Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aurondarklord" data-source="post: 6041045" data-attributes="member: 6667464">S'mon, wow, okay, that is waaaay before my time, but I'll take your word for it.  However, I'm curious, was the lack of missile weapons part of a paladin's code of honor, or was it simply a game mechanic that paladins couldn't equip these weapon types, like how in, for example, world of warcraft, a mage can't equip an axe and a warrior can't equip a wand?  However, while you did beat me at my own rhetorical question, we are primarily talking about 3E here, where paladins are allowed ranged weapons, and I believe there are even feats specifically designed to support that.  Zen Archery, I believe the feat is called, lets you add your wisdom modifier to ranged attacks.JamesonCourage, I'm not so much attributing views to you that you never expressed as the scope of my post became more than a direct response to you and sort of turned into a list of misconceptions about paladin honor I hate.  Not your fault.  Now, a couple of those things I'll give you, there is always a question of degree, in "all war is deception" or anything else, any behavior, even reasonable behavior, can be taken to an unhealthy extreme.  I listed several examples, like impersonating the red cross, of deceptions in war that are considered dishonorable by modern society.  I'll also definitely give you Qui-Gon, but you have to remember that even in-universe, Qui-Gon is considered a maverick who flouts the Jedi Order's rules and routinely disobeys the council.  Jedi (old republic era rules) in general I still consider an exceptional example of LG, an order of noble protectors who live in monastic servitude to their ideals and the people of their setting, following a strict code of behavioral rules.  What could possibly sound more like a paladin?  They're even referred to as knights!With regards to you asking for a specific example of a dragon with such a weak spot, Smaug from the hobbit, so much treasure had melted into his body that it formed impenetrable armor all around him, except for one small spot over his heart.  Bard ultimately kills him by using his black arrow to target this specific spot.As for the rest...I definitely like this God of Honor you mentioned, any rules you agreed to, including no rules.  Of course, a paladin must be good in ADDITION to honorable, so he can never fight by "no rules", there will always be certain things a paladin can't do, but if there are no standing agreements in place, and the setting has no generally accepted laws and customs of war, I definitely think a paladin can fight by no rules except not using tactics that are inherently evil, for example torture (I don't want to get into a huge real world philosophy discussion of whether torture is ever justified, I simply list it because the RAW specifically classes torture as an evil act).The thing about sportsmanship is that sports have rules, clearly defined guidelines for how the game is played, that generally have both a letter and an easily interpreted spirit.  Sports are competition for the sake of competition, and trying to work your way around the skill set that the sport requires is very much a violation of the spirit of the game.War doesn't work like that.While perhaps not ALL is fair in war (or love for that matter) it's a very broad pursuit involving coordination between different people with a wide range of skill sets and numerous different advantages and disadvantages against each other being balanced out.  It is not, generally speaking, just a duel or a collection of duels between paired off knights.  If such rules have been agreed upon, then of course the paladin should obey them, but in most cases they have not.A paladin does not go to war to test his strength and swordsmanship, if he wishes to do that, he may enter a tournament.  A paladin goes to war to defend the innocent and vanquish evil, and if he allows the innocent to die when he could have done something to stop it, because he'd rather lose fighting "properly" than win fighting intelligently, has he not been derelict in another part of his oath?  the part about defending the innocent and punishing evil?  This seems to me a question of law vs good, and the generally accepted wisdom for such situations is that a paladin should choose good when he encounters them.A lot of your examples just seem to me to boil down to "a paladin must intentionally handicap himself", which would really be pretty suicidal.  You can't use ranged attacks on melee enemies even in a pitched battle where the other side's ranged fighters are taking full advantage of it?  You'll lose, needlessly.  That's like saying that if a paladin is fighting a rogue, he must first take off his heavy armor, because that gives him an unfair advantage...of course the rogue will keep all the advantages HE has, but the paladin must have none.  