Note: this is not a thread of what makes a good paladin or a bad paladin; if you want to argue, please take it somewhere else
Anyway, I'd like to hear what interesting paladins you've dealt with, be them silly, annoying, terrifying, a flirt, or just interesting in any way. I'll start,
Nyght - He was a half elf paladin who always wore a black hood. He used a crossbow and carried an axe >< This was where I played a Rogue/Fighter
Interesting Actions:
> Couldn't distinguish between catfolk and a human child.
> First thing he bought while I was around was Soap...
> Bought a belt of Chasity...
> Trying to maim a bandit, he shot him in the face with his crossbow
> After realizing he couldn't save the bandit he shot in the face, he stabalized the other one who had been set on fire
> Had a tendancy to collect slaves... ahem I mean cohorts who are atoning their villainy by serving him.
> Allowed a crazy barbarian who while pantsless chased me with a flaming great axe to adventure with us.
> Slept with the stable maid (He lost the belt of chastity at some point)
>Attempted to woo the sun elf, though we did get a ride on her ship from that
> Led the party to take over and confiscate the pirate ship that attacked
Silverwind Lunaris - This is my bishie Aasimar paladin/sorcerer. :3 6'1 and silver hair. He has a low constitution, but despite that, the only armor he wears is his mitril chainshirt (Trying to keep arcane failure low)
Interesting Actions:
> Has gained the attention of far too many sorceresses who want him to 'lay on hands'...
> He tripped an orc down stairs
> Using daylight on his glaive, he walked into a dark room full of children working for Gaedren and gave a speech powerful enough to make one of them shed a tear. They looked to him for instruction on how to free themselves.
> Puts saving the kidnapped hostages ahead of slaying some random orcs
> Being of the dragon bloodline pulled out his claws in a decisive move to finish off an orc so that his party would move on to rescue said hostages.
> Rode his horse into a building (the wall was broken down and there were frenzied barbarian orcs fighting in there, it was time to rush in to save the day)
Sir Gelrik, Goblin Paladin
Yes, he is a goblin paladin. He keeps his visor down to hide his goblin nature. He is brave, friendly, eternally optimistic, and surprisingly clever.
He was sold as a slave to blackguard that he hated. One day, a human paladin defeated the blackguard in a duel. Gelrik asked to serve the paladin instead.
The paladin took him on as a squire and taught him the paladin's code. When the paladin fell in battle, Gelrik took up his banner and vowed to fight evil in his name.
I had a cool human paladin in the forgotten realms of the Goddess Siamoph, Goddess of Nobility.
He took his first level as an aristocrate and then paladin all the way.
He was Lawfull Good but simply did the best he could to help the nobles and make sure the peasents understood their place and why they should be greatfull for nobles such as himself and others that were there to look after them just like they looked after their sheep.
He was alotta fun to play. My DM thought the spare pack horse for his wardrobe was a bit much but I simply HAD to be well dressd no matter what the situation.
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Paladins don't get a lot of play in my circle of gamers. They seem to prefer the more morally ambiguous types.
There was one paladin yeeeaaars ago (1E) who insisted on being the party leader. For some reason, he felt compelled to always go North, until we discovered the he, in fact, honestly believed whatever direction he was currently facing was North.
After that, we made a point of subtly steering him in the direction the rest of us wanted to go - then he could go ahead and declare that direction to be North.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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The best paladin I've played was S'skarret (the apostrophe is a glottal stop), using the "reptilian" template from the Savage Species book. As he explained, "In my days, the world was ruled, quite openly, by the great dragons, each of which had a nation of servants, allied in our goals and outlooks. I was in charge of a company of warriors, but we had healers and mages, too, all in service to Her Worshipful Radiance, Queen Arapetagent, Lady Silverymoon.
"Even our enemies, the tribes dedicated to the awful red, blue, or black dragons, carries themselves with nobility. One of their mages cast some sort of enchantment on me, tearing me apart from reality and setting me adrift, comatose, in the great dimensional seas.
"As an aside, I suppose my companions thought me dead. My mate was nearing gestation and our eggs ... ah, that is all long, long past, and everyone suffers tragedy.
"So did our great ones. The dragons fell, or died of disease, or merely tired and fell sleeping in their lairs. Their tribes dispersed, or descended into barbarism. Ah, O noble Troglos clan, how lowly and base you have become.
"And I have broken free from my bonds, now in a world I barely recognize, a world run rampant with bounty, and beauty, and also with corruption and chaos. The old order is gone and forgotten. The lands are all covered in gnomes, and hu-men, and orcs, and other mammals, all of whom war incessantly with one another, without the great dragons to guide you and impose any sort of sanity.
"As for myself, I will keep my oaths. I will follow the laws and customs of Arapetagent, whether she still lives or no. Defender of the weak, servant of justice, patron of the arts.
