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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 65997" data-attributes="member: 2067">Hoo BoyI should probably run screaming from this thread right now, but...I'm a glutton for punishment.A direct quote from the PHB:"Paladins need not devote themselves to a single deity. Devotion to righteousness is enough for most."This gives a bit of a secular view of the Champion of Goodness and Order. A paladin isn't the servant of a deity -- they're a champion of the Cause. And the Cause is represented by their Code and their Alignment.The Code is already spelled out in the PH...not in detail, but it's there.IMHO, adhering to any Code of Conduct is a Lawful act...it's ordered, structured, etc. And the Code of Conduct of a paladin are fairly difficult, if not impossible, for anyone not good to adhere to. It's possible. But someone who is Evil will rail against the code every time they have to help those who need it and act with honor (which probably means not charging them for it, either). They may have trouble balancing their Good actions with their Evil when they cannot do any Evil. And they may find it hard to be indifferent to Good and Evil when they have to fight the latter every day.So the Code makes paladins Lawful Good...though I'd buy a Lawful Neutral paladin who adhered to the code (though they'd have to be a *good* roleplayer to pull it off).That said, I don't think that removing the Code will affect the balance of the Paladin very much. Alignments and Codes are role-playing guidelines, not mechanical limits...I'd gladly accept a setting that had neither requirement and more gray areas in what a paladin can be (basically fighter + divine spellcaster). But, as it stands, the Paladin basically is forced by their Code to be LG...they're very intertwined.The Code is a way to guage how adherent to a LG alignment the paladin is being. Take it away or change it and you don't have that easy guideline any more. LG doesn't nessecarily mean honorable or fighting against evil or helping those in need...the Code does. Take away the Code, and you're taking away a lot of the Knight of Valiant Behavior flavor of the Paladin...nothing wrong with that, but it does affect the class flavor-wise quite a bit.</blockquote>

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