>One side says paladins should always be Lawful Good and beholden to a god. So-called non-LG paladins are not paladins, but something else>The other side says paladins can be whatever alignment and do not need a god to be beholden to, since their ironclad oath is more importantWhat says /tg/ on this matter?
>>98901878Read a book nigger
>>98901913I did and I see both sides have merits.
>>98901878Work on your material, son. Your bot is clearly under-trained
>>98901878I am of the opinion that Paladins in the "D&D-standard" should be powered by Law and Good god-independently, their oaths alone sufficing to draw blessings from the Seven Mounting Heavens of Celestia absent any deity residing there.
LG no discussion
>>98901878must be some flavor of good (LG preferred) beholden to oath alonetying it to an deity overlaps with clerics too much and my mind dilutes the flavor
>>98901878must be some flavor of Lawful beholden to oath and god alone.not the church, not their local priest. Only their god and the oath they swore to them.
>>98901878I play 3.5e so I stand with forcing Paladins to play lawful alignment.
>>98902506Doesn't it have paladins of freedom?>>98902355fuck off puckee
>>98901878what a fatty
>>98902355>puckeeslop
>>98901878bigger tits than my gf
>>98901878Words should have stable meanings, but there should be some leeway for games.
Lawful Good emphasis on Lawful
>>98901878First is more interesting. Second reeks of special snowflake grey and gray reddit morality mub subverted deconstructed ludokino trash which fantasy has been blighted with for more than 20 years now and which needs to die. You don't want to be a noble warrior of a God? Play a fighter.
>>98901878In d&d lawful good. Outside d&d chaotic evil, as with anything else derived from the french.
>>98901878I will admit I cant separate what a paladin is and what a Templar is.>I roll a paladin>...Great>uh, where is my class skill for writing promissory notes? And what's my starting level in reading lantin?> you are not welcome at our table.
What alignment is Gilles de Rais?
>>98901878I partially agree with both camps because I am a filthy fence-sitter. Jokes aside, to explain my point:>While any warrior with some divine magic (half-caster) should be mechanically the Paladin class, their exact title should vary based on alignment (i.e. Blackguards, Avengers, Paladins, etc).>Paladins (which I will refer to all of them as, the class rather than each individual alignment) should worship a deity, and it should be one that aligns with their oath, which should also be important.>Their actual alignment should not matter as mortals are not ontologically locked to any alignment. Instead, the title they bear (Blackguard, Paladin, Avenger etc as I said earlier) comes from the Alignment of their deity. So long as they hold faith in their deity, act on their behalf, and act as their oath dictates, they are mechanically a Paladin and in flavor whatever the term is for a divine warrior of that god's alignment (i.e. if you worship Bahamut and have the Redemption Oath, you would be a Redemption Paladin of Bahamut, but if you worship Bane and have the Conquest oath you would be a Conquest Despot of Bane, I'm using the Dragon Magazine terms for clarity's sake).The god worship angle adds layers to any character you put it on, and doubly so for divine classes. Not using it feels like wasted potential, and as someone playing a Redemption Pally of Bahamut in a 5.5 game I can say that his faith has been a fun, major part of who he is both for better and worse, because of bahamut's strict stance against chromatics due to opposing Tiamat, he's dragging the party into a fight against a dragon. Bro is drinking that kool-aid.
>>98903057CG. Those kids were evil.
>>98901878I feel like paladin's definition shifted.It used to be an evil paladin working for an evil god was known as an anti-paladin, but now that's an antiquated term.I'd like them to return to Paladins specifically being tools of the gods of the forces of good, maybe giving the generic name of acolyte for divine warriors of all types.
>>98901878>chainmail against chest hair>enjoy the slow motion depilation of your flabby moobs, anon>maybe it'll teach you to pay attention to your training because you're too soft to pass as a warrior anymoreThose are both wrong.Paladins receive magical powers from a god by definition. Knights who don't get powers from a god are just knights. It's literally just what the words mean.There is no such fucking thing as "LG" except in Dumbasses & Dogshit. And there's absolutely no reason to give a rotten fuck what that infamously shitty system thinks.What you actually wanted to ask, but lacked the experience or just basic understanding of reality to phrase - was whether all paladins had to adhere to the same specific ethos or creed. The answer is no, they don't. Paladins are warrior champions of their religion. Religions can be pretty different from each other in the particulars of their beliefs and morals.
>>98901878Paladin (ˈpa-lə-dən )n.1. One of the twelve peers of Charlemagne's court2. A knightly hero, renowned champion, knight errantA paladin is a goodly warrior and on mission from the prince/king (hence "paladin"'s etymology being from French and meaning ""Of the palace"). Lawful good is literally what makes a paladin a paladin. The lawfulness is what keeps them to their oath and the goodness is what makes them a paragon of chivalry. They're an exemplar knight in the romantic chivalric tradition. That's just the plain definition of the word. A chaotic neutral "paladin" isn't a paladin in any sense or meaning. That's just a murder hobo with a sword and pinky promise. It would be like insisting that someone who stays inside a city and studies arcane scrolls is a ranger. Words have meanings.
