Thank you for reminding me. This was something they did with the paladin in 4th-edition D&D: the paladin simply has a different set of abilities for their theme, with no real restrictions on their behavior. It probably made the class accessible to a lot of groups who may have otherwise avoided it, because its behavior became suggestions rather than limits.

Not to so much detract from your point but rather emphasize it: Many GMs will show the EXACT same behavior when it comes to the Wish spell.

In Fourth Edition, Paladins aren't really treated any differently from any other Divine class, as far as I can tell (I'm not a fan of those classes so I've not played one myself, but going from what I've read in the PHB...). As far as I'm aware, their alignment should be the same as that of their god, but from what I remember I don't think it has to be...though obviously an "Evil"-aligned character following Bahamut would probably be a bit weird ;).

Fourth Edition doesn't have the old Nine Alignments, anyway, just Lawful Good, Good, Unaligned, Evil, and Chaotic Evil. And a deity like the Raven Queen (domains of Death, Fate, and Winter) is Unaligned - you could totally be a Paladin/Cleric/Avenger etc who worships her :).

If I had someone playing in my game who wanted to be a Divine class, I would just let them play their character (treating a Paladin no differently from any other Divine class)...and if they started doing something that seemed wildly against the tenets set down by whichever deity they were following, I'd question them about it first and find out why their character was acting this way all of a sudden - they might have a good reason for it, some internal conflict within their character that the player hadn't yet "voiced" in a post.

5E has no alignment restriction either. I mean, they all fight evil and/or chaos (some focus on undead, some on outsiders, some I believe on naughty fey) but they don't have to be LG. You can be a CE paladin in 5E, you just still hunt other bad guys. (Punisher?)

Even in 3.5, both players and DMs can be way too strict. A LG angel is MADE out of lawfulness and goodness. A LG human is not. The important thing is that there is an ideal you aspire to, you don't have to never ever stray from it.

DRAGONLANCE SPOILER: I mean, the most LG character I've ever seen is Sturm Brightblade. He's not a Paladin (or even a Knight of Solamnia) but he is by far the most deserving and honorable I've seen. He still cuts corners or breaks rules a few times when he has to. He even gets seduced by Kitiara, because he is only human. (And even death knights and ancient dragons get seduced by her SOMEHOW, so how could he resist?)

SPOILER OVER.

Paladins don't even need to be sticks-in-the-mud. I played a Gnome Paladin of Garl Glittergold, which is perfectly rules legal. I was having lots of fun, because my god was all about fun. To a lesser extent, a paladin of Pelor shouldn't be all serious and gloomy. Pelor's a nice god. A Paladin of St. Cuthbert, for example, might be super strict and overbearing. That god is all about beating people up for misbehaving. You have to take the god into consideration because that's the ideal for the character.

Rules clarification: 3.5 only says that paladins have to be LG, with no specification of gods. Now, clerics have a rule, they can only be one step away from their god. (So a LG cleric can worship a god who is LG, LN or NG.) And there are examples in the books of Pelor paladins. So I generally follow the cleric rule for them too. But RAW, you could totally be a LG paladin of a god who is neither lawful nor good. Might be a bit hard to follow their teachings though.

I've played many classes, but seldom a paladin. Happen to have taken over one, and neither the players nor the GM has harassed the noble knight who is non-self-important.

Per the rules, it does. I was going to post that paladin's don't even have to choose a deity, since clerics don't, but per the rules they do. However, "(o)nce invested, a paladin is a paladin forever. How justly, honorably, or compassionately the paladin wields those power from that day forward" is up to them. The book suggests that other members of their faith will punish transgressions, but that's going to be up to the GM, and in any case the paladin retains their class abilities, and even their alignment.

What if they didn't? I think this gets back to the original post: under what circumstances would you question a rogue or fighter or wizard? Each of them, particularly the rogue, could have strong ties to a guild or enclave that expects them to act a certain way and even has earthly agents to make sure they do. In a world of magic, anyone's "people" could have rigged safeguards such that if they get out of line they lose their class features.

