How do you make make a group of Lawful Good paladin intimidating to even non-evil characters without:

How do you make make a group of Lawful Good paladin intimidating to even non-evil characters without:
>Using the "they were actually evil all along!" trope
>Falling in the "all fanaticism eventually leads to evil, only sith deal in absolutes" moral relativism trap
>Using some retarded "It's not murder if it's an elf" justification
>Being literally retarded and claiming that torture, violence against non-combatants and slaughtering an enemy who has surrendered aren't evil acts
?

The paladin must git gud
Run him through a small test, with questions like this:
>If you knew worlds is ending tomorrow, what would you do?
>Is mercy a sin?
etc

Have them be VERY determined.Tracking down and fighting evil is literally their divine mission and they are going to put every single ounce of energy their mortal bodies have into this task

Give them the legal power to send you to jail, and preferential treatment in courts.
Works great for real life cops.

>>If you knew worlds is ending tomorrow, what would you do?
Stop whatever is ending the world or die trying

Simple. They are loyal to the people, the meek and the defenseless. Sure saving the kingdom and going on adventures is all well and good but if your tomb digging and dragon slaying puts the plebs in danger you are going to have to face the consequences.
They don't need to be antagonists but if your players think "shit I really dont want to piss off the paladins" you're doing something right.

Have them be actually dedicated to their cause. Willing to defend the innocent and their church by any means necessary and allowed by their doctrine. Show their conviction by having them go through a trial/execution for an evil person that has been 'redeemed' because they still committed evil acts. Being good isn't about being nice.

Make them powerful and driven. You don't need much else. Pick an antagonist that's known to be powerful and feared/respected by the party, and have a party of four of this paladins hand his ass back to him.

put them into shitty situations like Arthas where no matter what they decide to do its bad.

>innocent people get infected with virus
>they don't know
>they will 100% turn into undead abominations
>decide to purge them before this happens
>they were going to turn anyways but you're still murdering people who don't understand why

Just put them all in a big hall and once they turn just turn it into a furnace, done.

Make their god the one ultimate powerful one who sees all

>The Lord saw you refuse to help that beggar! Repent or be punished, Sinner!

I have a brother/sister pair of Paladins that are stalking the party in my current game, who have said that they are only not smiting the murderhobos because they're trying to stop a bigger evil

One of my players lost his character by challenging them and getting vaporized

Just have them be excrutiatingly brutal/merciless to the evil entities they've sworn to fight. Like, to the point where even hardened soldiers might say "That's a bit too far".

Set them up against a group of truly irredeemably evil bastards and let the party walk into the fight. Make the paladin calm and collected, slashing, and even impaling and hanging, those villains without mercy, but have him be a soft spoken and charitable fellow who wants the best for everyone.

Violence for him is a last resort, but when it is seen it is NEVER forgotten.

You just gotta praise the lord and pass the ammunition. Gratuitous violence on evil-doers will send a nice message to the survivors.

They are absolutely ruthless. Their job is to smite evil and that is exactly what they do.
>A group of bandits are plaguing the region
>Paladins go to nearby towns and demand info on the bandits' location using threats and possibly even force
>Paladins track down the bandits down and use pragmatic means to kill them making sure to hunt down survivors
>Hand a sack of human noses to the local lord telling him that if he wishes to they would appreciate a donation to their church
>Immediately leave a hunt down the next group of evildoers without stopping to catch their breath

As overrated as it is I think Goblin Slayer is a good example of how to make a scary paladin. His job is to kill goblins, he doesn't care for wealth, he doesn't care for glory, he doesn't care for glamour or fashion, he kills goblins gets his crappy reward and kills more goblins. Goblins are evil, they rape, loot, pillage, and kill, but it doesn't mean burning a fortress of goblins alive and hunting down anyone who might flee isn't brutal and terrifying.

They're just tired.
Years and years of trying to be a paragon of justice and goodness and they just continue to watch the world be a shit hole.
They could take you back in for questioning, and possible rehabilitation. But you both know the chances of recidivism are high.
They could take you back for a fair trial, let your side or the story be heard. But you both know it'll just be a hanging, or you'll be found innocent and have to be brought back in in a few months for the same shit.

The merciful thing is to just kill you now, and save you both unnecessary hardship.

The only problem I have with these kinds of things is that the creatures have to be proven as inherently evil, with little to no chance of exemption.

If the law requires your death a paladin would be in the right to kill you. Regardless of whatever moral standing you might have.

Easy. The Paladins gain a reputation for following the law to the letter and meting out punishment without a hint of mercy. They might help an old lady across the street... if she steals an apple in her senility though... BAM! Hand cut off.

>Lawful Neutral is apparently Lawful Good now

>implying Gary Gygax didn't confirm that torturous deaths for criminals is Lawful Good

I think that is more of a knight's duty. Certainly a guardsman.

Paladins, in most iterations, deal with either religious laws or moral quandaries.

That sounds more like a Lawful Neutral paladin than a Lawful Good one.

You remember the powder keg of justice story? Have them come upon that keg being set off.

