OOTS #1239 - The Discussion Thread

[Vahnavoi]

The presumption that just "being part of the feudal order" gives you the legal right to punish criminals is somewhat ahistorical anyway.

Generally, punishing criminals with the death sentence, was limited to great lords - and even they had to hold trials. Such great lords were described as having "the power of pit and gallows".

Lesser lords generally had to refer their criminals to the great lords.

Yes and no. As noted earlier in this thread by another poster, feudal order often included the concept of an outlaw, a person who has put themselves so far outside bounds of society that they can be killed at will by anyone encountering them. Furthermore, by the rules of earlier D&D editions, a Paladin would become one of the great lords themselves as they advanced in level. The game for higher-level character involves clearing a piece of wilderness to become a ruler of some sort.

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Later editions changing how Paladins work means people playing those editions (read: most people playing D&D in the last twenty years) are not playing a game of Telephone at all. Unless you're talking about how people played decades ago or at whatever apparently thriving tables of AD&D (with people who inexplicably ignore how paladins are written) you seem to be familiar with.

The later editions themselves are part of the game of Telephone. The game designers themselves have not always been good at communicating design intent to each other, let alone to the end-users.

---

The way the Sapphire Guard is rendered would have worked under AD&D though. They are an organization with lawful authority to inflict capital punishment on evildoers. Killing innocent children causes them to lose their powers, but no one bats an eye when they Smite Evil actual adult evil people. Many of them are indeed of noble birth with all the arrogance and feudal expectations that implies, as seen in HTPGHS. Miko was not of noble birth -- so far as we know -- but she was still a samurai within her culture , and acted as a samurai, a noble, within that framework.

The way Rich displays Paladins would have worked in any version of the game, in my view, not just 3.5.

Agreed. This is what I wanted to point out.

Incidentally, I saw an interesting thing from Gygax here

[...]

In other words, even in the 1980s it was wrong to simply murderhobo a goblin village. It looks like the approach Gary has is to not put noncombatant monstrous humanoids into the game at all; the only "evil" humanoids you're going to face are armed enemies who will kill you on sight. If you do encounter them, it's up to the DM to find a way to make them someone else's problem. But there's supposed to be such an out ; you're never supposed to put your players in a position where they massacre children. It's not even supposed to be an option.

There's a certain irony; Gygax and Rich both agree on this fundamental basic morality. So why does it happen and why are we arguing about it?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

I read that too and I think you're stretching a bit. If you go back and browse through, say, 1st edition AD&D Monster Manual, you'll find that Gygax himself included a fair few non-combatant monsters to murder, including good monsters an evil character might kill for fun and profit (f.ex., intelligent giant beavers).

What's happening in the exchange you read, is that some other person said they avert the moral dilemma by just not having the non-combatant monsters there to be killed, and Gygax giving a thumbs up. Whatever Gygax himself might've done in 70s and 80s, nevermind other DMs or playgroups, is somewhat besides the point. Maybe they had non-combatant monsters for player characters to kill, maybe they didn't, either way it's a creator-approved way to play to not have them if you don't want the moral dilemma.

[Skull the Troll]

I don't generally think much of attempts to bypass problems that didn't need to be there in the first place or were in fact introduced by the people trying to bypass them. Which the entire line of argument about non-combatants of evil species fits like a glove.

Early D&D introduced a ridiculous and stupid alignment system and an even worse idea of evil species, then multiple people have tried to tackle that without producing ostensibly good characters who engage in horrific acts - but without questioning either alignment or the idea of evil species.

Exactly. If you're leaving a rules based game like miniatures wargaming behind for a role-play based game like D&D then the idea of defining a sentient beings behavior by two words is frankly, silly. The Gygax thing is just a red herring. Gygax was making a game that was closer to Warhammer than the D&D many of us play. When I DM the characters sheets don't even have an alignment on them. If something like a protection from good spell affects them, then I make a judgment based on the entirety of their behavior as to whether I think it applies.

