How would you do an undead paladin Veeky Forums?

A ghost, grimly determined to complete the quest that ended his or her life before moving on to eternal reward.

...

I'm playing one in a Pathfinder campaign

Oathbound against undead paladin, killed when his order fought a lich, swore on his death thores that should the lich ever return, he'll be back to stop it.

almost 200 years later, he wakes up in his tomb. He's a skeleton nown, but knows what his mission is. He hates himself for wha he's become, and hates fate that forced him to become something like that, but an oath is an oath and he seeks to fulfil it, while also trying to live up to his paladin status while doing all the good he can and helping other mindless or evil undead to "find peace"

As an angry cunt that hates heresy so much that not even death will stop him from erasing it. Only when he considers his job done will he destroy the one last bit of heresy still around. Himself.

Just fucking yes

I AM NOT DONE.

THERE IS STILL EVIL TO SMITE.

I'd roll some dice and make up witty dialogue as the game progressed.

THERE ARE STILL SOULS TO SAVE.

AND THERE IS STILL WISDOM TO SHARE.

Mysterious and restless pursuer of evil, helping valiant heroes.

Undead paladins are always best bros

He's the jolliest bastard in a 10 km radius.

Seriously, I wish there were more positive depictions of undead.

Does "undead" specifically mean "rotting meatbag"?

Undead encompasses everyone dead. Not only skeletons and zombies.

Well you are talking about a holy warrior that basically says "Actually hold off on that afterlife. I don't trust my squire to not fuck up everything after I die".

So you're left somewhere between poor leadership skills (in what is often a charisma based class) and "unfinished business". I guess they could always just be a "late bloomer" sort where it's just a zombie or whatever that happened to become a paladin after already being dead

They believe my oaths ended with my life

I disagree

I've always fancied playing an undead Paladin who wasn't very good at his job in life.

Sort of the Robo-cop style chipper but not competent enough to back it up fully until he gets killed and reborn type.
Maybe he was even a squire and pretends to be his long dead legendary master in order to reassure people.

There is spell called "geas", you can improve it to use on a paladin. Simply your paladin defy and deny the death until finishing his quest

Not what you search but Zeliek seems to be a good undead paladin forced to do things against his will.

Err ... Wanted to answer to OP.

So who forced the dude against his will?

the lich king rose zeliek, and his mind was warped, forcing a sense of conviction, allowing him to use the light in the name of the scourge- while being painfully aware of it

WarCraft? Hmmm, the character itself is actually nicely done it seems.

Poor sod.

In World of Warcraft. The undead Scourge killed him and wanted to resurect him as a death knight but his faith was so strong that even in undeath, the power of the light still heeds his call, smiting his foes in battle.

Must still obey his undead masters though.

Seriously that's what I call a poor sod. And I didn't sadly play enough WoW to learn about him.

And I ain't going to play it after how shitty it turned after WoTLK...unless it's a private server.

WoW is probably one of the best universes for undead, sylvanas' story in particular and the forsaken in general twist the knife.

a shame about everything cata onwards

I blame the guys behind the story progress and ActiVision.

This is perfect

There is something tragic about this character. After destroying all evil, he should, then, destroy the evil within himself, otherwise the Idea of Evil will survive and contaminate other beings. Or, probably, I'm just a faggot giving too much thought into a gay character.

Nah, it's not gay if you are a undead hating evil and who tries to purge himself after the deed is done because you might loose yourself to it.

Fucking this.

Also maybe an undead paladin who's mind is strong enough to resist control by a necromancer for example, but still lost his humanity and now only remembers and continues his quest out of habit or lack of options.

AN OATH TAKEN IN VEHEMENCE BEFORE THE GODS IS A COVENANT OF THE ETERNAL SOUL, AND MY CHARGE IS YET UNFINISHED
AWAKEN, FIRE OF MY SPIRIT; DRIVE FORTH MY SPLINTERING BONES

>This post

IT'S PRETTY METAL.

I try

Egyptian-style paladin that some brave adventurers found in a tomb

>I CAN'T REMEMBER MY NAME. DID I HAVE A FAMILY? DID I HAVE FRIENDS? DID I HAVE HOPES, OR DREAMS, OR ASPIRATIONS? THESE THINGS ARE LOST TO ME.

>WAS I ALWAYS SO ZEALOUS IN MY CAUSE? AM I SIMPLY THE TOOL OF A GOD, SCOURED OF EVERYTHING BUT THAT SINGLE FUNCTION? DID I DO SOMETHING TO DESERVE THIS?

>IT MATTERS NOT. THERE IS NO PAIN. THERE ARE NO MEMORIES. ONLY PURPOSE REMAINS, A SEARING FLAME AT THE HEART OF AN EMPTY SHELL.

>PERHAPS, ONE DAY, I SHALL UNDERSTAND WHY I REMAIN UPON THIS WORLD, BUT IT CAN WAIT. I CAN BE NOTHING BUT PATIENT, AFTER ALL.

