Paladins: Lawful Good only and other restrictions

[Endur]

So only Lawful Good characters can be heroic and virtuous?

I think the answer is sort of.

If your character is heroic, I believe your character is good.

You may have written Chaotic Neutral for Han Solo's alignment on his character sheet, but if he consistently fights for the rebel alliance, rescues captured princesses, fights Darth Vader, and generally acts in a heroic manner, I'm going to view Han Solo as a good aligned character. The rebel alliance can have evil and neutral characters of course, so it would depend on the totality of his actions. I'm not going to tell the Player that he needs to update the alignment on his character sheet. I'm going to let the player do whatever the player wants to do. But I might allow detect good to spot Han Solo.

Virtuous is a bit more complex. The concept of virtues can be seen as a lawful good concept. If you accept that virtues are a lawful good concept, then someone who is following the virtues may be lawful good. Again, there is a totality of actions to be observed. War criminals may be religious, etc.

 

[GreyICE]

The thing is, very few characters believe they're evil.

A Lawful Neutral character believes that the law accomplishes a greater good than any individual circumstance. Even if he believes that a person has committed a crime for a good reason, that reason pales under the good a consistent legal system brings to the average person.

Even evil characters may believe that they seek power for "the greater good" or that "there is no such thing as good and evil, only power and those to weak to wield it."

So there's really no reason that a Paladin following a code is lawful good exclusive. Hell, you could make a good argument for a code that surpasses all individual circumstances is the very definition of lawful neutral.

 

[jonesy]

The thing is, very few characters believe they're evil.

The game could take a few lessons from the GRRM style of character building, where everyone thinks that they are the hero of the story.

And the alignment system in D&D does tend to steer too much towards evil=petty/good=naive.

 

[Gorgoroth]

paladins

Here are my experiences. I played an AD&D paladin, a 3.0 paladin, and a 4.0 paladin. I liked the 4.0 the least, because at the beginning, str-paladins sucked in terms of support. Now, had they had the divine power options from the start, that would have changed my opinion of them. But AD&D paladin restrictions, where you must atone, was kind of annoying, and kind of cool, at different times. It forced immature players to have real consequences to their in-game selfishness for magic items or cowardice (let the other guy die while I run away). Having the DM have the power to say, your god disapproves, you no longer feel holy. (you are now a fighter until you atone, or perhaps permanently)

So on the one hand, it's good, and on the other, if we have Anti-Paladins who are C-E, or L-E, why not a somewhat-anti-paladin who's fighting for good in a land where the laws are used for evil (e.g. well...any country, in fact). You could make a strong case that being CG is more good than NG, in such a society. Depending on how utterly corrupt and status-quo promoting the legal system is. Lawful inevitably (or at least often) means the paladin must do what his patron or king says, even if that King has been corrupted and whose morals are themselves lacking, or perhaps under the compulsion of some evil demons. This happened in one of our games. So you had to use your judgment, is this order to kill every rebel a just one? Remember, you cannot disobey your liege or the tenets of your faith, even though they may be "evil". I always saw Lawful Good as Lawful > Good in terms of precedence, because "I was just following orders" is EXACTLY what you must do, all the time, or you lost your paladin-hood. You can question orders, and feel at peace, but your connection will be severed and powers lost. It says it in black and white in the penalties for disobedience described in the class.

So, in this modern era of shades-of-grey vs black-n-white, I'd say, you should follow the alignment of your god, but have very specific orders and edicts for each paladinhood, and if you don't follow those, then you pay the price. No deviation allowed. Knowing the Path is not the same as Walking the Path(tm). You are a paragon of your faith, beliefs, moral code, set out at the beginning of your training, by a religious order or priesthood, or perhaps just a kingdom or a god directly. Also, your devotion to an alignment should be somewhat up-front. If you are a champion of chaotic ideals, you should be rewarded for increasing chaos, and penalized for NOT knocking over that fruitcart or causing a disruption to those guards who are harrassing that kid, over there. There are different kinds of champions, but their alignment and moral code should be rigidly adhered to.

That said, I see nothing wrong with having the PHB Core paladin being LG only, then adding the other alignments in subsequent books, like surely the anti-paladin will be. This is probably what will happen, I bet you any money. (ok, 1 cp)

 

[FireLance]

So only Lawful Good characters can be heroic and virtuous?

I think that issues such as alignment pretty much resolve themselves when you start from the perspective of which virtues are being championed by the paladin.

