JamesonCourage, I'm not so much attributing views to you that you never expressed as the scope of my post became more than a direct response to you and sort of turned into a list of misconceptions about paladin honor I hate. Not your fault.
That's fair, and informative. We're all just voicing our opinions anyways.
I'll also definitely give you Qui-Gon, but you have to remember that even in-universe, Qui-Gon is considered a maverick who flouts the Jedi Order's rules and routinely disobeys the council. Jedi (old republic era rules) in general I still consider an exceptional example of LG, an order of noble protectors who live in monastic servitude to their ideals and the people of their setting, following a strict code of behavioral rules. What could possibly sound more like a paladin? They're even referred to as knights!
This is an interesting question, and considering this thread's history, I don't feel bad at all going off on this tangent.
Basically, the Jedi Order itself might strive to be Lawful Good, but I do not see the Knights themselves as generally Lawful Good. The Jedi Order has laws, and is rigid; the Knights (and Masters, etc.) routinely stretch or break those laws (they're only guidelines! really!). Most post-Empire Jedi are much more individualistic than not, so even if they observe a lot of laws, I'd probably place most of them at Neutral on the Law-Chaos axis (I'm thinking of people like Corran Horn, Kyp Durron, etc.).
(I'm not as well acquainted with the Old Jedi Order, so there are probably examples of Lawful Good there.)
With regards to you asking for a specific example of a dragon with such a weak spot, Smaug from the hobbit, so much treasure had melted into his body that it formed impenetrable armor all around him, except for one small spot over his heart. Bard ultimately kills him by using his black arrow to target this specific spot.
Based on just the Hobbit, I have no idea if Bard is Lawful or not. As far as "is the shot dishonorable", I'd say it was, yes. Again, it's subjective, but it'd be like kicking the crutches out from someone that needed them to stand... but if that killed them instead. And it's not the killing that's dishonorable, it's the bypassing the fight that is. Do many Paladins struggle with this in my game (when I ran a 3.5 game)? Sure they did. I mean, it defeats Evil that much more safely and efficiently. But that's part of walking the Paladin line.
As for the rest...I definitely like this God of Honor you mentioned, any rules you agreed to, including no rules. Of course, a paladin must be good in ADDITION to honorable, so he can never fight by "no rules", there will always be certain things a paladin can't do, but if there are no standing agreements in place, and the setting has no generally accepted laws and customs of war, I definitely think a paladin can fight by no rules except not using tactics that are inherently evil, for example torture (I don't want to get into a huge real world philosophy discussion of whether torture is ever justified, I simply list it because the RAW specifically classes torture as an evil act).
Yeah, it gets a little awkward when setting starts deciding stuff, but it's necessary (since setting generally decides "honor" and all that). I mean, using poison is listed under "honor", and so it seems assumed that this is always a matter of honor in a default 3.5 world. So is "cheating", which, again, I likened to sportsmanship and bypassing a fight.
The thing about sportsmanship is that sports have rules, clearly defined guidelines for how the game is played, that generally have both a letter and an easily interpreted spirit. Sports are competition for the sake of competition, and trying to work your way around the skill set that the sport requires is very much a violation of the spirit of the game.
War doesn't work like that.
Well, actually, that's not always the case. It's kind of like sports. Some people "play to win, no matter how they win" and others "play to win" with sportsmanship in mind. The same goes for war. This could simply be the difference between "honor" and "dishonor" in combat. That is, those who have rules call it "honor" (no poison, etc.), and must follow these rules, and those who break them are labeled "dishonorable".
It is not, generally speaking, just a duel or a collection of duels between paired off knights. If such rules have been agreed upon, then of course the paladin should obey them, but in most cases they have not.
I think of the Paladin's code as a self-imposed limitation, not one based on agreement between parties. So, on this point I'll disagree.
A paladin does not go to war to test his strength and swordsmanship, if he wishes to do that, he may enter a tournament. A paladin goes to war to defend the innocent and vanquish evil, and if he allows the innocent to die when he could have done something to stop it, because he'd rather lose fighting "properly" than win fighting intelligently, has he not been derelict in another part of his oath? the part about defending the innocent and punishing evil? This seems to me a question of law vs good, and the generally accepted wisdom for such situations is that a paladin should choose good when he encounters them.
But the Paladin
must uphold his code at all times. In such a situation, I see a Paladin either doing his best to stop the Evil (and failing), or accepting a fall from grace to stop the Evil (by a dishonorable act for the Greater Good). He can, of course, get Atoned, stay a feat-less Fighter, or turn Blackguard. It's a hard situation for them, and I'd imagine that Paladins have philosophical debates on which is better (to fall and Atone to save innocents, or to go into a situation and knowingly fail to attempt to uphold all of the code).
A lot of your examples just seem to me to boil down to "a paladin must intentionally handicap himself", which would really be pretty suicidal. You can't use ranged attacks on melee enemies even in a pitched battle where the other side's ranged fighters are taking full advantage of it? You'll lose, needlessly. That's like saying that if a paladin is fighting a rogue, he must first take off his heavy armor, because that gives him an unfair advantage...of course the rogue will keep all the advantages HE has, but the paladin must have none.
