The funny thing about paladins of wee jas...

[gizmo33]

For The Win. He likes your comment.

Oh! Thanks. I was pretty sure my cleric got killed by the paladin but maybe I can apply the XP to my next character.

 

[GwydapLlew]

It has been a lot of fun, hasn't it? I think it's about time to put this one to bed.

And so my LE cleric simply says "is it ok that I be Lawful Evil to serve Wee Jas" during a Commune spell. I argue that a reasonable interpretation of the spell would get me the answer "Yes". Importantly - I argue that a Lawful Good member of the faith asking the same question gets the same exact result. If your paladin has any loyalty to the priorities and laws of the faith then, that pretty much ends his crusade. A high level Lawful Good cleric walks outside, and tells the paladin to pipe down because the Lawful Evil cleric is right.

I absolutely agree, with the caveat that nothing stops the paladin from trying to encourage LG behavior among the clergy or the faith. It's as allowable as the LE behavior.

 

[Hypersmurf]

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).

Detect Evil detects the auras of Evil creatures, Undead, Evil outsiders, Clerics of Evil deities, Evil magic item or spells.

Detect Law functions like detect evil, except that it detects the auras of Lawful creatures, Clerics of Lawful deities, Lawful spells, and Lawful magic items. Lawful outsiders are Lawful creatures, so they're covered. Lawful undead are Lawful creatures, but non-Lawful undead are not covered.

So Detect Evil is the only one of the four Detect [Alignment] spells that will detect undead that are not [Alignment] creatures, because the 'Undead' entry (with no alignment qualifier) is excluded from the other three by the 'except that' clause.

-Hyp.

 

[I'm A Banana]

1. I can actually prove the source of my magic

Not in any D&D I've ever played. The PHB doesn't once mention with clear definition where the source of any magic comes from. I believe this is intentional, to make for multiple possible definitions.

2. I can actually cast Commune

Yes or No answers are still vaguely interpreted, and are not eternal. Furthermore, I may just reach an agent of my deity. In addition, Commune, being a 5th level spell, is out of the realm of experience of most believers in the religion, who are rarely exposed to anything above 2nd-level magic. While those in some civilized lands may have clerics who have done this, it is hardly the trump card you seem to think it is.

3. I don't have to just assert that your paladin is being chaotic - we can actually both observe your paladin losing his powers.

One can have a Lawful revolution, a Lawful change, and a Lawful rebellion. It needs to be ordered, to respect legitimate authority, and to consider general principle over specific individuality. Why would my Paladin lose his powers? Unless you're trying to define the code in such a stringent way that make it inevitable that any Paladin with a disagreement in his order is condemned to forever be a fighter without feats.

4. I can actually precisely define good and evil and measure it - detection spells being only one measurement technique
and so on.

So? That proves that paladins can't validly honor a deity that expressly permits lawful and good behavior....how?

"Inquisitions weeding out the blasphemers" IS holy war - nobody defines holy war as "kill them all" except for secular skeptics outside of the faith. Your statements of what we're talking are exactly the descriptions of every Crusade (internal and external) during the Middle Ages. They infallibly killed only evil people as far as they were concerned - and given Wee Jas's supposedly lack of interest in moral issues, I'm not sure why you'd caution restraint anyway.

There's a great continuum between "some hillbilly LG Wee Jas church in the hinterlands has some paladins who think the rest of the church is wrong" and holy war. The LG church, by the RAW, is *still* the minority. Whatever they advocte, they don't have the leverage to pull it off...though they may someday dream that they will.

This fits in with the overall playing of paladins perfectly. No matter how many criminals they bring to justice, there will always be more. The dream is that someday the ideas and examples will be powerful enough to sway minds.

And so my LE cleric simply says "is it ok that I be Lawful Evil to serve Wee Jas" during a Commune spell. I argue that a reasonable interpretation of the spell would get me the answer "Yes". Importantly - I argue that a Lawful Good member of the faith asking the same question gets the same exact result. If your paladin has any loyalty to the priorities and laws of the faith then, that pretty much ends his crusade. A high level Lawful Good cleric walks outside, and tells the paladin to pipe down because the Lawful Evil cleric is right.

Yes, but just because she says so now doesn't mean she might not change her mind. Or that her true feelings are being represented (remember the line for "an agent" of the deity -- it's reasonable that all those Yes answers were given by a group of devils who serve as agents). Doctrines change with time, with new information, and with new leadership, and any LG priest or paladin is well within the scope of rationality to hope and work for such a day to come. Just as any LE cleric is well within the scope of rationality to believe that someday the whole church may bow to him (or his puppet-governor).

