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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6316216" data-attributes="member: 42582">I'm relying on the ordinary meaning of the word - "any knightly or heroic champion" is one definition that comes up, and "knightly" in turn means "characteristic of a knight; noble, courageous, and generous". If, in 4e, you are playing a PC paladin of a chaotic evil or chaotic god, you are already departing from the game's default assumptions, and so to a significant extent the onus is on you to make sense of the situation that you have created.For instance, the 4e PHB describes paladins (pp 89-90) as:indomitable warriors who’ve pledged their prowess to something greater than themselves. . . [and who] bolster the courage of nearby companions, and radiate as if a beacon of inextinguishable hope. . . Where others waver and wonder, your motivation is pure and simple, and your devotion is your strength. Where others scheme and steal, you take the high road, refusing to allow the illusions of temptation to dissuade you from your obligations. . . As fervent crusaders in their chosen cause, paladins must choose a deity. Paladins choose a specific faith to serve, as well as an alignment. You must choose an alignment identical to the alignment of your patron deity; a paladin of a good deity must be good, a paladin of a lawful good deity must be lawful good, and a paladin of an unaligned deity must be unaligned. Evil and chaotic evil paladins do exist in the world, but they are almost always villains, not player characters.The descriptions of evil and chaotic evil make it pretty clear - if it wasn't already - that "paladins" having those alignments will not be beacons of inextinguishable hope who take the high road rather than scheming and stealing (PHB p 20):Evil characters don’t necessarily go out of their way to hurt people, but they’re perfectly willing to take advantage of the weakness of others to acquire what they want. . . Chaotic evil characters have a complete disregard for others. Each believes he or she is the only being that matters and kills, steals, and betrays others to gain power.Clearly evil and chaotic evil paladins are not going to be paladins in the ordinary sense of the term. (Paladins of Bane would be plausible exceptions within the D&D cosmology; they aren't necessarily schemers, and the only weaknesses they set out to exploit are military weaknesses or personal weaknesses such as cowardice.)The 4e DMG even has a brief discussion (p 163) of how to handle "anti-clerics" and "anti-paladins":Evil and chaotic evil deities have clerics and paladins just as other gods do. However, the powers of those classes, as presented in the Player’s Handbook, are strongly slanted toward good and lawful good characters. . . You can alter the nature of powers without changing their basic effects, making them feel more appropriate for the servants of evil gods: changing the damage type of a prayer, for instance, so that evil clerics and paladins deal necrotic damage instead of radiant damage. When a prayer would blind its target with holy light, it might instead shroud a character’s eyes with clinging darkness. Holy fire consuming a foe with ongoing fire damage might become a coating of acidic slime that eats away at the flesh, or a purple hellfire with identical effects.For someone playing with the full suite of 4e rules, the best way to play a paladin of a god like Gruumsh or Asmodeus or Torog or Tiamat or Zehir is as a blackguard. (Who, apart from anything else, will play as a somewhat selfish striker rather than an other-regarding defender.)That would be a contradiction, given that honour and chivary are particular ethoses.If you don't want it to apply to your paladin then go to town. But in that case you won't need rules for stripping your paladin of powers if s/he is dishonourable or cowardly or selfish. I thought you were the one who was saying that you don't want the game to permit selfish, dishonourable, cowardly paladins.This is as close as you get to answering my question "What sort of game do you and  [MENTION=6776483]DDNFan[/MENTION] have in mind". Namely, one in which if the player choose to have his/her PC stick to the code then his/her PC will die (or, at least, have a real chance of dying).Do you think that a character who flips out or cries when his/her PC is killed is going to calmly accept that the price of having the PC live is letting the GM strip away the character's mechanical abilities? My gut feeling is that such a player will be angry at the GM for having framed him/her into a no-win situation. And frankly, my sympathies would be with the player at that point.EDIT: Elf Witch makes a similar point to mine about player personalities (although I think her sympathies lie a bit differently):Not playing with insincere or immature players is certainly a solution that works for me, though I seem to have arrived at it by luck rather than deliberate management.EDIT 2: On the definition of paladin in D&Dnext, the playtest rules give us two oaths. One is described as a paragon of virtue. The other is an avenger. It seems to me that if you don't want to play that sort of character then you wouldn't build your PC as a member of that class.</blockquote>

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