In all the paladin threads I've seen about people wanting to avoid falling or to have more lax restrictions on the paladin class I've never seen someone mention the Redeemer (you'll have to scroll down a bit, my link-fu isn't very strong)
I realize that it's only for half orcs but a human or half elf could pick it up with racial heritage as a first level feat. While it's slightly inferior mechanics wise and doesn't get rid of too many restrictions it can help if you want to have an evil character in the party.
Is there any particular reason that this archetype is ignored?
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In all the paladin threads I've seen about people wanting to avoid falling or to have more lax restrictions on the paladin class I've never seen someone mention the Redeemer (you'll have to scroll down a bit, my link-fu isn't very strong)
I realize that it's only for half orcs but a human or half elf could pick it up with racial heritage as a first level feat. While it's slightly inferior mechanics wise and doesn't get rid of too many restrictions it can help if you want to have an evil character in the party.
Is there any particular reason that this archetype is ignored?
The main issue is that Paladins can already ally themselves with evil creatures if they deem such an alliance as being for the greater good, so you don't really get much leeway, so all you get is a class with some neat flavor that doesn't really do anything much better than a standard paladin.
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Because its not just about being able to have an evil character in the party, though that helps a lot. It's also about being able to make my own choices as a player about what's important to my character, and what my character's diety would approve of. As long as I have a legitimate code with real repercussions, I don't feel it should have to be specifically lawful good. What if I had a paladin of balance who must maintain true neutral and do his best at all times to maintain the status quo of the region he serves? This is a perfectly viable code of conduct with many messy implications in terms of fun game play role playing questions. It is an excellent example of a paladin who might gain his powers from a neutral or lawful neutral outsider. It simply isn't as well done by most other classes as it could be by the paladin, but the paladin doesn't allow it in non-home brew games.
When our group was doing Curse of the Crimson Throne, my hubby wanted to play a Paladin of Pharasma...the true Neutral deity of birth, death, and the Path between (fate). We had to tell/remind him (he hadn't really played since 2.0) that true Pallies have to be LG and only one step removed from the deity they followed.
So, the GM and my hubby worked on what we now call Holy Warriors and Unholy Warriors, for the top six and bottom three alignments respectively. Basically, all Paladins are Holy Warriors, but not all Holy Warriors are Paladins.
If you want to play an HW (or UW, but those are mostly for either NPCs or when we all want to get our Evil on ;->) using our house rules, you'd have to (in order of emphasis):
1) choose an alignment within one step of your deity and STICK TO THAT, the way a Pally would to LG (my hubby's HW was Neutral Good);
2) focus on a specific thing, or small group of specific things, important to your deity. My hubby went with "make undead stop moving, they're an abomination" for his PC's focus;
3) be prepared for logical changes. If a Good-aligned HW would get smite evil as an ability, then maybe a Chaotic Neutral HW would have smite law instead.
Other than that, the powers and abilities are pretty much the same...
LB
Pathfinder 2e resolved that problem. Paladins (and antipaladins) have a much larger palette.
Pathfinder 2e Remaster went even further and removed arbitrary alignments completely
so... "Paletteadins"?
*standing slow clap*
A paladin needs to keep their oath and not break vows etc. Pledging to a group of religious tenets too far from the LG code will result in the paladin violating said religious tenets to maintain the paladin code, which would mean breaking their word, and hence violating their code.
So no, paladin cannot follow a deity with an alignment too far from LG.
Thank you for attending my Tedtalk.
See, half of what you refer to for Pharasma is G behavior, and half is N-G. But Pharasma is not Good, she is Neutral. Either there is more to being a devoted follower of Pharasma, or she us Good.
Ah, alignment/ paladin didcussions. Has anyone ever changed their mind or attitude from one of these?
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There is actually no restriction against worshiping Pharasma as a Paladin. The Paladin must be lawful good, yes, but the need to be within 1 alignment step of your deity is for Clerics and similar. The Paladin must honor his code of conduct but that code has no provision that a Paladin must be within 1 step of a deity's alignment.
Paladin's aren't actually required to worship a deity at all: In fact, the only mention of a deity in their CRB entry is when the opening blurb states they seek '...to embody the teachings of the virtuous deities they serve' which could be read as limiting their options to deities with Lawful Neutral, Lawful Good, or Neutral Good alignments as mentioned in the Gray Paladin archetype.
If you look deep enough, you'll find plenty of discussion on this specific topic in these forums.
Honestly, you could probably make a good argument that Pharasma as a goddess of fate and prophecy and the impartial judge of souls should actually be Lawful Neutral rather than Neutral, but that's an entirely different discussion...
Ah, that is where our eyes aren't meeting. I figure that calling yourself a member of a faith means you have agreed to follow it's tenets. For a lay follower these tenets aren't too strict, and being human the follower will break some on occasion, the faith will have some sort of penance system for this.
I'm figuring that by agreeing to follow these tenets the paladin has elevated the gravity of the situation by qualifying the religious rules as an oath he has sworn, thus making the keeping of it a condition of his Paladin Code. If following the faith is not an oath, vow, promise or whatever then no problem witn the paladin code arises.
Note, my actual homegame solution is to require all paladins to have a patron deity and that their alignment must match said patron.
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I do not see any contradiction between the Paladin code and the worship of Pharasma if a Paladin were to swear to lay the dead to rest, respect tombs and graves, destroy the undead, help with childbirth, and perhaps have an interest in prophesy. This is well within a Paladin's code of conduct.
I think it is probably best to think of Pharasma as being more along the lines of a cattle rancher in that any 'good' aspects really have very mundane (and possibly completely 'selfish') motivations: Pharasma only cares about the natural cycle of 'Birth to Death to Judgement' and therefore promotes actions that keep this cycle running smoothly (in particular, making certain the dead pass along to their judgement). She's not opposed to murder, as long as you don't prevent the victim's soul from moving on to her judgement...
Imagine a 'Paladin of Pharasma' encounters a fresh murder scene:
As a paladin, they should probably focus on pursuing the murderer to bring them to justice, as is the Paladin way.
As a worshiper of Pharasma, they should immediately focus on funerary rites to ensure the victim's soul doesn't linger for any reason, because Pharasma finds mortal law and justice irrelevant (after all, she'll judge the murder's soul at some point, so mortal justice just doesn't matter).