Paladins

[Aladinsane]

I have a SOA campaign and a TOB campaign at the moment. I'll save my TOB questions for that forum. In SOA my pc is a cavalier. I'm curious how you folk handle certain roleplaying issues with paladins, in particular their view of thieves. I'll give you my opinion, and then hopefully you'll share your's with me.
Poison: A paladin would never allow a party member to use poison. It is not honorable, and a paladin would not stand for it. That means no assasin, or any weapon, including arrows of biting, that use some sort of poison.
Backstabbing: Like poison, it is not honorable warfare and therefore a paladin would never condone it.
Stealing/pickpocketing: Never, never, never!
Traps: See poison and backstabbing. Never, never, never!
Open locks, find/disarm traps: No problem at all.
Tithing: While the game doesn't have any requirement, shouldn't a paladin tithe at least 10% of his money to the churches in the game?
Restriction on magical items: Do any of you limit the number of weapons and other magic items a paladin can own at any given time?
Association with anyone evil: A paladin would never take anyone evil into their party. I have heard some justify taking Viconia because you are saving her from a lawless mob, and then watching over her to make sure she does nothing evil. I disagree. In my opinion a paladin would likely save her, "notify the law of her presence so they could watch her" (hey you can't do it in the game but this is roleplaying), but never take her in. A paladin's reputation is one of his greatest comodities.
So how do you guys/gals deal with the above issues.

[ZFR]

same way I deal with other roleplaying issues:

From one of my previous posts:

Each character is unique. Saying "how would a neutral good react to incident X?" is a mistake. Saying "How would Mr. Smith (who happens to be neutral good) react to incident X?" is better. But he would react so because he's Mr. Smith and not because he's neutral good. So when you ask how would a lawful good good character react to something we cannot answer you. Because we do not know anything about that character and just because he's lawful good tells us nothing. You made the character you should know. If you think he would react so and so then that's how he will react. We can give you answers on how we think our lawful good characters would react but it's possible that there would be completely opposite reactions from characters who are all lawful good

And another

What many people forget when roleplaying is that you should not focus on your class/race/alignement/sex when making a decision. Sure these are what could guide you but ultimately it is your person that matters. While class/race/alignement/sex is fundamental, it is your experience (and I dont mean XP) that creates your personality. What you saw, how were you brought up, your tiny prejudices, and your general feelings, tendencies and habits and also spontaneous feeling of the moment is the basis of your decision-making. That's why one male half-elf neutral-good fighter could react in a completely opposite way to a particular situation than another male half-elf neutral-good fighter. When roleplaying a male half-elf neutral-good fighter called Bob and facing a decision dont ask " what would male half-elf neutral-good fighter do?" but "what would Bob do?"

An example. The Viconia incident you mentioned would do fine:

When a paladin is faced with the Viconia situation (s)he would not base his/her actions on being a paladin or not but rather on things like: has (s)he seen a drow before? Was his/her best friend/parent/offspring killed by a drow? Does (s)he like mob lynches? Was his/her best friend/parent/offspring a victim of a mob lynch? Does (s)he think Viconia is cute? Is (s)he a woman-hater? Does (s)he believe in converting people, or does (s)he rather think if youre evil, you'll always be evil? Is (s)he in a good mood today because his/her paycheck arrived? Is (s)he just mad about soemthing and wants to realese his/her anger at someone? Is she having her periods?

Please note I'm not saying your class (paladin) should have no effect on your roleplaying whatsoever. It should be your general compass and set general direction to your action. How you react to particular situation should depend on your character. That's what roleplaying is about.

[ 07-01-2006, 02:38 PM: Message edited by: ZFR ]

[Iron Greasel]

Don't restrict a pladin from being evil because he is a paladin. Sure, stealing from shops is bad, but then your paladin has better equipment so he can better fight for the cause of good. If killing evil people is good, shouldn't using poison to kill them better and more efficiently be more good? You can justify quite a lot of things by saying something about "greater good".

And note that paladins aren't necessarily paragons of virtue, and when righteously smiting evil may smite a good deal harder than strictly necessary.

Give money to the churches of the game? I would never do it. His own church, sure, but not the others. Your paladin might be different, though.

[Armen]

i don't know if it's only the uk (or even english) folks who would be familiar with the 'king arthur' stories? anyway - i reckon all of the knights in that would qualify as paladins but there's a variety of different characters in there - dishonesty, ambition, pride, arrogance - paladins aren't immune to any of these

even a paladin that you intend to fall somehow would be a perfectly respectable role playing character (although not a powergaming choice)

i guess i'm agreeing with zfr here

[Klorox]

I think there are many Paladin stereotypes a lot of people like to follow.

I don't think they should be stereotyped like that... each Paladin is an individual.

[JrKASperov]

Although I agree in principle that every paladin is unique, there is one thing that sets them apart roleplayingwise from the other classes. A paladin is REQUIRED to act like the first post describes because their gods dictate so. They are not paladins because they choose to be, they are because they are CHOSEN to be.This is mightily different from being a cleric because the role of the deity is far more significant.

[SixOfSpades]

Originally posted by Iron Greasel: Don't restrict a pladin from being evil because he is a paladin.

