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

[Hussar]

Actually, not that simple. Three main groups:

1) Want all alignment Paladins in the rules.

2) Want LG Paladins at their table, don't care if rules allow for others.

3) Want LG Paladins only in the book, strongly do not want rules to allow for others.

Pretty sure most people who "prefer the classic LG Paladin" are 2, not 3. Indeed I imagine 95%+ of D&D's playerbase is 1 or 2 (or close relations thereof).

Pretty much this.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

The basic assumption of that setting is that being a paladin carries a great deal of weight and authority stemming from its alignment restrictions, even in areas that follow "the Old Faith."

Hm, this is an interesting point. So in your campaigns, how does a paladin verify her paladinhood when someone is called upon to arbitrate disputes, and whatnot? Does she carry some kind of signet from The Paladin Order of Fantasy Land? Does she have to do something that only a paladin can do? ("Which of these 20 hooded townsfolk is evil?" "Execute this heinous criminal with your smite to prove you're a paladin!") Does the local cleric simply cast know alignment on her? Or somehow else?

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

My point includes the case that one side thinks the definition is malleable and the other does not.

Okay, so far we're on the same page. What is the rest of your Central Issue? I apologize for making you repeat yourself, but there's been a lot of back-and-forth, and I haven't followed nearly all of it.

 

[Xodis]

Still going I see lol.

For me, and YMMV, the reason a Paladin must be LG boils down to my definition of him: Holy Knight who follows a strict code of Chivalry (what we dreamed Knights were as kids until we became educated and learned otherwise).

This definition is what forces his Lawful Good alignment. "Holy Knight" can be broken down to a Warrior of Good, its pretty simple. If we go with Divine Knight instead, Warrior of Good still works. Holy and Divine are both defined as coming/related to a god; Good (according to webster). So its hard to argue against being a Good character (and as a PHB class has never been anything less than good I believe). If you're evil replace Holy Knight with Profane/Vile/Unholy/ Knight. All of these words are pretty much "antigood" which brings us to the Paladins polar opposite the Blackguard.

Now following a code as strict as Chivalry has to make him Lawful. His power is suppose to come from his god to power him to fight the forces of evil. He earns this great power (which can be arguable from edition to edition) by his infallible loyalty to his god. This type of loyalty takes someone who follows orders or is Lawful. A Chaotic person is free to follow their whims, so is a Neutral character only with a little bit of restraint. They would fail at some point (because even some LG characters do) to follow the code, forfeiting their powers.

So we have Law being a key factor here and Good being the Paladin version while Blackguard is the Evil version. So what is a Lawful Neutral Paladin? A Religious Warrior of Law? So how would that work mechanically? You smite Chaos? So regardless if someone broke the Law or not you can smite them for being a person of freewill....sounds like a Dictator to me. What if its a CG person and they didnt actually break the law? Now you're just a jerk. We could go with the alternative that you get to choose between Smite Good or Smite Evil....but wouldn't that choice alone tip the scales one way or the other? Or if you could do both at the same time....how are LN gods not in control of everything being unlimited in power even compared to other gods?

Not everyone agrees that powers should be able to be taken away, but when your powers are a gift and not your own raw power like the other Fighters or Arcane magic users, that is the risk you take. If I let you live in my house and have 1 rule, should you break that rule you wont be living in my house, its simple. Clerics can lose their power too, its just not as common and they are only following their Gods work not that of Chivalry/Paladin as well. Its suppose to be hard, thats why Paladins are special. This is the "Paladin" to me, at my table that is how its played, but I'm not unhappy about the openness of the Paladin in the rules. It seems watered down to me, but thats me. IMO its to help those that cant roleplay a Paladin any way but "Lawful Stupid", which seems to be a common complaint from many online.

 

[CleverNickName]

It doesn't bother me. I've always allowed my players to choose either Lawful Good or Neutral Good in my games, because of this quote from Shakespeare:

Mercy makes a king look better than his crown.
His scepter shows the force of his temporal power,
But mercy is above the power of the scepter.
It is enthroned in the heart of kings.
It is a quality of God himself.
And earthly power is most like Gods when mercy tempers justice.

So I'm all for righteous justice-seeking paladins who grind the sinful under their heel. But I'm also a fan of merciful paladins who understand that the law is not always just.

 

[evileeyore]

This is, I feel, a reasonable position. I don't even have a good answer to it.

There is a reason for that. Search your feelings, you know it's true...

This is back to wrong again. In your scenario, the "Paladins must be LG" Paladin does not actually exist in the game without rebuilding the class. Your footnote about "generically" applies here - people who want LG paladins (I assume) want a class that mechanically supports LG.

