"God might forgive you, but I won't"

I have no idea. Maybe a divine liche?

Yes, though that's really pushing the line between LG and LN. A Paladin of St. Cuthbert would have no issue with it, a Paladin of Heironeous would have more trouble. In other words, depends on the deity.

Not a human if memory serves, but Shiro from Shakugan no Shana counts.

It is permissible to kill a criminal if this is necessary for the welfare of the whole community. However, this right belongs only to the one entrusted with the care of the whole community -- just as a doctor may cut off an infected limb, since he has been entrusted with the care of the health of the whole body.

I would say a paladin is one entrusted with the care of the community.

They're almost always sworn knights granted de facto law enforcement powers by their church and state, correct?

Do the setting's governments strictly follows post-Enlightment beliefs about due process and 21st century understandings of use of force? If no, a Paladin who wastes time dumping a bandit chief on the "proper authorities" for a "fair trial" is wishy-washy at best and committing a dereliction of duty at worst.

>They're almost always sworn knights granted de facto law enforcement powers by their church and state, correct?

Pretty much. At least in D&D, so it depends on the deity in question too. A paladin of a lawful or good God or Concept will likely be treated as an ally and equal by other good aligned lawmen.

> "The way I see it, it's up to God to forgive people. It's just my job to arrange the meeting."

>"If they were actually a good person then they have nothing to worry about".

Yes. A god can be fallible, but a paladin cannot - or he is no longer a true paladin.

"God is forgiving, I assure you. Just be sure to ask Him when you get there."

If the local church and state and whatever-else form of government all agree that X villain has been given enough chances and is beyond redemption, then they might task a paladin with bringing said villain in, Dead. Or, in the case of undead, Destroyed.

In that scenario, OP's quote seems more merciful than merciless. There may be hope of forgiveness by a deity, but it will not be rendered by paladin's hand.

Yes. That's a Paladin's job.

Smiting everyone who's evil is lawful and good, so yes.

No, a paladin cannot disobey their god. Or at least, not more than once, at least as far as killing someone goes.

That being said, there's no reason that a god, nor his mortal servants, must be forgiving in life.

Max Payne

Jesus

How about a paladin who serves a truly all-beneficent deity that's too blindly trusting to protect their own interests?

The guy who made that image must never heard of Revenants before, since this is their origin story.

Depends on the setting, but generally speaking no.

Paladins are the servants of their deity and extensions of His will. If God would forgive the villain, a Paladin should do so as well.

That doesn't mean you have to go full retard and just pardon every monster and criminal you meet because your God is a forgiving God, but it does mean you can't just go full "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out."

>obligatory Gary Gygax quote

"Paladins are not stupid, and in general there is no rule of Lawful Good against killing enemies. The old adage about nits making lice applies. Also, as I have often noted, a paladin can freely dispatch prisoners of Evil alignment that have surrendered and renounced that alignment in favor of Lawful Good. They are then sent on to their reward before they can backslide.

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is by no means anything but Lawful and Good. Prisoners guilty of murder or similar capital crimes can be executed without violating any precept of the alignment. Hanging is likely the usual method of such execution, although it might be beheading, strangulation, etc. A paladin is likely a figure that would be considered a fair judge of criminal conduct.

The Anglo-Saxon punishment for rape and/or murder of a woman was as follows: tearing off of the scalp, cutting off of the ears and nose, blinding, chopping off of the feet and hands, and leaving the criminal beside the road for all bypassers to see. I don't know if they cauterized the limb stumps or not before doing that. It was said that a woman and child could walk the length and breadth of England without fear of molestation then...

Chivington might have been quoted as saying "nits make lice," but he is certainly not the first one to make such an observation as it is an observable fact. If you have read the account of wooden Leg, a warrior of the Cheyenne tribe that fought against Custer et al., he dispassionately noted killing an enemy squaw for the reason in question.

I am not going to waste my time and yours debating ethics and philosophy. I will state unequivocally that in the alignment system as presented in OAD&D, an eye for an eye is lawful and just, Lawful Good, as misconduct is to be punished under just laws.

Lawful Neutrality countenances malign laws. Lawful Good does not.

Mercy is to be displayed for the lawbreaker that does so by accident. Benevolence is for the harmless. Pacifism in the fantasy milieu is for those who would be slaves. They have no place in determining general alignment, albeit justice tempered by mercy is a NG manifestation, whilst well-considered benevolence is generally a mark of Good." -Gary Gygax 2005

Gygax also said that slavery is Chaotic Good as long as the slaves are evil.

