Was it easier to play a Paladin back then when...

Why do people on Veeky Forums love to invent problems so much? Aren't there any actual issues to complain about? Like, good companies going under, embezzlement scandals, scams or writers shooting the shit with new releases?

That still doesn't answer the question of why Paladins are doomed to fall while Evil has unlimited continues to rape babies.

I mean, didn't anyone who wrote any of the books realize the connotations that would create?

Is it truly evil? Does it evil? If yes, smite it with all your power. Your God has given you the burden to see through the evil disguise. Paladin's job is to protect the good, the weak, the innocent. Paladin's utmost duty is to smite evil.

To leave evil unpunished, even to show compassion to it is to help it. Nothing is more damning than such sin.

Redeeming is never your job. It's cleric's. A custom of detainment should only be observed if the villain hasn't attacked you, or, worse, murdered innocents first.

Remember: your God lets you know if an orc, a demon or sinister-looking vizier are good with but a look at them. If they are not - they're to be smiten the moment they commit the vile act.

But who cares about the rape babies when you can exterminate them?

Because if I can fall from smiting an evil person who begged for mercy, there should be a point where someone becomes so evil that they will never be redeemed, even if they wanted to.

Otherwise, why even have Paladins as a class if they're not allowed to be paladins?

You do not fall from smiting evil. Ever.
Whoever told you otherwise preys off your gullibility.

did your mouse miss

Your DM is doing wrong.

This is what happened in our recent campaign
>Assail the Dindu's castle and finally meet him in combat
>Tough fight, but between our mages locking his shit and us pummeling him, we manage to bring him down to like 3 HP (which the DM stated after our Rogue landed a sneak attack)
>Start of the new round, DM tells us that the Dindu throws down his weapon and surrenders and claims that he wants to redeem himself.
>Keep in mind, he was responsible for every major atrocity that happened throughout the campaign, leading to over 1000 civilian deaths and widespread famine
>At first, I'm like "fuck you, you're beyond salvation" but then the DM told me that if I killed a surrendered opponent offering to change their ways, I'd fall because I have to show mercy or some shit.
>Cue 1 1/2 session escort mission back to town where we have to defend him from shit.
>Then 2 sessions later, we find out he escaped and razed another village to the ground.
And this is a running theme by the way.

Well even if you do fall, that only makes you a better protector.

An Oathbreaker can do things no Paladin can.

Don't perceive falling as a limitation, but a gateway to becoming ruthless and efficient at cleansing evil.

If I wanted to play an inquisitor, I'd play a fucking inquisitor. I shouldn't have to become evil just to do my job as a good guy defending the weak.

But a good guy can't defend the weak, which includes those that have surrendered.

>dindu

Whatever little credibility you might have had? Gone.

At this point I'd just disregard the DM's shit and kill Dindu. Sometimes you have to be a little bad to be a greater good, even as a paladin.

Hard choices like this make characters interesting, escorting a villain back to town so that he can escape is boring, and even the most devout/single-minded characters can change when challenged.

I think the question here is, why is it so important to you that you play a Paladin that does everything he's told to do?

>"take them to the proper authorities."
"I am the proper authority"

And thus you fell to the villain deceit. Now you know better.

But, if you feel merciful... Wherever in doubt, ask your God - does that person feel remorse? Would it commit further evil? Remember, you can always tell if a person is evil.

It's not my fault that people on this board defend always evil creatures by stating "not all orcs!" in response.

A part of me thinks that it's because monstrous races became playable but for fucks sake, even in books that focus on the exception, it still makes a point of stating that most members of the always evil races are still fucking evil by default.

What's the purpose for punishment? Is it vengeance? Getting rid of them? Rehabilitation? A paladin wouldn't care for the first one, and if someone honestly wants for mercy then you should at least stop and listen - but it doesn't mean you need to just let them get away with all the shit they did.

If there's a good solid prison to throw them into and it's the law of the land, then throw them there. If it's impossible to keep this guy under the bars or you think there's no way he can ever turn to goodness, kill the fucker.