Good and evil and law and chaos are complex subjects. They have been studied by people since the dawn of time, not since 1974 by the French. :P I get why Gygax did what he did, if you're going to have a targeted spell you need to be able to define the target. The Gygax quote above is horrifying, but actually pretty on par for how fictitious villains acted in the 70's and 80's. Look at any villain from those era's. There's zero motivation for what they do, they just twirl their mustache and tie the girl to the railroad track. People today are more nuanced, but it can be hard.

Take my favorite (mixed genre) example, would Protection from Evil help if Walter White tried to punch you? In my game it would. In another DM's maybe not. Depends on how you judge Walter White.

[Peelee]

The later editions themselves are part of the game of Telephone.

Seeing as they were released in English, the original editions are a game of telephone and do not accurately portray the language as it was in the three-digit centuries, and that just ruins it for me.

I mean, that's how we're playing this, right? Completely arbitrary metrics anchored in the past for no real reason?

[Dion]

Look, the paladin rules are very simple.

When in doubt, smite evil.

If you get the bonus, you did good.

If you don’t get the bonus, then apologize to to creature you attacked, and move on.

[gatemansgc]

Look, the paladin rules are very simple.

When in doubt, smite evil.

If you get the bonus, you did good.

If you don’t get the bonus, then apologize to to creature you attacked, and move on.

lul i like this interpretation. but then again wouldn't they use detect evil first if unsure?

except miko of course, cause she's overzealous.

[Vahnavoi]

Seeing as they were released in English, the original editions are a game of telephone and do not accurately portray the language as it was in the three-digit centuries, and that just ruins it for me.

Yes, information passed down via natural language changes. Sometimes it gets lost or the meaning gets flipped on its head in a particularly stupid way. Are we supposed to be in disagreement?

I mean, that's how we're playing this, right? Completely arbitrary metrics anchored in the past for no real reason?

They aren't completely arbitrary. Each concept, each word comes from somewhere, their genealogy can be traced and their evolution described, at least in theory if not in practice. In D&D's case, the history of this particular thing is recent enough and well-documented enough that we can sometimes name the exact guy who did a thing, their reasons for doing the thing, and then we can, from our perspective, discuss if their reasons were good or not. We can also sometimes show the exact break point when other people stopped paying attention and discuss if their reasons were good, or if they had a reason at all. What about this is supposed to be a problem?

[InvisibleBison]

The later editions themselves are part of the game of Telephone. The game designers themselves have not always been good at communicating design intent to each other, let alone to the end-users.

I suppose it's possible that later editions are different from earlier editions because their designers failed to understand the design intent of the earlier editions, but I think it's more likely that the designers understood the earlier editions' intent and simply chose to do something else.

[Peelee]

Yes, information passed down via natural language changes. Sometimes it gets lost or the meaning gets flipped on its head in a particularly stupid way. Are we supposed to be in disagreement?



They aren't completely arbitrary. Each concept, each word comes from somewhere, their genealogy can be traced and their evolution described, at least in theory if not in practice. In D&D's case, the history of this particular thing is recent enough and well-documented enough that we can sometimes name the exact guy who did a thing, their reasons for doing the thing, and then we can, from our perspective, discuss if their reasons were good or not. We can also sometimes show the exact break point when other people stopped paying attention and discuss if their reasons were good, or if they had a reason at all. What about this is supposed to be a problem?

It is arbitrary when you pick an anchor point based on what you think it should be, and it is a problem when you judge later things based upon that arbitrary anchor point. If you dislike how paladins have moved away from being inextricably tied to religion, that's perfectly fine, and you're not wrong, but once you declare all later paladins to basically be playing a game of telephone based on your personal preference start point, then you should not be surprised to get some pushback, especially when you make statements involving said later paladins.

[Vahnavoi]

It is arbitrary when you pick an anchor point based on what you think it should be, and it is a problem when you judge later things based upon that arbitrary anchor point.

Oh no, I judged a thing! How awful!

It's normal for people to evaluate things based on their values. Establish an actual issue with my judgement first before complaining of me using it.

If you dislike how paladins have moved away from being inextricably tied to religion, that's perfectly fine, and you're not wrong, but once you declare all later paladins to basically be playing a game of telephone based on your personal preference start point, then you should not be surprised to get some pushback, especially when you make statements involving said later paladins.

