Why does noone play as paladins anymore?

I'm playing as a Paladin right now though.

>Because chaotic neutral is more forgiving for mistakes and lawful good is a bitch to work around if you aren't a good person naturally.

>when you realize why everyone likes your LG characters and fondly remembers them after the campaign ends

Well shit I dunno maybe people just don't want any god in their swording. I quit playing DnD like 15 years ago, this isn't an issue I have to deal with anymore.

They pretty much still do, reading the core oaths, Devotion is pretty much LG incarnate, Ancients is a celebration of culture and art something that progresse faster in benevolent orderly societies, and Vengeance has a whole line about taking responsibility for your actions.
I'm not saying your can't play a 5e paladin that starts out non-LG but I do think that following an altruist dogma will cause you to ,just by virtue of your actions, become LG. I think the problem is that people doesn't understand that LG is literally anyone with a consistent moral code that has a positive impact and not just a self-righteous dick with an axiomatic stick shoved up their ass, which to be fair is a pretty common archetype That Guys use to play morality police.

isis makes religious warriors looknbad

One of my go to classes is a paladin. Or at least a lawful evil Blackguard.

I love playing paladins. Whenever I run out of character ideas and the setting allows it, I roll up a paladin. Also, I try to include paladins of some sort in every setting I make.

Post more paladin stories.

I prefer clerics mechanically.

If it makes any difference, I usually just wind up being a paladin in lighter armor.

Because whenever you do, the rest of the party, or at least one of them, will do everything in his power to fuck with you, just to see you squirm as you barely hold yourself back from obliterating his stupid fucking evil warlock or whatever with righteous smiting so brutal and deserved that even fucking Satan himself would shudder. It happens in every game where there is a Paladin, like it were some kind of a law of nature, inherent and necessary to the cosmic order of things. Whenever there is a player that rolls a Paladin, in his group, another player will without exception become possessed by the Devil Himself and roll the edgiest, most blatantly evil motherfucker, just to see that Paladin player grit his teeth and have all the fun drain from the game for him as the game devolves into constant arguing and shit-talking and you try to justify to yourself why exactly you're playing with these fucking scumbags, until you give up an roll a Chaotic Neutral Barbarian just so you can stop giving a fuck in a group that hates you and your attempts to play Lawful Good.

Just. Fucking. Once. Just fucking once, I wish I could play a Paladin without that asshole. That fucking Assassin Rogue who murders peasants for lulz, that fucking Warlock who summons demons and hoards evil artefacts and wanks off to the Book of Vile Darkness, that fucking Anti-Paladin who just HAS to be in your group.

Clerics wear heavy armor too these days.

this really. Playing a paladin is hard because the rest of the group and the dm actively fuck with you and give you shit for it half the time. .

I know That Guy. I found better people to play with.
The thing is, That Guy's gonna be a cunt whether you play Paladin or not, so you might as well smoke him out now.

Because you're the only class who will become effectively dead weight if you step a toe out of your GMs unknown subjective moral standards.

>if you step a toe out of your GMs unknown subjective moral standards
t. bitter ex-paladin

I mean if 'these days' means back in 3.5 like 15 years ago then yes. In PF and 5e they are down to medium armor.

In 3 of the 4 active games I am in there is a player who is a Paladin or the non D&D equivalent to one. One is played like a lawful stupid shit bag who thinks he is god and everyone should respect his authoritah and one is an easy going non confrontational "hey guys I think we should approach problem like this because its the right thing to do, what do you guys say?" kind of Paladin and I hold him dear to my heart for not being a fuckwad.

Because as soon as you pick that class, the GM is thinking "how can I trick him into falling?"

>You didn't read the thief his Miranda rights! Fall
>You didn't bury the dead from this battle! Fall
>Your party member stole something and so you're associating with a thief! Fall
>That creature you just met that was attacking people was chaotic good and you didn't assist it in slaying those bandits! Fall
>You chose to heal a dying party member over a dying commoner with your last lay on hands for the day?! Fall
>Though the man did kill that lady he was a Lawful good assassin so you shouldn't have dealt righteous excecution to him! Fall
It goes on and on.