"Do I insist that you follow my laws, too? No, of course not. I am thankful that you would count me as a member of your company, and I admire the sense of right and wrong you bring to your travels. But you are mammals, warm-blooded and mercurial. My oaths as a paladin require stability and a dedication I cannot expect from you.
"It is a lizard thing; you wouldn't understand."
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The human paladin I'm playing now, Stefano T'Ron DeColber, I basically play like he's johnny bravo. He has an int of 7 and a wis of 9 but a STR, CON, and CHA of 18, 14, and 16, respectively. He whores it up whenever possible, loves to punish evil-doers (those who don't surrender when offered the chance are killed in single combat afterwards), and is generally oblivious to everything but his own charms.
Bears and halflings hold a special place of hatred in his heart as his family and village was killed by halflings druids who took on bear form as their wild shape...come to find out my GM has a very halfling-centric world planned >.<
I have played a Paladin of Ishtar. Rough transcription of some chat room roleplaying:
"Come, we must atone." *drags the fighter by the ear to the temple*
"Atone for what?"
"You have been on a murdering spree, defiling the fecundity of the earth."
"But those were *orcs*. And they were eating human *children*!"
"This is true. But still, you have spilled the blood of a creature that could have known truth, love and beauty."
"As did you."
"I did say WE must atone."
*enters the temple, where the temple courtesans are dressed...revealingly.*
"Go forth, my friend. It is time to confess what you have done, and with the grace of Ishtar, bring new life into this world."
"Wait. This is *atonement*?"
"Indeed."
"Why the hell hasn't your religion taken over the planet?"
"Not all are able to see this act as artistry, love and beauty. The greatest gift the gods have granted us...."
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The Hellbred Race in The Fiendish Codex II is the best idea for a Paladin that I ever used. (Think of a Tiefling-like Race that sees the horror of evil and repents, only much cooler.)
My PC was a gestalt, Warlock / Paladin -- very LG, very intrinsically evil.
I guess not unlike the character Vheod in Monte Cook's FR novel, The Glass Prison.
. . . .
I also ran a hairless, albino orc (using H-Orc stats) born in an orc community where his high Charisma was a character flaw. When he was a toddler his mother saved him by putting him in a basket down the river where he was rescued by a curious, runnaway halfling child who "raised" him in the woods.
As an adolescent the Orc left the woods with his "dad" the Halfling and went into the city where a church took him in and later trained him as a Paladin.
(I also played the Halfling, a self-taught, Druid / Rogue.)
Some 7 or 8 years ago I played a paladin of the love and beauty goddess Sune from the Forgotten Realms. The prevailing opinion of both the DM and myself was that paladin's espouse their deity's beliefs, not the lawful stupid paladin stereotype. So my paladin espoused the ideals of both protecting and promoting beauty.
I didn't have a chance to play him for long as the party wizard's player left and we needed a wizard more than a paladin so I started a new character, but my favorite moment from playing that character involved offering makeup to the party's ugly, female half-orc druidess played by my wife. :D
Currently playing a Dwarven Fighter/Paladin of Torag, who is fond of Desna (goddess of butterflies). His overall theme is crimefighter aka The Tick. So far all is going well, he's a fortitude beast with endurance and die hard, but has an unfortunate vulnerability to paralyzation! (poor die rolls, TWICE! LMAO) He tends to see things from his own unique perspective, paying more attention to the mundane and pointless, rather than the task at hand. "Look, the walls of this cavern are made of the same stone and brick as that well we passed on the way here 2 hours ago!" *party stares at him blankly*
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Malleus was a Scarred Lands Paladin focussed on laying the restless dead to rest. Since the majority of the ghostly types in the local area were not evil, he did so by communicating with them to find out what unjust acts, or deeds left unfinished, caused them to turn away from their final rest, and basically had a laundry list of small quests that he was on at any given time, final missions that, once accomplished, would help him remove another ghost from the world.
Whole lotta 'make sure my descendents are safe' or 'see my name remembered' or 'avenge my murder,' on that list...
(The setting had a single god focussed on Paladin orders, Corean, but he had four very different orders, and there was various other tweaks one could put on it, such as the undead-banishing Knights of the Tear. The 'Gold Knights' focussed on healing, and the 'Silver Knights' on summoning extraplanar creatures of good (and fighting evil outsiders), while the 'Iron Knights' were all about smithcraft, weapon-forging and seige weapons! Very fun! I loved the notion that different Paladins of the same god could be so wildly different in focus.)
I don't remember his name, but in a Greyhawk game, decades ago, I played a Paladin of Rao, the god of 'peace, reason and serenity.' He attempted to negotiate first, against foes that could be reasoned with (not animals or monsters, obviously), and argued that any soul that could be redeemed was denied to the forces of evil, while any struck down in righteous wrath only filled Hell's coffers with new power.
