Watching someone build a Lawful Stupid Paladin and dont know what to do

[Albions_Angel]

As the title says.

He will be the 6th and last player in an.... interesting party. Normally this party would be pretty good, but they are all new to 3.5e and I have never seen such low OP building.

Barbarian - sword and board
Bard/Beguiler - going for fey heritage feats and currently cant hit with his whip
Druid - halfling riding a dog atm, but poor use of spells right now. Trying to teach her but she doesnt seem all that interested in learning
Rogue - flits between ineffectual throwing (because didnt take precise shot) and ineffectual TWF (because didnt take TWF). Has Weapon Finesse.
Dragonfire Adept - you kinda cant screw this one up. Kinda expecting it to happen at some point though.

All 5e players. I get the feeling they are very used to having the DM level them up and hand them back their chars, or else playing level 20 characters and just having everything.

And now Paladin. Got a message from him with "Does Good Aura stack with AC?" and after explaining what good aura actually was, I thought that was the end of it. Then he came back with this:

I envision it as a "purge the heretic" destroy evil kind of thing. I want to do dmg but want that kind of feel of a heavily armored melee fighter.

RED FLAGS! The deeper I dug, the worse it got. Basically, he is looking to play a 5e Miko. I mentioned the current party alignments and got "If they arnt good, they are dead." and "I dont care if athism is allowed by law, they (the npc world they are in, not even the other players) are wrong."

I tried other things. I latched onto "I want to to dmg but want that kind of feel of a heavily armored melee fighter". Ok, its sub optimal, but look at my team. KNIGHT! GO with a knight. Or a Samurai. Or even a Duskblade or a Hexblade (both of which have expanded spell book fixes in my world). Nope. Paladin.

I dont really know what to do. Do I let him turn up, attack the party in their sleep, potentially kill one and then get killed himself? That seems unfair to the players. Do I TRY to make him fall? That seems unfair to him! Ban him from the table? That seems like an overreaction and could cause problems with one of the other players who wants him there.

Its.... sigh. I dont know any more. I already feel like I wasted my time including so many books. It took ages to get them to look outside the PHB and even then I got a 1 level dip in beguiler because they wanted to see if I was lying about trying to multiclass and a DFA. Hell, even all the races are core except the DFA (who is a raptoran). Now I am looking at a lawful stupid half elf paladin NOT focusing in diplomacy. Was it too much to ask for SOMEONE to play an incarnum class?

[exelsisxax]

Try again reaallyyy hard to explain to him how important it is for the function of the campaign that all characters can realistically get along well.
Then try explain to him how planning to kill people for no reason at all might already constitute a fall, even before he tries carrying it out.
Then try explain to him how bad he's going to get wrecked in a 1v5 situation where smite evil does nothing.
After that, nothing left but to tell him he's not invited anymore.

I think I covered all the steps.

EDIT: oh god he might actually be able to kill some of those other PCs... just pretend like that chance doesn't exist and insist that him = rekt if he tries a betrayal, because it will DEFINITELY cause a fall that steals all his features.

[Draconium]

I mentioned the current party alignments and got "If they arnt good, they are dead." and "I dont care if athism is allowed by law, they (the npc world they are in, not even the other players) are wrong."

So, this player straight-up told you he would initiate PvP if the other party members didn't build around him? Yeah, no. That is not cool. You're the DM, correct? This might come off as a bit harsh, but I would either tell him he can't play a Paladin if it's going to cause party conflict. And if the argues, tell him to walk. This is a major red flag, and playing with a problem player is never fun.

[Barstro]

I dont really know what to do. Do I let him turn up, attack the party in their sleep, potentially kill one and then get killed himself? That seems unfair to the players.

Some people just cannot take constructive criticism. Some people just cannot enjoy a peaty scotch; doesn't make them bad people.

If he attacks the party in their sleep, then I call that an automatic fall. But, really, we can go back in time a bit...

Paladins do not just wake up to be Paladins. If you think it's annoying for a player to be so restricted, think about how the PC was during all the training. If you have the temerity to do this, you can ask the player to give a background for the character and advise him that, based on the actions in his background, his character would never have completed Paladin training and/or would have fallen already. You can even go so far as to say "Your character idea is fine, but that's not a paladin. If a paladin character does those actions you state, then he WILL fall."

A Paladin gets his powers by being good and just, much how a Wizard gets his power from a spellbook. A Paladin who is no longer good and just is as useful as a Wizard who no longer has a spellbook.

[Cenric]

A Paladin gets his powers by being good and just, much how a Wizard gets his power from a spellbook. A Paladin who is no longer good and just is as useful as a Wizard who no longer has a spellbook.

