Neonchameleon
Legend
Both of which are perfectly fine as long as you're in a mixed class party. A Shonen Protagonist in a noir film is inherently a fish out of water and doesn't need to twist or subvert their archetype to stand out from everyone else in the noir film. Likewise classic paladins are a strong archetype because it's at odds with most adventurers, while fighters are no differently motivated than most other characters. As I say if you find this tasteless take a COVID test.I just...don't agree with that. Again, that's blander than unflavored oatmeal as far as I'm concerned. That's like saying "Mad Scientist, Unhinged and Brilliant" or "Shōnen Protagonist, Ridiculously Strong and Bizarrely Friendly."
I would say emphatically that the Oath of Glory, Oath of Conquest, Oath of Vengeance, Oath of the Crown, and Oathbreaker paladins did not have purity in remotely the same way. They have a form of purity and are all determinators - but the Crown deliberately gets grubby and offers the obvious question about swearing to a monarch unworthy of the devotion, the Glory is self-interested, and the other three there are dark.Sure, not all Paladins will be Good (since I prefer the 4e style thereof.) But purity, in the terms of a Paladin...is purity of devotion. Like...that's literally what it is. “My good blade carves the casques of men,/My tough lance thrusteth sure,/and my strength is as the strength of ten/because my heart is pure.” (Tennyson, Sir Galahad.) The purity is the devotion; the devotion is the purity. They are one and the same, inseparable.
This more or less leaves Ancients, Watchers, and Redemption as the other three that do go for purity and goodness. And frankly none of them cover classic paladins. Ancients is too plant focussed. Redemption is where I would end up if I were trying to create a Lawful Good Paragon Warrior - but it's not where Gygax did and so not the rest of pre-4e D&D did. And frankly I'm not sure what Watchers is going for other than Oath of Devotion But More Niche And Less Good.
We're in agreement about Redemption. But that doesn't somehow make Devotion (other than the name) worse than either Ancients or Watchers. Being able to play the archetype straight is a good thing. And, thanks to D&D history, the classic D&D Paladin is not the Redemption Paladin. And the Ancients Paladin is a wannabe warden encouraged to wear plate armour and otherwise only distinguishable from a Devotion Paladin by having a plant theme while giving up the effects that reinforce both the good and the lawful nature of the paladin.I never really said otherwise. I am arguing that its thematic niche is dull and insipid, and thus should not be the winner. Redemption, on the other hand, actually had flavor and texture to it, and represents a much more interesting and critical struggle: how long to press the "all life is sacred, every injury is a wrong, every soul is worth redeeming" doctrine, in the face of a world where you cannot always find the resources and effort and (most importantly) time to achieve that redemption, where one must sometimes accept that the perfect is the enemy of the good, and yet never fall prey to the cynicism that says "well if the perfect can be the enemy of the good, we should not seek the perfect in the first place."
Again the mechanics are better than most of the paladins, especially those in the lawful good area of paladinry. Indeed I'd go so far as to say that mechanically the only place where Redemption is more thematic (although it is a big one) is the Aura of the Guardian's abilities to take hits in place of your ally. I'd put Ancients in more need of going over than Devotion - and Vengeance should have more "ragged" options the way the Avenger did rather than drive you to heavy armour.The mechanics--or, perhaps I should say mehchanics--aren't particularly interesting. The fluff is worse, and the name is outright rank. Collectively, we have something that, yes, it serves a valid function. It's also one of the worst options on the list, and one that I dearly hope gets heavily reworked in "One D&D."