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I really like the paladin class, and I always have, but I've found that few people play it in my games. Invariably when someone DOES play a paladin, there's a collective groan from the other players when this decision is made, and during virtually every gaming session.
The problem, I think, is so many people play the paladin lawful stupid. Even if a paladin is run well, they're often at odds with the rest of the group in a way that becomes tiresome to all involved (including the GM and paladin's player).
I wanted to "fix" the paladin so more people would play this very useful class. My idea was, I think, obvious. Why not have all gods have paladins? How does it make sense for a chaotic good god (e.g.) to have paladins that must be lawful good? The paladin would be living by and espousing beliefs his own deity doesn't even buy into.
The solution seemed simple. Any good god can have paladins, and any evil god can have paladins (antipaladin). I expected I'd have to retool some of the paladin abilities, so I put it off. Surely there were aspects of the paladin class that relied on the lawful part of their alignment, and those would need to be adjusted.
Yesterday, I went through the paladin's abilities and found, to my surprise, that not one of them has anything to do with the lawful part of their alignment. They're all abilities related to good against evil. So having a neutral or chaotic good paladin doesn't require any changes to the abilities of a paladin whatsoever!
The only required change is this: The paladin's alignment must match the alignment of his deity exactly. The paladin must live by this alignment and the ideals and tenets of his deity. If he fails to do this he suffers the penalties.
The antipaladin works the same way, only he has an evil deity. This allows lawful evil and neutral evil paladins.
I haven't come up with anything for a neutral paladin. The explanation is that neutral deities don't see the need for paladins as they're not involved in the good vs. evil conflict. They may be invovled in the chaos vs. law conflict, but this isn't what paladins are about (if you look at their abilities, none have anything to do with law or chaos).
I'm really interested to see if I see more paladins in my games with this new house rule. I also think it makes more sense in Golarion than the old fashioned "all paladins are lawful good" ever did.
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And thus begins paladin alignment thread #7,659.
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You're preaching to the choir, brother. : )
Ever since The World's Oldest Role-Playing Game had both a Law/Chaos axis AND a Good/Evil axis, every incarnation of the paladin has had abilities which are about Good/Evil, and absolutely none that are about Law/Chaos!
Only the fluff, and therefore, alignment restrictions and restrictions on behaviour even mention Law/Chaos.
Changing the class to allow 'any Good' (and anti-paladins to allow 'any Evil') is as simple as saying so! No abilities need to be changed whatsoever, and the slightest tweak of the spell list (re: Law/Chaos alignment spell descriptors) and removing the single pro-Law line in the paladins Code and you're done!
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Absolutely. Also, I would argue that maintaining a chaotic good or neutral good alignment as well as the dogmas and philosophies of a chaotic or neutral good deity are just as difficult as lawful good, but will result in a character that is more fun to play and adventure with.
I think the paladin as lawful good is more a product of designers' cultural bias than any in-world reasons. In the decades since the creation of the paladin class, this worldview has become even more anachronistic than it was at the time.
If I'd realized how easy this change was to implement, I would have done it a long time ago.
The variants in prior versions dipped into different aura's and such for the differently aligned paladins, the chaotic ones having aura of resolve instead of aura of courage, etc. but the current paladin for PFRPG has all of these auras, if no then the antipaladin has them. Simply eliminating the alignment restriction and making a player choose at lvl 1 whether or not he smites good or evil (if he chooses a neutral alignment) would be my ideal 'fix' for the class. It mirrors a neutral cleric choosing whether or not to channel positive or negative energy, with no penalties for choosing to channel negative energy in a good party.
All that set aside, I am all in favor of giving the player more options to develop characters with, but this should never be used as an excuse to ignore alignments in the game, which is what most paladin fixes aim to do. Players who get to make the choice will feel a lot better about playing LG than players who are forced to, but players should not be rewarded for wanting to play a CN paladin. Not saying they can't do it, but if that's the reason you want this then you are probably missing out on part of the appeal of the class.
What aspects of what classes 'appeal' will vary significantly from player to player.
It's your home game, you can tweak it however you want. I prefer paladins to be treated as honored and respected heroes wherever they go, automatically trusted by commoners and kings alike... and you only get that by being lawful good.