And that IS arbitrary, it IS a rule that makes no logical sense and exists on an abstract whim.  What if your paladin is only equipped with a ranged weapon and the other guy has a sword?  should he fight bare handed because his code dictates he must not have an advantage, which means in this circumstance he must artificially give himself a DISadvantage?  What if an enemy challenges a paladin to a duel with weapons that the enemy is an expert with but the paladin has never used before?  is the paladin obligated to accept this challenge?  if you say he should not "bypass combat" then yes he is.  This seems ridiculous to me, and extremely exploitable, enemies could simply force a paladin to always fight them only at the thing they're best at, a situation where in every individual aspect of combat, the paladin must always artificially handicap himself in the areas where he's better to be "equal" while retaining the full penalty of all his disadvantages, which will make the paladin in total weaker than his foe every time.  That's obviously unreasonable.  But if you take a broader, more open view of "total combat skill" that allows a paladin to have and use combat advantages over his enemies, then if the ogre were legitimately "more skilled" than Cedric, he could have blocked the shot to his groin or otherwise prevented himself from losing the fight on account of it.  As an example, Aragorn is very paladin-like, a paragon of just and noble kingship.  Was it dishonorable of him to save Minas Tirith by calling the Oathbreakers into battle?  Obviously they gave him an enormous advantage, they were ghosts, thus intangible and unable to be harmed by the living and, depending on whether you're looking at the books or the movies, either scared Sauron's armies into disarray and often literally to death, or slaughtered them wholesale while taking full advantage of their incorporeality.You say that you don't consider it inherently dishonorable to attack an enemy's weak spot, but the groin is a "cheap shot".  what makes it a cheaper shot than a shot at any other weak point?  It's not somehow easier or less skilled, a skilled enemy is perfectly capable of protecting it, by wearing armor there, by using his shield, or any number of other means.  So what's the problem?I'd also point out that nothing anywhere in the rules has said a paladin may not "skip combat", in fact in many cases, I would see a paladin as morally obligated to try to avoid unnecessary bloodshed, to try to negotiate settlements between enemies where neither side is truly evil, to offer redemption to the wicked as an alternative to violence, a paladin is a high charisma class for a reason.  even attempting stealth to enter an enemy stronghold instead of charging in the front door is often a very paladin-like thing to do because it allows the paladin to avoid needlessly taking the lives of guards who are only trying to do their jobs and likely are unaware of and uninvolved in any evil being plotted by their employer.  In fact, the book of exalted deeds offers "ravages and afflictions" which are basically good aligned poisons paladins are allowed to use, so that they would have a full range of combat options available to them without the unnecessarily cruel implications of poison.On a totally unrelated note, which is not a response to anyone, on further consideration I feel I need to amend my position on Cedric's use of prostitutes to say that whether this is allowed also depends heavily on the state of contraception in the setting.  A paladin should never go from place to place leaving a string of illegitimate children in his wake.  This is harmful to both the women he fathers children with, who are forced to raise them on their own without his financial or emotional support, and to the children who grow up without a father and in many settings, suffering the social stigma of bastardy.  If we're looking at a realistic medieval setting, where contraception often revolved around trying to predict a woman's fertility cycle and avoid sex during that time, and herbs that were at best not fully reliable and at worst superstitious nonsense or potentially harmful to a woman who took them, then a paladin who sleeps around will almost inevitably eventually impregnate some of the women he's sleeping with, and must limit his sexual practices with according caution.  These risks, and of course the high death rate for women in childbirth in ancient times, were a large part of the reason older societies and religions often demonized sexuality.  Of course, if in this setting, reasonably reliable and safe methods of birth control exist, such as contraceptive spells or alchemical potions, or even just fictional herbs that work better than their real world counterparts, then this is not an issue and Cedric's obligation in that regard would be merely to practice safe sex and in whatever way he's able, "step up" in the unlikely event he accidentally fathers a child.</blockquote>

Verification