>I CAN'T REMEMBER MY NAME. BUT I CAN REMEMBER WHAT IS RIGHT/

I always imagined skeletons speaking in all-caps.

revenant. Vengeance upon him who killed me in the line of duty, protecting innocents from thugs like him.

I am vengeance. I am the night. I am glowing slightly bright. and rotting.

One of my players is a Revenant Paladin, Oath of Vengeance.

He's back from the dead to settle an old debt. Revenants are sanitary and sane for undead, just...intensely focused.

"only those with finished business may rest, and as long as there is evil, my business is not finished".

Onos T'oolan was a pretty good example. Probably something like that.

An eternal soul that arises in a new body whenever evil threatens the world.

LE Paladin of Vengeance.

>Noone mentions Geist of Saint Traft
>Noone mentions Kain or Raziel

Adding this series to my list.

Either Kain nor Raziel were paladins.

>It wasn't already on there

Step up senpai

Very carefully

>Kain or Raziel
Mah Nigga

I have a vampire character like that
>used to be a priest and a devout man
>got turned by a depraved vampire
>went a bit crazy on the whole devious undead gig (murders, rapes, etc...)
>had to flee to mexico because he was being too loud for the prince's taste
>had an epiphany, realizing how much of a shit he had become
>donned a luchador's mask, cast away his previous identity to become "El Estrellado" and protect the weak
it started out as a joke character to piss off a sourpuss DM but I got really attached to him and ended up
What pissed off the DM was that he expected to call me out on playing a joke character in a serious setting and that I ended playing him perfectly seriously, crafted a coherent backstory and context for him and resisted all the DM's attemps to have him "fall" by frenzying on the innocents, thanks to lucky rolls.

Was this like a weird west campaign

Go away Lucius.

It was actually an urban politics/investigation campaign
My char was very much involved with the Lancea Sanctum (vampire version of the church) and, apart from his sick lucha moves, was actually a skilled negotiator, a compassionate person, gave moving speeches and headaches to the scholars because he actually spent lots of time studying holy texts
If you want to stick to DnD tropes, he was halfway between bard and paladin, bent on redemption
he took the metaphor of humans as God's flock quite literally and wanted to protect them as a sheperd would, even driving drunks or lone women home at night, checking on the community, bleeding criminals dry and other charity work

>For eight thousand years I slept.

>For eight thousand years my kingdom eroded.

>For eight thousand years my people scrounged in the dirt to feed themselves and bargained with the treants for protection.

>For eight thousand years they floundered on the brink of extinction as the Green Tide threatened them at every turn.

>But today it will be no more.

>Today I rise anew, willed forth by Aillil's divine judgment.

>Today I raise my sword and my flame against the Green Tide.

>I will burn the whole of the goblin vermin to cinders and from their fertile ashes the Kingdom of Eogan will rise again.

>By my ancient oath and by Aillil's will, it shall be done.

Currently playing a knight who's recently returned from the dead after falling in an ancient battle to protect his homeland. He's come back as an embodiment of loyalty and has been bound to one of the other PCs. Fun character. Though technically he'd be a pyromancer spellblade, I guess. He's a paladin at heart tho.

Go away OnlyAfro

How do you manage communication with people from the present time ? Did your character have to learn the language or is it too hard to learn for an undead this old ? Did the others learn his language ?
Because in 8000 years, I don't think the language stayed the same, even with the same ethnic groups
Not trying to be a dick, just curious

Source of series? My google fu is shit on mobile

That's the sickest shit. I love your character and the campaign. Care to share more?

They don't know/can't believe that they're undead. They'll deny all evidence to the contrary and wonder why people keep running away from the zombie. "What zombie?"

Dark Souls 3 just happened to have nice fire knight art.
We handwaved it. Though Fearghal is back because his god stuck him back on earth so it's not out of the question he imparted the language to Fearghal or something like that. Though Fearghal does still talk in a bunch of thees and thous and such.

I haven't read for fun on years. Cut me some slack.

wrong liches lads

Pick it up again, it's good to do. You need a solid book

Try some of wildbows shit, it's all Web novels but they're long as shit and really captivating.

He's got gritty superhero, dark urban fantasy/horror, and alt-timeline biopunk sci-fi to choose from

Well the campaign was mostly set in Paris and while there was a continuous storyline, it had kind of a sandbox dimension in that we drove the story quite a bit and played different scenarii at different times and places, sometimes simultaneous with other games we had in the same timeline. We each had a roster of characters that we would pick from according to the setting/mission, etc ... it was pretty fun because most of the active players were intelligent enough not to turn this into a wankfest and we even had interesting interactions between characters of the same player.
Like I said, the DM hated this character (solely on the base that he was a luchador) so he didn't let me use him that much and I don't think I played him in games more than once, but I roleplayed a bit online with him
Sadly, online roleplay gets stale quick and this character is specifically designed to be dynamic and work by reacting to events, which I find hard to do when you don't have an exterior DM.
I still have him in case I have a good occasion to play him but he wasn't the char I developped the most and eventually we stopped playing with that DM because he started turning into That DM and only using the games to act out his power fantasies.
We still talk about and develop this timeline with my girlfriend though. We used to be the most active players of the group and we have our fun building our world together. I think we have hundreds of PCs and NPCs between us, all part of the same system. She went crazy when she found out about Changeling and basically wrote up almost the entire changeling population of a city in a month or so.

