. Not numerical, but you're going to fall or not fall in a mechanical fashion.
Even Neutral gods are going to have some sort of standard of conduct for their priests to uphold. They might not care about alignment per se, but they'll have something they're a god of, and codes of conduct are going to be viewed through that light. If they didn't have some standard, then everyone would be as pious and devoted to that god's teachings as the clerics, which is to say not at all, and at that point one starts to wonder why some people get cleric levels and not others. Is it to advance the god's interests? Well, then, the clerics just got a code of "Do What I Say; Advance My Interests." So when the party temple-robber thief archetype walks by, says "Ooh, doesn't that gold idol look expensive," and the cleric says "Don't even think about it," they're just as much shutting down a fellow player for the sake of an in-game code of conduct as a paladin would, and would probably fall if they didn't.
Yes. That can occur. But the importance of it being flavour based rather than mechanical, is that it might not. Each deity can have different restrictions, some religions may have minor restrictions others might have super strict restrictions, some might have no restrictions. But, it is still less restrictive in general than paladin codes, since not all clerics must have the same exact super strict code. There can be a god of freedom and good, who allows their priests to team up with evil individuals if it would serve the greater good. But there Cannot be a paladin who teams up with evil individuals regardless of circumstance. Having it be based on flavour allows much more flexibility, since it will depend on what god you have selected to worship rather than be completely arbitrary.


Also I believe that Mr. Moron is saying not that evil is against the rules but that it is not the default mode of play as decided by the game developers.
I don't understand why what they assume to be the default mode of play would matter in this discussion.

[YossarianLives]

Honestly I think a class that effectively cripples a character if it's player ever does something deemed to be "unlawful' is the stupidest thing ever.

[Mr.Moron]

I don't understand why what they assume to be the default mode of play would matter in this discussion.

Because it's a discussion on the merits of the paladin as default class in the core rules. This necessitates understanding the context in which the default classes were meant to operate. This is a heroic, fighting evil, good guys context.

Saying that a paladin shouldn't be a default class because it restricts evil characters or evil acts, ignores the intended context that game was designed for. One can talk all day about how it doesn't fit a particular play style and that's a fine and valid discussion. However if that play style was never intended as part of the core experience of the game that's more a criticism of the game as a whole than paladins in particular.

[Milo v3]

Because it's a discussion on the merits of the paladin as default class in the core rules. This necessitates understanding the context in which the default classes were meant to operate. This is a heroic, fighting evil, good guys context.

Saying that a paladin shouldn't be a default class because it restricts evil characters or evil acts, ignores the intended context that game was designed for. One can talk all day about how it doesn't fit a particular play style and that's a fine and valid discussion. However if that play style was never intended as part of the core experience of the game that's more a criticism of the game as a whole than paladins in particular.

I feel that the core rules should be inclusive of playstyles rather than exclusive of them, since that is the starting point of experience with that edition or game. Giant arbitrary restrictions that reduce the amount of playstyles possible in the core of the game, is a negative not a positive.

[Mr.Moron]

I feel that the core rules should be inclusive of playstyles rather than exclusive of them, since that is the starting point of experience with that edition or game. Giant arbitrary restrictions that reduce the amount of playstyles possible in the core of the game, is a negative not a positive.

Then that's a criticism of the validity of a products meant to provide more narrow or focused experiences over broader, generic or more inclusive ones, more so than one on paladins or even D&D in particular.

[endur]

Honestly I think a class that effectively cripples a character if it's player ever does something deemed to be "unlawful' is the stupidest thing ever.

Luckily, Paladins can be deemed to do an "unlawful" action without being crippled. "Evil" acts are the problem, not "unlawful" actions.

[Morty]

And people are still missing the forest for the trees. The paladin's code isn't a problem - no more than a strict, unbending devotion to any other cause. The problem is that one of the default, core classes is built entirely around such a narrow code of conduct, with rules punishing the class for straying from it, and sometimes even for their party's straying from it.

[Cluedrew]

I have one more argument for the paladin. That is there are people defending it because we like it. Sure it is not for everybody, but things like this are easier to remove than to add. A ban house rule can take seconds to implement, a good home brew is on a scale of hours. Of course they can't include everything they have so the splat books add some more of it in later. So maybe it shouldn't be a core class, but not a class at all?

Well maybe if there was some other way in the game to get across the paladin's code we could drop the class. Pure role-play is always an option but role playing games are really about creating rules to represent things, so why skip this one? (Actually question if you can think of a reason.)

I don't think the paladin class is perfect. However I don't think its problem is that it is "strict" rather that it is "invariable". That is I feel the problem is so much the paladin's code itself, rather that it is the only one. Why not include a "The Greater Good at All Costs" vow for a more edgy approach or "I Live to Serve" which can be of any alignment depending on who or what you serve. There was a missed opportunity there although some variants of the idea seem to have shown up on occasion such as Blackguards or Paladins of Slaughter.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, yes there are problems with the paladin class, I believe we have discussed most of them by now. But none of these invalidate the paladin as a whole. With a few tweaks you can adjust the paladin from the hard and fast lawful good type to... just about anything. A whatever alignment paragon of battle who can absorb damage with a touch (Lay on Hands) and then unleash it again with his attacks (Smite Evil) would make for an interesting character. Still that doesn't make the currant paladin worth less.

[goto124]

By the way, I encountered this:

How does a weak low-level paladin enter an enemy's castle without getting bashed up by the many many guards in there?

My best solution was 'wait an hour for a guard to walk out alone, knock him unconcious, then wear his clothes and enter'.

Was there a better way or something, considering that the paladin was alone with no helpful rogue-class teammates?

[BWR]

By the way, I encountered this:

How does a weak low-level paladin enter an enemy's castle without getting bashed up by the many many guards in there?

My best solution was 'wait an hour for a guard to walk out alone, knock him unconcious, then wear his clothes and enter'.

Was there a better way or something, considering that the paladin was alone with no helpful rogue-class teammates?


It really depends on the character, the nature of his vows and the GM.

[McStabbington]

Luckily, Paladins can be deemed to do an "unlawful" action without being crippled. "Evil" acts are the problem, not "unlawful" actions.

It also helps to remember that a well-crafted law is built for the purpose of protecting life and liberty, and as such has all kinds of flexible arrangements called "defenses" for those situations where protecting life and liberty require you to violate the letter of the law.

The last time I played a paladin on these forums, we were caught wounded out of doors after curfew after an invasion had toppled the local government. So I did exactly what I was supposed to do, and exactly what the law allows (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity_defense), and kicked in the nearest door and explained that while I was deeply sorry and would pay in full for any damage caused, we had to take shelter lest we all die. Not only did I not fall, I was commended by my fellow gamers for doing exactly what a paladin should do.

Which I think gets to the core of half of the hate on this board for paladins (the other half being obsession with tiers and mechanical optimization, where a paladin will by definition inhibit some gamers simply because they're a L5 class that can't stomp a god at level 8), which is that I'm reasonably certain the age demographic of this board skews young. Which means the only experience most of us have had with authority is "person tells me I can't do what I want". And the paladin is the personification of the authority figure. So, they get flak by association rather than people trying to find ways to make them reasonable authority figures who can be both smart and just, clever and honorable even though those thing really shouldn't be seen as non-complementary.

[theNater]

By the way, I encountered this:

How does a weak low-level paladin enter an enemy's castle without getting bashed up by the many many guards in there?
Ask permission. Break out the white flag and request parley. Take a reasonable oath to assuage any fears the enemy has about what the paladin will do while in the castle.

[Mr.Moron]

Ask permission. Break out the white flag and request parley. Take a reasonable oath to assuage any fears the enemy has about what the paladin will do while in the castle.

While a real answer would require more context, this is a good generic response. Though there is a certain type of GM who makes every enemy leader (if not every leader) an obstinate homicidal maniac who has a 100% chance of either shooting on sight, or using your negotiation attempts to betray the truce and kill you.

In their mind flaunting the rules, and using asymmetrical violence is the only viable solution. There is no such thing as negotiation, compromise, or understanding. Only DarkGrittyGrimBlack because that's "Realistic".

[Necroticplague]

Honestly, I never saw the point of it. Exactly how honorable and upright you are is a a matter of roleplay, no need to have mechanical ramification to it. If you want mechanics tied to your roleplay, play a cleric. If you want the mixture of divine and martial, play a cleric/fighter multiclass or a straight cleric with a more martial bent. What does a paladin do you can't represent with a cleric? Unless you have so little originality or ability/willingness to refluff, there's no reason for paladins and clerics to both exist. Maybe a 'subclass' of cleric would be appropriate (paladin being to cleric what Battle Sorcerer is to normal sorcerer, for instance). An entire class is unnecessary.

[BayardSPSR]

I have one more argument for the paladin. That is there are people defending it because we like it. Sure it is not for everybody, but things like this are easier to remove than to add. A ban house rule can take seconds to implement, a good home brew is on a scale of hours. Of course they can't include everything they have so the splat books add some more of it in later. So maybe it shouldn't be a core class, but not a class at all?

...

I guess what I'm trying to say is, yes there are problems with the paladin class, I believe we have discussed most of them by now. But none of these invalidate the paladin as a whole. With a few tweaks you can adjust the paladin from the hard and fast lawful good type to... just about anything. A whatever alignment paragon of battle who can absorb damage with a touch (Lay on Hands) and then unleash it again with his attacks (Smite Evil) would make for an interesting character. Still that doesn't make the current paladin worth less.

This goes both ways. The paladin concept is cool, but poorly implemented. The fact that people like the idea behind it and want to play that concept doesn't invalidate the claim that the implementation is terrible.

This is also getting towards the "it's not broken if it can be fixed" understanding of what amount to good design.

[icefractal]

People are always saying that the Paladin is restrictive. But it seems that a lot of the time what they really mean is that good-aligned characters are restrictive when you want to play a psycho. Or that people have used being a Paladin as an excuse for being obnoxious. Because while the Paladin code is somewhat more restrictive than what you'd do anyway as LG, it's not that much more.

I mean really, hanging out with Hannibal Lecter and enabling him, is that something anyone who's not pretty morally dubious themselves wants to do? "Oh, but he's a really skilled at what he does!" So are non-serial-killers, we'll get one of those instead. I'm not saying hugely alignment-clashing parties can't work ... but I've never seen it happen.

And yes, I know that "Hannibal Lecter" is a pretty extreme case, but I'm not making it up out of the blue - I remember reading a thread where someone wanted to play a cannibal mage that ate people for power, and not just enemies either, and called people uptight and uncreative for not having their (previously established) characters be cool with that. And blamed alignment - but really, alignment is not the only reason someone might object to that! :smalltongue:

[BWR]

The paladin concept is cool, but poorly implemented. The fact that people like the idea behind it and want to play that concept doesn't invalidate the claim that the implementation is terrible.


What implementation would this be? What it can do or what it can't? Because as has been pointed out repeatedly, lots of people have no problem with the paladin as a concept or with its restrictions, and the complaints of those who do have a problem have a tendency to be directed less at anything mechanical about the paladin and more at disliking LG people in general or being generally unpleasant gamers or having bad experiences with such.

[Cluedrew]

This goes both ways. The paladin concept is cool, but poorly implemented. The fact that people like the idea behind it and want to play that concept doesn't invalidate the claim that the implementation is terrible.

This is also getting towards the "it's not broken if it can be fixed" understanding of what amount to good design.

Sure, but even if it was implemented so badly as to utterly unplayable (and I don't think anyone is saying it is that bad) that doesn't mean the class itself "should not be" just that the implementation of it is bad. And since we are talking about the class itself, aka the concept that spans games, no bad implementation (or series of bad implementations) can invalidate the idea of the class itself.

In other words my "rule 0" argument is not saying that implementation is not broken if it can be fixed. But rather the fact the implementation can be fixed shows that the concept behind it is solid.

If you want to apply the argument to an particular implementation, I'm saying it is good but not perfect. I wouldn't even say the paladin is broken as that implies it doesn't work at all. And the class does work in some contexts, which have already been discussed.

Yes, other methods could be used to represent a paladin or paladin-like character. Yes, the paladin class could be made to be applicable to a wider variety of character concepts. Sure you could replace it in the core classes with something else (not sure what). None of these things however invalidate the currant paladin class. Something doesn't have to be the best possible or even the best to be good or even excellent. You can point out valid problems and limitations with this class, you can with any class, but how does that translate to should not exist?

[Milo v3]

What implementation would this be? What it can do or what it can't? Because as has been pointed out repeatedly, lots of people have no problem with the paladin as a concept or with its restrictions, and the complaints of those who do have a problem have a tendency to be directed less at anything mechanical about the paladin and more at disliking LG people in general or being generally unpleasant gamers or having bad experiences with such.
I mainly dislike it's implementation because of it's arbitrary nature, that unnecessarily removes valid concepts from the rest of the party. Many lawful good characters can be in a party with an evil character without mechanically getting screwed over by it, and if handled correctly in-character it can work immensely well, but paladins mechanics do not allow for such an opportunity.

[Mr.Moron]

I mainly dislike it's implementation because of it's arbitary nature, that unnecessarily removes valid concepts from the rest of the party.


Only in extreme edge cases. The kind of game you'd potentially bring a paladin to and the kind you'd bring an evil character to are close to mutually exclusive even barring the Oath. With the only overlap occurring in the loosest sandboxes and beer n pretzels for the most part.

