Would you allow this paladin in your game? (new fiction added 11/11/08)

[JamesonCourage]

Given that judges, in the much higher stakes of real world legal disputes, sometimes have to make-do without "errata" - ie they have to make sense of legislation that has not been purged of drafting errors or oversights - than I think it is more than reasonable to expect the same of RPGers.

Which is to say, I am also talking about the RAW. I think you are misinterpreting those rules, by putting a literal interpretation on the use of "evil" in the Atonement spell description which that word was not intended to bear.

I think the word "evil" has a very specific meaning in the D&D universe, and the Paladin class specifically talks about it. And, this isn't something I'm worried about interpreting; again, I'm not talking about how I'd rule the spell. The context of the thread is "can this be played by the rules as written", and in that spirit, I approach the Atonement spell as well. I'm making my argument based on RAW, not on how I'd rule things.

"Conscious and voluntary disregard of the need to use reasonable care" or "reckless disregard for the safety or lives of others" is not the same thing as intentionally harming others.

I don't ever remember saying it was.

In the case of negligence, the duty is one of reasonable care - the avoidance of the risk of forseeable harm. Gross negligence is simply failing to meet that duty in a particularly bad way: namely, reckless disregard of the need to take reasonable care, or - to flip it around - taking flagrant risks in a reckless fashion.

Again, I told you why I made this call. I basically transported the phrase over from "gross negligence". It basically boiled down to intentional. If the Paladin intentionally breaks the Code (poisoning someone one purpose, for example), he'll lose his powers. If he accidentally poisons someone (hands them a poisoned drink that he doesn't know is poisoned), then he'll likely be very upset, but he won't lose his powers. And again, I think that's a fairly reasonable interpretation of the phrase.

A fat person is fat. A grossly fat person is really, really fat. A negligent person is someone who fails to take care. A grossly negligent person is someone who fails to take care really, really badly - like my brick-tossing construction worker above.

Right; the Paladin won't lose his powers for not testing all drinks he hands out for poison, for example. Even if there's an assassin around, and he knows it. It might potentially be careless, but it won't make him lose his powers. However, knowingly handing the poison over, lying, cheating, or the like will make him lose his powers.

So, if you want to phrase it in parallel to gross negligence, it would be "conscious or voluntary poisoning of someone", or "conscious or voluntary failure to grant quarter". But I don't know that that adds much, and I'm not sure it covers all the cases.

This is basically intention, but they summed it up by "gross violation". Which I'm fine with. It tells you not to intentionally break the Code, or you lose your powers. It doesn't add much to you, but the Lawful Good Paladin is my favorite archetype, including the code. It adds a lot to me.

It seems to me that a paladin who hands someone a poisoned drink, thinking it not poisoned, is less culpable than one who deliberately hands over a poisoned cup. My feeling is that the latter, but not the former, is a gross violation, because more dishonorable, and more dishonorable because the paladin intended and desired to get the benefit of poisoning the person.

I agree? In the former, he didn't actually consciously or voluntarily disregard the Code, and in the latter he did. I think you're arguing with me while saying the same thing now? I'm not sure anymore.

As I said upthread, one kick to the groin, in extremis, would almost certainly not count as a gross violation

Hmm, but we still disagree here. My interpretation of "gross violation" as "conscious and voluntary disregard" for the Code certainly seems to apply here. He knows the Code, and he disregarded it voluntarily. Accidentally handing poison off is entirely different.

The measure of "really dishonorably" isn't to do with the degree of intention behind the act - it's to do with (i) the degree of disregard of the demands of honour, and (ii) the severity of the consequences that result from that disregard. Nearly all breaches of the code will be intentional actions - the point is that, in many cases (like the accidental poisoning, or the impromptu groin-kick) they will not be "conscious and voluntary" breaches, because not intended under the requisite description. And in some other cases - like the face-spit - they will also not be "conscious and voluntary" breaches, but nevertheless gross violations because of the culpability in running the risk of breach.