Exactly, they ruin every party.

>You chose to heal a dying commoner over a dying party member with your last lay on hands for the day?! Fall

From my experience, playing paladins depends entirely on you, your fellow players, and the GM. Are you a bad enough dude to be the only one in the party with a moral code? Is the GM going to make you fall as soon as you run into a trolley problem?

>lawful good assassin
That sounds like an oxymoron. A good assassin is reasonable, but unless there are laws permitting assassination that makes little sense.

>laws permitting
That's not what lawful means, though.

I mean it means you care about the laws and customs and take that into account when making decisions. Laws generally aren't pro-assassination and it's rarely customary to permit that kind of thing. If your career is assassin you're probably not going to be lawful. Personal inner law gets too wishy washy if they're more lax that external law: it's okay to steal to the rich and give to the poor to not!robinhood's code, so he's lawful good and not chaotic good doesn't follow.

>The King's Royal Assassin
>The Divine Blade of a Lawful Good faith
>A member of the old, good Republic that was overthrown by the evil tyrant who still lives by the codes of the past to the best of his ability in a world gone wrong

Just a few ideas off the top of my head. It's definitely possible.

Why hello jackass. I'm sorry you can't handle someone objecting to your psychotic murderhobo character's behavior and asking for a little decency. or actual characterization beyond "HUR DUR KILL EM ALL AND TAKE THEIR STUFF!"

My group has two.

>I am a spy of the state, I kill enemies of the state by order of the Royal Spymaster and by extension the King. My actions may violate laws, but they are in service to a Good ruler, my victims are Evil people and creatures, and those who break the law.

Am I Lawful Good? I am, after all, an enforcer of the laws of a Good kingdom.

Because for whatever reason, there is a disproportionate proportion of people who use RPGs to explore their 'Babbies first experience with grey morality' instead of reading a philosophy book

So that's why you get all the lawful good necromancers and their communist skeletons, paladins who have to align to weird mashups of utilitarianism and american protestant ethical codes, and so on

Personal example- Pokemon games. I have seen ONE pokemon campaign that played it like the games did- lighthearted adventures with the occasional nod to death and cruelty. Every other pokemon game I have ever seen has tried to introduce pokemon death in battle, team rocket using AK-47s, shock collers on rattattas and similar 'Mature' themes that are basically just pic related.

I had that warlock, user.
IC, I took him aside and politely asked him to not do this, that, and the other, or we would have to unfortunately cross blades, and he was strong enough to not hold back against.
OoC, I told him to knock it off so the game doesn't become the paladin and warlock are fighting again, and then the outrageously minmaxed multiclassed paladin is currently murdering the warlock for being a twat game.
It may be poor form, but I told him straight there was nothing he had in his arsenal my paladin would not laugh at, and the DM WOULD greenlight smiting time if I had just cause.

>be the not cleric in my 3.5 game
>have a paladin allied to another good god different from mine
>implying the second our edgy warlock steps out of line im gonna zap the fuck outta him before our pally can even draw her spear

One of my players is going to be a LN paladin of the dead

I usually play Fighters or Wizards, but Paladins are one of my favorite classes. I play them anytime a party won't sperg out about traveling with a Knight who doesn't believe in robbing and murdering everything.

I think when done correctly they make fantastic additions to nearly any game. Problem is everyone thinks they're inherently dumbfucks. I just try to play them like late Arthurian legends, mostly just honorable dudes trying to do the right thing.

By default, yes, but half of them get heavy armor anyway.

Playing a paladin is fun now.

It's the same playing a Space Paladin in the form of a Jedi.

So the other three people in the party can murder their way through hordes of enemies, but if I so much as think about giving someone the old lightsaber slash remedy I get told I'm slipping into the Dark Side.

