Why Should It Be Hard To Be A Paladin?

[Lonely Tylenol]

Cheating on one's taxes regularly means, of course, that less money goes into the public coffers. Which means there is less available to fund the welfare state (if such a thing exists), directly harming those in society who are most vulnerable. Even in the absence of a welfare state, it means that the state has less money available for defence against the forces of evil who threaten. And, again, it's probably those who are weakest in society who will face the worst consequences of any attack. So, I could readily argue that regularly cheating on your taxes is, indeed, evil.

So does the Neutral character cheat on his taxes, or not?

I like how the law of the excluded middle does not apply to alignment.

 

[delericho]

So does the Neutral character cheat on his taxes, or not?

If cheating on one's taxes is Evil, then no, a Neutral character will not regularly and deliberately cheat on his taxes. (Note that, with the exception of Paladins, even Good characters can occasionally commit Evil actions are remain Good. It is the pattern of one's life that determines alignment... hence by near-constant use of the qualifier 'regularly'.)

I like how the law of the excluded middle does not apply to alignment.

Not at all. I don't consider merely "not cheating on your taxes" to be a particularly Good thing. A Good thing would be to go above and beyond what is required of you, which would necessitate paying the full amount required in taxes, and then giving some additional sum (or service, or whatever) in charity to the needy.

As I said, though, I don't really want to go into the morality of charity, taxes and the welfare state, because although I have opinions on all these things, I'm also very conscious of the 'no politics' rule here.

 

[Voadam]

Some people feel that the chance of falling and the restrictions to a good ideal are the heart of the class and should be the focus of characters players paladins. Others feel that the restrictions are hard and when simply enforcing those restrictions in a RAW game makes paladin play about those restrictions a lot of the time. Some feel that paladins are divine exemplars of LG and the DM has specific views about what that means. On the other hand some view paladins as simply warriors powered by supernatural good who smite bad guys.

Paladins are balanced fine without the alignment, code or chance of falling aspects. A DM can be as open or narrow as they want in adjudicating these aspects of the character.

 

[Gold Roger]

The idea that the paladin should simply follow what he feels is the 'greater good' is extremely scary. This leads to a putting aside of all manner of lesser goods, on the grounds that evil must be stopped, and if innocents have to be sacrifices, oh well.

The damage that can and has resulted in people following what they consider to be the 'greater good' is really quite staggering.

Is this a bad thing, when applied to a character in a fantasy game? I'm not speaking PC's here, but the plot point of paladins going on some crusade of greater good, setting good PC's vs good NPC's has an entertaining ring to it.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

If people have that much trouble with a code of conduct, they shouldn't be monks either.

Or a Cleric. Or a Druid.

 

[delericho]

Is this a bad thing, when applied to a character in a fantasy game?

I'm not sure that anything is really a bad thing when applied to a character in a fantasy game. However, I do prefer in-game morality to bear at least a passing resemblance to actual morality. Without that connection, discussions of morality in the context of the game seem rather pointless to me, and so you'd just be as well removing alignment entirely.

Naturally, YMMV.

I'm not speaking PC's here, but the plot point of paladins going on some crusade of greater good,

IMC, when that happens the 'paladin' leading the crusade is not really a Paladin at all, but rather a figure of extremely high public opinion, and probably someone respected by the PCs, who is either misguided in his intentions, or actively evil and out to dupe people for his own nefarious ends.

Or, of course, is being led astray by advisors of poor character.

setting good PC's vs good NPC's has an entertaining ring to it.

This can make for a lot of good storytelling, to be sure, and is something I can get behind.

 

[tzor]

This is an interesting discussion. I would say that playing a paladin is not hard, but it requires a mindset that is not always in sync with the general mindset of adventuring player characters. It is also important that you need both a player, and a DM who understands what the paladin class is and what it represents in the game.

Meanwhile, let's consider the moment the realm of the fuzzy sorta. Is cheating on your taxes evil? Well sorta. It's more money in your pocket and less money in the pockets of the lawful authority which would of course be natually given to the poor and the needy. Assuming that the government is good and gives to the poor and needy.

On the other hand, tipping the tavern server generously is considered a well sorta good act.

Neutural people do well sorta evil and sorta good stuff all the time. Even good people might do an occasional well sorta act. Even a paladin ... well probably not but I personally feel that when you have to look at an act as being "well sorta" evil it shouldn't count as an "evil" act as specified in the code.

I've always maintained a simple definition for good and evil, somewhat derived from an old 2E description of alignments in terms of priorities. Evil is puting self ahead of others; good puts others ahead of self.

Paladins should not kill evil because it's evil. They should defeat evil because evil tends to harm others most, if not all, of the time.

Paladins should be real easy to play. Just pull out a Boy Scout's manual and follow that. Watch "leave it to Beaver" reruns and follow that. Watch "Rocky and Bullwinkle" reruns and ... perhaps I'm going overboard here?

"Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!"

"Not again!"

 

[D'karr]

Well, firstly, secular authorities are not necessarily bound to accept the word of the Paladin. Indeed, in any nation with ideals of due process in place, the Paladin will (and, indeed, should) be considered the same as any other vigilante, and be prosecuted and jailed as such. If nothing else, the Paladin might have fallen, and be lying about having seen signs of evil in the victim.

However, once we set aside secular authority, and instead move to consider the moral authority of the Paladin to mete out justice, I would generally agree with you: if the Paladin knows that the evildoers has committed deeds that warrant death, he is entitled to execute that sentence. (But, the key word there is knows - mere suspicion is not enough.)

However, the problem that you then hit is this: does being Evil in itself warrant the death sentence? If the answer is yes, in every case a being who is Evil deserves death, then so be it. But if there is even one instance where a creature is Evil but does not deserve death, then the Paladin cannot simply mete out judgement and death in any case... in case this is that one.

And none of the above deals with the problem that Detect Evil is not infallible. A creature could be cursed to detect as evil when he is not. It doesn't happen often, but again it doesn't have to. If it can happen at all, the Paladin has to stay his sword until he can ascertain the truth.

In all the above there are a lot of assumptions. In which case all these things would be campaign dependent.

The best solution to all of them is for the Paladin player and DM to work out what things the paladin and his "sponsor" would consider to be outside of the realm of the paladin's alignment. That would go a long way to prevent misunderstanding.

 

[Fishbone]

Why aren't there a lot of threads about DMs revoking Druid powers? I feel that true Neutral is far harder to play than LG. I guess mileage really varies. Never see threads about Clerics getting their powers suspended, either.
The treatment of the subject is that there is no leeway at all for a paladin to make even the tiniest "mistake" and that the player of a Paladin will be getting a harshly graded pop quiz in Ethics for the next 30 hours of play time.

 

[Henry]

A lot of this argument, for me, goes under the same heading as the subjects of DMs making their Bard players sing songs, or charismatic players roleplaying out every small detail of their social interactions with NPCs, or making fighter players mime the exact moves they're using, or Wizard players needing to produce bat guano and sulfur at the table. Other players don't have to go through hoops to produce anachronistic offerings at the table, because they're anachronistic; however, if a player does have a modern equivalent for the action they can engage in, they MUST engage in it exactly as if it were a real-life action.

Why put a player through that much scrutiny and accounting over a game? I'd rather have a DM spell out EXACTLY what a paladin in his view would do in a situation, same as if the Paladin's religious training were kicking in, and then let me decide whether to follow through or not. FranktheDM's Know: Religion check and his clear-cut Paladin code is probably the best one I've seen in a while, IMO; I follow similar rules in my games (where a paladin IS a frequent occurance).