The funny thing about paladins of wee jas...

[Sejs]

Isn't this just the FR version of the story, or has it now taken over "general" canon?

Oh no, absolutely - that's just the FR version we're talking about. But FR was the one Kae' and I were going back and forth on, so it's all good.

 

[Particle_Man]

Right. They still detect as evil, and undeath is considered to be inherently evil, mockery of life and nature, all that.

The Detect Evil spell will only detect undead that are actually evil, either by alignment or sub-type. The list in the table that includes Undead shows how strong their aura is, if they are evil, but will not be applicable to the non-evil undead. Note how Detect Good, Detect Chaos and Detect Law use the same table (unless you think that all undead would detect as evil, good, lawful and chaotic).

Whatever the common folk believe about undead, we are talking about Wee Jasians, who presumably take a different view. That said, the spell "Animate Dead" *is* evil, so paladins would have trouble with that (much as they would with wizards that summon fiendish creatures).

 

[Particle_Man]

AFAIK
> a paladin can't knowingly associate with evil
> Wee Jas knowingly associates with evil (1/3 of her worshippers)
> Lawful organizations can issue edicts and command loyalty to the highest degree. Paladins could theoretically be issued orders by Lawful Evil people in their faith and be expected (by the Lawful component, and their membership in the church) to follow the orders. Then again, they can refuse and lose their paladin-hood as a result of not following "legitimate authority", unless a Lawful Evil member of the Church of Wee Jas is not a legitimate authority.

How is this dilemma different from the Paladin's conflict when given an order by a king he has sworn fealty to, when the king is or has become LE? When there is a conflict between "lawful" and "good", good trumps lawful. And as noted above, the conflict does not exist if the order in question is not itself to perform an evil act.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I find it clumsy and unrealistic that a religion of any kind, that has ANY sort of opinion on morality/ethical issues, doesn't have an opinion on ALL morality/ethical issues. Meaning that I don't think it really works to allow more than one alignment for a faith that has a moral/ethical component.

Quite a few real life religions do not answer every possible question in a doctrinaire fashion, instead opening the door for individual religious figures and movements to put their own spin on things. And then members of the same religion are quite happy to kill each other for hundreds of years over relatively minor theological differences.

Religion is quite messy in real life. While it's tempting to make a game world less messy than reality (such as skipping the whole "orc baby" question), it can also be fun to make it just as messy as the real thing.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Regarding the original purpose of the thread if going by the FR standard of paladins serving gods then I rather like the idea of a LG paladin of a LN deity and think picking Wee Jass is particularly good from the standpoint of the walking plot hook it creates through the internal conflict between the paladin and their religion.

I can easily see a paladin of a god that is LN but has LE aspects. Gods are multifaceted entities after all, and so are their followers some may latch onto more evil aspects of their nature and another onto the lawful aspect and a paladin to the good aspects of their tenents. All following different parts of the nature of a single god.

 

[Li Shenron]

I think a Lawful Intolerant paladin of Wee Jas would be a really neat character, with imagery you'd never normally see associated with a paladin.

I think it would be better to just call him a Champion of Wee Jas.

Definitely impossible for a PHB Paladin to side with Wee Jas, since he cannot associate with at least half the people of such faith.

As a matter of fact I think that the PHB Paladin is not suitable for any LN deity (except St.Cuthbert which is LN but has a special dogma against Evil).

It is actually more suitable for a CG deity than a LN one.

 

[Arrgh! Mark!]

My AoW campaign had a great character (sadly deceased in his second combat) who was a cleric of Kalashtor, God of death, slaughter, evil and autumn.

The PC was of a particular faction that hated the notion of any undead; undead being creatures that defied Kalashtor's ultimate annihilation.

It was fun having a nihilistic death-cultist as the PC who actively sought out other evil clerics/wizards and killed them while the LG types were hanging back.

 

[GwydapLlew]

Definitely impossible for a PHB Paladin to side with Wee Jas, since he cannot associate with at least half the people of such faith.

So a paladin cannot worship Kord, because Kord has a faction of followers who believe in intimidation through strength and are evil?

There are three alignments available to priests of Wee Jas - LG, LN, LE. While LG is definitely the smallest of those three, LN is also by far the majority of those 3. It's not a matter of 'half the people of such faith' - Wee Jas is the Sueloise deity of magic, death, order, and vanity. She's not Nerull - her faithful don't go running around killing people willy-nilly and raising them as undead. Her role as death goddess has more to do with regulating where people go when they die than killing people off - I could easily see a Christian analogy in St. Peter and the Pearly Gates. (I'm not commenting on a specific religion, just drawing a comparison.)

If it were impossible for a PBG paladin to worship such a deity, don't you think there would be a note of it in the paladin's class? Don't you think it would be noted somewhere under religion? How about Complete Divine? All of these are noticeably silent on the matter.

 

[Psion]

So a paladin cannot worship Kord, because Kord has a faction of followers who believe in intimidation through strength and are evil?

Kord's clergy aren't evil, but that said, I would disallow paladins from following Kord as well.


That said, on the topic of Wee Jasian paladins, the Knight of Tears (from Scarred Lands, and Monte Cook's Years Best d20) would be an excellent flavor Prestige Class for such a character.

 

[delericho]

Those novels are fictional. I asked for proof of real magical realms without abundand underground life.

Yeah. I did admit it was a pretty dumb thing to say.

But (marginally more) seriously: I find it weird that you seem to have no problems of people turning into animals, or manipulating the elements with their personal abilities, or, using the same abilities, open a doorway between dimensions and calling a creature that is not made of flesh and blood, but literally of chaos and evil..... you don't bat an eye on that at all,

All those things are well within the purview of magic, and entirely appropriate to the motivations of the beings involved. They are all short-term one-off effects.

To feed a city of Drow with magic would require a massive effort on the part of the priests every single day... an effort that would appear to be totally out of character for chaotic and evil clerics of a deity who loves cruelty. It's possible, but it seems wildly out of character.

Yet if you don't rely on magic, then you have to posit some mundane means of feeding all those drow and all their slaves. Which means lots of drow shepherds keeping rothe, or their equivalent, and huge underground fields of mushrooms being tended by drow farmers. I find the whole thing incredibly jarring, not least because war in the Underdark then becomes not a matter of wiping out the enemy cities, but instead locating and destroying the food supplies for those cities.

So, I don't see quite how a society such as that described by the drow could come into existence. As far as I can tell, it's fundamentally flawed.

(What I can see working is if the drow were significantly fewer in number, lived much closer to the surface, relied on raiding for survival, and were considerably more desperate in their outlook. It also strikes me as fitting better - being banished to the Underdark doesn't seem much of a punishment when it means you get to be ultra-kewl and live in a luxurious metropolis like Menzoberranzan.)

None of that means I can't or don't enjoy the use of the Drow in the game.

Incidentally, I have exactly the same problem with the new BSG, which I nonetheless consider one of my favourite shows. There, humanity was abruptly cut off from their fields, in ships that almost certainly carried minimal supplies. Within a month, they would have been desperately short on the basic necessities of life, and the first time they got a chance to stop long enough to raise a crop was at the end of season 2. With no ability to forage in space, and virtually no chance to explore life-supporting planets, what have they been eating? And, in fact, their situation much worse than that of the drow - in BSG there isn't even anyone with whom to trade, since the only other power are the Cylons, who are hell-bent on ending humanity.