I disagree with the groin kick not being "conscious and voluntary". That's under the Paladin's control, and it was his choice. The accidental poisoning is obviously not him voluntarily disregarding the Code, and wouldn't make him fall, in my opinion. Same for accidentally disrespecting authority. But I think my take actually makes it easier on the player: you know the rules, and you can make mistakes, just don't cross these lines on purpose. But, again, that's my view. As always, play what you like

 

[pemerton]

"Conscious and voluntary disregard of the need to use reasonable care" or "reckless disregard for the safety or lives of others" is not the same thing as intentionally harming others.

I don't ever remember saying it was.

<snip>

I basically transported the phrase over from "gross negligence". It basically boiled down to intentional.

"Gross negligence" does not boil down to intentional. It boils down to degree of disregard to the risks of harming others that one creates. It's about culpability.

And I don't think that "gross violation of the code" boils down to intention either. It boils down to degree of disregard for the courtesy, honour etc due to others. It's about culpability too. In the case of the paladin's code intention is one dimension of culpability, but not the only one and not always the determinative one.

In the case of negligence, culpability can be seen as a function of the degree of risk (severity of harm, likelihood of its realisation) and the degree of knowledge of it (or the degree of culpability for ignorance). It's not about intention to cause those risks, nor about desiring to cause those risks (whether or not you meant to hurt someone, or even whether or not you meant to create a risk, is irrelevent to whether or not you acted with gross negligence), nor about whether the negligent action was istelf voluntary or involuntary.

That's why throwing a brick from a building is grossly negligent (high risk, high degree of knowledge), but failing to adequately anchor your pile of bricks may not be (lower risk), especialy if the reason for the inadequate anchor is that there is a chance, unknown to you, that birds perching on your bricks will dislodge your anchor (lower risk again, and lower degree of knowledge in a field where ignorance may be excusable - maybe they're a newly introduced species of bird). That's also why it won't be a defence to an accusation of gross negligence that you had a look and thought no one was down below - your gross negligence isn't imputed based on your desire or otherwise to scone people with your brick, but upon your duty to have regard to the sorts of risk that brick-dropping creates.

In the case of violations of the code, culpability seems a function of knowledge of the circumstances (is the cup poisoned) plus conformity of the behaviour with the demands of the code (passing someone a drink is polite, spitting in their face is not) plus having regard to the implications of the code (loyalty and humility should make you aware that any apparent pauper may be the prince in disguise) plus the force of external circumstance (an impromptu groin kick is clearly a violation, but if a one-off response in extremis strikes me as reasonably low on the culpability scale - in that context, it's simply not all that contemptuous).

 

[Aurondarklord]

JamesonCourage, As for reliability...a certain degree of "my way or the highway" is inherently part of how paladins are. If you refuse to do things his way, the code bars him from being able to help you. Cedric is no different, he just has a different "my way" than perhaps the stereotypical paladin. When I think of someone unreliable, I generally picture a person who promises to pay the rent every month and then half the time comes up short with an excuse how he'll get it to you friday...or next friday. I picture a dad who promises he'll be there for his kid's birthday, then suddenly a business trip comes up at the last second...again. I picture someone whose opinions and attitudes constantly change or who can't be counted on to keep his word or be there when he's needed. Cedric can be relied upon...just not always to do what YOU might want him to do.

See, you're reading between the lines with this high priest thing...you're ASSUMING that the high priest butted heads with Cedric, and that Cedric bucked his authority. This was never discussed in the fiction. The fiction merely says that he tried to change the tenets and lost his powers for it. And trying to change the tenets is heresy and makes that high priest inherently an illegitimate authority figure Cedric need not obey.

You call my use of the word heretic nonsensical, but it is correct. First definition of "heresy" on the merriam-webster online dictionary:

"adherence to a religious opinion contrary to church dogma"

Wikipedia explanation of formal heresy in the Catholic Church:

"willful and persistence adherence to an error in matters of faith and is a grave sin and produces excommunication."

