D&D 5E I have the worst Paladin ever!

[Sunseeker]

And this folks is why Paladins should've never been changed from thier LG 1e version.
Do evil crap, lose your powers. Enjoy playing a fighter....

If a brothel is against the law, and the punishment is death, this paladin would have been perfectly within their alignment to burn the place and everyone in it to the ground.

The problem with the LG paladin has always been that the Law is not always good, and Goodness is not always lawful.

 

[5ekyu]

At first i thought the post was PCing up some novel in parody. Like that LotR as an RPG post some years back.

Then i started to think it was not and it became a lot less interesting.

Sent from my VS995 using EN World mobile app

 

[doctorbadwolf]

If a brothel is against the law, and the punishment is death, this paladin would have been perfectly within their alignment to burn the place and everyone in it to the ground.

The problem with the LG paladin has always been that the Law is not always good, and Goodness is not always lawful.

Um....no. That act wouldn’t be Good just because brothels are illegal. LG has never actually meant “it’s ok to murder unarmed villagers by trapping them in a firetrap.”

 

[CTurbo]

I have played a few Paladins in 5e so far and none of them were "totally messed up."

One of them was LG and he just wanted to do what was right. He never got Lawful stupid, always listened to his friends' advice, and was really well liked by everybody. He was also a powerhouse on the battlefield whether he was buffing the group or just killing the bad guy.
One of them was CN and never got fully fleshed out. He never did anything extreme either way.
One of them was LE, and I wouldn't say he was "messed up" just because he was evil. He never went Stupid Evil. The most evil thing he ever did was nothing more than a series of evil acts that were necessary to get him out of a bind that he got himself into. He broke into somewhere for some reason(I don't remember lol) and got caught by a single guard. He was able to defeat the guard without catching even more attention, and basically kidnapped him, robbed him, completed his mission of stealing whatever, actually ended up framing the guard, getting a reward for turning him in, and watched the guard get executed. It wasn't like all that was a cold calculated plan. It just sort of worked out that way. It was pretty epic though how it all went down. Other than that, he REALLY cared about 2 of his friends and would have done anything for them. The rest of the group never even realized he was evil. They just thought he was a little greedy how loot was so important to him.

Anyway, this guy can at least kind of justify his Pally's actions. As long as he stays consistent, I don't see any issues with the actual character.

 

[FieserMoep]

There have always, in every society and time, been people opposed to such acts.

So your standard for morality is people opposing something?
As for the Templars or more the early crusaders, they did "good". They did the work of god. At that time only a christian had rights in their world view. A heathen had NO rights protecting him. There was no such thing as basic human rights that accounted for everyone. They were just the enemy and and their call to arms was rather easy to understand: Kill those that act against god. Taking their wealth was big motivator too, but technically you were not stealing because given they were no christians they had no right to possess that stuff in the first place.

Would I call them evil? No. They were opportunists and professional warriors let lose. From our understanding they did gruesome stuff of which most was just doing their "job" for them. If its not a proper christian, everything goes.

As for DnD it pretty much boils down to how you handle your world.
Is there a true, divine cosmic constant, a law of nature of being good or being evil or is it just an interpretation of domains that was passed down by the gods as their way of seeing things.

I mean, I always thought it was hilarious to imagine drown running around, smirking and giggling and telling each other just how evil they were today. In my opinion they just do "good" in their own way, at last if I want a proper narrative that can be taken serious without an entire race of sunday morning cartoon villains that try to outplay each other just in how evil they were.

 

[Lylandra]

So your standard for morality is people opposing something?
As for the Templars or more the early crusaders, they did "good". They did the work of god. At that time only a christian had rights in their world view. A heathen had NO rights protecting him. There was no such thing as basic human rights that accounted for everyone. They were just the enemy and and their call to arms was rather easy to understand: Kill those that act against god. Taking their wealth was big motivator too, but technically you were not stealing because given they were no christians they had no right to possess that stuff in the first place.

Would I call them evil? No. They were opportunists and professional warriors let lose. From our understanding they did gruesome stuff of which most was just doing their "job" for them. If its not a proper christian, everything goes.