The only thing that a cleric can say with certainty in the RAW is that the LE cleric believes he's right and still casts spells. And the Wee Jasian paladin would note this, and fight against it (using the Law to trap him, for instance, even if it takes years of studying his every move. Or encouraging a sect to develop that opposes his ideas, all the while obeying Jasian Law).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

That's not what it says. It says "the answers are correct within the limits of the entities knowledge". Give me a little credit for speaking English.

Then read it:

The entities contacted structure their answers to further their own purposes.

They are NOT compelled to give full and complete answers about stuff that the god doesn't think is important.

I think we can both agree that we have the right to design our games the way we want. I'm just saying that the core rules IMO are decidedly unhelpful in simulating what you're describing.

You're projecting a whole lot onto the game system, or are interpreting setting-specific information to be generally required. Anthropomorphic superhero deities are not a required element of a campaign setting and I don't think they even really exist outside of a few settings at all.

According to who? There are times when the god himself is very clear. Gods show up and tell their worshippers exactly what they're supposed to do all of the time. "Build a boat", "stop worshipping golden cows", etc. In fact, the more "legendary" the time frame (and presumable the magic content of a typical 3E game places it within that milieu) the clearer the deity is about exactly what they want.

And yet there still were religious battles between sects all the time. A god might call down "hey, build a boat, man," but that's a far cry from the level of detail that you were suggesting earlier. If a cleric then busted out a Commune to ask "hey, can you be more specific about the sort of boat you're looking for," there's no requirement for a god to do anything more. In fact, in the campaigns I've been in, the answer would be stony silence on a good day and a rebuke otherwise.

Sure they do! That's exactly the contention of certain members of the big three.

So I guess I'm imagining all the Christian on Christian violence throughout history and the Muslim on Muslim violence today? Islam was started by an emissary dictating out the Koran word for word, yet there's still strife over doctrine and other elements.

Your view of how religions work is really at odds with everything I've seen in history.

There is so much evidence against this that I could write a book on it. The Oracle of Delphi is probably an interesting counter-example.

She answered in metaphor.

Your counter-examples all work in a way very different from what you're trying to argue.

Ok, maybe they're all Chaotic Neutral. That's the not what the rules suggest though.

Really? Where do the rules talk about godly behavior? There are examples of how some gods behave in Deities & Demigods and various settings, but that's a far cry from "rules."

Why not? Suggest then, a legitimate, non-trivial use of the augury or commune spell. Sounds like the only thing you can use it for is for things irrelevant to the moral component (if any) of the faith.

"What is the cause of this plague?" "Where can we go to get food to keep the people from starving during this famine?" "Someone in the church knifed the pope. Who was it?"

Clerics are not Time-Life operators standing by. That spell slot shouldn't be used on Commune at all if they aren't going to be actively furthering the needs of the faith. Asking whether it's required to genuflect at the end of a pew doesn't rise to meet that standard and any cleric with with lack of wisdom to ask it should have the spell yanked away from them.

For what it's worth, I quote wiki (regarding the Oracle of Delphi): "It is a popular misconception that the oracle predicted the future, based on the lapping water and leaves rustling in the trees; the oracle of Delphi never predicted the future, but gave guarded advice on how impiety might be cleansed and incumbent disaster avoided." (the bold emphasis is mine)

Then stop insisting that the gods will give clear answers about inane fiddly points of theological trivia.

I completely agree, but how do you explain to a player why they're out of line for wanting to ask a question of piety with a Commune spell? "I've got better things to do than tell you whether or not to wage a holy war on Lawful Evil people, but feel free to call back when you want to talk about which dungeon door to open."

Stop with the strawmen.

"I've got better things to do than to mediate your squabble with Cardinal Flingflang. The army of Orcus is waging a crusade over the next mountain range and there's agents inside the church trying to pervert our worshippers to his cause. Your next question better be related to rooting out traitors in the church or helping out with the war effort or you're going to be cleaning all of the statues in the cathedral with your toothbrush."

But trying to clarify questions of doctrine?! That seems to be exactly what you're arguing against! You're suggesting that the alignment issues I'm talking about are trivial when, in fact, for many characters - like the paladin in the OP - it's central to their ability to do their job.

In any milieu resembling that from which the idea of the paladin originates, it's hard to think of questions that are more important than those of morality. To say that the gods don't care about that, IMO, means that the gods don't care about the central point of the paladin.

"He's evil and looking at me funny" is central to the mission of an idiotic paladin at best.

If someone's caught committing an evil act, the paladin acts, period. Having to ask if that's OK is nonsensical, although I guess I'm starting to see why people don't want to play paladins, if this kind of thing is typical.

And that a character guided by faith would have to phone Dial A God to figure this out really undercuts the notion of faith itself.