Oh gosh, its happening again. Lawful Good is not the best good. Your fluff is your fluff. Blahblahblah. Alignment thread number blah.
I houseruled a lot of things about the paladins, but the first and easiest idea was to do the any good/evil thing. The only class feature related to alignment is one of divine bonds enhancements, but I've never seen it used for axiomatic unless its a very specific circumstance. I like build your own conduct rules to create champions of ideals, to create a very open concept for people to work with. Depending on you play with you could get some very awesome characters out of opening up alignments.
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Just what is a Paladin, anyway, outside of RPGs?
Paladin, definitions and etymology:
The word comes into English from French, Italian, and Latin, where it originated as as the Latin term "Palatinus" (a functionary servant of an emperor).
It has variously meant over time:
1. Any of the 12 legendary peers or knightly champions in attendance on Charlemagne.
2. Any knightly or heroic champion.
3. A determined advocate or defender of a cause.
It's all a fancy way of saying that, historically, paladins have been advisers, politicians, police officers, activists, and soldiers... not necessarily holy, good, or lawful ones by D&D terms (although one might reasonably expect Charlemagne to have specially trusted his paladins, and that "knightly" would imply literally some fealty to the Church and adherence to the code of chivalry at one time... sort of the equivalent of politicians and police officers swearing to uphold and defend the Constitution and the law... in the real world, breaking codes of conduct in such offices rarely strips politicians and officers of their power... one might cynically say that the opposite is true.)
In game terms, the Paladin is an attempt to model the legend of Sir Lancelot. Lancelot's fall as a Paladin came in the form of nothing less than adultery with the queen of the king he swore to serve faithfully: lust, betrayal, deception, disloyalty - pretty heavy stuff, compared to the cheap "gotcha" moments DMs have been known to cause Paladins to fall with in D&D! Far from being precisely LG in a traditional D&D sense, Lancelot disobeyed Arthur (his king) at times when he thought it would do the most good (like befriending Arthur's arch enemy rather than fighting him, and then convincing that enemy to surrender peacefully to Arthur). Lancelot did display great, heroic courage and strength and a willingness to risk his own life when challenged - characteristics we'd hope to see from any PC class.
In short, the Paladin has evolved from "a determined advocate or defender of a cause", or a political adviser and servant to the government, through some attempt to simulate the heroic exploits of Lancelot, to what it is today: "That Lawful Good Sore Thumb that the DM Torments and the Rest of the Party Can't Stand."
What went wrong?
Most of the other classes in D&D have evolved, grown, and expanded a lot over the decades, but the Paladin has remained chained to the narrow image of a class embodiment of a single, arbitrary, poorly-defined alignment which has weirdly resisted change since the 1970s, instead festering regularly into the "Lawful Stupid" caricature that acts as the party's nagging Morality Police or which grinds the party to a halt to become the center of attention in debates over minutiae, becoming the tail that wags the party's dog to the increasing frustration and annoyance of the rest of the group (or, alternatively, innocently being turned into the harassed whipping boy and chew toy of sadistic DMs and generations of "Chaotic Stupid" Gnome Rogue party thieves for no particularly good reason.)
The Paladin, if she had a voice, might at this point speak up to declare that she is only facing worldly persecution, because She has stuck to her principals since her creation in the 1970s.
I would disagree: the Paladin is repeatedly at the center of party problems because, in spite of decades of change in the game, the Paladin has stubbornly tried to stay the same, until she is no longer playing the same RPG that the rest of the group is.
In short, the game has moved on and grown, but the Paladin stereotype has not, and instead becomes an out-of-place obstacle for the rest of the group to trip over.
The solution, I submit, is for the Paladin to evolve, and to set her sights beyond merely the Lawful Good alignment... indeed, to set her sights beyond alignment altogether!
There's no reason a Paladin couldn't be a champion of Law and Good, if she wants and it fits her character concept. There's nothing wrong with that.
But, the definition, "a determined advocate or defender of a cause", actually opens up a lot of doors for the Paladin, allowing her to cover ground that she has only rarely covered before.
For examples:
Imagine a party containing a traditional Barbarian, Ranger, Druid, and Cleric with (say) the Plant and Sun domains... the party has a bit of a theme to it: nature, the wilderness, and so on. Imagine that a Paladin joins... not a Paladin champion of the Lawful Good alignment, or even of Chaotic Neutral Alignment (or whatever), but rather, a Paladin who is a determined advocate or defender of Nature.
