Sebastian the third's page

First, I'd like to thank you for the amazing work you've done there. I poured hours reading and re-reading this guide, it's absolutely fantastic.

As an avid tiefling fan, I'd like to point out a couple of things that might worth noting in the guide:
1. The tiefling favored class bonus is amazing, easily 10 times better than just taking 1hp per level.
2. The racial feat Ancestral Scorn combines really well with cornugon smash. For a castigator paladin who has feats to spare, that'd give free-action potentially debilitating debuff vs evil-outsiders that you can attempt multiple times per round. Worth 20% of the feasts of a castigator, and as a paladin you WANT to be the one confronting the evil outsiders..

Option 1: put 4 in con, play a rogue, arrive butt-naked to battle and provoke by attempting to punch the meanest-looking foe around. Spend the rest of the 1st session rolling up decent stats. The chances or rolling a 4 again are minuscule.

Option 2: Show option 1 to the GM, and allow his good judgement to let you reroll your stats.

This is what I was going for in my WotR paladin, before the campaign went belly up:

Pitborn Tiefling Paladin, Omen trait, power attack+cornugon smash+ancestral scorn.
With mythicly high Cha and iterative attacks, you can keep all demons around you shaken and NAUSEATED.

Other than that, no need for oath of vengeance with mythic smite. you've got plenty of mythic points and you'd find nothing that'd give you more bang for your buck like mythic smite. By endgame your CHA should be in the neighborhood of +15. Enough to tempt dipping into lore oracle for sidestep secret.

After discussing with my partner, who's more knowledgeable in the Arthurian legend than I am, turns out that the Arthurian Knights DID go out to battle armies, dragons, witches and orcs. They just sparred with other knights because their code called not to kill Christians, everyone else was fair game. My bad.

You guys keep mentioning Arthurian Knights as THE model of paladins. While I agree that they can be A model, they are far from the only ideal of paladins.

Arthurian knights would go out, spar against other knights, then go back to the round table to tell tales of their deeds.

Paladins in pathfinder are out adventuring, violently killing sentient beings on a regular basis (There are exceptions to this, but most tables dislike the "do not kill" paladins so I'm glossing over them), looting their corpses and hoping to do promote good in the process.

In that, I think they are more akin to crusaders than Arthurian Knights.
Crusaders were not afraid to dirty their hands, since most sins were negligible to the holy act of the crusade. They would catapult rotten body parts into besieged cities to spread diseases, pillage and whore, knowing that it is all a part of carrying out their holy mission. Wars are a dirty business.

I think that if the church in the real world can overlook such behavior of its holy knights, the varied religions of Galorian (that are, in most part, less fussy and judgmental) can easily disregard whoring, drinking, swearing and other acts that are irrelevant to the good fight.

Edit: After discussing with my partner, who's more knowledgeable in the Arthurian legend than I am, turns out that the Arthurian Knights DID go out to battle armies, dragons, witches and orcs. They just sparred with other knights because their code called not to kill Christians, everyone else was fair game. My bad.

I speculate the gods might judge him on his personal merits as opposed to solely an absolute standard, so long as he toed the line on the stuff you say he does.

Might be so, but that's afterlife stuff that will happen after I finish playing him, so it bothers me little. It also brings an altogether different discussion about good and evil, and whether an inherently evil creature (one whose physiology/brain chemistry dictates evilness) can be redeemed by acting against his impulses. It's fun to muse on- but irrelevant for a discussion of how to play a paladin/paladin's code.

Thank you, I'm pretty proud of that concept, if you don't mind me saying. It came after a long thought about how to play a holy-warrior type who's class' dump-stats are wisdom and intelligence.

I have a bully paladin that used to be a street-orphan gang leader. He then bought into the Church of Iomedae crap about good and evil, and that if he continues with his wicked ways he'll end up in hell/abyss. Thus he follows a strict code of what to do (slaughter evil wherever you find it) and what not to do (Acts that are considered "evil" or "unlawful" by the church of Iomedae). He does that from an entirely egotistical reason- the quality of his afterlife- and no internal inclination for good or law. But in all effect his acts are that of a lawful good person. It does not matter that he's a bully that enjoys the power he has over his victims, who gets a kick out of violently butchering other sentient beings, because he inflicts his twisted pleasure over evil creatures, which is what his church deems "good". In fact, his acts were such an exemplary execution of the ideals of Iomedae that she blessed him with the grace of her paladins.

He won't torture captives ("Cause that's 'gainst the rule of'a church, dont'chu know?") but give them clean death. He has absolutely no problem with other party members torturing anyone ("If y'r fine with ending in 'ell, enjoy yr'self bro! But that's a no-no fo' miself").

I give him of an example of playing a paladin by the CRB that's somewhat different and not the usual stick in the mud. There's a multitude of ways you can take the LG/Code of Conduct and play it in the way that you and your table enjoy most. Be creative and have fun, that's what this game is all about..