And if your DM makes it so the prison breaks and they get out and go right back to the crime? Well, you gave them a chance and they fucked it up. No more of that shit.

Really I don't get why people think it's so fucking hard, why keep making these threads, why keep bumping them. Being a paladin is easy peasy.

>It's not my fault that people on this board defend always evil creatures by stating "not all orcs!" in response.

I don't think anyone here thinks you should go any easier on them if they do evil shit. You're just strawmanning and projecting your own issues to us.

>Remember, you can always tell if a person is evil.
Apparently not actually.
>Offer to kill all orcs? You can't because #NotAllOrcs!
>Offer to slay local banditry? Can't because they're just doing what they can to survive!
>Offer to slay Dindu who orchestrated the entire plot? Can't because he laid down his weapon and said he feels guilty about it, honest.
Also, there was one time I couldn't even slay a demon because one of the players was playing a NG fiend and this LITERAL PERSONIFICATION OF EVIL GIVEN FORM might be redeemed as that PC was.

It's insane.

Nigga, being a paladin fucking blows.

Everyone wants you to fall but evil gets a free pass because they have a tragic backstory.

Just the other day there was a fucker going on about how wiping out orcs was evil, even though people told him that the book itself said that it was okay if the orcs you're killing were evil.

These bleeding hearts are fucking everywhere nowadays.

Tell me why you won't fall, again?

Your GM is bad and he should *feel* bad.

Repeat after me:
Lawful Good does not mean Lawful Nice.
Lawful Good does not mean Lawful Nice.
Lawful Good does not mean Lawful Nice.

>Offer to kill all orcs? You can't because #NotAllOrcs!
You mean ALL the orcs? Or just the ones doing a bunch of raping and murdering? The former is genocide and genocide is evil.

>Offer to slay local banditry? Can't because they're just doing what they can to survive!
Keep stabbing them until they surrender, then take them to jail.

>Offer to slay Dindu who orchestrated the entire plot? Can't because he laid down his weapon and said he feels guilty about it, honest.
Jail. Also,

>Dindu
Please stop using that word.

Tragic backstories don't excuse for shit:half the party probably was just as badly off, and they didn't turn evil for it. Turning evil was the guy's choice.

Why would he really honestly all of a sudden regret what he did? Put your sense motive (or insight or whatever they call it these days) to work. Maybe leave a weapon around for him and turn your back to him, he'll probably give you the excuse. Or if he really is genuine, take him along and toss him to jail - are you really telling me that isn't a punishment? Jail's a shitty place, especially in medieval times.

Being a paladin is easy, you just suck.

Again - killing orcs doing bad shit is good, going the extra mile to genocide is evil. It says that in the books. This really isn't that hard.

Are you Mr. "I have straight A's in history class" from the alignment thread from a day or so ago?

If not, it's not evil so long as the creatures you're doing it to register as evil

>Because if I can fall from smiting an evil person who begged for mercy

Him begging for mercy is only an opportunity for you to give him the mercy of the blade and send him to be judged by a higher force.

Begging for mercy does not mean that mercy should be given. You took tally of his crimes, you judged him, and you found him wanting.

Sentence: Death. To be carried out post-haste, in accordance to the creed and the laws of justice and the divine orders of the high heavens.

It really is that fucking simple.

I don't frequent alignment threads and I fully acknowledge I know shit of history, but I do know my rules and I can say you're objectively wrong.

If they're just minding their own business, living in their tribe somewhere off and doing nothing to you, marching in and killing them all is evil.

You always can tell. If it does evil, then it's of evil alignment. If it even pings your evil detector then it's meant to be put down as soon as it gives you a just cause to do it. No two ways about it. Grey and Gay morality is for thieves and swindlers, paladin's world is white and black.

Play a Vengeance Paladin.

Orcs were made by a CE god to serve his CE purposes and they frequently go to war with either themselves or other races because they are told that everything belongs to them and everyone else stole it from them.

Orcs are inherently disposed towards being evil bastards user, doesn't matter if less than 1% of them decided to become a viable member of society, if they come up as evil, they've done SOMETHING to deserve being smote over.

>The former is genocide and genocide is evil.