Advantage is not the same as "bypassing" the fight. If the Paladin's armor made him literally invulnerable to the Rogue, then it would probably be dishonorable to fight him with that armor on. And, in the first example, the Paladin could bring his ranged attack on ranged enemies without any loss of honor.
But will you "lose needlessly" in some situations? Sure. I mean, that's the situation that even Cedric walked into! He knew his side was going to lose, and that he was going to die needlessly. Do I think the Paladin needed to be there? No, I don't. But sometimes that's the case; as a Paladin, you abide to a code that limits you. I mean, if using poison was the only thing that would weaken an enemy enough to
maybe beat it, it should be used right? To a Paladin, the answer is no. The same goes for cheating, lying, and the like. Perfectly reasonable weapons of war are outlawed here; of course the Paladin has it harder.
And that IS arbitrary, it IS a rule that makes no logical sense and exists on an abstract whim.
Well, I cited the definition, so you'll forgive me if I still disagree.
What if your paladin is only equipped with a ranged weapon and the other guy has a sword? should he fight bare handed because his code dictates he must not have an advantage, which means in this circumstance he must artificially give himself a DISadvantage?
I'm going to tackle these one at a time, because they don't seemingly all have the same answer.
As for this situation, yes, he should use what he can, but not his ranged weapon if it'll bypass the fight (if the enemy can clearly take it, I'd consider it fair game). Disarm the enemy, pick up a rock, hit him with your crossbow, use your gauntlets; do something.
What if an enemy challenges a paladin to a duel with weapons that the enemy is an expert with but the paladin has never used before? is the paladin obligated to accept this challenge?
Probably not, no (if there are no other stakes, then no, he's not).
if you say he should not "bypass combat" then yes he is.
No, since no combat has occurred. It's not "cannot bypass all places where combat might take place." It's "in a combat, not use a weakness so powerful that the combat itself is simply skipped due to that weakness."
This seems ridiculous to me, and extremely exploitable, enemies could simply force a paladin to always fight them only at the thing they're best at, a situation where in every individual aspect of combat, the paladin must always artificially handicap himself in the areas where he's better to be "equal" while retaining the full penalty of all his disadvantages, which will make the paladin in total weaker than his foe every time. That's obviously unreasonable.
A Paladin doesn't need to fight like this, but often will. The reason being, simply, that others will "cheat", "use poison", "lie", and the like. He can try to see through the lies, he can try to not be poisoned, he can try to not be cheated, but he
cannot make up for that disadvantage. He will always be at a disadvantage to anybody that capitalizes on the idea of "all's fair in war (mostly)". It's already ingrained into the Paladin class. It is a handicap.
As an example, Aragorn is very paladin-like, a paragon of just and noble kingship. Was it dishonorable of him to save Minas Tirith by calling the Oathbreakers into battle? Obviously they gave him an enormous advantage, they were ghosts, thus intangible and unable to be harmed by the living and, depending on whether you're looking at the books or the movies, either scared Sauron's armies into disarray and often literally to death, or slaughtered them wholesale while taking full advantage of their incorporeality.
It probably was dishonorable, yes. Which, again, people in-game probably argue at length on whether or not that matters! That's the difference between a Lawful Good Fighter (or Cleric, even), and a Paladin. You can be Lawful Good and act with dishonor occasionally. It won't push you to Neutral Good, necessarily. The Paladin in the same situation would likely be Lawful Good still, but he'd lose his powers (again, from where I sit).
You say that you don't consider it inherently dishonorable to attack an enemy's weak spot, but the groin is a "cheap shot". what makes it a cheaper shot than a shot at any other weak point? It's not somehow easier or less skilled, a skilled enemy is perfectly capable of protecting it, by wearing armor there, by using his shield, or any number of other means. So what's the problem?
Because normally (and from the fiction, it looks like), it basically set the enemy up to be completely defenseless, from which point he was slaughtered. The fight was bypassed by hitting that weak point. Hopefully my post up to this point shows why I see this as "dishonorable".
I'd also point out that nothing anywhere in the rules has said a paladin may not "skip combat",
Ah, but that's not what I was talking about. Again, I hope my post has made that more clear.
n fact in many cases, I would see a paladin as morally obligated to try to avoid unnecessary bloodshed, to try to negotiate settlements between enemies where neither side is truly evil, to offer redemption to the wicked as an alternative to violence, a paladin is a high charisma class for a reason. even attempting stealth to enter an enemy stronghold instead of charging in the front door is often a very paladin-like thing to do because it allows the paladin to avoid needlessly taking the lives of guards who are only trying to do their jobs and likely are unaware of and uninvolved in any evil being plotted by their employer. In fact, the book of exalted deeds offers "ravages and afflictions" which are basically good aligned poisons paladins are allowed to use, so that they would have a full range of combat options available to them without the unnecessarily cruel implications of poison.
Avoiding unnecessary bloodshed I'm okay with. Stealth I'm okay with (probably most of the time). The "ravages and afflictions" I'm not okay with, and I know I'm not the only one. Those are poison. But, if I accepted the book (I used the Core 3), then yeah, I'd likely have to accept them.
As an aside, I just wanted to say thanks for the interesting, civil, and thorough posts to me. Considering you've had just 3 posts, I feel pretty special. As always, play what you like