Okay, I'm known far & wide as the proponent of Evil paladins, but I'm going to have to nip that comment right in the bud. True there are holy warriors of all alignments, from LG all the way through CE, but if there was ever a class that needs to be anal about sticking to their alignment, it's the paladin. Put more correctly, your comment should have been "Don't restrict a paladin from being Evil if he's an Evil paladin." Canonically, Good paladins will Fall for (knowingly) committing even a single Evil action. And since the game can currently only handle Good paladins as the main character, really the only way to justify any dishonorable action is if the goal could not have been accomplished in any other way. For example, if you're fighting some creature that is completely immune to all forms of damage except Poison, then by all means, Poison that sucker. But even in this case, a Paladin might want to step back and not dirty his own hands--let some other party member use the poison. The Paladin might even want to absent himself from the fight entirely, not even taking a defensive role for his comrades who would stoop so low. But, if this immune-to-anything-but-poison bad guy could in fact be defeated by more conventional means that can be obtained later on, and the Paladin knows this, then it is his duty to wait--unless letting the evil being live a bit longer would cause the deaths of innocent civilians, etc., etc., etc. It's all about thinking ahead, and seeing which options are the most likely to bring about the greatest good for the greatest number, without doing something that would anger their god. In fact, some paladins might well choose to Fall if they thought the benefit was worth it: If you were in the position of being able to save an entire town, but (through some fiendish set of circumstances) the only way to do so involved killing an innocent baby, many Paladins would willingly sacrifice their Paladin status for the sake of the people.

note that paladins aren't necessarily paragons of virtue, and when righteously smiting evil may smite a good deal harder than strictly necessary.

Yes and no. Nobody ever said that Paladins should be merciful (except those that serve Ilmater) when dealing with their enemies, but they are indeed paragons of those qualities that are held to be virtuous by their alignment--or at least they should be. Keldorn says and does many things in the game that would get a real Paladin kicked out of the church many times over.

About Evil Paladins: The game cannot handle PC Rangers and Paladins of non-Good alignments because the part about Falling at low values of Reputation/Virtue appears to be hardcoded. But since NPC Rangers and Paladins never Fall anyway, there's nothing preventing you from doing the Multiplayer bit to have a Paladin as one of your party members--and then Shadowkeepering that Paladin into whatever alignment you choose. (Just remember to roleplay: Pick a god you think would be suitable for the Paladin to worship and roleplay what a hardcore servant of that god would say and do. Also, there's ample reason to believe that the Holy Avenger weapons in the game--Carsomyr and the Purifier--would refuse to be wielded by anyone not of LG alignment.)
At the moment, there are no non-Good mod NPC Paladins or Rangers in development, though that will very likely change soon. I'm only in the design stages myself, because that's all I do. As of July 2, 2006, I'm calling dibs on design rights to a True Neutral Halfling Beastmaster and a Lawful Evil Duergar Mindwarden of Deep Duerra.

[Iron Greasel]

I still claim that good paladins can be a little bit evil. Otherwise we wouldn't have fallen paladins. If there are paladins who lost their paladinhood because they were too evil, there must be paladins who are less than perfect, but not quite evil enough to fall.

[JrKASperov]

Note that those fallen paladins can also only have comitted one evil act.

[Iron Greasel]

I have serious trouble accepting that alignment would be binary. Commit one evil act, no matter how negligible, and you're tainted forever? Plus, you don't have to commit evil acts to be evil. It's the thought that matters.

Well, I have ran out of arguments think we should stop derailing the thread and get back to topic.

I still advocate the use of poison. If killing people with swords isn't evil, why should poison be? If you really want to be good, think more of why you are killing the ones you kill.

Backstabbing people before they have a chance to see you is dishonorable. (Then again, paladins are good, not honorable. I've never heard of a paladin falling for committing a chaotic act.) On the other hand, quaffing a potion of invisibility in the heat of battle, swirling behind the opponent before they have time to figure out where you went and THEN backstabbing doesn't sound wrong to me. You've given the backstabbee a fighting chance, if they were unprepared for invisible opponents, it's their own fault.

What about looting corpses? I really can't imagine the stereotypical sir Galahad the Pure kneeling over a fresly slain still bleeding human and going through his pockets. Only search dead people if you have a good reason to assume that they have something you vitally need. (For example, you have journeyed deeper into whatever building you are exploring and encountered a locked door. The gnomish locksmith of the party is incabable of picking it, and you need to look for a key.) If your adventure-sense kicks in and screams that you can't leave useful equipment lying around in dungeons, just take everything you think moderately valuable, sell it, and donate EVERY SINGLE COIN you get from the slain to a temple of Ilmater.

Why exacly wouldn't a paragon of virtue let evil people travel with them? As long as they travel with you, they can't do evil. And you might want to convert them.

To order Viconia to leave for the sole reason of caring about your reputation sounds sort of evil. Abandoning someone because people might look at you funny. To care about your honor to the extent that you no longer care about other people.

Note that these are my opinions. Do not make decisions that are solely based on my opinions. Make your own opinions. My opinions are subject to change without warning. I am not responsible for loss of paladinhood for making decisions based on my opinions.