Wrong. Genocide of an evil race is not evil. It is good. The fact that some of them are not completely evil is irrelevant.

Good and Evil are universal laws and primordial forces of the multiverse. Angels and Solars are intrinsically Good and created from literal Goodness, even though some Angels fall, and their job description is the genocide of demonkind, who are intrinsically evil, even though some of them are redeemed.

Like it or not, feel free to consider alignments stupid and the fact that "Good" and "Evil" were ever added to the classic and much more morally ambiguous axis of Law vs. Chaos, but this is objective fact.

Genocide is Good. Capital punishment can be Good. War in the name of Peace is Good.

>, doesn't matter if less than 1% of them decided to become a viable member of society
Yeah, no.
That's straight up evil.
Even the BoBD says any grandscale killing of evil tends to end up evil because good people get caught in the middle.

I remember a thread a little while ago about whether genocide was evil or not. I'm pretty sure you people were all there too.

Are we just going to repeat that thread? Because it was pretty stupid. I mean I don't think anyone learned anything or changed their minds about anything back then either: it was a waste of everyone's time and so will this be.

Someone, post the "Paladin job is killing evil" paste already.

If they do no evil, nor feel inclined to it should the opportunity provide itself then their alignment wouldn't be evil.

Quite wrong. Genocide has been stated many times in the books to be evil. It's never stated to be good.

At absolute best, genocide is neutral.

See, the thing about that is that it actually creates far more evil than it solves. You've got an army's worth of guys in PTSD for murdering orc babies. Then they will take those issues out on everyone around them, very possibly turning evil themselves - even if they don't, they'll cause significant deteoriation in mental health and put a dent on economy for fixing that, bringing the kingdom to a downward spiral. Pretty evil stuff.

Yeah, when it's done by idiots who don't have LITERAL RADAR THAT DETECTS IF YOU'RE EVIL OR NOT!

Think about it user, you're playing a class where you have the ability to detect how much evil is radiating off of someone, how the fuck is any *good* orc going to get caught in the crossfire?

>If they do no evil, nor feel inclined to it should the opportunity provide itself then their alignment wouldn't be evil.

Most of the time the assumption is that they do it to each other. They wreck other orc tribes, and other humanoids like gnolls and goblins and such.

Why not let them do that? Why do you need to butt in?

This is why an Oathbreaker works.
Ends to justify the means.

>At absolute best, genocide is neutral.
Good enough.
>You've got an army's worth of guys in PTSD for murdering orc babies.
Such individuals wouldn't be paladins, because in order to become a paladin, you need to be willing to slay ALL evil for the sake of good.

>Ends to justify the means.

But that never works.

Pretty much this. They are on the side of gods and angels. They are not worrying about subjective morality and other bullshit from our society that people try to spew.

Okay then, how about something along the lines of this.
>Monsters kill monsters, paragons of virtue die trying.

>in order to become a paladin, you need to be willing to slay ALL evil for the sake of good

In order to become a paladin, you need to be better than everyone. That doesn't include killing orc babies. That's the easy way out.

The hard way out is to get them adopted and raised as functional members of society. If they turn out to be shitheads, well enough, then you gotta kill them. But you give them the chance.

Just killing them is the same as killing the baby of two serial killers. You wouldn't do that either.

Because they wage war with ANY sentient creatures, whether they're other orc tribes who can take it or a human settlement where the inhabitants don't stand a chance.

You think it's a coincidence that in areas with civil wars, some groups eventually branch out to take resources from neighboring groups?

Is this a metaphor for niggers

if you want to raise baby orcs become a fucking priest. Not a holy warrior for fucks sake.

No one said you have to do it youself. There are plenty of priests to take that bugger off your hands.

Only an issue if your dm is shit.

>If they're just minding their own business, living in their tribe somewhere off and doing nothing to you, marching in and killing them all is evil.

No. If they are Evil, killing them is never Evil. No, not even if they're babies. You might consider it evil, but in this, you're objectively wrong.