The vast majority of the time it isn't " oh Joe wants to pay paladin, you can't play a torture specialist George " it's "no you can't play a torture specialist George. This isn't an evil campaign" regardless of what Joe is playing.

[Milo v3]

Only in extreme edge cases. The kind of game you'd potentially bring a paladin to and the kind you'd bring an evil character to are close to mutually exclusive even barring the Oath. With the only overlap occurring in the loosest sandboxes and beer n pretzels for the most part.

The vast majority of the time it isn't " oh Joe wants to pay paladin, you can't play a torture specialist George " it's "no you can't play a torture specialist George. This isn't an evil campaign" regardless of what Joe is playing.

That is false. Have you read Oots or Dragonlance? There is an evil character right in the main party of those, and I wouldn't call them "loosest sandboxes and beer n pretzels". Simply being evil doesn't make your character a super psychopath who rips off peoples arms every twenty minutes, you can be part of an adventuring party full of good (even LG) people without it suddenly breaking.

Note: Where is Red Fel when I need him... He'd be able to describe what I'm trying to convey much more efficiently.

[Seto]

Note: Where is Red Fel when I need him... He'd be able to describe what I'm trying to convey much more efficiently.

I believe you can summon him if you perform the appropriate ritual.

To the point, my party has both a Paladin (who happens to be the Half-Orc "Redeemer" archetype from PF, which allows him to adventure with Evil creatures) and a LE member. Said LE member is a quiet, pragmatic "do what's most efficient" type. So far it's going well, the moral conflicts have mostly been between these two Lawful characters and the CG Bard. (Although it might get more messy down the road)

[Mr.Moron]

That is false. Have you read Oots or Dragonlance? There is an evil character right in the main party of those, and I wouldn't call them "loosest sandboxes and beer n pretzels".

I also wouldn't call them games. They're books, books with a single writer. Totally different thing, totally different forms of engagement. They're pieces of media produced by a single mind with a cohesive vision for the consumption of others. Games are interactive experiences, between multiple people. People with differing levels of input and expertise. People with differing expectations and tastes.

This isn't just an apples-to-oranges comparison you're trying to make here it's an apples-to-bicycle tires comparison.


Simply being evil doesn't make your character a super psychopath who rips off peoples arms every twenty minutes, you can be part of an adventuring party full of good (even LG) people without it suddenly breaking.

I didn't assert this, especially first part. Though the second part is actually kind of hard to pull of in practice, even if isn't a given.

[Milo v3]

I also wouldn't call them games. They're books, books with a single writer. Totally different thing, totally different forms of engagement. They're pieces of media produced by a single mind with a cohesive vision for the consumption of others. Games are interactive experiences, between multiple people. People with differing levels of input and expertise. People with differing expectations and tastes.

This isn't just an apples-to-oranges comparison you're trying to make here it's an apples-to-bicycle tires comparison.
I used them as examples since they are parties who's characters have personalities that would be normal in a standard D&D environment. Them being stories rather than games is irrelevant. The point is that there are personalities that can work with opposing alignments without much issue.


I didn't assert this, especially first part. Though the second part is actually kind of hard to pull of in practice, even if isn't a given.
First part was asserted by other people in the thread, and it's an annoying thing many many people have said previously throughout alignment discussions (especially ones involving CE). The second part isn't actually that hard, it only becomes difficult if one player is being difficult (which can be playing a good or evil aligned character) or the mechanics get in the way (such as a paladin or anti-paladins code [antipaladin code is somehow much worse than paladin code... ick]).

[BWR]

I mainly dislike it's implementation because of it's arbitrary nature, that unnecessarily removes valid concepts from the rest of the party. Many lawful good characters can be in a party with an evil character without mechanically getting screwed over by it, and if handled correctly in-character it can work immensely well, but paladins mechanics do not allow for such an opportunity.

Again, this is creating a problem that either should be a problem for everyone that's Good especially those dependant on outside sources for their powers, not just paladins, or wilful misinterpretation of the rules. We keep pointing this out.



That is false. Have you read Oots or Dragonlance? There is an evil character right in the main party of those, and I wouldn't call them "loosest sandboxes and beer n pretzels". Simply being evil doesn't make your character a super psychopath who rips off peoples arms every twenty minutes, you can be part of an adventuring party full of good (even LG) people without it suddenly breaking.

Note: Where is Red Fel when I need him... He'd be able to describe what I'm trying to convey much more efficiently.

By Dragonlance I assume you mean the Chronicles, specifically Raistlin. It's been a while since I read the books so correct me of I'm wrong, but Raistlin didn't really do anything evil around the others until he took the Black Robes and sodded off to the Palanthus Tower. Most of them thought he was a bit off and unpleasant, especially Sturm, but they did not, to the best of my recollection, have any reason to believe he was evil, Caramon's observance of the Test notwithstanding.

But all that is beside the point. The real point is this: why is a limit on who a character can hang out with and what a character can do such a bad thing?

[Milo v3]

Again, this is creating a problem that either should be a problem for everyone that's Good especially those dependant on outside sources for their powers, not just paladins, or wilful misinterpretation of the rules. We keep pointing this out.

I don't understand why Good would never ever associate with evil, even though it is all throughout fiction. Sometimes, teaming up with a evil guy is the best option available, or you might not realise their evil, or you could be attempting to redeem the individual, or their might be a common enemy between the evil individual and the rest of the party, the evil individual could be your friend, etc. etc. etc.


By Dragonlance I assume you mean the Chronicles, specifically Raistlin. It's been a while since I read the books so correct me of I'm wrong, but Raistlin didn't really do anything evil around the others until he took the Black Robes and sodded off to the Palanthus Tower. Most of them thought he was a bit off and unpleasant, especially Sturm, but they did not, to the best of my recollection, have any reason to believe he was evil, Caramon's observance of the Test notwithstanding.
I might be remembering wrong, but I think he did some evil stuff but only put on the black robes when he fully betrayed his brother and there was no longer any real benefit to being subtle with his aligned nature.


But all that is beside the point. The real point is this: why is a limit on who a character can hang out with and what a character can do such a bad thing?
Because it's a team game? If it was just affecting the paladin themselves than it wouldn't be anywhere near as large an issue.

[Morty]

What implementation would this be? What it can do or what it can't? Because as has been pointed out repeatedly, lots of people have no problem with the paladin as a concept or with its restrictions, and the complaints of those who do have a problem have a tendency to be directed less at anything mechanical about the paladin and more at disliking LG people in general or being generally unpleasant gamers or having bad experiences with such.

Some people also tried to point out what the real problem is, but it was in vain.

[GloatingSwine]

I think the problem people have a lot with paladins is that their special class features are tied to alignment.

Alignment has all sorts of baggage around just how well it encapsulates the behaviours it is attempting to model, and so having a mechanical element strictly tied to those behaviours causes all manner of problems.

You could resolve that by reformatting the nature of a Paladin away from "is Lawful Good" to "is empowered for a specific calling", a holy mission which the player chooses at the time of character creation. Like Clerics it would be preferred for them to choose a god to empower them and the cause be something that god would choose a holy champion to go out and do, and their restrictions for falling would then be "as of a Cleric of X, but also if they take actions which directly contradict their given calling".

The Paladin can now coexist with basically the same range of behaviours as a Cleric of the same god, unless their own calling dictates some extra strictness in certain conditions.

[McStabbington]

I think the problem people have a lot with paladins is that their special class features are tied to alignment.

Alignment has all sorts of baggage around just how well it encapsulates the behaviours it is attempting to model, and so having a mechanical element strictly tied to those behaviours causes all manner of problems.

You could resolve that by reformatting the nature of a Paladin away from "is Lawful Good" to "is empowered for a specific calling", a holy mission which the player chooses at the time of character creation. Like Clerics it would be preferred for them to choose a god to empower them and the cause be something that god would choose a holy champion to go out and do, and their restrictions for falling would then be "as of a Cleric of X, but also if they take actions which directly contradict their given calling".

The Paladin can now coexist with basically the same range of behaviours as a Cleric of the same god, unless their own calling dictates some extra strictness in certain conditions.

If anything, that just goes to show how badly misunderstood paladins are, because that is not how a paladin works. If you are a cleric of Helm, and Helm tells you to decapitate a small kobold child because that child will grow up to become a sorceror that blows a hole in the multiverse and kills multiple good deities, you decapitate the child because that is what Helm told you to do.

If you are a paladin of Helm and Helm tells you the same thing, you grab your sword and stab your god in the face. You protect that child to the death because regardless of consequence, decapitating a child is wrong.

Paladins do not derive their powers from gods like clerics. They derive their powers from doing what is right no matter the cost.

[Eloel]

Paladins do not derive their powers from gods like clerics. They derive their powers from doing what is right no matter the cost.
Come again?

[Seto]

Come again?

That's true. They derive their power from cosmic Good (and to a lesser extent Law). It's right there in the PHB : "Paladins do not need to devote themselves to a god, devotion to righteousness is enough". (Although Clerics can do the same)

[BayardSPSR]

What implementation would this be? What it can do or what it can't? Because as has been pointed out repeatedly, lots of people have no problem with the paladin as a concept or with its restrictions, and the complaints of those who do have a problem have a tendency to be directed less at anything mechanical about the paladin and more at disliking LG people in general or being generally unpleasant gamers or having bad experiences with such.


Sure, but even if it was implemented so badly as to utterly unplayable (and I don't think anyone is saying it is that bad) that doesn't mean the class itself "should not be" just that the implementation of it is bad. And since we are talking about the class itself, aka the concept that spans games, no bad implementation (or series of bad implementations) can invalidate the idea of the class itself.

In other words my "rule 0" argument is not saying that implementation is not broken if it can be fixed. But rather the fact the implementation can be fixed shows that the concept behind it is solid.

If you want to apply the argument to an particular implementation, I'm saying it is good but not perfect. I wouldn't even say the paladin is broken as that implies it doesn't work at all. And the class does work in some contexts, which have already been discussed.

Yes, other methods could be used to represent a paladin or paladin-like character. Yes, the paladin class could be made to be applicable to a wider variety of character concepts. Sure you could replace it in the core classes with something else (not sure what). None of these things however invalidate the currant paladin class. Something doesn't have to be the best possible or even the best to be good or even excellent. You can point out valid problems and limitations with this class, you can with any class, but how does that translate to should not exist?

Fair points all. To be honest, my last post came off as a blanket statement of "all the criticisms are right," which is both meaningless and not what I'm trying to say. What I said was generalized and unclear.

Leaving aside most of the criticisms that have been levied against paladins in this thread, I still think you can make a valid case that paladins should not exist as a separate class while liking the concept of the class and enjoying playing it. Specifically, you can make that argument if you feel that the paladin concept would be better executed using the fighter or cleric mechanics (or a multiclass combination of those). "Poor implementation" in this case ("terrible" was an exaggeration, mea culpa) could refer to the use of hybrid classes in a system that already facilitates multiclassing, or to the fact that the Paladin is distinguished from a Cleric/Fighter mostly by the explicit potential for losing their powers, or any of the other ways people in this thread have found Paladins redundant or counterproductive.

That is an argument some people in this thread have made, and it's not invalidated by the undoubtedly correct claim that some people like the idea of a holy warrior for good and want to play one.

Regarding the "broken/fixable" issue, that's a different argument that hinges on a slightly different reading of the thread title: if the paladin as-is is broken (or damaged, or redundant, or what have you - since it would be unreasonable to claim that any hypothetical paladin implementation would still be bad), the fact that it could be fixed or replaced or made unique does not invalidate the argument that the paladin as-is has no place in the core class system.

That's my thinking, at least. I should note that these aren't necessarily the arguments I'm trying to make; I'm just trying to say that they're perfectly reasonable arguments for other people to make. Personally, I'm just one of the haters who thinks that the entire concept of a class system is a wargamey impediment to RPG fun, and that as such it should be abandoned as the "standard" form of RPG gameplay, and I would love to see a thread like this one for every single class so I can poke holes in them all.

[Nightcanon]

You could resolve that by reformatting the nature of a Paladin away from "is Lawful Good" to "is empowered for a specific calling", a holy mission which the player chooses at the time of character creation. Like Clerics it would be preferred for them to choose a god to empower them and the cause be something that god would choose a holy champion to go out and do, and their restrictions for falling would then be "as of a Cleric of X, but also if they take actions which directly contradict their given calling".

The Paladin can now coexist with basically the same range of behaviours as a Cleric of the same god, unless their own calling dictates some extra strictness in certain conditions.

McStabbington's comment above (which I believe relates to 3.5 Paladin RAW rather than your proposed change to the Paladin class) notwithstanding, this looks like a very sensible proposal. The absence of obvious Codes/ Creeds/ Canon Law for Clerics, rather than the existence of a Paladin Code seems to be the issue here for me, though. There seems to be a perception that Paladins Must Fall if the fighter they were seen entering the town with gets arrested by the watch after a drinking contest, while a Cleric of Hieroneous is allowed to associate freely with footpads and necromancers just because the rules don't say otherwise.

[icefractal]

That is false. Have you read Oots or Dragonlance? There is an evil character right in the main party of those, and I wouldn't call them "loosest sandboxes and beer n pretzels". Simply being evil doesn't make your character a super psychopath who rips off peoples arms every twenty minutes, you can be part of an adventuring party full of good (even LG) people without it suddenly breaking.Sure, let's talk about OotS, since I had it in mind, thinking about this topic.

