God Shopping
What’s this? A strange new protagonist? Who is this newcomer that she dares profane the hallowed halls of divinity with mortal tread? Only the blessed footgear of Paladin (et al.) has aforetime occupied these most sacred of five-foot squares!
Well friends, if you are attuned to the broader goings-on of the multiverse, you might just recognize Angie from Dungeons & Doodles: Tales from the Tables. We’ve got a crossover brewing with our pal DoodlePoodle, so I hope you’ll stop over and check out his half of this trade. We also have a few more comics from the Doodleverse heading your way in the coming days. But while we wait on those, what do you say we discuss Angie’s choice of deity (or lack thereof)?
To kick things off, let’s zero in on the relevant text from the ol’ rulebook. In 5e we learn that, “Although many paladins are devoted to gods of good, a paladin’s power comes as much from a commitment to justice itself as it does from a god” (PHB, pg 82.) Things are somewhat less explicit in Pathfinder 1e. There we are told that, “Upon reaching 5th level, a paladin forms a divine bond with her god” (CRB, pg 63). When you go digging a little bit deeper though, it’s clear that we’re talking about guidelines rather than rules. And even if you are running in a setting with an established “paladins are champions of the gods” setup, you just know you’re going to run into that player who wants to shake the celestially status quo and fly solo. So then, what exactly does a “godless paladin” look like?
I don’t know about you guys, but in my head it looks a little something like this. Or like this. Or maybe one of these. That’s right folks: We’re talking about the full-on anime protagonist. All you have to do is believe in yourself / your friends / your cause hard enough. Do that and you can hit that little bit harder. Endure that little bit longer. Get back up one more time. And as one of my all-time favorite clerics might tell us, that might just be enough.
So what do you say, Handbook-World? Have you ever encountered a paladin sans-deity before? Does it tend to play out well? Or is Angie making a big mistake by keeping that rose? Tell us your own tale of gods adopted or abandoned down in the comments!
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One cute, non-deity, homebrew sub i found had the “Oath” be wedding vows: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-LPkhtMvD4Dej0VUAwDs
And then i found a Warlock sub where your “Patron” is your spouse: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/S1Z9X8Onf4
I will run BOTH together some day. Hopefully…
That’s a hell of a multiclass. I imagine that mastermind type villains will try cause marital spats, thus resulting in a powerless paladin who must sleep on “the couch of the fallen.”
I assumed that the idea was to have the paladin be one spouse and the warlock the other. I hear paladin/warlocks are pretty good, though.
I meant running two PCs or partnering up with another player.
I love this idea. Though it would take some very committed role players IMO to pull it off well.
I’ve never played with a godless Paladin before, but I can see it working.
The Paladin would need to be very confident, of course, and would not have the same safety net as a Paladin with a patron; if they err, there is no outside force to forgive them. They’d have to redeem themselves in their own eyes… and a truly righteous being often judges themselves harshly.
Most paladins forgive their enemies. Self-affirming paladin forgives herself.
When you put it like that, paladins really do sound like shonen heroes.
Paladins benefit from having a noticeable Wis. modifier, though. 😉
Or shoujo ones – the OP made me think of Sailor Moon and Nanoha…
Laurel is taking me on my first watch-through of Utena at the moment. I’m pretty sure Anthy is a bonded weapon.
I play a godless Crusader in a 3.5 pirate campaign. In his own words “the gods are neither omnipotent nor infallible, and I have the scars to prove it. If I’m going to be following a flawed idol anyway, I’d rather believe in myself.” He’s not Good, though; his goal of going down in history by achieving memorable deeds (and reputation in general) averages out to around Chaotic Neutral, and will eventually transition into Lawful Neutral once he creates his own society/kingdom (and with it external rules he actually respects). To be a Crusader, you just need to believe in something.
Now which of you scurvy dogs will follow under the bloody banner of Hume?
https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1126232
I cut my teeth on paladins back in the 3.5 days when things leaned more towards the end of the spectrum where a Paladin wasn’t cleric-2-smiteric-boogaloo but instead a champion of the cosmic force of Good. (That’s also where those pathfinder texts making clear)
Those might be religious, and often were, but in the same way that a wizard or a fighter might be religious, having a divine patron they worshipped because they where relevant to their own worldview rather than because they had anything to do with their powers.
The “classic” or “archetypical” version of that kind of paladin, is the fairly-tale version of a Knight in Shinning Armor or one of the Arthurian knights that’s being portrayed as a good guy but whose main virtue isn’t piety.
That’s an archetype that I find works roughly equally well whether the paladin is a non-believer*, a quiet it-doesn’t-come-up-much-believer* or someone whose strong faith is an important part of the character.