Anachronisms aside, I don't see the difference. They represent the gods will to mortals (via divination) and the mortals needs/wants to the gods (via sacrifice).

Non-spellcasting experts can handle reading the holy books and praying at funerals and weddings just fine. When a god grants a mortal the ability to raise the dead or turn into a combat machine, it's not so they can sit around, eating bonbons and discussing how many angels will fit on the head of a pin.

That completely contradicts your use of Greek and Norse gods as examples. Superheroes floating above the planet in a bitchin' orbiting headquarters is EXACTLY what they were - except that Valhalla didn't orbit.

No, they were the id writ large, charging around, humping women while shapechanged into swans, getting drunk and harassing their spouse's children from previous relationships and so on. The gods did not come down and say "OK, let's have a town hall meeting so we can discuss every last flippin' element of your life." Hera was not Oprah. Mortals had to figure this stuff out on their own because the gods gave broad strokes answers and were off to go hang portraits of each other in the stars and so on.

Let me say it this way: the real world is what you would call "grim and gritty". The world of the actual legends is less so, but the gods have come down and told worshippers exactly what they wanted, they've taken sides in wars and fought personally, etc. You seem to be taking a mix of real-life and legend, and it seems to contradict both.

Right back at you. The gods came down and ... didn't break things down into detail. They've NEVER said anything with exacting detail except when it's a very narrow topic. They certainly never address sweeping issues of faith in detail. The best you'll get there are 10 short sentences written on slabs of stone that still leave massive gray areas for the faithful to figure out.

My basic contention is that without guilt-tripping the players into avoiding certain actions, the core rules make your cosmological philosophy hard to understand.

No, they don't. What you're calling rules are actually some examples of how some gods behave in some settings, not any sort of sweeping rules for how they behave. You specifically ignored the important part of the Commune spell along the way.

They seem so much more substantial in the game than they do in the picture you're painting.

Based on what? What are you reading that's making you think any of this? It's not the Commune spell, and there's no source in the core books that suggests anything that you're insisting is The Rules is true.

 

[James Heard]

Personally I think Wee Jas has her "portfolio" and all that but it helps if you remember she's also Suel goddess in GH and she has an implicit portfolio of "advancing the people of the ancient Suel empire." Yes, she's pragmatic. She's pragmatic to allow people to worship her along a LE axis and be ok with that. She doesn't do anything about the perversion of her faith into something it seems like it might not exactly have started out as, as long as it continues her faith into the future.

I can see some weird conflicts arising out of this, but I don't think the "monolithic" elements of the clergy would be the "spooky evil necromancers" no matter how many of that variety of faithful clustered around eating brains and resorting to dark arts. No, I think the brick and mortar churches would be more aligned along the LN axis even if they were outnumbered and the rare LG worshiper would be looked upon as a somewhat naive tool to be used to "bring the others in line." In other words, that to some extent Wee Jas herself would encourage more LG examples of her faithful simply as a way of showing the common people that she's about more than corpses and dusty tombs.

Also, Wee Jas is a love goddess as well. That's an interesting angle on the Paladin of the Ruby Sorceress debate too, because her portfolio of love specifically pushes the envelope of her own lawfulness. Maybe the paladin is seeking to return a lost love from the dead, which would require specific entreaties and performances in the Lady's service and command.

Anyways, that's just how I see it. There are people who pragmatically worship Wee Jas simply for the power that she represents, those who simply uphold her laws, and maybe the LG folks really are on to something in that they're what the Wee Jas faithful began as and were intended to be, and they simply didn't have a goddess whose inclinations were such that she wasn't willing to let her faithful make their own (personally disappointing) decisions.

 

[Seeten]

"He's evil and looking at me funny" is central to the mission of an idiotic paladin at best.

If someone's caught committing an evil act, the paladin acts, period. Having to ask if that's OK is nonsensical, although I guess I'm starting to see why people don't want to play paladins, if this kind of thing is typical.

This is 100% typical. "You want to play a Paladin?!?!" They say, then, the first Orc that dies, they state, "OMG, he had little children that now starve, thats an evil act, you're a fighter, no feats" and then you have a big, ridiculous argument about the nature of evil, and how THEY feel blah blah blah. This entire thread is a huge warning sign of why Paladins are utterly abysmal to play in the real world. There are about 9 people who have made statements that made me think, "Ok, a Paladin in his game would be cool" and about 99 who I thought "UGH. Never, ever." I can be a Crusader from ToB, or a Blackguard for better mechanics, and less foolishness.

I dunno who wants to play the "All your choices get you to lose your Paladinhood, hahaha, pick one and lose!" type of games, but I am glad I dont game with them, and since my home group is actually fairly similar, I'm sad for myself, too. Its sad and pathetic all around, really.