Lawful good =/ Lawful nice

>Paladins, in most iterations, deal with either religious laws or moral quandaries.
Not really. In most settings Paladins are just Judge Dredds that are actually good instead of purely lawful. If you want to make Paladins about religious laws your job is even easier, just take the Albigensian Crusade and go balls to the wall.
>Region has heresy, locals have begun preparing for war, capturing castles or even having nobles joining the heresy
>March into region with an army, capture castles and put everyone inside to the sword, for resisting the church they are all guilty
>After resistance is broken begin an inquisition
>Anyone who had any role in leading the church, rebellion, or converting people are to be executed alongside their spouses and adult children
>Younger children of the guilty are sent off to monasteries so they might avoid the same fate of heresy that befell their parents
>Any surviving members of the correct theology are exiled and replaced by outsiders to remove any trace of possible heretical influences

I mean killing people for heresy is bad but Cathars were full blown heretics.

Just make them strong, and holy enough that you can feel the will of god in their actions. There is something so bright and so powerful that too look upon it would be like coming face to face with the sun, and when you stand before them you stand before it.

>Albigensian Crusade
0/10 setting, the French are way too OP. Pls nerf.

Now here's the thing:
Do you want everyone (even non-evil characters) to be intimidated by the Paladins themselves, or do you want everyone intimidated by their judgement/ways?

If the former, it needs to be a "Phew, glad they're on our side" kind of thing. Like lots of public displays of evil-executions or trials. Appropriate punishments, but they include stories of just how insanely far and deep the order went to track the evil-doers down. Maybe have a really scary monster slip through the gates and start slaughtering civilian and experienced warrior alike, when one Paladin busts out of the chapel doors and fights off / kills the monster without a single ounce of fear or hesitation. Maybe even just expose some backstory about the intense physical and mental training every Paladin undertakes, and how a little more than half of them survive the training, and only a portion of those are good enough to be promoted to Paladins. You get a "good to have them around", as well as a "don't piss them off" vibe.

Now, if you want the Paladins' ORDER to be intimidating to everyone, that's a different story. You need those public executions and tortures of evil people to seem really unbalanced. Like, lose your arm for stealing a loaf of bread, lose your dick for sleeping with a fellow man's wife, get exiled from the city for speaking ill of their god or religion, every monster must be culled, as they are abominations in god's eyes, regardless of that monster's disposition, nature, or pleading for mercy. Make them seem less "extreme" in their moral views, and more extreme in their determination to uphold their views (it may not all be black and white, but god help you if it's black). Tell stories of how they hounded a suspected Revolutionary leader who opposed the church, followed him at a relative arm's reach over the course of weeks, haunting him everywhere he tried to flee until

cont...

>cont...
they finally caught up with him over a month after the hunt began, restrained him, and brought him all the way back to the city, simply seeing the whole grueling chase and long-distance journey there/back as a kind of "pilgrimage" of sorts. Really make it so that even characters who aren't "evil" need to REALLY make sure they stay away from evil lest they incur the wrath from the watchful eye of the almost-inhuman order.

you know, I think that what I like the most about doomguy is that even with all the sci fi shit his preferred weapon, the most iconic and the one that he appears with in that picture is a reliable and effective old school double barrel shotgun

Make them completely relentless, terminator style. Lose half your squad, the peasants are already taking to their heels? No matter, just press on regardless. Arrow to the chest? The light gives you strength. Lose an arm? You still have another one, don't you?
That way they're not only frightening to their enemies but also to the normal soldiers fighting alongside them.

>slaughtering an enemy who has surrendered aren't evil acts
>"oh no, please mister paladin! I surrender! see? now you can't kill me hahaha!"

This is fucking retarded.

This
Give them a knighthood or some nobility

well in setting like DnD good and evil are objective and racial profiling is a matter of common sense

Anyone got the full comic, or is that it?

This. Paladins are the law, if the guy you are fighting is a criminal whose crime is worthy of death you are well within your right to smite him. In fact if the only way to ensure justice is to smite him (eg. he's a corrupt noble who will just bribe, manipulate, and intimidate to ensure he isn't found guilty) the lawful good thing to do would be to kill them instead of letting them stand trial.

Not really. If stealing is evil and you are stealing you get punished. Maybe they could spare goblin or orc children (but in DnD always evil aligned creatures exist so it could still be justified killing children). Using the bandit example.
>Stealing is a crime punishable by death
>Bandits have been roaming the countryside
>By being a bandit it is just to kill you whether you robbed one caravan to feed your family and nobody was killed or you killed hundreds personally and are just a rich asshole who likes to hurt people
You could even claim that intent to commit the crime is the same as committing the crime. Join the bandits the day before the paladins showed up and didn't even go on one raid yet? You still get the death penalty.

this
smiting evil might be their main purpose, but evil doesn't come around THAT often (presumably). most of their time is spent kicking non-evil shitheads back into line, and maybe they like that kind of authority, to the point where they'll use their station to shut down the activities of anyone who does things that look "abnormal" or "suspicious" to them.
they don't have to be murderous or cruel, just nosy and overly enthusiastic.

Damnation Crusade

It's only 6 pages long though

>Auto-resolved battles in Total War games