Invoker wrote:Actually, no. They are Lawful Good above all else, whatever is their deity's alignment, and that should tell us something.
They follow a deity, they follow a code, but those things don't mean they HAVE to do something: they mean the values they founded their lives on dictate their choices. They aren't bound to anything, and when they die trying to do something, they chose to.
No, they literally are bound to that. That is what a paladin is. That's why the class works as well as it does. They're not just Lawful Good because that's the mechanical restriction. They're Lawful Good because they are intended to be selfless servitors of both people and their Gods, regardless of the circumstance. They are oath bound to service.
Their powers are mandated by divine writ in the same way that a clerics are. They are bound to their Gods will and when they drift from that, they are at risk of falling. That's why we look at paladins of different gods in a different way. What you expect of a Tyrran you don't expect of a Tormtar, which you don't expect of a Hoarite, which you don't expect of an Ilmatari and you don't expect it of a Sunite. They are all still Lawful and Good, but in different ways.
At best, they must all consider that whatever civilization they defend is better Lawful and Good than Chaotic and Evil. However, that does not mean that they then must begin to immediately institute whatever knightly based honour system is dictated by chivalrous law. The word Lawful has every bit as much wiggle room in it as does the word 'Good'.
I never said they have to be emotionless. I said they don't empower those emotions to decide their course of action for them: they base their actions on values.
Yes and their values give rise to emotions. Righteous fury is itself an old paladin trait and is as old as the storytelling of the furious and the goodly. It is simply impossible to remain entirely rational about actions in the heat of battle and a great restrictor of character to do so.
This has nothing to do with anything I said. No comment possible.
That's what it comes down to though isn't it. You have one class in the game against who such metagaming is profoundly possible - to the detriment of the player of said class. A player can literally turn around to the DM and say "this paladin is violating their code" and that statement, regardless of whether it is true or false, has power. It is effectively a catch-all defense against consequences for your character - despite the fact that what the paladin was doing may in fact have been entirely in character both for a Lawful Good character but also for a paladin of their God.
So when you say "this is what a paladin must do", I am forced to bring this up because that is not the kind of thinking that leads to good storytelling. It leads to metagaming. It's a way for characters who have attracted the justifiable ire of a paladin to get a way to stop themselves from dying and prolong their character.
So what follows is my experience from being on staff on this matter. I was very forward about my viewpoints when I was there and was one of the paladin Nazis on staff.
As it was and I suspect still to be true, the ruling that DMs made on the paladin code (as suggested above) is a result of that being the only commonality between different DM views and the fact that DMs need to keep the kind of meta-gaming I mentioned above to a minimum. I can only remember one fall during my time on staff, which was Eleanor and that was requested due to other tensions ongoing at the time. MoV has made quite a good go of another approach to her character since then.
In terms of viewpoints, Ghost for example skewed heavily towards a 3.5e idealist viewpoint and would disagree with me quite profoundly. Myself and I think Golem were much more inclined towards a 5e viewpoint. I can't speak for the others, but I suspect they ranged between those viewpoints. As such, the DM ruling on the matter, which has not changed since I was on staff, is very much the statistical average of these viewpoints - intended to make falling something judged entirely by the DM staff as a whole and generally a head DM decision, done in conjunction with the player, NOT as a result of playerbase machinations.
It's an unfortunate consequence of moderating a large player base. If I were DMing Baldurs Gate as a 5e or even 3.5e/Pathfinder game, I would be much stricter on the matter.
Anyway, I'll reply in a little while if you respond, Invoker. Have a good evening
