"Remember, heroes, fear is your greatest enemy in these befouled halls. Steel your heart and your soul will shine brighter than a thousand suns. The enemy will falter at the sight of you. They will fall as the light of righteousness envelops them!"
This is a three-shot topic. I don't drink, but I really considered going upstairs and having a bit of that Whipped Cream Vodka stuffed in the fridge. I'll admit to writing down the word "Paladin" and just staring at it for a while. Every so often I'd say "Fuck" out loud. No other class, in any game, has such a weight to it. No other class carries so much reputation as baggage, and no other class has this many horror stories. Today, we talk about the Paladin.
For those of you who don't know what a paladin is, first of all I'd like to welcome you to Earth and I hope that your alien race is a benevolent one. I'm honored you would choose to read my blog. Anyway, to give a system-agnostic explanation, the paladin is a holy warrior. He is a crusader and a champion of truth, justice, and good. He is a warrior with the ability to call upon holy magic and smite the wicked. He also has a strict code of ethics he must adhere to, in addition to upholding a strict alignment of Lawful Good.
He also has a reputation. He's an arrogant one man police force. He destroys any hope of the party being varied or eclectic...or even just differing from his world view. His constant crusading and unwavering 'all evil must die' mentality serves as an ever-present game disruptor. He has a complete inability to compromise, and delivers morally justified murder every single time his evil radar pings. Worst of all, if he doesn't act like this, he has to worry about his "sworn code" being compromised and his class being taken away.
That's the reputation, anyway. You can find constant arguments on this on the Internet, probably more than all other classes combined. If it's not paladins heavily disrupting games with their actions, it's GMs who think that trying to force the paladin to "fall", to break his listed code, is something that he needs to include in the game. This conflict likely started back in first edition, so we're going to take a look at Paladin's history, starting with what the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons book says about Paladins.
First off, they're a subclass of fighter. They share many things with the parent class, but require higher attributes to play. Where Fighter only requires a Strength of 9 and a Constitution of 7, the Paladin requires a Strength of 12, an Intelligence of 9, a Wisdom of 13, a Constitution of 9, and a Charisma of a staggering 17. The most generous of the suggested rolling mechanics is to let the player roll 4D6 dice and drop the lowest. They'd do this six times, then arrange your scores the way you want. Even in this method, your chance of rolling a 17 or 18 on a single roll of 4D6, drop lowest is 5.78%(Thank you, Mike). Now, you've got six of those chances, but it's not looking very likely. The harshest suggested rolling method is to simply roll 3D6 for each stat, no rearranging. Pen and Paper games were different back then, and this meant your chances of playing a paladin were less than two percent.
So Paladin players would really feel like they won the lottery, here. It was reflected in the class's abilities too: In addition to the fighter's melee combat abilities, they got a short list of spells, and several special abilities like detecting evil, a free once-a-day heal, a warhorse Pokemon and Turn Undead like a cleric. In first edition, the subclasses(Paladin, Druid, Assassin, and Illusionist) were harder to get into, but they were better than their associated core class.
But there WAS a catch. They didn't get the fighter's men-at-arms, but they ALSO had several restrictions.
They needed to stay Lawful Good in alignment. In addition to that, if they ever performed a chaotic act, they needed to atone for it by finding a high(7+) level cleric and performing the penance they stated. If they ever willingly and knowingly performed an evil act? You're done, son. Do not pass Go, do not collect 100 dollars. You're a plain-ass fighter now.
They had restrictions on the magic items they could carry. They could only have one magic set of armor, one magic shield, four magic weapons, and four other magic items. Period. In a game where magic items were very important, this was pretty big.
You could never amass wealth. You could only keep enough treasure to live in a modest manner, pay your henchmen, and to construct or maintain a small castle. I have to admit, this one's not so bad considering the nature of first edition(You couldn't buy magic items) but...on the other hand, I'm not gonna cry for the guy who owns a castle.
Tithe. In addition to being unable to amass wealth, ten percent of everything you got had to go right to the church. So even after your party split loot, ten percent of it went away. And no, you couldn't give it to a cleric PC: The book even mentions this specifically.
All of your henchmen needed to be Lawful Good. In a game where henchmen were more important, this was a heavy restriction to the types of followers available. You were basically going to be rolling with a lot of expensive clerics unless you did a lot of footwork. In addition to that, you can't associate with evil people at all, and EVEN NEUTRAL PEOPLE had to be on a "single expedition" basis, and ONLY if it forwarded a Lawful Good cause. Not a GOOD cause, a LAWFUL GOOD cause.
