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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6112964" data-attributes="member: 42582">I've barely played a 4e paladin - I almost exclusively GM that game - but was thinking of pre-4e D&D play, plus play in other fantasy systems.Not everyone agrees that alignment is essential to the pre-4e paladin - for instance, way back in Dragon 101 there was an article ("For King and Country") that had a big impact on me, and among other things explained how the paladin would run better (for me, at least) without alignment.A paladin can doubt his faith, sure. But in my personal conception of the archetype (Lancelot, Galahad, etc, and certain readings of some other very famous historical figures) the paladin can question his faith in the mode of questioning the worth of anything ("My lord, why have you forsaken me?") but not in the mode of judging something else more valuable than the object of faith. The fallen paladin, in this conception, is either led into self-delusion by confict (like Lancelot) or led into nihilism ("Evil, be thou my good!").The only modern fantasly literature I know is Tolkien, Dragonlance, REH and HPL. The latter two don't have paladins - they're unrelentingly modernist, and modernism has no room for paladins.Dragonlance is best passed over in silence, but Tolkien, in Aragorn, has a powerful model of paladinhood. It's also completely anti-modern ("The hands of the king are the hands of a healer" - it's hard to get more anti-democratic than that!).I know D&D is not about "earth in the past", but when I play a paladin I'm wanting to engage with the pre(anti-?)modern, romantic archetype that's at the core of the class.I want the mechanics to realise - or at least to leave room for - the archetype as I understand it. The archetype is clear to me - whether it should be modelled with a circle of protection 10' radius, or Smite Evil, or something else, is pretty secondary to me. (Though I think the bonus to defences/saves, and laying on of hands, are both pretty important - perhaps they have to stay if the class is to fit the archetype.)Others are free to play as they like, of course. I'm not stopping them, and have no desire to! I just want the game to have room for me too.</blockquote>

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