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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DM-Rocco" data-source="post: 2331720" data-attributes="member: 14451">Well, I am sure that you are correctly quoting the PHB, I will take your word for it, however, two things come to mind. One, clerics don't all have to be Lawful good, Paladins do.  This allows different standards because they don't have an as strict alignment.  Even assuming that you are lawful good cleric worshiping a lawful good god, you are not under the same standards of a lawful good paladin.  Because you don't have a direct oath (unless your DM makes you take one) you can cheat a little in your role as a cleric.  A lawful good cleric could lie to protect the innocent (or even the evil) and still retain spells but if a Paladin were to lie about anything (assuming lying is covered in their code, and it should be), he would be cast from the order and have to atone.  If I recall, the original post was 'why do paladins get a bad rap,' or something like that, not how is a cleric comparable to a paladin. Two, I think the main reason paladins get the bad rap as a Goode two-shoes is cause of first edition AD&D.  If I recall correctly, (and again, I would have to wait until I get home to look it up, I should just keep books at work <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" /> ), Gary Gygax actually had a code of conduct for a paladin in the PHK and I don't think he had one for a cleric.  Why does this matter?  Because, many people started out playing AD&D and they remember the code and they remember the paladin had to act a certain way and that way was to not lie, to not cheat, to not be underhanded, to not kill for no reason, to be courteous to the ladies, ETC.  Back then, as now, it was extremely hard to have a paladin in the party because everyone had to consider thier actions if the paladin was around.  This gets to the main point of the thread, because it has been ingrained into our minds that that is the way a paladin acts, and therefore the way lawful good should act. Many people mistake Lawful Good for paladinhood.  They are not the same, they are exclusive of each other.  A lawful good character of any other class is completely different in scope than a paladin and that is the main point.  In the end it is only secondary that a cleric has to be on thier best behavior, the point is that we hold a paladin to a higher standard of lawful good than any other class.  Whether it is because of the knights of the rounds table, because of the knights of dragonlance or because of the way the original paladin in AD&D was constructed, we put them on a pillar and expect them to not fall of.</blockquote>

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