Fate of the Fallen
Today marks the third and final episode of our crossover with Dungeons & Doodles (unless of course you count the latest Handbook of Erotic Fantasy). While it’s a banner day for inter-webcomic cooperation, it looks like things haven’t gone so well for Paladin. His on-again-off-again romance with Necromancer has finally caught up with him. Even if we can sympathize with his motivations, dude still committed an evil act. One shudders to think what might have happened if Demon Queen had somehow made it through that hell portal! And so, down in the gutter with tarnished armor and flickering halo, our hero has fallen from grace. There but for the the grace of god (or thine own path of righteousness) goest thou, Angie!
You guys have already heard my best fallen paladin story, so what do you say we take a more general approach the question of paladin codes? We can debate endlessly about whether or not Paladin deserves to fall in this particular scenario, but at the end of the day it’s all about his paladin code. What tenets has he broken? Does he believe that he deserves to fall? And what exactly is The Big Blue Lady’s opinion on the matter?
To answer these questions, it’s important to have a more specific rubric than, “Was it Evil, Y/N?” As any number of forum arguments demonstrate, that question is infinitely open to interpretation. Instead, I find that it’s more useful to consider your paladin’s idiosyncrasies. Are they all about “speak no word that is untrue?” Maybe their holiest dictum is “leave no one behind.” Or perhaps you positively, absolutely have to stop at the tickle feather when it’s time for interrogation?
If you’d like to take a whack at crafting your own code/oath, then I highly recommend this tool. Laurel has used it to great effect with her ‘frat boy paladin.’ Dude is bound by oaths to Cayden Cailean to follow The Bro Code. The result is a character that still feels like a paladin, but has a more distinctive personality than “default champion of righteousness.”
So for today’s discussion, what do you say we talk oddball codes and custom oaths? What would it mean to swear an oath of poverty? Are you bold enough to accept all challenges to duel no matter what? Would a hypothetical ‘knight of courtly love’ fall if he neglected to help Necromancer in that fateful ritual? These kinds of hypotheticals can gives rise to some of the meatiest RP and plot-hookiest of paladins. So get into character-creation mode, and then give us all your most inventive codes, tenets, and sacred oaths down in the comments!
THIS COMIC SUCKS! IT NEEDS MORE [INSERT OPINION HERE] Is your favorite class missing from the Handbook of Heroes? Maybe you want to see more dragonborn or aarakocra? Then check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on the The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. You’ll become part of the monthly vote to see which elements get featured in the comic next!
Ooohhh, Angie! ^_^;
First she misinterprets Antipaladin in DoodlePoodle’s part of the crossover, and now she does the same with Paladin over here…! She’s two for two, and might need to do more background checks in future.
I’ll admit, I’m sorry to see Paladin at this low ebb (though the halo effect is cool). Did he run away from his team out of shame, or did they actually tell him to go…? I hope it was shame, not exile.
I’ve totally got an answer for that and have planned out his character arc in exacting detail. If only you could glimpse behind the veil of my metaphorical GM screen and see all my intricate notes!
*stares at empty Word doc*
All writing and no roleplay make Colin a dull boy.
Now this
This is a mood.
As of 5e, paladins no longer need Wisdom any more than fighters or wizards. Their Sense Mot—erm, Insight checks have suffered as a result.
I’mma stick with PF 1E, D&D 3.5, AFF 2E and my homebrew systen, I think. ^_^
The url link in the sentence “If you’d like to take a whack at crafting your own code/oath, then I highly recommend this tool.” leads lead to the “tickle feather” comic page, not to the custom oath tool.
You can delete this comment after editing the post.
Nope, their shame must forever be preserved.
Also, it’s possible that ‘Vigorous application of Mr. Stabby’ was the tool all along.
Fixed. Thanks for the heads up.
The comic has upgraded to .gif format! Laurel is now cursed with the power to animate every comic henceforth.
She’s such a friggin’ artist.
“We could do animation, but see how grainy it is? And you don’t have the same richness of color.”
Man, Paladin must have fallen really far if his racials are on the fritz. Or was that halo a class feature?