Nigga please, these guys we're fighting steal children and sell them to Hutts and shit as sex slaves. I gave them a chance to repent and not continue doing it, but they thought it was funny and said the money was great.

How the fuck do Jedi get anything done in RPGs when you can't carry out justice on the worst scum of the galaxy, yet the Smuggler can shoot them in the head and next minute is a hero.

I see why the Jedi in the movies stopped giving a shit.

I haven't gotten a chance yet. I'm going to next chance I get. Probably gonna be a dwarf as well since I've never given them a go.

Got any good stories about either?

Well it is a fairly good thing to be thinking about. Makes encounters more interesting when the paladin finds ways to be moral and get the job done.

Never seen a GM get overly viscous about tricking the paladin into falling but then again haven't seen many paladins either...

Got a picture for just this occasion.

Way I see it lawful good assassin is easily justified when assassin's have a legitimate guild and one of their members spends a lot of time making sure a job is only going to harm evil folks.

Barring those two things though neutral good is still very possible if you strive for something close to Leon: The Professional.

Wait, don't tell me. Roll20, right?

I know, I just prefer playing them as support casters who SMITE AND CLEAVE when appropriate.

And only War clerics start with heavy armor proficiency.

Paladins of Vengeance can easily be any alignment so long as their sworn duty of retribution takes precedence over all their natural impulses.

They're still Lawful as a tertiary alignment. A Chaotic Neutral paladin is actually a Lawful Chaotic Neutral by the virtue that they cannot act against their chosen conduct, making them by defenition Lawful even though they're chaotic. Weird, huh?

That just means they're fighting their natural instincts to run wild, it does not mean their alignment is actually shifted.

Spoony covered this a while ago

youtube.com/watch?v=unNSx7ilS4k&list=PLtffrRBS4J2HE5I3cl75ncRlVlg-79nFP&index=47

Also anti-paladins seem fun
youtube.com/watch?v=3_olkV4g75c&list=PLtffrRBS4J2HE5I3cl75ncRlVlg-79nFP&index=54

While Lawful characters will tend to respect the law, if the law is applied in an orderly and consistent manner, Lawfulness has more to do with your relationship with order. Are you a consistent person who makes plans and schedules, follows those plans and schedules, and acts consistently and non-disruptively? Would you prefer to change a process, system, or organization from the inside instead of demolishing it?

Then you are lawful.

If you're consistently and predictably irresponsible with no sense of time, does that make you Chaotic Neutral or Chaotic Evil?

And I would agree if it were not for the fact that the oath of vengeance specifically includes a section on helping the people who are harmed by your enemies. This seems to imply at least a character who consistently takes responsibility for their actions, and a less then selfish if not wholly altruistic attitude towards the people they encounter.
While vengeance is the harshest oath and the only core oath that could really have a temporarily LE or permanently LN or NG member without them falling, it still requires the paladin to follow a written oath that instructs dedication, and selfless behaviour.

>they cannot act against their chosen conduct, making them by defenition Lawful
No.

Storytime?

>You thought you hung your coat on an ordinary coatrack, but it was actually an innocent litle orphan girl polymorphed into a coatrack and cursed to die if a paladin's coat was hung on her! YOU HELPED EVIL SO YOU FALL!!!

To fuck with you, specifically.

I do, presently. A few sessions ago the bard and wizard of the party conspired to cause him to start a new fashion trend. Now we can't go anywhere without seeing at least one villager wearing a helmet enchanted with Dancing Lights.

I can do whatever the fuck I want as one of the neutral alignments and I don't have to justify anything to anyone.

But user, restrictions breed creativity.

Not really.

I don't think I'd fit well playing a Paladin, or at least LG-type characters. I tend to play evil characters because I like a good villain and it's generally fun tempting the mostly good party into doing devious shit.