Church dogma for the faith of the High Lord is the tenets as currently written. This high priest, who adheres to a religious opinion contrary to church dogma, namely a stricter idea of what the tenets should be, tried to change them, willfully and persistently adhering to his erroneous beliefs over existing dogma. That is literally the definition of heresy, and makes him without any doubt a heretic.

Now, the impression I get from what Shilsen presented in his fiction is that Cedric follows a fairly liberal religion that worships an equally liberal deity. The tenets, the stated dogma of his faith, encourage moral behavior and moderation in personal indulgences, but nowhere forbid such indulgences outright, and wise and learned members of the faith, like Father Shikuna, are fully aware of this, while a relatively new, young member like Magnus is still a bit green around the gills, coming into his paladinhood with his own preconceptions of righteousness and what "ought to" be expected of one, and interprets the tenets through that filter. And every religion has this to some degree, different members of the faith who interpret dogma slightly differently, reading into it through their own experiences and viewpoints. More permissive faiths also tend to suffer from the occasional well intentioned moral extremist with a stick up his rear, who decides he's going to "reform" a faith he sees as being decadent or corrupted to make it live up to his much higher moral expectations, and the high priest who lost his powers seems to be an example of such a person.

The game world as presented by Shilsen repeatedly and visibly vindicates Cedric's interpretation of his faith and what is expected of him. In that light, it's not that Cedric resents being told what to do or bucks authority in general, so much as Cedric refuses to alter his faith to suit the opinions of people who are visibly and provably WRONG about what is expected of him. All he has to do to make sure he's right, and thus following the legitimate authority of his deity and the correct dogma of his church, is open his bible and read the tenets.

Of course, you don't believe that a God grants paladinhood, so you seem to believe that cuts the deity himself out of the authority power structure entirely. That a paladin is answerable to the abstract nature of his alignment, and to the church...but not to a deity in the middle. This doesn't make much sense to me, and I think to some degree you're trying to cut the High Lord out of the equation because he obviously supports Cedric and you don't want to give Cedric an excuse to buck the church and stay lawful. Now, according to the SRD entry on divine spells "The divine forces of law and good power paladin spells.". DIVINE forces, according to every online dictionary I can google, "divine" means relating to or proceeding from God or a God...of course the SRD also refers to "deities OR divine forces" when explaining where clerics get their powers, which seems to suggest they're something different, so I'm a little confused as to developer intention and I can kinda see where your idea that the paladin does not directly get his powers from his deity is coming from. But there's enough room for interpretation that I figure individual players can choose and a paladin can get power from either a God or an ideal, however they and their DM choose to do it, and still be correct under the RAW, and the way the fiction is written, it very clearly seems to assume that Cedric follows a deity and gets his powers from that deity.

As for what I define as flexibility....living by a code, even if you bend that code a bit, is inherently inflexible. A character who values flexibility would not want to take a class that has a code to begin with, so he'd have the maximum flexibility of being able to do whatever he deems appropriate without having to follow a code at all.

Now, RAW=/= "core 3", RAW is all the books, everything in 3.x published by wizards of the coast and not third party companies, and in a sense, later books CAN ACT AS errata for the core 3, because in many cases they attempt to clarify or expand on rules left ambiguous within the core 3, and in this case, the grey guard class does so by talking about the looser restrictions a grey guard has contrasted against what is "normal" for a paladin, by spelling out the difference and saying how atonement would normally work for a paladin vs how it works for a grey guard, and it specifically says that a paladin can normally atone for COC violations at 500xp penalty to the caster, whereas the advantage a grey guard has is not that they are able to atone, but that they don't have to worry about that penalty.

As for the question of why Shilsen wouldn't just use the paladin of freedom or holy liberator or something if he wasn't exclusively talking about the core 3 books....because doing so would defeat the purpose of the intellectual exercise. The entire point is to present Cedric specifically as a paladin and determine whether he works. Putting him into a different class and archetype makes that meaningless.