Can paladins be Libertarian Ancaps?
>>98903082What kind of slack jawed faggots are you playing with that they need to be dragged into a fight with a dragon? If I were playing with you our characters would be fucking racing to see who could hit the dragon first.
>>98903183Pedantry and dictionary definitions are the weak and cravenly refuge of the redditor, anon.
>>98901878I like classic Paladins but I also like the idea of just having a general 'knight of a god'. Just call them Champions or something with a Paladin subclass if it bugs people that much.
>>98901878Alignment doesn't exist outside D&D so LG/not LG is irrelevant. Nobody sees a paladin in another fantasy setting and screams that they can't be paladins because alignment doesn't exist.Paladins (assuming the archetype and not the IRL ones) need to derive their magic power from somewhere. Unless your setting allows for oaths to grant magical power by default you're gonna be pinging a god for divine energy.Oath is pretty important since that's usually your verbal contract with your god.There are also champions of evil gods, I think that the distinct nomenclature for them is setting specific, you could technically have a paladin of the god of murderrape if your setting doesn't have alignment. If it does (ie. we're playing D&D) then just call them Blackguards. I would prefer if people didn't use Paladin for champions of evil gods.
>>98903198To be fair, it's not an OOC thing it's an IC thing. We're only level 6 and after the druid and sorcerer did some scouting, we found out it's a Red Dragon, which could be a serious problem. Like I got a Dragon-Slaying Javelin from an ex-dragon hunter turned smith with the promise of bringing him the dragon's head, but we struggled hard against an artificer NPC with some movement tech via legendary action (AoE charge attack that did serious damage because half the party can't make dex saves for shit even with my aura). Also, the party is:>My character, a Silver Dragonborn Redemption Paladin of Bahamut who's dumb as a sack of hammers but can give a hell of a sermon>A bugbear Armorer Artificer who got shaved and spent some time in thay as minor nobility after educating himself, is now an exile.>A human moon druid who's basically a wild child>A tiefling shadow sorcerer who has connections with some elf woman we met like twice who is more than willing to do dubious shit for powerAs I said, even with the aura dex saves for me and the armor, the frontline tanks, are like +3 at best. We are not surviving a fire breath if it rolls high. Also, we're kind of dealing with a bardic cult that might be lead by a bard-lich of some variety while the city we're in is preparing for a festival which will probably get hit like 9/11. So yeah, a lot going on, but because my paladin is so zealous in his faith, and because Redemption doesn't mean "uwu everyone deserves a second chance" it means "if someone's pure evil they get smote, everyone else gets one chance to change and if they don't take it they also get smote" and bahamut is diametrically opposed to chromatics, my character immediately was like "There's a chromatic and it's holding a debt over the heads of these kobolds who the city wants to hire on? Fuck that, I'm going to smite that bastard what for" and may have pushed the issue. Doesn't help I've never fought a dragon in D&D.
>>98903212>Just call them ChampionsThat's exactly what PF2e does IIRC
Funnily enough the one edition where a paladin must follow a specific deity is the only one where they cannot fall
>>98901878The first group are venerable grognards, the second are post-modernist scum who hate the idea of any idea being objectively good or bad, they crave grey areas so they can justify whatever hedonistic crap they want to indulge in.
>>98901878If we are being autistic about it, the OG "Paladins" are the companions of Charlemagne, who fought the Moors.
>>98903201While just pulling answers out of your ass to match up how you feel right this moment is a better way, huh? You are too chaotic to even be in a thread about Paladins. Go contribute to a Bard thread instead.
>>98901878>retard says other retards are having a retarded slapfight and I should joinNah.
>>98901878Group 1 is objectively wrong because the only edition in which they were beholden to a specific deity as opposed to Good deities as a whole was 4E, where Paladins were not LG only. Group 2 is actually right about at least one edition of the game.
>>98901878MILKADIN
>>98903194No, even evil paladins have a Lawful Oath they follow to heart (it doesn't mean the tenets of the Oath are Lawful, however).
Paladin should not just be lawful good they should be the alignment of whatever their God is.
>>98904497This. It's the most practical and fair.
>>98904484Ancap paladin voluntarily swears an oath to a god in exchange for divine smiting powers. Nothing contradictory here.
>>98904552Ancap are an always chaotic evil faction anon.
>>98904566Fat, overpaid, government 'worker' fingers typed this post.
>>98901878>modern players when they play the class that was designed to be Lawful
>>98904573Thanks for the unplanned donations. I'll put the money to good use.