Or,
Imagine a party of Goblin adventurers... including a Goblin Paladin of Fire; rather than being devoted to any specific alignment, the Paladin of Fire is a champion of the pure truth and wisdom and beauty of burning flames - the flames that keep Goblin villagers warm and safe at night! The fire that cooks Goblin food! The fire that keeps children amused and out from under their parents feet! The fire that brings beauty to dry, dead forests, and brings down the stockades around farmer's fields! The fire that burns books and the evil letters and words! The Goblin Paladin of Fire burns writers at the stake to protect Goblin society from harm, the Goblin Paladin of Fire brings fire to the fire-less, and tasty cooked food to the hungry. The Goblin Paladin of Fire brings the Burning Torch of Vengeance upon threats to his people, and holds the sneaking dogs and stamping horses in the darkness at bay around his bonfires!
For any party imaginable, a Paladin could be developed who could fit right in with codes of ethics and philosophies which range from the familiar to the slightly alien, but still make logical sense, and are still recognizably Paladins in their own way.
And, non-Lawful Good Paladins could just as easily make unusual villains - and not necessarily Evil Anti-Paladins, either.
As for alignments, why not a True Neutral Paladin, devoted to maintaining a careful balance between all the different factions in the alignment matrix? It's a bit weird, it's a bit kooky, but in a world of Dwarves and Elves and planar beings and mysterious aberrations, it could be among the easier philosophies for people in the real world to understand. The Big Bad Evil Guy of the Week this time isn't a Chaotic Evil Necromancer, but rather a Neutral Paladin and his cult of deranged fanatic silent Monks attempting to balance out a world which has tipped too far toward the side of Law and Good, by helping the forces of Chaos and Evil to regain their share of the balance... the cult may even try to summon some eldritch horror of neutrality from out of the void to help with this cause... a strange, unearthly being with no interest or commitment or devotion to any particular extreme of morality or ethics, a truly neutral disregard of all things equally as little more than dust beneath its vast, tentacled feet.
What if a Dark Elf Paladin of Knowledge and Liberation, along with her Bard accomplices, were to bring a crusade in the name of the Dark Elf notion of wisdom and enlightenment to the surface world, advocating the construction of special academies of learning, and building magical printing presses to mass produce "The Mysteries of the Worm" and "The King in Yellow" for the benefit of ignorant surface-dwellers, to free them from the restrictive chains of their collective sanity?
The Lawful Good Paladin stereotype is so very narrow and human and western a concept! Yet, we as a tightly-knit culture of gamers can barely agree on what the philosophy of the Lawful Good Paladin actually is... why should a world peopled with so many non-human races be expected to have exactly the same ideas of what Paladinhood means as one faction of the gamer world, when so many of those fantasy races are so different from their Human counterparts, and so many indeed are so different as to be more or less completely alien?
What sort of Paladin organizations might be established in the deep vaults beneath the earth or in the spaces between the spaces, under the guidance of the churches and monasteries and asylums and factories and vaults of Boggards, Ghouls, Derros, Drow, Gugs, Intellect Devourers, Kuthites, Shoggoths, Aboleths, Cloakers, and so on? Mere sane humans may not quite understand the morality and ethics of such beings, but surely they, too, have devoted advocates and defenders of their own alien causes, whose inhuman faiths grant them powers and abilities that would seem miraculous to common folk.
Lawful Good is only a narrow subset of the available alignments, and alignments are only a narrow subset of the possible philosophies that might drive a Paladin and inspire her faith and fervor. With so many possibilities, so many non-human races in the game who do not necessarily share human ideals and aesthetics, why should we expect all Paladins everywhere to adhere to exactly the same code of ethics and philosophy?
This is gonna end about as well as the other one that has been going on for hundreds of posts. Someone who shall remain nameless will come in here and berate you for defiling the epitome of heroicness that is the Paladin and anything less than LG shouldn't be called a paladin and blah blah blah ramble ramble.
That's right. Call it something other then a paladin and do whatever you want.
