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Message: <blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 5666279" data-attributes="member: 5948">One of the problems paladin PCs tend to have is that they are often one-dimensional.  Their personality is 'paladin'.Basically, don't be like that.  Give your paladin something else to hang his/her hat on.  Neil from Greg Keyes' Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series is one of my favourite literary paladins - he's a Viking paladin.  Brienne from Song of Ice and Fire is only debatably a paladin, but her hook is that she's a ugly woman who seeks worth and self-esteem through service and honour.  Komawara from the Initiate Brother is a fantasy-samurai-analog paladin (another alternate-culture paladin!), a warrior who begins to aspire to a measure of paladinness due to exposure to the horrors of a major war.Basically, paladins become paladins for a reason.  They want to make the world a better place, for instance.  Or something less direct than that.  But when it comes to their everyday behavior, it's worth thinking back to that original 'why' decision they made.  Is the behaviour something that the paladin, given their REASONS for being a paladin, could be expected to countenance?  Does it go against what they hope to achieve by being a paladin?Too often I think a paladin's code is seen as an inconvenient straightjacket, an annoying restriction on freedom of action.  Better to instead look on it as the embodiment of what the PALADIN believes, not just as the strictures of his/her faith.  The paladin has looked at the world, seen what they think needs to be improved about it, and has made the informed decision to live in a certain way in order to help that come about.  That's what the code is about.</blockquote>

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