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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeremy Ackerman-Yost" data-source="post: 2374303" data-attributes="member: 4720">No, I think that people who don't understand the gravity of their calling are "naive chuckleheads."As for standards, I do, in fact, hold paladins to a VERY HIGH standard, because I want them to UNDERSTAND rather than parrot.  Any dink can follow a Celestial Rulebook for no better reason than "It says so."  It takes a truly good person, and a fairly impressive one, to do good because he actually knows what is right and wrong.  There is a difference between knowing the trappings of right and wrong and seeing past those trappings to what your true impact will be.  There's also a tremendous difference between doing right and giving the appearance of doing right.  Which brings me to vice and "moral attitudes," I have a different opinion than most on what constitutes a vice and what constitutes a virtue, and most people who are "holding themselves above vice" are among the most despicable people on the planet, in my experience.  And they are generally responsible for more suffering and death than any dozen flawed human beings who nevertheless actually try to do right.  If all these cats are exemplars of "moral attitudes" then the heavens must be a really unpleasant place.Dignity and honor is in the eye of the beholder, but in my estimation the kind of dignity and honor everyone wants out of paladins is hollow.  It is actually a form of pride and self-aggrandizement.  Paladins shouldn't ride out around with a trumpet announcing to the world what wonderful people they are.  It's people like that which cause us to NEED paladins.Oh, and while I'm dealing with falsehoods... I believe the second highest calling for a paladin (or anyone for that matter) is the service of Truth.  Politeness and its associated trivialities are nonsense and lies.  There's a difference between respect for the legitimate and feigning respect to that which has not earned it for reason of "civility."  The first is a virtue, the second is the lowest form of dishonesty, the subversion of truth for expediency.The highest calling is to Love, but that's harder.  Very few people in D&D worlds or the real world have managed to pull that one off consistently, and if we were making it a requisite for playing a paladin, we wouldn't have any.  Still, Cedric does a better job of it than most.</blockquote>

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