1) OotS is single-author fiction. Durkon's player isn't going to get unhappy if he's sidelined for a bunch of episodes, because he doesn't have a separate player. And more importantly, if the characters need to act a certain way for the story to work, then that's how they act.

2) Even in that context, Belkar gets restricted, more so over time, from actually evil to "chaotic snarky", which is where I see a lot of "evil in a non-evil group" characters end up. If that works for you, great. But personally, I don't find it very satisfying as either party involved.

3) They're on a "fate of the world" quest. Those things can patch a lot of conflicts. In a more sandbox situation, where people are pursuing their individual goals, the fact that one person's goals and/or methods are horrific is going to stand out.


I'm not pinning everything on the evil character here - it's about fitting the game style. If we had an existing amoral/evil party, then someone tried to bring in a Paladin and said "Nah, it's fine, you guys can just pretend to not be evil all the time", I'd tell them to GTFO and come back with something that fits.

[veti]

Why not include a "The Greater Good at All Costs" vow for a more edgy approach or "I Live to Serve" which can be of any alignment depending on who or what you serve. There was a missed opportunity there although some variants of the idea seem to have shown up on occasion such as Blackguards or Paladins of Slaughter.

Well, I'd say "I Live To Serve" is an extremely Lawful creed, no matter whom it is that you serve. You can't get any more Lawful than willingly subsuming your own will to someone else. Not necessarily Good, of course - but in the nature of things, Good leaders are more likely to inspire that kind of loyalty.

And the problem with the "Greater Good At All Costs" concept is that it basically allows the paladin to be just another murderhobo with no repercussions. That seems - unsatisfying.


What implementation would this be? What it can do or what it can't?

The aspect that grates my cheese is where it requires the player to commit, up-front, to upholding a set of values that are simultaneously (1) strict and inflexible and (2) incredibly vaguely defined. Ask any software engineer whether that's a recipe for a successful project.

Make it a prestige class, and at least the player has a chance to explore the alignment/code before it becomes a mechanically critical feature of their character.


That's true. They derive their power from cosmic Good (and to a lesser extent Law). It's right there in the PHB : "Paladins do not need to devote themselves to a god, devotion to righteousness is enough". (Although Clerics can do the same)

Seems to me that your parenthetical addition there - fatally undermines your whole argument.

If "clerics can do the same", then the claim that paladin's powers are somehow different from a cleric's - falls apart.

[Seto]

If "clerics can do the same", then the claim that paladin's powers are somehow different from a cleric's - falls apart.

I didn't say that paladin's powers are different from a cleric's. I simply said that Paladins do not derive their power from a god. They never do. Clerics do most of the time, but some don't.

[Nightcanon]

I might be remembering wrong, but I think he did some evil stuff but only put on the black robes when he fully betrayed his brother and there was no longer any real benefit to being subtle with his aligned nature.

Raistlin didn't do much that was noticeably Evil in Autumn Twilight or the first part of Winter Night, despite the fact that he was harbouring the soul of Fistandantilus during this time, and indeed showed more compassion for the gully dwarves than the rest of the party (Flint's racism and Tanis's plan to use them as a distraction are more problematic, I think). Sure, he was cynical and rude, particularly to Caramon, but in terms of causing Sturm trouble as a Knight of Solamnia, associating with Kender, Barbarians and any (non White-Robe) mage were the problems.
IIRC, even teleporting off alone nearly killed Raistlin, so his statement to Tanis that he was unable to save the rest of his companions or even his brother was true. Is saving oneself when unable to save others Evil? Is it even always Non-Good? Raistlin's brand of Evil was more 'power, whatever the cost' than 'hurting others for the fun of it'.

Sturm Brightblade is an interesting study for this thread: in terms of character he was a pretty good exemplar of a Paladin, despite not deriving any mechanical benefit, while the social effects of being taken for a Knight were at best mixed. Mechanically, he was a (1st Ed) Fighter, I think. Again, I may be misremembering but Knights of the Crown were basically fighters (or possibly Cavaliers, which were evolving at about the same time in Unearthed Arcana), who could switch to being Knights of the Sword after a certain amount of time and gain some divine spells.

[veti]

I didn't say that paladin's powers are different from a cleric's. I simply said that Paladins do not derive their power from a god. They never do. Clerics do most of the time, but some don't.

Err... no, the evidence you've quoted doesn't support that conclusion either. "Paladins do not need to devote themselves to a god, devotion to righteousness is enough" - the word there is "need", implying that they can devote themselves to a god instead of to Righteousness. Conversely, they can get their powers from a god.

Just like a cleric.

[Seto]

Err... no, the evidence you've quoted doesn't support that conclusion either. "Paladins do not need to devote themselves to a god, devotion to righteousness is enough" - the word there is "need", implying that they can devote themselves to a god instead of to Righteousness.

Just like a cleric.

Hm, good point. I jumped to conclusions a bit too fast. But then again, anyone can devote themselves to a God. Doesn't mean they gain power from it (except in the Cleric's case). And what I disagree with in your post is the "instead of". A Paladin can never abandon righteousness, it's what defines them. Their religion ? Not so much.
Two other reasons I see to maintain the argument are that :
1- it's not specified (at least not in the PHB's fluff description) that Paladins can gain power from devotion to a God (I intuitively read the sentence we debated on as "they have divine power whether they worship a God or not", but your reading makes sense too), while it's the norm for Clerics. Instead, the fluff for Paladins is "they have a calling to righteousness etc." (which is most certainly not the case for Clerics, who have to put faith in something. Paladins look most like Favored Souls of Good).
2- The alignment of the Paladins are the same, when the Clerics can be any alignment depending on their God. The code of conduct is basically the same whether you're a Paladin worshipping Heironeous, Pelor or nobody. Sounds like cosmic decree to me.

[Frozen_Feet]

Because it's a team game?

The joke is, it doesn't need to be.

The Paladin and the Obligatory Immoral Other Character don't need to agree, they don't have to be in good terms and they don't even need to function as a single unit for them to help each other or work towards a common goal. Players and player characters can be rivals or antagonistic towards each other and you can still play a game just fine when you remember it's just that, a game.

Splitting the party shouldn't be as big of taboo as it is, and I feel clinging to it actively prevents people from learning and developing different ways of playing RPGs.

[VoxRationis]

I've tangled with the idea of running antagonistic PCs many times, but I keep running up against the difficulty of how the tabletop format gives away a ton of information—the asymmetry of knowledge necessary to enact plans against someone's interests just isn't there unless you're the DM.
From the player's perspective, you get examples like this:
My mage wants a tome the party's escorting as we guard a caravan. We are set upon by bandits and in the ensuing fight, I feel it is a good time to steal the tome. My mage, in the back lines, overturns the cart with the tome as the others move to engage. I cast invisibility on the book but claim to have cast a different spell which failed. However, because one of the other players doesn't want me to succeed, and knows from the format of the game what I just did, he goes to the trouble of identifying what spell I cast—when he wouldn't for any other occasion—and stymieing my attempt to take the book, all in the middle of a life-or-death combat.
It's a little like playing head-to-head splitscreen when playing a first-person shooter. You have to try really, really hard to avoid gaining and using the shared information which you don't in character, even when not using that information could be extremely detrimental to you, and that's difficult to do.

[Frozen_Feet]

But that's why you have dice and a GM to serve as a referee.

Think for a moment. Those two things were introduced to wargaming in order to stop players from arguing endlessly and to get two adversarial people to play nice with each other.

The GM can call out and prevent any blatant attempts at metagaming, and dice can fairly be used to resolve situations where both (or all) involved parties have a decent argument going for them.

[McStabbington]

Err... no, the evidence you've quoted doesn't support that conclusion either. "Paladins do not need to devote themselves to a god, devotion to righteousness is enough" - the word there is "need", implying that they can devote themselves to a god instead of to Righteousness. Conversely, they can get their powers from a god.

Just like a cleric.

Erm, that doesn't really follow. Paladins get their power from their dedication to the cosmic power of goodness and righteousness. Sometimes they also follow a particular god, but this is incidental: any deity they follow, they do so because that deity is also committed to the cosmic power of goodness and righteousness. If at any time there is a conflict between what the paladin in his heart knows to be right and what his god tells him is right, that conflict is always resolved by telling the god to go jump in a lake. A paladin will fall if he takes any other course of action.

By contrast, any conflict between what the cleric knows in his heart to be right and what his deity tells him is right is always resolved by doing what the deity tells him, because that is what a cleric is: an earthly manifestation of and agent for a deific presence. A cleric will fall if he tells his god to go stuff it because he's doing the right thing.

Which is precisely what that passage says.

[goto124]

that conflict is always resolved by telling the god to go jump in a lake. A paladin will fall if he takes any other course of action.

Doesn't telling the god to jump in a lake lead to falling?


1) OotS is single-author fiction. Durkon's player isn't going to get unhappy if he's sidelined for a bunch of episodes, because he doesn't have a separate player (aka Durkon's player does not actually exist). And more importantly, if the characters need to act a certain way for the story to work, then that's how they act.

This is a very important point. In single-author fictions, one mind has control over every single thing in the world, from the setting and the storyline down to the invididuals' minds. The author can set up coincidences, change the events such that the party doesn't run into real problems, and even tweak their minds when the plot calls for it.

In tabletops, we have players trying to have fun their way. When a player's fun hinders another, that's a problem. The DM can't dictate the players' actions (and to some extent, even the events, which do somewhat depend on players' actions) in all but the most railroady adventures. And certainly no DM can change the players' minds.

[Mr.Moron]

I used them as examples since they are parties who's characters have personalities that would be normal in a standard D&D environment. Them being stories rather than games is irrelevant. The point is that there are personalities that can work with opposing alignments without much issue..

It's very relevant. As other posters have already pointed out again the work of a single author will be cohseive because they control every little thing. The personalities work together "without much issue" because the author deems to so. There is zero chance of the characters acting in a way that is disruptive to one another when the author doesn't want, because the author is only one with any say, the author is god.

In a game you have multiple people, with their own separate interests and desires. Even with the most cooperative. accommodating and in-sync people disruptive conflict is bound to occur eventually even without the added complications of characters that grossly offend one another's ethics.

The Games/Books are so obviously incomparable I can't even begin to fathom how the differences could be called out as irrelevant. It's like me saying that a rule for to hit/damage formula that was

DAMAGE = ((DEX+CharLevel)*d100)-(500+(TargDex*d100))+((d10*(d(STR/5)^2))*(WpnBaseMax*d12)-(WpnBaseMin*d10))*(d20%10+chaMod)-((targeCon*d10)-((targetCon/20)^3)*d4d(d6*d6))-1000)

was fine because something roughly similar worked in a video game and that was proof that complex hit/damage formulas work "Without much issue" even though the nature of a video game (computer can handle the math instantly in the background), totally gets around the issues it would present in a TT game.

[Milo v3]

Sure, let's talk about OotS, since I had it in mind, thinking about this topic.

1) OotS is single-author fiction. Durkon's player isn't going to get unhappy if he's sidelined for a bunch of episodes, because he doesn't have a separate player. And more importantly, if the characters need to act a certain way for the story to work, then that's how they act.


It's very relevant. As other posters have already pointed out again the work of a single author will be cohseive because they control every little thing. The personalities work together "without much issue" because the author deems to so. There is zero chance of the characters acting in a way that is disruptive to one another when the author doens't want, because the author is only one with any say, the author is god.

In a game you have multiple people, even with the most cooperative accommodating and in-sync people disruptive conflict is bound to occur eventually even without the added complications of characters that grossly offend one another ethics.

The Games/Books are so obviously incomparable I can't even begin to fathom how the differences could be called out as irrelevant. It's like me saying that a rule for to hit/damage formula that was

DAMAGE = ((DEX+CharLevel)*d100)-(500+(TargDex*d100))+((d10*(d(STR/5)^2))*(WpnBaseMax*d12)-(WpnBaseMin*d10))*(d20%10+chaMod)-((targeCon*d10)-((targetCon/20)^3)*d4d(d6*d6))-1000)

was fine because something roughly similar worked in a video game and that was proof that complex hit/damage formulas work "Without much issue" even though the nature of a video game (computer can handle the math instantly in the background), totally gets around the issues it would present in a TT game.

Ugh, the reason I used media examples is because examples from games is completely useless. Since you obviously haven't seen any examples. I could use the examples of 3 times we had evil aligned characters in our "non-evil" games. But there have already been people sharing such examples in the thread, and they have been ignored.

[Mr.Moron]

Ugh, the reason I used media examples is because examples from games is completely useless. Since you obviously haven't seen any examples. I could use the examples of 3 times we had evil aligned characters in our "non-evil" games. But there have already been people sharing such examples in the thread, and they have been ignored.

It's not that such examples don't exist or that "Evil Included" games are impossible. It's that those games are minority and those run as serious standard campaigns are an smaller minority at that,. They're certainly not the default by any means and the game text calls this out consistently across editions, and in multiple sources within editions. As such judging the value of paladins as core class by their incompatibility with "Evil Included" is intellectually dishonest as nothing about the core design is meant to support "Evil Included".

You're free to dislike that fact about the core design and think that it's inferior to a more open one, but let's not pretend that refusing to play with evil is causing paladins to fail any important metric for a game about being heroes. Let us also not pretend that D&D is meant to be anything but a game about being heroes, because that is what the game tells us it is.

