Musings on the "Lawful Jerk" Paladin

[Ralif Redhammer]

It boils down to that there are people that either can play as part of a group like an adult, or can’t. People that either don’t know that they’re being disruptive, or do so on purpose. I’ve no interest in playing with those folks anymore. There can certainly be frisson and distrust amongst characters, and with NPCs. But anything that actively disrupts the story, rather than contributing to it, is a problem.

At a con I was playing a cowardly LE rogue. The guy playing a paladin at the table and I had great fun needling each other (in-character). But it never slowed down or sidetracked the game.

It's funny. For all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about lawful stupid paladins, I've never had that problem. Chaotic Insane Neutral who stab their ally in the back "just to see what happens"? Those are the people that have caused issues with my campaign. Even if you're talking haughty/stuck up characters, the worst ones I've encountered were not playing paladins.

 

[CleverNickName]

I think the problems that most people have with paladins can be traced back to conflicting expectations, honestly. You know, when the player expects one thing and the DM expects another. I think that 99% of all of the "Lawful Jerk" complaints and complications could be avoided with a 10-minute conversation while rolling up characters.

Maybe something like this:

Player: How would you describe paladins in this game world?

DM: Well, in this campaign they are (insert general description here).

Player: I see. And how would a paladin of (alignment, deity, etc.) be expected to act in this world?

DM: For the most part they would (info dump).

Player: Cool. And what typically happens to paladins that can't, don't, or won't?

DM: Well, they (insert details here). Would you be interested in a quest where your paladin falls out of favor, and has to undertake a quest to regain his powers?

Player: Um...(either "Sure, that sounds great" or "Nah, not this time.")

DM: So what character will you roll up?

Player: In light of all this, I think my character will be (a Paladin if you like what you hear, something else if you don't).

 

[TheCosmicKid]

However the player is a philosophy major in college and is not a moral absolutist by any fashion.

Sorry for the rant, but I don't play D&D (well, not always anyway) as if it were philosophy 101.

Side note: most professional philosophers are moral realists. Undergraduate philosophy majors, maybe not, but you know what they say about "a little knowledge": one look at the Trolley Problem, and whoa! mind blown! ethics must be, like, just your opinion, man. So don't go through D&D, or life, thinking it's childish or naïve or lazy to believe that right and wrong are real. You can do so and be in very good company.

(Don't get me wrong, you can also believe the opposite and be in very good company, but the big names in nonrealism understand that their opponents are intelligent and serious people.)

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Today's Paladin does not even have that going for it; today's Paladin is the millennial model, with all the bells and whistles and none of the hard work. Your average, garden-variety Paladin today still whimpers sycophantically about their need for a Holy Avenger while hoarding all the dice for their next smite; yet can't even be bothered to come up with a creed. (They might say, "My oath, is, like, to do stuff that makes me better, and stuff. I think!").

Yeah, as much as I love 5E, it is very much the "participation trophy" version of D&D. There are virtually no mechanical penalties built into the rules, so if the DM is not a hard ass about things, players can get away with doing whatever they want, regardless of how it violates character concept or the few vaguely inferred no-nos in the rules.

Now take this gold star for reading this and get off my lawn so I can go back to houseruling in 1E penalties for characters in my 5E homebrew.

 

[DeanP]

The paladin is absolutely my favorite class, and have played a paladin through the editions of D&D. I think the problem of becoming a jerk paladin was rectified by one simple house rule back in first edition. Ignoring the "paladins will only adventure with persons of good alignment and neutrals on a one time basis." This stricture made it near impossible to have a harmonious, continuous group of PCs. To me, it was at the heart of the problem. It forced somebody in the group to play something they didn't want to play, it was the essential source of resentment. It was hard enough to qualify to play the class, why make it so you might only be allowed to play it once with a group or force the paladin player to cajole others to "be good"? Once this rule was eliminated, there really wasn't a problem with a paladin in the mix of characters with different alignments.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Yeah, as much as I love 5E, it is very much the "participation trophy" version of D&D. There are virtually no mechanical penalties built into the rules, so if the DM is not a hard ass about things, players can get away with doing whatever they want, regardless of how it violates character concept or the few vaguely inferred no-nos in the rules.