==Aelryinth
I'll also note, as far as 'trusted heroes' things go, the Realms has dozens of stories about roguish Harpers, who are generally CG, and relatively few about paladins.
But even in those books, the average person trusts an order of paladins more then a wandering Harper. Why? Because the paladin generally belongs to an Order with an open and glorious history, doesn't try to hide their actions, doesn't skulk in shadows, doesn't really keep secrets, and makes a point of protecting people that can't protect themselves. They are right there, all the time, doing the job they said they'd do, and dying for it.
Harpers do these sort of things, too, but they do them in little bits, here and there, and then they happily break laws and upset all sorts of folks in pursuit of the 'right thing'. They also hide a TON of secrets, and work with questionable sorts all the time.
People trust paladins more then Harpers, even in FR. Go figure. And lordie, do they play up the stuffy LG model for paladins in FR.
==Aelryinth
Yron, sounds like the paladin is a follower of Erastil...nature lover, god of hunting, home and family. Preferred weapon a longbow, too. Probably married with six kids.
Your counter-examples are also all out of date. They basically say being LG is trite, old, passe, and playing a LG true-blue hero is basically something nobody should do.
You want modern paladins? Go read Harry Dresden. The Knights of the Swords are paladins, and they are awesome to read. Ain't nothing Lawful Stupid about them, and everybody loves having them around...even if you can't cuss around them without admonishment.
"G!+ d@~n, would you look at those heck hounds!"
===Aelryinth
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Yron, sounds like the paladin is a follower of Erastil...nature lover, god of hunting, home and family. Preferred weapon a longbow, too. Probably married with six kids.
Your counter-examples are also all out of date. They basically say being LG is trite, old, passe, and playing a LG true-blue hero is basically something nobody should do.
You want modern paladins? Go read Harry Dresden. The Knights of the Swords are paladins, and they are awesome to read. Ain't nothing Lawful Stupid about them, and everybody loves having them around...even if you can't cuss around them without admonishment.
"G@@ d+$n, would you look at those heck hounds!"
===Aelryinth
Harry Dresden is definitely not LG.
Tv Tropes link.
Its all opinion Aelryinth. The value of the literature your naming and what the alignment of the character Yron mentioned was. I put a paladin of Cayden up in another thread and someone thought he was NG even though he explicitly didn't listen to rules and tried to escape civilization. YMMV. Some wiggle room helps everyone be happy, rather than those few who like things the way they are.
Okay, we'll call it...True Paladin!That's right. Call it something other then a paladin and do whatever you want.
==Aelryinth
Is a true neutral paladin truly confused? If the pure neutral outsiders are any indication...
You want modern paladins? Go read Harry Dresden. The Knights of the Swords are paladins, and they are awesome to read. Ain't nothing Lawful Stupid about them, and everybody loves having them around...even if you can't cuss around them without admonishment."G@@ d+$n, would you look at those heck hounds!"
===Aelryinth
Harry Dresden is definitely not LG.
Tv Tropes link.
Aelryinth didn't say Harry Dresden was Lawful Good. He said the Knights of the Cross were Lawful Good. Which is probably accurate, although some of the quirks pointed out are unique to Michael Carpenter and his religious upbringing, not strictures of the Knights as a whole. (Sanya, for instance, is an agnostic who swears in Russian and kills demon cultists with an AK-47.) They do pretty much always keep their word, however... in fact, for one of the swords, breaking an oath would break the sword. But when it comes to the Laws of Man they can be rather flexible.
The idea of variant paladins has been floated before. Back in 3.5 the Unearthed Arcana book had a CG Paladin of Freedom, a LE Paladin of Tyranny and a CE Paladin of Slaughter (basically an anti-paladin). And people should absolutely run with that idea if that suits their game. Heck, I'd love to play a chaotic good paladin of Cayden Cailean who heroically fights for freedom and equality and booze.
But this overlooks the more pressing question: why is having a lawful good PC considered problematic? If you've got evil PCs then it's obviously going to be a constant source of conflict among the players, but that's going to be an issue for any group with evil PCs and any good alignment (and many neutral ones). The chaotic good PC shouldn't have any more tolerance for the lawful evil one torturing prisoners and selling them into slavery than the lawful good one: it's still utterly contrary to his beliefs. If anything, a chaotic good character should be even more willing to kill an evil character in his sleep just to rid the world of him, agreements to work together be damned! After all, doesn't chaotic good mean that you believe in freedom and do what's right, no matter what the rules say? Having "chaotic" in front of your alignment isn't a "get out of morality free" card... you still have to play the other half of your alignment.