[Milo v3]

It's not that such examples don't exist or that "Evil Included" games are impossible. It's that those games are minority and those run as serious standard campaigns are an smaller minority at that,. They're certainly not the default by any means and the game text calls this out consistently across editions, and in multiple sources within editions. As such judging the value of paladins as core class by their incompatibility with "Evil Included" is intellectually dishonest as nothing about the core design is meant to support "Evil Included".
I disagree. So what if it thats the default? I don't care if that's the default, if it reduces options rather than creates them, it shouldn't be in the core of the game in my opinion.


You're free to dislike that fact about the core design and think that it's inferior to a more open one, but let's not pretend that refusing to play with evil is causing paladins to fail any important metric for a game about being heroes. Let us also not pretend that D&D is meant to be anything but a game about being heroes, because that is what the game tells us it is.

Please note, you can be a hero in a game without being good in alignment.

[Lord Raziere]

Doesn't telling the god to jump in a lake lead to falling?


Dude, the thing about the Paladin is: if Bahamut himself came down from the heavens and told a paladin to kill an innocent child for no reason at all, The Paladin is under no obligation to obey, and in fact has a duty to defy him, because if Bahamut ever gives that kind of command, that means he is not a god that is worthy being worshipped by a paladin. "Do not associate with Evil" applies to gods as well. If Bahamut is evil, you kill freaking Bahamut. If a noble tells you to kill a child, you say no your a paladin. If a King tells you to kill a child you say no your a paladin, if your god tells you to kill a child, you say no your a paladin, if the great omnipotent overdeity of all things came down and threatens to destroy the paladin unless they kill a child, you say no your a paladin.

Why? because killing a child is wrong no matter who gives the command. anyone who gives the command is not an authority worthy of the Paladin's respect.

Being a paladin means that you have to respect authority, yes. but only if they deserve that authority. Those who command to do wrong....aren't worthy of that respect.

[Mr.Moron]

I disagree. So what if it thats the default? I don't care if that's the default, if it reduces options rather than creates them, it shouldn't be in the core of the game in my opinion.

First: Again, this is not something that can be fairly be framed as a criticism of the Paladin only of the core design philosophy.
Second: Every element that can be included in a game both introduces and excludes possibilities. This is meaningless argument as it can be applied to anything.


Please note, you can be a hero in a game without being good in alignment.

Please note, you can ride a bicycle without wearing a banana helmet on Tuesdays. (we're doing non-sequitors now?)

[Milo v3]

First: Again, this is not something that can be fairly be framed as a criticism of the Paladin only of the core design philosophy.
Second: Every element that can be included in a game both introduces and excludes possibilities. This is meaningless argument as it can be applied to anything.
1. I disagree, as no other aspect of the core rules break my stated philosophy on core rules. Only the paladin's code of conduct mechanically removes options from people who aren't playing the class.
2. I'm not sure I understand this. How does adding a option innately remove options?


Please note, you can ride a bicycle without wearing a banana helmet on Tuesdays. (we're doing non-sequitors now?)
There is no reason to be rude, you were stating players are expected to be heroes, so it's fine if evil options are diminished or restricted. When there is nothing at all stop evil characters from being the heroes in these situations fighting against evil, saving the world, etc, so simply "players are expected to be heroes is irrelevant".

[VoxRationis]

A paladin doesn't actually remove options from the other players inherently—it just restricts options if the party is to function well. Technically, you could bring an evil necromancer to the same table as a paladin; the other player's choice of paladin doesn't stop you from rolling up a character with a big 'E' on the alignment section of their character sheet. It's just that if you do that, it'll cause all hell to break loose very quickly, one way or another.
But that's true of a lot of character options and archetypes! Sure, they don't say so right off the bat in print, like with the paladin/evil character combo, but your elven kleptomaniac is going to mesh poorly with your LN dwarven captain-of-the-guard who hates elves, just as much and just as inevitably. So if one gets brought to the table, they've restricted the other player in exactly the same way. Other examples that include actual potential for falling include mixing of clerics of oppositely-aligned gods or a druid and a tree-hating industrialist.

[Milo v3]

A paladin doesn't actually remove options from the other players inherently—it just restricts options if the party is to function well. Technically, you could bring an evil necromancer to the same table as a paladin; the other player's choice of paladin doesn't stop you from rolling up a character with a big 'E' on the alignment section of their character sheet. It's just that if you do that, it'll cause all hell to break loose very quickly, one way or another.
But that's true of a lot of character options and archetypes! Sure, they don't say so right off the bat in print, like with the paladin/evil character combo, but your elven kleptomaniac is going to mesh poorly with your LN dwarven captain-of-the-guard who hates elves, just as much and just as inevitably. So if one gets brought to the table, they've restricted the other player in exactly the same way. Other examples that include actual potential for falling include mixing of clerics of oppositely-aligned gods or a druid and a tree-hating industrialist.

The difference is that one of those is caused by the characters personalities and actions causing drama and friction, while the paladin adds in an unnecessary Mechanical issue on top of the standard issues that can occur from evil characters.

[Karl Aegis]

I feel like the Evil being talked about in this thread is the kind of evil even other Evil characters wouldn't tolerate. Most Evil people don't kick puppies while depopulating and enslaving entire villages. It attracts too much attention from the guys who would rather sack the village every once in a while. Most people in general would rather maintain the status quo of a setting. Having an Evil dude or even a Paladin going around exterminating entire tribes just doesn't sit well with most people.

The Paladin restriction on associating with Evil dudes just seems arbitrary. Arbitrariness is more associated with chaotic alignments than lawful alignments. The people Paladins shouldn't associate with are the kind of people nobody wants to associate with. The genocidal, baby blending puppy kickers. Not even normal evil guys like those dudes.

Evil dudes can have the same goals as good guys. Maintaining the status quo is one of the big ones. Disrupting the status quo gets every alignment after you, not just the good guys.

[Brookshw]

I disagree. So what if it thats the default? I don't care if that's the default, if it reduces options rather than creates them, it shouldn't be in the core of the game in my opinion.


That's fine as an argument about appeal but d&d doesn't use an inclusive design philosophy. Outside of core everything, prestige classes, splat books, etc, none of that is automatically accessible, its DM option to make accessible.

Core's a big scoop of ice cream, toppings come after. Turns out evil is a topping.

[Frozen_Feet]

The Paladin restriction on associating with Evil dudes just seems arbitrary. Arbitrariness is more associated with chaotic alignments than lawful alignments. The people Paladins shouldn't associate with are the kind of people nobody wants to associate with.

Quite wrong. Law is as much about drawing lines in the sand as Chaos is, the difference is that Law sticks to those lines. Also, the rule against associating with Evil people is pretty much the opposite - it should be obvious why a champion of Good tasked with purging Evil ought to not hire or work with Evil. Pretty much all the problems with that rule stem from people committing an equivocational fallacy and defining "associates" too broadly.

[goto124]

it should be obvious why a champion of Good tasked with purging Evil ought to not hire or work with Evil.

Please do explain to me, the silly little idiot I am, what the reasons are.

[Milo v3]

it should be obvious why a champion of Good tasked with purging Evil ought to not hire or work with Evil.
I disagree. Greater good seems like it'd be more important to a champion of good.

[Mr.Moron]

I disagree. Greater good seems like it'd be more important to a champion of good.

No. You're describing a pragmatist (http://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/pragmatist), almost the polar-opposite of someone focused on ideals and empowered by principles.

[Karl Aegis]

Champions of Good should be more focused on creating an absolutely immense amount of orphans than trying to work with team Evil. Why should they have the right to have a family? It's not like those Evil things can even be considered people. They don't have more than one dimension and can't possibly feel more than one emotion. Exterminate all the eye-blights, how dare they think themselves fit to walk on the same earth as my Goodness! They can't possibly be the same as me, the person whose only defining features are my ability to ride a horse and stab anything I deem ugly.

[Milo v3]

No. You're describing a pragmatist (http://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/pragmatist), almost the polar-opposite of someone focused on ideals and empowered by principles.

Not necessarily. If you Have to team up with an evil individual that isn't cartoon-y evil and can be redeemed or at least stopped from committing further acts of evil, there is no reason to not use the individuals talents if they would cause no evil and instead save the damn universe. Simply because they are empowered by principles, doesn't mean they have to make Int a dump stat.

[VoxRationis]

Champions of Good should be more focused on creating an absolutely immense amount of orphans than trying to work with team Evil. Why should they have the right to have a family? It's not like those Evil things can even be considered people. They don't have more than one dimension and can't possibly feel more than one emotion. Exterminate all the eye-blights, how dare they think themselves fit to walk on the same earth as my Goodness! They can't possibly be the same as me, the person whose only defining features are my ability to ride a horse and stab anything I deem ugly.

And this represents the real core of the issue that many people on this forum have with the paladin: the "Evil is a lifestyle choice" mentality. To a certain way of thinking, having an Evil alignment is just another checkbox on a government form, no different from race/ethnicity or sex. Consequently, action against Evil is discriminatory persecution, yada yada. What this mentality forgets is that Evil is a descriptor based around moral character; how they interact with others, their core principles (or lack thereof). Making judgments based on Good/Evil is what those arguing that we shouldn't judge based on other qualities think we should do.

[Seto]

And this represents the real core of the issue that many people on this forum have with the paladin: the "Evil is a lifestyle choice" mentality. To a certain way of thinking, having an Evil alignment is just another checkbox on a government form, no different from race/ethnicity or sex. Consequently, action against Evil is discriminatory persecution, yada yada. What this mentality forgets is that Evil is a descriptor based around moral character; how they interact with others, their core principles (or lack thereof). Making judgments based on Good/Evil is what those arguing that we shouldn't judge based on other qualities think we should do.

No one said that a Paladin should consider Evil a valid moral choice. It's just been said that it's silly to refuse any contact other than antagonistic with Evil characters. You don't have to get along with Evil people, you don't have to pat them on the back, but if you have a common goal that advances the forces of Good, might as well work together.
It also depends on how far you need to go in order to be Evil. If pinging Evil implies you love killing babies and bathing in their blood, yes, a Paladin should put you down. If however (like in Eberron) Good/Evil/Neutral all represent a third of the population, and being an antisocial, greedy shopkeeper means that you ping Evil, then the Paladin code is obviously too strict.

But any way you look at it, even admitting all that you said, "we should judge people for being Evil" still does not mean "someone who's Evil has to stay that way and cannot ever act in a way beneficial to Good". That last sentence is typical of poor characterization, not moral relativism.

[Mr.Moron]

If however (like in Eberron) Good/Evil/Neutral all represent a third of the population, and being an antisocial, greedy shopkeeper means that you ping Evil, then the Paladin code is obviously too strict.

I can't imagine that's kind of definition of "Evil" the code was written with in mind. It seems to me that in that case the "Neutral" bar is set a bit high. After all this is the default defintion:


"Evil" implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.

At minimum the default game (for which the code was written), "Evil" assumes that you regularly commit murder or worse against others as a regular basis.

That aside, in any setting where a full 33% of the population is evil the paladin is clearly not an appropriate character archetype. They just not built for that kind of GrimBackGrittyDark , it doesn't work in that kind of environment.

[TheCountAlucard]

At minimum the default game (for which the code was written), "Evil" assumes that you regularly commit murder or worse against others as a regular basis. All murder may be killing, but not all killing is murder. Nor is hurting or oppressing someone "murder or worse."

[Mr.Moron]

All murder may be killing, but not all killing is murder. Nor is hurting or oppressing someone "murder or worse."

The description contains three sentences. The first sentence describes what evil acts are. The latter two provide clarification and context for the first. Specifically they go to further describe what those of evil alignment do. Taken as a whole this provides a pretty clear picture: The Harm, Oppression and Killing of others are all evil acts. However, to have an evil alignment you must be performing acts equivalent to "killing without qualms if doing so is convenient" or "killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master". Harm & Oppression can clearly rise to the level of those acts if grand enough in scope and severity, but this is probably well beyond the realm of a small-time scam artist shop keep.

EDIT: Further, from the section introduction above:


Good characters and creatures protect innocent life. Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit.


We can again see there is a certain bar that needs passing to be "Evil", to have an evil alignment (the type paladins are barred from working with).

[Karl Aegis]

What exactly does a paladin do that isn't hurting, oppressing or killing others? Isn't that what the class is based around? Killing others?

[Mr.Moron]

What exactly does a paladin do that isn't hurting, oppressing or killing others? Isn't that what the class is based around? Killing others?

The understanding that there are exceptions for self-defense and the protection of the innocents is so obvious and so culturally ingrained the writers didn't think to include them. The idea that any behavior in a conflict at all, beyond lying down and "taking it" being evil is so plainly absurd on it's face it doesn't require addressing.

The thought "Hey, technically our wording excludes self-defense or using lethal force against an insane orphan-eating cannibal" never came to mind, because why would it?

Beyond it defying all common sense, the reading you seem to advocate for here renders the game unplayable because all PCs must be evil, and evil PCs are not allowed by default.

[Woodsman]

Champions of Good should be more focused on creating an absolutely immense amount of orphans than trying to work with team Evil. Why should they have the right to have a family? It's not like those Evil things can even be considered people. They don't have more than one dimension and can't possibly feel more than one emotion. Exterminate all the eye-blights, how dare they think themselves fit to walk on the same earth as my Goodness! They can't possibly be the same as me, the person whose only defining features are my ability to ride a horse and stab anything I deem ugly.