If it helps, you can substitute "Good" for "A" and "Evil" for "B", and think of both A and B as assholes, but the fact still remains, no matter what you think about it. Alignment systems do not do relativism and they were never intended to, and any attempt to relativize them has only ended in them being rendered irrelevant due to openness of interpretation.

A Lawful Good Paladin is completely within his rights to judge anything and everything that is literally considered Evil, even if they're in the forest, minding their own business, because by their nature, intrinsically, they are Evil, purveyors and spreaders of Evil, and will not hesitate to eat children and raid villages, or summon daemons.

This is part of the reason alignments are usually stupid and why Paladins easily become one-dimensional characters and pose issues in parties in games where people are trying to play potentially morally ambiguous characters, and why Paladins falling is practically a meme (because most DM:s have a highly subjective interpretation of "evil" completely divorced from the actual nature of Evil).

Closer to sandniggers, really

>You might consider it evil, but in this, you're objectively wrong.
>Alignment systems do not do relativism and they were never intended to, and any attempt to relativize them has only ended in them being rendered irrelevant due to openness of interpretation.

It says in the books that genocide is evil, though.

You gonna scan every person?
Also, Ao said that gods should calm down and Detect evil now only works on Evil Matter, ie. demons and devils (and yugoloths, but barely anyone uses them).

Care to show any source?

>In order to become a paladin, you need to be better than everyone. That doesn't include killing orc babies. That's the easy way out.
Okay, now I'm sure you're Mr. straight A's in history class because he said this exact same bullshit.

It's neither my responsibility nor my job to take care of orc orphans. My duty is towards the eradication of evil in any form it may take. God gave me the eyes to detect evil and the power to smite it. If your prerogative is to put the lives of evil on the same level as the lives of good, become a cleric and preach your sermons to those who have the patience to listen.

Because a neutral goblin tribe enslaved by them is sick and tired of it, but can't quite run away. Because there's a peaceful gnome village without even the weakest militia just behind the hills to which those tribes rolled over.

So I should steal an entire generation of orc babies and heavily indoctrinate them?

As long as is a good god, yeah.
Go ahead.
The Orc Crusade of Torm will come.

>Okay, now I'm sure you're Mr. straight A's in history class because he said this exact same bullshit.
Or maybe it's not bullshit?

>It's neither my responsibility nor my job to take care of orc orphans.
Again, you don't have to. You just have to do something a little more complicated with them than killing them.

>heavily indoctrinate them
If that's what you call giving them the same decent childhood you would to a human or dwarf child, then yes, I suppose.

Or maybe it just reflects that your own childhood was shit and you're now projecting that to the rest of us.

>You gonna scan every person?
Yes, because my blade is only for the wicked.

Uh... I was thinking along the lines of "Noddite cult of Zarus"

I'm not the OP, just a curious user trying to do what's right.

Even on a fantasy game where races have different racial traits. he believes that all races are equal and its just a question of teaching and nurturing. Well, Then scrap the whole Good/Evil and Lawfull/Chaotic from the game, it doesnt works for you, specially because killing fathers and mothers and stealing babies so you can set them against their own race is also fucked up then.

>Zarus

You know he's evil, right?

I mean everyone here advocating slaying all the orcs really sounds like a worshipper of Zarus, but Zarus won't have paladins...

>Or maybe it's not bullshit?
No, it's pretty fucking bullshit. It doesn't matter if you feel that it's the "easy way out," because what matters is that evil doesn't have a chance to harm innocent lives. People who purposefully do the hardest option available just because "that way's the easy way out" are fools, because the goal of any community is to fix their problems in the most easy and effective means possible.
>Again, you don't have to. You just have to do something a little more complicated with them than killing them.
And you don't think that raising a group of orphans to hate their own race isn't something an evil person would do? At least by killing them, their souls will automatically avoid punishment like their brethren who fell to my blade.

NODDITE cult, NODDITES, the only ones who actually spare others, and wish to share their culture because they believe it's the best.

>Yeah, when it's done by idiots who don't have LITERAL RADAR THAT DETECTS IF YOU'RE EVIL OR NOT!

I really always hated this part of Paladins, honestly. I feel like reading auras and determining alignment should be some high-level priest magic or some shit like that, a form of divine divination.

