Got an idea for a character to run

[CapeCodRPGer]

Hows this sound? A paladin, everything he belives about his god is in a book he had since he was young. All the book relly says is "you are good if you worship me." So when faced with moral situations he would look in the book first.

"well, the book does not say that killing babies is evil, so if I do it, I'm not evil." Thats how his thought process would be.

Yes I am trying to make a point with it.

Whats everyone think?

[Shifty]

Then the delusion is that he is a Paladin, as opposed to a Fighter with a pretty clear cut mental illness, Sociopath?

[tlc_web tlc_web]

I agree with Shifty for the most part.

In my opinion, the unspoken requirement of being a paladin is an fairly good innate sense of right and wrong coupled with a desire to right.

A real paladin would realize that even though the book does not specifically state that killing babies is evil, he would realize it is evil and not want to do it.

HOWEVER a delusional cleric/fighter who thinks he is a paladin would buy that line of reasoning. Additionally the God in question would actually strickly speaking be LN, however his only definition of "good" considers himself and those that follow him to be good.

Personally if I was your god I would let you play this out as though your alignment was floating between LG and LN and make your a cleric/fighter. I would make it very clear to the players to difference between "class" and "title". Class is a slightly OOC terminology with IC parallels. Title is a an IC terminology. In this specific case, your title is indeed "paladin".

[W E Ray]

For the sake of argument -- in game...

The Paladin gets his Class Features from somewhere -- so where does that Pally get his?

I think it's more possible that the PC in question is an ANTI-Pally who absolutely believes -- knows for certain -- he is a Paladin. Not a Fighter.

. . . .

That's the thing about Alignment in D&D -- a character's stuff comes from Deities and Powers, unlike in real life where there are no Deities or Powers so it's all charismatic sleight-of-hand and psychology.

[Name Violation]

W E Ray wrote:

For the sake of argument -- in game...

The Paladin gets his Class Features from somewhere -- so where does that Pally get his?

I think it's more possible that the PC in question is an ANTI-Pally who absolutely believes -- knows for certain -- he is a Paladin. Not a Fighter.

. . . .

That's the thing about Alignment in D&D -- a character's stuff comes from Deities and Powers, unlike in real life where there are no Deities or Powers so it's all charismatic sleight-of-hand and psychology.

I'll agree with Ray for once. Anti Paladin. SO Caotic evil he THINKS he's lawful good