Congratulations, you are a paladin!"Whatever alignment they follow"? We are getting broad minded.
Paladins are knights of great power, prowess, and respect. They are natural leaders and fearless in battle. These fighters are normally very faithful to whatever alignment they follow, unafraid to show their beliefs. This gives them an important advantage in battle, for they know that, whether they live or die, they will die fighting for a cause and will be rewarded in whatever afterlife they expect. This allows them to fight confidently, fearlessly, and with great focus. If dedicated enough in their faiths, they can even gain abilities and power from their alignments, making them even more lethal in battle.
These are fortified, focused, and strong-willed fighters.
Knights of the Holy Whatever
My results from a quiz sent by a friend: Which RPG Class Are You?
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17 comments:
Wizard/Mage for me. That's twice I've come to wizardry in these quizzes. I don't know many wizards that prefer short swords, though.
In any event, what kind of rocket propelled grenade is a wizard?
Eric Hines
A delayed blast fireball?
So you're not an RPG wizard?
Is this expansion to "whatever" a new D&D thing or just the quiz-master's logorrhea? (Haven't played since 198mumble.)
The game started by hewing closely to standard myth. Thus, paladins had to be lawful good. But people like to mess with things, be creative, change 'em 'round, and there isn't any way to prevent this that doesn't come off as arbitrary.
The tradeoff is that the game then starts to get uninteresting to lots of people. If paladins don't have to be good, why have them, according to that reasoning. Why play at all?
I don't know, James. It's been a long time since I played too.
AVI: I can kind of imagine an evil paladin, but not a chaotic or neutral one. But I would think even an evil one would be weaker.
I got mage. Must be my age showing because used to I always came out ranger. :)
LittleRed1
The game started by hewing closely to standard myth. Thus, paladins had to be lawful good. But people like to mess with things, be creative, change 'em 'round, and there isn't any way to prevent this that doesn't come off as arbitrary.
The tradeoff is that the game then starts to get uninteresting to lots of people. If paladins don't have to be good, why have them, according to that reasoning. Why play at all?
If you're interested, as someone who has played in each of the 5 editions I can explain why (and when) the change occurred.
In 1st ed AD&D, paladins could only be humans of a lawful good alignment. The human bit was never explained, but everything else about the class pointed at the source material as the paladin being a champion of virtue and justice. A Dragon magazine article first posited the existence (and rules for) the Anti-Paladin. A champion of evil, a Black Knight.
In 2nd ed, paladins no longer HAD to be human, but still needed to be Lawful Good. They were still champions of virtue based on the Christian model. But by 3rd ed, Wizards of the Coast (who had secured the rights to D&D from TSR) had set up their own cosmology and pantheon of deities. Paladins still needed to be Lawful Good, but there were rules explicitly set up in the core set to allow for "fallen Paladins" or Blackguards. It was technically an "advanced" or "prestige" class to apply to any character which met the prerequisites, but former paladins who had forsaken virtue got bonuses from their fallen status.
By the time 4th Ed rolled around, it was decided that Paladins weren't just champions of virtue, but were champions of their chosen deity. Why could a Paladin sworn to Loki and who championed Loki's causes not be considered a paragon of Lokian virtue (if you could call it such). Thus, you could have a Neutral Paladin if your chosen deity was Neutral as well (a Paladin of a Nature deity would likely be such). And 5th ed has not changed that significantly.
Perhaps ironically (or perhaps not, depending on your perspective I supposed) Monks (taken more from Asian monastic tradition than European) MUST be of a Lawful alignment (and have been so since 3rd ed on). So in some ways, because Paladins are now tied to their respective deity's alignment, they are of a more flexible morality than the ascetic monk may be.
The problem with an evil Paladin is that you're already less virtuous even if you're Lawful Evil. You've still got some of the virtues -- courage, loyalty, self-discipline -- but not others. Since virtues are strengths of capacity as well as strengths of character, that means that in important ways you'll be weaker than the true paladin.
As I said, the shift in 4th ed was away from the Paladin having his powers from virtue to having his powers due to his faith (and faithfulness) to his chosen deity. And when it's not a question of virtue but one of faith, then virtues like charity, humility, and such only matter if they're important to your Paladin's deity. Thus a Paladin of Loviatar (a Finnish goddess of pain and agony) would be considered "virtuous" by his sponsor for cruelty. A Drow Paladin of Lloth would actually be punished and in violation of her "ethos" if they were charitable, honest, or even loyal (except to her).
Well, that's fine for make believe powers like the ability to turn undead. The problem with that structure is that actual human powers do come from virtue (of which pious faith can be one). You'd end up with Anti-Paladins who might be able to turn undead or lay on hands, but who are fat and lay around watching TV all day, or are so drunk when you need them that they can't drive their warhorse, or didn't get around to exercising that year, or.... :)
I can see it now:
DM: You're a chaotic evil paladin, right?
Player: Yep. Heh heh.
DM: Okay, make a diet and exercise saving throw.
Player: What!? Um, 9?
DM: So, your character gains ten pounds and temporarily loses a point of constitution.