The halo is an aasimar trait. It interacts occasionally with his divine powers though.
I’m pretty sure Paladins mistake and cause for falling from grace of her holiness Miss Purple is purple was disobeying her prime tenet: “thou shall not assist Demon Queen, that stuck-up banshee I swear that bitch is the worst I hate her so much worst ex ever like literal harlot queen of hell”
Bah, grammar. Also, bah, how didn’t I see Paladins ex-patron was blue-colored?
Highly inaccurate! The Big Blue Lady would never swear!
But everything else was correct eh?
/wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know-what-I-mean
She’s shown up twice now. I probably ought to figure out her place in the cosmology. :/
Probably give her an official name too, like with Demon Queen. And maybe update the cast page.
https://i.gifer.com/WUZ2.gif
I look forward to Paladin (and Snowflakes) character growth into ‘literal hobos of murder’
Snowflake is a paladin class feature. Why would Paladin still have access to her?
Well, he can’t call/summon her, but I imagine Snowflake can still seek him out (e.g. to mug him or sell his valuable good-ish Outsider blood for mane-hair products). And she did seem frazzled the last time we saw her – she could be stranded from… wherever Paladin yoinked her from.
Wait, is Snowflake running around unsupervised, with nobody to hinder her plots to secure Horsepower’s love? This could end badly…
I mean, either that or she’s back in limbo:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-outer-planes-part-2-limbo
Pathfinder 2e has the Champion (Paladin is a subclass) which specifically notes that if your tenets collide, you choose the higher-ranking one.
For example, a mentioned knight of courtly love (Champion of Shelyn) would have a chance to get a pass for protecting Necromancer, though NOT for outright helping her ritual. After all, the courtly love is potentially a knuckle higher than never commit evil, as it’s listed in archives of nethys. Or at least equal.
Oath of Poverty: PF1e’s monk has that as an option. Basically just bare essentials and one keepsake
All Duels: Iomedae’s 1e code makes a specific requirement that it has to be from a near-equal. A lot of codes have “if it’s ACTUALLY hopeless, you can ignore the situation.”
Cowards!
„Fighting this dragon is hopeless, I’ma just ignore it.“
does not sound like a good philosophy:-p
Well, that or do something else. Or take non-combat actions, like guiding the evacuation.
The unsaid ruling is that the gods are jerks. (Would use worse words.)
And if someone’s god cant see a deed done out of the right intentions, even if botched, then they sure as heck aren’t worth following/believing.
Yeah I think the prime defining trait of most gods is absolute selfishness and self percieved infallibility – every action is made to promote their ideals and views, which they never question or judge, regardless of alignment. Their way is ‘correct’ until proven otherwise – which only other gods with the same attitude could hope to do, usually as bitter rivals or a code among them to stop an all-out war that destroys creation. And they demand that worldview of their followers.
Perhaps the problem isn’t so much that they’re jerks, as that most deities are Outsiders who represent an alignment. They are mostly incapable of being anything other than what they are, which makes it difficult for them to understand mortal difficulties.
I don’t see why those two things are mutually exclusive. It feels like saying “The problem isn’t so much that there’s a flood as it is that enough rain has fallen that the river rose high enough to cover a few houses.”
Jerks can be – should be – corrected, and might change.
A creature so locked into its function that it embodies that function and cannot change can only be pitied and, if possible, avoided.
This is a very broad generalization of the topic, and shouldn;t be held as gospel (again, **** FR’s “setting” and all the tropes present there).
In any case, I usually take some inspiration from Exalted and Godbound as inspiration to develop better pantheons and deities.
Frankly I blame poor/lousy wording/ridiculous old tropes from the ur-days of DnD1e.
Basically all the Pathfinder oaths are actually very lenient when it comes to the more “treading the line” stuff like duels and such.
Revising the paladin class in general is a project of mine, and oaths fit under that category.
(Unless we are talking about Forgotten Realms, **** those “gods” and **** that setting.)
But I mean… The atonement spell exists.
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/a/atonement/
Man, the Handbook is very petty with it’s advice today. Makes me think it was crash & burned by a deity itself.