A friend of mine played and interesting "twist" on the paladin. As a high(ish) level campaign, PCs started at level 10th.
His character was a good heated but highly delusional, almost cartoonesque knight. The quintessential brave if not foolish hero...
Mechanically, the "knight" used the stats of the paladin's mount while the 10th level paladin PC was his horse, punished by some LG deity to look after this human until he dies of old age or something.
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I played a Qadiran paladin named Ardurak Loka'Tan partway through The Second Darkness AP. He was very Persian in flavor and worshipped Sarenrae.
Things that set him apart:
Not heavily armored like a regular plate mail paladin as he dressed toward his homeland's flavor wearing a breastplate.
Bore a falchion as his weapon of choice, since this was similar in flavor to the chosen weapon of scimitar espoused by Sarenrae.
Ramped up his Handle Animal purposely to care for, tame, and later take a boar for his Divine Bond (yeah, that boar).
He was seriously out of his element, and ended up being a "gambling counselor" which was a bit of a foil for the other character's activities in the party in that setting.
Played nanny to the group's rogue and seriously believed he was always on the verge of a religious conversion (OOG I knew better).
I played a self-hating Tiefling Rogue/Paladin (Mulluq'Tar Sheptat) who was raised by the church (of I think Ra or Horus in FR), out of sight due to his monstrous appearance. He went out at night to see the city and tried not to be seen so he wouldn't scare anyone (the rogue part). The church raised him to believe that he could never overcome his evil heritage, and because he was a devout follower he hated himself for what he was. He was granted paladinhood, after he was old enough to leave the church or they would have dubbed it blasphemy, and decided that since he can never truly be good himself he would do what he could to rid the world of evil. No matter how LG he acted, he didn't actually believe that he was good, and that his god only gave him powers because he could gain access to and remove evil forces by the fact that he was inherently evil by heritage.
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Recently ran a Gnomish Paladin from 1-18 or so through Legacy of Fire.
He worshiped Sarenrae, wielding a Scimitar (usually Holy'd or Divine Bonded to be awesome), and smote face.
Against several boss monster-types, he would one-round kill them. I believe he critted 3 consecutive attacks on one boss.
But his stats weren't the coolest part...
as a Gnome, he believed his faith in Sarenrae was the anti-Bleaching agent, and was totally pious. Completely devout. And one of the nicest persons you'd ever meet. Almost every enemy got a personal "hello" and offer of surrender, even insane brain-burned Super Mutant Gnolls.
He was then killed, and reincarnated as an Orc. He became a literal wrecking ball of damage, believed himself unkillable in combat (between his LOH and the party healer's cures, he was just about unkillable from damage), and began to smite like there was no tomorrow.
Wearer of a Hat of Disguise, he was always fastidiously clean, smelled like cinnamon and coffee, and looked pretty much exactly like Kyra, the iconic cleric.
Lycanthrope changes a victim's alignment. Different types of lycanthropes have different set alignments. Werebears are lawful good.
I had an extraordinarily lazy and scruffy looking werebear paladin/monk who's last line of offense was to infect the bad guy on purpose, causing the to become lawful good and join his BEARHOUSE.
Our Shoanti paladin of Erastil was probably one of my favorite paladins to encounter as a GM. He was also the only paladin I ever say that seemed to have more of a problem with remaining lawful rather than falling to evil. "I wish to hit him, but I cannot."
Of course, it was also pretty cool that he was trying to reconcile a NPC from Rise of the Runelords with his brother and convince him to get married and raise a family as well.
I was also fond of our really, really dumb paladin of Iomedae in our Council of Thieves game, especially when he had to play the paladin in the Six Trials of Larazod . . . it was even more amusing when he stated that, as ignorant as the paladin was, he knew every line of the play because it was such a shinning example of the horrible moral decline of Cheliax.
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Currently running my group through Second Darkness, and we have a fallen paladin of Sarenrae. She has a bit of a problem with Kleptomania.
Probably the most interesting member of the group, considering that she started out as a fallen paladin, and that kleptomania is fun when said paladin is working in a casino. :)
The player would roll will saves and sleight of hand checks ahead of time, and every so often I'd check one off. Somehow, when she was tempted, everyone else was looking in another direction.
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I played a halfling paladin of Erastil. I played him like a badass sheriff, very gruff and very no-nonsense (despite being 3 foot something). He rode in on his sheepdog wielding a lasso or spear (depending on whether he wanted to bring 'em back alive or not). He had one issue which was that he was gay (but couldn't admit it to himself). In the campaign we ran it that the church of Erastil frowned on homosexuality (no baby-making that way). So he was trying to reconcile his devotion with his sexuality. He was a fun character to play.
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^^^^ That's frighteningly close to how I saw a good chunk of the Erastil faith working out!