*or non-follower/follower, many dnd settings gods are obvious enough that most everyone tends to believe in them in the sense that most people in the real world believes in China or Mexico or France even if they don’t personally follow/worship them.
I dunno, man. There’s quite a lot of piety floating around the grail quest in Morte d’Arthur. That’s practically the defining characteristic of Galahad, for example.
That is true. He was the guy I was thinking off when I specified “whose main virtue isn’t piety”.
But in general the Fairy-tale version of the Knight in Shining armour is probably a better fit than the proper traditional version of arthurian knights.
The fair tale knight is certainly what I imagine when I look at the “folk hero” background. Paladin seems appropriate there.
One of the paladins in my game, the wonderfully named Carrion Frost (Hraelfrost in his own tongue, but he chose to translate it to maintain the effect) deliberately abandoned his goddess, my world’s version of the Frostmaiden Auril, after she published him brutally for needlessly calling upon her powers. He spent the rest of the campaign on a single-minded Vengeance quest that ultimately led him to massacre thousands on two continents, found two death cults, briefly become a demon lord and torture… just so many people. Through it all, though, he never Fell – his oath had always been that of Vengeance, and avenging himself on his deformed patron just wasn’t all that different. In the end, despite not being the one who killed her, he was such a legend for his brutal, nihilistic single-mindedness that he essentially became something between a bogeyman and a demigod, prowling the land forever and taking horrible revenge on behalf of the “wronged” everywhere… because by this point, he honestly didn’t care how genuine somebody’s grievance was.
He was rather charming and self-aware in his edginess, too, which cements him as one of my favourite characters of all time.
No press tour. No courtesy copies. No advance. Directly to the bargain bin in select CVS stores.
Oopsie! Phone autocorrect strikes again.
I’m almost going to miss this sort of thing if/when phone keyboard algorithms get sophisticated enough to actually understand what we’re trying to say.
Yeah, my phone (and occasionally computer) auto-fill suggestions are an endless source of amusement. Recently my browser even directed me to a webcomic I’d never heard of, Daughter of the Lilies (I had typed “da” into the search bar and it was like the 5th option) that I quite enjoyed.
A godless paladin is a tricky affair. In Pathfinder, being a godless good knight of honor and lawfulness has another dedicated class to it: the Cavalier. They got a cherry-picked code of honor independent of gods (usually) and most of the Paladin knightly gimmicks, sans spellcasting and divine protection.
And spellcasting/divine power is where the line is really drawn. The paladin is a cavalier with a divine sponsor – all the divine magic and protection has to come from somewhere. Deities are the easiest and default approach.
I imagine the paladin could also draw from good-aligned concepts or virtues as well – something like how a witch chooses a patron, or how a druid gets their powers. If they can justify divine origins, they can draw it from their bloodline.
There’s also of course the gray knight, a paladin who gave up the divine parts but kept the rest to have a bit of leeway in morals.
Oracles have a similar state, though they lose the ‘choice’ part. They’re saddled with a curse and divine powers. These don’t necessarily need to be associated with a deity. And if they are associated with a deity, the oracle needs not be a worshipper – they keep their powers/curses regardless of belief. One could easily apply the same to a Paladin.
Lastly, one could have a paladin be godless in the sense they don’t pick ONE deity. The can choose a pantheon of goodly deities, and just be dedicated to good in general than one of their specific codes.
They can also pick demigod-powered entities as their divine sponsors (e.g. Empyrial Lords) – anything that can grant divine spells as a god technically counts.
What’s weird is that apparently the Inquisitor class could be godless, though I’m not certain if that really saw much play as it seems as much an accommodation for a character from the Pathfinder novels; Salim Ghadafar, the Priest Who’s Not A Priest. He’s a detective/troubleshooter for Pharasma, the goddess of death and fate, but he’s also an avowed atheist from the atheist nation of Rahadoum. He DOES have the ability to cast spells, but absolutely HATES doing it because he despises the gods and what they encourage people to do, and he feels dirty when he casts. He’s the kind of protagonist who does his job, but he’ll complain the whole time.
It’s been a while since I read those things…. For some reason I assumed Salim was supposed to be an oracle on account of the “unwilling” bit.
The line between a cavalier, an inquisitor, and a godless paladin is pretty thin. As examples, take a look at Captain America, Batman, and Green Lantern. Are they all godless paladins of a sort?
Using PF 1E:
Captain America, I’d describe as more of a Monk / Fighter.
Batman is a Vigilante to the bone.
Green Lantern, I would actually describe as a divine spellcaster of some sort.
This is a complaint as old as paladins.
“Why do we need a paladin? Just be a fighting man that worships a god!”
“Why do we need a paladin? Just be a cleric that uses a sword.”