What? Pay no attention to the Handbook’s mysterious past! It’s just a book, not a proper character. How could it have motivations….
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/origin-stories-mr-stabby
Be bold Paladin. Ask for TWO silvers.
(Seriously though, Paladin needs revising, and not in a way that makes everybody into maltheists.)
That would be the sin of greed. Unthinkable!
Not if you need 2 silver to be able to get into the homeless shelter, as opposed to lying on the streets and getting mugged / chewed on by giant roaches and rats.
What if you need the silver coins to kill a werewolf (and/or vampire) abomination with? They’re perfectly valid as sling ammunition.
The Knight in Shining Armor is too iconic a fantasy archetype to change too much. There are plenty of D&D traditions that need to change, but I think that letting players play such archetypes is worth keeping.
The biggest problems with the paladin, I think, are that they can serve as a sort of moral judge for the rest of the party and the way that their black-and-white morality reframes the rest of the game world. The latter is frankly too large a topic to cover in a tangentially-related comment section (and not just rooted in the paladin class), and the former has gotten milder every edition I’ve played.
WotC is trying to emphasize that a paladin’s oath is personal. They’re not supposed to try and force others to follow their code; they just need to follow it themselves. This is good! It turns the code of conduct from license to run roughshod over everyone else’s plans into a strong character trait, with hardly any more importance to the party as a whole than the wizard’s caution, the druid’s hatred of constructs, or the rogue’s greed.
I think that’s a fine level to leave it at. It allows some intra-party conflict, but that seems inevitable—and possibly even desirable, if the players and DM handle it right. From a narrative level, if everyone in the party agrees all the time, there’s no point in having more than one person in it. Getting the balance right—enough conflict to be interesting, but not so much that it tears the party apart—isn’t easy, but the results are worth it.
Oh sure. The central problem that I think underlies this entire discussion is when it is an excuse for bad GMs to be bad GMs. I have no problem with it being a character trait, as long as it isn’t too restrictive.
I think the most interesting one ive seen would be the minotaur paladin i had in my party once. His oath was an Oath of Glory, and his pattern of behavior could best be summed up as “Screw you bard, i’ll do it just because youll mock me if i dont.”
This led to an increasingly pointless series of flexes, egged on by the bard (who knew exactly what he was doing), culminating with using an enlarge person spell, some inspiration and the power of MUSCLE to rip a dwarven throne that had been built flush with a floor of sheer granite out of the floor as the party’s trophy from an old abandoned dwarven city.
It was an impressively dumb character and oath, but all the more fun because if you got him mad and stubborn enough, he would somehow figure out how to do something both trivial and near-impossible.
Sounds like a typical Taurus. 😛
Judging by the 3.5 Book of Exalted Deeds, you’d be unable to use magic items (or much of any equipment), but would get a bunch of supernatural bonuses that might almost make up for it, if you’re not a member of a class completely dependent on a forbidden piece of equipment. (Books aren’t mentioned, so sucks to be a wizard.)
Anyways, regardless of what oaths your paladin swears, it’s important to not forget them. There’s a player I mentioned pretty regularly when I first archive-binged this comic and shared a ton of gaming stories, but I don’t remember what I called him, so let’s just call him The Fool. (He more than deserves it.)
The Fool was playing a dragonborn paladin, one who supported dragons and hated giants. 5e lore says that dragonborn hate dragons due to being enslaved by them, a fact which The Fool was unaware of; of course, ignorance aside, playing a single dragonborn who likes dragons is perfectly fine. But it should give you context for what came next.
We saw a dragon flying in the sky, and the paladin flagged him down. (I don’t remember how.) After a brief conversation, the paladin asked if there was anything he could do to help the dragon. It said there was a giantess in a nearby tower that it wanted gone, so we went there. The giantess, in turn, said she missed her husband, who had been taken by grand Chief Guh. So we had the giantess lead us to Chief Guh’s fort, to defeat her and free her captives.
Along the way, after running into an exercise(?) group we mistook for slave traders who the giantess tried to eat, a few of whom the paladin accidentally murdered while trying to cut their chains, another player asked what the paladin’s oath was.
