View Single Post

Thread: Paladins as villains?

  1. - Top - End - #28
    Ettin in the Playground
    Join Date
    Jul 2011

    Default Re: Paladins as villains?

    Quote Originally Posted by paladinofshojo View Post
    I always had the idea of setting a paladin up as the antagonist for my campaign..... When I say antagonist I don't just mean being a religious zealot who sees the PCs as "infidels"..... I want to create a character who could be considered somewhat evil while still maintaining a chivalrous air around him..... incredibly ruthless, suave and cultured.... Of course he's going to be from nobility, so that he'll have a superiority complex, but I also want him coming from a family that is powerful even among noble standings, further inflating his ego. Also a bit of a hypocrite, he doesn't particularly enjoy killing innocents but has no problem with sending his minions forth to do so if it's convenient for him.

    He should also have paladin powers....just to be a deconstruction of all that a paladin is. He should be incredibly handsome and charismatic....

    I'm having trouble setting up a meeting between the PCs and this villain though......
    Well the issue is that in D&D, a Paladin is a representation of the forces of good and law. What you're looking to deconstruct is the perception of Paladins or possibly the idea that people can be good, which is a far far worse thing. To have a Paladin (at least one in the traditional sense) be other than good is an attempt to deconstruct the very idea of good. Now there are worlds without morality, D&D is not one of them. A Paladin cannot by definition be amoral, therefore a deconstruction of a Paladin should represent the flaws in the idea of Paladin.
    How you ask, well give the Paladin flaws, make him an alcoholic, or a deadbeat, or a somebody who likes to kill. Give him something to struggle against so that his morality means something. But to deconstruct the idea of good itself is a very difficult and philosophically involved principle. I personally would not play with somebody that tried to in essence break the game world in that way, and I am concerned that some of your players might feel the same way. Now you could have an LE antipaladin who still believed himself to be a paladin, or a CE antipaladin, who hid his chaos under a veneer so that he could get away with his vile and heinous crimes (after all chaotic evil isn't chaotic stupid anymore than lawful good is lawful stupid, and even CE people are capable of complex plains and ruses). But in game terms you cannot make someone good who is not.
    Last edited by AMFV; 2011-09-17 at 08:54 PM.
    My Avatar is Glimtwizzle, a Gnomish Fighter/Illusionist by Cuthalion.