D&D 5E Is Anyone Unhappy About Non-LG Paladins?

[Tequila Sunrise]

It's not me feigning ignorance... it's you and your blog post not actually answering the question I asked... I didn't ask why you liked flexible paladins... I asked you what would define this so called flexible paladin (beyond holy warrior which is an archetype that can be accomplished easily in every edition as well as in different combinations of fight/spell without a specific paladin class)...

Personally, I'm comfortable with any and all of the above. In 4e, I simply treat paladins as the in-your-face military branch of their respective temples. Though I don't play PF often, I'm just finishing the write-up for the Exemplar class, a collaborative take on the paladin class that I've been working on with a few Paizo fans.

Hope that helps.

In other words, you're looking for a level of specificity that I neither want nor impose on my players. A base class is far too big a part of the game to confine to one specific archetype, so I define paladins as I define clerics, with the obvious addendum of "But more fighty than the cleric." In other words, yes, a holy warrior. Beyond that, a paladin player is welcome to define her paladin as she wishes.

So you want a more martial cleric? Again that's what a cleric-fighter is for... so I'm missing the point of what archetype or niche your flexible paladin with no code and no alignment restriction actually fullfills... it's not the chivalrous knight like @pemerton's (which, while I don't like it I at least understand what archetype or niche it fills)... It's not the paragon of good that the LG paladin reflects... so what is it?

If the flexible paladin sounds like an archetype that can be arrived at via multiclassing...well, barring smite evil and a few other paladin features, yeah! Considering some of D&D's other classes, I don't see any inconsistency.

Why do we need rangers when the naturey-warrior archetype can be accomplished by a multiclassed druid/fighter? Why do we need bards when the jack-of-all-trades archetype can be accomplished via wizard/rogue/cleric multiclassing, plus a musical instrument? (Or just mage/rogue, depending on edition.) Why do we need druids when the nature-priest archetype can be accomplished by a cleric with the nature-y domains? Why do we need LG-only paladins when the Galahad archetype can be done with a LG cleric/fighter multiclass? Come to think of it, why don't we all just play the three generic classes from the 3e Unearthed Arcana, and fluff to taste? No need for all of these hybrid and specialty classes, right?

Answer these questions, and you just might discover what niche the flexible paladin fills. Hint: It's as much a chargen/gameplay niche as an in-game niche.

 

[Lalato]

So... Is killing evil or good? And if it's evil, how does that synch with the paladin? And if it's good, then how does that synch with the paladin? Is killing lawful? Or chaotic? Or is it neutral?

 

[pemerton]

If you want to play a holy warrior, there is nothing stopping you from playing any martial class as a holy warrior. Why does this one need to be LG only?

Tradition isn't a good explanation, especially if you consider historical sources. Paladins weren't nice guys. They were basically holy terrorists out for Saracen blood. In history, they really were... go forth and kill the enemies of this church (and keep all the loot you can find). Any positive spin on that is just myth making.

I think when we're talking about the paladin and cleric classes (or samurais, or other knights, etc), for a mainstream fantasy RPG, we have to draw upon the mythical self-conception of those archetypes, rather than the historical reality.

Sure you can portray the Paladin as a Cleric with some martial feats or Fighter with some cleric feats

<snip>

A Cleric has different roles than the Paladin entirely, I say the niche of a Paladin would be very unfulfilled with just a martial Cleric.

I can't speak for 3E or 2nd ed AD&D, but in 1st ed AD&D and in 4e clerics and paladins are very much on a continuum.

In AD&D they both wear heavy armour, have decent hp and attacks, have decent saving throws, are healers, and can detect and ward against evil. There are differenes of mechanical implementation, and paladins have a min CHA, but it's the same archetype.

In 4e STR clerics and STR paladins fight in melee, and can heal, and can defend. Clerics are better healers, paladins better defenders. CHA paladins have more "spell" attacks (ie ranged attacks of various sorts) to go with their melee, and PHB WIS clerics are obviously casters (radiant attacks, etc). But again they are on a continuum.

No-one has much of a problem with non-LG Paladins having different names, but it would be super-pointless to rename the class for each alignment variant.

Just to add to this: in early D&D material it's very common to see evil clerics described as "anti-clerics". Much as an evil "paladin" was called an anti-paladin. Even 4e recognises that evil paladins are often anti-paladins, and has a discussion in the DMG of how to reflavour their abilities (eg necrotic or acid rather than radiant).