Championing virtues such as honor and honesty would pretty much pre-dispose you to a Lawful alignment, while virtues such as compassion and sacrifice would move you towards Good.

So, if you happen to be required to act in accordance with a whole laundry list of virtues (as paladins were prior to 4e), your viable alignment options would naturally be narrowed down somewhat.

Essentials only required paladins to pick one virtue, and that freed up their alignment options. Paladins of valor could be unaligned, for example.

I hope that 5e retains this focus on virtue, and rewards paladins for focusing on more than one virtue. For game balance reasons, I'd be quite happy for this to be expressed in terms of additional options instead of additional benefits. For example, say a paladin of honor gains access to a certain list of spells and certain special abilities, while a paladin of sacrifice gams access to another list of spells and other special abilities. A paladin dedicated to both honor and sacrifice can prepare his daily spells from the spell lists of both honor and sacrifice, but doesn't get any more spells per day. Similarly, if paladins of honor gain access to divine challenge and paladins of sacrifice gain access to shield ally, a paladin of both honor and sacrifice can choose to gain either ability.

 

[billd91]

The thing is, very few characters believe they're evil.

That's pretty much always been irrelevant in D&D which has provided a yardstick for objectively measuring a PC's alignment by defining what is good and what is evil. Both are real forces in D&D and not just socially constructed concepts like in the real world.

 

[billd91]

That said, I see nothing wrong with having the PHB Core paladin being LG only, then adding the other alignments in subsequent books, like surely the anti-paladin will be. This is probably what will happen, I bet you any money. (ok, 1 cp)

This is has been a very common compromise in D&D from 1e through 3e and even in Pathfinder. Frankly, I think it's the way to go, though I wouldn't object to a sidebar treatment in the initial paladin offering suggesting ways to tailor the paladin for other extreme alignments (CG, CE, LE).

Paladins are iconically LG in D&D and I think they work best that way as a distinct character class rather than subsume them or confuse them with clerics. Their flavor may not be for everyone, but I don't see that as a problem.

 

[FireLance]

So on the one hand, it's good, and on the other, if we have Anti-Paladins who are C-E, or L-E, why not a somewhat-anti-paladin who's fighting for good in a land where the laws are used for evil (e.g. well...any country, in fact). You could make a strong case that being CG is more good than NG, in such a society. Depending on how utterly corrupt and status-quo promoting the legal system is. Lawful inevitably (or at least often) means the paladin must do what his patron or king says, even if that King has been corrupted and whose morals are themselves lacking, or perhaps under the compulsion of some evil demons. This happened in one of our games. So you had to use your judgment, is this order to kill every rebel a just one? Remember, you cannot disobey your liege or the tenets of your faith, even though they may be "evil". I always saw Lawful Good as Lawful > Good in terms of precedence, because "I was just following orders" is EXACTLY what you must do, all the time, or you lost your paladin-hood. You can question orders, and feel at peace, but your connection will be severed and powers lost. It says it in black and white in the penalties for disobedience described in the class.

That's an interesting perspective. I've always preferred to play paladins as more Good than Lawful, but more Lawful than Good paladins certainly do exist (Miko Miyazaki of the Order of the Stick being perhaps the best-known example).

It may seem to be a tautology, but I think that a Lawful Good paladin should only be required to uphold Good laws. Neutral laws may get a pass, but Evil laws would certainly not be considered laws by a Lawful Good paladin, and he would not hesitate to disobey them, even if it gets him thrown into a fiery furnace or a den of lions (we assume that his deity, who is presumably Lawful Good, would make the necessary arrangements to ensure that he survives). In fact, paladins probably have a handbook with useful sections like, "How to Lobby for the Repeal of an Unjust Law", and "Overthrowing Tyrants in an Orderly Manner: a Step by Step Approach".

 

[jonesy]

I've always preferred to play paladins as more Good than Lawful, but more Lawful than Good paladins certainly do exist (Miko Miyazaki of the Order of the Stick being perhaps the best-known example).

Hah! Miko isn't lawful. She went against the orders given to her, made up her own, attacked without knowing who she was attacking, behaved like a bully. She's chaotic neutral at best.

 

[FireLance]

Hah! Miko isn't lawful. She went against the orders given to her, made up her own, attacked without knowing who she was attacking, behaved like a bully. She's chaotic neutral at best.

Well, you can take it up directly with Rich Burlew, if you like.