D&D 5E Thematic Differences Between Paladin (Green Knight/Oath of the Ancients) and Ranger

[MARCVS AVRELIVS]

I like to think of it as the Ranger or Druid had the freedom to choose whether or not to live in nature, but the Paladin was chosen by the Ancients.

 

[Riley37]

It's older than civilization and yet incorporates a number of civilized elements (such as art and music).

In most conversations, it would be pedantic to point out the distinction between *culture* and *civilization*.

People who make art and music have *culture*; this includes the Khoi, the Aussie Aborigines, the Lakota and other Sioux, and every other hunter-gatherer culture.

Civilizations have cities and literacy and specialization and roads and wagons and running water and all that stuff. Every civilization I know is pastoralist, that is, it gets fed by farms and/or domesticated herds of animals. All civilizations are cultures, but not all cultures are civilizations.

There may have been an Oath of the Ancients paladin, singing and carving bone statuettes and telling racy folktales, living large and keeping hope alive, before the first time anyone ever wrote down words, and before the first time anyone got a horse to pull a plow across a field.