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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Derren" data-source="post: 5861597" data-attributes="member: 2518">Ah, the eternal paladin issue.Let me start with a picture (not from me and you need to have played a lot of Bioware games to really understand it)<a href="http://epantiras.deviantart.com/gallery/?catpath=/#/d4t87r3" target="_blank">Epantiras's deviantART Gallery</a>There are a lot of different ways people portray paladins yet D&D has always had problems with defining them.First, the issue with always being LG or not. While one could now have a lengthy discussion I say, why bother? When we have LG only paladins then we will in a few splatbooks have a blackguard anyway. Lets save the space and make paladin for all alignments on the GE alignment axis. (One class with different build paths for each alignment)But that does not address the real issue with paladins now, does it? Even when just focusing on LG paladins, there are a lot of ways to portray them (see the picture above).Paladins range from Jesus in armor who never do anything remotely naughty to Judge Dread with a big sword punishing anything not following their strict world view.And all of those interpretations are correct as WotC themselves doesn't seem to know what to do with paladins so the description they give of them are not consistent at all.And while one can argue that this just gives freedom to the player, which technically is correct, it has the problem that paladins tend to be, well lets say they don't tend to stay in the background and let the others "do their thing". Having a paladin in the party affects all players (strangely there is no such problems with clerics even though their religious undertones also lends itself to this, but that is a different matter)And having a paladin player who understands something different from a paladin than the other players or DM is just a train wreck waiting to happen.So in this case it might be beneficial to define the paladin more strict instead of less. And when we have paladins for several alignments )one way or the other) it might be a good idea to focus more on the lawful part.Coming back to the picture again lets look a bit at Samara (the blue one) from Mass Effect. While that is SciFi Samara is as paladin like as one can be and is generally a nice person. Unless you get between her and her mission, then she kills you, no matter who you are (bad criminal or good cop just doing your job. She won't feel good about it, but she will kill you). While this sounds rather one dimensional, she still manages to be a rather interesting character, especially when she comes into conflict with her code.Now while such devotion can be as problematic as the current paladin issue, by relying on a code instead of a vague definition of good and evil players will know what to expect from the paladin as either they will use a code from the book or they have to make up one before the game and share it with the DM.</blockquote>

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