What exactly does a paladin do that isn't hurting, oppressing or killing others? Isn't that what the class is based around? Killing others?

This kinda precludes pretty much any other option to solving conflict. Paladins are entirely welcome to arrest and toss Evil folks in jail or offer them a chance at redemption. They aren't required by their code to kill every Evil character they come across. Plus, a paladin probably shouldn't be oppressing people who have done no wrong-- that's certainly not a Good action. But is tossing someone in jail when they've broken a law oppression? Perhaps to a more Chaotic character, sure, but not to a Lawful character like a paladin.

While a paladin might be good at combat, again, that doesn't mean they're ONLY good for killing. They have options for social skills-- while they probably don't have the level of diplomancy a dedicated spellcaster has, they can at least put some skill ranks into the skill. And again, defeat in combat doesn't necessarily equate to killing-- they can just as easily take the bad guy prisoner and offer him a chance to redeem himself or just toss him in jail. Knocking the bad guy out, binding him with specially-made anti-spellcasting manacles if need be, then giving him the medical attention needed to ensure he doesn't bleed out is entirely within a paladin's power.

As has been pointed out, Evil's not really an inborn trait in mortals. It's an active choice. If someone is actively committing Evil acts, the paladin's responsibility is to stop them. And, again, this doesn't equate to killing them. Hurting them, possibly, but that's if said Evil person doesn't accept the paladin's offer of surrender (which, in a TTG, is rather unlikely).

[LibraryOgre]

What exactly does a paladin do that isn't hurting, oppressing or killing others? Isn't that what the class is based around? Killing others?

*Healing, both of wounds and diseases; a combination of immunity to disease, the Heal skill, and the ability to Remove disease by magic makes them ideal hospitalers in a plague.
*Bolstering the morale of others, by their very presence.
*Driving back the undead hordes that threaten all life.
*Finding where people hurt and repairing that with words (sense motive/diplomacy in 3.x; good wisdom and charisma in AD&D).

A paladin is a bulwark against evil and chaos. While that, not infrequently, means the martial opposition of evil, it can mean so much more when not called upon to fight.

If you want a great example of a Paladin, read the Samurai Executioner series of manga.

[theNater]

There's been some conflating of terms here.

A paladin is required to punish those who harm or threaten innocents. They are not required to punish the Evil.

A character who will kill without qualms if it is convenient is Evil, even if it never becomes convenient. A shopkeeper who would murder you for your pocket change if he could get away with it is Evil, but (in most civilizations) does not harm or threaten innocents(because he knows he can't get away with it). Such a character will ping on Detect Evil. Not only is a paladin permitted to refrain from attacking them, attacking them will cause the paladin to fall, because they are innocent.

The thing about paladins and Evil characters is that paladins are not supposed to "associate" with Evil characters. While it's unclear what "associate" means in this context, it's reasonable to read it as "spend extended amounts of time with". Under this reading, a paladin can wander into the shop of an Evil shopkeeper, buy a few things and shoot the breeze for a bit, and wander out with no problems. Note also that "registers on Detect Evil" is not the same as "is Evil", so a paladin can't abdicate judgment on who is Evil to the spell. This also means that even if a character pings on Detect Evil, the paladin can associate with them as long as the paladin can reasonably believe they are not actually Evil.

[Eloel]

Note also that "registers on Detect Evil" is not the same as "is Evil", so a paladin can't abdicate judgment on who is Evil to the spell. This also means that even if a character pings on Detect Evil, the paladin can associate with them as long as the paladin can reasonably believe they are not actually Evil.

Citation needed. Detect Evil clearly detects Evil, only Evil, and nothing but Evil.

[Broken Twin]

Technically speaking, Detect Evil pinging Evil is not always accurate. There are spells and artifacts that can hide/change your alignment, and there's always the small chance of encountering a creature who's Type:Evil, but not Alignment:Evil.

[TheCountAlucard]

Undead, regardless of alignment, show up on Detect Evil, so a Lawful Good vampire detects as good, evil, and lawful besides. Non-evil Outsiders with the Evil subtype will also fall afoul of you if you treat this fallible first-level spell-like ability as the end-all, be-all justification you need to lay down the smiting.

[Heemi]

Technically speaking, Detect Evil pinging Evil is not always accurate. There are spells and artifacts that can hide/change your alignment, and there's always the small chance of encountering a creature who's Type:Evil, but not Alignment:Evil.

Truth. A demon who has been redeemed through any circumstance, love based or otherwise, will still ping as detect evil. A Succubus Paladin was presented in an online article, so it pretty much confirms that Subtype:Evil monsters are allowed to turn good for various reasons, even if they are "Born" evil.

[LibraryOgre]

Undead, regardless of alignment, show up on Detect Evil, so a Lawful Good vampire detects as good, evil, and lawful besides. Non-evil Outsiders with the Evil subtype will also fall afoul of you if you treat this fallible first-level spell-like ability as the end-all, be-all justification you need to lay down the smiting.

Assuming, of course, such concepts exist in your edition; there's no indication that Fall-from-Grace (http://torment.wikia.com/wiki/Fall-from-Grace), for example, pings as evil.

[Brookshw]

Assuming, of course, such concepts exist in your edition; there's no indication that Fall-from-Grace (http://torment.wikia.com/wiki/Fall-from-Grace), for example, pings as evil.

Well if were going that route there's a small army of risen demons that hangs out in the upper planes and is cautiously accepted for a very loose and distrustful version of accepted.

[Kalirren]

OP: Classes are there for characters to play, and to be different from each other. As long as someone wants to play a paladin, there can be a paladin class, and as long as enough people want to play paladins, there ought to be one in a mass-market system.

So I'll kick it back to you, do you have a problem with 3.5's execution of the paladin concept in class form, or is your problem instead that you don't see why anyone should want to play a paladin in a game, or both?

As for the first, 3.5 is far from perfect, and I totally agree that its construction of the Paladin class is really just sorta clunky. Better ideas abound; just look for them.

As for the second, well, there are a lot of people who just want to play the good guy once in a while, so much so that they're willing to tack it on as an aspect of their character that's reflected in the system. Nothing wrong with that.

[BayardSPSR]

OP: Classes are there for characters to play, and to be different from each other. As long as someone wants to play a paladin, there can be a paladin class, and as long as enough people want to play paladins, there ought to be one in a mass-market system.

So I'll kick it back to you, do you have a problem with 3.5's execution of the paladin concept in class form, or is your problem instead that you don't see why anyone should want to play a paladin in a game, or both?

As for the first, 3.5 is far from perfect, and I totally agree that its construction of the Paladin class is really just sorta clunky. Better ideas abound; just look for them.

As for the second, well, there are a lot of people who just want to play the good guy once in a while, so much so that they're willing to tack it on as an aspect of their character that's reflected in the system. Nothing wrong with that.

My problem, at least, is that people may want to play a left-handed ex-ninja, but that doesn't mean there should be a class for that. Likewise, wanting to play a good guy is perfectly fine, but that doesn't mean there needs to be a Good Guy class - especially in a system that already has mechanics for making characters unambiguously Good.

Should "Evil Wizard" be a different class than "Ethically Forgettable Wizard?" If you're going to do a class-based system, I don't think moral tendencies are a good basis to build classes on. Especially since there's an inevitable "but I want to be an Evil Paladin," which is a perfectly reasonable choice to make, but if you're just going to have to make another identical class with the alignment descriptors changed every time someone wants to do that.

... Or you can separate classes from alignment restrictions, allowing all the non-Neutral Druids and Chaotic Monks a player could want to play - but that would mean that the mechanical Paladin class is no longer the paladin concept, in the sense of "holy warrior of good," but instead a Fighter/Cleric that hits ideological enemies harder and can arbitrarily heal.

[Eloel]

... Or you can separate classes from alignment restrictions, allowing all the non-Neutral Druids and Chaotic Monks a player could want to play - but that would mean that the mechanical Paladin class is no longer the paladin concept, in the sense of "holy warrior of good," but instead a Fighter/Cleric that hits ideological enemies harder and can arbitrarily heal.
Hello, Crusader!

[endur]

My problem, at least, is that people may want to play a left-handed ex-ninja, but that doesn't mean there should be a class for that. Likewise, wanting to play a good guy is perfectly fine, but that doesn't mean there needs to be a Good Guy class - especially in a system that already has mechanics for making characters unambiguously Good.

Classes exist because of popularity.

Paladin has been around since AD&D PHB 1e and will likely continue to be around.

[McStabbington]

My problem, at least, is that people may want to play a left-handed ex-ninja, but that doesn't mean there should be a class for that. Likewise, wanting to play a good guy is perfectly fine, but that doesn't mean there needs to be a Good Guy class - especially in a system that already has mechanics for making characters unambiguously Good.

Should "Evil Wizard" be a different class than "Ethically Forgettable Wizard?" If you're going to do a class-based system, I don't think moral tendencies are a good basis to build classes on. Especially since there's an inevitable "but I want to be an Evil Paladin," which is a perfectly reasonable choice to make, but if you're just going to have to make another identical class with the alignment descriptors changed every time someone wants to do that.

... Or you can separate classes from alignment restrictions, allowing all the non-Neutral Druids and Chaotic Monks a player could want to play - but that would mean that the mechanical Paladin class is no longer the paladin concept, in the sense of "holy warrior of good," but instead a Fighter/Cleric that hits ideological enemies harder and can arbitrarily heal.

I think this is an excellent argument, but not for the conclusion you intended. The conclusion that you actually reached is that you aren't up for playing a paladin. This isn't in itself a bad thing. But there's no good reason for ruining it for the rest of us.

I've mentioned this several times, but it apparently bears repeating that clerics are not agents of good. They are agents of deities, and deities often have their own agenda that doesn't always match up with what is good.

Which is precisely why it is a good thing that there is a paladin class: if this thread has shown anything, it's the value of having someone who doesn't compromise in their quest to do what is right, who never says "close enough" or "greater good" or allows their desire to follow a god, or power, or love, or their own self-interest to get in the way of that quest. That is what seperates a paladin from every other class. And it is why I for one am glad that they bothered to make the class in the first place. Because sometimes I want to play someone whose only motivation is to do the right thing for the right reason.

Is the class clunky? Yeah. Will it slow a powergamer group down? Often. Could you build the class to be more effective? It's been done several times. But none of that makes the class unnecessary.

[BayardSPSR]

Which is precisely why it is a good thing that there is a paladin class: if this thread has shown anything, it's the value of having someone who doesn't compromise in their quest to do what is right, who never says "close enough" or "greater good" or allows their desire to follow a god, or power, or love, or their own self-interest to get in the way of that quest. That is what separates a paladin from every other class. And it is why I for one am glad that they bothered to make the class in the first place. Because sometimes I want to play someone whose only motivation is to do the right thing for the right reason.

Why is there a need to implement that concept mechanically as a class? To me, "good" by any definition doesn't seem like something there should be mechanics for (or associated with). Especially considering that many people don't seem to play their paladins that way.

Why can't you play a Bard (or any other class) whose only motivation is to do the right thing for the right reason? I don't see how that motivation demands the ability to Smite Evil, Lay On Hands, and eventually cast Cleric spells.

I'm not trying to say no one should play the paladin concept, but that the Paladin class gets in the way of the paladin concept. I like the concept. I've played the concept, and will probably do so in future. I don't think that means there should be a class for that. People wanted to play a Samurai; that didn't make the Samurai class a good fit with the game it was built for.

I sincerely hope that I'm not ruining anything for anyone. My intention is to bemoan what I see as a counterproductive mechanical intrusion into RPG fun. It would be a tragedy indeed if this vague and hyperbolic griping somehow ruined any kind of gaming for anyone, never mind "the rest of us."

[Cluedrew]

Why implement anything mechanically? My first major role-playing campaigns were complete free form and that worked wonderfully. I'm not sure what the answer is, but here we are talking about Dungeons & Dragons instead.

The sides have become very entrenched so I'm going to do something a little different. I'm going to go over the opposite argument that I usually do.

So the main problem with the paladin is that it represents a very singular character concept. One of a heroic idealist with a particular set of skills and powers. It cannot be used to represent other types of characters, even if those characters have similar or identical skills, because the rules say it can't.

This thin character concept is reinforced by mechanical "catches" that are tied to how the character acts. So if you attempt to move outside of the concept you will suffer the fall and resulting power loss by RAW. Plus what triggers the catch is open to interpretation leading to the "nope, you fall" problem, where the paladin falls for something that either was beyond the player's control or the player didn't realize would make them fall.

Then there is the problem that the character concept only operates in a story with a simplified, lets call it fairy tail, morality. Where the bad guys are evil, everyone is somewhere on the scale of innocent victim to noble hero and the good guys beat up the bad guys for truth and justice. In other words is can't deal with working with the bad guys out of necessity (whether these bad guys are PCs or NPCs) and many other forms of desperate measures for desperate times. The first, not working with bad guy PCs, adds an extra problem in that is does not only limit the paladin and the paladin's player but other players in the same game.

And although it is not technically part of the problem the problem is highlighted by the paladin's more flexible counterpart, the cleric. Which by choosing an appropriate religion can represent a much wider variety of character concepts. As can most of the other core classes, at least from a personality perspective. Similarly many alternate methods for representing a virtue-based character have been suggested including straight role-play and a vow bonus you can add to any class. These would be more flexible in their use to allow for more character concepts.