A CG Paladin makes a lot of sense. A champion of freedom. A hero of the oppressed. A scourge of slavers and tyrants. Her CG aligned god(dess) grants powers in order to promote those things she cares about.

None of those are chaotic principles (indeed, the very idea of "principles" is inherently lawful). That sounds like a LG paladin to me.

For what it's worth, Tritherion (the Greyhawk god of freedom and liberation) is CG.

It also seems to me that a god like Kord would much rather have paladins than clerics, being a god of Good, strength, and martial prowess. Similarly Hextor, and countless many other martially-minded gods.

A paladin of Kord doesn't cause me any conceptual confusion at all: honourable, engaging in displays of prowess, scorning weaklings and cowards; if we don't allow that because of the alignment rules we've got a terrible case of the alignment tail wagging the archetype dog.

 

[pemerton]

Answer these questions, and you just might discover what niche the flexible paladin fills. Hint: It's as much a chargen/gameplay niche as an in-game niche.

I don't know if we have completely identical conceptions of the paladin, but I definitely agree with this: the paladin is a mechancial/charact build alternative to the cleric.

In the story, it's the same archetype.

 

[Hussar]

So... Is killing evil or good? And if it's evil, how does that synch with the paladin? And if it's good, then how does that synch with the paladin? Is killing lawful? Or chaotic? Or is it neutral?

That's a question without answer. There's no way to answer that in a D&D context and never has been.

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What's the difference between a Neutral cleric of Olidamara and a Neutral druid of Olidamara? How would those two characters be different. Since mechanics are off the table, what makes those two characters different?

What's the difference between a Paladin of Heironeous and a Cleric of Heironeous? Again, no references to mechanics. What can one class do that the other one can't?

The argument that allowing for non-LG paladins somehow waters down paladins doesn't really wash. The argument seems to be that if any alignment can be a paladin, then it's no different than a fighter cleric of that alignment. But, if that is true, then why isn't it true in earlier editions? What differentiates a LG Cleric/Fighter from a LG paladin? Why would a LG cleric of Heironeous be held to a lower/different/higher standard than a paladin?

When you can answer that question, then you can complain about how a CG Paladin of Kord is too much like a CG Cleric of Kord.

 

[pemerton]

What's the difference between a Neutral cleric of Olidamara and a Neutral druid of Olidamara? How would those two characters be different. Since mechanics are off the table, what makes those two characters different?

What's the difference between a Paladin of Heironeous and a Cleric of Heironeous? Again, no references to mechanics. What can one class do that the other one can't?

The argument that allowing for non-LG paladins somehow waters down paladins doesn't really wash. The argument seems to be that if any alignment can be a paladin, then it's no different than a fighter cleric of that alignment. But, if that is true, then why isn't it true in earlier editions? What differentiates a LG Cleric/Fighter from a LG paladin? Why would a LG cleric of Heironeous be held to a lower/different/higher standard than a paladin?

I think you might mean Obad-Hai rather than Olidamara. Other than that, I agree with what you say here. The differences between these PCs are differences of mechanical build, not differences of underlying archetype.

Is killing evil or good?

That's a question without answer. There's no way to answer that in a D&D context and never has been.

I don't fully agree with this, though. I think D&D - for better or worse - defaults to the assumption that killing in self-defence, or in defence of others, is morally permissible and in some circumstances perhaps morally obligatory.

For instance, the d20srd says that "Good characters and creatures protect innocent life." I think that the protection in question is understood to include defensive violence.

A more tricky issue is duelling. I think that chivalric morality, and other comparable pre-enlightenment codes (eg viking law codes) take for granted that if someone willingly engages in a fight, and is killed, then the killing was not murder. But the d20srd says that "Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit." That suggests that someone who goes out of there way to start duels because they enjoy winning them - a duellist hustler, if you will - is evil, because enjoys destroying innocent life for fun. But I think that where a duel arises over a genuine point of honour or legitimate conflict, then a good character who participates is not a murderer, because not failing to protect innocent life - the other party to the duel willingly chances his/her life on the outcome. (A truly good character who wins might nevertheless show mercy, however, if that is possible in the circumstances.)