But the paldin doesnt lose his bab, so he's waaayyy better
Actually wizard can use scrolls no comparison here

But on to the main question,
1) Does the paladin know he cant detect good? He can only detect evil so if the party is all neutral he has no native way to tell what they are.

2) Ask him if he would be ok with someone else in the party playing a character diametrically opposed to his PCs view point (make it clear the other character will wipe the floor with him if they fight over it). This should make him see what he's trying to do from the others point of view.

3) I dont think a guy like this could really be a paladin out of the gate, have a real sit down talk with him that this isnt 5e's paladin where you just need an oath, 3.5 is pretty strict about YOU MUST BE LG.
3.1) on an off shoot he sounds like a murder hobo, maybe you show him paladin of tyranny and slaughter and then force him to read red fel's guide to evil. I mean like sit and watch him read it, written examinations of the material covered is optional.

4) Id also explain to him that this attitude doesnt float at all at level one, if he punches an evil mayor it doesnt matter how right he was, what des matter is the 20soldiers who will be trying to murder him for assaulting their boss.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Ask him to play a paladin of tyranny, and provide the party with a set of riverine manacles and an arrest warrant?

More seriously, if you want to encourage/enforce cooperation, and talking doesn't work, just flat-out ban PvP to start with. If that doesn't get the hint across, and the player still wants to bring a horror paladin, banhammer the character concept. If the player doesn't like it, they can just not show up.


I don't know how to get your particular party to multiclass/optimize/use non-PHB stuff, but it may help to provide background (tier system, handbooks) or incentive (sensible multiclass options get a bonus feat).

[Geddy2112]

It sounds like you have two problems-one is the low op level of the group, and the other is the paladin wanting to build a character that won't fit with the party.

The first is not inherently bad or wrong, and I bet most of it is because they are new and came from 5e. It is a little harder to completely flub building characters and end up with ineffective things in 5e vs 3.5. 3.5 is a lot more complicated than 5.0 as well, so it might just be too many. You have four options to solve this.
1. Lower down to their op level. If they are having fun and don't mind, you can make equally optimized enemies to scale with their power level and play ability.
2. Gently and slowly teach them with advice and challenging, but not otherwise brutal encounters. Let them learn that what they are doing is not working, and when they realize things are not working and ask for help or get frustrated, offer help. Let them rebuild characters, feats, etc. A lot of us had to learn the hard way- I know I made bad optimization choices when I was first starting.
3. Don't pull punches and let nature take its course. Characters will die, likely TPK, and they can rebuild better. That said, they might come to hate 3.5 or not learn. If you go this route, don't do it to punish players.
4. Don't run the game. If the players don't want to learn 3.5, or OP to your level, or learn to OP, or you don't want to dial it back, then it falls under irreconcilable differences. Run 5.0, or another system, or don't DM for the group.

I suggest the second option;give them the benefit of the doubt of being new to a large and complicated system, and them being jaded to 5.0. It is a hard transition, so be understanding.

The second problem is with the player, and needs to be addressed as either "build to work with the group, or don't play". Regardless of system, game, whatnot, ttRPG's are about the group party working together. Characters can be different, disagree, even fight from time to time, but the group has to be functional. Challenging the group cohesion in or out of character is the fundamental problem of bad gaming.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to be a paladin. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be a paladin purging evil. There is nothing wrong with being a paladin who purges heretical members of the faith who use their powers for evil. There is nothing wrong with being a paladin who thinks that atheists are wrong. There is a MAJOR problem with being a toxic a-hat in the group who says "agree or die". No party should be held together, or stand, for anything like this. Any time any character of any class or alignment throws down such ultimatums they are disrupting the group. Sometimes this is good during intense scenes or climatic events in a campaign. But the paladin is joining a preestablished group, and the group gets the final say to invite him in or not. Likewise, the player is joining a preestablished gaming group, and the group gets the say. By the same token, if the group was all this kind of paladin, and the new player wanted to bring in a chaotic evil cannibal barbarian, it would be equally disruptive and dysfunctional. No player or DM should just strongarm the rest of the group to their whims and use the metagame contract to get away with it.

He can play a paladin all he wants, and go around smiting evil things. You can make encounter after encounter undead, demons, devils, and god knows what eldritch horrors for all of his smiting pleasure. In turn, he has to play a character that works with the group, or he won't play at all.

[Yael]

When people get this stuck into playing something they don't know what actually does, I let them. I give them wings. Play a Paladin of Slaugher? Go ahead! A Kensai? Ready, set Go! A Knight? Eyup!