I think that summarizes most of the arguments against the paladin. If someone from the anti-paladin group (not to be confused with a group of anti-paladins) could let me know if I got that right or if I missed anything.

[Eloel]

That sounds about right.

[Cluedrew]

Cool. I don't actually disagree with anything there, its just it brings me to a different conclusion than "the paladin should not be". To explain exactly why is going to take a little while and I need to do some real life things today, so it will probably have to wait for tomorrow.

[Frozen_Feet]

Please do explain to me, the silly little idiot I am, what the reasons are.

Evil means debasing and harming life.

Paladin is tasked with stopping people who do that.

You don't get to have Evil alignment without qualifying as the sort of a person the Paladin ought to stop. A paladin might leave such a person alone if they don't have proof or means necessary to bring them to justice, but they won't be friends with them nor support them. Even the shopkeeper who's ripping off their customers is someone the paladin ought to boycot, even if what they're doing is technically legal and sanctioned by society. If you don't get why, ask any human or animal rights activist who are doing similar stuff in real life.


I disagree. Greater good seems like it'd be more important to a champion of good.


No. You're describing a pragmatist (http://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/pragmatist), almost the polar-opposite of someone focused on ideals and empowered by principles.

Agree with Mr. Moron here. Whenever you're thinking of a character who's willing to either sanction or turn a blind eye to evil thoughts and deeds, you're not thinking of a paladin. If a paladin is found doing either in the name of "greater good", they're a fallen paladin.

[Ashtagon]

That's actually a good analogy The mindset of a paladin should be akin to animal rights activist, eco-warrior, "conviction" (not pragmatic) politician, and the like. They don't compromise with those who are even merely nominally opposed to themselves. The kindest they'll be is to stay away from them for now, and any closer interaction involves doing they best to make them change their ways -- none of this "for the greater good" nonsense.

[BWR]

I would argue paladins do work for the greater good. It is constantly on their mind and the core of their beliefs, and the greater good cannot be tainted with compromise and pragmatism. It corrupts morally and sets a bad example for everyone and is a slippery slope - if you tolerate that one lesser evil to defeat a bigger one, where do you draw the line?
The greater good is not merely solving this particular problem in an expedient manner, it is the consequences of your actions and how they affect the entire world. A paladin not only fights evil, she must be good example, doing what is right regardless of what is easy or convenient, setting a good example to show others that there is a better way than tolerating evil, inspiring people to make the right choice even if it costs them dearly.

[Necroticplague]

The sides have become very entrenched so I'm going to do something a little different. I'm going to go over the opposite argument that I usually do.

So the main problem with the paladin is that it represents a very singular character concept. One of a heroic idealist with a particular set of skills and powers. It cannot be used to represent other types of characters, even if those characters have similar or identical skills, because the rules say it can't.

This thin character concept is reinforced by mechanical "catches" that are tied to how the character acts. So if you attempt to move outside of the concept you will suffer the fall and resulting power loss by RAW. Plus what triggers the catch is open to interpretation leading to the "nope, you fall" problem, where the paladin falls for something that either was beyond the player's control or the player didn't realize would make them fall.

Then there is the problem that the character concept only operates in a story with a simplified, lets call it fairy tail, morality. Where the bad guys are evil, everyone is somewhere on the scale of innocent victim to noble hero and the good guys beat up the bad guys for truth and justice. In other words is can't deal with working with the bad guys out of necessity (whether these bad guys are PCs or NPCs) and many other forms of desperate measures for desperate times. The first, not working with bad guy PCs, adds an extra problem in that is does not only limit the paladin and the paladin's player but other players in the same game.

And although it is not technically part of the problem the problem is highlighted by the paladin's more flexible counterpart, the cleric. Which by choosing an appropriate religion can represent a much wider variety of character concepts. As can most of the other core classes, at least from a personality perspective. Similarly many alternate methods for representing a virtue-based character have been suggested including straight role-play and a vow bonus you can add to any class. These would be more flexible in their use to allow for more character concepts.

I think that summarizes most of the arguments against the paladin. If someone from the anti-paladin group (not to be confused with a group of anti-paladins) could let me know if I got that right or if I missed anything.

Yep, that's pretty much it. Though, I would like to add, clerics of causes/philosophies are possible, not just clerics of gods. So a cleric of Good is entirely possible, and would be fluffwise identical to the Paladin.

[VoxRationis]

Seriously, stop comparing the Paladin to the Cleric. That's not where the Paladin comes from, that's not the core essence of their class. The paladin is not a priest. The paladin is a warrior, a knight. They are an offshoot of the Fighter, one so valiant and righteous that their purity becomes mechanically useful. Paladins are like Galahad or other Knights of the Round Table. Yes, they have certain things, like a smattering of divine spells and Turn Undead, in common with the cleric, but that's not what their class is.

[LibraryOgre]

Seriously, stop comparing the Paladin to the Cleric. That's not where the Paladin comes from, that's not the core essence of their class. The paladin is not a priest. The paladin is a warrior, a knight. They are an offshoot of the Fighter, one so valiant and righteous that their purity becomes mechanically useful. Paladins are like Galahad or other Knights of the Round Table. Yes, they have certain things, like a smattering of divine spells and Turn Undead, in common with the cleric, but that's not what their class is.

Yes and no, Vox. While the concept of the Paladin comes from a specific place, the concept of a cleric, as written, doesn't come from much different of a place. The Paladin may be Roland and the 12 Peers of Charlemagne (qv 2e PH), but the cleric is identified as coming, in part, from Archbishop Turpin... also one of the Twelve Peers.

The concept of a militant, holy, knight is the core of both the cleric and the paladin. They get compared because their inspirations are, if not the same, then very similar.

[Karl Aegis]

Oh, dang. We're back to the French. No love for the Polish Hussar, yet?

[veti]

Evil means debasing and harming life.

Paladin is tasked with stopping people who do that.

You don't get to have Evil alignment without qualifying as the sort of a person the Paladin ought to stop. A paladin might leave such a person alone if they don't have proof or means necessary to bring them to justice, but they won't be friends with them nor support them.

Thus far, you could substitute the words "good person" for "paladin", and nothing would be lost.


Even the shopkeeper who's ripping off their customers is someone the paladin ought to boycot, even if what they're doing is technically legal and sanctioned by society. If you don't get why, ask any human or animal rights activist who are doing similar stuff in real life.

Ah, here's a distinction - maybe. A good person can still deal with evil people, within reason - a paladin can't.

Or can they? It seems to me that paladins do, in fact, do deals like that fairly regularly. If a paladin buys a slave in order to set them lawfully free, that means they have to make (and honour) a business deal with a slave trader - is that fall-worthy? If an unjust ruler has appointed their own judges, does that mean the paladin should no longer turn the common murderer (who would be tried and punished appropriately) over to the corrupt authorities? If a shopkeeper runs a front for an evil criminal gang, is the paladin not permitted to buy a pair of shoes from him? Even if he's the only cobbler in town?

Sounds like Lawful Stupid to me. And it still doesn't quite explain why they need a separate class. These are roleplaying decisions. Any character can make up their own mind in each of these cases.

[VoxRationis]

Yes and no, Vox. While the concept of the Paladin comes from a specific place, the concept of a cleric, as written, doesn't come from much different of a place. The Paladin may be Roland and the 12 Peers of Charlemagne (qv 2e PH), but the cleric is identified as coming, in part, from Archbishop Turpin... also one of the Twelve Peers.

The concept of a militant, holy, knight is the core of both the cleric and the paladin. They get compared because their inspirations are, if not the same, then very similar.

But that's Archbishop Turpin, a priest, a holy man. And a significant number of the priest spells are straight from Biblical tales of the prophets. But Charlemagne and the Twelve Peers (minus Turpin), or King Arthur and his knights, are a different sort of character. They're brave and virtuous, pious yes, but that's because piety was wrapped up in medieval virtues—the bravery and virtue were more important.

[BayardSPSR]

I think that summarizes most of the arguments against the paladin. If someone from the anti-paladin group (not to be confused with a group of anti-paladins) could let me know if I got that right or if I missed anything.

I endorse that message, though I won't claim to speak for anyone else.


Seriously, stop comparing the Paladin to the Cleric. That's not where the Paladin comes from, that's not the core essence of their class. The paladin is not a priest. The paladin is a warrior, a knight. They are an offshoot of the Fighter, one so valiant and righteous that their purity becomes mechanically useful. Paladins are like Galahad or other Knights of the Round Table. Yes, they have certain things, like a smattering of divine spells and Turn Undead, in common with the cleric, but that's not what their class is.

Originally, I think Clerics weren't priests either. They were explicitly holy warriors with powers granted by their gods, and didn't even have casting at the first level. I welcome correction on this count, not actually having any "original" materials.


Oh, dang. We're back to the French. No love for the Polish Hussar, yet?

If it makes you feel better, I love that concept too, and still don't think it should be a class either. :smallbiggrin:


But that's Archbishop Turpin, a priest, a holy man. And a significant number of the priest spells are straight from Biblical tales of the prophets. But Charlemagne and the Twelve Peers (minus Turpin), or King Arthur and his knights, are a different sort of character. They're brave and virtuous, pious yes, but that's because piety was wrapped up in medieval virtues—the bravery and virtue were more important.

The notes on the Song of Roland I can find on short notice describe Turpin as "fierce," "fiery," and "a great warrior," while the close personal relationship with God belongs to Charlemagne. I don't see any particular distinction between him and the other Peers.

[theNater]

Thus far, you could substitute the words "good person" for "paladin", and nothing would be lost.
A Good character is under no obligation to stop others from doing Evil. A character who donates a significant amount of money or time to feed the starving is Good, despite no attempts to stop those who are debasing or harming life.

Many Good adventurers will act to stop such things, but only paladins are obligated to do so.

[LibraryOgre]

But that's Archbishop Turpin, a priest, a holy man. And a significant number of the priest spells are straight from Biblical tales of the prophets. But Charlemagne and the Twelve Peers (minus Turpin), or King Arthur and his knights, are a different sort of character. They're brave and virtuous, pious yes, but that's because piety was wrapped up in medieval virtues—the bravery and virtue were more important.

How? One is a holy knight, granted powers by their god because of their holiness, and the other is a holy knight, granted powers by their god because of their holiness. Both swore vows to that effect, and those vows would be to a deity or their proxy.

If the class "paladin" didn't exist, making those characters would be "Mix a little cleric into a fighter."

[Necroticplague]

Seriously, stop comparing the Paladin to the Cleric. That's not where the Paladin comes from, that's not the core essence of their class. The paladin is not a priest. The paladin is a warrior, a knight. They are an offshoot of the Fighter, one so valiant and righteous that their purity becomes mechanically useful. Paladins are like Galahad or other Knights of the Round Table. Yes, they have certain things, like a smattering of divine spells and Turn Undead, in common with the cleric, but that's not what their class is.

A Cleric isn't a priest either. Last I check, priests didn't practice fighting and how to wear armor (they're called men of the CLOTH, after all). Clerics, on the other hand, sit their, knowing how to use almost as many weapons as the rogue, and being able to be dressed head to toe in solid steel, attaching extra to their arm as a shield if they feel the need. Both clerics and paladins are empowered by their belief and conviction to go forth, kick rears and take names. For a cleric of the philosophy/cause of Good and the paladin, both are empowered by their faith and conviction in Good to go forth and rid the world of evil.

[BWR]

A Cleric isn't a priest either. Last I check, priests didn't practice fighting and how to wear armor (they're called men of the CLOTH, after all). Clerics, on the other hand, sit their, knowing how to use almost as many weapons as the rogue, and being able to be dressed head to toe in solid steel, attaching extra to their arm as a shield if they feel the need. Both clerics and paladins are empowered by their belief and conviction to go forth, kick rears and take names. For a cleric of the philosophy/cause of Good and the paladin, both are empowered by their faith and conviction in Good to go forth and rid the world of evil.

Last I checked, priests weren't restricted to Judeo-Christian use, not to mention examples of battle priests in those traditions. And 'cleric' and 'priest' can be used synonymous in D&D, these days unless you use cleric for the class and priest for the position. Though in 2e a cleric was a specific type of priest. And no matter what people say, paladins can be empowered by gods and lose their powers if they fall out of favor. It's just that they must also be LG, and, like priests, are not required to worship a god.

[Brookshw]

A Cleric isn't a priest either. Last I check, priests didn't practice fighting and how to wear armor (they're called men of the CLOTH, after all). Clerics, on the other hand, sit their, knowing how to use almost as many weapons as the rogue, and being able to be dressed head to toe in solid steel, attaching extra to their arm as a shield if they feel the need. Both clerics and paladins are empowered by their belief and conviction to go forth, kick rears and take names. For a cleric of the philosophy/cause of Good and the paladin, both are empowered by their faith and conviction in Good to go forth and rid the world of evil.

There's some historical distinctions going on there. To go back to Mark Hall's point, there were militant priests, as I recall the early Pope's wore armor and led in the field. There was also a strong German ideal in, iirc, the 1700s regarding religious militarism centered around the church and enfolded the priesthood. If someone more knowledgeable wants to elaborate on the militarism found in religion I'd be more than happy to listed. Of course if we're getting into history I suspect we're looking at a political divide between paladins as religiously bent warriors/lords but not part of the church hierarchy and clerics as part of the church hierarchy engage in similar actions. Then we get into motivations between the lords etc to support the church. Can't say I'm the best source for knowledge on the topic though.