Playing a demon-blooded tiefling paladin of Iomedae in a Kingmaker campaign.
Spoilered for wordswordswords
Still has a real childlike naivety about a lot of things. Then he heads off to the Stolen Lands with some friends and it's a whole new world. With all the fey about, he really feels like he's living out some of the fairy tales he was told as a child, and it shows. Total wide-eyed idealist. Prefers diplomacy when possible. Big on learning about and from other cultures. Absolutely infatuated with the (generally chaotic, mind)fey, for good or ill. Real big on redemption, partially because of his tiefling baggage. Works with the community, still off-balace about just how accepting people have generally been of him. He's still not used to expecting anything less than the worst in that area, and it's hard to let his defenses down, but he's learning. Even with those doubts, he still really wants to be the knight in shining armor, just like in the stories. And deep down he feels the Stolen Lands, with all the fey and such, just seem like the perfect place for him to become that. Not for the sake of pride, but more for acceptance and absolution from the "tiefling guilt" he still hasn't grown out of.
One of the goals he's working towards is building a community(guided by his church and similar faiths, Sarenrae most likely) for like-minded members of typically "outcast" races. Tieflings, kobolds, whatever, as long as they can abide by the laws of the land, they would have a place where they could live thier lives in peace. He's pushing for it because it seems few others will, because he knows how important it is to have a supporting group to reach out to outsiders, and partially to finally prove to himself that it can work, that there's nothing inherently wrong with him.
Before that, I came within a hair's breadth of winding up playing a hermaphroditic tiefling paladin of Shelyn in Council of Thieves before that GM ran with Kingmaker instead. I can only imagine how that would have turned out.
Freaking random tiefling trait charts, man.
I was going to have my fighter in Legacy of Fire go towards paladin of Sarenrae as he matured and grew into his faith, but then he encountered pugwampis. And is now likely going barbarian instead.
The all time best paladin I've ever seen played?
But she still lacked the faith that those ideals could survive on their own in such a world. She started going about in secret to watch his back and clean up loose ends that she believed would wind up getting him killed. She dirtied her hands handling matters she believed the paladin couldn't, or more importantly, shouldn't. She became more and more devoted to the task of protecting him both as a person and as a symbol that couldn't afford to be sullied by what she considered necessary evils.
When the party left enemies alive, she murdered any who she believed might come looking for revenge on the paladin. If she found out about a problem that could even slightly put the paladin at risk of breaking his code, she would either cut through the problem with brutal efficiency or guide the party away from ever seeing it, consequences for anyone else be damned.
She covered her tracks well, and kept it up for a long time. But while she started off believing whole-heartedly that she was doing what was right, the guilt just started to pile up. While the paladin was sleeping the sleep of the just, she was getting anything but. Eventually the rest of the party started to notice her cracking up, and it all came out in the open when she tearfully confessed(in a church of the god she had come to believe in but whose tenets she could not find the faith to truly follow) everything she had done and why to the paladin she had turned into a sort of idol. He was horrified by what had been done for his sake and in his name, and saddened by who had done it. The wizard is full-on weeping at this point, not even daring to ask for the forgiveness she believes she doesn't deserve. The paladin(AND THE PLAYER) is shedding Manly Tears as he hugs her, forgives her without any hesitation, and then gently places her under arrest. THE DAMN GM IS TEARING UP AT THIS POINT.
The party is shocked when they learn the details in-character, and a good chunk of the campaign after that was dedicated towards the wizard's trial(with the paladin and most of the party serving on her defense) and her long and arduous parole(under the paladin's watchful eye) and struggle towards redemption. She eventually made it to NG.
The paladin and wizard were married by the end of the campaign, but that was an even longer and bumpier road.
That guy set the paladin bar for me. That's pretty much my RP Holy Grail.
Before you read on, I mention religion in this post, but I am in no way trying to start a heated discussion on religion. Take a breath, read on, and you'll see that it's all good.
Back in 2nd Edition we ran an epic campaign from 1st - 21st level over the course of 4 years in college.
My roommate had never played D&D and is a very devout Christian. I eased his fears and introduced him to the Paladin class. My roommate was, and still is, Lawful Good to this day.
His character, Israel of the Dalelands, paladin of Selune, drew much of his background and theme from the Bible. The entire campaign was a Shar vs. Selune struggle.
Israel was a fisherman who was prophesied to do some wonderful things. Among his initial tasks were to find and recover the Armor of Selune, which is a reference to the Armor of God in the Bible.
The Armor in the Bible and the Armor in the game were almost identical:
Sword (Belt) of TRUTH
Breastplate of RIGHTEOUSNESS
Boots (Sandals) of PEACE
Shield of FAITH
Helmet of SALVATION
I can't remember what they all did, but the sword was a holy avenger.
