Director of Brand Strategy
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Pharasma may oppose undead, but she is neither a proponent for good nor for law. As such, a paladin would have a difficult time following her, as the paladin's world-view and that of her deity would often oppose one another. If you want to be a Pharasmin undead fighter, I suggest a cleric or inquisitor, both of whom have looser alignment restrictions, and can fight undead for the abominations they are (for cheating death, which comes without bias toward ethics for all mortals) instead of simply for being evil.
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Pharasma may oppose undead, but she is neither a proponent for good nor for law
Neither does she espouse chaos nor evil. In fact, reading her descriptions in God and Magic and The Inner Sea World Guide, she occasionally encourages "goodly" things like the birth of children. Perhaps her motivations are neutral, but the results are good and who are we, as mortals, to question her motivations? Most of her controls cover areas that encourage life, community, and reverence of the dead. Nothing there that really opposes a paladin's code.
If you view the paladin's alignment as a personal choice rather than part of a "system," it is easier to see how a paladin could devote herself to the Lady of Graves and support the destruction of undeath, protection of childbirth, guardians of the dead (including their possessions), etc. The Lawful axis could just refer to the paladin's devotion to the deity, their adherence to oaths, and truthfulness while the Good axis is their protection of the innocent (like newborns), guardians of cemeteries against desecration, and destruction of undead.
I'm not saying that Mike/Mark are wrong, just that the issue is much more open to adjudication than it appears. The only thing restricting these choices from a player are (1) a splat book that is by it's very nature optional, and (2) a campaign specific rule that does not exist in the core rules outside of a cleric or perhaps an inquisitor.
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I agree with Bob. Lawful alignment can mean having a strong moral code or set of rules you impose on yourself just as much as it can mean adhering to any and all laws of the land.
I personally do not see anything wrong with allowing a Paladin to choose to follow a deity of any alignment they want to (in PFS; in a homegame, if they want to do an evil deity, an anti-paladin might be more suitable). As has already been pointed out in this thread, the choice of deity adds no mechanical value to the paladin, as it does with both the cleric and inquisitor.
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the choice of deity adds no mechanical value to the paladin, as it does with both the cleric and inquisitor.
It does with some very limited mechanics. If we opened it up a bit, a paladin could benefit from some traits/equipment that require the character to be a "worshiper" of the deity. But, even these are very minor, and circumstantial, benefits that should not be a reason to restrict the options.
I would love to see it opened up for Pharasmin paladins, or Cayden Cailean, etc., but I'm not sure if we can do that without contradicting specific material already published in the "Faiths of" series even thought they are not required for PFS play. And that, I'm not really in favor of. At the same time, it's hard to enforce a rule/restriction that really only exists in a book that is not part of the core assumption without adding the specifics to either the Guide or the FAQ.
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To give you guys an Idea on where the developers are coming from on this, here are some quotes from James Jacobs. YOu may not agree with them, but this is how they see it.
It's not a "rule" per se, but it doesn't have to be because paladins have to be Lawful Good. If you worship a deity more than 1 step from Lawful Good... you're either not worshiping your deity appropriately (and thus being chaotic by being a blasphemer or heretic and thus losing your paladinhood) or you're worshiping so well that you're doing things that aren't lawful good, and thus not a paladin.
Paladins don't NEED the 1 step rule since they have to be Lawful Good.
No, not really.
A paladin has to be lawful, and that means that he really SHOULD not only adhere to the rules of any major organization he joins, but should exemplify those rules as a paragon of what those rules represent.
A worshiper of Calistria who exemplifies her teaching will be doing chaotic neutral acts all the time. Likewise, a worshiper of Pharasma will be doing neutral acts all the time. Those acts will eventually cause an alignment shift toward one of those alignments—they won't necessarily cause a TOTAL shift, but it only needs a single shift from, say, LG to NG or LN to make a paladin not be a paladin.
As a result, a paladin can pretty much only worship LG gods or NG or LN gods, since he can skew toward the good aspect of a NG deity or the lawful aspect of a LN deity without jeopardizing his own LG alignment.
If you want to play a "holy warrior" of a non LG, NG, or LN deity like Calistria or Pharasma, you should probably play a cleric or a cleric/fighter or maybe a cleric/rogue. And that doesn't mean even levels—you can take only a couple of fighter levels and then focus on the cleric levels. Alternatively, an inquisitor might be a good choice.
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One of the only things that I really liked about 4e D&D was the fact that they removed alignment restrictions from Paladins and said that Paladins were just divine champions of whatever god.
I know that can't work in Pathfinder because of the nature of the system and the powers that Paladins get. I'm just saying, it'd be nice to have a Paladin-style class (Heavily armoured divine warrior with minor spellcasting abilities) that wasn't alignment-dependent.
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I must disagree that a Paladin would rapidly deviate from their Alignment. For example, from that argument, a Paladin of Abadar would be doing Lawful Neutral Things all the time. Sooner or later, he's more neutral than good, and *POW* the Glow leaves the armor, and you have a warrior. Or a Paladin of Shelyn, who does Neutral Good Things more than Lawful good, and sooner or later, they become Neutral Good. By the argument of "you will become your deity's alignment", Paladins should be worshipping only LG Gods.