Pemerton....that's a very thought provoking post you lay out, and I think it lays out a few good points,

First of all, I believe the paladin's code has to be interpreted through the lens of the setting, to reconcile the modern audience for which D&D is written with the romantic archetype. Because you're right, the paladin can't exist to constantly rail against the system of monarchy and the inequality between ruler and ruled in a medieval fantasy setting, that's what the holy liberator is for. You have to determine what the values and ideals of your setting are, how your cosmology works, and thus what the obligations of a paladin are based on that. A paladin in a gritty realistic medieval simulation type game, a paladin in a heroic romance game, and a paladin in a modern people in renfaire costumes game are gonna stand for different things and behave differently. And part of that is tied to the social contract between players and DMs, the duty of the DM to design a world that works for the kind of game the players want, and the duty of the players to discuss what's expected of their characters in the presented setting with the DM and make sure they fit.

Of course a DM can be a jerk and present a paladin player an endless series of sadistic moral choices that either have no right answer or require the player to be able to read the DM's mind or just guess, and in so doing make the paladin class all but unplayable. But I don't see that as a material point because it's always the case for anybody. The fact that the DM can screw you over if he chooses to goes without saying, and applies no matter what class you're playing. But I do believe that an experienced and skillful DM who has done a good job of conveying how the moral framework of his setting works to his players can present moral dilemmas to a paladin in an interesting way without simply letting the player decide whatever they want, by using the moral dilemma to create good role play opportunities, make the player get out of his head and into character and respond not as a modern 21st century American would think, but as his character would think and be conditioned to think by the framework of the setting.

As for planescape...I definitely agree that to play a paladin in planescape, you have to sit down and talk to your DM about exactly what constitutes breaking the code by fraternizing with evil, because at some point, you're gonna have non-combat encounters with evil outsiders in Sigil and the like. Now, I don't see planescape so much as cynical or nihilistic as...a bit old testamenty, sort of like the story of Job where God and the Devil make a bet on human nature, the battle between good and evil is very real, but it's more complicated, more subtle, more of a cold war than the knock-down drag-out brawl of forgotten realms or greyhawk, and as an inherent part of that, the paladin has to have more freedom to solve problems by means other than violence when he encounters evil beings.

However, and I think this goes for any setting, unless you're playing at a pure hack-and-slash table, you have to interpret the prohibition against associating with evil to mean things more like "a paladin can't be in a party with evil characters", "a paladin can't have a succubus girlfriend", etc, not that the paladin will immediately fall if he so much as exchanges words with an evil character that aren't "repent or die". A paladin has to be able to engage in diplomacy with evil beings, for example, to advocate for the interests of good at the cosmic bargaining table, and if treaties between the cosmic powers exist, following them is part of respecting legitimate authority.

As for the degree to which the world has to vindicate the paladin's faith, I think what you're asking for to some degree defeats the purpose of D&D. If the world is stacked from the outset in such a way that good will always ultimately triumph simply because it's good, then there's no tension, the actions of the player characters don't matter, players know how the story ends before it even begins, and it's impossible to present a moral dilemma anyway, because the answer is always obvious. I see no problem with the paladin in a world which doesn't have an inbuilt guarantee like that, even a world, like the one Cedric lives in, where he's a speck in the overall cosmic scheme of things, and he knows it, but he's trying to do what he can in what relatively small ways he can. I don't see this as a failure to vindicate the paladin's faith, I see it as requiring the paladin to HAVE faith, faith being defined as dedicated belief in the ABSENCE of certainty. The paladin does the right thing because he knows it's right, not because he knows he'll win. And he inspires others to do the same, in the hope, even if it's a slim hope, that if he can make enough good men stand up for what's right, and they in turn inspire others, eventually the tide CAN turn in good's favor, even if doing so requires constant work and constant vigilance because if good slips, it can fail in a world where evil has a real chance to win.

Also, I never said Batman was a paladin, I said he can be interpreted as lawful.

 

[JamesonCourage]

"Gross negligence" does not boil down to intentional. It boils down to degree of disregard to the risks of harming others that one creates. It's about culpability.

It's basically disregard of care on purpose. Serving spoiled food that you know is spoiled. Knowingly throwing a brick down, rather than securing them poorly and accidentally knocking one off. I see the following wording on "gross negligence":

An indifference to, and a blatant violation of
This would seem to back up my "you know the Paladin Code, and you consciously disregard it" take to some extent.

