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

[Vartan]

As I play a paladin, I would go after LE before CE. I believe that planning, organization and institutional corruption create more evil than do random, capricious acts of evil. Of course, this is the way I play a paladin, and is tied up in my personal view of morality, so it comes with a grain of salt.

 

[Starglim]

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.

Certainly different orders of paladins might have their own particular priorities. My mongrelfolk paladins of Ylyma, to give an extreme example, are sworn to protect their community which they believe to be founded by an Abyssal power. They might accept the necessity of alliance with certain CE beings, but regard LE and LN forces that violently oppress or seek to exterminate mongrelfolk as utter anathema, to be confronted and destroyed without hesitation.

 

[Bront]

I've never played a paladin that worried as much about the ultimate evil's allignment beyond the evil part

My guess would be which ever the big baddie is.

 

[Sejs]

Way I see it is thus:


They both pass the Smite Test.


As for whether or not a paladin should hate a chaotic evil enemy more than a lawful evil one, allow me to submit this thought - A paladin is lawful good. Granted. As an agent of good he is divinely invested to both detect and smite the forces evil.

But as an agent of law, he has no ability what so ever to affect the agents of chaos.

Good is the focus, law is the method. He should hate evil for being evil, and let the manner they go about it be of no bearing.

 

[shilsen]

Shilsen once again displays his mastery of paladin knowedge.

Speaking of which, how much did the Cedric thread lose from the crash?

Not that much, I think. I haven't added any new material to it in 2006, and most of its appearances in the last few months have been someone casting "Raise Thread"

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.

It was intentionally circular. The paladin will react to the situation, rather than to the label of LE or CE. Especially since one particular situation usually doesn't reveal alignment all that well. In short, I think LE/CE is irrelevant as a factor in the paladin's response. What will matter will be the individual paladin's character, his code, the specific situation, his ability (or lack thereof) to do something about it, etc. Whether the act seems LE/CE is very low on the list of factors, if it's even present.

 

[Osgood]

Gotta be CE, I figure if the paladin is cool with a CG character, they're cool with a LE character. They share an alignment axis at least.
Seriously in my group I usually ask the players to prioritize their alignments. Ultimately the paladin will find time when the law directly goes against goodness, and there are times when the greater good must break the law. In my experience characters, particularly paladins, faced with these situations self-destruct if they don't have a general view of which they value more. So I suppose a Lg paladin would despise CE more (and probably not work with CG or CN characters, but may team up with a LE), while a lG might despise a LE more (and be brothers in arms with the CG).

 

[Kahuna Burger]

For those who have said that (some) paladins would consider LE equal to or even preferable to CG, may I just say:

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.

Associates
While she may adventure with characters of any good or neutral alignment, a paladin will never knowingly associate with evil characters, nor will she continue an association with someone who consistently offends her moral code. A paladin may accept only henchmen, followers, or cohorts who are lawful good.

So aside from the complete lack of choas detection or smiting, the paladin's code is pretty clearly biased against evil over chaos. They cannot work with LE, they can't attack CG for being chaotic.

 

[GSHamster]

Chaotic Evil tends to be the more important threat in the short term. Lawful Evil tends to be the more important threat in the long term.

So faced with two Evils, my paladin would probably face the CE threat was it would seem more immediate. The problem though, is if you are always facing the immediate threat, you are always delaying facing the LE thread.

For example, if you have a villainous vizier, slowing taking control of the kingdom vs a serial killer in the slums. In the long term, the vizier will probably cause more pain and suffering than the serial killer, but the serial killer is a more immediate threat. My paladin would probably go after the serial killer first.

So, really, the lesson in all of this is: If you are LE, distract your paladins with several CE threats, until it is too late for them to stop you.

 

[drothgery]

Chaotic Evil tends to be the more important threat in the short term. Lawful Evil tends to be the more important threat in the long term.

So faced with two Evils, my paladin would probably face the CE threat was it would seem more immediate. The problem though, is if you are always facing the immediate threat, you are always delaying facing the LE threat.

The thing is that CE threats are usually more amenable to being solved by a guy with a +5 Holy Avenger than LE threats are. LE threats (especially the most insidious ones) are evil "people" (humans, elves, dwarves, etc.) in positions of power; characters that know how to work the system (usually bards and rogues) are better at taking them down.

 

[Torm]

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.

Not a chance of me laughing at that - seems pretty cool, in fact. From that, your party has a pretty good notion of what you expect a Paladin to be, up front, instead of getting deep into play with a Paladin in the party and then discovering that the DM and the player had completely different ideas of what that meant.

Source? That's called the Bilble, man.

Ah, yes. Excellent campaign material - just wish it was statted out a bit better. But the Author can't be blamed - it DID come out a WHILE before 3E was even announced.