Neutral Paladin

[rossik]

so, paladins have to be good, right?
otherwise, they would be anti-paladin...


but didnt he have to serve a god and a "politic power"?

so, whats about being good?
cant i be a neutral paladin, from a neutral god?

 

[Bardsandsages]

In the Forgotten Realms, paladins of Helm are Lawful Nuetral.

There is nothing in any of the rules that says you have to follow a political power. Hell, you don't neccessarily have to follow an actual god. You can be a paladin of a "cause" or a code of conduct.

It is up to your DM if he would allow a LN paladin. I have in the past, and it has never been a problem. But I have always made such players clearly define what their "code" is before saying OK. If it was part of a character concept, it was fine. But if you just want to play LN to get all the cool powers of a pally without having to be "good" then no.

 

[tx7321]

In pre-UA 1E Paladins must be LG. If they fail to act LG at all times they become fighters (and may or may not ever regain their former class; I'd strongly suggest not involving UA in this). To switch to an anti-paladin, I think you'd have to turn in an extreme way to CE, and likely need to be higher level I'd think (I don't own that Dragon Mag. anymore that presented the NPC class but I thought it explained how this works). I don't think I'd allow a player to do this (if it happened I'd take the PC over and run it as an NPC).

If your interested in LN paladins, you might use normal fighters, call them Knights, and maybe have similar attribute requirments; possibly make them a sub-cat, and give them some unique class related abilities, although I think the fighter class already meets this requirment).

 

[Voadam]

I think there was a dragon magazine article with variant paladins for every alignment. A Plethora of Paladins? Someone with the old article or the Dragon archive CD could probably give you specifics.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

It's hard to figure out what the code of a TN paladin is supposed to be. I mean, the code is supposed to be hard to follow, but probably the majority of all people are True Neutral, so how difficult can it be?

I mean, I can see a True Neutral long-term political agenda (prevent both overly large political entities that dominate the world and areas of total anarchy), but it's hard to envision smaller, day-to-day events where the True Neutral response would be clear and obvious.

 

[Bardsandsages]

It's hard to figure out what the code of a TN paladin is supposed to be. I mean, the code is supposed to be hard to follow, but probably the majority of all people are True Neutral, so how difficult can it be?

I mean, I can see a True Neutral long-term political agenda (prevent both overly large political entities that dominate the world and areas of total anarchy), but it's hard to envision smaller, day-to-day events where the True Neutral response would be clear and obvious.

Karla, the Gray Witch from Lodoss Wars, was true nuetral. A true nuetral person dedicated to nuetrality will sometimes even side with evil if he/she believes good is getting too powerful. It's sort of the logic "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely". Even a good kingdom, if afforded absolute power, slowly sinks into corruption. The true nuetral paladin would seek to insure that no one influence becomes too powerful. He recognizes the need for both law and chaos, and for good and evil.

 

[lukelightning]

I reject the "active balance neutrality." If you seek to balance good with evil, then you are evil.

Karla the witch is neutral or evil, depending on your view (she possesses/mind controls innocent people; that's definitely an evil act).

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I reject the "active balance neutrality." If you seek to balance good with evil, then you are evil.

Depends on the local cosmology and your beliefs. If you think something really bad is going to happen to the cosmos if Good gains the upper hand, then trying to balance Good with Evil might be justified.

 

[Shadeydm]

I reject the "active balance neutrality." If you seek to balance good with evil, then you are evil.

Karla the witch is neutral or evil, depending on your view (she possesses/mind controls innocent people; that's definitely an evil act).

In the eternal champion books the "champions" served the "balance". Some were evil others were not. So I believe it really depends upon the individual DMs cosmology and what kind of game he is running.

*edited because I fail at typing.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

I reject the "active balance neutrality." If you seek to balance good with evil, then you are evil.

I reject your rejection.

Seeking to balance good with evil is ... evil?

How can that be? Especially when you consider that the same person is also interested in balancing evil with good.

Note that this need not even be on the microscopic level. Rather, our balancer may be interested in the global balance.

In other words, it's fine if Evil rules in Country A, and Country B is a bastion of Good.

In fact, for our balancer, this sort of situation is almost required! People need Evil in their lives - if nothing else, they need something to strive against. Similarly, Evil cannot win, because people need Good in their lives - if nothing else, they need something to hope for. The clash of Good and Evil is the true driver of progress in the world, without one or the other, the world would stagnate or self-annihilate.