Why aren't paladins liked?

[Epametheus]

I usually emphasize the Good part of my paladins' alignment, with the Law part generally indicative of duty & honor; Law + Good is the person that tries to watch out for everyone.

Weak will saves actually aren't a problem for paladins, since they usually have decent wisdom stats and good charisma stats. Since they have poor will, they usually wind up on par with clerics and druids (adding two stats to one save goes a long ways). A paladin that I made for an epic campaign had 30's or higher across the board for saves. It's not unusual to have a comabt-heavy session where the paladin didn't fail a single save, at high levels.

Core rules paladins are actually a bit underpowered, I think; you need to go to the splatbooks before you can get a paladin that'll kick just as much butt as the fighter or barbarian.

 

[Sir Elton]

Why isn't the paladin at the top of the list of classes to consider with a group of adventurers?

I don't know about others, but the Paladin is usually the first class I think about when I want to play a game. I want to play a merciful paladin all the time, a paladin who extols forgiveness, chastity, temperance, mercy, justice, valor, and spirituality as virtues (there's another one in there, I forgot the name).

He has loyalty to his companions, loves his god, and seeks to do the right thing all the time. He wants what is best for his companions, but he goes by the rule: "Choose ye this day whom thou shalt serve." He is merciful, he doesn't use his detect evil ability to smite anyone since that is against his virtue. So if he encounters a bunch of squatting goblins he'd defend the goblins' right to squat in the dungeon.

He'd only attack if he has just cause.

 

[ForceUser]

I don't know about others, but the Paladin is usually the first class I think about when I want to play a game. I want to play a merciful paladin all the time, a paladin who extols forgiveness, chastity, temperance, mercy, justice, valor, and spirituality as virtues (there's another one in there, I forgot the name).

He has loyalty to his companions, loves his god, and seeks to do the right thing all the time. He wants what is best for his companions, but he goes by the rule: "Choose ye this day whom thou shalt serve." He is merciful, he doesn't use his detect evil ability to smite anyone since that is against his virtue. So if he encounters a bunch of squatting goblins he'd defend the goblins' right to squat in the dungeon.

He'd only attack if he has just cause.

You sound like my kind of gamer.

 

[Sir Elton]

You sound like my kind of gamer.

I guess I do.

 

[BSF]

Personally, I like paladins. I didn't used to, but over the years I have seen so much story that you can weave in where they have to make important choices while being true to their standards. I like them more and more all the time.

As for why people don't like them, well, poor RP from some people is a big factor. Also, there are a number of situations that some players like to be a little fast and loose with morality and having a paladin in the group will definitely cramp that style.

 

[Herpes Cineplex]

In our Scarred Lands game, our primary melee fighter (and the one who deals the most damage) is a high-strength, high-charisma paladin of Madriel (goddess of healing, mercy, etc.). I don't think things would work as well for us if we swapped her out for a fighter; yeah, we'd be gaining a slightly nastier combatant, but we'd be losing a massive amount of healing per day, a vicious smite attack against all the BBEGs we run into, the only character with a really good diplomacy score, and a second-tier undead-turner. In fact, in a few more levels the paladin will probably become the primary undead-turner, since our cleric has started in on a prestige class.

Basically, as far as what makes our party effective in game terms goes, the paladin is practically irreplaceable. We fight a lot of evil creatures, and a lot of undead; the extra feats a fighter would have just wouldn't make up for losing the things our paladin can do. Not to mention the fact that the setting really makes paladins popular with ordinary people, particularly really charismatic paladins of a very well-loved goddess, and the fact that the setting has a lot of genuinely and obviously evil factions to square off against.

The LG ethic hasn't caused us any problems, mostly because without really thinking about it we've been following some of the advice in this thread. We've been considering the "Good" part to be much more significant than the "Lawful" part, for example. We've also been assuming that the Lawful part is dependent on the tenets of the faith the paladin follows, and that the paladin's responsibiliy is to adhere to them herself, not to try to enforce them on other people.

Our GM isn't interested in being a jerk about it, either. As long as the paladin's player is satisfied that she's following her code of ethics appropriately and the GM is satisfied that she's not doing evil, she gets a fair amount of latitude. For example, she'll try not to lie, but under some circumstances (say, talking with an evil person) she is clearly under no obligation to tell the complete truth and nothing but the truth. As long as she doesn't compromise the cause of good and her own personal integrity, no one's going to start nitpicking.

