Just posting some stuff from my own game world, for general comment. It's somewhat long, as it requires certain background information before I can get to the meat.
The most important thing about my world (Zion; a kind of Middle-Eastern/Hindu-influenced setting) is that gods have no direct influence. This is for various reasons, but essentially it was sealed off from the rest of the multiverse ages ago, to serve as a prison for several powerful demon entities. Wanna know where the Demon Princes and Archdukes who rebelled and tried to ally together were sent? This is it.
Anyway, fortunately for the humans in the setting, the powerful demons are all bound up, even within the prison. End result, gods have no direct hand in things, and it's generally a nasty place.
There is one exception. The Goddess Nuan took pity on the people who had to live there, especially those who had chosen Good as a path. So she broke the prison just enough to enter herself, bodily, in the form of a river. That river cut through a vast desert, creating a 'fertile crescent' of clean, pure water and ensured that at least one good god would be available for worship.
Of course, in doing so, she lost her sentience. So, still not 'active'... but the most present god. It was a big sacrifice on her part, but she did it to save her son... Heironeous.
Heironeous was born an ordinary human, in an Evil Land (tm). Soldiers tracked down his mother as she was giving birth and drowned the child. They didn't know, however, that the cave she was giving birth in was once worshipped by the locals as the place of a water-deity. When the child was drowned, this water deity (Nuan) noticed - she finally saw what was going on, and infused the child with the barest tiniest fraction of her divine essence, raising him from the dead. Heironeous, alive (and breathing water), was discovered by villagers hours later, who raised him in secret.
When he was older, he overthrew the evil rulers, yadda yadda.
(The legends that the PCs are aware of add in another angle. They say that Heironeous had a twin brother, who was strong as a baby and impressed the soldiers who killed Heironeous, and so they took him back to the king. The king adopted him as his own, and called him Hextor. When Heironeous finally overthrew the king, he had to fight his own twin brother. This is untrue, as will be explored below - but the PCs don't know that yet.)
The important thing here is that Heironeous was the first Paladin. He defined what it meant to be one - the honour, rightousness, etc. He became the prototype. This is important because in Zion, ideas have power. While the gods have no direct power, and cannot 'grant spells', the ideas of gods do have power - the very fact that thousands of people believe in the deity 'Kreitan' means that clerics who worship 'kreitan' will get spells.
So the fact that Heironeous existed, and acted in such a way, and was blessed with divine power, means that those who follow him, act in the same way, also receive powers. There's no external meddling here, no Paladin-god who looks down and says 'Hey! He's cool. I'm going to grant him powers.' It's all natural properties of the world.
The path of the paladin is quite specific. It involved two main tenets:
* The paladin is not dedicated to 'destroying evil.' The paladin is dedicated to 'protecting good.' They are the shield, not the sword. They smite the wicked only when evil threatens good.
* The paladin is not a master. He serves the common good, he serves order, he serves the innocent. In short, he is a servant. Humility is required, as pride can easily overwhelm men's hearts and send them down the wrong path.
There are other aspects, of course, courtesy and honesty among them.
Now, the fact that there is no overriding deity means that it's also easy to fall. I'm sticking with my original interpretation of the 3.0 rules (overruled in the FAQ, yes, but I decided not to change) that Paladins who deliberately commit evil acts are permanently barred from regaining powers - no atonement or similar act can restore them. This is again because there's no controlling deity. Once the Paladin leaves the path, they cannot find their way back on. It's over.
EXCEPT - except. You remember above about Hextor being only legend? Well, he was partly true. Except that when Heironeous fought the king, he discovered that the king was his father. And that he wasn't the true source of evil, anyway - it was a demon who gave the king his power, and that demon couldn't be killed. Heironeous, who had already sacrificed a great deal, and compromised in order to get to where he was, couldn't accept that. He killed the king, but that broke something inside of him. He decided he had to rule in order to protect people from evil and gain the power to destroy the demons. He had good intentions, but ultimately he was in the wrong - he was now willing to compromise too much, his alignment slipped. He renamed himself Hextor, and became remembered as The Tyrant.
Of course, he didn't 'fall'... being the prototype paladin, he was forging the path, not following it. But it means that those Paladins who do the wrong thing, for the right reasons, do have a way to regain their powers - because, after all, leaving the path is in fact truer to the path of Heironeous than staying on it is. It takes a lot of effort, though. Essentially, it involves sticking to the behaviour of a paladin even though they gain no power from it, while they slowly sacrifice everything they have. Finally, they must sacrifice their life in a worthy cause, preferably one that will gain them no notice, no fame. But at the point of their death, they return, whole and reinvigorated. 3.5 has finally given me a mechanic for representing this - it's the Saint template (although pared down slightly. Dropping the level of Fast Healing, for instance).
Fortunately, the player of the Paladin in my game loves to see her poor characters tortured. Her character's level 17 now (almost level 18) and has just lost his powers. He's going to go through a while without them - I'm planning their reintroduction around level 20.