Vengeance.
The Fool was supposed to be obligated to exterminate giants wherever he saw them—fight the greater evil, by any means necessary, no mercy for the wicked, all directed at giants. And he just kinda…forgot.
The Fool’s response? He tried to have his character quietly leave the party at the next opportunity, and wound up dying by attempting a jump attack from a 30-foot balcony while at low hit points in the big fight against Chief Guh’s. I don’t think he ever played a character with a code of conduct after that—mostly fighters and barbarians and one monk who only lasted a session, but who took up most of the session with a solo trip to recover a magic item that we’d abandoned weeks away for reasons I I can’t explain briefly.
Moral of the story? Well, The Fool clearly thought it was something like “don’t play characters who aren’t allowed to do whatever they want”. I’d say it’s more like “Remember your code of conduct,” and maybe “Don’t choose a code of conduct that doesn’t come naturally to your character (or a character that doesn’t naturally fit the code)”.
By my read, dude wanted to play an avatar, not a character. That’s OK in the right kind of group, but falls flat on its face when you remember that, oh yeah, these PCs are supposed to have distinctive personalities. In other words, if you can’t remember your code, you can’t remember your motivation or your personality quirks.
That’s not a bad read, and I don’t think it’s completely wrong, but I don’t think it’s that simple. At least some of his characters were clearly intended to be distinct characters with distinct personalities, and that actually worked at least once.
But yeah, dude had a problem remembering details with a lot of his characters. And also the adventures he ran, when he DMed. We lost three PCs because he didn’t realize the big monster with a CR twice the party’s level wasn’t supposed to leave the room. (And he kept forgetting whether it had an axe or claws. It was claws, by the way.)
He played simple characters best.
Been there done that. In a mechanical sense, 3.5 gives you effectively what ABP gives you (with a few additional things). Pathfinder’s VoP gives you 1 ki point per level.
In a meaningful sense though, it meant having established an orphanage on the Beastlands (Planescape), a home for the multiversal orphaned, which doubled as a traveler’s rest stop. With the aid of an npc with never-quite-explained dimension hopping abilities, he’d find us when we needed him (but not necessarily immediately), and would bring the orphan back to the caretakers. All of the wealth went towards raising the children and providing them the money to get their feet on the ground, whether that meant training for an apprenticeship, becoming a fighting mercenary, or just starting a family.
This basically served as promoting low-income living in a homestead way, and since my character was a hengeyokai (dog-changer), I was interested in showing off poverty in a wilderness living sense, forgoing the hustle and bustle of developed lands in favor of subsistence farming and gathering in an undeveloped wilderness.
It was one of those campaigns where downtime gave us months to a year to really do things. Shame the character ended with a fate worse than death.
Alternatively, an Vow of Poverty can look very jesuit in nature. I played a Changeling that took such a Vow. The vow assume you’ll have only one simple weapon, but it doesn’t actually require as much. My GM allowed me multiple sets of clothing and sets of weapons to allow for my changing body and identities. I wanted to show off poverty in all shapes, sizes, and genders, the goal to show off the many faces of empowerment despite poverty.
I played as a male bugbear and as a female half-elf, the former nearly 7 feet tall and the latter just over 5 feet. I’d planned to have a human male, but we never got around to that. The bugbear preferred two sickles in combat, the half-elf a spear, and the human male would have preferred fists. I had other options as well, but I never got around to using them.
I appreciate that you interpreted “poverty” beyond a by-the-books “not use any magic item of any sort.” The vow winds up shaping the character rather than restricting them. I think that’s what the paladin’s code is supposed to do. 🙂
Having brought up the Paladin of Communism code two comics ago, I will instead talk about Deathbladé Soulstyyl, Antipaladin of Rovagug (better known by his birth name, Carl).