It also helps that with the paladin, 3/5 of the party is good-aligned (the other two are neutral, of course), so party votes not only end up going the paladin's way, but few votes even occur that aren't about something the paladin would be willing to participate in anyway. Even the neutral people are generally in favor of deeds which vanquish the tide of evil in the world, because it makes things better for them and it's awfully lucrative.

It's a good fit for that game and that group, and not a bad class at all. This latest experience has definitely made up for all the high school games I played in where the paladin's player thought his alignment was Lawful Obnoxious and the GM spent over half the game looking for ways to screw the paladin over.

--
a recent convert to 'paladins are cool,' but a very devout one
ryan

 

[Saeviomagy]

If someone else plays a paladin in a party, then it cramps my style.

If I play a paladin in a party, then it will cramp someone else's style.

That's the problem. Most other forms of roleplay allow each player to determine his own character without it necessarily leading to conflict.

The paladin's code says they won't lie or cheat or use poison, respect legitimate authority and punish those who threaten innocents.

That's totally fine. The bad bit is the line in 'associates' which says that they won't continue an association with those who offends their moral code.

Which means a single paladin in the party means that you need to have an entire party restricted by the paladin's moral code. And if the rest of the party don't want that, you've got to leave, or worse still excise those who defy it. Which is not fun.

 

[Zappo]

- Paladin should not be a core class. Quite simply, its antithesis class of Blackguard is a prestige class that takes several levels of practicing being evil to really acheive -- but people can start off blessed just because they say so? Get real.

That's because Good is quicker. Easier. More seductive.

...wait. Maybe you are right.

 

[Liolel]

I play a paladin, and I find it a perfectly fine class. Sure I'll admit its not the right class if you want to just kill monsters without a thought, while I have not had many problems along this line (there was the one case where we found a group of intelligant constructs who were made for an evil army but they didn't want to be in the army and weren't evil so the group let them go). Other situations require more thinking but it keeps the game intresting, and often prevents the party from taking the easy way out which when thought about isn't so easy.

Current problem, Hall of The Rainbow Mage Spoilers

Spoiler

We were exploring the dwelling of a mage who had disappered and in the proccess we found the mage was evil and planning on taking over the region. Now we found the mages dead body. The question is what to do with it, If we bring him to his none evil reliatives they might pay to have him raised which is a bad thing. But if we don't bring his body out, we are deciving his daughter from ever learning the fate of her father, and ever seeing him again even just if to accept that he's dead. Third option is to tell his relatives the mages plans but I doubt they would believe us.

Now that example was from a published module and I was the one who thought of the problem so the DM wasn't out to get me.

The main reason's I think no one like paladins are 3 in nature
1. Players that play paladins really badly (Wotc boards are full of examples like the paladin that burned hobgoblin infants out of spite.) and the dms that let the paladins get away with this. (the dm who posted about that above mentioned paladin let the paladin get away with it.)
2. Players that play paladins who have focus on the law aspect and not the good aspect. (Lawful Stupid) (No lieing form anyone, no sneaking around and a dozen other stupid standerds applied to the whole party.)
3. Dm's that when a paladin is in the group focus on making the paladin fall. (Worst case I read, and this was the dm admitting what he had done not a players guess was there were two buildings on fire with screams coming from each of them. One was some site that had a lot of innocent people in it, the other was a trap by the BBEG. Whichever one the paladin choose was the trap, and he would fall as he failed to save the innoncent people. Now thats the type of Dm you don't want to play with.)

Those are the main three reasons for paladin hatred but theres several things you can do to most likely avoid it.

1. Don't play a paladin in a group that as a whole has dubious morales. That is just asking for trouble.

2. Play a paladin who focuses on good more then law.

 

[milotha]

I've found that Paladins usually stifle the roleplaying style of most groups. Having a Paladin with a goody-two-shoes holier-than-thou attitude in the party often puts a crimp on the more chaotic and neutral styles of play. Not to say that a Paladin MUST be played like this. It's just that I've seen too many Paladins played in this manner. This can often lead to inter-party conflicts that are not fun.

Secondly, I've seen a lot of players view that playing a Paladin somehow makes them morally superior to the rest of the party. Sometimes this can lead to ego trips on the part of the Paladin palyer, who then begins bossing around the rest of the party or NPCs. This too can lead to inter-party conflicts.

Lastly, other than the Detect Evil ability, there isn't really any ability the a Paladin adds to the party that a cleric and fighter don't already cover. Playing a Paladin is essentially a specialized cleric fighter, and there are so many other cool combinations of these classes, that have less stringent moral/alignment requirements.