So... that's my paladin styling (and a portion of my world's back-story). Any comments?
The most important thing about my world (Zion; a kind of Middle-Eastern/Hindu-influenced setting) is that gods have no direct influence. This is for various reasons, but essentially it was sealed off from the rest of the multiverse ages ago, to serve as a prison for several powerful demon entities. Wanna know where the Demon Princes and Archdukes who rebelled and tried to ally together were sent? This is it.
Anyway, fortunately for the humans in the setting, the powerful demons are all bound up, even within the prison. End result, gods have no direct hand in things, and it's generally a nasty place.
There is one exception. The Goddess Nuan took pity on the people who had to live there, especially those who had chosen Good as a path. So she broke the prison just enough to enter herself, bodily, in the form of a river. That river cut through a vast desert, creating a 'fertile crescent' of clean, pure water and ensured that at least one good god would be available for worship.
Of course, in doing so, she lost her sentience. So, still not 'active'... but the most present god. It was a big sacrifice on her part, but she did it to save her son... Heironeous.
Heironeous was born an ordinary human, in an Evil Land (tm). Soldiers tracked down his mother as she was giving birth and drowned the child. They didn't know, however, that the cave she was giving birth in was once worshipped by the locals as the place of a water-deity. When the child was drowned, this water deity (Nuan) noticed - she finally saw what was going on, and infused the child with the barest tiniest fraction of her divine essence, raising him from the dead. Heironeous, alive (and breathing water), was discovered by villagers hours later, who raised him in secret.
When he was older, he overthrew the evil rulers, yadda yadda.
(The legends that the PCs are aware of add in another angle. They say that Heironeous had a twin brother, who was strong as a baby and impressed the soldiers who killed Heironeous, and so they took him back to the king. The king adopted him as his own, and called him Hextor. When Heironeous finally overthrew the king, he had to fight his own twin brother. This is untrue, as will be explored below - but the PCs don't know that yet.)
The important thing here is that Heironeous was the first Paladin. He defined what it meant to be one - the honour, rightousness, etc. He became the prototype. This is important because in Zion, ideas have power. While the gods have no direct power, and cannot 'grant spells', the ideas of gods do have power - the very fact that thousands of people believe in the deity 'Kreitan' means that clerics who worship 'kreitan' will get spells.
So the fact that Heironeous existed, and acted in such a way, and was blessed with divine power, means that those who follow him, act in the same way, also receive powers. There's no external meddling here, no Paladin-god who looks down and says 'Hey! He's cool. I'm going to grant him powers.' It's all natural properties of the world.
The path of the paladin is quite specific. It involved two main tenets:
* The paladin is not dedicated to 'destroying evil.' The paladin is dedicated to 'protecting good.' They are the shield, not the sword. They smite the wicked only when evil threatens good.
* The paladin is not a master. He serves the common good, he serves order, he serves the innocent. In short, he is a servant. Humility is required, as pride can easily overwhelm men's hearts and send them down the wrong path.
There are other aspects, of course, courtesy and honesty among them.
Now, the fact that there is no overriding deity means that it's also easy to fall. I'm sticking with my original interpretation of the 3.0 rules (overruled in the FAQ, yes, but I decided not to change) that Paladins who deliberately commit evil acts are permanently barred from regaining powers - no atonement or similar act can restore them. This is again because there's no controlling deity. Once the Paladin leaves the path, they cannot find their way back on. It's over.
EXCEPT - except. You remember above about Hextor being only legend? Well, he was partly true. Except that when Heironeous fought the king, he discovered that the king was his father. And that he wasn't the true source of evil, anyway - it was a demon who gave the king his power, and that demon couldn't be killed. Heironeous, who had already sacrificed a great deal, and compromised in order to get to where he was, couldn't accept that. He killed the king, but that broke something inside of him. He decided he had to rule in order to protect people from evil and gain the power to destroy the demons. He had good intentions, but ultimately he was in the wrong - he was now willing to compromise too much, his alignment slipped. He renamed himself Hextor, and became remembered as The Tyrant.
Of course, he didn't 'fall'... being the prototype paladin, he was forging the path, not following it. But it means that those Paladins who do the wrong thing, for the right reasons, do have a way to regain their powers - because, after all, leaving the path is in fact truer to the path of Heironeous than staying on it is. It takes a lot of effort, though. Essentially, it involves sticking to the behaviour of a paladin even though they gain no power from it, while they slowly sacrifice everything they have. Finally, they must sacrifice their life in a worthy cause, preferably one that will gain them no notice, no fame. But at the point of their death, they return, whole and reinvigorated. 3.5 has finally given me a mechanic for representing this - it's the Saint template (although pared down slightly. Dropping the level of Fast Healing, for instance).
Fortunately, the player of the Paladin in my game loves to see her poor characters tortured. Her character's level 17 now (almost level 18) and has just lost his powers. He's going to go through a while without them - I'm planning their reintroduction around level 20.
So... that's my paladin styling (and a portion of my world's back-story). Any comments?
