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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 9361728" data-attributes="member: 22779">One of the most eye opening experiences I had about alignment was during 3e, years ago.  I got a new player at my table and he plonked down his new character (I forget what class now, doesn't really matter).  The character was Chaotic Neutral.  I raised an eyebrow or two, mostly because this was a new player to the table and I had zero interest in the player being disruptive.  The player promised that he wouldn't be disruptive but insisted on the CN designation.  So, I grudgingly okayed it with the caveat that at some point down the road, we were going to have another conversation about this.So, a couple months passed and there were no problems with the character.  The character was always forthright, upstanding, kept his word, never disobeyed an order, stuck to plans and was always up for a good strategy session."You realize your character is Lawful Good, right?" I asked?"No way.  He's CN!  He has to be CN!""But, he's never done anything even remotely chaotic and he's always acted good.  He's organized and never impetuous.  He works very well with others and always has the group's interest at heart.  This guy is textbook LG.  Maybe NG?  He's the opposite of CN though," I replied."NO!  Absolutely not.  This character MUST be CN because I do not ever want you to tell me what my character will do because of his alignment."Now, I'm paraphrasing a conversation from 20 years ago, but, that's the gist of it.  He was CN, not because of any real interest in being CN but because he absolutely hated the idea of me, the DM, trying to enforce any alignment based behavior on him.  Didn't matter that I wasn't that kind of DM and had never once even hinted that I would ever do that.  He was absolutely adamant about being CN.  Once I realized what the conversation was actually about, I totally let it go and let him be whatever alignment he felt comfortable with.That was the day I ejected alignment from my D&D games.  From that point onward, I never even bothered asking the alignment of characters.  Couldn't care less.  It's your character.  You define that character, not me and certainly not whatever was in the PHB.  5e ejecting alignment from the game has been one of the absolute best ideas of the edition.As far as the whole context of paladins goes - well, context is tricky.  It's hard to say what something will connote to me or you.  Just because something doesn't connote a certain meaning to you does not mean I'm wrong for taking the connotative meaning differently.  It's simply different interpretations of the same word.  Trying to "prove" that someone's connotative meaning is wrong will never, ever work.  And it's not like the connotation of paladin as linked to medieval knights is all that hard to see.  It's there in the pictures, the text and all sorts of elements.  This isn't really a stretch to see how the connection is made.The best solution, AFAIC, going forward, is to, as others have said, broaden the class.  Cast a wider net of inspiration so that the Crusading Knight connotation can fade into the background further and further and we can have a different iconography for paladins going forward.  For example, I don't think this image of an Oath of Ancients Paladin is evoking Christian Crusader in any real way:<img src="https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/020/653/970/large/bastien-aufrere-chong-color6.jpg?1568651696" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />((Oh, crap, that character has GLASSES!!! RUNNNNNNN!!!!))</blockquote>

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