playing a paladin in world that is not black and white

[Elf Witch]

I like paladins, as a DM and a player. I've tried just about everything to get players to recognize that paladins are playable. There is something about the very concept of paladins that makes people get inflexible.

I once had a council of paladins, with as many different personalities as I could come up with (humble, self-righteous, overconfident, humorous, high-handed, wise, proud, etc) and I made sure that each would have had a seat at the Round Table. (Short answer: if you're a prick and you do the right thing, you can be a paladin, you're just a prick of a paladin)

People argued with me about whether or not this NPC or that NPC could remain a paladin over their language, attitude, even practical jokes!

These days I tell people to read David Weber's Bahzell series, about a barbarian berserker paladin. He's honorable but devious, forthright and subtle, willing to forgive ignorance but willing to gut a man if they become insulting through willfull ignorance.

I like paladins and I think they can add a lot to a game.

The biggest problem I see is that everyone gets caught up in what they think is good. Good can be a lot of different things. A paladin can be about trying to redeem the bad guys or he can be about sending evil bad guys to hell.

Some paladins can be polite and others can be rude SOBs.

The second problem is some players what to have the freedom to do anything and feel that having a paladin in the party spoils their fun. "what do you mean I can't beat up the city guard they looked at me funny" To be honest I think a lot of PCs are borderline sociopaths.

 

[Celebrim]

I like paladins and I think they can add a lot to a game.

I agree.

The biggest problem I see is that everyone gets caught up in what they think is good. Good can be a lot of different things. A paladin can be about trying to redeem the bad guys or he can be about sending evil bad guys to hell.

That, and people get caught up in the idea that because he's lawful he must have a single approach to every situation. Either PC thinks that the Paladin has to be 'Lawful Stupid' or the DM gets upset if you don't play the character as 'Lawful Stupid'. Both are equally annoying.

A Paladin can be, and probably is, about trying to redeem the bad guys OR if failing that, sending them to hell. Lost in the conception of Paladins is the fact that 'Lawful Good' is a highly nuanced belief system - more nuanced than either NG or LN. Paladins are balancing two priorities: to be lawful, and to be good. Thier code will provide for them to lean one way or the other according to the situation. So if the bad guys seem redeemable, if mercy seems like it has some chance of success, then they will be merciful within the limits provided by thier code. If on the other hand the bad guy doesn't seem redeemable, or seems to be trying to abuse the Paladin's mercy, then its swift justice and a one way ticket to hell time.

But in no way does the Paladin have to be stupid, and in fact Wisdom - knowing when to do things - is one of the traits most valued by LG types. If the code didn't require interpretation and discernment, Wisdom would be unnecessary.

Some paladins can be polite and others can be rude SOBs.

At least in 3rd edition. In 1st edition they all had to have 17 Charisma or higher, which meant that they were either polite or else very charming SOBs.

The second problem is some players what to have the freedom to do anything and feel that having a paladin in the party spoils their fun. "what do you mean I can't beat up the city guard they looked at me funny" To be honest I think a lot of PCs are borderline sociopaths.

To be honest, alot of PCs are sociopaths. Part of that comes from taking 'Nuetral Gamist' stance as a player. One form of 'nuetrality' is that under normal circumstances, you are supposed to be 'nice' because 'good' is the alignment appropriate to living in ordinary circumstances, but that when your survival is threatened all the rules of behavior are off you are allowed to be as ruthless as you need be to protect yourself. If you have a player who approaches the game (or heaven forbid, life) from this perspective, which isn't suprising since that's a typical competitive gamist stance outside of role playing, because the game is about putting the characters in dangerous challenging situations, you end up with a player whose ideal of fun is simply 'winning by any means necessary'.

 

[phindar]

To be honest I think a lot of PCs are borderline sociopaths.

Borderline?

I think that's true to a degree. One of the cool things about roleplaying is getting to do stuff you normally wouldn't, couldn't, or would be tried as an adult for.

But the real problem as it appears in this case is your fellow player is a control freak and a prick, and as such, the problem isn't the paladin, its people aren't playing the way he wants them to. Which is his problem. Its the group's problem to the extent they are willing to let themselves be bullied over it.

I mentioned earlier I just got done playing a pallie in an grey Eberron game, and in the third session the group nearly turned on itself about what to do with some Valenar elves we had captured raiding villages in the Talenta Plains. Half the group wanted to turn them in to the halfings, the other half wanted to release the elves into the wild sans gear, and let nature sort them out. It turned into a session of character debate that bled into player debate, that ended with the cleric attacking the monk. So I've been there.

