A Chivalrous Compromise for Paladin

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Paladins do not compromise. It goes against their code.

 

[eamon]

This Knight is a Divine warrior archetype, dedicated to some Ideal (whatever this Ideal might be), and propagating this ideal by means of fearlessness, relentlessness, discipline, and glory (fame whether loved or feared). This is the Knight in Shining Armor - whether Lancelot or the Black Knight - or even the Green Knight. These Knights are deadly warriors who champion their respective Ideal while radiating the aura of the celestial-or-infernal forces of their Ideal.

Having Black Knights and Lancelots being mechanically identical is a problem. I'd expect the ideals to be reflected in the rules for the knight. One might be focused on retribution; the other on defense and healing; yet another on just, proportional punishment.

Whether via spells, powers or tricks, any such abilities should be consistent - i.e. it's not OK to just have a bunch of powers that might describe completely opposing ideals mixed together.

So, Im in the faction that finds it unacceptable to coerce the Paladin to be Lawful Good only, and finds it problematic to mechanically enforce conduct that really depends on situational narratives.

I think you're unnecessarily confounding the prototypical paladin the game rules should describe with the specific incarnation a player is playing. I also find it unacceptable to rigidly enforce the RAW paladin's oath to be the single, only possible oath exactly as written! But the alternative isn't to just omit the flavor consistency entirely; the alternative is to show the prototypical example - the quintessential paladin - and let people change what they want.

I'll guarantee that it's much easier to give an example of a paladin than it is to make rules for consistency of ideals with game mechanics. After all, a zealot's ideals might be reflected in many aspects. The shining, radiant nature of many abilities, the healing touch, the ability to discern lies, the imposition of a rule on another - these might all have reflections in game mechanics including in subtle ways by omitting contradictory abilities; an idealist of a different mold might have different flavor with different rules.

So, even if you intend to have "paladins" with other ideals, you're still better off having one fully fledged example instead of overly-generic rules that don't quite hit the mark. I'd rather trust the DM and other players to get something this subtle right. Indeed, having a generic system is likely more restrictive rather than less: a rule (or here, class variant) omitted is one common sense can supply, whereas a rule for making variants kind of suggests that that's the way to go.

Unless the generic rule really works well, I'd rather not have it, and something this delicate is almost impossible to get right.

A restricted example is better than restrictive rules.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Having Black Knights and Lancelots being mechanically identical is a problem. I'd expect the ideals to be reflected in the rules for the knight. One might be focused on retribution; the other on defense and healing; yet another on just, proportional punishment.

Whether via spells, powers or tricks, any such abilities should be consistent - i.e. it's not OK to just have a bunch of powers that might describe completely opposing ideals mixed together.

I don't think that [MENTION=6694221]Haldrik[/MENTION] is recommending mixing opposed ideals into the same bag of tricks. I think the recommendation is to select a few key features that say 'I am Paladin, hear me roar'.. like 'Smite', martial weapons, armor, and limited divine casting.

Then have themes, or simply use the domain themes in existance, to flesh out the core ideals. You should be able to see a paladin in play and say 'that is a paladin of Thanos', or 'that is a paladin of Mystra'. This can be done with a core 'this is paladin' set of abilities {class}, and expanding options to layer on top of that.

The cool thing is this method would allow for 'follower of Thanos', characters who are not paladins fully, but abide by the dieties precepts in thier own way. I can easily see Mages taking a 'paladin' theme for a god of magic.

The other cool thing is that you could tag these themes with the setting they are tied to... and avoid the oddities of having a Paladin of the Mockery {Eberron} wandering around in Dark Sun....


Of course, they could also go with 3 variant Paladins, the LG, LN and the LE versions. Three base classes with abilities keyed toward the alignment norms with an example code of conduct.


No matter which way they go, I hope they include how to customize a code of conduct and how violations of that code can impact on the character in some way beside 'Poof! you are now a sucky fighter cause you accepted a bribe'


[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], a little more on my method.. which is posted in full somewhere in the legacy forums...
[sblock]
The skills-n-feats idea I stole from Ken Hood. Basically there is an entry level feat 'Disciple of Arms', that granted cross-class access to the 'Devotion' skill.
Clerics had a similar class feature that granted class access to this skill.

Then there are a number of feats and feat tree's that have prerequisites of levels in Devotion.

If you violated your code, you would get a temporary loss of skill which resulted in the inactivation of feats that you no longer met the prerequisite for.
Minor breaches lost a point or 2, serious breaches lost 3 or 4, and major breaches could drop you completley to zero points and the loss of all abilities.

You would have to quest to regain the lost skill points, or if you walked away from the quest those skill points would permanently dissapear.

Changing dieties was simply a matter of proving your worth to the new diety, via a quest, which if very successful brought you over at full strength. If not so successful, you might start with some temporary losses and some more quests to pursue.
Of course failure tended to be a major breach of the code and you would have to start anew with either your previous diety or some other one. Chaotic/Good dieties were more likely to renew a contract with a fallen disciple than lawful/evil ones... but evil dieties love to contract with a fallen disciple of a previously good nature!

All in all, it added alot to the game. I just wish I had more time to playtest before 4e came in and my group switched over!


[/sblock]

 

[Remathilis]

I re-read the Essentials Paladin, and realized there might be a good compromise there.