Besides Alignment Prerequisites, Restriction, and Violations Rules... what else needs to be in the package?

Smite [Opposite Single Axis Alignment]? Detect [Opposite Single Axis Alignment]? Spontaneous Channel [Single Axis Alignment] Energy (Turn/Rebuke Undead, Lay on Hands/Dish out Pain, Cure/Cause Disease, Remove/Cause Fear, etc)?

Are those things you "need" to make a "Restrictive Alignment Paladin mechanically supported by the rules"?

'Cause, you know... there have generally been two types since the beginning of the class [-]Jedi and Sith[/-] Paladin and Aunty-Paladin.

Yes, 3 is a number from 1 to 9. But I'm saying paladins are triangles and you're saying they are n-sided polygons.

I will always feel that inclusivity trumps exclusivity.

My Paladin doesn't need his own water fountain, thank you very much.

And this is why I say you don't understand my point. I am, in fact, saying that the definition of paladin as "Paladins must be LG" is not, in fact, included in the set "Paladins can be LG or any other alignment". That you are mistaken in thinking that the two are the same. This is what my examples were intended to demonstrate.

The two aren't the same.

One simply subsets into the other, one is lesser than the greater of the other. Do I really need to make a Venn diagram?

You can say (and did!) that it's better for D&D to provide Paladin(subtype=all) than to provide LG Paladin. But you can't say they are the same class.

Not saying they are. You can however very easily make one into the other by toggling a switch (DM houserules to say "Paladins MUST be LG").

Going the other way (at least in the bad old days) requires more fiddling with the class' undercarriage.

Options are a good thing. Variety is a good thing. People insisting on one true ways are a bad thing.

But, but... my One True Way (Inclusivity) is the best way.

...seems to regard NG as "True Good" and LG as "Good confined by Law" (not an uncommon view among D&D players, of course, but it seems like in Ye Olden Dayes LG was regarded as "more good" - the wheel turns and so on - don't think it'll ever turn back to LG as "more good" of course).

Go back far enough and it was "Lawful is the only Good".

I think that is where "LG is the bestest best Good" comes from.

 

[Greg K]

Actually, not that simple. Three main groups:

1) Want all alignment Paladins in the rules.

2) Want LG Paladins at their table, don't care if rules allow for others.

3) Want LG Paladins only in the book, strongly do not want rules to allow for others.

Pretty sure most people who "prefer the classic LG Paladin" are 2, not 3. Indeed I imagine 95%+ of D&D's playerbase is 1 or 2 (or close relations thereof).

Personally, I all for Paladin = LG. However, I want the main class either renamed to Divine Warrior or split into both Holy Warrior (For Good and Neutral) and Unholy Warrior (for the evil versions). Paladin would just be the LG subclass.

 

[billd91]

But, can you explain to me how a NG Druid, allowed in 3e is any different than a, say, NG paladin appearing in 5e?

What is the difference? Why is it acceptable to relax the restrictions on Druids but not paladins?

Even though druids have had alignment restrictions, can you honestly say that it has been nearly as big a deal among the players you've encountered? On the messageboards you've visited? Are there constant alignment debates that rage around druids falling like there are paladins?

Moreover, the archetype of a "knight in shining armor" (and by that I don't mean just an evil knight with a good buff on his metalware) is widely known in general culture, not just in D&D. That makes the paladin, on its surface, a pretty easy class for the uninitiated to put into the context of heroic play. They may not get rogues, fighters, clerics, but the knight in shining armor? That's something they know and can relate to fairy tales and heroic tales they may have heard, seen in the movies, or read. Holy warrior of some fictitious god with any kind of moral outlook? Not so much. That's one of the reasons the debate on the paladin's alignment swirls so much but not for the druid.

 

[Halivar]

Meh, I look at it this way.

If Savage Wombat gets his way, then basically the rules are a big middle finger salute to any player who wants to play a non-classic paladin. Sure, we can house rule it, but, the rules are planting a big old flag that says, "Paladins must be LG".

Do you honestly feel that 1e-3.x were giving you the middle finger because they had LG-only paladins?

 

[evileeyore]

I'm coming back to this one for a moment:

I've never played Eberron, but I'm genuinely surprised. Maybe FR is a good fit for the "holy warriors of chivalric virtue aren't really all that special" paradigm, but Greyhawk (where I play 1e and on whose chassis I build my other-edition homebrews) definitely is not. The basic assumption of that setting is that being a paladin carries a great deal of weight and authority stemming from its alignment restrictions, even in areas that follow "the Old Faith."

Wait... so the characters in the game world knew the rules the class had to follow?

How very meta of you.