Can an undead be a paladin?

... and now that I think about it, an "escapee" from this military, loosely based off of Daniel Fortesque, would make a fun NPC.

Revenants bro.
>Paladin has mission
>Paladin dies
>Paladin has so much willpower he gets back up
>Will not stop until he finishes his mission
>With his mission at last completed his body collapses, entirely lifeless showing all the decay staved off by being a revenant

Actually had a guy I played with pull his off, none of us realized until the end due to a clever mix of RP and playing certain things off as part of "oaths" he'd taken.

>In most settings
Name them.

This thread is displeasing

>good (or Good...
>evil/Evil
What's going on here?

No, because the few good-aligned undead types can't be achieved by Paladins.

Not really a paladin per se, but well-remembered.

...

...

>In most settings skeletons
Negative Energy is a D&D/Pathfinder thing.
That is not most settings.

im not sure

the difference between settings that do or don't have alignments. I think the point is denoting a difference between objective morality (alignment, Good/Evil) and subjective morality (gray, good/evil).
Not that user though.

Yes.
In most settings, an undead can be a Paladin of EVIL.
In really awesome settings, an undead can be a Paladin of Good. Provided it's possible for the undead to have real free will, then death shouldn't stop you from fighting for JUSTICE.

>Undead Paladin
>Not "Twice-Alive" Paladin

HERESY
HERESY
HERE-RAH-SCHWAH

...

Good job missing the joke, friend.

If you're a sentient undead, and you're in the 5e rules realm, you technically only have to adhere to your oath vows to be a paladin, or be an oathbreaker (still a paladin) ...

So. Why the fuck not?

Rules as written, an undead that user positive enrergy isn't damaged in the slightest. And there are a few cases where being undead doesn't convert your alignment to evil as well, at least in PF. Meaning that undead Paladin's under the right circumstances can exist.

...

Only the honor of a paladin is unbreakable. Even by death itself.

Yes. Next question.

...

While undead must be categorically evil in almost every DnD setting, DnD does have a very cheap and theme-park style view on mythology.

Indeed, Paladins are historically a term for christian knights during the crusades. We'll not get into that kettle of fish, but let us consider that Christians have many, if not these most stories of thought-dead saints or holy men coming back from the dead to perform a work or miracle. Now we can quibble on if these are undead or angels, but they're at least ghosts, being both formerly mortal and intelligent.

Now these are cleric spells, which sort of cheapens the whole idea of works and miracles, but that's a whole industrial shipping container of kettles of fish, so we won't go there either.

One of the longest held beliefs is that a corpse, improperly buried, whose convictions were so powerful as to be unnatural enough to make the corpse rise to work its' wrath upon the living. Seeing a righteousness is only a few arc-seconds (let alone a whole degree) from wrath, there's no reason paladins couldn't be undead.

Indeed, in some interpretations, Roland is seen again after his death in the company of Charlemagne.

Source is Lords of Darkness for ad&d 1e.

>tfw the Mechanicus will never discover 36 Kars on the moon

I think the Kars are on Mars.

Only if you use the Tome of Exalted Deeds or whatever it’s called. But that’s for 3.5e though.

A paladin can be undead, as in a paladin who dies before the completion of a quest and became a revenant.

A zombie or skeleton, doesn't really have a will of its own to commit to an oath, so an undead cannot become a paladin.

So, I'd say a paladin can into undead, but an undead cannot into paladin, typically.

This one's actually better given the context.

Depends on the setting.
D&D? No (not in most cases).
Warcraft? Yes, it just hurts like a bitch for them to use.

best answer

Not sure about paladin, but a cleric/wizard works just fine.

My paladin is a spooky skeleton. He died during a mission for his temple and they botched the resurrection spell.
Would've died but his madter stepped in at the last moment and sacrificed himself to finish the spell.
Not like anyone notices. Always in full plate as is.

Unsounded if anyone is curious. Decent comic.

Oh shit I remember loving that comic when I first read it.
What's it called again?

See

There was a forgotten realms novel that featured one.

...

I think mummies are described as occasionally being paladins for whatever god they were devoted to in life.

Eberron definitely has evil, undead Paladins of the Blood of Vol. In one of own Eberron games I'm going to feature a recurring enemy who is a Paladin of The Becoming God.

This guy is undead and uses holy powers, but it's quite painful since the Light is destructive to undeath. He sees his undeath as a mental illness more than an incurable permenance.

Duty does not end in death.

>this 4e is objectively the best setting

Yeah, maybe better than the D&D 3.5 ones.
Altough how artificial is the transition between the setting changes between 3.5 and 4 ruins it for me.