Carl was a DMPC Antipaladin Oradin I ran during my group’s short-lived “Suicide Squad” campaign. He was a tiefling with spiked armor and a katana for maximum edgyness, and he took his service to the god of mindless destruction very seriously. Perhaps too seriously, actually. While the Antipaladin Code of Rovagug has six tenets, Carl tended to get hung up on the first one: “All things must be destroyed, but the tools of destruction will be destroyed last.” This meant that he actually spent a lot of time trying to protect or save fellow PCs because he understood them to be tools of destruction, and clearly other things had not yet been destroyed. He was also very into the letter, if not the spirit of Rovagug’s deific obedience (“Smash an assortment of items worth at least 10 gp, preferably something fragile, aesthetically beautiful, or with significance to a good-aligned deity. Roll in the shards of the destroyed items, howling and shouting praises and curses invoking the Rough Beast”) – every day he would go down to the market, buy 10 gp of pottery and then throw it on the ground and roll around in the fragments for a bit. Actually, in general he was anti-pottery and would smash any the party ran into, and that was kind of the full extent of his involvement in world-ending destruction.
My point is that fighting for the Greater Good of Bad is harder than it sounds.
I was confused until I realized he probably had negative energy affinity.
I had always assumed Link was a ranger. He was an antipaladin this whole time!
Conveniently, you can get negative energy affinity from an Oracle curse. Inconveniently, Antipaladins don’t actually have the swift-action-on-yourself clause in their Touch of Corruption ability, but conveniently, I was the DM so the rules were whatever I said they were, and the players getting free healing weren’t likely to complain.
Have you ever seen a greater force of mindless, uncaring destruction than Link? MAYBE Mario?
Most GTA player characters, but Link could probably keep up if Hyrule had rocket launchers.
We had a Paladin almost fall in the last session of our last campaign. He was mostly a Barbarian, you see, and while raging he bisected someone who’d dropped their weapon and was trying to surrender. I think the reasoning behind him not actually falling was one part DM fiat because it was the last session and one part ‘your god gives you a pass because Half-orc Barbarian, but you’d better do a penance quest sharpish.’
As for Paladin, well, obviously the right thing to do would’ve been to disrupt the ritual first and resurrect as necessary later. That said, stepping in to defend his lady-love while also fighting mostly for the forces of Good-ish is the sort of thing where, if I were TBBL, I’d fire him as one of my Paladins while also passing on his CV to a slightly more Neutral deity.
I imagine the smite winking out just as the sword contacts the spine.
Now there’s an angle….
No smite, which might have helped. This wasn’t pre-meditated execution of a helpless man, just your standard ‘berserker fluffs his WIS save to stop fighting,’ but with added disapproval from his God of Honour patron and his Lawful Good sentient weapon. It also meant that the group stopped criticising me for using fireball to trim the health pools of people who we were meant to be taking alive, so good times all round.
There’s got to be some sort of godly temping agency, right?
I doubt it. Gods prefer lifetime commitments from their worshipers; temping agencies don’t provide that kind of dependability and promote a much more superficial kind of relationship. (Cynically, one where the god doesn’t have such absolute power over the mortal.)
I quite like the idea of “free agent paladins.”
“You fell with the guy, sure. But he’s a self-important prat. Stick with me and you’ll go far! Would you like some brochures?”
Our party’s Greek-themed cleric began as a rowdy, fun-loving CG priest of Heracles. Drinking, carousing, “punch-healing” interrogations were all in a day’s work. Following his death and resurrection (a big deal in the campaign for the PCs and players), wherein he met some of his gods in the afterlife and was basically told to “do better” if he wanted a true hero’s afterlife and not the grey oblivion of ordinary folk, the cleric became a LG cleric of Zeus and was now bound by (among other things) the ancient Rules of Hospitality (xenia):
A) Respect from hosts to guests. Hosts must be hospitable to guests and provide them with a bath, food, drink, gifts, and safe escort to their next destination. It is considered rude to ask guests questions, or even to ask who they are, before they have finished the meal provided to them.
B) Respect from guests to hosts. Guests must be courteous to their hosts and not be a threat or burden. Guests are expected to provide stories and news from the outside world. Most importantly, guests are expected to reciprocate if their hosts ever call upon them in their homes.