Gross negligence is a conscious and voluntary disregard of the need to use reasonable care
Again, the conscious and voluntary disregard of the Code.

carelessness in reckless disregard
Again, it's conscious disregard (which I think apply to the Code, rather than negligence, which I think you're applying inappropriately to the Code).

You don't have to agree, and that's cool, but I'm steering this back to the Paladin's Code and the meaning of "gross"; I'm not particularly interested in going over "gross negligence" with you. If you think it's integral to this conversation to proceed, we'll have to agree to disagree and move on, because to me, it's a tangent. As always, play what you like

 

[JamesonCourage]

Of course, you don't believe that a God grants paladinhood, so you seem to believe that cuts the deity himself out of the authority power structure entirely. That a paladin is answerable to the abstract nature of his alignment, and to the church...but not to a deity in the middle. This doesn't make much sense to me, and I think to some degree you're trying to cut the High Lord out of the equation because he obviously supports Cedric and you don't want to give Cedric an excuse to buck the church and stay lawful.

Hey, I know I said I'd let you get the last word, and I'm planning to let you have it after this, but I wanted to say that I'm disappointed that you don't think I'm arguing in good faith. Here's a quote from myself (from May 18th, almost sixth months ago):

Just chiming in to say that I've always seen the Paladin as Lawful Good by necessity. That is, their code is so inherently tied to Good that the very fabric of Goodness itself gifts them their supernatural abilities. Yes, they may follow a god, but all of that falls short of their unwavering commitment to Good, not by any god. This is what separates them from a Cleric, in design. A Cleric is the holy warrior of a god, while a Paladin is chosen by the fabric of Good itself to champion it, as long as he follows a specific code.

Play what you like.

 

[Jackinthegreen]

I'll grant that the original intent was to evaluate the paladin by RAW, but the problem with RAW is that it is still up for interpretation and quite often becomes "Rules As I Interpret Them, And You Can't Prove Me Wrong So There!" Thankfully the latter part of that hasn't really happened in this thread, but acknowledging that that can be the case raises another question:

Is it in the better interests of the concept and game to hold ourselves to RAW despite its failings? If the intent was to get an objective view concerning this, is it even possible? Is it a worthwhile pursuit to stick to the request of sticking to RAW on this, or can be go beyond that?

Shilsen, if you're still poking around here, could you chime in on this?

 

[Aurondarklord]

I never said you aren't arguing in good faith JamesonCourage, I just think you're arguing from a framework that would better support your position. You want things to be a certain way, and in this case, for them to be that way you need to minimize the relevance of Gods to the questions we're dealing with. So you take that interpretation. I just think that if we're discussing the RAW, you have to acknowledge that it provides valid options for working both with and without Gods in divine magic classes, and Shilsen clearly is heavily leaning towards Gods. I think you're wrong, or at least focusing exclusively on one of two valid options, I don't think you're doing so willfully or in bad faith, I just don't think you seem to like the idea of paladins getting a get out of jail free card from the "my god says so" excuse so you don't interpret things that way.

 

[pemerton]

It's basically disregard of care on purpose.

What can I say - that's not the legal meaning, and I don't find it very helpful as a gloss on "gross negligence". "Grossness" pertains to degree of culpability, and I think it has the same meaning in "gross violation" - that means "very culpable" violation.

I think degree of intent is probably a part of that, though there could perhaps be a de minimis exemption for even very deliberate violations.

But degree of carelessness, and external exigencies, would also normally be seen to pertain to culpability also.

 

[pemerton]

I do believe that an experienced and skillful DM who has done a good job of conveying how the moral framework of his setting works to his players can present moral dilemmas to a paladin in an interesting way without simply letting the player decide whatever they want, by using the moral dilemma to create good role play opportunities, make the player get out of his head and into character and respond not as a modern 21st century American would think, but as his character would think and be conditioned to think by the framework of the setting.