There wasn't really an "artificial setting change". It's just a straight up different setting

if the skeleton was raised by a god of life, and thus was not created to be the anti-thesis of life

than sure why not, not all skeletons are the same

Wasn't that some weird cataclysm or whahever?

In Forgotten Realms, yeah, but Forgotten Realms isn't Greyhawk or Points of Light, which are the generic settings of 3.5 and 4e respectively

As if paladins weren't broken enough

I think that had a better example of an undead paladin in the Warcraft universe. Not really sure if Barthalome used holy powers at all as opposed to just being part of the Argent Dawn.

I wish there were more settings in which nearly everyone is undead.

>sorta like what happens in a chemical reaction between potassium and water.
bullshit, I've gotten bananas wet before and nothing happened

>Indeed, Paladins are historically a term for christian knights during the crusades.

No, they were the companions of Charlemagne.

do they count?

I'd allow it. I'd allow it and then have the paladin have to deal with it. It'd probably spin off into the "good" gods having actually been evil authoritarian fucks the entire time, though.

I'd probably do it in a way where the evil gods usurped the power center of the good gods, with the good gods being imprisoned. Clerics and such would worship the concepts of the good gods, the energy of the belief would be intercepted by the evil gods, but the powers would still be granted by the withered pantheon with what little energy they still have.

Fun things to be done with that.

LotD are daemons though.

Who says a Paladin can't become a ghost?

>While undead must be categorically evil in almost every DnD setting
No they don't. Most D&D settings allow for some form of good undead.

But if they were once humans can they really be considered demons..?

Btw didn't Grey Knight have warp ghost marines too?

>Can an undead be a paladin?
In basically every setting, the undead fall into some combination of three categories:
* mindless
* inherently evil
* necessarily evil
So no, not usually.

Humans, dead humans evens, have become demons before.

They are Demons of the Emperor as opposed to the Chaos Gods.

Also we have no proof they used to be human, just hints they might be.

But that's wrong, idiot. In basically every setting, there exists at least some form of undead that can be good aligned.

Why are you moistening your bananas?

Yes. It's speaks even more to their character than if they were alive because they're defying their very nature in order to stand for what they believe in.

An undead thrall who defies whatever forces possess them after death and whatever prejudice exists against them from the living that they swear to protect is GOAT imho.

Just do like my character. He's a vampire who pretends to be a paladin. All his miracles (extra speed, extra strength, extra toughness) are fake - he uses his vampiric abilities for that.

Here's the outfit of the guys playing them.

I'll allow it. I don't have a problem with good-aligned undead, and I feel like people who do are just grognards mad about something being different than how it's always been.

It's been a while, but i believe that in D&D, good-aligned undead are called "deathless".

Sure.

Yes.

Ghosts can be any alignment, can't they? Paladins seem prone to dying with unfinished business they'd be very keen on finishing.

Couldn't a Crusader from 3.5 (The Book of Nine Swords) be Undead? That's similar to a Paladin, right? I don't remember exactly cause I was like 11 years old at the time

Am that user. This is indeed what I was going for. Capitalized words indicating objective or game-construct alignments.

How 'bout a Paladin who gets killed but is just too angry at all the uncorrected injustice in the world to actually stay dead. Or just too stubborn. Could make a pretty gud char.

ITT:
>Undead can't be paladin
>Succubi can

...

This post reminds me of that post about how the pigment in black people's skin has an extremely rare compound in it, then they claimed that black people were each worth their full body weight in that compound. Like nigger no, a banana is not 100% potassium.

Question is, can a vampire or half vampire be a chaotic good paladin?
This is important for my next character.

I'm going to say that any form of undead that needs to feed should almost certainly be off-limits for Paladins and other Good aligned characters.

what if a half vampire doesnt need to feed to live, just gets stronger. so he could refrain.

Bartholomew is a warrior, not everyone in the Argent Dawn is a paladin. Still a cool dude, of course.

kys

That was basically Baron Saturday and Reg Shoe from Discworld.

Both had unfinished business and were too stubborn to take death lying down. In the case of the Baron he completed his business and Death came for him and presumably at some point Death will come for Reg.

The Baron, yes. But I don't think ordinary(non-voodoo) zombies work like that in Discworld.

Other than Mr Slant who won't die until he get's a refund from his failed defence lawyer. He represented himself and won't die until he finishes getting paid for defending himself.

And Reg who won't die until the city is under glorious socialist people government.

It still amazes me how warcraft manages to have all these interesting side characters and decides to focus on absolutely retarded shit instead.

That picture is missing one thing

undead paladin NPC in one of my campaigns. He became the right hand of his god and was tasked with a never ending crusade. Though his body would fall to entropy he remained tethered to the world through her divine energy.

i had a undead NPC* where the fuck did the first part of the text go?