D&D 5E Is Anyone Unhappy About Non-LG Paladins?

[GravyFingerz]

Wasn't there an interview with SKR or Monte Cook or some other 3e designer and they said that they wanted to get rid of the alignment requirement for paladins but feared slaying too many sacred cows? Or was that the multiclass restriction? I can't remember. Maybe it was both.

 

[Elf Witch]

I can't say I am thrilled by it I prefer paladins to be LG and anything else to be holy warriors. But it is a simple house rule that can easily be fixed.

 

[Raith5]

Have a coherent, consistent design vision for your game, or get off the pot and let adults who have a clue and a backbone take the helm for 6th ed. I saw a half-orc "paladin" in my last Encounters game play the most ridiculously selfish, cowardly, and non-heroic character I've ever seen, and the DM said and did nothing about it, beceause there were no rules support.

Basically 5th ed (and 4th), it's okay to murder children with your divine smite without limit because there is no way the DM can limit your abilities. Alignment is BS and has zero design space or force of effect in 5th ed.

I dont really agree with this design vision because it presumes some idea that gods are always aware of the actions of their champions/paladins and are thus able to 'turn on' or 'turn off' the powers of these champions. I just find this use of alignment presumes some idea of holiness or omnipotence that stretches credibility and cuts off the roleplaying possibilities of playing of the fallen or corrupted paladin or one that simply having a crisis of faith. If there is just one narrow way to play the Paladin - I think it just limits roleplaying in unnecessary ways.

Dont get me wrong I think their should be in game consequences from NPCs for Paladins or any other pious character who diverge from their ethos, I just dont see how giving the DM the power to switch off the Paladins power makes for more interesting RP gaming.

 

[Falling Icicle]

I've always hated alignment restrictions, so their absence in 5e is a huge plus for me.

 

[pemerton]

Have a coherent, consistent design vision for your game, or get off the pot and let adults who have a clue and a backbone take the helm for 6th ed.

Weren't you criticising another poster in another recent thread for being critical of aspect of D&Dnext? Or am I misremembering?

Paladins don't really make sense without an ethos. To have an ethos, a code, and derive benefits from it, requires a tradeoff for violating it.

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The entire original design of a paladin is, you trade off roleplaying restrictions for combat benefits.

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the alignment restrictions for paladins should have mechanical effect otherwise the entire alignment system is a waste of paper and killing trees for no good reason.

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I saw a half-orc "paladin" in my last Encounters game play the most ridiculously selfish, cowardly, and non-heroic character I've ever seen, and the DM said and did nothing about it, beceause there were no rules support.

Basically 5th ed (and 4th), it's okay to murder children with your divine smite without limit because there is no way the DM can limit your abilities.

There are many D&D players who don't share this conception of distribution of responsibilities across game participants, and I'm glad that the WotC designers acknowledge that.

If you didn't like the way the half-orc paladin was acting, why didn't you (via your PC) try and track down an NPC cleric of his/her religion to chastise him/her?

 

[Jester David]

Prefer LG only paladins. I like my champions of good that can lose their powers if they stray from their alignment.
But that's easy enough to house rule and ignore, and more people likely prefer paladins with flexible alignments, so I'm willing to acquiesce for the happiness of the majority.

 

[LFK]

I have several issues with LG paladins. One is that your deity is your same or similar alignment as you, if you are a cleric. So why be lawful if you are a paragon of your deity's whims?

If your god is LE or CN, and you are an avatar of that god, you should be a champion of their ethos. So if they design Paladin with Oath of Justice to be defined as the classic LG paladin, that should be explicitly restricted to LG or LE or LN gods. But they aren't. So they're trying to achieve independence of the alignment system having any repercussions, while also trying to force a strong alignment ethos by skirting it entirely.

It is beyond stupid. If you're LG, the be an LG paladin of an LG god. If there is such a thing as a NG, CG, or LE or CE "paladin", those should be defined by appropriate subclasses where there are actual rewards for behaving in such a way.

The complication here is that they're planning on pushing adventures and campaign settings much harder this edition. They've already mentioned that the PHB contains the pantheons for most of the major properties (FR, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, &c.) and this idea works well for some settings and terribly for others. Not every pantheon "fills the grid" or even uses both of the alignment axis. The way they're going now doesn't even entirely negate the direction you'd like to go with things, it just shuffles that away from the default assumptions of the class, ideally tying it much more into the specific campaign settings where it both belongs and can have the most impact.

For example, the Knights of Solamnia are tied to Krynn in so many specific ways that a generic "LG Paladin" wouldn't do them service, but it also wouldn't be appropriate to put them into the PHB.

 

[Kobold Stew]

There are a couple of issues bundled into this question, and it's maybe helpful to pull them out.

1. The existence of characters called "paladins" who are not LG.
2. Alignment restrictions on any class.
3. The legacy of Paladins being stripped of their powers if they become non-LG (or commit a single evil act, or whatever).

1. has been answered for me through the oaths. The oaths do imply some alignment associations, and so it is now a matter of labelling ("Devoted Paladins are LG"; "Vengeance Paladins are N or LN"). I am satisfied with what 5e gives us.

2. is also not a problem for me. Just as Clerics must be within "one step" of their deity, some restrictions on alignment for certain classes (Paladin, Druid, Cleric, Monk) does not seem burdensome to me. Indeed, I'd even be happy if the wording were strengthened, from the play test's current "typically..." to a stipulation that you can't advance in the class if you fall outside of the stated parameters. But I wouldn't want to force that on others.

3. has been removed from the 5e we've seen, and rightly so. While I don't mind some behavioural curbs in a game that has alignment (as above), the legacy of power-stripping by DMs is unhealthy, and I'm pleased it's gone.

So I'm not unhappy about LG Paladins; I am happy that an LG-only option exists, and would have it strengthened, though not to the extent of replicating the DM excesses of the past.

 

[SoulsFury]

It should be called Holy Warrior, or Holy Knight, etc. Paladin should be a subclass. If they had designed a full class that can only be LG and took us back to the stone age of D&D (I can still remember my first DM burning a whole forest down, making my paladin the hated one of an entire nation because he burned an evil book in an elven tree home), I would be very disappointed in 5th edition.

 

[the Jester]

Basically 5th ed (and 4th), it's okay to murder children with your divine smite without limit because there is no way the DM can limit your abilities.

Given the huge emphasis in 5e on making the game what you want it to be, I don't think this argument holds water. I'm willing to bet that, either in the PH or the DMG, we'll have a sidebar on paladins losing their powers by violating their code in some campaigns. Or maybe it will be in the main text for the class. But I'd bet $5 that it's going to be mentioned in there somewhere.

And really, even if it isn't, this is such a simple thing to keep in your home game that I don't see any problem at all.