Mechanical penalties for roleplaying are prone to getting gamed. Especially if the penalties were intended to balance what was otherwise an overpowered class, like the 1E paladin. It's a setup that incentivizes grabbing the class for the power with no intention of adhering to the spirit of the rules, following their letter as *ahem* creatively as possible. Maybe your own gaming group is better than that, but as far as the core rules go, the current way is the better way.

 

[Oofta]

Side note: most professional philosophers are moral realists. Undergraduate philosophy majors, maybe not, but you know what they say about "a little knowledge": one look at the Trolley Problem, and whoa! mind blown! ethics must be, like, just your opinion, man. So don't go through D&D, or life, thinking it's childish or naïve or lazy to believe that right and wrong are real. You can do so and be in very good company.

(Don't get me wrong, you can also believe the opposite and be in very good company, but the big names in nonrealism understand that their opponents are intelligent and serious people.)

Well, I would probably never put anyone into the trolley situation in a game unless one of the options was to throw the brakes, risk derailing and possibly dying unless you can somehow manage to avoid catastrophe.

I think one of the mistakes 4E made was to try to force moral relativism into a fantasy game. I get it that for some campaigns it works for orcs to be humans with a skin condition and bad dental work. I also don't have a problem with orcs being an evil race.

An analogy. Nobody is going to feel bad if you disinfect a vial that is contaminated with ebola. Nobody talks about how sad it is that the poor baby ebola viruses just want to replicate and grow. Is ebola evil? Well ... in a sense it is. It's entire existence revolves around destroying life. In another sense it's not evil because it's not sentient (same with my cat who would love to get at those birds in the back yard*).

But what if a sentient creature, let's call them an orc, was hard wired to kill and destroy all other sentient life. That the only reason for their existence is destruction, and the only reason they don't kill is because of selfish reasons. They never know love or compassion as we understand it, they raise children because they have to, not because they love them, etc. It's not nature versus nurture, raise an orc baby in a loving environment and it will still kill you in your sleep if it can just because that's how it gets it's jollies.

Is that orc evil? I would say yes. They are not human, and to assume they would ever go arm-in-arm singing kumbaya with other sentient creatures if given a chance does not fit the base assumption of what an orc is. Now, I will be the first to admit that it may be a gross over-simplification to say that, but then again that's what D&D is all about. For many people it's a fantasy game with a simplified moral structure so we can roll some dice, eat junk food and have fun hanging out without having to concern ourselves with the moral quandary of leaving orphaned baby orcs after slaughtering their parents. Because no matter what we do, that orc baby will grow up to be an evil force of murder and destruction. In other words, an orc.

*Hmmm...maybe cats are evil.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Sunseeker]

If orcs weren't meant to be killed, they wouldn't have been made out of experience points.

Is a half-orc only worth half XP?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Mechanical penalties for roleplaying are prone to getting gamed. Especially if the penalties were intended to balance what was otherwise an overpowered class, like the 1E paladin. It's a setup that incentivizes grabbing the class for the power with no intention of adhering to the spirit of the rules, following their letter as *ahem* creatively as possible.

Which is exactly why earlier versions of the class had codified rules about what is and is-not acceptable behavior. A paladin will never use poison, not because there's never a situation where doing so would be the lesser of two evils, but because admitting that such situations could exist would open the flood-gates to flouting the expectations entirely. If you don't say that a paladin will never associate with an Evil creature, then you open the door to players associating freely with demons, whenever they think doing so will be more efficient or convenient.

The old LG paladin is a great concept if you're playing in a world of black and white morality, like Dragonlance, which D&D was entirely crafted to support. Conflict arises when the DM transports the class to a world of greater ambiguity, because the rules weren't designed to support that type of setting, so the paladin ends up looking like a jerk whenever they insist on doing the right thing.