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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jsaving" data-source="post: 6130405" data-attributes="member: 16726">I agree with your general sentiment that being implacably opposed to evil is what makes a paladin a paladin -- but completely disagree that "being Lawful Good" is what's needed to bring this about.  I think all that's needed is to lay out the governing principles that all paladins must follow, like protecting the weak and refusing to commit evil acts in the name of the greater good, and then let players choose any alignment they see as consistent with those principles. If you want to play highly creative paladin who's seen enough government malfeasance to distrust human authority, fine -- you can be a paladin despite your NG alignment as long as you protect the weak and follow the other commandments in the code.  If you want to play a paladin who thinks following the rules best preserves human dignity and therefore won't bend the law of the land even for seemingly good purposes, fine -- you can be a paladin despite your LN alignment as long as you protect the weak and follow the other commandments in the code.  But no matter what alignment you are, you receive no special treatment of any kind, you follow the one-and-only code in full, and you fall if you don't keep it, even if you can justifiably claim your alignment pushed you toward a different course.If the goal here is to preserve the essence of the paladin class as a "bastion for everything that is good and just in the world," I'd actually argue that going Lawful-only is a big step in the wrong direction.  Evil characters by definition oppress the weak rather than helping them, so if you have a class that's specifically designed to let LE characters play it without an alignment change, you *can't* make protecting the weak a universal class norm, thus ensuring the very "alignment champion" idea you don't wish to see in Next.  If you want a class that embodies righteousness and insist on an alignment restriction, I'd suggest that Good-only or at least nonevil-only may be a better choice than Lawful-only.  And the often-heard response that anybody who can write down their core convictions has to be Lawful just isn't right.  Doing something because a code tells you to is Lawful, yes, but the mere fact that you can describe your principles in a concrete way isn't.  And it would be very sad if any paladin were protecting the weak because a code told him to, when any truly Good individual would do it because their deepest convictions lay in that direction.  Unless we're back to the old idea that those who love freedom enough to be Chaotic are inherently irrational creatures who roll dice to determine their actions, that is -- and I don't think there's a single person in my gaming group who would like to see that happen.</blockquote>

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