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you will become your deity's alignmentThat largely depends on how you view alignment and its impact on the game. Not to mention, the more you restrict paladins, the more they are all the same. Boring!
"A worshiper of Calistria who exemplifies her teaching will be doing chaotic neutral acts all the time. Likewise, a worshiper of Pharasma will be doing neutral acts all the time. Those acts will eventually cause an alignment shift toward one of those alignments"
That is from James Jacob. It seems like whoever worships a deity should end up that deity's alignment.
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you will become your deity's alignmentThat largely depends on how you view alignment and its impact on the game. Not to mention, the more you restrict paladins, the more they are all the same. Boring!"A worshiper of Calistria who exemplifies her teaching will be doing chaotic neutral acts all the time. Likewise, a worshiper of Pharasma will be doing neutral acts all the time. Those acts will eventually cause an alignment shift toward one of those alignments"
That is from James Jacob. It seems like whoever worships a deity should end up that deity's alignment.
Well, if a cleric can be one step then a regular follower can too. They just have a slightly different slant on that gods teachings, but not TOO different.
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That is from James Jacob. It seems like whoever worships a deity should end up that deity's alignment.
Perhaps, but as I said, it depends on how you define the alignment system. We can go back and forth quoting this designer or that developer.
Hell, I can quote the CRB p.166..."Alignment is a tool for developing your character's identity - it is not a straightjacket for restricting your character. Each alignment represents a broad range of personality types or personal philosophies, so two characters of the same alignment can still be quite different from each other. In addition, few people are completely consistent."
or perhaps CRB p.168...
"There's no hard and fast mechanic by which you can measure alignment"
The bottom line is *you* cannot have an argument regarding the alignments since everyone has their own interpretation. Mike just has to say what is/not legal. No explanation is required. In fact, I would say, any explanation at all is likely to create even more arguments. You don't want paladins of Pharasma or Cayden Cailean running around, fine. Just say so. Don't try to create some justification to explain why. Having an explanation just leads to players reading between the lines and trying to find the loophole to exploit, often in unexpected ways. All PFS has to say is that a paladin must declare a patron deity. Since PFS requires a worshiper to be within one step, problem solved. If you don't like the fact that leaves it open for Irori or Dranngvit paladins, then list them specifically as not being eligible.
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I'm not sure I would call it arbitrary. IMO, the fact that a paladin is not required by RAW to select a deity in the first place has always struck me as strange. Their powers are similar in nature to a cleric's which are divinely granted. I would think a paladin's power would be similarly granted. Sure, you can elect to worship a theme instead of a deity in PFRPG, but since we are restricting that option for clerics and inquisitors, it seems natural to so the same for paladins. Do I like the fact that they are restricted to the LG/LN/NG deities, no, but I understand it for the purposes of OP. I just wish we would stop playing games with the pally and just make their rules the same as the cleric/inquisitor. That seems to be the intent anyway.
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One of the only things that I really liked about 4e D&D was the fact that they removed alignment restrictions from Paladins and said that Paladins were just divine champions of whatever god.
I know that can't work in Pathfinder because of the nature of the system and the powers that Paladins get. I'm just saying, it'd be nice to have a Paladin-style class (Heavily armoured divine warrior with minor spellcasting abilities) that wasn't alignment-dependent.
Well a while ago, Green Ronin put out a 3.0 book called "the book of the Rightous"
In this tome they had a class called the "holy Warrior"
The holy warrior had the base attack bonus, saves, armor and weapon proficiencies of a paladin. Also the class had the spell casting schedule of a paladin.
Like a cleric based on the diey you selected, you picked a pair of Domains, and those domains gave you powers which defined what your holy water could do.
I do like the paladin, and wouldn't want to see the class go away or changed for that matter, but i would like to see the addition of a "holy warrior" type class. this would satisfy people wishing to play....well err...holy warriors that arn't LG, and follow other gods.
If i could have my cake and eat it too, i would like to see spell casting, like hit dice tied to Base attack bonus
and thanks everyone for your thoughts
In other words
+1 good base attack bonus D10 hit points--Paladin Ranger spell casting
+3/4 Medium base attack bonus D8 hit points--Bard/Inquisitor/magus spell casting
+1/2 Poor base attack bonus D6 hit points--Spell casting Cleric Wizard.
But it would probably be too much trouble to scrap the Cleric/Oracle/Druid, and put in D6 full spell casting, and d8 Bard spell casting classes to replace them.
But when all is said and done, I still get my character concept...a warrior who is dedicated to hunting the undead and follows Pharasma ( yeah death's heretic) so even though I can't do it with the Paladin class, I can still express this character concept with a cleric, or an inquisitor. I suppose that all i would need to do is how i want to finely tweak the character---do i need to toss in a level of fighter...etc.