Paladins, their alignment and a modest proposal

[Andarion]

Let me be honest first, I hate alignment past good/neutral/evil, I can work with it though.

Here is my suggestion about paladins and their alignment. I define paladin as a servant of their god. In another thread, it was discussed changing smite evil to smite evil/chaos. Interesting idea, got shot down. This got me thinking, if a paladin cannot smite chaos, and only evil, why do they HAVE to be lawful good?

My suggestion, change the paladin alignment requirements. Instead of just LG, change it to similar to the clerics, any good, but must be of the same alignment as their god. This way, the alignment is still extremely strict, but not as strict. Now they are better servants of their gods, even more so than clerics who can be one step away, and they are now able to uphold their gods code of conduct and strive for their god's goals.

[lastknightleft]

Andarion wrote:

Let me be honest first, I hate alignment past good/neutral/evil, I can work with it though.

Here is my suggestion about paladins and their alignment. I define paladin as a servant of their god. In another thread, it was discussed changing smite evil to smite evil/chaos. Interesting idea, got shot down. This got me thinking, if a paladin cannot smite chaos, and only evil, why do they HAVE to be lawful good?

My suggestion, change the paladin alignment requirements. Instead of just LG, change it to similar to the clerics, any good, but must be of the same alignment as their god. This way, the alignment is still extremely strict, but not as strict. Now they are better servants of their gods, even more so than clerics who can be one step away, and they are now able to uphold their gods code of conduct and strive for their god's goals.

So we should all have to be forced to play paladins by your standards? I'd have to change my knight who happens to have some quasi-spiritual powers because of his devotion to the chivalric code. To a Paladin of Some god or the other.

Seriously I understand that you like your paladins to be connected to a god in some way, but it specifically says in their block that they don't have to be and by implementing your change you are ruining my character concept and forcing me to play by your games standard.

No solution to fixing the paladin should be about tieing them closer to a god or religion.

[seekerofshadowlight]

Paladin are LG that's it. you wanna be a holy warrior take a cleric. [Holy warrior alt from the campaign setting is killer for that.]

[Andarion]

Alright first, Lastknight, where on earth do you think I said EVERYONE should play a paladin?

"Seriously I understand that you like your paladins to be connected to a god in some way, but it specifically says in their block that they don't have to be and by implementing your change you are ruining my character concept and forcing me to play by your games standard."

And here is my rebuttal,

Divine Bond (Sp): Upon reaching 5th level, a paladin forms a divine bond with her god. pg 32 PFRPG Beta and read on and there are numerous mentions of deities. So, they are tied to a god. I saw no where in the whole explanation where it said they are not tied to a god, now I will give you that it no where said they had to be tied to a god, but all their abilities, for the most part, mention that a paladin receives his/her powers from a deity.

Moving on, the lawful chaotic alignment has always been ambiguous. Why must a monk be lawful because they are dedicated to studying their art, and yet wizards can be any alignment even though they are required to dedicate their lives to the study of magic? (these explanations had to be taken from 3.5 rulebook, since PFRG has none) To further explain away alignment based on law/chaos, 3.5 had the complete scoundrel which gave examples of lawful good scoundrels...who turned out to be nothing but chaotic good. So even the people who came up with the rules for alignment basically did away with them. The only explanation I ever saw for alignment restrictions was years ago in a forum when some math monkeys were creating the point limit for PrC creation.

Since I believe I have adequately shown paladin's ties to gods, and the wishy washy state that is the law/chaos alignment; here is some examples of what I was thinking with my original post.

Iomedae LG - Goddess of valor, rulership, justice, honor...quintessential paladin god

Torag LG - god of the forge, protection, strategy... great paladin god for dwarves

Sarenrae NG - goddess of the sun, redemption, honesty, healing... neutral good but a great god for a paladin who seeks out and destroys the undead and attempts to bring evil people back to good

Shelyn NG - goddess of beauty, art, love, music... hard to think of a good pally reason for her but I am not the greatest RPer

Desna CG - Goddess of dreams, stars, travelers, and luck... great deity for a paladin who dedicates themselves to keeping the roads clear of monsters and bandits

Cayden Cailean CG - God of freedom, wine, bravery...In my opinion a awesome god for a paladin, who better to worship if you crusade against tyrants?