Take that as you will.

To be fair if you ping as an evil person you're not really a person anymore.

Nah, that was because of family connections.

Gygax was able to divorce the fantasy worlds he created from reality and accepted that the past is a foreign country.

I would rather that than all fantasy being bland, unchallenging modernity playing dressup

If we're talking a setting with real gods, then you either follow your god's ideals, or find another god. Otherwise you're a shitty paladin and will fall.

Slavery isn't wrong if it's done correctly. One of my gripes about the way history is taught is that people, especially Americans, have developed this gut response of outrage at the -word- slavery, even if the slavery in question is different entirely from the infamous chattel slavery of the 19th and earlier centuries.

For instance, slavery as punishment for a crime is not only just, it's actually preferable to a prison sentence, as they would be creating value instead of simply draining tax dollars. It need not be permanent, either. Similarly, indentured servitude, properly regulated, would be an excellent "first rung" on the ladder out of homelessness or poverty, providing food, shelter, skill at a trade, established work history, and perhaps a small stipend.

Tl;dr - not all slavery is negroes and whips, and why people can't figure that out is beyond me.

>Every day he looks in the mirror and points a gun to his face
>Believes he's bad luck and takes drinking
>believes he's perpetuating his bad luck and depression due to his drinking
>starts drinking again at the end of 3
It's like, his willpower went into negative. It's so negative he doesn't have the willpower to kill himself anymore
Fucker's probably spending his jet black credit card on every type of alcohol in the world, hoping he vomits his liver out

The problem even with idealized slavery is, much like the America prison system, it creates an incentive to have criminals, because they're free labor nobody cares about

Yes, but only when spiritually flatfooted.

>that image
Did you know that the Legend of Zelda did that? It's not really that uncommon idea to have regret or vengeance push people to haunt or remain around for far longer than intended.

*tips fedora*

There's never going to be a perfect justice system, but if it's a choice between prisons or slavery as punishment for certain crimes, slavery is preferable. Though it wouldn't be universal, either, obviously - flogging should be an acceptable punishment for certain crimes, and most really minor stuff should be handled with fines. In my "idealized system," there would be fewer laws on the books in the first place, as well.

In any case, though, that wasn't my point. My point is that slavery is not inherently evil. Chattel slavery is, because it's fundamentally unjust, but certain

I'm going to do some amateur theology that I'm pretty sure is five kinds of heretical here.

>God is absolute good, love, justice, law et cetera
>It is therefore the duty to uphold God's order
>Mercy is at best a deviation of the law and at worst ignoring the law
>Therefore it is a privilege that should be reserved for God alone, only He can grant mercy (ie. grant expemptions to His own law)
>A paladin's duty is merely to execute the law
I guess you could justify that quote like that.

Notice that the Enlightenment is the only era in history to have named itself. There was already some or other understanding of a fair trial in Medieval Europe. For example, in France the presumption of innocence wasn't introduced by the French Revolution. It was already there centuries earlier, introduced (or at least formalized) by Saint Louis. In a medieval setting that seeks to emulate Europe at the time, the only ones who would be utterly robbed of the right to a fair trial would be outlaws, who had already been declared to be outside of the scope of the law.

I'm all for Republicanism and popular sovereignity, but let's be mindful of the biases the "Enlightenment" has snuck into our view of the past.

No.

Just play a Lawful Evil fighter. That's what you really want.

Sam Vimes

So not being a pansy post-modern morality paladin constitutes as evil now?

>God MIGHT forgive you

It's not up to the paladin to forgive, it's up to God. By killing the person he's enacting the form of justice he's dedicated his life to.

that's actually a paraphrased quote from vladimir putin

Wasn't he also the one who told some Chechen sympathizers that if they were such big fans of circumcision, he could show them some experts who would make sure nothing would ever grow back down there? That guy is full of BBEG quotes.

Bringing up Sam Vimes in any discussion of Paladins is practically cheating. The man is so Lawful Good that the darkness itself decided it would be better to serve Sam Vimes than oppose him.

Probably not. The quote implies that God is distant, only really important in the afterlife, and that you can just throw away lives and let God sort them out on the promise that the good ones will get into Heaven early and the bad ones will go to Hell anyway.