When I compare the evolution of game concepts to a game of Telephone, that's not a value judgement - it's an observation and comparison. The starting point and the end point have nothing to do with my preferences - we know for fact when Paladin was published for D&D, we can take any individual person and check if they can trace their understanding to the original. If not, we can trace where their understanding actually came from, then check if that source can trace it back to the original. So on and so forth. Exactly like a reversed game of Telephone.

Now, I am making a value judgement of both the original message and the current resulting message. I do think the original is more useful and consider the current result to be a perverse corruption of it. This isn't the same as saying it is bad by itself - in a game of Telephone, a weird end result doesn't prove the message itself is bad, it proves communication was bad. But for the sake of argument, lets say I think the resulting message is bad in itself. So what exactly is your gripe with or counter-argument to that? Do you prefer what the Paladin has become?

Consider: the comic OotS itself is making a point similar to mine. It is parodying how Paladins have come to be played at actual tables. In his various replies to arguments about how his Paladins aren't perfect Paladins, the Giant had more or less said "whatever the original idea was, this is what players got out of it, and I think it's bad".

[pendell]

Ugly thought: If GG at the beginning of the hobby hated the idea of Paladins massacring children and Rich Burlew in the current hobby hates massacring children , how did the signal get garbled? The only conclusion I can draw is that the game is , to some degree, being played by players who have no problem whatever with killing kids.

It's not that these people are ignorant and need educating in the ways of righteousness; it's that they know very well what morality is and have deliberately chosen to ignore it. And for them, this is "fun". Otherwise why are they doing it in their spare time?

...

By all means, let Rich try to educate them. But if they've already chosen to disregard ordinary morals and the message being hammered by fantasy writers for more than a hundred years, I don't think they're suddenly going to start listening now. That's willful , not invincible, ignorance.

It doesn't really say much good about the health of the hobby. It's why I took a ten year hiatus from it. The one bright spot is there are tables out there where these issues are considered seriously. I only hope gleeful genocide is not the hobby's default.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Peelee]

Oh no, I judged a thing! How awful!

It's normal for people to evaluate things based on their values. Establish an actual issue with my judgement first before complaining of me using it.



When I compare the evolution of game concepts to a game of Telephone, that's not a value judgement - it's an observation and comparison. The starting point and the end point have nothing to do with my preferences - we know for fact when Paladin was published for D&D, we can take any individual person and check if they can trace their understanding to the original. If not, we can trace where their understanding actually came from, then check if that source can trace it back to the original. So on and so forth. Exactly like a reversed game of Telephone.

Now, I am making a value judgement of both the original message and the current resulting message. I do think the original is more useful and consider the current result to be a perverse corruption of it. This isn't the same as saying it is bad by itself - in a game of Telephone, a weird end result doesn't prove the message itself is bad, it proves communication was bad. But for the sake of argument, lets say I think the resulting message is bad in itself. So what exactly is your gripe with or counter-argument to that? Do you prefer what the Paladin has become?

Consider: the comic OotS itself is making a point similar to mine. It is parodying how Paladins have come to be played at actual tables. In his various replies to arguments about how his Paladins aren't perfect Paladins, the Giant had more or less said "whatever the original idea was, this is what players got out of it, and I think it's bad".

All that is perfectly fine, if terribly communicated because you are not speaking in the English of the 7th century AD. Like a game of telephone.

[Vahnavoi]

Forgive me, I didn't know I was talking to 7th century Englishman.

[Cazero]

All that is perfectly fine, if terribly communicated because you are not speaking in the English of the 7th century AD. Like a game of telephone.

Morbleu, what is that about the english of 7th century? Rangez vostre table ronde, messire ! We're talking about paladins, the honored french knights of Charlemagne ! And even that is an oversimplification, we should be speaking latin right now.

[Fyraltari]

Morbleu, what is that about the english of 7th century? Rangez vostre table ronde, messire ! We're talking about paladins, the honored french knights of Charlemagne ! And even that is an oversimplification, we should be speaking latin right now.

