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Puke
2016-07-17, 08:59 AM
Hey folks,
In my current campaign, there is a god which favors balance before all.
A part of his dogma is "The greater good is the only choice to make. If you need to make peace with demons to accomplish the greater good ; do so. The only true, ultimate good, is the one who allow us to keep the balance ... balanced..."

The Ultimate Good is a really simple concept : anything that threatens the world must be purified by fire. You will do everything that serves the Great Balance or helps the world to keep going as it is. Any being that would be a threat to the universe must be extemrinated.

Well, that being said, I want to allow a paladin to choose this dogma, and I'm wondering how you would do that. What would it change for the paladin class, and what variant would be the closest to this dogma ?

I already thought about "Incarnation of the balance" but its too close to the nature.

Demidos
2016-07-17, 09:56 AM
There's two ways of seeing this...


The first, is that ALL paladins should ascribe to the greater good, since they are meant to bring about as much good as possible in the world. Thus if forced into a choice between saving 10 children or 20, 20 should always win. This paladin is close to the balance type in your proposal, but perhaps without quite the necessity of BURN WITH FIRE.

The second possibility is that all paladins, rather than JUST being good, are being held to a higher ideal. Under this assumption, the paladin CANNOT compromise on their actions. They can do the best they can, and save the 20, but even then they would fall for not being enough. Here the paladin is at an impasse, since they cannot save either the 10 or the 20. This is old-school paladin.



How this ties in to your question...


Both options above are valid styles of play, and you seem to be advocating a half-way path. The second option tends to end up with many of the no win scenarios that have caused many of the posters on this board to come to vent frustration about. You mention consorting with fiends for the balance paladin. The first option opens the door to the possibility of slippery slope morals, since perhaps by helping a fiend in exchange for saving a child you doom 10 more accidentally. At what point is helping a fiend more damaging than saving a child? What are you willing to sacrifice to do that? Would you lie? Would you cheat? Would you steal? In short, your answer boils down to one simple question -- do you consider absolute good and evil to exist within your D&D campaign setting?

If yes, then you have room for balance paladins as pragmatic do-gooders who serve to temper the relentless pursuit of Good (capital G) by old-school paladins. Your proposed paladins would take a middle seat between.

If no, then all paladins are balance paladins, since there is no absolute Good (capital G) that must be followed at all costs. Again, the purify with fire deal might depend on the individual, but it could be safely added as a seperate sect of balance paladins.

Edit:
I would also caution you to consider carefully what you mean by "balance". Are you referring to alignments? Good and evil? Law and Chaos? Presence of monsters? Civilization and Nature? Movement of souls to the afterlife? What exact balance needs preserving, and based on what point in time?

It is easy to imagine a "balance alignment" paladin murdering many evil creatures, and then turning around to murder his good associates to maintain the balance. Is he then an unbalancing force? From what little you described, it seems that you intend it to be a do-gooder paladin. I am not sure how this relates to balance, unless the balance of evil is supposed to be zero, in which case it acts as a traditional paladin in any case.

Puke
2016-07-17, 11:44 AM
The balance in my setting is the balance between Good and Evil... hum... pretty simple in fact.

There is an artifact called "The Balance". It shows the gods whether the good is too strong or the evil is too strong. The gods then try to restore the balance before Ao ccomes or before the world collapses because someone succeed in reaching 21th divine rank.

Puke
2016-07-19, 04:27 AM
There's two ways of seeing this...


The first, is that ALL paladins should ascribe to the greater good, since they are meant to bring about as much good as possible in the world. Thus if forced into a choice between saving 10 children or 20, 20 should always win. This paladin is close to the balance type in your proposal, but perhaps without quite the necessity of BURN WITH FIRE.

The second possibility is that all paladins, rather than JUST being good, are being held to a higher ideal. Under this assumption, the paladin CANNOT compromise on their actions. They can do the best they can, and save the 20, but even then they would fall for not being enough. Here the paladin is at an impasse, since they cannot save either the 10 or the 20. This is old-school paladin.



How this ties in to your question...


Both options above are valid styles of play, and you seem to be advocating a half-way path. The second option tends to end up with many of the no win scenarios that have caused many of the posters on this board to come to vent frustration about. You mention consorting with fiends for the balance paladin. The first option opens the door to the possibility of slippery slope morals, since perhaps by helping a fiend in exchange for saving a child you doom 10 more accidentally. At what point is helping a fiend more damaging than saving a child? What are you willing to sacrifice to do that? Would you lie? Would you cheat? Would you steal? In short, your answer boils down to one simple question -- do you consider absolute good and evil to exist within your D&D campaign setting?

If yes, then you have room for balance paladins as pragmatic do-gooders who serve to temper the relentless pursuit of Good (capital G) by old-school paladins. Your proposed paladins would take a middle seat between.

If no, then all paladins are balance paladins, since there is no absolute Good (capital G) that must be followed at all costs. Again, the purify with fire deal might depend on the individual, but it could be safely added as a seperate sect of balance paladins.

Edit:
I would also caution you to consider carefully what you mean by "balance". Are you referring to alignments? Good and evil? Law and Chaos? Presence of monsters? Civilization and Nature? Movement of souls to the afterlife? What exact balance needs preserving, and based on what point in time?

It is easy to imagine a "balance alignment" paladin murdering many evil creatures, and then turning around to murder his good associates to maintain the balance. Is he then an unbalancing force? From what little you described, it seems that you intend it to be a do-gooder paladin. I am not sure how this relates to balance, unless the balance of evil is supposed to be zero, in which case it acts as a traditional paladin in any case.



Came back with a better answer.

In the current settings, there is 4 players (including me) playing Gods.
You can see the setting in my signature, or here : http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?490625-The-Endless-Adventure-Unique-thread

The thing is my character, Myrddin, is a paria. He is a sun elf wizard that left his family to travel the world. At first, he did want to make Corellon LArethian care about elves again, but then, he understood that Corellon had greater business to deal with. Eventually, Myrddin became one of the most powerful wizard in the univerve, and, perehaps, THE most powerful of Faerun, not only because he had knowledge, but because he was friend with Elminster, Mystra's remaining power, Khelben Blackstaff, and.... hemhem... Myrddin found a way to bring back Karsus.
Myrddin was chaotic good, and he always fought to save the universe.

He teamed up with a paladin of Torm, and they had many MANY discussions about how they had to spread the "good".

The paladin said "We must help the weak and defend them from the strong. We must bring law and justice to everyone and smite the evil. Never abandon anyone."

Myrddin, on the other hand wa like "Sacrifice as many innocent as necessary to save the world. If the world is destroyed, everybody dies. So the choice is simple. There is no evil by nature, the evil comes from the actions."

I can picture it to you by telling you the paladin was pretty dull and he gave a legendary sword to an illithid to save a bunch of little girls (we still taunt his player about it).

So, lets come back to our greater good. For the lawful good paladins of Kaelan, god of good and justice, they are protectors. They smite evil when they see it, but won't break the law to accomplish the good, and will always follow their orders and refer to their sacred books.

On the other hand, the Knights of The Greater Good (whose we are trying to build here) will do their best to bring back balance to the world by smiting any being that may destroy it for good. This does not mean they will attack innocent people or good paladins, but this means they will figure by themselves what is the true evil. They will assume a demon is evil if he does not try to speak with them or to propose a deal. They are able to understand that even the evilest creatures by nature may help the greater good... they still can kill them later. They will favor the good behavior, but will not hesitate a single time to torture someone that does not want to answer their questions.

This dogma is not only here to keep the balance, but also to save the universe in its whole.