They don't, of course, or don't usually. So, at what point would you say to the fighter, hey, they way you're acting is a bit weird?

Or, better yet, the barbarian or bard: at what point would you take them aside and say, look, I've noticed that you're being kind of lawful. If you don't get more chaotic, I'm going to make you stop advancing in your class.

Monks are even closer to paladins, in that they have to be lawful, yet I've never heard a story about a monk being threatened with becoming an ex-monk. Or a druid! Has anyone ever heard of an ex-druid? Becoming non-neutral (which can happen in two or four different ways, depending) or ceasing to "revere nature" has the same effect on them as it does on a paladin. Yet I've never seen a druid complain about this.

I think the only difference with a paladin is that their Code gives them all these easy buttons to push. If other classes had things spelled out in the same way, I think GMs would mess with them, too.

I recommend not going down the road of applying alignment to fictional characters. Surely you've seen the 3x3 chart of how Batman exhibits every alignment.

Ultimately, alignment is simply not mechanical enough, and too poorly explained for the situations in the original post to be anything other than aggravating. Everyone has their own ad hoc mechanics for it, like the GM mentioned in the original post who has "neutrality points." They want alignment to work like hit points, but it doesn't. It's almost entirely judgment based, and so it's easy almost to the point of being accidental for people to game they system or just look like they're gaming the system.

There's this sense, I think, that a non-LG paladin is somehow gaining some advantage, that they're getting the best of both worlds in the form of divine power and completely free will. Except, they're not that much more powerful than a rogue or barbarian. They're also not as powerful as a wizard, beyond a certain level, and the wizard has free will too.

By stick in the mud, I meant having to block ideas by the other party members, on the off chance that they would get the paladin in trouble. Fun's fun, but does the paladin stand by when the rogue goes to loot a crypt of Bahamut? Or when the assassin kills a few people - wait, no, that couldn't happen, because the presence of a paladin restricts everyone else from playing certain classes. It even prevents them from behaving in a way that would cause the GM to make them evil, because then they can't be in the paladin's party anymore.

Those issues are all workable, but it's not hard to see that others might see the mere presence of a paladin as restrictive, and look for ways to needle them.

I like that some editions and some settings don't worry as much about alignment. If alignment does have to matter, I find it works best when it's purely a matter of mechanics, rather than behavior, with alignment neither driving nor being driven by behavior. Like bloodtype: it determines how certain physical interactions proceed, but it can't change you and you can't change it. You can't be certain classes, you can't wield certain weapons (and you might take extra damage from some weapons), and you can't cross certain spell boundaries, and that's that. The boardgame Talisman had alignment that worked that way.

To the question of why is it okay to tell the paladin how to play their character, the answer is that in several editions, that is baked into their rules.  If the GM is telling you "a paladin of x wouldn't do that", then they're probably hinting that what you're about to do is the kind of thing that will lose your powers.  That said... the viability of a paladin in the editions that require behavioral codes is really dependant on the GM and player relationship.

If you want to play a paladin, it's a great idea to work with the GM to nail down your actual behavior code before the start of the game and all that implies.  Pathfinder actually includes a god-by-god set of tenants for paladins that makes some of this easier.  It also helps to understand where your GM stands on some of the big grey issues of alignment.  For instance, if a tribe of goblins that have been eating babies tries to surrender, do you have to accept that surrender?  If they're still holding a bunch of babies hostage, what kind of actions can you actually do to get answers from them or even allow others to do?

The point where things are likely to get messiest are when the player expects to be under rules X while the GM expects them to abide by rules Y.  If you can't handle Y, you probably want to play a different class with that GM.


Some GMs get way too hung up on the "the bad guy is right there, but you can't arrest him because you're a LG paladin and you have no legal grounds" trope, too.  Or the "I'm going to force you to fall" trope.  Those tend to be the types of GMs that railroad other stuff, too, but it seems like they feel particularly justified when it comes to paladins.


