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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SHARK" data-source="post: 433560" data-attributes="member: 1131">Greetings!Well, more of my thoughts on paladins can be found in the threads, "Executing Judgment On Paladins" and "The Templars Ride Forth". However, I offer some additional commentary here that is reprinted from my e-mail to my friend Dragonblade!__________________________________________________Quote: The SHARK-school of paladins indeed! See, if paladins must always fight their enemies according to some elaborate tournament rules--well, that's nice, if the enemy agrees.What happens when they don't fight fair? What happens when they betray you and stack the deck at every turn. This isn't comic-books, or Barney World. In my campaign, yeah, paladins are the greatness and righteousness and all that, but if they *insist* on fighting in the brutal, grim world that doesn't follow the nice, neat tournament rules, then the paladin will end up defeated and crushed. He will be crucified on the hill, and lashed with the scourge until he dies in screaming agony. The crows will eat what is left of him. Meanwhile, because of the paladin's stupidity, and refusal to realise that touranament rules have no place on the battlefield of a grim and brutal world, the civilians that he was supposed to save from the forces of Darkness will now be broken to the yoke of tyranny, and enslaved to the oppression of rape, torture, and misery, as the forces of Darkness reign triumphant!Real good, paladin. The people are raped, eaten, slaughtered, or enslaved, because you and your friends were stupid. Because you could'nt tell the difference between a chivalrous knight that opposes you across the tournament field, and an evil, wicked vampire lord that leads the legions of darkness against all that is holy and good!See the difference? Of course you do--you know how long such stupid paladins would last in a grim, brutal world!<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> These other people make the huge, weak assumptions that the rest of the world will "play nice"--and even if they don't, they then go on to assume that the paladin character has some sort of "plot immunity" because he insists on being nice. Nice is for fairytales, and nice can be for an opponent who agrees to fight by the same rules of the "game" that you do. The real truth is though, certainly in a grim, brutal world, the enemies that oppose the paladins don't see it as a "game." It is deadly serious business, and they "play" to win, by any and all means necessary. After all, "To the Victor go the spoils!" In the end, when the armies of Darkness rule in the throne of might, and they have subjugated all the people, will it really matter that somewhere, someone, believes that the ruling evil empire didn't gain it's victory because it didn't play "fair"? I mean, that just isn't reality, you know? Either evil is defeated, or Evil triumphs. The question for the paladin to me is--are you going to defeat evil, or is evil going to defeat you? Are you going to crush the forces of evil, or are you going to be left staring skyward in death as you lay in the mud as the evil knights ride over you on their way to conquest?__________________________________________________End Quote.Posted by me, at an e-mail to Dragonblade.Semper Fidelis,SHARK</blockquote>

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