I believe that with the diversity of gods in the good spectrum of the pantheon, there is no reason not to allow them to be of other alignments. It doesn't really even make the class less restrictive, if they must pick a deity, and stay at that god's alignment or lose all class abilities as normal, they are still required to stay at one alignment.

[lastknightleft]

I didn't say you said everyone should play a paladin I said you said every paladin has to attach themselves to a god. I play a Knight (he has class levels as paladin) who gets his paladin powers from his virtue and devotion to the chivalric code, there's no god involved. Tieing a Palladins allignment to his chosen gods means he has to choose a god, which he never had to do in 3.5 a paladin can just be a righteous warrior of virtue and your recomendation turns him into a holy warrior of a god, that's fine for your gods and easy to houserule in. For mine I'd have to ignore the rules. which since we are playtesting, my DM won't allow me to do.

And that was an addition by Jason that wasn't in the original 3.5 (where the descriptions of the class are drawn from) I've allready made a post to him asking him to rewrite it to make the divine bond just a celestially granted boon and not a My god gives me this.

[Selgard]

The problem is that it isn't as simple as "they can be any alignment" or "any good alignment".

Lawful Good does not = Paladin. Paladin = Lawful Good.

Or, Not all Lawful Good people are paladin, but all Paladin Must Be Lawful Good.

Not only that- but *in addition to* being lawful good, they ALSO have to uphold the Paladin Code.

A Chaotic Good of any class, having a code to live by and be beholden to, goes against being Chaotic. Chaotic is by its very nature care free, not beholden to any rigid hierarchy. (Whether they are good or evil is aside from the point of whether or not they structure their lives around a rigid creed or code),

This means either ignoring the Code entirely- which actually creates a marginally more powerful paladin (one who isn't restricted by the code) or it necessitates creating some other code, one that's more in tune with a chaotic alignment. What that would be, I have no idea- since any creed or code to follow that rigidly would go against being chaotic.

I would second the idea that if you want to be an "evil paladin" then Cleric is probably the class for you. Your -character- doesn't have to consider himself a priest, afterall. Cleric is just a set of abilities. He can be the (un)holy crusader with a special steed, going out to.. do whatever it is his chosen deity wants him to do.

-S

[kessukoofah]

GAH! this again! Why are some people so insistant on Divine Magic coming from deities (besides the obvious tie of divine-god)? why can't abstract forces grant magic and powers just as well as a God? I know in the forgotten realms and other settings it was said that Gods give magic, but those are settings, not core rules. If Nature can grant magic to druids, why can't the Sun give magic to Paladins or clerics? why can't the force of Law? No one is yet to explain it besides "we never did it that way, and the setting prohibits it." can someone please tell me why? In fact, it would make more sense to have his magic being granted by the Forces of Law and Good, since Gods have agendas and are not perfect. the forces of Law and Good would be uncorruptable fonts of power.

I'm holding off on the question of Alignment, since that would get me even angrier. and I'll just houserule it my own way anyway, and therefore I don't feel comfortable adding to that discussion.

[primemover003]

Sorry but even as popular as this idea might be a Paladin is and always should be a LG defender of the realm, a shining stalwart of goodness and order. That's what a D&D Paladin has always been and to change that breaks not only backward compatibility but it kills a kitten too. No Paladin would condone such actions.

If you find the Law/Chaos axis so nebulous maybe you should do some reading on the subject. Check out the eternal champion (Elric and Corum especially) series by Moorecock or dig up the juicy tidbits on the war between the Queen of Choas and the Wind Dukes of Aqaa from greyhawk lore. Or the Tales from the Infinite Staircase from Planescape was a whole super module based on the struggle of law and chaos!

Law vs Chaos is an easy dichotomy to exploit. Here's an Idea I had for a dragon themed campaign I ran. The PC's were a band chartered by the crown of a kingdom to help settle the frontier. The PC's were following a lead on an escaped criminal to a lawless River town where sightings of a blue dragon had been made. The town while rough, was still a beacon of civilization in the frontier, making it a perfect target for my band of eco-terrorists, the Circle of Skyfire. The Circle was composed of warriors, a storm themed Druid, a javelin of lightning specialized ranger, and a sundering Barbarian wielding an adamantine greatclub. They basically let loose various magical beasts in the town (cockatrices, stirges, etc), set fires, and attacked caravans and barges moving up river from the coasts. The Circle of course worshipped the Blue dragon they called Skyfire. Wilderness vs. Civilization. Chaos vs. Order.