Watch out, calling Charlemagne French while talking to an Austrian is both correct and dangerous.

[Peelee]

Forgive me, I didn't know I was talking to 7th century Englishman.

Again, if you know of some cabal of players who exclusively play AD&D paladins but play them deliberately incorrectly, and are specifically talking about them, then that is a good rebuttal. If not, well, I'm simply going by your own logic. If you dislike the result, that's hardly my fault.

And even that is an oversimplification, we should be speaking latin right now.

How vulgar.

[RatElemental]

Good and evil and law and chaos are complex subjects. They have been studied by people since the dawn of time, not since 1974 by the French. :P I get why Gygax did what he did, if you're going to have a targeted spell you need to be able to define the target. The Gygax quote above is horrifying, but actually pretty on par for how fictitious villains acted in the 70's and 80's. Look at any villain from those era's. There's zero motivation for what they do, they just twirl their mustache and tie the girl to the railroad track. People today are more nuanced, but it can be hard.

Take my favorite (mixed genre) example, would Protection from Evil help if Walter White tried to punch you? In my game it would. In another DM's maybe not. Depends on how you judge Walter White.

These are the kinds of reasons why I've been kicking around the idea of having the alignment detection and hate spells just be, essentially, "detect ally" or "detect enemy" but misnamed by the mortal spellcasters who first discovered/invented them. That does bring a few other problems though, for one it'd have to involve pretty messed up criteria for who counts as an enemy.

[danielxcutter]

These are the kinds of reasons why I've been kicking around the idea of having the alignment detection and hate spells just be, essentially, "detect ally" or "detect enemy" but misnamed by the mortal spellcasters who first discovered/invented them. That does bring a few other problems though, for one it'd have to involve pretty messed up criteria for who counts as an enemy.

I have been thinking of something like that for one of my pet projects actually; for example anti-demon spells... aren't necessarily inherent good in a setting where demons aren't any better or worse than other types of supernatural entities.

[Vahnavoi]

Again, if you know of some cabal of players who exclusively play AD&D paladins but play them deliberately incorrectly, and are specifically talking about them, then that is a good rebuttal.

I could find such a group if I wanted to, but why would I? A game of Telephone does not requite deliberate errors.

If not, well, I'm simply going by your own logic. If you dislike the result, that's hardly my fault.

You are completely correct that by my logic, the entire evolution of natural language can be likened to a multi-generational game of telephone. It doesn't follow we need to go back the chain all the way back to 7th century England when talking about D&D, specifically. Though if someone wants to make a point about Charlemagne's Paladins and how they in turn lead to Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions, which in turn lead to D&D Paladin, and how the concept changed in those transitions, that would be an interesting argument.

[Thermophille]

These are the kinds of reasons why I've been kicking around the idea of having the alignment detection and hate spells just be, essentially, "detect ally" or "detect enemy" but misnamed by the mortal spellcasters who first discovered/invented them. That does bring a few other problems though, for one it'd have to involve pretty messed up criteria for who counts as an enemy.

Might I recommend Pathfinder's optional alignment rules? It makes morality relative, and while I'm not a relativist myself, allowing different players at my table to get different readings from the same NPC when they cast Detect Evil is fun for me to run as a DM.

[Peelee]

I could find such a group if I wanted to, but why would I? A game of Telephone does not requite deliberate errors.



You are completely correct that by my logic, the entire evolution of natural language can be likened to a multi-generational game of telephone. It doesn't follow we need to go back the chain all the way back to 7th century England when talking about D&D, specifically. Though if someone wants to make a point about Charlemagne's Paladins and how they in turn lead to Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions, which in turn lead to D&D Paladin, and how the concept changed in those transitions, that would be an interesting argument.

Look dude. You're talking about paladins in the story, which is explicitly 3.5, in terms of Paladins from AD&D, which has nothing to do with the story, and then complaining about it because it's different. If you don't like me pointing out how that is more than a bit silly, well, that's your own thing.