That's just in good fun, though.  Wish is written to be that way, in most editions, and a GM that doesn't make it at least a bit dangerous to use for big stuff is going to have to end the game pretty quickly after the PCs figure that out.

I think that playing a (3.5/PF at least) Paladin is just another type of roleplaying challenge, much like playing any character who is not yourself is - it's just that their specific challenges are more spelled out than those of other situation.

I mean, playing a spy of the plot's Big Bad without making the playing experience hell for either yourself or others is probably an harder challenge than playing a Paladin, yet I've seen it done masterfully - and that was one pretty evil, muderous spy as well. Everybody seemed to enjoy the playing experience.

It's just a matter of having fun while letting others have fun on their own terms, as well - so long as the players work together instead than against each other, the problem usually sort themselves out. Just to make the point, I'm currently playing a Paladin in a party that include a patently evil character - but I just happen to be playing an extremely naive Paladin who's specifically both a bad judge of character and entirely too trusting. To the point that said Paladin has been able to figure out totally innocent explanation for things that should have been glaring red flags. But this way I get to keep playing the character I want (since my Paladin isn't knowingly working alongside an evil character), and the other player get to keep playing their own character as well... and everybody is happy.

That's the goal in the end - if the players and GM are willing to work it out, a solution so that everybody is happy can usually be found; it's all a matter to work together. And yes, this is often harder to achieve in play-by-post than in real life, if only because it's easier to be uncompromising with people you're never met... but in the end, it all comes down to people trying to have fun together, and working at it in good faith.

And if people can't do that... then how are they going to roleplay together at all? The only way roleplay can work is if everybody is doing their part; if people can't figure out a way to handle having Paladins in their group, then I would bet there's other issue that group will have to face before it can actually play things properly.

This is all just my opinion though - anybody can make of it what they want.
This message was last edited by the user at 16:33, Mon 07 Nov 2016.

I agree. When a class doesn't have alignment or behavior restrictions (or when no one cares about them), there's less for the GM or other players to latch onto. Some people will add stuff, like a family or their honor, or some goal, so that now there are buttons to be pushed again, but some people don't like having their buttons pushed so they either avoid such games or they make orphaned loners. A paladin, right out of the gate, is not a loner.

Yeah, and I think this is where the original poster's theory comes into play, the one where he thinks that maybe the online nature of this gives people who want to be bothersome more license to do so.

I call that "being bought in." A group that wasn't bought in would try to find ways to force your character to use detect evil or would punish you for not knowing the other PC was evil. A group that is bought in just wants everyone to have fun.

I think there's enough room to accommodate willing parties.

If you have a paladin and an assassin and both PC's want to work together - easy enough....how many Hong Kong action flicks involve a cop working with a contract killer who wants to get out?

This is only one quick example - but like others here have said, they key is a willingness to work together.
This message was last edited by the user at 18:43, Mon 07 Nov 2016.

Paladins of Sune (CG Goddess of Beauty in Forgotten Realms) were totally a thing in 3.5. And Paladins of Mystra (NG Goddess of Magic) too, I played one a long time ago and it was really interesting.

I think that everyone just needs to calm down, pull up a chair, read some Order of the Stick.

Or Looking for Group.

Or 8-Bit Theater (though the last on has nothing to do with this discussion).

All are classic examples of how people can work together, and even roughly get along, no matte how many Paladins are invited. ;)

In reply to Tyr Hawk (msg # 17):

The Order of the Stick is a great strip, but it's written by one person who determines the actions of all the characters. A real group composed of those characters would have gotten rid of the evil character and probably have ditched the fighter, or worse. They've adequately explained why the wizard and cleric don't just take care of everything on their own, but I've rarely seen that work out in real games. It's worth noting that both the wizard and the cleric have, in their own ways and almost single-handedly, become threats to the rest of the party and the world. But that's a different discussion.