Cue the campaign’s recurring big-bad, a scheming king of a neighboring state who was fond of manipulating the party by tricking the PCs into situations where anything other than what the king wanted them to do would be a direct violation of Zeus’s laws and result in the party healer being reduced to meat-shield duty. (Regicide, obviously, was right out.)
Now see? This right here is the stuff that campaigns are built on! Classical hospitality was a clever trope to riff on for a Greek game, and you got a unique villain out of the deal. Good show.
Acting out of kindness and compassion in order to help others is a Good act by most reasonable metrics. Effective Paladins tend to Captain Kirk their way through any false-binary choice. Oath of Redemption is the most goody-two-shoes “No fun allowed” Paladin and that’s their whole deal.
So… you’re against discrete tenets and oaths on principle since you can just Kobayashi Maru your way around them?
I’m fine with discrete tenets because it gives a codified set of rules. If you’re given a scenario where abiding your Oath would be detrimental to the party it’s your duty to Kirk the situation so that you can abide your Oath without harming the party.
I’d argue that by attempting to stop Necromancy Wizard from doing the ritual without killing her that Devotion Paladin was Kirk-ing the situation and staying within his oath.
Not exactly a paladin code but an anti-paladin one:
Follow no code
Do as you want
Anti-paladin: I am free from oaths, unlike you i can do as i want.
Paladin: That is what your code says?
AP: I don’t follow any code, i am free from shackles.
PL: Then how you can follow a code that says that you can do as you want if you don’t follow any code?
AP: Eeemmm…
PL: If your code say you to not follow any code and to do as you want you should not follow it and therfero restrain your actions.
AP: Eeemmm…. Shut up…
PL: But…
AP: Shut up you are not my mom 😛
Man… I wish Monty Python had done a D&D movie.
At least we’ll always have Holy Grail
Wheatley is the only being in the universe capable of following this code for more than a few weeks without it collapsing under the paradoxes.
Hah, I’m totally yoinking that Paladin Code Generator, but I’ll be upgrading to include -1 on the axis. Since a few of those zero levels make no sense for a “profession/class” that needs to adhere to Law and/or Good.
Of course I’ll be using it in a game where “alignments” are meaningless outside of the idea that the “Good Guys” call themselves Good and their enemies Evil (some call themselves Order and their enemies Chaos)… yeah, my pantheon skews Moorcockian rather than Gygaxian.
For example:
“0: The paladin’s reputation is irrelevant. He may be a social pariah or seen as a lunatic. As long as he keeps true to his other tenets, he is content.”
What? Nah, Holy Code Warrior has to at least be on neutral standing within the local //civilized// community.
I also need to develop it’s opposite, the Anti-Paladin’s Code Generator, so I can start using this to describe my Character’s paths, like my Avatar of the Trickster deity, my Honor-bound assassin’s code, etc. It’ll be useful to have a way to chart the various ‘prereqs’.
Of course it’s completely useless to my Holy Slayer. His only Divine Mandate’s are that he never show mercy to or make deals with Undead, Demons, and Evil Mages (and soon to add Evil Fae to his no-no list), since if he breaks that mandate he immediate loses his “constant, always on, Smite those guys I hate” ability.
I’ll honestly mostly use this as a shorthand to describe Codes of Honor and Divine Pacts.
Sounds like an Old Man Henderson paladin, lol.
I’d argue that if your reputation reflects badly on your patron/cause, it’s a hindrance to your mission. So in that case a bad reputation is a problem regardless of your score in Personal Reputation. But if your actual cause isn’t known or the people in question are irrelevant to it? Ignore them freely.
I’d disagree with that. I mean, yes, ideally a paragon would maintain a good standing within the local community, but the ideal paragon would maintain the third level of all the tenets until being brought outside the World of Forms made his oaths collapse under a mass of contradictions. A noble warrior who chooses to do what’s right even when the community around him disagrees is valid. Arguably, it’s standard—otherwise no paladin could ever free a slave.
Think of Spider-Man. (It’s debatable what alignment he is, but I’d argue that after his origin story he’s Lawful Good, and that it’s just his hyperactivity and out-of-the-box solutions that make him seem Chaotic.) Spider-Man does what he does despite knowing that every caper gives J. Jonah Jameson that much more ammunition to use against his public image. But he knows his great powers come with great responsibility, so he takes that responsibility anyways.
