>Play 5e >Party almost TPKs, fail on death saving throws >Start rolling for a new character, want something that I haven't done before >DM suggests I play Oathbreaker Paladin
Class features and oath spells seem cool, but I'm more worried about how to play this guy. Specifically, I've never played an evil character before and would rather avoid being That Guy and playing Coldsteel the Paladin. We've had parties representing all points of the alignment spectrum before, so party synergy isn't the problem. I just don't want people rolling their eyes every time I do something.
tl;dr how do I evil and not be shit at it?
Also post your dark Knights, please.
Ian Long
>tl;dr how do I evil and not be shit at it? Step one: Have a clear motive. Choose one particular thing that your evil character will do anything for. Power, revenge, etc. If it's on the line, take the most brutally efficient method available. If it's not, be a vaguely decent person. If you have an actual reason, your character comes off as much more human and less "kicks pigs for fun".
Step two: Never screw the party. Just don't. Ever.
That's it, it's that simple.
Colton Stewart
Play them as someone who simply wasn't as skilled at the whole Paladin thing. They tried hard, but they lost against evil more than they one.
So they broke their Oath, and started fighting dirty. Still working against Evil, but not able to follow a code.
Works better if there's some sort of neutral god of death in the setting who can be granting the powers, possibly as a favor for him slaying a necromancer who was working against their followers.
You could probably get away with him being neutral or chaotic neutral, depending on how much he dislikes honor and rules. The key thing though is that he still shouldn't be murdering people for no good reason. Just because he broke some of the rules doesn't mean he became a sociopath. He'll do it if it comes down to the wire, but torturing a random civilian for information is still something he wouldn't approve of
Parker Turner
Our party is currently doing missions for an army at war with another nation. I was thinking about having my character possibly be a soldier in the ranks, if not a guard for the priesthood therein. With what you suggested, maybe I could play up the nationalism with my character and work from there?
DM wants to keep Oathbreakers restricted to being evil. It's a nice thought, but something I can't technically work with here.
Julian Roberts
>Our party is currently doing missions for an army at war with another nation. I was thinking about having my character possibly be a soldier in the ranks, if not a guard for the priesthood therein. With what you suggested, maybe I could play up the nationalism with my character and work from there? Nationalism's a good one, yeah. "For king and country" can very easily be translated into "foreigners have no rights" and "victory at any cost".
Ian Parker
Ah, if he's requiring Evil, that's a different story. Still, I would consider which Oath you broke that led them to that.
To go Lawful Evil and focus on a heavy war effort, perhaps he was an Oath of Ancients paladin who decided all the light and music and love of nature had no place in wartime. Maybe lost family to war?
Jaxon Cooper
Because you are asking this question. You won't be that guy. Keep up the good work OP
Chase Stewart
How about you used to be a paladin for the nation in question, but went Anakin Skywalker when you started to find their ethics overly rigid and dogmatic, one thing lead to another, you did something awful, they detained and possibly executed your wife (who was perhaps considered an apostate for some reason; the cause of this conflict?) and you swore revenge against the church and the nation?
It would neatly align you with the party, and make you capable of being legitimately evil but still somewhat justified.
Owen Flores
That's not too bad of an idea, though evil or not, I'd rather not have youngling murder in my dude's background so if I do go with this, I'll likely tweak it.
It's something to think about, but I don't think it would necessarily work in this context. That's certainly enough to fall and make you choose a new class, but I wouldn't say it'd be evil enough to cause a fall so hard you suffer an alignment shift all the way to the evil end of the spectrum.
Adding to these, though, since you gave good examples for Devotion and Ancient Oaths, perhaps a Vengeance paladin went down the At All Costs part of her oath and ignored people obviously suffering and in danger of being killed in favor of taking out the leader of the raiders.
Nathaniel Martinez
More dark knight art pls
Landon Anderson
if you need inspiration, babby's first Oathbreaker paladin is Arthas Menethil
Nathaniel Clark
Arthas or Lord Soth I think are pretty good and simple examples of Oathbreaker paladins, but I don't think they're good player character examples. What about good examples for someone who's playable that breaks an oath? I guess Jamie Lannister isn't too bad but I can't think of any others
Matthew Price
it's the same principle all the way through though. At some point, the character reached a point where it seems like doing the right thing and following their vows were mutually exclusive, but once they broke their vows everything spiraled out of control
Carter Gonzalez
Just make the anime edgy loner that actually just wants validation from the group. And then do edgy things, but don't skirt too far because your friends are going to hate you if you do. They'll also love it when you're willing to do the thing no one else really wants to do.
That or just play a smug anime girl, that works too.
This is also a good one.
Benjamin Lee
What's wrong with that exactly? People who tell you that you're having badwrongfun when they're not even at the table when all you needed was a yes or no answer to a questions are actually one of my least favorite things about this board.
I suppose. The line for PC at least in my mind is someone who can still mostly function in society, and Arthas when he goes full blown oathbreaker doesn't seem like he could hang out with a group of more normal people without trying to get them killed for his own reasons.
Austin Foster
>and Arthas when he goes full blown oathbreaker doesn't seem like he could hang out with a group of more normal people without trying to get them killed for his own reasons. obviously you could tone down his evilness, or at least outright hostility, without breaking the heart of the character
Joseph Brown
Since you bring up Lord Soth, Mina from the Dragonlance series was a great example of an Oathbreaker who didn't fall into the trap of being Babby's First Evil Character.