So yeah. You're starting to see where the problem began, right? Nobody's ever said "You can't play a Paladin, my guy's a Necromancer". The paladin player feels like he won the lottery(see above) and doesn't want to let go of playing one. He asks(or forces, or begs) everyone to conform to his restrictions so he can play. This wasn't always a terrible thing because games were generally focused on heroics back then, but you still felt it. This meant no neutral characters, meaning no druids, no assassins, and probably no thieves, since they were "only rarely" neutral good in alignment.
But here's something interesting about AD&D. It had another class that was just as hard to get into and had just as many, if not more restrictions. The book claims Monk to be HARDER to attain due to requiring a Strength, Wisdom AND Dexterity of 15 in addition to a Constitution of 11. I'm going to spare my math friend the numbers on that and call it roughly as hard to get into. So why doesn't Monk have a legendary amount of baggage to it?
Well, for one, Paladin is present in every core edition of Dungeons and Dragons, where Monk was left out of the PHB in 2E and 4E. Both 2E and 4E added the Monk later in supplementary materials. In fact, in 4E, the Monk is a twist on the original idea and psychic in nature. In addition to that, Monk's immense amount of restrictions had nothing to do with his conduct or friends beyond requiring a Lawful alignment. The monk doesn't care who he adventures with, where the Paladin class requires the player to act like a police force. Overall, this paints a picture of an easygoing but personally restricted person, one unconcerned with group composition or actions.
Second edition Dungeons and Dragons actually tries to lift the problem oath restriction from the paladin, saying that he understands not everyone can maintain his high standards, and that he will tolerate people of any alignment so long as they are not committing evil or unrighteous acts. However, it also adds that thieves are tolerated if they are "sincerely trying to reform" and that stealth in the name of good is acceptable, but "only as a last resort".
And thus, "Paladins Hate Thieves" is born. God bless them they tried to lift the heaviest(and most unfair) restriction of the Paladin, but it's too little, too late. Most 2E players were 1E players, and even if they weren't, every group probably had one or two. Often we have an idea in our head of how something is 'supposed' to go, how a class is 'meant' to be played or how a passage is meant to be interpreted, and everyone who played 1E is bringing that emotional baggage along with them.
You'll see in coming posts how that baggage is the Paladin's biggest problem.
Third Edition shook up how Dungeons and Dragons was fundamentally played. Previous editions were far from fair or just. Balance was all over the place because it was MEANT to be. The fighter was powerful early and weak later because he was powerful exactly when the Wizard needed him to be: their roles switch with time. There were official modules designed solely to viciously kill the whole party. Most of that is gone. Now the classes were easy to attain and meant to be fairly balanced. You could decide what you wanted to be BEFORE you rolled stats. EVERYONE had special abilities, and classes like 1E's Monk, Druid or Paladin or 2E's Bard were no longer a special lottery win. There were more classes with alignment restrictions, but breaking them wasn't the ridiculous loss it was before: in most situations, you just can't level or use class abilities until you atone, which was a Cleric spell. You could be a paladin, and all you needed was a half-decent Wisdom for spells and Charisma for your special class abilities.
Everything's equal, so there's a heavy argument for the code of honor being superfluous as a balancing factor now. It's still included, but in a somewhat more subdued manner. In 3.X the code is simply to never commit an evil act, respect legitimate authority, act with honor, help those in need, and punish those who threaten innocents. Yet...he still can't exist alongside an evil player character, or even someone who "consistently offends his moral code". The restriction on henchmen, followers and cohorts remains.
"Trimming down" the code of honor sets the theme for future game editions. Pathfinder adds a clause that a paladin may associate with an evil person if he feels it's for the greater good. 4th edition paladins are champions of a particular god, and don't even need to be good! They simply have to follow the tenets set by their deity. Hell, the only reason they can't be evil is that none of the PCs in 4E can be evil. Fifth edition allows paladins to choose from between three oaths in the core book, which also further customize your character with special abilities. More are sure to come with supplements, widening the definition of a Paladin even further.
Well, what am I getting at? We're going to discuss why the paladin has such baggage behind him, and why he can bring so, so many disruptive things with him. To do that, you needed to know where they began, and where they are now. Paladin began as a very specific thing that...incidentally caused a very specific problem. Further editions slowly tried to fix the issue(as you saw), and coming up I'm going to discuss where they went right, and what was too little, too late.
No comments:
Post a Comment