There’s a lot of conceptual overlap, and I’d hazard that all three of those character concepts could be adapted to all three classes.
Does this pantheon of newly introduced good (?) Deities have names or nicknames? Are any of them Cleric’s sugar daddy?
And why is the bearded one wearing a divine thimble on their arm-stump?
I think that guy might be (an expy of) Tyr, who got his hand bitten off by Fenrir.
Or Nuada, of the Tuatha de Danann, who got his hand cut off in the war with the Fomorians and (for a time) replaced by a silver prosthetic.
Or Toolh’Tyme Tym, who lost his arm in a grisly carpentry mishap.
Tyr: https://thenorsegods.com/tyr/
Lathander: https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Lathander
Pyr’paal: https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d0000b273e5db583cf58b3b3aa526aaa6
What does Godless Paladin look like? My mind went to Judge Dredd faster than F1 car reaches 100km/h and now refuses to budge. Yeah Dredd is a Lawful Neutral(at times willing to bend rules a bit to do good) but I can shake idea that Godless paladin would replace them with some moral code and law comes to mind first.
Yeah we go back to my older comment about Paladins Law vs Good scale balance.
I dunno… I’ve seen Judge Dredd lay on hands before, and that mess didn’t look like healing.
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9r6g2Y1D3aA/V7H0Fso4f0I/AAAAAAAAZJI/3o0L7Ppm5S8ksS-Zqlsg8rIvI-7rKZmHQCLcB/s1600/f83.jpg
That is called Smite, and at that very moment Dredd was very much a shining light of good by comparison to the Dark Judges, Judge Fear specifically being on receiving end.
Dredd is not a loving goodie do good but he does care for his city and it’s people. Not even depths of hell has safe place to those who want to harm the innocent, as SovMeg 1 learned. Heck he’s the one most eager to club a bent Judge, more so than SJS is most of the time, and uncorruptable. He even busted his own brother, just because his ideals were stronger than blood.
He may not be what we would consider a Paladin but in his universe, by comparison he is. Besides Lawgivers have enough ammo types to count as magic, right?
The players in my group actually struggle to grok godless paladins, because the original DM they played with liked to offer paladins the ability to change oaths more or less on a whim, so they never really had it in their heads that paladins were powered as much by their own belief in the specific ideals of their oaths as they were by getting zapped with celestial lightning.
To this day he still occasionally talks about playing a paladin who changed oaths as his backstory, and doesnt really understand when i tell him that if he didnt feel strongly enough about the original oath to stick with it, then he wouldnt have qualified as a paladin in the first place.
I dunno. I imagine that powerful belief followed by crushing betrayal followed by redemption arc w/ new believe sysmtem would work for that backstory.
In general, I’d be careful with the whole “your character concept is nonsense” stance. Paladins aren’t real, and their powers vary by story/table/individual. That only becomes a problem when a player’s vision and their GM’s fail to align.
If he had told me that he was going to start the game as a fighter, or even an oathbreaker paladin (which is sort of the whole point of being an oathbreaker) i would have said “sure, that sounds cool!” But you have to admit that a character that is empowered by their deep belief and zealotry who doesnt believe deeply and isnt a zealot sounds rather contradictory, no?
Certainly it won’t make the fans happy:
https://static3.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Kylo-Ren-Force-Heal-in-The-Rise-of-Skywalker.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=960&h=500&dpr=1.5
As a 5e DM and Player, I think I’ve seen more Godless Paladins than ones devoted to a deity. The whole point is the Oath – what you are devoted to, rather than to whom.
An example from my most recent campaign:
Quo was a warrior sworn to uphold planar boundaries and destroy abominations of the far realm wherever they might tread. An Oath of the Watchers paladin who was made for a campaign with no gods at all, he was a devotee of an ancient order who ended up an unwilling part of the Arcanist Inquisition.
Well yes. I imagine the paladins in that campaign would have to be godless, lol.
Nuden, Aasimar Paladin of No God was my first serious pathfinder character. He cam from the Spheres of Power version, meaning his stuff doesn’t translate well. Still, the archetype descriptions can come through.
For my part, I mixed two archetypes
Dirt Spattered Angel
While many paladins rely solely on the supernatural might imparted by their deities, dirt spattered angels believe that their gods help those who help themselves. Dirt spattered angels may not even worship a deity, or their powers may be granted by a deity whose attention they are unaware they have. Trust in their faith, in a god, or in their own iron codes of duty, to keep them hale and whole, these blessed warriors look to the strength of their own arms first when it comes time to face their foes on the battlefield.