In the old days, at least, you'd be in some danger of dropping below the prerequisite scores and thus out of the class -- or of becoming so weak in character that you Fell and lost your status as a Paladin. Is that still true, or is being a Paladin now an entitlement that it would be unfair to deny you just because you behaved in vicious and evil ways, or became fat and slothful?
That's probably up to the DM, although I imagine that players may weigh in on it too--I'm a group right now where the lawful good cleric is always suggesting that we torture prisoners and steal tstuff and so on. Everybody keeps looking at him weird.
Well, that's fine for make believe powers like the ability to turn undead. The problem with that structure is that actual human powers do come from virtue (of which pious faith can be one). You'd end up with Anti-Paladins who might be able to turn undead or lay on hands, but who are fat and lay around watching TV all day, or are so drunk when you need them that they can't drive their warhorse, or didn't get around to exercising that year, or.... :)
Uh, Grim... all the characters' abilities in D&D are made up powers. And evil doesn't necessarily mean slovenly. Or lacking total self-control. Or gluttonous. Sure, they CAN be those things, but nothing says that just because an evil Paladin lacks loyalty as a virtue doesn't mean that they are incapable of loyalty. Merely that they are only loyal when it suits them.
And further, D&D, from the 1st ed on, has always been a game of mechanics. There's a mechanic for grappling attacks, a mechanic for mass combat, a mechanic for counter-spelling an enemy wizard, and so on. But there has never been a mechanic to "save against sloth". As such, the formulation that "actual human powers do come from virtue" is that it is not reflected in the rules. So while you may argue that it makes no logical sense for an evil Paladin to be the martial equal of a good one, I'd posit that you're arguing logic in a game where wizards can cast an identify spell using a pearl worth "at least 100 gold pieces". And nothing anywhere explains how to calculate who determines the worth of that pearl. Are the pearls used to identify magic items in the desert smaller and more flawed than the ones in the fishing village that has pearl cultivation beds? That's a screwed up metaphysical system where market forces determine the efficacy of magic. In short... it's arguing that a game of make believe is failing to recognize reality.
You could run that argument the other way, and say that the fact that the pearl can be used establishes that it is worth 100 gold pieces, whatever people happen to be prepared to pay for it. Nice little arbitrage possibility there. "I've got a pearl demonstrably worth 100 gold pieces, which I will sell to you for 75 because I could buy it for 50."
My point was more that there's a danger that Americans -- who increasingly live sedentary and TV-bound lives -- are losing an understanding of how virtue is linked to the potential to be heroic. This was modeled in the old rules, which had very high prerequisite scores for the Paladin class (and things like extra spells for clerics of extremely high wisdom). It wasn't modeled perfectly, but a Paladin who did something wicked and dishonorable would Fall and lose all those powers.
Now, apparently, the mechanics have been adjusted so that you can attain the heights of heroism as a kind of gift from someone in a position of power. It's a model of a bad worldview: the only thing that keeps us from all being Paladins is that the gods are unfairly bestowing their favor only on a select few. There's nothing about us that would make us deserving. It's not that we've trained ourselves to be strong, or demonstrated loyalty and piety, or that we pursue moderate habits that ensure our constitution. It's just a matter of whether someone in a position of power bestows upon us a favor.
I see your point about the game, but I think it was trying to get away from the quasi-Christian European background of the game. E.g., under the old AD&D rules, clerics couldn't use edged weapons and were seen and described much as medieval Catholic priests, even if they were priests of Odin or Ares or some other war god. That also changed.
The old D&D was a game with a lot of cultural contradictions in it like that. The fixes tended to introduce other problems.
As to your larger point about American culture, I think you're right, but I'm not sure how much that's reflected in the game as it stands now, in part because I stopped playing around the time the 2nd edition was coming out.
In any case, I think the link between virtue and the potential to be a hero can really only be established by the DM and players themselves. Even in the case of the paladin's higher requirements, sure, they represent the extra training and discipline, but for many gamers I suspect they really just meant being luckier with the dice. The DM would have to conscientiously set up a world that rewarded the virtuous character to really reflect what you're talking about.
Sorry, I've been away from the discussion for a while. But actually, it's interesting. In the 3rd ed and later systems, there were no longer pre-requisites to be met to belong to any class whatsoever. You can be a physically weak Paladin (or one with a low Wisdom, or poor Charisma), if you want to... you'll just be terrible at all the things Paladins do. Or you could be a rogue with a low dexterity. Strangely, while you CAN be a wizard with a low Intelligence, you cannot cast spells (in 3rd ed) that are of a level greater than your Int score-10 (so if you have a 13 Int, you'll not be able to cast spells above 3rd level). But even that went out the door in 4th and 5th ed. So you can absolutely play an stupid wizard. Again, you'll just be terrible at it. If the mechanics of it interest you, I can draw up something outlining how it all works.
But to address your broader point, if you are worried that players of D&D are picking up the wrong lessons from an RPG, I think that you can rest easy. I have rarely met a player of any role playing games that are not highly literate and generally well read. It's happened, but even they tend to have interests towards other pursuits that you would find more acceptable. For example, I believe all role players I've known had an abiding love for Arthurian legend to begin with. Some even preferring the Malory you're fond of (not to imply that I am not fond of it as well).
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