Its also further evidence, IMO, that the ENTIRE code of honor needs to be written out of the Paladin class, or the class needs to go. Too much baggage.

 

[Will]

Good debate, back and forth... as for earlier point on 'within the faith,' I was a bit wrong. But I think there's some confusion on the scope of what 'within the faith' means.

There is 'followers of X god,' and there is also 'members of Y religion.'

So you could have 'followers of Wee Jas,' but very different religions.

And as for doctrine questions, it is possible that followers take it upon themselves to do things Wee Jas would do, if she was walking around the world. Imagine... 'Wee Jas will accept any who follow her tenets. We're here to make sure only the right people sign up.'

There's a story about Judaic scholars arguing a point of doctrine, and one rabbi, outnumbered, calling out 'If God had wanted my interpretation, let Him speak now!'

And lo and behold, God shows up, and says that, indeed, that's how He had intended the interpretation.

The rabbis conferred, and then pronounced that since God had given them laws and responsibility to interpret them, He was now overstepping His bounds.

I think you can see potential parallels to Lawful deities.

 

[Particle_Man]

Detect Evil detects the auras of Evil creatures, Undead, Evil outsiders, Clerics of Evil deities, Evil magic item or spells.

Detect Law functions like detect evil, except that it detects the auras of Lawful creatures, Clerics of Lawful deities, Lawful spells, and Lawful magic items. Lawful outsiders are Lawful creatures, so they're covered. Lawful undead are Lawful creatures, but non-Lawful undead are not covered.

So Detect Evil is the only one of the four Detect [Alignment] spells that will detect undead that are not [Alignment] creatures, because the 'Undead' entry (with no alignment qualifier) is excluded from the other three by the 'except that' clause.

-Hyp.

If that is the interpretation of "Detect Evil" then that would simply be a case where "Detect Evil" registers occasional "false positives" - beings that are neither evil in alignment nor [evil] in sub-type (in this case, the mummies and ghosts that are not evil in alignment). Since most undead are in fact evil in alignment (though not usually [evil] by sub-type) this doesn't come up too often, but clerics might realize that if the ghost of "Sir Lancelot, holiest of holy dudes" detects *both* as good with a detect good spell *and* as evil with a detect evil spell, then something is obviously wrong with at least one of those spells.

The alternative is that you have to invent a *third* type of evil (separate from both alignment and subtype) that is operationally defined as "whatever my detect evil spell says is evil". I can see why paladins would care about evil the alignment. But why would they care about a differing definition of evil, if it can be applied to good-aligned creatures? (Note: these definitions adjectival and thus are about nouns (creatures, objects); I leave discussion of evil actions for a different place).

My original point can be equally made with "Holy Smite", which affects evil creatures and neutral creatures, but not good creatures, so that the occasional good mummy and more common good ghost would be immune to holy smite. (Also, Holy Aura and Holy Word).

 

[Aaron L]

I view the power of Paladins to come not from gods, but from the cosmic principles of Law and Good itself, a source of power even greater than the gods. And these cosmic principles of Good and Evil and Law and Chaos are the source of Divine magic. The gods tap into these sources themselves and grant it to their worshipers, but it can be harnessed without godly intervention by those willing to learn.

I don't see godless Clerics as getting magic from their willpower or conviction, but from the principles of alignment and Platonic ideals and cosmic forces.

I also see Paladins, of any god, as getting their powers directly from the ideals of Lawful Good. They can latch onto gods and belong to orders serving gods, but the gods aren't granting them their powers. Servants and holy warriors of gods are Clerics; Paladins serve Law and Good. As an example: what would happen to a Paladin whose god changed alignment from LG, and the Paladin followed suit and changed alignment to? He wouldn;t be a Paladin anymore. That proves to me that the source of their powers is something above the gods. The gods serve the alignments, too. The gods are agents of the forces of Good and Evil and such just as much as their mortal followers are... they're just higher in the hierarchy.

That's why I don't have a problem with a Paladin who worships Wee Jas. The Paladin is getting his powers from some other source, he's just been brought up to venerate the goddess, probably because his family and culture do, and he sticks with her because her precepts arent completely contrary to the principles of Paladinhood (She's Lawful Neutral.) I think the roleplaying opportunities would be enormous, the character having to reconciling the Evil influences in is church and the less than ideal precepts of his church with his personal faith as well as his devotion to Law and Good. Maybe he can do it, and he stays pure and true. Maybe he can't, and the internal conflict eats away at his soul and he falls into the pit of the Blackguard?


I think it would be fun as hell to play, and the next Greyhawk character I get to make is going to be that character.