--Vrock the Vote!

[Selgard]

As an idea or theoretical construct for conversation I have no problem with a character worshipping an ideal.

In practice however it usually turns out that all a character really wants to do is cherry pick some domain powers while not really attaching himself to anything meaningful.

Now, I'm not accusing you all of any of that- it's just a problem that keeps coming up. "I worship [x] and the [x] that I worship lets me do [y] and since the player created it, it's relatively difficult to have a coherent argument with them about it.
Yes, DM's can do it- but why should they be forced to, when there are already established and wide spread pantheons about it?

The other problem is that "Law" or "Order" or "freedom" can't bestow anything because it isn't intelligent. It isn't so much a factor of perfection or imperfection as it is an issue of sentience. And once you grant it sentience, then you are granting it a will, and thus you've created another deity even if you refuse to call it such.

if "Freedom" is an ideal I can draw power from, but "Freedom" isn't intelligent, then "freedom" can't take my power away or tell me I'm doing something wrong. I am in effect, "free" to use my power however I want. In effect, I can escape some consequences of being a cleric just by Not choosing a deity to draw my power from.

That is my problem with it, in practice.

If I were DMing a scenario where a PC just had their little heart set on Not worshipping a deity, I would force them to write up the details of their "ideal" in a Deity format, complete with portfolio directives and such. Then I would go over it, edit it, and discuss it all with the player to make sure we were all on the same page- so that in play they would have the same restrictions and such as do those clerics who worship a "deity".

This is true whether the person is a ranger, a cleric, a druid, or a paladin. In no instance would I allow them to just say "I worship the ideal of [x], gimme my spells".

-S

[lastknightleft]

kessukoofah wrote:

GAH! this again! Why are some people so insistant on Divine Magic coming from deities (besides the obvious tie of divine-god)? why can't abstract forces grant magic and powers just as well as a God? I know in the forgotten realms and other settings it was said that Gods give magic, but those are settings, not core rules. If Nature can grant magic to druids, why can't the Sun give magic to Paladins or clerics? why can't the force of Law? No one is yet to explain it besides "we never did it that way, and the setting prohibits it." can someone please tell me why? In fact, it would make more sense to have his magic being granted by the Forces of Law and Good, since Gods have agendas and are not perfect. the forces of Law and Good would be uncorruptable fonts of power.

I'm holding off on the question of Alignment, since that would get me even angrier. and I'll just houserule it my own way anyway, and therefore I don't feel comfortable adding to that discussion.

Thank you for chiming in on my side. Not everyone wants to have their paladin stuck to a god like pin the tail on the donkey. Clerics are the only class that requires it and I like it that way, it allows my character to exist. Just because a paladin is lawful good doesn't mean he can't worship whatever diety he wants, hell he could worship ethrynull for some reason as long as he maintained the cause of justice and virtue.

[Alex Draconis]

You know what drives me nuts is Paladin is a class but Blackguard is a prestige class. Why the disparity? You have to "grow" into evilness?

[kessukoofah]

It's not so much your "side", and I don't want it seen as people taking sides. I just have a problem with the idea that somehow people are able to suspend disbelief only up to a certain point. what if I told you that my world is a cylinder, and there's a moon going back and forth in the center, and that there are 2 suns? physics tells me it isn't possible (or at least, quite unlikely that anything resembling life would appear), and yet somehow people can accept that. but the moment I say that the force of law grants me magic powers equal to those given by a supposed deity, one that I might not even believe in, to his own champions. and the same goes in reverse. anything that can grant powers can take them away. if the player is supposed to be the paragon of law and he does something against it, oops. Law goes elsewhere and gets a new champion. same with the gods. only differance is that somehow he gets his power from an ideal or concept, which is oddly enough more realistic then from a deity. how much can people accomplish in life for abstract conepts and ideals? look how far people are willing to go for concepts like "wealth". and yet, it doesn't have the same power as a god? And we're back to Nature granting magic to a druid. explain that away. If nature can grant power to a Druid, then why can't, say, urban-ity grant power to other classes? or why can't nature grant power to paladins?

