Paladin / Warlock Faith conflict query

[Yunru]

I'm not sure why people would not follow that path, if you could be a doctor only studing some days most people would try to be a doctor.

Follow? Sure.
But consider: How many people swear to get slimmer at new years? Of those, how many hold themselves to that oath?

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Nagol]

I respectfully disagree. A faithful follower of a deity, who receives powers from said deity, wouldn't then go on the side bartering with a patron for power. Why would they? Their god provides! And why would the deity tolerate their chosen followers consorting with a supernatural being of suspect - if not entirely offensive - nature, motives and ethos? Bah, BAH I say.

Now there *is* an edge case where the deity and patron are allies, or have similar interest. So it IS doable. But it has to be crafted carefully.

David Eddings has a whole series (Elenium, the Diamond Throne is the first book) where the order of paladin-like knights learned magic from the 'old gods' to help their mission. An god-like avatar points out that their god does love them and would've provided, but isn't upset.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

In my setting, both paladins and warlocks are primarily empowered by nondeities (like archfiends, empyreal lords, etc.*) for very specific purposes. It takes a certain amount of effort to transform the proto-paladin or proto-warlock into becoming a member of the class, so there is an "economic" as propaganda incentive to convert someone else's paladin/warlock instead of making one from scratch. The purpose of the paladin is to be a public symbol of devotion, vengeance/justice, older values (ancients), redemption, conquest, etc. Anything that interferes with that is likely to draw their ire, so there is a certain risk in multiclassing paladin/warlock (a similar risk to doing paladin/rogue), but no guarantee that it will go badly.

The reason they support paladins is because, while they want all souls they can get on their planes, souls associated with more power in life are more likely to go straight to being combat-orientated angels/archons/guardianels/devils/demons, etc. (I call these exalted souls) and the less powerful petitioners can try to become exalted after death (good ones can chose to climb Mt. Celestia or Olympus and hope to impress something, and part of the reason there is all that torture [and the Blood War] is that evil types inflict trauma on their petitioners in the (slight) hope that they will become exalted, but mostly they sing hosannas, get tortured (evil), do maintenance (Mechanus), or dream up weird stuff (Limbo) . The ratio of exalted to petitioners is pretty low (especially for good types, although all those good petitioners singing hosannas power up the good outsiders [why solars are more powerful than pit fiends and balors]), and they hope the paladin will inspire potential exalteds to be live up (or down for evil) to their potential.

* I tend to use a mixed pantheon grabbed from 4e and Pathfinder, so there is one goddess and a dragon god who really like paladins, but outside of them, most gods use clerics.

 

[Riley37]

Yes, because there's no tales of pettiness/jealousy/rivalry/spitefulness etc at all in Greek & Roman myth....

Name two stories, from Greek or Roman sources before the advent of Christianity, in which gods are rivals over the *exclusive* worship of a human or group of humans.

They're jealous over sex, and the title "The Fairest". They quibble over vengeance, and how much Aeneas has to suffer before marrying Lavinia. But one god forbidding mortals to worship another god? Educate me with a specific passage of a specific text, written in Greek or in Latin, earlier than 30 AD.

Take responsibility for your own biases and house-rules. Don't shift blame to the Moirai; that's not how they rolled.

 

[ccs]

Name two stories, from Greek or Roman sources before the advent of Christianity, in which gods are rivals over the *exclusive* worship of a human or group of humans.

They're jealous over sex, and the title "The Fairest". They quibble over vengeance, and how much Aeneas has to suffer before marrying Lavinia. But one god forbidding mortals to worship another god? Educate me with a specific passage of a specific text, written in Greek or in Latin, earlier than 30 AD.

Now why in the 9 Hells would I quote you anything in Greek/Latin? You wouldn't understand it any better than the point I was making in English.

Take responsibility for your own biases and house-rules. Don't shift blame to the Moirai; that's not how they rolled.

Oh, OK, well if you insist.... I'm perfectly fine with my own biases & house-rules. Always have been. I recognize them, I accept them, in some cases I've even actively chosen them. And I don't give a were-rats arse about your opinion of them.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Some deities would allow summoning some vestiges, but anothers may be forbidden, and some vestiges wouldn't like relations with followers of certain god. It is more about background.