If anything, isn't it the evil PC that's the problem here? They've made it impossible for players of good PCs to actually play their alignment without inter-party murder taking place. Their choice is to either kill or eject the evil PC (thus creating conflict among the gaming group that could sunder it) or to not play their alignment, essentially turning neutral even if their character sheet says good, so that the player of the evil PC is the only one who gets to have any fun while the rest of the group just kind of slogs along in misery, reduced to supporting characters in their own game. (And yes, I speak from experience on this one, having been in groups both with an actual evil PC and with PCs who were essentially evil even if their character sheet said "chaotic neutral". People gave up on being chaotic good pretty quickly.)
Then again, the whole question is moot if your players play all their characters, regardless of what their sheet says, by the only truly universal RPG protagonist alignment: Homicidal Kleptomaniac. :-P
The way you handle evil and good working together varies between the players and group. Some people play any good and harass everyone who isn't quiet up to their standards, and other people play evil without doing a single act that threatens group cohesion because it just isn't worth it. I don't think the good guy really isn't any better than the CN guy doing whatever he wants, personally, I just think you should avoid threatening group cohesion. Opening up paladins and loosening their strictness helps this happen in my experience, but YMMV. People play what they like.
Actually in my experience you don't need a paladin in the game to get shoo'd by other characters. I had a group a few months ago where any hint of evil at all was treated badly. Like, in character but needs to be talked out of character but won't because bad social skills/attitude badly. They just didn't want evil and wanted good guys, but you had to meet their standards of good. Attacking evil on the battlefield? Bad. Insisting on killing a charismatic/intelligent spontaneous caster BBEG instead of exiling him? Bad. Get onto other people for being bad who turn out to be good? Bad. Have a backstory that involves a hint of evil? Bad. Seeking redemption? Bad! You shouldn't have been evil in the first place. Chelaxian? You have it coming!
I think they had issues personally. Paladins just have happen to enforce it on themselves, depending on how you handle the code. People on the other hand handle themselves in all sorts of ways.
The way you handle evil and good working together varies between the players and group. Some people play any good and harass everyone who isn't quiet up to their standards, and other people play evil without doing a single act that threatens group cohesion because it just isn't worth it. I don't think the good guy really isn't any better than the CN guy doing whatever he wants, personally, I just think you should avoid threatening group cohesion. Opening up paladins and loosening their strictness helps this happen in my experience, but YMMV. People play what they like.When you don't have Paladins in a game, problems like these disappear. Other good aligned characters just have to worry about keeping the evils in check. The Paladin however is the one who has to worry about his built-in self destruct and has to wonder whether his DM or his fellow players are trying to get him to push it.
No. When you have grown-ups in the game, problems like this disappear. The problem isn't the class, it's the player, or more often the other players, who want to do "naughty things".
The Narration makes some excellent points.
And they already have holy warriors of each alignment- we call them Inquisitors or Fighting Clerics or even Battle oracles.
Which means Paladins don't need to exist. Any one of those, or for that matter anybody, can call themselves a Paladin and stick to a code.
Yron, sounds like the paladin is a follower of Erastil...nature lover, god of hunting, home and family. Preferred weapon a longbow, too. Probably married with six kids.
Your counter-examples are also all out of date. They basically say being LG is trite, old, passe, and playing a LG true-blue hero is basically something nobody should do.
You want modern paladins? Go read Harry Dresden. The Knights of the Swords are paladins, and they are awesome to read. Ain't nothing Lawful Stupid about them, and everybody loves having them around...even if you can't cuss around them without admonishment.
"G@@ d+$n, would you look at those heck hounds!"
Harry Dresden is definitely not LG.
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Aelryinth didn't say Dresden was, he said " The Knights of the Swords " were. And he's right.
No. When you have grown-ups in the game, problems like this disappear. The problem isn't the class, it's the player, or more often the other players, who want to do "naughty things".
The Narration makes some excellent points.
And they already have holy warriors of each alignment- we call them Inquisitors or Fighting Clerics or even Battle oracles.