Overall, it was an amazing campaign and I have many fond memories of it.
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Before you read on, I mention religion in this post, but I am in no way trying to start a heated discussion on religion. Take a breath, read on, and you'll see that it's all good.
Back in 2nd Edition we ran an epic campaign from 1st - 21st level over the course of 4 years in college.
My roommate had never played D&D and is a very devout Christian. I eased his fears and introduced him to the Paladin class. My roommate was, and still is, Lawful Good to this day.
His character, Israel of the Dalelands, paladin of Selune, drew much of his background and theme from the Bible. The entire campaign was a Shar vs. Selune struggle.
Israel was a fisherman who was prophesied to do some wonderful things. Among his initial tasks were to find and recover the Armor of Selune, which is a reference to the Armor of God in the Bible.
The Armor in the Bible and the Armor in the game were almost identical:
Sword (Belt) of TRUTH
Breastplate of RIGHTEOUSNESS
Boots (Sandals) of PEACE
Shield of FAITH
Helmet of SALVATIONI can't remember what they all did, but the sword was a holy avenger.
Overall, it was an amazing campaign and I have many fond memories of it.
Cool! Was that Jim?
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I had a pretty awesome paladin character for quite some time--actually the first character I ever took from level 1 to level 20+. The campaign, a homebrew, eventually ended up with the entire party slaying a demonic quasi-deity and becoming a new pantheon of gods.
Basically, my character (at the end, an artificer 1 / paladin 11 / Infused PrC 10), was a walking (eventually, flying) tank. The original concept (big guy in full plate armor carrying a small, one-handed firearm) ended up getting completely distorted near the end of the campaign by the addition of a giant flaming sword and a pair of wings, but I still had a lot of fun. Personality-wise, Daniel, my paladin, was the most obnoxiously self-righteous, well-meaning jerk you could ever meet. He was anal-retentive to the extreme (to the point of being comical--up until he started turning into an angel- he got more serious after that), and fastidiously clean, using prestidigitation to clean himself without taking his armor off. Daniel was brash and foolhardy (note: his catchphrase: "AHA! A QUEST!" yelled as loudly as possible, in character, and his multiple instances of insulting demon lords), but was a veritable unstoppable force in combat.
One odd story involved the use of Daniel as fodder for a makeshift catapult, because, as you know, paladins can bypass DR/good if used as projectiles. What happened was the other party members winched him up onto a parapet with a block-and-tackle, and then dropped him on a huge demon. Maybe shooting it would have been easier, but this was more fun.
Some 7 or 8 years ago I played a paladin of the love and beauty goddess Sune from the Forgotten Realms. The prevailing opinion of both the DM and myself was that paladin's espouse their deity's beliefs, not the lawful stupid paladin stereotype. So my paladin espoused the ideals of both protecting and promoting beauty.
Funny. I did that too, at about the same time. Only my paladin was a woman named Delilah. She always went through a lot of effort after a battle to cleanse the bodies of the slain, see them garlanded in flowers and properly buried while she wept tears at their lost opportunities for the love that would turn them from evil and hatred into the pure beauty of good.
I had a lot of fun with her but the other party members got a little tired of her habits.
A couple interesting ones I've seen that come to mind:
In Living City (2E), a samurai paladin. This was interesting flavorwise/RPwise, in that the character had to balance the demands of two sometimes conflicting moral codes, and there weren't a lot of Asian-themed characters in that campaign. It was also clever mechanically, in that with LC's point buy system and the hefty stat requirements to be a 2E paladin, it was impossible to have any kind of strength bonus as a paladin; the samurai kit's kiai ability allowed him to have 18/100 strength for a round when it really counted.
In a 2E Forgotten Realms game, a paladin of Azuth (the FR demigod of wizards). He ran around in robes and no armor, as befit the favored servants of his god.
Incidentally, my hat's off to anyone who can play a good paladin for long in a Living game (or other organized play) without an engineered team of your friends to always play with. It is hard to uphold those kinds of moral standards when you never know what your party will be from adventure to adventure. I played one for a little while in Living Greyhawk, and I died so many times in the scenario of: evil monster is trying to kill/eat one or more innocent people, and the rest of the party decides to run for it and let them. After it happened twice in one module (Jason Bulmahn's Endgame, as it happens) I retired that character indefinitely.
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I died so many times in the scenario of: evil monster is trying to kill/eat one or more innocent people, and the rest of the party decides to run for it and let them.
No truly LG (not LS) paladin is going to do this, IMO. If charging said evil monster will most assuradely result in both one's own death as well as the deaths of the villagers, what have you accomplished? How much good will you not do b/c you got yourself killed in an unwinnable situation?
In those situations paladins should try and talk the party into an ambush (good tactics, not evil) or, if they won't see things your way or don't feel that even with an ambush you would be successful, say a prayer for the dead and come back and kill it while it sleeps.