Back to the game perspective and the objection to the Paladin as being similar to the cleric or could be expressed by a fighter cleric, why is it that the paladin is singled out quite often in this? The ranger could be tossed aside as being a fighter/druid hybrid (or maybe just druids for that matter), the bard (within the scope of 3.0/3.5) could be chucked as a rogue/sorcerer. Scouts could be tossed as fighter/rogues or fighter/rogue/druids. We could go through a number of base classes, certainly several in core, and toss them aside quite easily if the objection to the Paladin is simply that it's redundant. So why don't I hear these same type of objection commonly levied against the other base classes? Because it's a 1:1 scenario?

[Necroticplague]

There's some historical distinctions going on there. To go back to Mark Hall's point, there were militant priests, as I recall the early Pope's wore armor and led in the field. There was also a strong German ideal in, iirc, the 1700s regarding religious militarism centered around the church and enfolded the priesthood. If someone more knowledgeable wants to elaborate on the militarism found in religion I'd be more than happy to listed. Of course if we're getting into history I suspect we're looking at a political divide between paladins as religiously bent warriors/lords but not part of the church hierarchy and clerics as part of the church hierarchy engage in similar actions. Then we get into motivations between the lords etc to support the church. Can't say I'm the best source for knowledge on the topic though.That's my point. The post I was responding to, as far as I could see, boiled down to 'clerics aren't the militant arm of divine casters, paladins are', to which I was pointing out is incorrect. Clerics can already be the dude wielding the literal hammer of justice clad in glowing armor of righteousness while channeling divine power, so what niche does the paladin serve?


Back to the game perspective and the objection to the Paladin as being similar to the cleric or could be expressed by a fighter cleric, why is it that the paladin is singled out quite often in this? The ranger could be tossed aside as being a fighter/druid hybrid (or maybe just druids for that matter), the bard (within the scope of 3.0/3.5) could be chucked as a rogue/sorcerer. Scouts could be tossed as fighter/rogues or fighter/rogue/druids. We could go through a number of base classes, certainly several in core, and toss them aside quite easily if the objection to the Paladin is simply that it's redundant. So why don't I hear these same type of objection commonly levied against the other base classes? Because it's a 1:1 scenario?

Oh, I have objections to those annoying hybrids as well, I just wasn't mentioning them because this thread is about the Paladin's failings. Actually, I'm a bit more extreme, and think that Druid and Cleric are redundant as well (clerics of nature:people who's devotion to nature gives them divine magic. druids: people who's devotion to nature gives them divine magic). Barbarian and Fighter should be combined into one more generic class (whether your 1/encounter buff is a mad frenzy or a calm battle focus is your choice), bards should be a variant sorcerer, ranger and paladins should be fighter/cleric PRCs or crusaders, wizard should be replaced with fixed-list spellcasters (or Arcanists), ect.

[Brookshw]

That's my point. The post I was responding to, as far as I could see, boiled down to 'clerics aren't the militant arm of divine casters, paladins are', to which I was pointing out is incorrect. Clerics can already be the dude wielding the literal hammer of justice clad in glowing armor of righteousness while channeling divine power, so what niche does the paladin serve? Rightyo though the "CLOTH" statement gave me an alternative impression. What I assume the poster was getting at is there are various facets of the clergy that don't coincide with this militaristic image but would still be in the purview of a cleric. Or something to that affect at any rate. I'll give it more thought after a few more cups of coffee.




Oh, I have objections to those annoying hybrids as well, I just wasn't mentioning them because this thread is about the Paladin's failings. Actually, I'm a bit more extreme, and think that Druid and Cleric are redundant as well (clerics of nature:people who's devotion to nature gives them divine magic. druids: people who's devotion to nature gives them divine magic). Barbarian and Fighter should be combined into one more generic class (whether your 1/encounter buff is a mad frenzy or a calm battle focus is your choice), bards should be a variant sorcerer, ranger and paladins should be fighter/cleric PRCs or crusaders, wizard should be replaced with fixed-list spellcasters (or Arcanists), ect.

So within the scope of 3.0/3.5 generic classes from UA are more your cup of tea then?

[Frozen_Feet]

Thus far, you could substitute the words "good person" for "paladin", and nothing would be lost.

A Good character is under no obligation to stop others from doing Evil. A character who donates a significant amount of money or time to feed the starving is Good, despite no attempts to stop those who are debasing or harming life.

Many Good adventurers will act to stop such things, but only paladins are obligated to do so.

What theNater said. A paladin who lets evil go unpunished when he has the power to stop it, or a paladin who goes "hey, it's inconvenient doing the right thing all the time, maybe if I only do it some of the time?" ceases to be a paladin and becomes a "mere" Lawful Good fighter.


Ah, here's a distinction - maybe. A good person can still deal with evil people, within reason - a paladin can't.

Or can they? It seems to me that paladins do, in fact, do deals like that fairly regularly.

Exceptions prove the rule; they don't make it.

Also, "deal with" is vague colloquial speech. There are many ways in which a paladin can "deal with" evil people. The rule is against knowingly associating with and hiring them. Those are far more specific.


1)If a paladin buys a slave in order to set them lawfully free, that means they have to make (and honour) a business deal with a slave trader - is that fall-worthy?

2)If an unjust ruler has appointed their own judges, does that mean the paladin should no longer turn the common murderer (who would be tried and punished appropriately) over to the corrupt authorities?

3) If a shopkeeper runs a front for an evil criminal gang, is the paladin not permitted to buy a pair of shoes from him? Even if he's the only cobbler in town?


1) Depends on the sort of slavery. Chattel slavery is evil by the rules, period. A paladin can't buy or own slaves in a system like that and is obligated to work towards abolishing such systems. In cases on indentured servants or debt slavery, it's acceptable for a paladin to buy a slave their freedom, even if it supports a corrupt system, but it's still less-than-ideal. In latter cases, the question is wholly about the character of the slave-trader - namely, are they evil? Will giving them money cause more people to be victimized? When the answer is yes, the paladin shouldn't pay them for anything - and if possible, should take extra legal actions to stop their business. (The concept of "honouring a deal" is a red herring. A paladin is not obliged to make nor honour illegitimate deals. We had a thread on this very question few months back.)

2) If the murderer would be punished justly and the paladin knows this, on what basis are the nominated judges unjust or evil? Who nominated them isn't important at all. A paladin hardly needs to break the Law of the Land when it's Lawful and Good, even if the one who set it is anything but.

If the paladin doesn't know... well, ask yourself: would you hand a criminal to officials who were nominated in suspect circumstances and whom you can't trust? Or would you, perhaps, demand for the presence of an official you do know and trust?

3) If the Paladin knows he's evil, then no, he's not. He'll be a goody-two-shoes and get his shoes from elsewhere. After taking necessary means to eradicate the criminal organization, of course.

If he doesn't know, he can't be penalized for buying a pair of shoes, because he's not consciously breaking his code, and the act of buying shoes is not itself evil.


Sounds like Lawful Stupid to me. And it still doesn't quite explain why they need a separate class. These are roleplaying decisions. Any character can make up their own mind in each of these cases.

You're not seeing the forest for the trees. The class and mechanics of the paladin are a method for codifying a certain character archetype and role; choosing to play a paladin is a roleplaying decision. You could play a paladin in a system with no class for it, by choosing to stick to the code and joining a militant organization enforcing those principles; but just as well, you could play a fighter in a system with no class for it by picking up a weapon and starting to kill people.

Whether to have a class like the paladin is not a question whether it is necessary, it's a question of how granular you want your system to be. In early D&D and its clones, characters are defined by broad archetypes, and then specialize to narrower archetypes. In such a system, the only way to model a paladin is to have it as a sub-class or prestige class of the Fighter. You acquire character traits in discreet packages known as levels, with little customization possible. Choosing to play a LG cleric or fighter/cleric doesn't actually give you all the traits of the paladin nor does it entail following a paladin's code - a character might still choose to follow it, but it would not have in-game effects associated with it.

As far as "Lawful Stupid" goes... most of your examples are not about what's stupid, they're about what's easy or convenient. They're about whether to pick the most obvious solution, without looking further than that. But the paladin isn't about doing those, it's about doing what's right. Often, it means going the long way and incurring costs to yourself (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v415/n6868/abs/415137a.html) to bring the bad guys to justice.

[Cluedrew]

OK, I've gotten support from the anti-Paladin group on my statement of faults of the paladin. Now that I have established what is wrong with the paladin I would like to explain why I'm still defending it. The question the thread is dealing with is, "Should the paladin be a class?" And despite all of its faults I say yes. I agree that the paladin-class has faults but to me all of these faults mean the paladin needs an overhaul, not that it should be scrapped entirely.

The "single concept" problem is defiantly the main issue for me. Sure there is some variations you can get but it is minor compared to the other classes. My solution would be to give the paladin multiple codes to choose from. The currant one would be the "idealist" code, maybe adjusted a little bit to replace "to not associate with evil" to straight "do not allow evil" which is really what they are going for and allows for the good+evil party mix, although there will still be a lot of friction there as the paladin will be watching the evil party member very closely, but it is not an immediate fall. Then we actually have options, does the paladin allow the evil party member more and more leeway despite evidence that is not a good idea until the paladin is essentially committing evil acts by locum or at the opposite extreme does the paladin inspire and redeem the evil party member? Now you can choose.

From there add on some other codes, such as a "greater good" type code, where evil is allowed as long it creates more good in the end for a more edgy approach. Maybe create some morally ambiguous codes as well to let the paladin traverse down the alignment chart, in terms of viable character concepts, not the same paladin unless it is a fall. Also drop the lawful-chaotic restrictions on most of them, people with a chaotic personality can be idealists. ... Actually no, not going to say anything else about alignment.

If you feel that some mechanical parts of the paladin only fit the idealist arch-type then tie some of the paladin powers to which code they follow. So the idealist gets a lot of healing, the greater good type gets some healing and some damage and a paladin that has vowed to protect something gets defence boosting magic and redirect attacks to his/herself. (I think D&D 5e does something like this, I don't have 5e materials.)

Now this does technically change the paladin class from "hybrid physical divine class dedicated to goodness" to "hybrid physical divine class dedicated to X" but I feel this is not so much changing the class as adding a bit of modularity. Of course if you are really attached to the old meaning of the paladin you could call the modified class the Oath Knight and have the idealist code be the Paladin's Code. Then have the Inquisitor's Code, the Guardian's Code, the Hunter's Code and so on as other options. So you can argue that since my solution technically makes the paladin not a class technically I'm arguing that the paladin should not be a class and technically you would be correct. But I think you are getting caught up in the semantics of the argument. The paladin would still be a mechanically supported character concept available for selection at level 1, which is close enough in my book.

I think that addresses all of the issues people have with the paladin except paladin-cleric overlap. Which I would argue is as much the cleric's problem as it is the paladin's. Now I agree it is a shame that the paladin doesn't come with all these fixes by default, but I'm not involved in the design process so there isn't a lot I can do about that. And no, I'm not saying "its not broken because it can be fixed". However since the class can be fixed while maintaining the original underlying concept the same that means the underlying concept that the paladin class was built to try to represent is valid.

"Don't through the baby out with the bath water." Don't confuse a idea of the paladin (the baby) with the problems in its implementations (the bath water). Conversely, don't be afraid to take the baby out of the bath water then throw the bath water out. Which means don't be afraid to fix the problems with the paladin so it works for your paladin-like character concept. It is not an idea situation no, but it is a salvageable one.

[Necroticplague]

Well, once we start looking for ways to fix the implementation and allowing the concept (divinely empowered martial good guy), we run into the fact that the Crusader exists. Which, as far as I'm concerned, is basically the paladin fix: uses a more appropriate mechanic, portrays more than one concept (can use same mechanics to build a paladin-type who's determination to do good lets him continue fighting despite injury, to a paladin-of-slaughter opposite who's rage refuses to let go), more easily refluffed (related to previous), and has something unique about it (instead of pre-prepping their abilities as spells, they receive theirs in flashes of inspiration).

[skulduggery]

snip

Your idea is pretty much exactly how 5e does paladin. It's actually a very simple yet diverse solution.

As for the rest of the thread, alignment hasn't been an issue for paladins since before 3e (remember paladin of freedom?).

[Eloel]

The question then becomes
"Why does the guy with conviction have to be the fullplate/sword dude with minor spells? Why can't the wizard swear such oaths? If he can, why don't we just stick the same oath to a cleric/fighter and call it a day?"

[Mr.Moron]

The question then becomes
"Why does the guy with conviction have to be the fullplate/sword dude with minor spells? Why can't the wizard swear such oaths? If he can, why don't we just stick the same oath to a cleric/fighter and call it a day?"

That's certainly one way to do it. However the fact that there are alternative ways of implementing something and some of those implementations that might be more versatile doesn't mean that the current system is some kind of egregious error.

The answer to question "Are there are there more versatile or efficient ways of implementing the paladin class?" is "Yes". It also is utterly irrelevant to the the question of if the implementation we got has any right to exist or was (broadly speaking) a mistake.