Warrior of Blind Faith
Not all warriors of faith pray for spells to supplement their might; instead, some spend the time they would normally spend in prayerful contemplation performing a different type of offering, sparring and training in the arts martial. For these warriors, the clash of sword on sword is the sweetest prayer, and the only reward they seek for these dutiful dedications is the strength and skill they impart.
The Dirt Spattered Angel is the key one there. In that setting, a long time ago the aasimar and tieflings were formed as a goddess died. Those close to her became Aasimar, constantly being reborn with no memories while Tieflings were farther out; cursed so they and their descendants would show the scars.
Nuden rejected the Gods, convinced they were not individuals but forces with little true awareness. He believed the God of, say, Rogues was just a people made construct of magic, slavishly following what people thought such a God would do. A Goddess died in the past and all the people tied to her domain died with her; to him that means the Gods are also very directly connected to the people who follow them. As such, he respected the followers of the Good Gods/Goddesses, but ultimately choose to avoid the Gods they followed.
Mechanically, Nuden was a mess, mostly from my lack of experience. He was effectively a Fighter with Divine Grace, Lay on Hands, and a Mount. Tanky as all hell, but with little ability to actually hit.
RP wise, he was a blast. He was Good for the sake of Good, no cause besides what he chose to champion. I wrote that he was a paladin because he was convinced in his previous reincarnation he has been CE and was tryin to make up for his past lives wrongs. He founded a lawyer’s guild (ha) to try and change the corrupt laws of his city because he understood that walking in with a sword to break evil business practices wouldn’t work long term. He was Honorable almost to a fault, tried Diplomacy on literally every foe we fought (and succeeded a few times), and tried his best every step of the way.
What more can you ask of a Paladin of no God?
He ultimately died, came back as a wraith to keep up the good fight, then joined the “Bad” guys because they had been hinting they were working for the Greater Good (TM) and he decided he was willing to risk himself to try and find the truth but the party was needed here.
Heh. My first paladin was a lawyer. Of course, his society was all about trial by combat, so “lawyer” was a hands-on kind of profession.
Oh, I forgot Jaun “Aegis”, an actual godless 5E Paladin. It was a pretty wild setting, with most of humanity nomadic to avoid staying in one place for long enough to tick off the resident Great Spirit, and Jaun was (slated to be) an Oath of the Crown Paladin, devoted to shepherding civilization and people in general rather than any god or crown.
Had the campaign continued, it would have made for an interesting interaction with the ancient evil we had a hand in restoring (technically Jaun had nothing to do with that, but I don’t think he’d have found a way out of that one either). The God King was clearly evil, but he was a Tyrant, devoted to bringing order and civilization. Jaun (who had ironclad morals and was not at all averse to risking his life to help others) probably would have followed him for a time and tried to bring him around to a gentler way of doing things, until it became clear the differences in their ideologies were irreconcilable.
I think it hurts paladins the most when a campaign fizzles out. Those powerful beliefs tend to tie directly to world-shaking revelations and setting-altering BBEGs, and you don’t really resolve those in the early levels.
The group I DM has a paladin who is not only godless but outright hates the gods. Oath of Glory lets one get away with that.
I wonder why 5e decided to focus on oaths more than deities? I suspect it’s a nod to the fact that deities can be awkward in a custom setting, but I’d be curious to read dev notes on the subject.
Well, yes, I played a (sort of) godless Paladin. In the Paladin RPG! Which is an offshoot from King Arthur Pendragon. And concentrates on the original Paladins, namely the companions of Charlemagne (Charles the Great, first Emperor of the Franks. Before there was “the matter of Britain” about Arthur, there was “the matter of France” about Charlemagne. Some people even say that the “English” medieval Arthur cycle was a reaction on the “French” Charlemagne cycle.
In the system you play a knight who is beholden to Charles. And you try and protect his realm against external and internal foes. With the help of God, I now realize. They might even be able to perform a miracle if their Love God passion is high enough. But not the way that Paladins in D&D(like) games work.
I actually played an outlawed knight once, who had heard about the treachery by a important noble. So he went and broke in during the night, with the help of Charlemagne himself, who was divinely obligated to go gallivanting during the night, and who met my character on the road. The whole setup was more or less based on the medieval Dutch Carolingian tale of Carel ende Elegast.
It’s a tough line to walk. As modern people, we tend to want knights with broader archetypes than “Galahad.” But Christianity is so baked into the literature of chivalry that it can be hard to make sense of knights and paladins without a faith element.
Ha, but that is because we fall in the trap that all knights must be perfect. To most medievals the striving was as important as the attaining. Gawain and Lancelot were seen as good knights, because they usually realized that they were imperfect. And that the aspiring to be better was part of what made them good knights.