For decent social standing to be a prerequisite for paladin status, the society in question would have to be innately moral on a level no real-world (and few fictional) society reaches. As long as there are good things society frowns upon or bad things it tolerates, there is space for an antisocial paladin.
Spider-Man is a bad choice for your argument, he doesn’t have a bad rap because his actions have cheesed off the community, but because a singular individual has made it their mission to ruin him.
Inversely, in most Spidey stories, the actual community rallies behind him as the “elites and the authorities” turn upon him.
This is also why I said I’ll be adding -1s. So a Code Warrior can //deliberately// do things that are wrong from a Community/Good or Law/Authority standpoint but remain Aligned with the higher powers of Community and/or Authority, it’ll just require they work a bit harder in other ways than the slackers who don’t thumb their noses in those instances.
Heck, I could see some of the negative versions applying to even conventional paladins.
Law and Justice
-1: The paladin may not follow any evil law. It is not enough for him to find a good way of obeying, he must actively refuse both the letter and spirit of the law.
-2: The paladin’s defiance of evil laws must be open and public. He cannot attempt to hide his disobedience, and may only avoid punishments that it would be evil for him to accept.
-3: The paladin must not only defy evil laws, but also neutral laws created for an evil reason or that serve an evil purpose. He must jaywalk whenever possible if jaywalking laws are used to oppress half-orcs.
Dealing with Evil
-1: The paladin must make a good-faith attempt to reform any mortal evildoer who is not currently hostile toward him. In most cases, this only means he must be a good example, but he may not actively shun evil creatures.
-2: The paladin must make a serious attempt to reform even hostile mortals, so long as their hostility is not physical. If he subdues a gang of bandits that attack him, he must show them the error of their ways.
-3: The paladin must reform even supernatural evils or die trying, unless the evil in question is actively fighting him. If he spares a fiend, he must not let it escape him until it has been redeemed into a celestial.
My guy Alester is Oathbound. Oath of the People’s Council, to be specific. He must always strive to defeat corruption when he finds it. I also take it to that he must learn to be the best leader he can be when he’s finally able to return home to take the throne.
Always tough picking a leadership type character in a team game. Parties tend to develop leaders, but having one that must assume that role can cause friction. (Sort of like “the captain” in a sci-fi game.)
How’s it worked out on your end?
He’s only level 3 and we start at level 2 so it hasn’t really had a chance to become any type of problem. My plan is that he wants to learn rather than take charge right away. So he’ll listen to what everyone has to save and make his own suggestions instead of jumping straight in with “Here’s the plan.”
Having one that must assume the leadership role has usually worked out fine, in my experience. It’s when you get two that the real problems start…
Or one who is totally unsuited for leadership assuming the power but demands it as their right/due/necessity anyway.
I have that in a few groups I’m in with one particular individual, in each group we’re in they want to be in charge without actually being in charge* and are so hopelessly terrible at making intelligent choices it would be funny to me if I wasn’t also in those parties…
.* IE, they want the group to do what they want to do, but also want no responsibility if things turn to shit, so they argue and whine almost endlessly when the actual leader of the group (or the group as a whole if we vote) doesn’t do what they want.
I have a cleric with a vow of poverty. In older editions, this actually meant something, but in 5e it’s roleplay flavoring. So she has the things she needs to do her job – armor, weapon and shield, spell components – and everything else goes to her temple or charity. She considers her gear communal items that will be passed on to others in her order. Her only personal possessions are the flute her brother gave her (and made her promise never to sell) and the journal she keeps of the party’s adventures.
She still has to put up with the barbarian in her party demanding to know how a cleric with an oath of poverty got hold of two rings worth 50 GP each. Her current response alternates between “Do you want a Warding Bond or not?” and “I don’t HAVE two anymore, you won’t give me back the other one!” (He knows she’ll use the spell too often if he gives it back.)