The idea that a Paladin, starting out, can just sorta go around and read auras BUT ONLY THE AURAS OF EVIL PEOPLE was always complete and utter horseshit. I don't understand why the mechanic remains.

At best, I'd let a Paladin perform a ritual to see if he can determine, with the aid of his divine patron, if someone is evil or not, and still, they would have issues just walking up to them and stabbing them in the face, because it's sorta hard to prove just exactly they actually did to deserve it.

Could lead to some interesting roleplaying, as well, as the Paladin meets someone he thinks is evil, decides to determine if the person is evil, succeeds, and then looks for evidence so the person can be judged. Or his patron doesn't show him that person at all, but gives him some other mark, somewhere, in the city or nearby, because premonitions and divine visions aren't perfect, and the gods work in mysterious ways, etc.

But at-will detect evil? Horseshit. Utter horseshit, and makes it hard to believe that anyone evil anywhere ever gets into a position of power.

I don't know whether "different racial traits" and "all races are equal" would go against each other any. You can raise a human and an orc together, and the orc will likely be physically stronger but both will have about the same odds of turning out to be a good person.

>People who purposefully do the hardest option available just because "that way's the easy way out" are fools, because the goal of any community is to fix their problems in the most easy and effective means possible.
Yeah, well, it still says in the book that you're wrong, so...

>And you don't think that raising a group of orphans to hate their own race isn't something an evil person would do?
No? Where did I even say that? Most likely those orcs would in fact be raised to do the opposite: to give their own race the chance, for that was the chance they themselves were given and it turned out to be pretty okay.

I mean, telling them to hate all other orcs sounds kind of backwards, doesn't it?

Ok, let's start over.

What problems do any of you have with Oaths?

They don't have that on 5e.
They can sense undead and fiends like a radar though.

>I really always hated this part of Paladins, honestly. I feel like reading auras and determining alignment should be some high-level priest magic or some shit like that, a form of divine divination.
Detect Evil is a divine spell, it's just that paladins get it innately.
>The idea that a Paladin, starting out, can just sorta go around and read auras BUT ONLY THE AURAS OF EVIL PEOPLE was always complete and utter horseshit.
It only works on creatures with 5+ HD though.
>But at-will detect evil? Horseshit. Utter horseshit, and makes it hard to believe that anyone evil anywhere ever gets into a position of power.
Well, there are ways to mask alignment...

>Well, there are ways to mask alignment...
I get that skinning a fiend can mask good, and a good guy could have killed a fiend for Good reasons, but how does anyone look at a guy wearing angel skin and think
>Yep, not evil, must be a gift.

That's the whole point of the paladin class. Protect the innocent, detect the evil, smite the evil.

>Yeah, well, it still says in the book that you're wrong, so...
Yeah, well, it also says that there's exceptions to the rules, so...
>Where did I even say that?
If you raise an Orc in a human society, especially one where the populace has dealt with Orc raids in the past, the Orcs will end up developing a hatred for their own race.

Maybe it's because of the prejudice that they deal with from non-orcs, maybe it's because they can't understand why their race would do something like that, or maybe it's because the person who raised them unwittingly taught them to hate all the qualities that make orcs what they are.

But best believe, they'll hate them, just like any other lawful/good aligned citizen in a lawful/good society.

Except that Charisma, Intelligence and Wisdom are important to be able to function in a society.with law and order. Guess what the dumb and stronger orc would lack by his racials? D&D is eugenic.

In war, kill them. Charge through the ranks to kill their leaders. Storm the tower to kill the leader.

If he begs for mercy, demand to know how many of his own enemies HE ever gave mercy. If he continues begging, shrug and turn your back to him. He will try to stab you in the back, allowing you to end him at last.

Then let all the priests and merchants and politicians do their diplomacy thing. Let them forge friendship between the races. Bring a lasting peace and mutual prosperity instead of keeping the downright spiral of death and war going. You're the paladin: your war is over.

How is that so hard?

There are amulets and spells that obscure alignment for the purpose of masking the user from detect X spells that are completely innocuous unless you know anything about magic items.