(What eventually happened was the cleric set the prisoners free one night when he and a sympathetic character were on watch, the elves came back later that night and tried to kill us-- or get us to kill them so they could die in honorable combat-- we recaptured them, turned them into the halflings, and then the halflings turned them loose in the jungles with no gear. So in retrospect, it's kind of funny how it worked out.)

Anyway, the surest way I've found to people getting angry at the table is the frustration of trying to change something they don't like as a player using only their character's actions. Because characters don't have that much influence over the game. A lot of the time, things would go much more smoothly between the people at the table if they put the dice down and said, "I don't want to spend the whole session arguing about this. Why don't we try to find a way for our characters to work together on this?"

Characters arguing is fine. Its roleplaying. Players arguing is drama, and who needs that?

 

[Elf Witch]

I can understand wanting to do stuff you can't in real life. But what I find annoying is players who claim that their PCs are not evil, go around doing what ever they please because they are the PCs.

See a magic item you want but don't want to pay the asking price so you just beat the living daylights out of the shopkeeper and take it.

Fight the city guard when they come to arrest you for the theft so what if some die they are only city guard.

Rescue a rich merchants daughter from slavers get paid in advance for her, then turn around and hold a bidding aunction between her father and his rival.

These are some actions I have seen done by so called chaotic good or neutral good characters.

Maybe its me I just don't see the allure of playing common thugs and that is how I see a lot of players have their PCs act.

 

[Celebrim]

I can understand wanting to do stuff you can't in real life. But what I find annoying is players who claim that their PCs are not evil, go around doing what ever they please because they are the PCs.

I think that is the key. Players that act like that normally have a conceptual problem understanding even what RPing is. Instead, they see RPG's as just another competive game where winning is defined as 'beating the DM' and to that end 'aquiring loot' and 'becoming powerful' (to make it easier to beat the DM).

See a magic item you want but don't want to pay the asking price so you just beat the living daylights out of the shopkeeper and take it.

Fight the city guard when they come to arrest you for the theft so what if some die they are only city guard.

Rescue a rich merchants daughter from slavers get paid in advance for her, then turn around and hold a bidding aunction between her father and his rival.

All of which is a strong Chaotic Evil stance, or as some have called it 'Chaotic Greedy'.

These are some actions I have seen done by so called chaotic good or neutral good characters.

For most of these players, alignment is something you put your character sheet in order to gain advantages - much like choosing a feat or a spell. What annoys these players about people who choose 'Lawful Alignments' is that they see 'lawful' as a drawback with no real corresponding advantages. Quite often, they see 'good' in much the same way, like this was a character flaw in some fashion. They see your choice to be 'lawful' as at best a 'mis-play' and at worst as anti-social (ironic, huh) - just you being difficult for no reason - like playing a blind character or a lame character not because you are trying to min/max but 'just because'. As far as they are concerned, you are interfering with the goal of the game - beating the DM.

Maybe its me I just don't see the allure of playing common thugs and that is how I see a lot of players have their PCs act.

Because you are playing a different game than they are, or at least that they think that they are. I think it's not fair to suggest that most of these players are playing 'common thugs' because they get a kick out of it (though some are). Instead, they are adopting a strictly neutral stance of the sort you'd have when playing checkers. 'Killing' a checker peice doesn't have any moral value. It's just a game peice, and because its a game, you are expected to try as hard as you can to win. Be ruthless. Doing anything else is 'rude' and poor sportsmanship. They are playing an RPG like a checker game, often as encouraged to do so by experience with computer RPG's (which rarely are about anything more than beating them and doing what it takes to beat them). The upshot of this though is that thier characters act like common thugs.

Let me throw a flame out there. I've never ever met a player who wanted to toss out the alignment system that wasn't at some level wanting to play the game that way. That goes right back to the 'King and Country' article in Dragon 101, in which the author - zealous but misguided DM that he was - argued that the alignment system was wrong because it prevented King Arthur from allying with Orcs, something that King Arthur would be (in his mind) clearly motivated to do because Arthur's primary motivation was (naturally, what else could it be?) to win.

I'm not kidding you. That's the crux of his argument (and alot like it). I got a big guffaw out of that.

 

[Seeten]

I prefer to throw the alignment system out, and have no interest in playing chaotic greedy. Or Lawful stupid, for that matter.

I do, however, enjoy playing real characters with grey feelings on a number of interests. Complex people in a complex world, as opposed to black and white people with binary feelings.