[Bilbo Baggins]

Look dude. You're talking about paladins in the story, which is explicitly 3.5, in terms of Paladins from AD&D, which has nothing to do with the story, and then complaining about it because it's different. If you don't like me pointing out how that is more than a bit silly, well, that's your own thing.

(bolded for emphasis)

I don't want to speak for Vahnavoi, but I don't think anyone was talking about paladins in OotS at all. It just started as a discussion about Gygax's statements on what horrible actions one could commit and still be considered Lawful Good.

[Peelee]

(bolded for emphasis)

I don't want to speak for Vahnavoi, but I don't think anyone was talking about paladins in OotS at all. It just started as a discussion about Gygax's statements on what horrible actions one could commit and still be considered Lawful Good.

Bolding mine/

Paraphrased more shortly than above, Paladins were written to be sworn member of a knightly order - lower nobility at minimum - and beholden to religious institutions as well. They were agents of the state, or more correctly, part of the feudal order. The Saphire Guard in the comic is a fairly good example.

The idea of a lone wolf Paladin dishing out vigilante justice without any such ties is a weird corruption of the idea born out of a metagame of played games by people who didn't like, adhere to or even understand the original concept.

That was the first post I responded to, specifically because it was talking about paladins in OotS. The Sapphire Guard members largely happen to be religious but that doesn't seem to be due to being paladins; that seems due to being Azurite, who as a people seem incredibly religious overall.

[Dion]

So I’ve been re-reading Odysseus.

Wow, what an immense amount of casual piracy.

“Well, after the war we were on the way home and got hungry, so we stopped off to steal cheese from a Cyclops. Oh boy did he get mad! So of course we blinded him.”

Anyhow, I’m not going to think too hard about the moral behavior of some people who called themselves paladins more than a thousand years ago. Because I can virtually guarantee that by today’s standards, they behaved abhorrently.

[danielxcutter]

So I’ve been re-reading Odysseus.

Wow, what an immense amount of casual piracy.

“Well, after the war we were on the way home and got hungry, so we stopped off to steal cheese from a Cyclops. Oh boy did he get mad! So of course we blinded him.”

Anyhow, I’m not going to think too hard about the moral behavior of some people who called themselves paladins more than a thousand years ago. Because I can virtually guarantee that by today’s standards, they behaved abhorrently.

Didn’t the cyclops trap them in his home to eat them?

[Dion]

Didn’t the cyclops trap them in his home to eat them?

Yep. They broke into the Cyclops house and helped themselves to his stuff, and then waited for him to come home to demand even more stuff.

And he was like, “hey, I have a different idea. How about I eat you.”

Now, the Cyclops idea was certainly bad by anyone’s standards. But that doesn’t make Odysseus into the good guy in the story.

[KorvinStarmast]

The only conclusion I can draw is that the game is , to some degree, being played by players who have no problem whatever with killing kids.

Most DMs when I played, as a teenager or a young adult, DIDN"T have the enemies be kids. A notable exception was a DM I had who'd been to seminary, and he made a big deal about the bugbear young in the caves of chaos, and the moral issue of slaying monsters.

Spoiler: Gotcha DMs

Show

This campaign was in about 1981. My ranger, whose raison d'etre was to have special enemies, like bugbears, slain agreed with the paladin to tie them up and leave them be. DM played the gotcha game. As we came back, they had all chewed through their bonds. So I killed one of them, and told the other three "flee to the east if you don't want to die also." DM rolled a die, and the little bug bears fled. He then tried to play the moral dilemma game with me, and the entire table, not just me, pushed back at him. Classic case of "what kind of game are we playing?" discussion that basically ended the session. As the paladin player noted before we stopped for the evening, "If you wanna play {effin} mind games with us, I'm asking you to stop. We get enough of that crap at work."

It's not that these people are ignorant and need educating in the ways of righteousness; it's that they know very well what morality is and have deliberately chosen to ignore it. And for them, this is "fun". Otherwise why are they doing it in their spare time?

Indeed, we wanted more game, and I suppose more war game, and he wanted to play moral argument that evening.