I mean hell, in our current game I convinced the party to favour the local crime lord in taking the reigns of a city after the collapse of its government despite their hatred of them. In all fairness however, part of the credit goes to the bro-rogue who is always down for following one of my schemes.

Neutral is the tagalong alignment, you don't take sides. You don't get to join the evil wizards college or fight for the glory of the king.

Neutral alignments are the most beta.

The GM doesn't like my choice of gods.

That's not how neutral alignment worked since like the early 90s.

>Neutral means you can't do anything.

It's all about motives and intent, my dude.

If you join and fight for a good or evil Neutral origination, you're clearly not playing neural. Your alignment should change accordingly.

Alignments are simply teams, not instructions on how to roleplay your character.

Are they, though?

My character, a lawful evil wizard recently helped out a group of Paladins because the opportunity would reward him favour in the eyes of the local ruling body.

He played a team for his own, selfish benefit. I don't see how this would automatically make him good.

At my table I base alignment on what organizations you have the most renown with, rather than introspective moral compasses for each character that you decided on before you even played. Neutral characters are simply ones that haven't dedicated themselves to an organization with stance on the whole cosmic battle of good verses evil, like druid circles or thieves guilds.

If you're helping the lawful good paladins help team lawful evil, then sure, but you might end up being considered just neutral. But if you build enough renown with the paladins and it's hurting team evil, you might be considered good even if you're doing it for selfish reasons kinda like a business man making money off of a crisis by solving it.

So, you're a shit DM?

That seems a bit arbitrary, but I can see where you're getting at.

I've always found the alignment system be a more loosely-defined set of internal morals. But it all really boils down to how the GM decides they want to implement something like this..

I'm just glad my GM isn't very strict with alignments, since at the start of the campaign I was the only Evil character in a party of two good-aligned and one neutral-aligned. I had to pull some real mental gymnastics for the sake of party cohesion.

Huh? Paladin girls are extremely popular on Veeky Forums from what I've seen.

Alignments were designed to simplify, generalize and to stop moral arguments at the table. So, they are quite arbitrary by their very nature.

>"Stev! You just burned a whole village down! You're a paladin fighting for good!"
>DM: "Don't worry, It was an evil village."
>"Oh okay, lets salt the earth then."

>I'm just glad my GM isn't very strict with alignments, since at the start of the campaign I was the only Evil character in a party of two good-aligned and one neutral-aligned. I had to pull some real mental gymnastics for the sake of party cohesion.

Sounds pointless and awful.

That's because autists get off to enslaving and corrupting them, user.

Of course they do. It's doubly more impressive if you can come up with a memorable character while snapping out of a comfort zone and denying yourself all the advantages from having a more vague moral outline.

It's like making self-imposed challenges in video games. Possibly very satisfying.

So, you're a shitty roleplayer that uses alignments as a personality and to justify your obnoxious behavior?

Hey, I'm a sadist, not an autist. There are many different kinds of ist.

I'd like to play as a succubus or "fallen woman" that's been reverse-corrupted into becoming a chaste paladin.

I don't know what you'd call that.

>Never seen a GM get overly viscous about tricking the paladin into falling

Not him, but it's not usually tricking, it's usually fiating by retarded bullshit into falling.

I once had a game where

>You weren't happy and approving of an NPC murdering explicitly good people in order to swell his army with angels? YOU FALL!

I played a true neutral rogue in a party with 2 paladins

Avoiding conflict is as easy as treating the paladin as a friend and making him understand that what you do does not concern him, and if you do have to take actions toward the evil side just try to do it without him noticing and/or with the least amount of bloodshed

Negative my man. Domains that grant Heavy Armor currently include:
>War, as mentioned. Martial Weapons as well.
>Life, for whatever reason.
>Nature, which makes even less sense.
>Tempest, on top of Martial Weapons
>Forge (UA)
>Grave (UA)
>Protection (UA)

In the current edition, there are more domains that grant Heavy Armor than those that don't (Knowledge, Light, Trickery, Death).