No truly LG (not LS) paladin is going to do this, IMO. If charging said evil monster will most assuradely result in both one's own death as well as the deaths of the villagers, what have you accomplished? How much good will you not do b/c you got yourself killed in an unwinnable situation?
Here's one example:
You're trying to escort several dozen mook villagers across a snowy field. A remorhaz pops up and starts chowing down. Villagers are running for safety; a few have been eaten in the surprise round, but the rest could escape if the beast is engaged.
The other 5/6 of the party are extremely cowardly and absolutely refuse to engage or do anything but run away at top speed.
Could you, playing a paladin, feel good about abandoning innocent people to certain death to join them? Call it lawful stupid, but I couldn't.
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No truly LG (not LS) paladin is going to do this, IMO. If charging said evil monster will most assuradely result in both one's own death as well as the deaths of the villagers, what have you accomplished? How much good will you not do b/c you got yourself killed in an unwinnable situation?
Here's one example:
You're trying to escort several dozen mook villagers across a snowy field. A remorhaz pops up and starts chowing down. Villagers are running for safety; a few have been eaten in the surprise round, but the rest could escape if the beast is engaged.
The other 5/6 of the party are extremely cowardly and absolutely refuse to engage or do anything but run away at top speed.
Could you, playing a paladin, feel good about abandoning innocent people to certain death to join them? Call it lawful stupid, but I couldn't.
I look at it as a cost-benefit analysis. You have a dozen villagers. Some have started running for safety, some are already dead. You are sans party. If you fight it solo, there's a 99% chance you will die. Now, let's say you're level 1 and 17 years old (around starting age for human paladin, IIRC). You have another 60-70 years of evil fighting in you. Because you died trying to save 8 or so living villagers, you will not help 60 years worth of people.
Now, that being said, if there's a reasonable chance that you could make it out alive, of course, go for it. Otherwise, I contend you might as well fall on your sword the first time you think an evil thought...the effect is about the same.
I look at it as a cost-benefit analysis.
I've played lots of good-aligned, even lawful-good characters who would make that analysis and make that choice, but, to me, a paladin can't. You do the right thing at the given moment and if that means your life, it means your life.
Maybe a half dozen of the villagers are inspired by your sacrifice and themselves become paladins down the line, and the greater value for good ends up being that way. In the moment, you don't know, and it's part of the nature of the paladin as a divine class to trust in your deity and that if you do right, things will turn out right, if possibly not for you.
This is my take on the class; it may not be yours or anyone else's. PCs may be heroes, but it's the paladin's job to be a hero when it's hardest. (I also half-seriously think they should get d20 hit dice for following their stupid code.)
I don't see how a paladin could, in good conscience, continue on knowing he allowed 7-8 innocents die in favor of so-called countless innocents he hasn't even met yet. The 7-8 he is seeing right now are real people with real lives who will be lost if he doesn't intervene. The others are hypotheticals, based on assumptions that have no bearing. He could get attacked by a bear after he leaves the village and slain without every doing any good at all. How would his God judge him then?
The here and now is what concerns most paladins, not an uncertain tomorrow. To abandon a certain few in favor of uncertain many? That's not good, that's calculating.
Ever since the first Doom Patrol, this horrid situation has found its way into ever Paladin conversation and nearly every game involving Paladins. Which sucks. I would not have a Paladin in my game fall for not committing suicide, nor would I penalize them unnecessarily for rushing off into certain doom. Do what's right for your character.
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I don't see how a paladin could, in good conscience, continue on knowing he allowed 7-8 innocents die in favor of so-called countless innocents he hasn't even met yet. The 7-8 he is seeing right now are real people with real lives who will be lost if he doesn't intervene. The others are hypotheticals, based on assumptions that have no bearing. He could get attacked by a bear after he leaves the village and slain without every doing any good at all. How would his God judge him then?
There's a saying in the WoW..."A dead *insert DPS class name here* does zero DPS." Meaning if all you're focusing on is your goal (in WoW: doing the most DPS, as a paladin: saving every innocent) and it gets you killed you do no good whatsoever. That's how I view paladins and no-win situations.
The here and now is what concerns most paladins, not an uncertain tomorrow. To abandon a certain few in favor of uncertain many? That's not good, that's calculating.
I think being good sometimes requires the ability to be cold and calculating...even moreso than evil. You have to realize that you can't right every wrong...doing so would be impossible and you'd spend so much time on the little wrongs you wouldn't even get near touching the big ones. You have to prioritize.
I guess what I should have stated in the beginning was...this is how I play my paladins. IMO, YMMV, etc.