Spoiler: more on that session

Show

The very premise if that module was that it was, in a very war gamey sense, based on an existiential conlflict of repelling monsters from their efforts to disrupt the attempts of the humans to settle those lands on the borderlands. (Rather like the problems with the Wain Riders in Middle Earth coming from Rhun, or like the nomads of the steps encountering settled lands in Eastern Europe, et cetera) . That's excatly what, in AD&D 1e, Rangers are all about.

The following session, we went back to trying to clear out the caves, and trying to get various groups of monsters to fight each other by offering them our assistance. (which is IMO the smarter way to clear out the caves). The back stab we got from that {effin} cleric when we got back to town after the third session cost us two PC deaths. To a certain degree, the most dangerous creatures to us by that point were two humans in the keep, not the monsters in the caves.
It's a very interesting module, that's for sure.

Morbleu, what is that about the english of 7th century?

It was not French, it was a Germanic / Saxon tongue IIRC fused with the Angle-ish Germanic tongue and of course there was some Celtic (Briton) and Latin stuff floating about ... but it wasn't French. I don't recall the French impact on English becoming profound until after 1066. (Though with trade and how noble families intermarried, it was probably at least somewhat there).

We're talking about paladins, the honored french knights of Charlemagne!

8th Century....

Spoiler: when?

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The Paladins (or Twelve Peers) are twelve fictional knights of legend, the foremost members of Charlemagne's court in the 8th century. They first appear in the medieval (12th century) chanson de geste cycle of the Matter of France, where they play a similar role to the Knights of the Round Table in Arthurian romance.[1]

You are completely correct that by my logic, the entire evolution of natural language can be likened to a multi-generational game of telephone. It doesn't follow we need to go back the chain all the way back to 7th century England when talking about D&D, specifically.

Correct. We do have one poster hrophila, who could probably converse in that tongue, but most of us can't.

Though if someone wants to make a point about Charlemagne's Paladins and how they in turn lead to Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions, which in turn lead to D&D Paladin, and how the concept changed in those transitions, that would be an interesting argument.

You left out the literary influence of the Arthurian Cycle (Knights in Shining Armor) on Paladins (lay on hands, Lancelot, Morte d Artur IIRC, after a knight in a tourny was felled by his lance) and the Historical Templars (as well as the knights Hospitlar which informed the original Cleric) but we need not dwell on that. It wasn't just Holger Dansk / Oiger the Dane.

Look dude. You're talking about paladins in the story, which is explicitly 3.5, in terms of Paladins from AD&D, which has nothing to do with the story, .

That's not quite correct, though. Paladins in 3.5 did not arise ex nihilo. They were a 25 year old trope/archetype that was first fully fleshed out in AD&D 1e. (Greyhawk was an 80% solution that you can see went final in PHB AD&D 1e). How paladins are and were perceived was already well grounded in AD&D. (And OoTS wise, Haley's dad was a 1st edition thief, so at least Soon is an AD&D 1e paladin. And he founded the Sapphire Guard. )
Granted, WoTC did something novel: anyone could choose to play a Paladin in that edition, unlike AD&D where you had to qualify for it by a bunch of better than average die rolls ... so in that respect, 3.5 edition undid a crucial feature of paladins: their rarity.

So I’ve been re-reading Odysseus.
Wow, what an immense amount of casual piracy.

Why are you disparaging against the ancient Greeks? It's their story. Your cultural condescension is noted.
(On a related note, I wrote a paper in college on the Odyssey, with a particular focus on the leadership skills of The Protagonist. TLDR: my conclusion was that, by 20th century standards of leadership, he was rated way down near the bottom. I got an A on the paper. The prof noted in red a strong agreement on my low scoring with particular regards to him losing all of his ships and all of his men by the end of his journey home from Troy...paper written in the late 70's. Was I ahead of my time?).

[Vahnavoi]

@Peelee & Bilbo Baggins: the thing you are arguing about was already addressed, with pendell more or less making my point for me:

The way the Sapphire Guard is rendered would have worked under AD&D though. They are an organization with lawful authority to inflict capital punishment on evildoers. Killing innocent children causes them to lose their powers, but no one bats an eye when they Smite Evil actual adult evil people. Many of them are indeed of noble birth with all the arrogance and feudal expectations that implies, as seen in HTPGHS. Miko was not of noble birth -- so far as we know -- but she was still a samurai within her culture , and acted as a samurai, a noble, within that framework.

