Suggestions for Playing a Paladin

[Dannyalcatraz]

I generally sort paladins into 2 groups: "Old Testament" & "New Testament"

OT Paladins are merciless foes of evil, and see themselves as judge, jury and executioner in the service of the divine. Once given an order by The Divine, they do not question it, and very much embrace talon law: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Their most common version of being "Lawful Stupid" and biting off far more than they can chew and simply getting killed. Their "crisis of faith" typically comes if they encounter someone who really SHOULD be shown mercy, but whom they may be expected to kill.

NT Paladins are defined by their mercy and charity. They may be fierce warriors, but they'd rather dissuade you from evil by their words and by being a living example of their faith. Harm them, and they may forgive you, because you don't know any better- and by forgiveness, they provide you that better example. Their version of "Lawful Stupid" results in them being stabbed in the back by a foe they showed mercy when they should have killed or incarcerated them. A typical "crisis of faith" typically takes the form of encountering someone whom they perceive as irredeemably evil but who has everyone else fooled.

Both may also suffer equally from simple violations of their codes of conduct.

 

[TarionzCousin]

Before committing to playing a paladin, I recommend discussing alignment with your DM. You want to have a good idea how strict he/she is and also how much alignment will affect other beings in the game.

The one paladin I played in 3E only once successfully detected evil. Every monster, NPC, and even the BBEG who wanted to enslave my character's home city, were merely "misguided."

Of course, it later turned out that a fellow player was evil, and the DM was shielding her from me because he wanted to date her.

/rant.

 

[JDragon]

Before committing to playing a paladin, I recommend discussing alignment with your DM. You want to have a good idea how strict he/she is and also how much alignment will affect other beings in the game.

The one paladin I played in 3E only once successfully detected evil. Every monster, NPC, and even the BBEG who wanted to enslave my character's home city, were merely "misguided."

Of course, it later turned out that a fellow player was evil, and the DM was shielding her from me because he wanted to date her.

/rant.

Good idea. Luckily the DM is the wife of another player so I will not have the same issues you did.

I will double check with her next game to make sure my Detect Evil and such will work.

Thanks

JD

 

[GSHamster]

One other suggestion I've seen out there:

A paladin is Lawful Good. But if Law conflicts with Good, choose Good.

 

[scourger]

My advice on playing a paladin is not to. I was super excited a few years ago about the chance to play a dwarf paladin in the last D&D game our group ran. In my mind, he was to be a scourge of evil and effective warrior. In reality, I was very under-powered and largely ineffective. Even with a cool mount to summon and a dwarven cleric cohort, the character wasn't nearly as cool in play as he was in my mind. It ended very unsatisfactorily with all 3 killed irreversibly in a single session.

I "took a break" from that game for several months and only returned to play another character, the twinked-out fighter that sidelined my character. Luckily the other player quit for reasons unknown to me. I just didn't have the motivation to make another character. It lasted about 2 more sessions before the other players killed the campaign on a night I had a real-life conflict.

I don't blame the DM. He's a long-time player, although this was his first time DMing. He was using modules, so I don't think it was over-challenging (but it felt difficult). It may have been somewhat the style of our group which for the other players is very cautious & tactical. As a player of similar experience and a DM of greater experience, I percieved several TPKs that we narrowly missed; one by a blatant deus ex machina to save the campaign. I am sorry that it ended badly for everyone--especially the DM who abandoned the campaign with one more module to go. I doubt he'll ever DM again. Even though I take some vindication that the other players' (mis-)behavior finally caught up to them, I never felt really good about any of it.

I hope your experience will be different, if you do decide to play a paladin.

 

[Herobizkit]

My suggestion would be to pick your deity, then tailor your champion to best serve the deity's needs.

In my opinion, a paladin of Abadar, surrounded by opulence and lawyers, would be a much different paladin than one of Iomedae, a more traditional "right wrongs and triumph over evil" type.

 

[malcolypse]

I was recently trying to describe a meme to a friend and gave up and looked it up on the internet. The page I found it on was a "best of" collection of the Good Guy Greg memes.

I showed him the particular meme I had in mind, and then he wanted to see the rest of the list.

After about two pages of Good Guy Greg smiling at me around his spliff, and seeing what a good guy he was, I decided that I would have to play him in a game as God Guy Greg, the Paladin.

Crazy, I know, but who wouldn't want to be in a party with God Guy Greg?

 

[Gulla]

I have played paladins (or paldin-ish) characters several times. I have a few points that I need to have established to make it work:

1. Check with the DM that a paladin will fit the party, the setting and the mood the DM wants. If the DM wants a gray world playing a paladin will be a great challenge. Also make sure that you two agree on how much the Paladin's faith and powers should be challenged. It is very easy as a DM to constantly put a paladin in "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenarios, and unless "the fall of a Paladin" is what you want to play, it is not much fun.

2. Decide what a paladin is. Is he "just" a Good fighter with a faith or is he The Sword of God working in the world. Is he the embodiment of the Just and Good Wrath of God, or of Strength and Mercy.

3. Decide where in the Lawful Good he is. It will probably come times where just law conflicts with personal Good, and having thought about it before helps.

4. Talk over the choice of paladin and how he see things with the other players. There are a lot of groups (both of characters and players) where playing a Shining Beacon of Good will never work. And you need both the DM and the players to accept and play along to make this fun for all.

5. Agree with the DM what detect evil does and what consequences should come from it. Opinions on this vary from "don't care, focus on you Mission from God (aka the scenario)" to "smite anything Evil on Sight."

Playing a paladin can be lots of fun and make for great adventure groups, but has a clear tendency to cause some inter-group discussion and conflicts. Make sure the group and the DM find the idea ok before you start. And good luck.

 

[Halivar]

I don't have a link, but there was a lengthy thread(s) on EnWorld a few years ago about a paladin who killed a child molester from behind. It was a rather heated discussion, from what I remember, and best exemplified (IMO) the kind of internal struggle a paladin has with righteousness, decisiveness of action, and still keeping the moral high ground.

Imagine your character in such a moral quandary. Or come up with some moral quandaries of your own. Think through how your character would evaluate the situation, and what terrible choice he would make.

My current paladin's code is simply: always use diplomacy first. Always accept quarter if the terms of surrender include a way of permanently removing the BBEG's power from the world*. If neither of the first two work out, slay away!

*In my most recent campaign where I was party captain, two BBEG's chose exile to the Shadowfel instead of destruction at our hands. I can't tell you if my fellow players felt robbed of awesome encounters, but in this case the good result was so extreme (freeing of entire civilizations we were going to destroy in the course of killing the BBEG's) that I could not conceive of my paladin not accepting those terms.

 

[delericho]

I'm looking for any suggestions and advice the brain trust that is the ENWorld Community can provide.

I'm quite a fan of the notion of the "reluctant paladin". This is the guy who just wanted to be a farmer/butcher/blacksmith, but one day was visited in a dream by his chosen deity and told he was needed. Obviously, when your deity appears to you personally and tells you to be a paladin, you don't argue!

So, he's the guy who tries really hard to live up to the ideals of paladinhood, but he does it because he was chosen to do so, and not necessarily because he chose to do so. Such a paladin would likely be young and fairly idealistic... but not necessarily.

One other important thing about playing paladins: don't be a jerk about it. (This applies to all characters, of course, but it does seem to be especially important when playing a paladin, or alternately any Evil character.)