The sections of the story with Miko the paladin are interesting, because the author seemed to want to touch on what everyone dislikes about paladins. Note that one character's goal is to cause the paladin to fall.

The other, more reasonable paladins are an instructive take on the class, though.

Regarding the Paladins of Sune - I think the Mara quest line in Skyrim is a good example of how a "Paladin of Love" would work.  Although "Paladin of Love" keeps making me think of Elvis.  :)

3.5 had variants for Paladin types at each of the corners (the LG one, then Freedom for CG, Tyranny for LE, and Destruction for CE).  I actually like that mix, though you can get there through other means.

Regardless, though, it's on you the prospective paladin player to get with the GM and hash out exactly what is expected of you above and beyond just being a LG type.

Also of some note, the stock 3.5 paladin cannot work with an evil character (it's written there, explicitly, in the class).  Heck, it uses the phrase "associate with", so you can't even be part of the same country club.  Which sucks because Asmodeus worshipers always throw the best parties.

That's the best advice I've heard. Get with the players too, if possible. Given how quickly a paladin could tear up an undead or demon/devil based game (or any mystery in which the killer is the only evil character), paladins should come with a warning to have such a discussion. Though, that should be a sign to the designers to just change the class.

I recommend reading the Complete Book of Paladins.  Anyone who thinks a paladin who is lawful good needs to be played like a goody two-shoes doesn't really understand the history.  Playing a chevalier, for example, means bringing down holy horror on your enemies, even when they may be unarmed--some things that would be considered lawful evil by our mindsets but not in a historical context.  Their belief system may be seriously flawed with racism, sexism, or simply deifying their king to oppose all objectors.  These are the people who would burn witches at the stake, torture to get confessions, etc.

A paladin is essentially "a man with a mission" and lawful good is them playing to their particular ideology, which is subjectively "lawful good" to them in their particular moral structure.

For me, I think there is a reason why I would expect a certain amount of...um..."specific behaviour" (for want of a better way of putting it) from a Paladin. Well, not just Paladins - any Divine class. Because they are Divine classes. Martial classes get their power from their own training and physical abilities. Arcane classes wield the power of the elements and such-like, tapping into the natural forces of the world and/or themselves to do stuff. Primal classes are similar, but get their power from Nature instead, from natural spirits or straight from the earth/air, etc. Psionic classes draw their strength from their own minds, to using things like telepathy and telekinesis to channel their energies.

But Divine classes get their power from the gods, and the gods have their own ways in which they like to do things, and in which they like their followers to act. A person who has chosen to follow the ways of a deity must therefore have at least some idea of what following that deity entails in order for that deity to go "Hmm, yeah, that person's got the right idea - I'll give them some power with which to actually go about doing it". I mean, it's no good claiming to be a follower of Bahamut and then going on a crusade to murder every metallic dragon you come across because you think "all dragons are evil", for example ;).

That said, there are no Divine classes currently present in the game I'm running and I never choose to play them either. I don't like gods in stories - even though they do tend to actually exist, they are really just a load of massive OP entities who poke around with the mortals and make stuff happen because they want it to, so by the end it's often a case that everything ultimately happened not because of any choices the mortals made, but because the gods pushed them into it and manipulated them to get their own way. Any character I play (in a setting that has gods who are actually there) will be aware that the gods exist but otherwise won't really care for them that much.

In reply to Ameena (msg # 23):

I'd like to point out that the deities don't control free will though. After all, if they did, there'd be no need for atonement spells, Paladin's couldn't fall, etc.

I think that you lost the point of my original message, where is was another player, not the DM, telling me this.


Anyway, holy forum post Batman! The response has been awesome! Way more discussion then I ever expected. engine, you rock, man! You totally get it and explain it better then I could.

Also, if you have a Player B, be aware that his/her choice may not be intentional. We all have blind spots. My opinion of Player B should be taken with copious amounts of salt. Making the same assumption that I did could lead you down the wrong road.