Genocide in general is. Genocide of evil isn't genocide. Unless you want to argue that Good is literally Evil.

>Care to show any source?
>ctrl-f
>"Gygax"

Also, on the issue of your picture, that refers to people, not intrinsically evil beings. It also refers to the actions of a madman and someone being tricked, and it clearly states that the madman is wrong.

If that "town" is a goblin den, poisoning the well is an act of Good; the danger here lies in the fact that innocents could be hurt due to your carelessness. If you want to make sure, you go in and you put the entire place to the fire and the sword, men, women, and children.

That way, it won't poison some human baby upstream. That being said, even if that would happen, it wouldn't necessarily be evil, since intent actually matters; if you were willfully careless, it's evil, but if you were careful and the child got poisoned by accident, it would not be evil, merely a tragedy.

>ctrl-f
>"Gygax"

Did Gygax ever deal with genocide or baby orc dilemmas at all? The closest I remember him going for is allowing paladins to kill criminals they first had converted to good gods.

If he never said a word about this subject, then I don't think you should bring him up at all. If he did, then surely you can screencap something and provide an actual counterargument that's more than just anons flinging shit?

Good enough, question before I agree or sperg.
If the innocent, even if it was a good family of goblins died because of your purge, would your do his penance?

I've found this question is the main difference between a zealot and and a rabid murderhobo pointed at the tag [Evil].

Should I seriously indoctrinate baby orcs into believing the Noddite way?

>and it turned out to be pretty okay.

This assumes, of course, that it turned out "pretty ok". Your "nurture over nature" bullshit has no place in a multiverse literally governed by concrete laws and where beings are born inherently evil.

Some can overcome it, some can fall, others can redeem themselves, but they are by no means the norm. If it says that the race is Evil, it's Evil, and anyone that isn't is the exception to the rule.

Lawful doesn't do exceptions to the rules.

>Detect Evil is a divine spell, it's just that paladins get it innately.
I know.
>It only works on creatures with 5+ HD though.
I know.
>Well, there are ways to mask alignment...
I know.

None of this is relevant, nor new information. I still think that at-will Detect Alignment (Evil, Good, whatever) is horseshit. I'd place a Paladin at the gate and just have him stare at anyone that enters the city, knowing full well that only those that know how to and have the means to do so will be able to mask their evul.

It's ridiculous, uninteresting, and gives rise to tons of issues for no good reason.

>beings are born inherently evil

They're not, though. Alignments can change and infants are neutral: it's nurture what turns them evil. Otherwise you'd never have a non-evil orc at all.

Pretty sure this is in the books as well.

>That's the whole point of the paladin class. Protect the innocent, detect the evil, smite the evil.

Huge difference between "Protect the innocent, detect the evil, smite the evil", and being able to literally see the alignment of anyone they lay their eyes on if they happen to be evil.

Would be a lot more sensible and interesting (as well as causing a lot less bullshit issues relating to this dogma) if Paladins actually had to work to detect evil, investigate, hunt, and could make mistakes.

Reasonable suspicion should be as much of a thing as nagging doubts.

Any god that takes his fate away from Gruumsh is good enough.
Misquote?

Paladins should be rare and busy smiting real villains, not guarding gates.

No worries, seeing all their friends and neighbors murdered by me would've turned them evil anyway.

Not him. But an goblin is a evil monster. Evil is a tag. So is monsters. There is no good, hardworking, blue collar family of goblins user. If there is an exception and dont live among their own tribe. You can purge it safely,

Your DM is just shit.

*if there is an exception they dont live among their tribe.

>If it says that the race is Evil, it's Evil
>an goblin is a evil monster

Actually it only ever says "usually evil" or "often evil" with monster races. "Always evil" is reserved for evil outsiders and undead, and even then there's the occasional exception.

That's how D&D is, that's how paladins are. They are knights of good sent to find and vanquish evil. Arguing abut it as pointless as arguing about one spell per day thing.

You're dancing around an issue. Regardless of what you think may have happened or whether it should've been possible, a family of good goblins died because of your crusade.

Will you do your penance?