Paladin's serve Virtues in Essentials. Two examples are listed, both have an alignment requirement (Good and LG, IIRC). Expand the idea out a bit more...

A paladin picks a Virtue: Justice, Purity, Service, Honor, or Mercy. Each virtue has its own alignment code and "flavor"

Justice (Any): You seek to right wrongs, punish the wicked, and seek retribution on those who wrong you.
Purity: (LG): Your a traditional paladin out to do traditional paladin things.
Service: (as appropriate): You pledge yourself to the service of a higher being or deity.
Honor (Any Lawful): You live by a strict code of honor and refuse to deal in underhanded things like deceit and treachery.
Mercy (Any Good): You dedicate yourself to life and the lives of other living things, trying to heal the sick and alleviate suffering.

The Codes give a few powers and benefits, along with some RP restrictions. If you want all paladins to be L/G or LG, restrict your PCs to specific virtues. An avenger virtue (Vengeance) and even a Blackguard virtue (power) could come later.

 

[eamon]

I don't think that @Haldrik is recommending mixing opposed ideals into the same bag of tricks. I think the recommendation is to select a few key features that say 'I am Paladin, hear me roar'.. like 'Smite', martial weapons, armor, and limited divine casting.

I think you'd want to be careful with limited divine casting since you don't want different ideals to have the same spell list.

At that point, what's the value of having such an (extremely minimal) base class? The descriptions of how the variations are similar and how they're different (i.e. generic rules for making paladin variants) are going to be much longer than just giving a few examples.

I think that the 4e essentials blackguard is a good example of that - rather than giving overly abstract generic rules, they just give and entire new class definition - the repeated content is after all minimal, so it's not worth splitting that out. Especially if 5e uses centralized power definitions (i.e. 3e style) rather than 4e style inline powers, such a class variant might be quite short and concise.

 

[OmegaMan950]

This is some good stuff, it's building upon the groundwork laid out in the 3rd edition Unearthed Arcana, Dragon Magazine variants, and the 4E options. I'm not too worried about the terminology but the "paladin" class to me is an extemely fervent warrior of a particular cause, an example being LG, CG, LE, and CE in 3rd Ed.

Personally, I am in the faction that is skeptical about the utility of alignments. I like the Altruistic (Good) versus Predatory (Evil) trope, and the Societal (Lawful) versus the Individual (Chaos) trope. However, I philosophically oppose coercive rules for these. (Coercing Good is the opposite of Good.) Moreover I will not play a game whose rules mechanically punish players who violate arbitrary alignment definitions - definitions that often prove nonsensical in too many situations.

(Moreover, my characters, including Clerics, have never worshiped deities. Thus dedication to one of the gods is a nonstarter.)

So, Im in the faction that finds it unacceptable to coerce the Paladin to be Lawful Good only, and finds it problematic to mechanically enforce conduct that really depends on situational narratives.

This is a really important point as a lot of people have different views on what constitutes lawful good behaviour. Some people like black and white views of morality which works for fast and easy-going gaming, while others prefer shades of grey. Factor in also a lot of people look back to medieval periods as a benchmark for what was involved in chivalry and that makes things even more complicated - what was accepted back as benevolent behaviour back then probably isn't now.

This mainly concerns a paladin following an ethical code as their divine beneficary, but what about a paladin following different gods? A paladin of Lathander is going to be different to a paladin of Illmater, and a paladin of the Host is going to be different to a paladin of the Silver Flame, even though they're all "lawful good", if worst comes to worst they might even come to blows.

The Paladin theme explicitly synergizes with the Knight class. However it is also possible to build a different kind of Knight. Or oppositely, it is even possible to build a different kind of Paladin, perhaps even a Paladin Wizard, to exemplify the flavor of a Code of Lawful Good.

This is also a good point - the term paladin differs in respect to the story and the mechanics. I've always thought the Greyhawk god Trithereon (spelling?) a CG god was an awesome choice for a paladin's diety, but the mechanics got in the way, and I've always thought the best "defender of justice" storywise in a 3.5ed game would be a diviner, using spells (though really annoying in a mystery game, that's another thread.) to route out evil at its source with as little blood lost or innocents hurt as possible.

Don't even pretend the Codes have anything to do with alignment. Half the problems with paladins are because people don't agree what lawful good is. Spell out what they're about in the Code.

This really needs to be held up and shouted from the roof tops. Alignments (if used in game, I personally dislike the alignments) help promote roleplay, not curb it. Codes and "Lawful Good" mixing in a bad way lead to the "Lawful Stupid" paladin play

Having Black Knights and Lancelots being mechanically identical is a problem. I'd expect the ideals to be reflected in the rules for the knight. One might be focused on retribution; the other on defense and healing; yet another on just, proportional punishment.

I agree with this too a degree, but only because I like to keep mechanics and flavour seperate. I understand some people don't like that though. I agree with Remathilis and think that Essentials and Heroes of Shadow nailed what should be done in contrasting paladins and blackguards.

I'd prefer a base class first called whatever - knight, templar, champion, crusader, etc. that is alignment/diety neutral, and then build your LG paladin or Tyrant of Bane or whatever from that rather then starting with the LG paladin and building from there. I, however, wouldn't be upset if they did it that way and did it well