Mum-Rob the Ever-Living's page

Some quick questions folks - I think I got lost in the 'fast-and-heavy' on the last page. =)

I've downloaded the paladin upgrade PDF and read through it, and gone over it with my lone paladin player... who had a question or two that I can't answer (and don't see answers to in the thread here after some looking), so, in the time-honored tradition of seeing what others think....

1) The revision states that the paladin's mount can be 'called to them' once a day. Where is it outside of that? The revision doesn't state, so it could be anyplace from wherever it was last left to a celestial plane. Is there some hint of designer intent that I've missed in reading?

2) Can they send it back when they're done, or is it now stuck wherever they are until called again? Can they, at 9th level, use their second daily summons to send it back, or is the transport one-way only?

3) Would it be possible to put some thought into mounts suitable for urban paladins? Warhorses are all well and good, but they don't do much for you in a back alley in Absalom, or a crowded street where they're not even going to fit. I'm not sure what can be done about it to be honest - at least not for human-sized characters, anyway, although I can see several possibilities for, say, halfling, dwarf, or gnome paladins beyond the boar and dog listed just on the animal companion revision list.

Thanks!

Some quick questions folks - I've downloaded the paladin upgrade PDF and read through it, and gone over it with my lone paladin player... who had a question or two that I can't answer (and don't see answers to in the thread here after some looking), so, in the time-honored tradition....

1) The revision states that the paladin's mount can be 'called to them' once a day. Where is it outside of that? The revision doesn't state, so it could be anyplace from wherever it was last left to a celestial plane.

2) Can they send it back when they're done, or is it now stuck wherever they are until called again? Can they, at 9th level, use their second daily summons to send it back, or is the transport one-way only?

3) Would it be possible to put some thought into mounts suitable for urban paladins? Warhorses are all well and good, but they don't do much for you in a back alley in Absalom, or a crowded street where they're not even going to fit. I'm not sure what can be done about it to be honest - at least not for human-sized characters, anyway, although I can see several possibilities for, say, halfling, dwarf, or gnome paladins beyond the boar and dog listed just on the animal companion revision list.

Thanks!

I just got in the mail and even if there's some conversion necessary (which I'd have to do for Pathfinder anyway) it's well worth the full cover price just for the setting information - let alone the *2.00* that Paizo wants.

Just wanted to ask this:

Anyone here ever have trouble with DMs who demand that all LG types, especially Paladins, must be played as either morons or bigots and then penalize the player when they don't "get it right"?

Let me assure you, it gets real tired, real fast.

See the extremely long post I just posted, Eric. In short, and sadly, yes, yes, I have.

In my experience - and I speak specifically of paladins as a class and characters of Lawful Good alignment here - the single biggest problem to seeing more of both in the games that I've played in can be summed up simply: bad examples.

To explain and illustrate the paladin part, I offer an actual example from a published (non-Paizo) product, Dramatis Personae: Campaign Ready NPCs by Archangel Studios. In it, they offer up a paladin npc who, straight off the page, has the established practice of walking into bars (and presumably any other establishment he visits), using his Detect Evil power, and then more or less mindlessly attacking anyone that registers until they are slain.

I don't know how that would work in anyone else's game, but in mine it's a one-way ticket to jail since no paladin could lie about having done it and remain a paladin (presuming he'd somehow managed to keep his paladinhood after a few stops in the first place). This kind of 'convert or die,' 'my way or the highway,' 'kill them all and the gods will know their own,' and so forth behavior is a staple of the way that I've seen paladins portrayed in campaigns and source material since I started this hobby (which was, to give you an idea of how long I've been seeing it, in 1976). Too many people seem to think that this sort of rigid, unyeilding, famaticism is what's required to be a paladin, and after a few encounters with guys like this, most parties will (understandably) turn around and walk the other way when they see one coming.

The Lawful Good issue is a simlar sort of thing: far too many people seem to think that having that alignment turns you into either a killjoy inquisitor from Torqumada's cohort that is out to ruin everyone's fun (a frequent use of the alignment in published material), or someone with an IQ of about 45 that gets everyone into trouble because they refuse to believe the worst of anyone (more often encountered in a player in my experience). It's been so bad in some groups I've gamed with that 'Lawful Stupid' or 'Awful Good' were the way the alignment was actually referred to by players and the DM.

Now neither of those ways off viewing the alignment are, in my opinion, accurate, as they both come from extremist viewpoint ends of the alignment line. But both of them can kill the fun in a game faster than you can say "Jack Robinson."

The problem is in the way the alignment and class are presented to and by the players - because gamers have to a real extent been conditioned to think of paladins as rigid, unyeilding killjoys, and people with Lawful Good alignment as either idiots or fanatics out to make everyone into a Stepford Wife 'for the good of their soul' then players avoid them both because of simple avoidance. They're like Pavlov's dogs, reacting because of a stimulus, no matter if the stimulus is accurate or not.