As for DnD it pretty much boils down to how you handle your world.
Is there a true, divine cosmic constant, a law of nature of being good or being evil or is it just an interpretation of domains that was passed down by the gods as their way of seeing things.

I mean, I always thought it was hilarious to imagine drown running around, smirking and giggling and telling each other just how evil they were today. In my opinion they just do "good" in their own way, at last if I want a proper narrative that can be taken serious without an entire race of sunday morning cartoon villains that try to outplay each other just in how evil they were.

IIRC the higher clergy was at least partially sending so many young knights on a crusade because having that many young men with too much legal power and fighting prowess turned out to be rather problematic in their home countries. Knowing that you can harass your commoners without facing repercussion... yeah

Goodness is both a matter of perspective and of superposing greater construct in my worlds. You can have two LG characters going at each other's throats and a LE and LG one get along pretty well. However, there are things a "good" character would not do, like killing innocents for example.

For evil people, they don't believe they do *good* things, but rather the *right* things. We've played an evil campaign where our PCs were totally depraved and doing horrible things. They didn't do that because they were har-har-mustache twirling evil, but because they thought (and knew!) their parton deity (who kind of saved their lives as kids) wanted it done. They had their logic for imposing tyranny and slavery and draconic law and sacrificial burning and torture on the citizens. Meanwhile, they totally knew love and loyalty and friendship and even had concepts of "fairness".

Just once, I would like to hear a story about a paladin who wasn't totally messed up.

Oh that's not too hard. My husband loves playing paladins (or concepts that could qualify as "paladin"). His last one was a Paladin of Tyr who was basically a wandering judge who constantly questioned and re-evaluated his faith because his father (who was a very law-abiding judge as well) committed suicide after he made a grave misjudgement.

He also played a mock-adin once who was a rogue pretending to be a paladin because these dudes usually kick butt, loot the riches and get swooned by the ladies. He insisted to get payed for his heroic deeds in advance but got disillusioned pretty quickly

 

[Bardbarian]

I'm pretty sure you are the villain of the story. You are the Sheriff of Nottingham of your campaign world.

 

[FieserMoep]

IIRC the higher clergy was at least partially sending so many young knights on a crusade because having that many young men with too much legal power and fighting prowess turned out to be rather problematic in their home countries. Knowing that you can harass your commoners without facing repercussion... yeah

True, though the even bigger problem was harassing someone elses peasants.^^

And true, you can do and reflect "bad" things and justify them for you in a certain context like "we were at war", "repaid a favor" etc. That is how it most commonly happens in human history. Thing is, you can also very well think it is good to do so. Ask the native south american people. I don't think that ripping out the heart of human sacrifices was "evil" for them. True, they feared their gods and wanted to appease them but it may just have been a necessity of everyday live at that point rather than something you think of as good or evil. Think of the witch hunts. Drowning a women just because of accusations may sound bad, but to them it may have seen like a normal, maybe even good thing to do. Mercy-killing is also no foreign thought for us. We kill pets if they get ill, some countries even allow to help humans to kill themselves.

No just get a believe system where killing wrong doers is a good thing for them for they will get redemption and their soul purification that way and killing "innocents" is a great thing to do.
Who does not know the trope of the hero killing his friend before he gets "mutated/possessed/whatever".
That is just the same thought.

 

[Iry]

That’s a pretty dark campaign, but if everyone is happy playing evil characters then go for it.
Just make sure and mark “Evil” on your character sheet.

 

[Kichwas]

If a brothel is against the law, and the punishment is death, this paladin would have been perfectly within their alignment to burn the place and everyone in it

Sometimes the “law” is unlawful, sometimes a society uplifts evil conduct and villifies good conduct.

If you look at LG as a champion of concepts like universal equal rights, justice, honor, charitable nature, protect the weak and downtrodden, etc...

- that’s your core “good”, much of it common to NG and CG as well.

These are all your “do the right thing” alignments.

What you describe above is classic LE - the police state or totalitarian response.

A Paladin should be acting like Superman not like an enforcer for the North Korean police.