I'm disappointed I don't have much more to share about El Estrellado, but he fit the "undead paladin" theme of the thread.

I guess it's the easiest way and it does make sense that his god would give him a gift of language.
Also Fearghal sounds really cool.

the coolest stuff he actually did in game was manage to hold off and soothe an angry mob, as well as a bunch of inquisitive cops, with a heartfelt speech (some other supernatural was trying to get an allie's den ransacked), all on live television
But while he was the one that stood out because he had Majesty out the ass and was the party face, the real hero was a friend's char who managed to disable/scramble all cameras involved so people wouldn't realize he was a fucking vampire (vampires are blurry on camera)
I miss this campaign for the teamwork that was involved in trying to not get fucked over by an increasingly douchebaggy DM

Did you miss this friendo?

Malazan Book of the Fallen. Quintessential epic fantasy series.

You won't have any idea what's going on until midway through book 2, but it's worth sticking with it through all 3.3 million words.

The side series' are fun as well.

Read a lot of Pratchett?
If only he could become lich..

That's the intent. Reading All You Need is Kill got me wanting to be more regular.

You know how sometimes you seal an evil because it's unkillable?
And you know how sometimes people stay in weird timeless dimensions forever to fight evil so it can't escape?
That, but without the timelessness. The paladin ages and dies, but continues going due to oath.

That's because people here younger then that game.

>3.3 million words
My body is ready

Hey, I just remember that it was somewhere between mediocre and pretty good, with it's specific theming pushing it over the edge to pretty good. But just barely.

NOT EVEN IN DEATH DOES DUTY END

Eh, it was pretty popular and well-received at the time. Popular enough, in fact, to get a second-string metal band to write a song about it:

youtube.com/watch?v=V7GigyRzH1s

I've always been a big fan of the concept of a character who wasn't Raised or forcefully brought back to life or anything, but of someone who was so determined, that after they died they got right the fuck back up and kept going. Maybe it took them awhile, maybe they're a skeleton now, but they did it.

I gotta say, the theming really did a lot for it.

Oh, absolutely, it had some real atmosphere and style.
Huh. I ought to go back and finally beat it. Maybe after I finish my current run through another old, atmospheric game, The Last Ninja. (I forgot how bastard hard that game was, but man, that soundtrack!)

You know about 7 or 8 years ago, I was a young man in college. My best friend was room mates with a quiet half jap kid who liked to write. I read a short story he wrote about a knight who died protecting a princess. met death, ancient greek style wrestled with him for an unspecific amount of time and when death asked him why he struggled so hard he shouted because that his duty was not yet fulfilled or something. and with the last word his skeleton erupted from the ground. the he learned that the princess became the queen, lived a long happy life, and died at a ripe old age over 100 years ago, so he goes into service for her descendant, the new princess.

Sometimes I remember that story and wonder if the kid ever finished it, or drew more than the few basic illustrations he doodled for it.

Undead librarian preserving knowledge future generations.

Oak from Demigod would fit the bill. He's not really devoted to a specific deity (that I'm aware of), but fits all the other traits of being a paladin.

demigodthegame.com/origins/oak/

>midway through book 2
A) if you can figure out what the fuck is going on by midway through book 2, you're way ahead of the curve

B) midway through book two is one of the high points of the series.

dull

Terminator 2 isn't gay.

A pariah to it's own faith, seen as an abomination but still has the drive to do good as it did in life. Likely keeps it's true nature secret, and may even result in a schism in the faith with heresies of pro-undead thinking. For these innovators undeath would not be an abomination, but a continuation of works unfinished in life. If their gods wanted them then, they would have taken them. That they are not with their gods, then their task is not yet done.

>>undead paladin

what? was his sworn god was too cheap to pay for a full resurrection and opt for a half ass reanimation?

Eru actually give gandalf a level up along with a resurrection.

>Demigod
That game was back when MOBA were something new and fun.

Now the genre ain't going anywhere.

Sadly, most gods cut on the budget.

...

This is basically the whole point of my character
No god watchef over him. He came back because he was too pussed the butch ass lich that killed him was going to come back one day

I like the concept of an Undead Paladin that out survived his God, so the source of his powers is his own conviction and became a pseudo-perpetual engine of Divinity.

Not quite a god, but closer than anything else.

Then again, I'm also a massive fan of the entire concept of a bodhisattva and that is a similar enough concept.