[Kirth Gersen]

I had a player who wanted his character to be the absolute exemplar of Lawful Neutral, the Champion of Law on earth. We took the paladin, swapped every instance of "good" for "law," and swapped every mention of "evil" for "chaos." Ended up with a very workable Champion of Law class.

"But that's not a paladin!" people moan. Well, it is and it isn't. Mechanically, it's a paladin with some of the words swapped, but it'd undeniably that class. Flavor-wise, you could rename it: call it a "justiciar" or "paragon of law" or something and still be OK. So what's the huge issue? It worked quite well in-campaign, and made for an excellent character. Yet, judging from some opinions, I should be put under a restraining order never to play the game again for as long as I live, for permitting such a "blasphemy" (the noun, not the spell). Pshaw!

[Andarion]

I love this argument because no one is quite arguing the same thing.

If we argue definitions, divine equals gods no room for negotiation, so a divine class must have a deity.

If we argue mechanics, we find that the paladin can have his/her abilities changed to follow whatever singular alignment the uphold, I can make a CE paladin, extremely easily.

If we argue backwards compatibility...Unearthed arcana in 3.5 made LN and LE paladins.

So how do we approach this, well it comes down to one thing and one thing only; how does the pathfinder setting work? If the pathfinder world setting requires it's clerics and paladins to follow a god, then the PFRPG should require it. You don't like it, house rule it.

Mechanically, what I have proposed does not destroy the paladin class. They must be a certain alignment, based on their chosen deity. All I have done is opened up the deity choices.

The paladin code as written in the PFRPG rulebook is easily followed by a chaotic good character.

Respect Legitimate authority, Robin Hood, the quintessential CG character, respected King Richard, the legitimate authority, and fought Prince John.

Act with honor (no lying, cheating, using poison) all these seem to be pretty evil acts; aka getting what YOU want at the expense of others.

Help those in need, again Robin Hood, rob from the rich and give to the poor.

Punish those who harm or threaten any innocent- any good hero

And before we go any further, stop using the "I don't want the rule to change because it doesn't work with my character." argument. This sounds a lot like min maxing

[primemover003]

Alex Draconis wrote:

You know what drives me nuts is Paladin is a class but Blackguard is a prestige class. Why the disparity? You have to "grow" into evilness?

Because by default we're supposed to be playing the GOOD GUYS.

If you want to flip the multiverse on it's head, change pepsi to coke, stuff like that goes strictly into homebrew territory. I for one have never seen an Evil campaign end well. In fact I think most players with characters that have neutral alignments are far too mercenary. Neutrality is no excuse for being evil-lite.

[Jason Bulmahn]

Let me just settle this a bit, before it spirals out of control.

Paladins will remain LG. This is a sacred cow that I am going to milk for a while.

It should be stated that I think there is plenty of room in the game for holy warriors of another alignment (other than clerics), but those warriors are not paladins. Their build is focused around the LG concept and I will not be adding all the rules necessary to accommodate the other 8 alignments.

Moving along...

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing

[Set]

Alex Draconis wrote:

You know what drives me nuts is Paladin is a class but Blackguard is a prestige class. Why the disparity? You have to "grow" into evilness?

Evil is pickier. You have to earn your stripes and prove your dedication to become a Blackguard (or Assassin).

Any yob off the farm can put down his pitchfork and become a Paladin.

Mean Girl - "It was better last year."
Nice Girl - "Why? What did they have last year?"
Mean Girl - "Standards."

[Alex Draconis]

Set wrote:

Alex Draconis wrote:

You know what drives me nuts is Paladin is a class but Blackguard is a prestige class. Why the disparity? You have to "grow" into evilness?

Evil is pickier. You have to earn your stripes and prove your dedication to become a Blackguard (or Assassin).

Any yob off the farm can put down his pitchfork and become a Paladin.

Mean Girl - "It was better last year."
Nice Girl - "Why? What did they have last year?"
Mean Girl - "Standards."

That strangely makes sense.

order of the stick #446.