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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aurondarklord" data-source="post: 6041519" data-attributes="member: 6667464">JamesonCourage, I'm definitely starting to see the paladin you envision taking shape in my mind now.  One who fights in a showy fashion not because he's a vain glory hound, but to inspire the people who see him in action, to display not his own glory, but the glory of goodness and the glory of his God.  And this is a very cool type of paladin....I just don't think it's the ONLY type of paladin, and I think it has certain considerations of its own.First of all, I think this kind of paladin, which I will hereafter call the "glorious paladin", has to be practical and realistic.  He also walks a fine moral line, because if he overinflates the notion of "his legend" in his mind and bases his actions off that, then he's guilty of hubris, and pride goeth, as we all know, before a fall.  I think the glorious paladin sometimes has to do moral math and wrestle with questions like "if I die gloriously here, will the legend that survives me, and the people inspired by it ultimately do more good than if I lived to help and inspire others in the future?" and consider the fact that nobody is going to be inspired by watching some moron throw his life away and get the people he's trying to protect killed in the process, and that stupid but "noble" behavior which presents "good" as an unrealistic and unattainable standard can actually HURT his cause and present honor and righteous behavior in a BAD LIGHT.  I think the glorious paladin who can walk that line, do the practical thing when he has to and the glorious thing when he can morally afford to, is Sir Galahad, while the one who always does only the glorious thing regardless of the situation ends up Don Quixote, a stupid good character tilting at windmills because he's divorced from reality.Watch Game of Thrones sometime, or read the Song of Ice and Fire books from which it was drawn, and you'll see my point played out, on the one hand, you'll see characters like Daenerys Targaryen, a noble, benevolent queen who tries to act righteously in pursuit of her goals but acknowledges the realities of the world around her, and generally succeeds, but you'll also see characters like Ned Stark and Stannis Baratheon who are so hidebound by their rules and their concept of honorable behavior that they just prove incapable of dealing with the real world, and not only do they lose for having done so, they inspire no one, Westeros ends up a worse place for their efforts, and they let the perfect get in the way of the good to the detriment of everyone around them.I see the paladin's code as a balancing act, and a fine line that a paladin has to walk, because sometimes articles of the code conflict with each other, and the paladin has to decide which side to err on.  If you have to act with honor and respect legitimate authority, what if a legitimate authority figure commands you to do something you consider dishonorable?  If you have to help those in need and punish those who threaten innocents, what if you encounter someone who mugged an innocent for money to buy bread because he was starving?  Paladins have to have some room to make up their own minds in these situations which side of the code they go with and what kind of paladin they are, without the DM saying absolutely that one side is the right side and the other will cause them to fall.  And yes, I imagine paladins have in-universe arguments about this sort of thing, but they can't really do that if one side of the argument involves falling, because then clearly the Gods have made up their minds which side is right already.  In a polytheistic setting, who's to say THE GODS agree on the subject?  I imagine if you asked St. Cuthbert and Pelor these questions, you'd get very different answers, yet both sponsor paladins in the default 3E setting.  Perhaps behavior that will cause a paladin of one deity to fall won't cause a paladin of another deity to fall, even if both Gods are LG.As for what you said that "most people" would view kicking in the groin as a dishonorable cheap shot, I think it depends on the circumstances.  I think if you're talking about two knights having a sword duel, then yes, but it also wouldn't be very effective because they're both wearing armored codpieces.  If you're talking about hitting below the belt in boxing, then of course, but that's a sport.  But if you're hearing about someone who fended off a would-be rapist that way, well, I don't think I've ever heard someone say "that was so dishonorable, she should have fought fair and gotten raped" and it's a standard move taught in close quarters combat classes in most modern law enforcement and militaries, which generally strive to be honorable, fighting by the laws and customs of war in the case of modern first world armies, and protecting and serving while respecting civil rights in the case of police.  Not to mention, saying that "most people" think it isn't by itself an argument.  There are a lot of things "most people" think that they can't quite explain if you pressure them for a detailed breakdown of why they think it.Now, to the question you asked me about why a paladin can't lie, cheat, or use poison even if doing so gets results, the RAW presents the theory that some tactics, including torture and poison, are inherently "tools of evil" and thus tainted.  