On the subject of Paladins, the last time I played one another player thought it was hilarious to "accidentally" catch me in his alchemist bombs. I wouldn't have cared as much if he did anything useful, but there were several combats he did more damage to me than the monsters.

He fell off a cliff, I didn't remind him he got wings last session. Oops.

>thinking evil has ever not been rewarded at any time in history

You poor, summer child.

You're a retard as well. Carry on, then.

Nothing good really, the shit-bag Paladin does your usually 'that guy' stuff as a paladin like insisting he detects evil on every person he meets ever, and you know why should they object if they have nothing to hide. He also got into a out of game yelling match with the rogue because the rogue held onto a note that would advance the plot and didn't like the fact the paladin was all 'give it to me, you basically have no right to read it or decide everything'. I stepped in as a cleric, same god as the paladin and told him hes being a shitbird and god wouldn't want you acting that way and threatening violence against your own friends.

He also got into a fight with the CN Sorcereress when she wanted to defile some ancient tomb by stealing a bunch of gems that were inlaid within the walls. Came to an argument about how they were both not gonna be the first one to leave and a bunch of bullshit.

He also got into a argument with the resident psionic character whose powers were keeping the party within someones dream and if he left or died it would all come crashing down. Paladin insisted he wouldn't leave without the guy and the guy was like don't be fucking retarded I have to leave last or we get fucked. Paladin ended up being so stubborn that the psionic said "fine, fuck you" and left and fucked up the Paladin pretty bad.

I don't dislike the player, but he is very prone to easy frustration and just should not play a Paladin. Not the first and only game hes been that kind of shit, but certainly the worst. Glad that game has been on hiatus for a while.

The other game with the easy going Paladin is nice, I am the GM and hes the only player with experience and were both chilling back and trying to get the 3 new to rpg players more comfortable with playing and speaking up.

Also playing a Jedi in a Force and Destiny game. Sounds like your GM is just a dick. Jedi canonically kill people all the time. The only time I've been pulled to the dark side was an instance of violence beyond what was required to survive and complete the mission.

At the expense of derailing the thread a bit how are the new people faring?

I'm currently playing a paladin who worships a goddess of laughter. His tabard turns into a jester hood at the top and his face plate is a grinning mask. He also has a smiley face on his shield. He's on a quest to reclaim the ancient text of the Divine Comedia for his Pope. His hammer is called Zillyhoo, which in his people's tongue translates to Last Laugh. He also has throwing hammers that he juggles. It's fantastic.

Why do you think nobody plays paladins?

recently retired a 30th level paladin

I play them depending on how the DM treats alignments, if it is a Strict
>you must be lawful stupid
with like no flexibility then I don't do it, I do if that is the type of character I want, but rarely do i do that because I find those kinds of character to be boring to play and roleplay as, and they tend to drag the party down a bit.

why would a paladin be with that group of people in the first place?

Because paladins were originally a super rare and ultra-powerful class for players who managed to roll high enough ability scores. If you just want to play a holy warrior, play a cleric.

A large amount of DM's that I've played with would enforce the traditional THAT GUY mentality of lawful good.

which is one of the reasons i became a DM in the first place

Pretty good actually. One of them is just sort of going with the flow and doesn't really have any initiative or aspirations for his character (just like the player as a person though) but is completely unoffensive. One took surprising amount of initiative and actually started acquiring books and reading world lore and stuff. The third is a nice middleground between the two, the more we play the more they involve themselves which is good. I find thats usually the biggest hurdle for new players is just getting comfortable to speak out and start dialog instead of just sort of keeping quiet and following the experienced people. We just reached the end of the first chapter of Kingmaker so I think i'm gonna run a couple of one-shots and see what they think of non D&D systems.

What do Paladin requirements 30 years ago have to do with the OPs assumptions that Paladin players are currently dwindling?