I should note in my example everyone was at least 20 years old and sober. Unfortunately growing up doesn't always mean a mature and stable mind with people, and sometimes social skills are lacking.
A fighter can be a holy warrior. He just doesn't get smite. Or auras. Or magic. He can role play being devote, and serving a deity, and follow all his tenants. Anyone can really. Mechanics help fluff meet though. Paladin is the only full BAB champion. His fluff restrictions are pretty meh sometimes though, and his code of conduct mechanic doesn't always agree with the individuals who want to be a good guy. Which can be awkward.
The class should be supporting the character concept, not the other way around... classes such as the Rogue, the Cleric, even the Fighter and so on have all expanded their definitions a lot over the years, to cover and support more and more character concept ground. The rogue is no longer simply the Party Thief, the Cleric is no longer simply the party Judeo-Christian-inspired healbot and undead-turner, the Fighter is no longer necessarily Conan the Barbarian with the serial-number filed off.
The Paladin, however, is still the class where we build the same Lawful Good guy with the same motivations and the same weaknesses to the same DM jerk moves, in order to support pretty much the same narrow mechanical idea.
Let's face it - people aren't joining the game to get an opportunity to emulate some supporting characters from the Harry Dresden books.
They are, in many cases, joining it to be Knights in Shining armor: trustworthy, dependable, honorable, respectable, standing up for Truth, Justice, and the American Way! And then, they all get funneled into the Paladin class, as if they cannot achieve their goals using the mechanics of the Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, or even Wizard to simulate pretty much the same thing. Because, the Paladin has been the narrow pigeon-hold this concept has been artificially been crammed into.
Meanwhile, the Paladin class, which can open up so many possibilities for embracing new and unique character concepts with only small tweaks to the basic mechanics, is instead artificially closed off to the outside world, for no particularly good reason other than to segregate off the heroic characters behind the Paladin firewall, into artificial Us-vs.-Them camps of "adventures who are free to troll the campaign" and "stuffy Paladins".
The Knight in Shining Armor character concept is not a toxic substance that needs to be shut away into this one class, and then kept in check by killer DMs always on the lookout for the tiniest slip-up.
Tear down that wall... open up the Paladin pigeon-hole, stop crowding it with all the Knights in Shining Armor, and give the class some breathing room.
In my games I'm house ruling that Paladins can be any good and Anti Paladins any evil. Barbarians cover any chaotic and Monk cover any lawful. It just makes sense to me.
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Honestly, if your GM is a dick who amuses himself by trying to force his players into a Morton's Fork where any action they take will self-destruct their character by violating their code of conduct, then the game was probably going to be miserable no matter what class you played.
The fact is that the paladin's code of conduct isn't as restrictive--and violating it not as hair trigger--as some people seem to think. You have to comport yourself with decency and honor, yes... but you aren't expected to do the impossible. Paladins face situations where they have to decide whether to be lawful or good and they choose good and remain paladins (because otherwise they'd be hellknights). Some situations have no perfect solution, and it would be good characterization for the paladin to feel bad about it, but their god shouldn't kick them out over it because it's not their fault. The Second Darkness campaign, for instance, has a bit where the PCs go undercover as drow, and the module specifically discusses the fact that good PCs (paladins included) will probably see a lot of evil things happen that they can't prevent... and that they shouldn't be punished for it.
I rather like the idea of opening up the paladin to more alignments. After all, we've got classes that are "any Lawful" or "any non-lawful," so why not a class that's "any good"? I just disagree with the notion that Lawful Good characters are somehow a problem that needs to be "fixed". After all, a Chaotic Good paladin would be just as devoted to their own personal ethos. Chaotic good is not the alignment of "Honey badger don't care, honey badger do what it wants." It's the alignment of "FREEEEEEEDOM!" So while they might care less about things like stealing (so long as it's from bad people or people who can afford it), they would care just as much about stuff like executing or torturing prisoners, stealing from good people, the plight of the common folk, and even more about freeing slaves and toppling tyrants. They're still not going to get along with characters that only care about getting XP and loot by any means possible.
ROFL I stared a thread just like this with the same exact topic because I believe the same thing a couple of weeks ago over here.
