Ghost paladin of Aroden?

[Tinalles]

Quick question: would the ghost of a paladin of Aroden retain her powers after Aroden's fall?

I'm working on a scenario in a homebrew campaign involving a Paladin of Aroden, Jaina Everton, hunting down a straggler from Tar-Baphon's forces after the Shining Crusade. She cornered her quarry in late 3827 AR and, unfortunately, lost the fight -- drowned in a cunning ambush involving an unexpected pool of water and a net with weights on it.

The ambush site, though, had only one exit, and she died squarely across it. She promptly rose as a ghost and proceeded to bottle up the area. She can't leave the pool of water she drowned in, but her quarry is permanently trapped. So, stalemate, waiting for the PCs to come along and put the paladin to rest by destroying her quarry (a corrupted fey creature named Barrasthûl).

But if Jaina lost her paladin mojo when Aroden went belly up in 4606 AR, then the chronology doesn't work. Barrasthûl would surely have broken out once that happened. So ... just trying to find out whether I need to rework this backstory.

[Quandary]

Are you operating under the assumption that Paladins receive their powers from deities?
They don't. If anything, you can say they receive their powers from 'cosmic Lawful Goodness'.
There is one Paladin Archetype (Sacred Servant) that receives SOME powers from a deity.
AFAIK, death of the deity/angering the deity would only cause them to lose access to the Domain and Call Celestial Ally abilities.
The rest of their abilities would still continue to derive from 'cosmic Lawful Goodness' (to give it a specific source).
Otherwise, the standard Paladin and every other Paladin archetype does not depend on a deity for any of their powers.
"Paladin of Aroden" means nothing more than "Fighter of Aroden" unless discussing the specific deity-linked Archetype.
For the same reason, "Paladin of Asmodeus" doesn't really indicate any specific mechanical relationship or in-game meaning.

[James Jacobs]

Yeah; while most paladins worship deities, they don't have to. As an extension, a paladin can worship a dead god and still get paladin powers... as LONG as the paladin is lawful good.

Remember—Aroden was lawful neutral, and so paladins wouldn't have been a huge part of his following. It'd probably be about on the same level of paladins who worship Abadar.

Problem with being a paladin of Asmodeus is that you can't do that and remain lawful good. You have to be lawful good to be a paladin. If you're honest and devout about your worship to Asmodeus, you're not good—you're evil. And if you're not honest and devout and just give lip service and oppose the evil parts of your religion, you're not lawful, you're chaotic. In either case, a paladin of Asmodeus wouldn't work. Unless it was, of course, a fighter or a cleric or some other class who was lying and just pretending to be a paladin, at which point I'm not sure why you'd come out and say "yeah I'm a paladin of Asmodeus." It's just kind of a nonsensical idea.

But there can certainly be ghost paladins of Aroden.

[Quandary]

yeah, I never read into the "Paladins of Asmodeus" article anything suggesting there are actually Paladins who knowingly WORSHIP Asmodeus (while retaining Paladin powers), or who even walk around and say "Hi, I'm a Paladin of Asmodeus". It was just the heading of a topic introducing how Asmodeus interacts with Paladins, which specifically says that this interaction inevitably leads to their fall as Paladins. It could involve influencing them without knowing Asmodeus is behind it, or it could involve taking advantage of the 'may work with evil' clause (without them 'worshipping' Asmodeus) for similar outcome. Asmodeus may certainly like to view them as "Paladins of Asmodeus" with an evil chuckle, but it doesn't really correspond to what people think it does, "Paladins of X Deity" doesn't really mean much in game terms (outside of Sacred Servant archetype, which wouldn't work with Asmodeus, it specifically says only LG, LN, or NG deities).

If you want to say the Paladin worships X deity, that's fine, but doesn't impact most Paladins' powers (as long as it doesn't cause an alignment conflict), and even for Sacred Servants a minority of their powers are affected (albeit the primary reasons to take that Archetype). For non-Sacred Servants, worship of evil gods should be flat out excluded, and although 'lay' worship of gods (including most Paladins) is a different thing than clerical worship, you would have to be careful with TN/CG deities... I don't think they're impossible, LN/NG deities are explicitly legit for Sacred Servant Paladins after all, but you should constrain your worship to their aspects/cults which are in line with a Paladin ethos (avoiding the aspects/cults of them which are opposed to it, which would be the case with some aspects of those alignments). Depending on lore, suitable aspects/cults of TN/CG deities may not even exist, I just didn't want to rule it out per se.

[Tinalles]

Oh good. That means I don't have to rewrite backstory at the last second.

And yes, I get that Aroden wouldn't have had very many paladins. Fortunately, all I need is one. If I need 'em in job lots, I'll look elsewhere.

Thanks!

[Quandary]

If you did make it a Sacred Servant Paladin, it could be funny because the ghost Paladin could have assumed that it lost it's Domain powers because it fell from Aroden's grace (instead of just because Aroden died/disappeared).