as I've said before, I don't want to get into whether that's true in the real world, and moral absolutism vs moral relativism, but according to the RAW, it's true in D&D and for the purposes of Sir Cedric that's good enough.  But among the "moral hard lines" the RAW lists, and books like the book of exalted deeds cover the subject in considerable detail, "kicking in the groin" or "using weak points to bypass combat" are never mentioned, and while that may sound like a cop-out on my part, please also consider that for the things that are specifically mentioned, the handicap they put on the paladin is mechanically addressed.  The paladin can't lie or cheat, but he has detect evil, and while of course not all people who ever lie or cheat are evil, the game gives him a great tool to help him see who he should be wary of and avoid falling for deceptions.  Similarly, ravages and afflictions, which are designed not to cause needless suffering to their targets, exist to present him a moral alternative to poison, so he'll have the options in his tool kit should a situation arise where poison is the one thing he needs to succeed in a given situation without violating his code.  So where the game limits the paladin, it addresses those limits mechanically by providing options that compensate for them so that good is NOT inherently hamstrung against evil, but rather has a different, but equally effective toolkit.It is also worth mentioning that, as some people have pointed out, perhaps our expectations of what a paladin should be have become inflated beyond what's realistically playable, and we've confused the code for "a paladin must be morally perfect".  Paladins are mortals, not celestials.  It's feasible to be as perfect as a celestial when you live in the Heavens and are like CR14 just by existing...doing it on Earth as a mortal man?  a lot harder.  Nowhere does the code say, imply, or suggest that a paladin is held to a higher standard than other LG characters, despite that many people on this board seem to not only consider them to be, but take the idea that they are for granted ("well, you can just play an LG fighter or cleric, a paladin is something special"), and in fact the code specifically says that a paladin will fall for a "GROSS" violation, not that they will fall for ANY violation, which seems to suggest they have a bit of room to interpret it and skirt the limits as situations they deal with in practice demand, and will only fall if they are serious offenders, the occasional "cheap shot" in combat, if you want to view it as a cheap shot, would probably not qualify.If you want to play a perfect character, paladin or otherwise, a shining beacon of glorious moral wonderfulness...D&D offers you the tools to do so, the book of exalted deeds offers feats like vow of chastity (which pretty much proves paladins are not by default required to be celibate, because its bonuses are not baked into the paladin class and it would be fairly redundant otherwise), and of course the saint template, which basically amounts to "you are an absolute moral paragon and get ridiculously overpowered bonuses for it", but once again, those bonuses are not baked into the paladin class, suggesting that the saint, a morally perfect character (or at least close to it) is virtue considerably above and beyond the basic requirements of a paladin.If you consider that, Cedric is fine as a paladin, cheap shots or not, he meets the requirements as written...he just doesn't enormously exceed them.  he maybe occasionally commits a small violation of the code in service to the greater good, depending on your interpretation of the code, but he never commits a GROSS violation, nor violates needlessly.  I will say that I found it grating that the fiction presented by Shilsen makes Cedric pretty much infallible in the eyes of his God and the superiors within his church, a paladin like that probably would not realistically be treated by everyone in-universe as THE GREATEST PALADIN EVAR IN THE HISTORY OF EVARZZZ, but he is an acceptable, and very interesting, paladin.Pemerton, I am very well aware that moral theories have been proposed where such catch 22s exist, I just see the logic behind them as inherently flawed and invalid, they often boil down to questions of people in leadership positions having to make hard decisions between "bad" and "worse" outcomes, and saying they're evil either way, or presenting self-contradictory logic like "the greatest good is to become evil so that others don't have to, sacrificing your soul for theirs...but you're still evil...but it's good", and I just don't see the world that way, and think that kind of logic exists solely so that people can have their cake and eat it too, keep their hands clean by hating their leaders for making moral compromises while reaping the benefits thereof.On another note...I may just be an idiot, but I can't find the site rules for this forum anywhere, and I don't want my discussion to run afoul of them, could somebody provide a link to the rules or tell me where they are?</blockquote>

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