Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9470233" data-attributes="member: 42582">Nothing in <a href="https://www.dndbeyond.com/classes/4-paladin" target="_blank">the text that I'm reading</a> states that the 3rd level Oath is the only oath or vow that is taken. In fact it implies the opposite:Becoming a paladin involves taking vows that commit the paladin to the cause of righteousness, an active path of fighting wickedness. The final oath, taken when he or she reaches 3rd level, is the culmination of all the paladin’s training. Some characters with this class don’t consider themselves true paladins until they have reached 3rd level and made this oath. For others, the actual swearing of the oath is a formality, an official stamp on what has always been true in the paladin’s heart.It is the final oath, which "binds you as a paladin forever." Note the sole oath.It seems pretty clear to me, at least on D&D Beyond:The presence of strong evil registers on your senses like a noxious odor, and powerful good rings like heavenly music in your ears. . . Your blessed touch can heal wounds. . . . [Y]ou have learned to draw on divine magic through meditation and prayer to cast spells as a cleric does. . . . [and] when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, you can expend one spell slot to deal radiant damage to the target [a divine smite] . . . the divine magic flowing through you makes you immune to disease.The character is channelling divine power. To quote some more from the same page,Whatever their origin and their mission, paladins are united by their oaths to stand against the forces of evil. Whether sworn before a god’s altar and the witness of a priest, in a sacred glade before nature spirits and fey beings, or in a moment of desperation and grief with the dead as the only witness, a paladin’s oath is a powerful bond. It is a source of power that turns a devout warrior into a blessed champion. . . . The most important aspect of a paladin character is the nature of his or her holy quest. Although the class features related to your oath don’t appear until you reach 3rd level, plan ahead for that choice by reading the oath descriptions at the end of the class. Are you a devoted servant of good, loyal to the gods of justice and honor, a holy knight in shining armor venturing forth to smite evil? Are you a glorious champion of the light, cherishing everything beautiful that stands against the shadow, a knight whose oath descends from traditions older than many of the gods? Or are you an embittered loner sworn to take vengeance on those who have done great evil, sent as an angel of death by the gods or driven by your need for revenge? The Gods of the Multiverse section lists many deities worshiped by paladins throughout the multiverse, such as Torm, Tyr, Heironeous, Paladine, Kiri-Jolith, Dol Arrah, the Silver Flame, Bahamut, Athena, Re-Horakhty, and Heimdall. How did you experience your call to serve as a paladin? Did you hear a whisper from an unseen god or angel while you were at prayer? Did another paladin sense the potential within you and decide to train you as a squire? Or did some terrible event—the destruction of your home, perhaps—drive you to your quests? Perhaps you stumbled into a sacred grove or a hidden elven enclave and found yourself called to protect all such refuges of goodness and beauty. Or you might have known from your earliest memories that the paladin’s life was your calling, almost as if you had been sent into the world with that purpose stamped on your soul.Notice the references to gods, and to the paladin as "a devout warrior", "a devoted servant", "a glorious champion of the light", "an angel of death" who is "sent . . . by the gods", "a holy knight" undertaking a "holy quest", who may have been visited by a "god or angel while . . . at prayer", or in "a sacred grove".Not to mention that the class features are replete with words like "divine" and "sacred". I don't know what you mean by "different approaches". There is one approach. To the extent that there is some equivocation over exactly what it means to be "in a preparatory stage, committed to the path but not yet sworn to it" I think that is because the text is deliberately leaving it open for a player and/or GM to adopt slightly different approaches to how a paladin is called and grows into their vocation. That sort of open-ness is not surprising in a RPG intended to be sold to and played by a very diverse audience.Despite it, I am not seeing the ambiguity or uncertainty that you are. I think the class is clear: the character is inspired by an encounter with, or at least a sense of, the divine and sacred; commits themself to that path; and in due course swears a final oath that makes their choice to journey along that path irrevocable. As a result of their commitment and inspiration, they are imbued with divine and sacred power.You and [USER=23751]@Maxperson[/USER] seem to want to ignore the reference to a "final oath" and read it as if is the only oath. And you seem to want to read this passage - "a paladin’s oath is a powerful bond. It is a source of power that turns a devout warrior into a blessed champion" - not as a description of the paladin's path, but as a statement about the soul source of a paladin's power.Of course no one else can control how you read a text, but my general view is that if there is a reading that produces nonsense, and another equally available or even more readily available reading that produces sense, the latter reading is to be preferred. And here, I think it's very clear.</blockquote>

Verification