The funny thing about paladins of wee jas...

[gizmo33]

That only matters if you regard the Church of Wee Jas as a monolithic entity that has codified laws and restrictions. Besides, any church can have evil members, not all members of a church must be clerics. (This is leaving out Eberron's rules of a cleric not having to be the right alignment anyway.)

Well, a church having evil members is one thing, but the significant part of Wee Jas is that the *clerics* can be evil, which means there is no theoretical limit to having a paladin directly serve a LE cleric.

If Wee Jas is Lawful, I think it's a safe assumption that the laws are codified. If Wee Jas' church is not monolithic, that raises some troubling questions about gods and Lawfulness, which I will address further below.

 

[Will]

Personally, I find it makes for a very interesting game if a given god can have multiple religions, sometimes at war with one another.

I mean, imagine sects of LG Wee Jas who have immense doctrinal differences (such as over what parts of Wee Jas are most worthy of worship), but occasionally band together when LE Wee Jas acolytes spread their heresies ...

 

[Corsair]

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



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.

Raiding.

There, done. Add that to all the other things listed (underground food sources, slaves being fed dead slaves, magic, etc) and that seems like enough of an answer for me.

----

RE BSG: Seasons 1 and 2 combined only covered a few months in space.

 

[GwydapLlew]

Personally, I find it makes for a very interesting game if a given god can have multiple religions, sometimes at war with one another.

I mean, imagine sects of LG Wee Jas who have immense doctrinal differences (such as over what parts of Wee Jas are most worthy of worship), but occasionally band together when LE Wee Jas acolytes spread their heresies ...

I tend to agree. I played a LG cleric of Wee Jas who saw himself as a caretaker for those in this life, just as his goddess was caretaker for those in the next life. He was compassionate and wanted to make life on Oerth a better place, so that people no longer feared death and went to Wee Jas willingly.

 

[gizmo33]

Your math is fuzzy. It's more accurate to say that 50 - 60% of Jasidan clerics are LN, with 20-30% being LE, and the remainder being LG.

Yea, like I said, 33% of the clerics are LE. I think the point of what I have to say doesn't change if you change it to 20%, the point being that a paladin of Wee Jas theoretically associates with LE.

You are correct. Taking orders from a LE character however, only violates the paladin's code if the paladin commits an evil act or willingly associates with an evil character. Paladins of Wee Jas would not be found serving under a LE high priest, and I doubt that the LN majority would find it amusing to deal with the constant issues that would arise from assigning a paladin to such a church.

Well it seems obvious to me that a paladin is willingly associating with Lawful Evil beings simply by being a member of the faith of Wee Jas. Now you might say "well, no, he doesn't have to talk to a LE cleric" which is sort of like me playing a paladin in your campaign, getting a cohort and having HIM do all of the talking for me when I join an evil party. I think that still counts as associating with evil.

So I think it's pretty safe to say that the paladin is associating with LE by virtue of belonging to the same organization. Otherwise, what would the paladin do if he observed a LE cleric being attacked? The typical reaction would be to intervene on behalf of his fellow church member, but hopefully you can see the potential problems with that. And he's certainly associating at that point.

By the way - consider the possibility that the "association" rule for paladins and the "three alignment" idea for clerics came from *two entirely seperate sources* in the DnD rules, and were never designed to be compatible. I think it's possible that the 3E designers just never realized the problem with it.

That's your opinion, but it's not supported by the rules for clerics in D&D.

I completely agree - I'm talking about the "rules for clerics in DnD" as you say. I'm not saying that it's not the rules - I'm saying that something isn't right - either the cleric and paladin rules are incompatible, or very strange things are happening in the fantasy world they are trying to describe. Though I realize, as I often say, that the DnD rules are not designed to be "simulationist". The alignment/cleric alignment system is probably one of the worse aspects in this regard.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Otherwise, what would the paladin do if he observed a LE cleric being attacked? The typical reaction would be to intervene on behalf of his fellow church member, but hopefully you can see the potential problems with that. And he's certainly associating at that point.

I always figured the paladin would be quite affronted, if there are heresies within the faith that is after all for the faithful to sort out. Save the LE cleric from the outsider then deal with the corrupted heretic himself of course.

 

[GwydapLlew]

Well it seems obvious to me that a paladin is willingly associating with Lawful Evil beings simply by being a member of the faith of Wee Jas. Now you might say "well, no, he doesn't have to talk to a LE cleric" which is sort of like me playing a paladin in your campaign, getting a cohort and having HIM do all of the talking for me when I join an evil party. I think that still counts as associating with evil.

I don't see defending someone from harm as associating. By your logic, if someone attempted to kill a criminal that my paladin had in his charge (let's say that said criminal is being brought to justice) then my paladin is associating with the criminal when he tries to keep him alive.

I think there is a certain element of ambiguity to the paladin's code that allows for these sort of situations. My view of paladin orders are similar to the knightly orders of Medieval Europe - they were affiiliated with the church, but they had their own codes, leadership, and hierarchy. Seeing as that is one of the strongest influences on the paladin class, it makes sense to me.

So I think it's pretty safe to say that the paladin is associating with LE by virtue of belonging to the same organization. Otherwise, what would the paladin do if he observed a LE cleric being attacked? The typical reaction would be to intervene on behalf of his fellow church member, but hopefully you can see the potential problems with that. And he's certainly associating at that point.

To use another example: the paladin is general of the king's armies. The king's spymaster is attacked by an assassin. The paladin knows the spymaster is evil, but also knows that the spymaster serves the paladin's lord and is integral to the defense of the realm. If the paladin rescues the spymaster, is he then stripped of his powers? I think not.

By the way - consider the possibility that the "association" rule for paladins and the "three alignment" idea for clerics came from *two entirely seperate sources* in the DnD rules, and were never designed to be compatible. I think it's possible that the 3E designers just never realized the problem with it.

Have you read the Ruby Vindicator PrC? It states that one of the the easiest ways to enter it is by being a multiclassed paladin of Wee Jas. There was also (IIRC) an article in Dragon magazine about paladin orders of the Oeridian religions, and Wee Jas was listed as one of them. Both of these are official products; saying that the designers overlooked a slight incompatibility when both of these rules were created specifically to address what you see as an incompatibility strikes me as a bit silly.

 

[GwydapLlew]

I always figured the paladin would be quite affronted, if there are heresies within the faith that is after all for the faithful to sort out. Save the LE cleric from the outsider then deal with the corrupted heretic himself of course.

Well...the primary issue with the Jasidan faith is that according to the faith, a LE cleric isn't a heretic - the cleric just uses the teachings of the faith in a way that is abhorrent to the paladin.

 

[Will]

According to the faith according to whom?

Maybe I prefer my deities fairly inscrutable, but I tend to shy from the idea of D&D religions as singular monolithic entities.

 

[GwydapLlew]

According to the faith according to whom?

Maybe I prefer my deities fairly inscrutable, but I tend to shy from the idea of D&D religions as singular monolithic entities.

As do I, however, according to the RAW, clerics of a deity just have to be within one step of the deity's alignment. Also, the description of Wee Jas's clergy states that the LE-aligned clerics are the largest minority in the faith.

So....according to the people who write the books that we use to run the games we run. In your campaign, do as thou wilt, but the discussion is based on what's written in the rules themselves.