One of the things that Mordred has going against him (before all the 60’s, 70’s and later psychological tragic backstory and revenge motivation got hold of him, is that in the romances he no longer strives to be a good knight. Which does not make him evil, but also does not make him a proper knight anymore. Because, even when you sometimes are a murdering might makes right knight, if you repent, and try to strive for a better you, that is often enough. And Mordred very much does not do that.
Part of the background in Paladin the RPG is that you are part of a family, which will probably have a feud with another family, and you will be called upon to use violence in pursuing that feud. However, that violence should be used only in pursuit of that goal, and not of wanton destruction or violence against others, not related to the feud. If you do use it differently, you will forsake (some of) gods grace on you, and/or your family. So, in the medieval (and early modern) mind, faith and violence were, and could be, connected. The “problem” with Galahad is that he already has gods grace. He does it effortlessly, which is usually what pisses the other people off. Luckily his character does not rub this in, and he usually is able to make friends, or at least not enemies.
I think that a clear path to atonement makes a big difference. The concept of atonement is at least as important as the fall, but I see a lot of talk about “one mistake and you’re screwed forever.” That’s what today’s comic is trading on:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/fate-of-the-fallen
In that sense, Galahad is still pissing off other people. Players want interesting and imperfect characters, but feel as if their game (and let’s be honest here: the D&D paladin specifically) demands perfection.
Well, 5e paladins get their powers not from belief, but from conviction, and adherence to an oath. Which is, admittedly, kind of splitting hairs, but has a manifest difference.
A Vengeance paladin swears an oath to, well, avenge something. Anybody can do that, but the paladin’s conviction is so strong that they manifest powers while they follow that oath, and those powers relate to that oath. A Redemption paladin, by contrast, swears to redeem themselves and others, to find the good in everyone, and gains different powers from that.
What makes a paladin a paladin isn’t believing in yourself, but an unwavering dedication to a cause, a belief in something greater than yourself that you would not just die for but live for, spend your every breath serving, spend every moment furthering, never deviate from.
And, of course, the Fall is not when you stop believing in yourself—it’s when the mortal frailty of spirit overcomes you, and you turn from your path, which you were so sure of. It is not the result of a fickle god who looks upon your actions distastefully, no, it is your own faltering in your conviction that your actions serve this greater purpose, your own realization that you have betrayed that which you once held more dear than your own immortal soul, the thing you swore to uphold above all else.
The Redeemer who strikes in rage. The Avenger who shows mercy. These are Fallen.
Ummm…
http://dnd5e.wikidot.com/paladin:glory
Okay, listen—
In seriousness though, the Oath of Glory is fueled by conviction that you are destined for great things and following an oath, not just believing in yourself. You can still Fall by betraying that oath even if you still believe in yourself.
Also glory paladins are like, barely paladins flavor-wise and are mostly there to give the paladin mechanical class a place in the kind of narrative the theros book encourages
I bet the glory paladin isn’t even a true Scotsman!
In seriousness though, your setup works well. It hangs together nicely. I don’t think it’s the only possible way to play a paladin.
To be fair Tyr us a pretty good God to follow.
Plus he could really use a hand.
Never played with one myself, though I did play a paladin whose religion didn’t come up. Amusingly, the paladin in a game I ran was one of only two players that used the piety rules I added.
Also, who is the purple wing goddess and what are here tenets?
How did your piety system work?
As for the goddess Pyr’paal, her mysteries are not meant for the unshriven ears of outsiders. >_>
My last paladin was an oath of conquest paladin for the orzhov syndicate. He swore no allegiance to God, and only did his duty to pay his debt to the church. He was, conveniently, a church legbreaker for dealing with particularly unruly debtors.
That’s an interesting setup for a conquest paladin. It’s odd to think of these guys as serving anyone but themselves, but that makes for a fun “turn on your master” storyline later on.
My group has a we’ll-get-to-it-eventually campaign centered around the Pathfinder book “Rasputin Must Die!”. Since the campaign is centered around that, the group made Earth-focused characters. We also all had a personal challenge to make a character outside of our normal mold/habits, and long story short the resident murderhobo ended up with a Paladin of Communism.
What is a Paladin of Communism like, you ask? Well, I happen to have written up this handy Paladin Code of Communism:
Oath of the Common Man?
https://dnd-5e-homebrew.tumblr.com/post/136812581995/oath-of-the-common-man-paladin-by
You’re a comic or two early. If everything goes according to plan, we’re hitting paladin codes on Monday.
This is brilliant!
I had no idea this was even a thing. My fighter specifically doesn’t want to multiclass into a paladin because he doesn’t like the idea of being bound to gods and oaths. Also because I dumped charisma in favour of wisdom for RP purposes, but he wouldn’t go into cleric for the same reason.