Now personally, as someone who doesn't use alignment in my game, I'm happy to leave the issue of defensive violence vs pacifism, and whether duelling is murder, as open ones, to be addressed and debated as part of actual play like the other moral questions that the game raises.

But for those who are using alignment, I think the game does provide some answers that aren't too hard to make sense of.

The real problem area, in my view, is that the game often labels as "evil" NPCs (eg many orcs, goblins etc) whose status, as legitimate targets of defensive violence, is often obscure at best. It's as if, because the game designers have stuck the label "evil" on them, the PCs are free to treat them as if they were legitimate targets of defensive violence even though no real indication has been given of the threat that they are posing. Often it's not enough just to say "They're threatening the villagers", because if the villagers are illegitimate colonists then it is the "evil" humanoids who have the justice of self-defence (in this case, defence of their homelands against invaders and colonists) on their side.

The answer to this sort of problem that I've adopted in my own game is to deepen the backstory - make it clearer, by reference to gameworld history and/or cosmology and mythic history, who has what sorts of legitimate claims. But my experience is that once you start doing this you don't need alignment any more, because the history and cosmology of the gameworld provide sufficient moral reference point in and of themselves (much as they do for us in the real world).

 

[Halivar]

A more tricky issue is duelling. I think that chivalric morality, and other comparable pre-enlightenment codes (eg viking law codes) take for granted that if someone willingly engages in a fight, and is killed, then the killing was not murder. But the d20srd says that "Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit." That suggests that someone who goes out of there way to start duels because they enjoy winning them - a duellist hustler, if you will - is evil, because enjoys destroying innocent life for fun. But I think that where a duel arises over a genuine point of honour or legitimate conflict, then a good character who participates is not a murderer, because not failing to protect innocent life - the other party to the duel willingly chances his/her life on the outcome. (A truly good character who wins might nevertheless show mercy, however, if that is possible in the circumstances.)

That's an interesting case. I'm tempted to label such behavior as Chaotic rather than Evil, especially if no malice is involved.

 

[pemerton]

That's an interesting case.

Thanks. In my day job I write on the morality of defensive violence (mostly in the context of just war theory and its implication for international law and terrorism), so I've thought through some of these issues probably more than is sensible.

 

[Halivar]

Thanks. In my day job I write on the morality of defensive violence (mostly in the context of just war theory and its implication for international law and terrorism), so I've thought through some of these issues probably more than is sensible.

LOL in the context of D&D that is a HUGE can of worms. It's why I like to write stories where the bad guys are really bad, and they do really bad things; moral quandaries in the players' quest can be fun once in a while, but overall I want the players to feel just and righteous on their quest. I have two ladies in my gaming group who will absolutely, positively refuse to kill any creature or person who does not show up on a detect evil scan, even if that creature or person is trying to kill them at the moment.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That's an interesting case. I'm tempted to label such behavior as Chaotic rather than Evil, especially if no malice is involved.

In the example he gives, there clearly is malice involved (having fun pulling the wings off flies or the like IS malicious, I would assert, and it's that times a million and involving sentient beings). I don't see how picking someone clearly weaker than you, manipulating them into a duel that they stand little chance of winning (if any), even if you're not consciously aware you're doing it, and killing them could ever be anything but Evil, certainly if it's a routine behaviour. It's pretty much a form of Chaotic Evil (because it's all about self-gratification and will rapidly destroy the fabric of society).
[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] - My group includes an employment lawyer (who is thus very familiar with and interested in human rights), TWO senior people from international charities which deal with war-torn areas (who are thus very interested in such issues), a senior child psychiatrist, and er... a day trader (but he's a really good person!). Oh and occasionally a human rights barrister and a guy who runs social-enterprise-based universities in Africa and used to work for UNICEF.

As much as you might think you overthink that kind of stuff, as DM to that group, I tend to think about it a lot myself, because I don't want to lead us into some sort of elaborate moral argument.

Hilariously, the day trader's PC is probably the "most good" out of the lot of them. The UNICEF guy, who is perhaps the nicest person in the world IRL, is incredibly devious and scheming in-game!
[MENTION=9327]Halivar[/MENTION] - Yeah, it's generally more fun long term to let the PCs be Big Damn Heroes rather than dealing with complex moral quandaries in D&D, but my experience is that Paladins (of any alignment) and the like tend to attract moral quandaries like flies to honey. Also sometimes these sort of things naturally emerge in play.