In order for it to be relevant you'd have to first:


A) Prove that versatile or broad mechanics are necessarily an improvement over more narrow or specific ones in the context of D&D design goals.
B) Establish a standard of versatility something must meet to "deserve" being a core class.
C) Establish in ways paladin fails those that standards that no other D&D class does.


If any of the following things aren't true or can't be sufficiently established then the idea that there might be more versatile ways to implement the paladin concept just aren't relevant to the subject at hand.

[BayardSPSR]

Back to the game perspective and the objection to the Paladin as being similar to the cleric or could be expressed by a fighter cleric, why is it that the paladin is singled out quite often in this? The ranger could be tossed aside as being a fighter/druid hybrid (or maybe just druids for that matter), the bard (within the scope of 3.0/3.5) could be chucked as a rogue/sorcerer. Scouts could be tossed as fighter/rogues or fighter/rogue/druids. We could go through a number of base classes, certainly several in core, and toss them aside quite easily if the objection to the Paladin is simply that it's redundant. So why don't I hear these same type of objection commonly levied against the other base classes? Because it's a 1:1 scenario?

There are ongoing threads criticizing the existence of the Rogue and Wizard, and it's not impossible we could see more (though it would eventually become silly and redundant, if it hasn't already). Some of the people here do support a reduction in classes to broader archetypes, rather than the existing mix of broad and narrow ones; a few others (assuming I'm not the only one) would pursue that logic to the conclusion "and this is why classes are a silly thing that shouldn't be in RPGs except to make things simpler for new players."


"Don't through the baby out with the bath water." Don't confuse a idea of the paladin (the baby) with the problems in its implementations (the bath water). Conversely, don't be afraid to take the baby out of the bath water then throw the bath water out. Which means don't be afraid to fix the problems with the paladin so it works for your paladin-like character concept. It is not an idea situation no, but it is a salvageable one.

We seem to agree on many of the arguments, while differing slightly in conclusions: you consider the paladin class (not the just the concept) part of the baby, which should be salvaged, where I see it as part of the bathwater, which can be disposed of without injury to the paladin concept.

Unless I'm misreading you.

[Cluedrew]

I think why they chose to have a class based around conviction is for two main reasons. The first is that is how D&D represents most things, create a class for it. It allows you to work the idea deeper in the class, for instance you can set up the abilities to match what the conviction is about. Like the paladin's Lay On Hands, the good guys don't have a monopoly on healing but it is often been associated with holy things. So you can have a wizard swear some oath but he would be using his skills for his conviction, not drawing power from it.

That is not only in terms of the currant implementation. In fantasy literature the wizard who is dedicated to something usually spends a lot of time in the tower studding, gathering knowledge and living for a long time. In other words it is a very different arch-type, in my experience, and doesn't quite fit the same mechanical representation.


We seem to agree on many of the arguments, while differing slightly in conclusions: you consider the paladin class (not the just the concept) part of the baby, which should be salvaged, where I see it as part of the bathwater, which can be disposed of without injury to the paladin concept.

Unless I'm misreading you.
I think you are, I am mostly attached to the concept. There are some parts of the class I like, but there are somewhere between the baby and the bath water.

P.S. Is here any way to get the little arrow link to the original post without using reply with quote?

[Eloel]

A) Prove that versatile or broad mechanics are necessarily an improvement over more narrow or specific ones in the context of D&D design goals.
B) Establish a standard of versatility something must meet to "deserve" being a core class.
C) Establish in ways paladin fails those that standards that no other D&D class does.



A) If implementation 1 supports model 1, and implementation 2 supports model 1 and model 2 at least equally well, implementation 2 is superior to implementation 1. There does not need to be a proof for this, because it's apparent - it lets more models to be supported by the system.

B) This is a comparative argument only - if there are classes that add coverage for more desired character concepts, they should take place of the narrower classes in core, assuming authoring time and book space is a limited commodity. This can be reached simply by seeing that the whole point of core is to reach a wider and more generic audience. Figuring out which of the non-core classes are more efficient in terms of space and coverage is left as an exercise to the reader. (hint: "all" is a good starting point)

C) Core classes: An argument could be made for Wizard vs Sorcerer, at least in core, since they could be argued to be variants of the same class, I don't necessarily agree, since their fluff is vastly different. Rangers are on a similar boat with Paladins, since Favored Enemy does not warrant creating a whole class around either, in my opinion. Rangers, at least, are versatile enough that while they're basically a variant Druid/Fighter, they can still be in all flavors of Druid/Fighter. Paladins, on the other hand, are Cleric/Fighters, and are a very specific brand of Cleric/Fighters.

@cluedrew
You need to add ;post# to the quote, which can be found via getting a singular link to the post.

[LibraryOgre]

Oh, I have objections to those annoying hybrids as well, I just wasn't mentioning them because this thread is about the Paladin's failings. Actually, I'm a bit more extreme, and think that Druid and Cleric are redundant as well (clerics of nature:people who's devotion to nature gives them divine magic. druids: people who's devotion to nature gives them divine magic). Barbarian and Fighter should be combined into one more generic class (whether your 1/encounter buff is a mad frenzy or a calm battle focus is your choice), bards should be a variant sorcerer, ranger and paladins should be fighter/cleric PRCs or crusaders, wizard should be replaced with fixed-list spellcasters (or Arcanists), ect.

Some of this starts straying into 3.x specific territory... in 2e, after all, a scout simply is a thief, most of the time.

Now, as for the difference between a druid and a cleric? Certainly, you could condense them into a single class, and roll in wizards as well, as there's not really a compelling reason for there to be a difference between divine and arcane magic when they use identical mechanics.

But the concept for the druid and the cleric don't draw from the same stereotypes... while both are "divine casters", and you might get some mileage out of a nature cleric v. a druid (see the entire Moonshae trilogy, which is more or less about a Druid becoming a nature cleric), they don't draw from the same well. Archbishop Turpin and the Knights Templar are not the same concept as the Druids that Caesar wrote about, or the 19th century mesopagan druidic revival that influences AD&D druids... heck, AD&D druids have more overlap, in many ways, with wizards, given the overlap of Merlin.

IMO, this gets trickier to track with later editions. While AD&D and OD&D had as their inspirations literary, legendary, and historical figures, later editions increasingly have D&D as their inspiration... a 3.x druid is the way it is, not because of "Druids", but because of 2nd edition Druids, who are the way they are because of 1e Druids.

[BayardSPSR]

C) Core classes: An argument could be made for Wizard vs Sorcerer, at least in core, since they could be argued to be variants of the same class, I don't necessarily agree, since their fluff is vastly different. Rangers are on a similar boat with Paladins, since Favored Enemy does not warrant creating a whole class around either, in my opinion. Rangers, at least, are versatile enough that while they're basically a variant Druid/Fighter, they can still be in all flavors of Druid/Fighter. Paladins, on the other hand, are Cleric/Fighters, and are a very specific brand of Cleric/Fighters.

Somehow I always found the "dual wield or shoot arrows!" binary boring.


Now, as for the difference between a druid and a cleric? Certainly, you could condense them into a single class, and roll in wizards as well, as there's not really a compelling reason for there to be a difference between divine and arcane magic when they use identical mechanics.

I'd support that motion on that logic - but that probably doesn't mean much, since the closer a motion is to fundamentally reworking D&D tropes, the more likely I am to support it.


IMO, this gets trickier to track with later editions. While AD&D and OD&D had as their inspirations literary, legendary, and historical figures, later editions increasingly have D&D as their inspiration... a 3.x druid is the way it is, not because of "Druids", but because of 2nd edition Druids, who are the way they are because of 1e Druids.

This actually brings up a conceptual problem I had starting in the old "Is beta5e Awful?" thread. How do you explore possible answers to the design goals of a D&D edition that has the design goal of "being D&D?" Especially when it's not the first edition to have that design goal...

[veti]

I think why they chose to have a class based around conviction is for two main reasons. The first is that is how D&D represents most things, create a class for it. It allows you to work the idea deeper in the class, for instance you can set up the abilities to match what the conviction is about. Like the paladin's Lay On Hands, the good guys don't have a monopoly on healing but it is often been associated with holy things. So you can have a wizard swear some oath but he would be using his skills for his conviction, not drawing power from it.

Not necessarily. The 'Vow of Poverty' - gets a lot of flak, but it does show there's a viable alternative mechanic for characters to gain extra powers in exchange for voluntarily accepting restrictions on their behaviour. If you redefine the paladin's code as a "Vow of Justice" or something, then anyone could take it, and gain paladin-like powers, without changing class.

(Incidentally, a 1e paladin was explicitly limited in how much loot they were allowed to carry - it was something like "one magic weapon, one magic armour and shield, up to 4 miscellaneous items, and a few other bits and pieces" - any surplus had to be donated to... something.)

[Cluedrew]

Thanks Eloel, I think I got it.


"Why does the guy with conviction have to be the fullplate/sword dude with minor spells? Why can't the wizard swear such oaths? If he can, why don't we just stick the same oath to a cleric/fighter and call it a day?"
The third question is I think the simpler of the two. No reason if we have a generic oath mechanic that can be applied to wizards, cleric/fighters and other classes. More important and complex part is the first two, because it has to do with design choices that are not universally better than the other options.

In my mind it comes down to breadth vs. depth. Having a class dedicated to the concept allows for greater depth to tie the mechanics together and so on. Having a oath mechanic for all classes would have greater breadth, allowing more classes to use it and so on.

Now the breath option does have some advantages, the total number of character concepts it supports is greater for one, but it also has some disadvantages. Even if having a lot of your character reflect the oath isn't important there are other issues that come up.

The first off, first off "oath bound warrior" is a much stronger arch-type than say "oath bound wizard" or "oath bound thief". By the way I'm speaking of oaths like the paladin's dedication to goodness, not the thief's guild code of silence, which would probably have different mechanical repercussions and so. So they would probably get used less anyways.

Then there is the fact that not all classes would benefit from the mechanical bonuses from the oath. A wizard is going to get very little use out of smite evil and lay on hands will to little more than free up some spell slots for a cleric. And similar problems will come up for other possible benefits.

There is one other factor, and that is that D&D's main tool for representing character's is classes. For better or worse that is the one it has chosen and although there are others (feats, skills, race) none of them have the same power as a class to define a character. So I guess that the designers wanted, something for the characters that are defined by their dedication and not simply an add on.

Now I would like to say I don't believe that creating a class was the superior choice, so going with something else is not a bad choice. For example something like the "Vow of..." system. Just that this choice has some advantages and is a viable choice. The existence of other viable choices does not negate that.

About the wizard, I was not speaking of all wizard characters, just the ones I have seen in fantasy literature enough to actually remember. I'm not saying that a wizard who gets spell casting ability from moral conviction couldn't exist (although that is starting to get into cleric territory) but that is less common of an arch-type. I guess the designers felt it was rare enough that they didn't have to include any extra mechanical sport for it. Sorry if the last post wasn't very clear, I blurted that one out quickly.

[BayardSPSR]

The third question is I think the simpler of the two. No reason if we have a generic oath mechanic that can be applied to wizards, cleric/fighters and other classes. More important and complex part is the first two, because it has to do with design choices that are not universally better than the other options.

...

The first off, first off "oath bound warrior" is a much stronger arch-type than say "oath bound wizard" or "oath bound thief". By the way I'm speaking of oaths like the paladin's dedication to goodness, not the thief's guild code of silence, which would probably have different mechanical repercussions and so. So they would probably get used less anyways.

Then there is the fact that not all classes would benefit from the mechanical bonuses from the oath. A wizard is going to get very little use out of smite evil and lay on hands will to little more than free up some spell slots for a cleric. And similar problems will come up for other possible benefits.

...

About the wizard, I was not speaking of all wizard characters, just the ones I have seen in fantasy literature enough to actually remember. I'm not saying that a wizard who gets spell casting ability from moral conviction couldn't exist (although that is starting to get into cleric territory) but that is less common of an arch-type. I guess the designers felt it was rare enough that they didn't have to include any extra mechanical sport for it. Sorry if the last post wasn't very clear, I blurted that one out quickly.

General oath mechanic... That's a cool thought. Mind if I shamelessly steal that for my homebrew system?

Not necessarily as a character-creation thing, even... I really like the idea that at any moment of appropriately high drama or emotion, a character can fall to their knees, cry out a heartfelt oath to the heavens, and receive character- and oath-appropriate abilities/bonuses as long as they hold true.

The tricky part would be working out the mechanics, of course, but I like the concept.

[Cluedrew]

No I don't mind, and you seem to have a really cool interpretation of it to.

... I got nothing else significant to say.

[McStabbington]

I think you are, I am mostly attached to the concept. There are some parts of the class I like, but there are somewhere between the baby and the bath water.

Honestly, I would phrase it somewhat differently: every class can be about good, but that's something you add on to the simple concept that already drives the class. A good wizard is basically a wizard who says "I use my long hours reading in a library . . . for great justice!" Good sorcerors = "I use my smoldering good looks and force of personality . . . for great justice!" Good bards = "I shall sing you the song of my people . . . for great justice!" Even good clerics = "I shall put my hands on you and heal you and make hundreds of pounds of nourishing wafers that taste like cardboard . . . for great justice!"

A paladin is the concept you pick when you want your great justice uncut with anything else. It's not about books, or singing, or sneaking about picking locks, or flavorless wafer provision. It's just doing the right thing.

[goto124]

Flavorless wafers? Prestidigitation!