Paladins: Which do you hate more - LE or CE?

[Blood Jester]

We touch a wall here. For me hate is incompatible with Good as a moral value. This is certainly my Catholic self speaking, but I would put that into play if a player was to "hate for good" in the campaign.

Hmm. :\


That aside, we are speaking of Holy Warriors, not Jedi.
There is nothing about being a Crusader against the forces of evil that dis-allows hatred for beings that enjoy the pain and suffering of others. And nothing I can recall (note the qualifier) in any Paladin rules that restrict them in that way either.

But I tend to lean my Paladins towards worrying more about supporting what is "Good" and the "Lawful" side is more about a code of ethics than about the legal system.

 

[irdeggman]

From the SRD:

Code of Conduct: A paladin must be of lawful good alignment and loses all class abilities if she ever willingly commits an evil act.

Additionally, a paladin’s code requires that she respect legitimate authority, act with honor (not lying, not cheating, not using poison, and so forth), help those in need (provided they do not use the help for evil or chaotic ends), and punish those who harm or threaten innocents.

So it looks like paladins are in opposition to evil or chaos hence chaotic evil is in opposition in both ways.

Note that they are first and fore most against evil though.

 

[Odhanan]

Hmm. :\


That aside, we are speaking of Holy Warriors, not Jedi.
There is nothing about being a Crusader against the forces of evil that dis-allows hatred for beings that enjoy the pain and suffering of others. And nothing I can recall (note the qualifier) in any Paladin rules that restrict them in that way either.

But I tend to lean my Paladins towards worrying more about supporting what is "Good" and the "Lawful" side is more about a code of ethics than about the legal system.

Indeed. Now I do recognize the extreme impact of personal points of views on the matter, hence my allusion on my "Catholic Self", as I worded it. Do you?
"That aside, we are speaking of Holy Warriors, not Jedi." For me Jedi and Paladins are the same thing. The only difference being the idea of preventive strike. The Paladin is allowed to initiate a preventive strike. A Jedi isn't.

 

[Umbran]

There is nothing about being a Crusader against the forces of evil that dis-allows hatred for beings that enjoy the pain and suffering of others.

Gotta be really careful with absolutes - like "nothing".

You ever watch the actions of someone who felt real hatred? Not just anger. Not just heat of the moment. But real hatred? It isn't commonly found in our world. Hatred is blinding. Hatred gets in the way of rational thought - and brings the hater to lose perspective.

And loss of perspective is the number one way to slide down the slippery slope.

In my personal GM quest to find interesting and challenging moral quandries for paladins, the road of hate has been the one that most easily bring's 'em down. Get a paladin to hate, and eventually he starts making bad judgement calls, because he forgets that there's anything more important that the thing he hates.

 

[Torm]

Neither, because as a paladin I have no way to personally work out whether someone is LE or CE, since I can't cast Detect Law/Chaos. So it comes down to the specific situation, not the alignment.

No offense, Shilsen, but what you said here is actually more or less circular - the specific situation ITSELF is going to indicate to you whether or not you are dealing with LE or CE (that being the way one would "personally work out" such). Which, in turn, brings me back to my original question.

I don't see why the paladin would make a distinction. They're BOTH evil.

As I mentioned in my comments to Nightfall before, it isn't a matter of ignoring one in favor of the other, so much as, all other things being as equal as possible, which one would a Paladin go after first? And is the answer to this question "hard-coded", so to speak, into the nature of being a Paladin, or is it more of an individual character-flavour sort of decision?

I tend to think the latter, myself, but I wanted to hear from others.

I think this one hits the bullseye dead on. (regarding Starglim's comments.)

I agree, and it goes to the core of my initial question in some ways. Would a Paladin see eliminating a sporadic, rampant, Chaotic Evil, as more of a priority? Or would the more organized and focused Lawful Evil be the thing to nip in the bud as quickly as possible before it has as much time to work toward its goals? And, as I mentioned above, is this answer "Character", or is it "Class"?

For me hate is incompatible with Good as a moral value.

I don't think we're using quite the same definition of "hate" here, so let me clarify which one I meant in the thread title:

From Webster's: 1. (verb) To dislike greatly; to have a great aversion to. It expresses less than abhor, detest, and abominate, unless pronounced with a peculiar emphasis.

If the "great aversion" in question were to an individual themselves, it might conflict with the religious codes followed by some Paladins (including this Catholicism of which you speak - which sourcebook is that in, again? ), and I could understand your concern, but in this case it is directed at an abstraction that is almost certainly universally reviled by Good beings.

P.S. I just noticed I used the wrong word for what I meant to ask in the original post. I will correct that immediately.

 

[prosfilaes]

One of the gods I wrote up for a LE races has paladins. They consider evil to be something that is fought whenever possible, whereever possible. But chaotic evil, for both the god and her worshippers and paladins, is viscerally wrong. It is abhorrant and, unlike LE, unnatural, and her worshippers would go out of their way to destroy chaotic evil above lawful evil. I think that's a perfectly reasonable option for these paladins.

 

[Seeten]

My Paladin, the one from my avatar, dislikes LE far, far more than CE for a variety of reasons. (Caveat: My Paladin is of Freedom, and is CG, but this would likely be the same for a LG pally too)

1: LE is evil that is frequently successful. It is not just successful, but difficult to bring down as often law is ON ITS SIDE. You must fight the system, and the bad guy. It is insidious. Insidious, successful, and cancerous evil is dangerous and scary, and worth fearing.

2: CE is evil that is frequently unsuccessful. It is unfocused. It is backbiting, infighting, and in many ways laughable. Its evil that is easy to meet head on. Evil you can find easily, because it doesnt cover its tracks. CE might(better?) have raw power to back it up, because even its own friends dont like it.

3: The most dangerous threat, gets the majority of the thought, and the majority of the ire. CE is disgusting, but mostly easy to deal with, and easy to shrug off. LE is much more difficult, as they actually care about their families. They generally don't harm innocents, so in many ways, they are like the evil thats in your own heart, as a paladin, a twisted reflection. And that is scary.

 

[sword-dancer]

They re both on his Lists, the more harm one does the higher he ranks on the list,

Righteos/holy fury/anger/wrath is a very fitting emotion for a paladin, as long as he don`t go over the border with his actions.

 

[Odhanan]

If the "great aversion" in question were to an individual themselves, it might conflict with the religious codes followed by some Paladins (including this Catholicism of which you speak - which sourcebook is that in, again? ), and I could understand your concern, but in this case it is directed at an abstraction that is almost certainly universally reviled by Good beings.

Source? That's called the Bilble, man.
And for me at least, and most of the players I've been playing with, a D&D Palading/knight is defined by Catholic values. Now, you may laugh at that, and all the more power to you, but please know when to stop. In this instance, I was talking of the roots of the Paladin in real Catholic world. Please don't cross the line. Thank you.

 

[Particle_Man]

You ever watch the actions of someone who felt real hatred? Not just anger. Not just heat of the moment. But real hatred? It isn't commonly found in our world. Hatred is blinding. Hatred gets in the way of rational thought - and brings the hater to lose perspective.

The closest "in game" equivalent is the barbarian's rage (or perhaps the frenzied berserker's frenzy). And since these are tied to a class that cannot be lawful (or it loses the rage/frenzy), and a paladin must be lawful good, it seems that rage is disallowed, not for being non-good, but for being non-lawful.