Conversations drift.  It's what they do.

In this particular incident, was the other player doing this IC or OOC?

If it's OOC, you can just flatly say you're a different sect.  Even D&D gods have the equivalent of denominations and offshoots.  One god could have five separate religions devoted to them (NG, LN, TN, CN, NE) and all of them have very different opinions on the will of that god - and all of them still get spells, so none are more or less correct than others.  Even within the same alignment, there can be one, two, or twenty different factions that emphasize one teaching or another.  As long as you weren't advocating something clearly evil, it can be put down to those kinds of differences.

If it's IC and you don't really want to argue back (using the factions concept), you should just let them know OOCly that you're not really interested in RPing that kind of thing.  If that doesn't work, let the GM know and/or get out of that situation.  Just because you want to play a character that's a holy warrior doesn't mean you have to consent to religious arguments in-game.  Life's too short to RP crap you really don't want to RP.

In reply to Westwind (msg # 1):

A Paladin is a difficult class to play and a difficult class to run.  On the one hand, you don't want to be a wet blanket and spoil everyone's fun, no matter which side of the screen you're sitting on.  On the other hand, you picked Paladin.

The class, even more than Cleric, is defined by his ideology.  The Paladin in 5e is even divorced from the explicit connection to the divine, instead fueled by his own oaths of commitment to a code of conduct.

In general, as a player and a GM, I think that having strong feelings about what the other PCs are doing at the table is admirable.  Characters should squabble and bicker and have differing opinions, and stand up for what they believe in.

The Paladin just puts that front-and-center, and that can be awkward when you run into the game behind the roleplaying.  Things that normally get handwaved like killing bandits and looting tombs suddenly become moral quandaries.  He can often seem like a damper simply by expressing relatively normal societal views and imposing them on the game's space.  I don't think anyone here would really argue against someone who told them that killing was wrong if they could avoid it; or that we shouldn't disturb the tombs of the interred and steal all their stuff.

Playing a Paladin, then, does require you to really communicate with your fellow players and the GM, to really get the expectations down about things like the Stormtrooper Expendability Quotient and the non-grave-robbed distribution of loot.

There is one other perspective on Paladins, though, that's often understated.  It's often assumed that they are paragons of virtue, that their behavior should be beyond question.  However, I prefer to view Paladins as an aspirational class.  They see their code of conduct as an ideal, one that they know they can never perfectly embody.  Seeing the Paladin as a worthy who is reaching for greatness rather than someone who already stands on the pedestal creates a much richer emotional context.

This also makes their potential fall from grace more telling and more impactful, if you choose to use those mechanics.  Taking this view of a Paladin, if they keep trying, honestly trying, they are good enough.  But if they actually actively turn away from the path, if they truly sacrifice their morals, they are not simply stepping down from a place on high, they are giving up a lifelong pursuit.  And how far they fall, from mere Fighter to heinous Blackguard, depends on how much they resent what they have given up.

In reply to Ameena (msg # 23):

I'd say the answer to that is both yes and no.    Divine classes get their power from the same place as the gods, so it could be reasoned that one doesn't necessarily have to act in a manner that would be approved by that god.   But then again, you probably wouldn't pick a god you didn't agree with in the first place.

In reply to Hunter (msg # 28):

That isn't really supported mechanics wise. Paladins that chose a diety gain their power through following the tenets of that diety. Paladins that decide to not follow that diety's tenets (however that plays out) lose their power, spells, class abilities, etc, and are unable to continue leveling as a Paladin, until they have used an Atonement.
Now, I do think that you have something here with the part about not picking a diety that didn't fit ideologically, however, that's part of why Paladins are LG. The concept of the class has parts that are defined by the pantheon available to them as a class.
You fins things similar with the clerics, who must be within two alignment steps of the Cleric.

I always wanted to play a paladin that was coerced into being a paladin. He was "chosen," or given a Mark of Justice, or something. Sort of like Spike, on Buffy.