All this cost-benefit analysis of paladins reminds me of my first attempt at playing a NOT LS paladin, back in 2E. I was playing in a hobby-shop game with a DM that by today's standards would be considered a grognard. I wanted to play a SMART paladin. In fact, she had a 16-18 intelligence, in addition to good scores in other abilities. The idea was to play a paladin that was a soldier for good, not just a warrior.
She would use tactics, planning and careful thought when fighting the bad guys. She was also an archer in chainrmail (rather than a tank with a longsword). I was proud of the idea.
However, Mr. Grognard was not. He believed that a paladin would never shoot an enemy from behind (even when said enemy was attacking fellow party members or innocents, or has and would attack in the near past/future). Nor would they ever use stealth, deception or, apparently, anything that makes a good soldier or archer. Which I thought was silly, I understand being forthright and honorable. Even offering quarter, but not when it wasn't feasible or when doing so would risk others. Also, the light armor and bow sort of ticked him off in some indefinable way.
I was rather ticked and marked the idea off to be tried another day in another game. When he kept complaining, I said "Screw it." and erased the Paladin from the class line on the character sheet and wrote down "Fighter"
Then was promptly killed by ghouls. Ah, the good old days.
One of my favorites was an alternate paladin I built from Unearthed Arcana (3.5), a Paladin of Freedom (basically CG). She was the niece of another character I played back in 2E days, who was a home-built class, basically a lightly-armed fighter that could tap into 'Wild Surges.' The concept was that she was a champion of capricious chaos (not in the Warhammer version of the word), sort of a Chaotic Good paladin-mage type. It made sense at the time, anyways.
A tradition in my groups when we ran Temple of Elemental Evil for new groups (we/I like the module), that we use the old characters as the residents of the Village of Hommlet, and other supporting characters, so when the group needed a fighter/minor healer to back them up, they hired on an ingenue Paladin of Freedom that wandered into town when her aunt said that folks there might need some help. She talked a LOT, sort of a bubbly, well-meaning teenager with a tendency to clumsiness (but not in combat).
As a side note, that was the only group that ever hired the mage Spugnois. There's a bone to throw to the more experienced folks out there. :)
Wayfinder, PaizoCon Founder
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Currently I'm playing a paladin of Abadar in James Jacobs' campaign The Shadow Under Sandpoint.
Howell B. Talbot III is based on...yep, Thurston Howell III. (The B. stands for Backus). What better character to serve Abadar, master of banks and cities and commerce and mmmmmmoney?
Most of the journal there is written from Howell's viewpoint, btw. He also has his background and stat block (from several levels ago) in Wayfinder #3 as part of The Registry column.
I cannot tell you how much fun it is to speak in a Locust Valley lockjaw accent the entire game, being all proper and stuff. Ostog/Erik Mona paused during a session to tell me Howell was a huge pain in the ass for the party, as Howell was basically preventing any lawless behavior (burning down a townhome in Magnimar to kill the seugathi inside). My response (OOC) "So, I'm playing the paladin right then?"
;-)
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Wayfinder, PaizoCon Founder
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Please tell me you're doing the voice.Howell B. Talbot III is based on...yep, Thurston Howell III. (The B. stands for Backus). What better character to serve Abadar, master of banks and cities and commerce and mmmmmmoney?
;-)
Oh, indeeeeed, lovey. INDEEED. ;-)
(I am most happy to demonstrate at PaizoCon)
One of my players once played a paladin who took his warhorse with him everywhere he went. When I DM-ed an adventure with a partially submerged monastery, he even went as far as having one of his companions (one of the other players had skill ranks in carpenter) build a raft for his horse.
There is a long tradition in my game of the palladin's mount being at least (and usually more) intelligent than the palladin.
This is mainly because the players use int for at least a bit of a dump stat. Also I let people with mounts/companions/familiars take leadership and make their little buddy their cohort. This means I do give them some points (usually between 1/2 and 2/3 of what players get) to spend on stats. They don't make the mounts intelligence a dump stat.
The first palladin who had this happen he and his mount started playing pranks on each other. A lot of fun back and forth there.
M'Tuk'Tuk has never met an interesting paladin. Darn goody-two-shoes*.
*Shoes probably made out of M'Tuk'Tuk's brother's skin.
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M'Tuk'Tuk has never met an interesting paladin. Darn goody-two-shoes*.
*Shoes probably made out of M'Tuk'Tuk's brother's skin.
played a paladin with a three int.. sixteen wis and 20 charisma...would say things like look at all those sarcophaguses... the party would say sarcophagi and he say no...there's more than one!
my brother played a paladin possed by a demon ...when his hpts reached zero the blood would pool around him and become demon armour and he would come back to life as an antipaladin until sunrise..which be come a regular paladin again|
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my brother played a paladin possed by a demon ...when his hpts reached zero the blood would pool around him and become demon armour and he would come back to life as an antipaladin until sunrise..which be come a regular paladin again
Stealing from Marvel's Black Knight, it might be fun to have a Paladin who wields an ancient Holy Avenger, once weilded by his grandfather, who fell and became a Blackguard / Anti-Paladin. In addition to the usual penalties for falling, if he ever uses the sword to commit an injust or evil act, the fallen spirit of his grandfather, lingering within the blade, begins to exhort him to greater and greater acts of evil...
