Paladins In No-Alignment Games

[lastspartacus]

So I am running a Pathfinder game with no alignment, but this makes Paladins a difficult predicament.

Now I've already ruled that we will be simply using common sense for a general feel of how a character is acting. Furthermore I have ruled that a Paladin can serve any diety, fulfilling the role of a holy warrior for any deity, like a more militant cleric.

This brought up some problems, however, such as where to draw the line on healing and harming, or if paladins serving darker deities should be able to heal. What about nuetral deities?

I was hoping to find an archetype, but none suitable were found.
Basically, I am looking to find good replacements as in a homebrew archetype for things such as detect evil and such, because my character wants to use a neutral deity serving paladin who is kind of evil.

[Paraxis]

Turn smite evil into smite servants of flame and darkness -ie evil outsiders, and undead. Channeled energy works like a cleric neutral ones must make a choice evil ones channel negative energy.

Replace detect evil with zone of truth.

You have a no alignment paladins. They can't smite every bad guy but I think that is for the most part alright smite evil is one of the most powerful abilities in the game.

[leo1925]

Why not just use anipaladins for darker deities and regular paladins for everyone else?

[Paraxis]

If alignment doesn't exist at all as a game concept you need to patch things like holy damage, detect evil, smite evil, ect...

[Bob_Loblaw]

Ultimate Magic has some things you can look at for alternate channeling and I think smiting. I would also use paladins for good and antipaladins for bad. For neutral, maybe have the player choose a path, paladin or antipaladin.

[Volaran]

In alignment-less games, I tend to replace Detect Evil with a supernatural Sense motive bonus (+1/2 levels).

[Necromancer]

This is an abridged list of changes I use for a non-alignment games (excluding taint/virtue-vice system changes):

- alignment is completely removed (obviously)
- outsiders keep species subtypes (demon, protean, etc.)
- alignment spells instead function against outsider (species), undead, elemental, construct or fey
- detect alignment changed to detect outsider [species], undead, or fey
- detect heresy spell added; detects divine classes (and spells cast by) drawing their powers from a different source than the caster
- either no deities or distant deities (a la Eberron)
- religious attitudes are oblivious to the nature of deities
- divine casters continue to receive spells (the source of their power depends on the setting)

Paladin-specific changes:

- paladin's smite functions against a range of creature types (subtypes for outsiders) relevant to the paladin's religious order; I call it "Smite Enemies of the Faith"
- smite ability also functions against divine casters drawing power from a different source than the paladin
- paladin's detect evil ability functions as detect outsider(subtype)/undead/fey/etc; the creatures detected are limited to the choices made for the alternate Smite ability
- paladin's code varies by religious order

[Utgardloki]

I'm currently working on a Savage Worlds campaign that has "paladins", but not "alignment". My approach to this is to have "paladins" declare an allegiance, which they then support.

I don't intend to implement the Paladin class in Savage Worlds, so I won't be converting over all their abilities. But a Paladin with an allegiance to, say, the Kingdom, might be able to smite enemies of the kingdom, but this ability doesn't work against those who are neither working to help nor hinder it.