But they are adults, and are playing a game with RULES. They will read through the rules in order to play a character class. So, basically if they were playing Monopoly, they wouldn't get out of jail just because they don't want to be there, they would unless they roll doubles or have the card, that's how the game works, that's following the rules. It should be no different when he or she falls after murdering the innocent under his wrongly interpreted version of Lawful Good and his Code of Conduct. Sure, s/he'll be a Miko, but the same way she fell, he or she will.

Don't punish them, you already warned them about what will happen, if they agree, just play along and wait until the moment it comes to take away those powers and just leave a (worse) fighter at the table.

[Luccan]

Honestly if it's their first time, I wouldn't expect them to grasp outside of the core books; they clearly don't understand some of the base mechanics anyway. As unbalanced as the classes are, as newbies, they aren't likely to purposefully break anything or notice power gaps (unless one of them is really terrible or grasps the concepts more quickly) and they'll (hopefully) figure out the smart ways to do things over time (like choosing the right spells, feats, and skills). Asking them to absorb all those books could be an issue, though not necessarily a big one, in comparison to the Paladin. That PC sounds like he wants the game to either revolve around him or he wants to be an antagonist. Try asking him WHY he wants a character that attacks his [friends/associates/fellow players], rather than a character that can get along with other people, while holding fast to his own moral principles for himself. A paladin doesn't need to force his expectations on others. He can attempt to teach what he thinks is right, but it should be gently. Alternately, maybe he thinks all lawful good characters (or just paladins) are expected to be self-righteous jerks. Try to give him some examples of that not being the case.

If that doesn't work and he decides he wants to cause problems at the table regardless, ban him. Because he'll probably cause problems no matter what class/alignment he plays.

Oh I almost forgot another thing you could try. Explain to him that the conflict/drama is supposed to come from outside the party and that any inter-party drama needs to be agreed upon by the players as part of how they want to role play (and that regardless, bringing the game to a halt over an in-character squabble is not a good idea. These people still need to delve the dungeon/kill the cultists/protect the prime material somehow)

[Albions_Angel]

Thanks all for the good advice. Curled up now with a bottle of beer.

Latest message. "I've taken your advice and wont be playing a paladin." "Oh right? You thought of a new concept? Im happy to help you find a class." "Nah, I already found one. I am going to play a demon hunter." "Uh, as in you are going to take a paladin base and stack anti-fiend feats and classes on it?" "No, the one on the wiki." "The wiki I told you was full of home brew and not to use ever?" "Yeah, I thought it looked cool."

I despair but at least I have alcohol.

[ExLibrisMortis]

For what it's worth, the various Demon Hunters I could find don't look particularly problematic, other than the Ronin (seriously: katana fanboy overload).

Also, what is it with all these people giving classes non-standard save progressions? +10/+12/+10 or +11/+11/+8 as level 20 saves just doesn't make any sense, guys!

[Kaje]

Nope, do not allow this person to use some homebrew garbage you haven't expressly allowed.

[Luccan]

Also, what is it with all these people giving classes non-standard save progressions? +10/+12/+10 or +11/+11/+8 as level 20 saves just doesn't make any sense, guys!

I've tried a couple times to build homebrew classes, none I thought were particularly good in the end, but I recommend anyone who starts to do it, begin by looking at and possibly basing your first few homebrews, on other classes. They have spell/feat/skill/save/BAB progressions that are in line with the way the game is supposed to work. If you're gonna change that, you need to have a much deeper understanding of the rules

[ZamielVanWeber]

Also, what is it with all these people giving classes non-standard save progressions? +10/+12/+10 or +11/+11/+8 as level 20 saves just doesn't make any sense, guys!

You see, they saw that Kenzer & Co gave a class 3 non standard saves and a nonstandard BAB and went YES PLEASE! If that poorly edited book can do it so can we!

[lord_khaine]

Latest message. "I've taken your advice and wont be playing a paladin." "Oh right? You thought of a new concept? Im happy to help you find a class." "Nah, I already found one. I am going to play a demon hunter." "Uh, as in you are going to take a paladin base and stack anti-fiend feats and classes on it?" "No, the one on the wiki." "The wiki I told you was full of home brew and not to use ever?" "Yeah, I thought it looked cool."

I despair but at least I have alcohol.

It sounds like even with that class he wont be able to optimize his way out of a wet paper back. So really, rejoice? The worst crisis, party drama, is now averted. Sorting out if someone is a little to strong or to weak is a lot easier.

[SangoProduction]

Let him know, strictly and harshly, "This is a TEAM game. If you don't want to play in a team, then you're not playing in our campaign."

The low op stuff is easy. Just drop the power of your creatures. Better than high op, which you really can't challenge by working with monsters.