This is the heart of the matter. Oaths and codes attempt to impose structure on messy human actions. The 3.5 vow of poverty made those restrictions mechanically concrete, but the game has moved away from that sort of granularity.
So my thought is this: If it’s all RP flavoring anyway, why not go for the gusto and come up with the weirdest shit you can? Self-flagellation paladins who can’t smite until they’re injured? Shed-no-blood vegetarian paladins who can only use bludgeoning weapons? Consensus paladins who must get unanimous agreement from the party for major decisions (That’ll make ordering pizza extra fun!). Without mechanics, this sort of self-imposed restriction comes down to the player. That can be frustrating as a GM watching a player rationalize flagrant vow violations, but it’s likely better than the ceaseless your-guy-wouldn’t-do-that arguments you get when you try to police it.
> Shed-no-blood vegetarian paladins who can only use bludgeoning weapons?
The phrase “bloody pulp” comes to mind. Maybe it doesn’t count as “spilling” blood if you tie a few sponges to your weapon and soak it up?
> Consensus paladins who must get unanimous agreement from the party for major decisions
Sounds like a job for the self-flagellation player.
Both of these could be interesting (if comic) PCs.
Though this isn’t for a paladin, I’ve always wanted to play a cleric of a god of music who had taken a vow to rock-and-roll all night and party every day
Holy shit I love it. I bet that paladin’s war paint kicks ass too!
https://www.cruisington.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Gene-in-full-war-paint.jpg
I love that “Bro Code”. Really nice example what you can do with that tool to make a flavourful paladin.
And on the flip side, as a DM it might be useful to have a “default” code which tries to match the books as closely as possible. That way you have a good basis to judge a paladin’s actions fairly for players that don’t use the tool themselves.
Laurel just invoked the Bro Code on her dude in Sunday’s session. The party found out that an evil power is using them to eliminate a rival claimant to godhood. Bro Code Paladin takes “cannot work with evil” very seriously, and can’t continue the quest until he’s shaken free of the manipulative power’s influence. It should make for an interesting conflict as my megadungeon finally gets into the end-game.
I find myself annoyed, because Paladin is a perfect class for a character I have planned, a redux of an old favorite of mine, Locus the Cheerful Sociopath. Oath of Conquest is a perfect fit mechanically; it’s got the tanking, morally ambiguous tactics, even the focus on fear!
There’s only one problem.
Paladin is a terrible class for this character. At least, at this point in his career. Because his whole schtick is that he’s already completed his life’s purpose. He went on a whole self-destructive quest for vengeance, sacrificing his sanity, his morals, and his life to utterly destroy his foes… and then he survived. Now his greatest motivation is “I’m bored, and would like to not be anymore”, and there is simply no way to spin a character defined by their lack of drive into a Paladin without seriously warping the definition of the class. Even his hedonism has caveats; the same things that make him an excellent party member (despite his CE alignment) eliminating any chance for turning his personality into a Code. (Those caveats being that he’s both highly intelligent and well aware that being an adventurer is his dream job, being a reliable source of entertainment, challenge, and murder, all with societal approval, and so he’s more than happy to curb his desires for the good of the party or even just keeping up appearances. Plus, he has a few good/moral traits, like being extremely protective of children and a tendency to become emotionally invested in his party).
Oathbreaker Paladin actually almost works, since he’s effectively abandoned an Oath of Vengeance, but I still feel like it demands a level of conviction/investment that Locus simply doesn’t possess, and it’s not as clean of a fit mechanically.
The class-level system has its strengths, but also its weaknesses. The big weakness is how static it makes characters, on a fundamental level. 3.5 eventually introduced retraining rules that sort of alleviated this, but 5e doesn’t have anything like that at this time.
Seems like the only solution is to make Locus a fighter or something, maybe add a level or two of cleric, and just pretend he used to have paladin powers.
Might I suggest reflavoring the Oath of Conquest with the custom code tool I linked up top? I bet you could make a “paladin of nihilism” work thematically with a bit of tweaking. “Douse the flame of hope” is already in there.
Plus you can move over to Oathbreaker if you have another character reversal and discover new meaning in subsequent adventures.