This is very removed from how I like to GM and how I like to play, but it gives me a good idea of where you're coming from. I agree that it's a possibility that I did not allow for in my earlier posts.

I don't see planescape so much as cynical or nihilistic as...a bit old testamenty, sort of like the story of Job where God and the Devil make a bet on human nature, the battle between good and evil is very real, but it's more complicated, more subtle, more of a cold war than the knock-down drag-out brawl of forgotten realms or greyhawk, and as an inherent part of that, the paladin has to have more freedom to solve problems by means other than violence when he encounters evil beings.

OK. My feeling is that, in that situation, a paladin can still look quite naive. But I think I can see ways of making it work. The paladin has to be "in on the joke" with the powers of good.

As for the degree to which the world has to vindicate the paladin's faith, I think what you're asking for to some degree defeats the purpose of D&D. If the world is stacked from the outset in such a way that good will always ultimately triumph simply because it's good, then there's no tension, the actions of the player characters don't matter, players know how the story ends before it even begins, and it's impossible to present a moral dilemma anyway, because the answer is always obvious.

But I don't agree on this one. The world can vindicate the paladin's faith without the paladin necessarily winning in a procedural sense. For example, the paladin might die and all s/he stood for fail (as Aragorn worries may happen in LotR), but that wouldn't mean that the world failed to vindicate the paladin's faith - the paladin him-/herself didn't come to harm, even in death, because s/he died fighting righteously!

Contrast 1984 - where there is always a point at which you break, and your previous resistance becomes meaningless. This is a world that fails to vindicate faith. I don't think that sort of world has the conceptual room for paladins - they're deluded, the most foolish, not the best and wisest.

My own preferred approach, which you've probably gathered by now, is to let the players debate over what the world is like by their own play of their PCs. Their choices, plus the action resolution mechanics as adjudicated by the GM, will provide the answer. The paladin I described upthread, who stood up to the cynical machinations of the gods in the name of humanity and decency, was prepared to undergo eternal suffering in order to do the right thing - but by doing so would have won, not lost. ("The good person can't be harmed!") Though the campaign itself would have come to an end. (As it happens, though, the PCs found a way to create a simulacrum of the paladin to undergo the suffering instead. So he was able to retire to his temple/monastery and train new generations of warrior-monks.)

In a diffrent campaign the arc of one PC (a warlock, not a paladin) did take a grimmer direction. He became addicted to a magic-enhancing drug; spent all his money paying for the drug, and lost his house; when his summoner friend decided to change sides in the key battle of the campaign, the warlock swapped sides too in exchange for the promise of his home back and a magistracy in his hometown once it was conquered; and finally, having run out of the drug, he ended up in withdrawal-shakes on a mission while resting to regain spells.

He was rescued by a valley elf enchanter, who became his girlfriend. He got off the drugs. Having been born into slavery himself and having bought his own freedom (that happened prior to play, as part of the PC backstory), he used his magistracy to campaign with some success for the end of slavery in the kingdom. Then his valley elf girlfried was killed on a mission, when the summoner lost control of one of his demons. The warlock fell back into addiction (to wine, this time) and died in a TPK before he had mustered the resource to get the elf resurrected.

My reason for these actual play examples is to try to illustrate what I mean when I talk about "letting the players choose": the GM throws the situation in the path of the PC, but it is the play of the game that determines the moral character of the world (Is it really one in which the good person can't be harmed?), rather than the GM deciding before play starts on "the moral framework of his setting."

 

[Mallus]

I also want to conjure up [MENTION=3887]Mallus[/MENTION]! As a Cedric-sympathiser, presumably Mallus thinks that the paladin archetype can have cogency outside the romantic, providential framework that I describe.

Hello pem! Sorry for the delay, traffic in the virtual aether.

You've nailed the central problem with the paladin; they're idealized, romantic Christian knights from one literary tradition unceremoniously plunked down in another, into D&D's hodgepodge of influences, which include prominent elements of pulp swords-and-sorcery a la Howard, revisionist S&S a la Moorcock, and the amoral far-future picaresques of Vance.