Gods are one thing, but the “paladin code” is another. Part of the tension of the class is the risk of falling. You do that by failing to live up to your code. You can always take a page out of 3.5 and follow the more generic code:
The 5e version of that all-purpose code is the more conceptually flexible oath mechanic. So yes, you can certainly tell the gods to take a hike, but then “falling” becomes something like “losing self confidence.”
Sounds interesting, but it doesn’t fit my character’s build or personality. It’s too bad, I thought it might add some mechanical depth if he wasn’t just a plain vanilla fighter.
Turning down 2/3 goddesses worked out so well for Paris, I’m sure Angie will be fine snubbing all three.
And after stringing them along for 18 episodes each week at 8/7c, only on ABC.
Cleric not paladin, but I did once play an aasimar whose faith was in good and positive energy…because no god of good could (or at least would) reach down to the fallen lands he was in.
Sounds kind of like the Force.
Nope, no such animal as “Godless” Divinely powered professions. Now if you want a NonDivinely powered profession, that line forms to the left but be warned they come with a completely different set of abilities and drawbacks…
I’m coming up on 9 years in my megadungeon, and one of the more interesting NPCs in the lore is “the red saint.” Dude was a high level caster with access to both divine and arcane magic. His whole shtick was that he tapped into divine power with worshiping any god, thus earning their enmity.
My take is that, when we’re talking about magic, it’s always possible to conjure an exception.
Sure, with enough magicalness in your arsenal you may as well be your own Deity*… but that’s not what we’re exactly talking about in //this// case.
And yeah, for NPCs I’d might be more willing to make an exception, but again, we’re talking about taping into the Divine, and you have to decide how much interaction there is in your world between Divine and Magic based powers/abilities.
I could see allowing a PC who was a fallen deity, one returned to mortality who still had Divine “self-empowerment”… but oh boy would that require one hell of a level of a trust between me and the Player and a willing acceptance that the PC’s life will be a living hell with every nefarious ne’er-do-well out to make the godling into their own personal little “god on tap”. And fairly strict limits on their powers… and … yeah. I don’t see it happening in the games I’m running now (for faceless randos on message boards).
.* Or enough Divinity you can have your own magic, but that’s kind of a given.
since PC Babysitters don’t get any domain powers or favored weapon stuff, I don’t see why they would need a God in the first place.
Two lines stand out:
These can both be treated as flavor text. However, I think it’s fair to say that there’s a strong tradition of the “holy knight.” My impression is that it’s kind of assumed as a default.
Dude on the far right is pretty clearly Tyr, but who are the others?
I briefly played a Githzerai Order Cleric named “T’mezz N’yark” (New York Mets. I also at one point played a Githyanki named Lex’raa Dri’guezz. (Alex Rodriguez. Yes, all my Gith are dumb Klingon baseball jokes.) Gith of all stripes tend to be militant-atheists, and Githzerai have atheistic Clerics of all stripes.
I shudder to think of an Antipaladin of the Dodgers.
You mean L’an’glizz Dod’jozz?
It always bugged me that the Githyanki were the evil ones since real Yankees are good. Shouldn’t the evil ones be the “Githredsox”?
I follow in the footsteps of Giants. The twisted cultists of Dod’jozz are our sworn enemy.
In the lore of our games it’s both. Paladins, clerics and such got power from their faith and soul, but gods say it’s them 🙂
Damn credit-nabbing deities…. It’s always all about them!
For me, paladins and clerics who don’t serve gods are the norm rather than the exception. I grew up with the 3.5 cleric and paladin, who explicitly can serve causes and ideals rather than deities, and it’s still my favourite interpretation for multiple reasons: It makes them more setting-agnostic (as in you can more easily adapt them to a setting with different deities, not just literally being agnostic); it makes class more about abilities than flavour (after all, not every rogue is a thief); and I feel limiting the best healing and aligned spells to the gods has problematic implications (the idea that you can’t “truly” serve the cause of good – or even law, chaos or evil – without a god strikes me like an excuse to treat nonreligious people badly in real life).
Anyway, with my personal feelings out of the way, my nontheistic clerics and paladins are usually still devoted to something. I may have one paladin draw power from loyalty to their nation and people while another is empowered by their unwavering resolve to bring hope to the downtrodden; similarly, a forge cleric might draw strength from their belief in the value of honest work, or a trickery cleric from their will to subvert rules and undermine authorities. How they feel about actual gods (if they exist) depends on the character: I had one paladin who was respectfully agnostic (“I don’t know if there’s a god watching me, but I’ll do the best I can just in case”) while another was brazen enough to call out the setting’s gods to their faces when she thought they were doing things wrong.