He's attempting to redeem the blade (and his family name, and perhaps even the spirit of his grandfather). His grandfather has other plans, and is offended by the thought of his grandson succeeding where he failed, because he's twisted his 'fall' around into a thing to be proud of. If his descendent succeeds, then that forces him to accept that he did indeed *fail.*
I played a Paladin once who was half-angel, half-devil, using the Paladin of Freedom variant from Unearthed Arcana. At the time I was considering just making a Aasimar Paladin, but our DM was telling us about some side story in Planescape where an angel and devil, a Justicar and a Succubus I think, had fallen in love and escaped persecution to some neutral plane. I tossed the idea of my character being their child, and we just started tossing ideas for traits back and forth. Mechanically, I rolled her up as an Aasimar, and used some of the feats from Races of Faerun for the wings and such.
She had golden skin, red feathered wings, small horns on her forehead, a pointy tail, and had glowing golden eyes. She was sworn to uphold the freedoms and rights of all beings(unintentionally akin Optimus Prime), and became a Paladin of Freedom. With a Warmace(one-handed d12 weapon). That was pretty fun. :)
I have seen more than my fair share of paladins with the Walking Cliché archetype. Guys who insist on being celibate, use their code to annoy others, make life for the party unnecessarily hard, and so on.
One paladin I remembered who was actually reprimanded by his deity (well, it was more a gesture of confusion by his deity, no real reproof) when he declined an offer of "being shown the town's gratitude by local girls" (who used this as much as an excuse to attempt to see what was below all that armour than anything else) and who went into the stables to his horse (yes, he actually did that. Of course he never lived that down, and had to endure paladins-mounting-their-mount jokes for weeks ;-))
One I remember because he was not so uptight, being a paladin of Torag with a more sane code (he was also unique in that he was NOT a dwarf ;-))
And I played a very unusual paladin once.
Shakeer the Penitent is a Dervish in the service of Serenrae.
Background
Being born to a moderately rich/noble family in Katheer, he was of course expected to marry some princess, as befits nobles. But he never did. He was one of those romantics, and wanted to marry for love.
The thing was that he just couldn't love women. When he was caught with another man, his family dragged him off to temple to redeem for his sins (not just for being gay, but for being gay and therefore not marrying a merchant princess, as is befitting).
Under the ministrations of the Dawnflower's clerics, he found out that there was a dire need for redemption - but it was not him who had to do penance, it was his family for putting some low concerns like a bit of money and status above their son's happiness.
Being accepted for who and what he was in the church, he found a pure and fierce devotion to Serenrae and became a holy warrior in her service, intent on bringing redemption and justice to all who needed either (or both) - but also to find glory, so he could show his family that he could accomplish something great even the way he was. (This misbelief that he had to show success to validate his nature was the one flaw his goddess hoped he'd find out for himself)
Stats:
To go with a non-standard back story for a paladin was a non-standard build: Shakeer was no strong but not very smart brute in full plate (which is what most cliché paladins look like). He was not strong, but he was agile, and while no match for a wizard's intellect, he wasn't stupid, either.
He used a scimitar (without a shield) as a weapon and only took six levels of paladin before moving over to duellist (using the dervish dance feat which allows one to use dexterity for attack and damage rolls with a scimitar, and also to become a scimitar-wielding duellist).
Behaviour
Shakeer is not grim, holier-than-thou, uptight or self-righteous (something that is shared by almost every cliché paladin). He is rather an affable, good-humoured, charming man who thinks that it's a bad idea to try to scare people into behaving orderly. Seeing no sense in celibacy for its own sake, he never berated any of his companions for dalliances, and would probably have not said no to a dalliance himself, had an opportunity come his way.
It never really did, at least not while adventuring with the party. That might be because he didn't actively seek it and didn't broadcast the fact that he was not into women. He probably wasn't approached by either men or women because they were used to cliché paladins who would go crimson if even the suggestion of any form of naughty stuff came up. (Yes, the cliché paladin problem is a big one in some of the groups I play in - the paladin in our Crimson Throne campaign is a prime example)
It might not be a PC, but rather a novel character, but everyone who wants pointers about playing a very holy but not holier-than-thou paladin should read the Dresden Files. Michael Carpenter, a Knight of the Cross embodies an ideal every LG divine servant should aspire to. Not just purity of faith and all that stuff, but the affability and tolerance to go with it, and behaviour that really is leading by example, and not just bullying others into playing nice.