Gods are who give the paladins their powers, not man. Thus I am a firm believer that as long as the paladin follows his deity's tenets he is in fact a paladin or anti-paladin regardless of the Lawful/Neutral/Chaos part. Just follow what his god/goddess believes in and he stays their champion keeping his god-bestowed powers/abilities/spells.
A couple of really good resources for me are the Faiths of Purity and Faiths of Corruption books by Paizo. They have paladin codes/tenets for all of the major deities. The "core" paladin has generic codes that I feel are superseded by these new codes by specific gods/goddesses.
I know my thread has gone on for a while and is over 200 posts now and feel that there are a few people who I shall not name that are really set in their ways of how they see a paladin. There will be dissenters on the boards of course who have already visited this thread and call for you to not name these variant paladins "paladins" just because they aren't LG.
My advice is that it is your game and as long as you have discussed this with your table and everyone is cool with it, just have fun and roll with the new paladins. I certainly am going to in my games no matter what anyone on here says!
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I happen to like the distinctiveness of the LG paladin. The LG alignment is the hardest to properly role-play, and the role-playing aspect is the main drawback for an otherwise very powerful class.
We have all had experience with (or at least heard of) horror stories regarding paladins. From the player side: role-playing paladin PCs as pompous self-righteous jerks and/or "lawful stupid" types who never back down from any perceived injustice. Or from the GM side: where the GM gleefully entraps a paladin PC into "falling" by trickery, "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenarios, or fiat.
Those aren't problems of the paladin class per se: they're problems with the interpretation and/or incompatible play styles.
So, in my game, paladins are LG, but I generally give the player the benefit of the doubt when it comes to moral questions. I NEVER set them up to fail. When I play a paladin, I always remember that "lawful" means "team player" and "group > individual".
In my game, if you want to play a non-LG holy warrior that's dedicated to a deity, then there's already a published option: Play an inquisitor!
I happen to like the distinctiveness of the LG paladin. The LG alignment is the hardest to properly role-play, and the role-playing aspect is the main drawback for an otherwise very powerful class.
We have all had experience with (or at least heard of) horror stories regarding paladins. From the player side: role-playing paladin PCs as pompous self-righteous jerks and/or "lawful stupid" types who never back down from any perceived injustice. Or from the GM side: where the GM gleefully entraps a paladin PC into "falling" by trickery, "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenarios, or fiat.
Those aren't problems of the paladin class per se: they're problems with the interpretation and/or incompatible play styles.
So, in my game, paladins are LG, but I generally give the player the benefit of the doubt when it comes to moral questions. I NEVER set them up to fail. When I play a paladin, I always remember that "lawful" means "team player" and "group > individual".
In my game, if you want to play a non-LG holy warrior that's dedicated to a deity, then there's already a published option: Play an inquisitor!
It really isn't the hardest to role play. That is a myth, unless the only characters you play are chaotic neutral homicidal kleptomaniacs (spelling?) which is what most people on these boards seem to think is the best and most fun way to play. I play lawful good all the time and even if I'm not running a paladin I usually end up lawful something. I'm all for opening up the paladin to be able to include all nine alignments, but if the reason you want it is so you can be a homicidal maniac, then I think the problem is not with how restrictive the paladin class is, but rather with how players who want a chaotic paladin need to broaden their personal play style.
Harry Dresden would probably qualify as Neutral Good. He's the agent of an angel, and he's definitely Good...doing what he does without pay despite the costs to himself. He's not lawful because he has deep-seated and well-reserved authority figure issues. On the other hand, he is deeply respectful of those who've earned that respect, and he's not whimsical, he's just got a fast mouth. He doesn't have problems working with teams, and he doesn't have problems going solo...but his big thing is he's got a lot of friends and allies, not underlings or superiors, and he doesn't ride solo anymore.
NG wisecracking Winter Knight wizard all the way, babeeeeee!
And that said, Michael he probably respects more then anyone else in any of the books, including his own grandfather/mentor. Why? Because he holds himself to an even higher moral code then Harry does, regardless of what it costs him. That kind of respect is hard-core earned.
===Aelryinth
Harry Dresden would probably qualify ...
Any discussion of the “real” alignment of any well known fantasy character can go on for pages, and is not germane to this thread. Let’s not go there, eh?