I could have sworn I remembered some text about “following a divine ideal,” but I’ll be damned if I can find that line in 3.5. The closest I could dig up was the Pathfinder 1e take on clerics:
Lacking similar text on the paladin class, it’s possible that Pathfinder paladins are intended to lack that same freedom.
It’s on page 30 of the 3.5 Player’s Handbook, under “Religion”: “Some clerics devote themselves not to a god but to a cause or a source of divine power. These characters wield magic the way clerics devoted to individual gods do, but they are not associated with any religious institution or any particular practice of worship. A cleric devoted to good and law, for example, may be on friendly terms with the clerics of lawful and good deities and may extol the virtues of a good and lawful life, but he is not a functionary in a church hierarchy.”
Anything about paladins? Or are we just extrapolating from clerics?
Yep. On page 43, the first sentence of the paladin’s “Religion” entry reads, “A paladin need not devote herself to a single deity—devotion to righteousness is enough.”
While Pathfinder 2nd Ed is more explicit about clerics and paladins serving deities, they did also introduce the concept of Pantheons as an alternative (which was an expansion on the existence of the Godclaw pantheon in 1e) a dedication to a group of gods with similar ideals, while not actually serving any particular one of them.
The given examples are the Godclaw (Iomedae, Abadar, Asmodeus, and Irori) as the four biggest Lawful gods in the setting, with the other major example being The Prismatic Ray (Sarenrae, Shelyn, Desna) sharing themes of protecting the innocent, but having no qualms with crushing those who would harm them.
On the other hand, Pathfinder 2e also has the Laws of Mortality as a worshippable “God” even though it’s explicitly atheism. I don’t think clerics can serve it but champions (2e’s replacement for paladins, with paladin being a subclass of champion) can, as far as I know. One of the benefits of the Laws of Mortality is being able to take Mortal Healing, a feat that makes you much better at mundane healing as long as the person you’re healing hasn’t benefitted from divine-sourced healing recently (such as the Heal spell.)
Are… are they actually called Prismatic Ray in canon?
Yes, their Pantheon is called The Prismatic Ray. They’re also in an open relationship.
I can’t help but think of Sanya from the Dresden files books (and compare him to Michael Carpenter from those same books.) In a setting where the Judeo-Christian god objectively exists alongside pretty much every other supernatural being of power humanity has ever believed in, Sanya carries a sword forged from a nail of the True Cross, entrusted to him personally by no lesser a power than the archangel Michael. He wields this holiest of artifacts fiercely and selflessly, laying down his life without hesitation to trounce evil and protect humanity.
Sanya is a committed atheist.
“Yes, an archangel handed me my sword. But maybe there are wizards and fey powerful enough to deceive me into thinking they’re angels. Or maybe I’m simply crazy. It’s not even unlikely, given that I JUST SAID I believe in wizards and fey, and angels talk to me in my head on a regular basis.”
OK, to an extent Sanya is trolling the rest of the supernatural world, especially his friend and fellow paladin Michael Carpenter, who wields the second of the three Blades of the Cross. And to an extent he’s trolling the Americans around him, since he grew up in the USSR where atheism was an admired virtue. But he has a serious point as well:
Even if angels or gods or God DO exist, and granted him the power he wields, he’s not doing it for them. He’s doing it for his fellow humans (and human-adjacent entities). He could learn tomorrow that God really WAS a figment of his imagination, and his calling as a paladin would not change one iota. He’s probably not a literal atheist — Sanya’s not a stupid man, and he lives in a setting where the evidence is overwhelming — but his calling to paladinhood is an atheist’s calling.
Certainly sounds like a neat character to bring to a D&D style game. Reminds me of Salim Ghadafar from elsewhere in this thread.
I have played a paladin who didn’t follow a specific god. Rilinda Brightwarden, Paladin of the Ancient Oaths, does not see any reason to limit her opportunities to do Good to a single deity’s commands. She takes her oaths rather literally, focusing on the Light to be found within all things. She will accept missions from any good deity and quite a few of the neutral ones, so long as they don’t conflict with either her current tasks/missions or her oaths.
Currently she’s wielding a minor artifact of Pelor, and has received several signs that he would like her to do something about the guy trying to become the avatar of a god so destructive that all the other gods, of all alignments, banded together to seal him. That suits her just fine, as keeping existence existing is rather important.
yeessss angie in HoH, i love dungeon & doodles.
Then I suspect you will enjoy tomorrow’s comic as well. 😀
Yes. This needs to be a T-Shirt.