The way Rich displays Paladins would have worked in any version of the game, in my view, not just 3.5.

KorvinStarmast's comment is equally relevant:

That's not quite correct, though. Paladins in 3.5 did not arise ex nihilo. They were a 25 year old trope/archetype that was first fully fleshed out in AD&D 1e. (Greyhawk was an 80% solution that you can see went final in PHB AD&D 1e). How paladins are and were perceived was already well grounded in AD&D. (And OoTS wise, Haley's dad was a 1st edition thief, so at least Soon is an AD&D 1e paladin. And he founded the Sapphire Guard. )
Granted, WoTC did something novel: anyone could choose to play a Paladin in that edition, unlike AD&D where you had to qualify for it by a bunch of better than average die rolls ... so in that respect, 3.5 edition undid a crucial feature of paladins: their rarity.

How Paladins were played in actual games during 3.x era did not stem from just what 3.x edition said about Paladins. How they were played, as well as the whole 3.x edition itself, were influenced by earlier versions of Paladins.

I'm talking of 1st Edition AD&D, because that was (IIRC) the last major edition put together by Gygax, and people were talking about Gygax's opinions. I don't consider 1st edition an arbitrary stopping point for such discussions.

Now, if you want to follow my logic (instead of just making fun of it), you can discuss earlier inspirations for Paladins, including Charlemagne, King Arthur, Poulson and whatever I might be forgetting. You can, if you want to, make the argument that Gygax screwed something up when translating these concepts into a game. It's a valid line of critique.

---

TL;DR: I'm not complaining about the comic mucking up Paladins; I was merely using the comic as common reference point. I'm complaining about actual D&D designers and players mucking up Paladins.

[Riftwolf]

Look, the paladin rules are very simple.

When in doubt, smite evil.

If you get the bonus, you did good.

If you don’t get the bonus, then apologize to to creature you attacked, and move on.

Just an addendum to this, but can Smite Evil be converted into non-lethal damage?
Just wondering if you could use it for the secret unlockable alignment Actual Good, which doesn't treat every fight as a fight to the death, is perfectly fine with taking prisoners and letting villains live, and will look for peaceful answers to problems over violent cycles.

[Petrocorus]

It was not French, it was a Germanic / Saxon tongue IIRC fused with the Angle-ish Germanic tongue and of course there was some Celtic (Briton) and Latin stuff floating about ... but it wasn't French. I don't recall the French impact on English becoming profound until after 1066. (Though with trade and how noble families intermarried, it was probably at least somewhat there).

I don't really think French could have had a major influence on English before 1066. It really is Guillaume's conquest that made it the language of the English nobility.
By the 7th century, French was not the language of France any way, it was only the language of the French-Center region, i.e Paris, Chartres, Orléans. Even most of the nobility were probably not speaking it but rather regional languages and Latin.
By the 8th and 9th century, Charlemagne's court was not even in Paris but in Aix-la-Chapelle (now Aachen in Germany)
By 1066, French was probably much more common among the nobility but even then significant part of it did not speak French, though big parts of the northern half of France had adopted it or were speaking a tongue really close to it.

You left out the literary influence of the Arthurian Cycle (Knights in Shining Armor) on Paladins (lay on hands, Lancelot, Morte d Artur IIRC, after a knight in a tourny was felled by his lance) and the Historical Templars (as well as the knights Hospitlar which informed the original Cleric) but we need not dwell on that. It wasn't just Holger Dansk / Oiger the Dane.

The lay-on-hands also exist in French folklore, legend say the Kings of France could cure diseases by laying their hands on people. IIRC, even by the 17th century, French kings were still blessing the diseased some times per year.

[Jasdoif]

Just an addendum to this, but can Smite Evil be converted into non-lethal damage?

Certainly. If the attack deals nonlethal damage, the extra points of damage from smiting would also be nonlethal.