So from the start, you've got the deck (of many things) stacked against the class; D&D's default implied setting strips them out of the moral universe in which they make sense. Worse, the game's original basic structure --kill or trick, loot, advance-- runs contrary to their high-flying ideals.

What's a DM to do? Either ban the class or cut them some slack.

(sorry if this is pedestrian, I'm not up to referencing Kant this morning ).

So, proceeding from the assumption the paladin class is only playable as a somewhat... compromised version of Galahad, what should we do about Cedric?

What I found the most amusing about this thread was the number of posters who admitted Cedric was an interesting character, but wouldn't allow him, presumably because maintaining a strict interpretation of the paladin class in theory was more important that having an interesting PC active in their campaigns.

Interesting fictional characters (and their exploits) are why I play/run RPGs. So PCs like Cedric are a godsend (pun intended!).

He's a cross between Patton and Martin Luther (with Luther's love of beer replaced by a love of hookers), dolled up in Galahad-drag. The story-telling potential there is considerable. Cedric represent an opportunity to insert a classic reformer's story into a campaign. It makes a nice addition to the dungeon-delving and monster-slaying. What DM worth their polyhedrals would pass that up?

There's an unfortunate tendency in the paladin discourse towards making the class less interesting in play, both thematically and ludically (is that even a word?).

For example, by forcing the paladin to, in a strict, literal sense, respect "all legitimate authority", you neatly remove the ability to tell a reformer's story. The paladin cannot oppose their unjust king, or their decadent church. To me, this is pointless, it robs the class of the kind of drama it's ideally suited for, as the paladin's authority is traditionally seen as coming from a divine, rather than temporal source, and shaking up the status quo is something they should be able, if not encouraged, to do.

In Cedric case, it's clear the legitimate authorities might be wrong, and fun part is playing that out at the table, not predetermining it during the elevator-pitch phase of chargen.

And what id Cedric opposed his churches practice of selling salvation, instead of their sexual mores? I wonder if the opposition to him would have been so strong?

Switching gears... the idea that paladin's should follow the rigid strictures of tournament combat while on the battlefield seems equally counter-productive. For starters, it's not how the class was originally conceived. AD&D paladin's were explicitly forbidden from using poison. But burning foes alive with Greek fire was a-okay. As were bows/crossbows. And, presumably pouring pots of boiling oil on enemies scaling the castle walls. And metal-clad knees to the groin...

Some gamers go so far as to equate smart tactics with dishonor. This doesn't make sense in a game derived from wargames, where smart tactics are a central component of play (it's also not very historical, so far as I can tell).

Giving players a script to follow, either in terms of their permitted interpretation of their PCs religion, or of their combat tactics (as Unearthed Arcana does explicitly for the cavalier and paladin) seem like the antithesis of good DM'ing. When I run a game, I'm interested in what the PCs do, not in what I'd do in their place.

And micromanaging PCs is not something I'd do for anyone, regardless of class. It does not lead to better gaming.

I kinda reject the notion that a DM needs to specifically define their setting's moral universe in order to make paladins playable. From a dramatic standpoint, that's the least interesting approach. If I were to run a game with Cedric, I'd leave the question, "is he a reformer or heretic (or both)?" to be resolved during the course of the campaign. Again, that's where the entertainment lies. Just getting players to color within my lines, so to speak, seems dreadfully boring.

Full disclosure: I know the OP, shilsen, so that obviously colors my opinion, but it also means I can dismiss the idea he's a disruptive player, or that Cedric represents a power-gamer's attempt to 'get something for free' from the paladin class (every gamer should be so lucky as to have a shilsen in their campaign).

Cedric's a thought experiment - is Cedric legal under the 3e RAW? Amusingly enough, despite my ongoing participation in this thread, that's the question I'm least interested in. It's the wrong question to ask. Unless adhering to rules-orthodoxy is the principle goal while gaming.

A final thought: D&D paladins are a lot like Jedi. Iconic fictional constructs whose moral systems don't bear scrutiny. It's best not to think too much about them...