>>98901878I'm all for the classics, so I think they should be lawful good and abide to a benevolent god.That being said, I do think there should be other 'paladin-like' classes to accommodate those other cases, but they need to receive other bonuses and other names.
>>98902565>Doesn't it have paladins of freedom?I think Paladins of Freedom should still be Lawful Good in their pursuit of creating a world where other people are free to be Neutral/Chaotic Good.It’s about self-sacrifice, you see.
>>98902565Paladins of Freedom are in Unearthed Arcana aka "the big book of variant rules"so it isn't standard
>>98901878This debate was old 20 years ago.Lore has to serve the game.
Anything beyond Law/Chaos/Neutrality is insipid star sign bullshit that courts horrendous play styles.Lawful Good, Chaotic Evil and Neutral Good players are consistently some of the worst elements at the table because they're trying to make the game about their teenaged conceptions of the world and side quests that have nothing to do with the goals of the party.
>>98901878considering that the general concept of "Paladin" is so tied up in the chivalric orders and various other church knights, it naturally follows that at a bare minimum Paladins as a class should>be part of a church (regardless of said church's character)>be beholden to said church's principles (regardless of what said church principles may be)
>>98903183>Words have meaningsAnd if you kill/replace enough people, those meanings will change!
>>98903194You joke, but this is actually a thing in the Pillars of Eternity vidya series. In that, the Paladin/Cleric divide is explicitly religion vs philosophy. Clerics are empowered by their patron deity while Paladins are warriors who've dedicated themselves to the study of a particular ethos so hard that it sharpens the energy from their soul to the point they can do combat magic. One of the factions is an order of mercenary Paladins whose power comes from devotion to commerce and professionalism.
>>98905326That's actually good for once.
>>98901878No edition of D&D has ever required a paladin to tie themselves to a god in the default ruleset, this requirement only comes up in a few specific setting books.The problem is that people hear 'Divine magic' and instantly think it must come from a god.However in actuality the Divine magic that a paladin gets in the cosmology of most default D&D settings is that they are hooked up into the alignment(s) divine power fonts that the gods themselves use, while Clerics get it from the gods and Rangers/Druids pull Divine magic from communing with Nature. This is in part why any priest matching Alignment to the Paladin can petition their god to hook the Paladin back up to power if they fall.The Oath is what binds a Paladin to the font, it's essentially just a weaker version of the same divine ordinances the gods are under as it pertains to alignment and domain. As such a god that is also hooked into that font can hook the Paladin back in.They also should be lawful, otherwise they aren't able to properly hold to an oath.Anyone who says they must always have a god are secondaries or, even worse, PFtards.
>>98901878Paladins are the Peers of Charlemagne knighted on Palatine Hill
>>98905188>Lawful Good, Chaotic Evil and Neutral Good playersThey would just be Law, Chaos and Neutral/Law in most tables that only kept to the L/N/C axis.The reason why the G/N/E axis was added was because older editions tended to assume L=G and C=E but there were very clear cases of Lawful but wicked and Chaotic but noble characters across many classical works of fiction.
>>98905628That's what I said.
>>98905614>The problem is that people hear 'Divine magic' and instantly think it must come from a god....Yes, that's what that means. It is magic which is divine in nature, and thus it is granted by a god.>Rangers/Druids pull Divine magic from communing with Nature. No. Rangers and Druids are Primal casters. They draw not from the divine, but from nature itself. No aspect of Druids or Rangers is divine.>The Oath is what binds a Paladin to the font,Oaths weren't really a thing until 5e, 3.0 and earlier had a strict code of conduct and alignment lock, 3.5 had a looser code of conduct and divorced paladins from gods, and 4e - in another move that proves the hate for it was manufactured - does the based thing and forces paladins to draw power from gods, as they always should have.>They also should be lawful, otherwise they aren't able to properly hold to an oath.This is just untrue. That's like saying a CG character is incapable of keeping a promise, which is the dumbest fucking shit I've ever heard.>Anyone who says they must always have a god are secondaries or, even worse, PFtards.Incorrect. You are the secondary, as 4e straight up required them to serve a deity.
>>98902355>Redditor pucke℮21 (puckee) spamming his commission againhttps://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/1x45q0c/artcomm_sigeric_galran_paladin_by_lily_curtis/https://desuarchive.org/_/search/image/TpdHaI4yyazdR_wisdhXYQ/>posted 3 times since October 2026>>98902761>Redditor pucke℮21 (puckee) spamming his commission againhttps://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/17saywb/commart_knightbrother_emmerich_paladin_by_pedro/https://desuarchive.org/_/search/image/dvXb01E_8-EcWGWcqB5Hyw/>posted 42 times since November 2023
>>98906133NTA
>>98903082Basically sounds like how Paizo handled it with their Champion class, well outside of even recognizing the existence of alignment but that's easily re-added.