Unless you're in some fringe setting that screws with alignment like Eberron, you're supposed to emulate your God, and serve their will. A Paladin who follows a God, and not an ideal, would probably get himself in some pretty bad trouble ignoring his God's ways if that God was one of forgiveness rather than retribution (because D&D Gods won't really be both).

He'd be breaking a tenet of his faith, and probably need to do some form of penance. If he "lived by" that quote, he'd be on a slippery slope to permanently falling.

D&D ALIGNMENT IS SHIT !
SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT !

Paladins have God on speeddial. If God says that he should smite, he will do so, or Fall.

If God tells him to show mercy he will do so, or fall.

>if that God was one of forgiveness rather than retribution

This is why I always assumed only harsher, more martial-inclined gods actually have formal Paladin orders. Nothing about the Paladin is at all "nice": it's a class built around self-sacrifice and delivering heavy-handed but fair justice. A Paladin could be an amiable and understanding fellow but this meme where that's the /only/ way to play a Paladin is the reason why it's basically become the weenie class.

This is why when I write up my own settings, I make it so the god's existence is nowhere near certain from a meta standpoint and the Paladins just kind of make a bunch of assumptions about where their powers come from and what they're supposed to do.

>I hard-code CLEAVE-AND-SMITE-bots into my setting
>Not being an asshole is for lame losers
>I'm still butthurt mom and dad made me go to church

Knowing my god is easier to charm than I am, I make sure there's no chance the evildoer manages to convince him to let him free.

That sounds like the opposite of what user is saying

>Anyone who doesn't play a wishy washy boyscout Paladin is a Smitebot Edgelord

Historically, knights were jerks. A knight given a free pass by his god to act as law enforcement would probably be an even bigger jerk. But you can be a jerk and still be a good guy. This idiotic belief Paladins and their gods MUST adhere to 21st century morality politics is the worst. Paladins are at their most interesting when they're rough-around-the-edges. No one wants the single-minded Smite ALL The EVIL robot breaking down every single door, but no one wants the guy who derails every single combat by demanding the action stop for a "fair trial" either.

I don't understand why the God of Good-Natured Discussion, Peace, and Forgiveness would want followers who train from a young age as warriors with special powers meant to help them find and kill things which go against that god's ethos. Unless those warriors are strictly reactive instead of proactive, but that's one way to play a Paladin. Not the only way.

Because they live in world with flesh eating abominations literally escaped from hell. They defend against things much worse than outlaws and heretics

Fair enough, at least in regards to Paladins who serve the God of Agreeableness.

I get what you're saying, but I refuse this belief Paladins acting like anything other than Silver Age Captain America is edgelording.

it's Oath of the Ancients, iirc

gandalf

Literally Vengeance Revenant.

>starts drinking again at the end of 3
He only takes a sip before leaving the bottle and walking away. He's fine

Harry Dresden

that is literally what's happening with my paladin of vengeance right now

joined a war against a neighboring country because while he left to buy supplies for his people, he returned to the abbey to see it burning with the enemy country's flag above it all

during the fighting he learns that the entirety of the country has been worshipping an archdaemon thats been posing as the country's fire god

even when confronted with the truth the people believe they are still in the right and refuse to stop the danger

gets taken to hell with the group at one point to the archdaemon's brother and refuses a deal with it to save the abbey's souls for it's own worship, watches them all get devoured berserk advent style

is denied vengeance by the team leader, a ranger, who during an interrogation of an enemy who branded the paladin's forehead, the ranger shoots him, instead of allowing my paladin to use any torture methods

finally fight the enemy demon knight who burned down the abbey, beat him, entire party is saying to back off, that the light goddess "guersha" that I follow wouldn't want this, they also believe that the knight can be saved, but you know what? that sunovabitch was human when he did it!

"may the light of Guersha find you in the afterlife,
may she cleanse and forgive your sins there,
for in this world I cannot!"

Branding Smite

was I in the wrong?

what do you expect us to say? Yes? Nigga that was awesome. We all love an underdog.

That was awesome but you need some better grammar and punctuation.

Skulduggery pleasant

Nah, paladins have to forgive even when they kill. They can never revel in causing suffering, or in the satisfaction of being vindicated.

This doesn't mean they can't kill. What matters is how they kill and how they feel about the kill.

Absolutely. Righteous Paladins are in high demand because of all the limp wristed 21st-century morality Paladins are a dime a dozen.

yes

but they still have to act on their gods will, even if they personally do not forgive the individual