We’ve had the worst time figuring out what would sell well on T-shirts. 🙁
Sort of the opposite of a “godless” paladin: Years ago in 2E AD&D, my wife played a reluctant swashbuckler paladin. The swashbuckler fighter had a holy vision while performing a virtuous act back at 0-level. Troubled and confused (these sorts of things happen to better people than me), she sought guidance at the nearest temple and was instructed that the deity in question (Issek of the Jug) sought to right wrongs and relieve the oppressed through her actions. She spent the remainder of her career grudgingly being Lawful because it’s what her patron deity would want, praying for the day when he would say “Good job, you’re done” so she could go back to being a Chaotic Good drifter.
https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/017/204/CaptainAmerica1_zps8c295f96.JPG
Honestly, I didn’t think of an anime protag-esque Godless Paladin before (But it is now deffo on my list! Thank you!) But that is mostly cause I play a lot of Edgy bois unfortunately… Cause like, 5e states its ANY cause someone believes in hard enough…and when you think about Oaths like Conquest, Oathbreaker and even Vengeance…you can paint a lot of different godless paladins IMO. Like, Vengeance Paladin who is powered by SPITE instead of friendship, Conquest powered by the desire to rule instead of to overthrow the evil empire, and even Oathbreaker who is flavored to be evil has no alignment restrictions for such a thing! Really, a godless Paladins cause can be as varied and distinct as any of the Deities!
Meanwhile, somewhere in the depths of the seediest bar of Handbook-World, an unshaven Paladin stirs from his drunken stupor.
“Wait, what? You don’t gotta be evil?”
I have a godless paladin in my current game: he’s a paladin of Duty and also a cop. He doesn’t have an oath as much as a code of conduct, and gets his power basically from his conviction, and the belief of others around him. So yeah now I think of it, it IS a bit anime. He’s currently trying to redeem himself from an incident when he broke the law. He’s taking negatives to various rolls until the party (the rest of his squad) forgive him. It’s taking a while.
I’m also planning to multiclass my barbarian in another game into Paladin, swearing an oath to defend the land and its inhabitants from the meddling of the gods, ironically enough, some of whom are trying to start a war.
Getting some strong Sam Vimes vibes off of this one. 🙂
A paladin, in my mind, is even more tied to their god than a cleric might be.
They aren’t lawful because they care oh so much about the idea cosmic order against chaos, they’re lawful because they follow their god’s teachings to the letter.
A cleric might get empowered by a divine collective that agree with the mortal’s goals, a shaman might not even know who sends their visions, an oracle could actively work against their divine patron, but a paladin? That’s a path of conviction that leaves no room for debate. They are their god’s mortal champions.
You couldn’t have a paladin of “generic cosmic Goodness” or whatever?
I had a player who roleplayed an oath of Glory Paladin in a 5e game. While he did worship something, that something was himself. He constantly sought greater and greater challenges, so that others might hear his name and join him in glorious worship of his ego. His main two sources of inspiration was Gaston of Beauty and the Beast, along with the Hercules Disney film.
Personally Like that Paladins are tied to Oaths, rather then Gods. It gives both the player and the DM much more concise guidelines for what is not okay, as well as allowing them to function better in settings where the existence of gods is much more unclear. I also just think you can make a lot of cool concepts for a (martial) character who gains power solely through the strength of their conviction.
Like in Pillars of Eternity where you have the Goldpact Knights. An order of Paladins who worship contracts. Once they have been paid to do something, they will see it through. Come hell or high water.
I’ve always wanted to try out a braggart PC. They sound like great fun.
Atheism
Atheism is the rejection of the gods. Rather than outright disbelieving in gods whose existence is a matter of hard fact, atheists in Golarion instead deny that the gods are truly divine and thus not deserving of worship or blind faith. 🙂
I mean… The Pathfinder wiki is cool and stuff. But help me out here. What’s the connection between Golarion style atheism and paladins who draw their powers from non-godly sources? Because I’m not certain they’re the same thing.
The primary solution I use came out of some inspiration from Godbound and Exalted, along with my own system advancements. When the PCs are/can become gods, logically the best answer is to make a religion/religious philosophical code/etc. that the gods themselves follow, and then allowing worshipers to honor that (perhaps with your own personal twist on it).
Personally, trying to play a “godless paladin” feels to me vaguely like cheating, like the player wants to have the powers and the status but doesn’t want to have to live with the limitations that are supposed to balance them.
More to the point, why in the names of all the gods *wouldn’t* you want to have a patron god? You’re leaving the bulk of the class’s roleplaying potential and plot hooks on the table, just like you’ve mentioned that playing a warlock without patron shennanigans is just bland.
Though I suppose I might be biased here, because I have built just about my entire self-identity on my own Christian religious beliefs, and I consequently just about *always* make my character’s religious beliefs a central component of his or her characterization, even when I’m not playing a cleric or paladin.