A Paladin and his Oath

it comes from studying magic thats not the same as getting divine powers from a code of conduct

they channel power through their fedoras

An independent divine spark driven by faith in one's oath and conviction in one's cause.
You can cross it once or twice when necessary but when you start to disregard your own self-set ethical code, your spark dies and you're no longer a paladin.
Or you flip it straight into Oathbreaker and just say "fuck the world".

the fifth ideal is to swear an oath that they will become a personification of law and truth.

You could always play a Paladin who isn't devoted to a god, dingus.

What do you mean "now"?

>reads texts that describe how and what one should do
>conduct themselves in a specific way to gain usage of great powers
>often taught by another like them

are paladins and wizards truly so different?

Their contempt for Deus Vult memes gives them power.

>How the fuck do Paladins get their power in 5e now that you can play a godless Paladin

What do you mean "now" Kemo Sabe?

Half-Orc Paladins....heresy and abomination

I like the spark of divine energy idea. Makes it easier to justify paladin powers and borrows a bit from sorcerers, a class that I love. Thanks!

pope-sama wills it
perhaps the gods believe in you even if you dont believe in them, your oath supports their ideals and so they empower you as such

I don't get it...

Which is exactly what makes them awesome

Pretty stupid.

I’ve played with two godless Paladins before.
The first time I did I asked the guy how you’re supposed to play a godless Paladin. He flipped out and assumed I’m Christian and shat all over my assigned-by-him religion (this was Online).
Second time was in person and he was an edgy Paladin in black plate that stole and actually murdered civilians and stuff.

Godless Paladins are cancer. Just play an Eldritch Knight, people.

It's not my problem that you found shit players. I'll continue to play Paladins who are not part of a church.

weren't there technically godless clerics in Ebberon?

The plane itself is lending its power to them.

Faith is what drives the Paladin, not Gods. Absolute conviction in your beliefs if what gives you the ability to channel divine power.

Only if you play them like a colossal sperg, as you apparently do.

Better than clerics but not because reasons.

I don’t even know you, guy. I don’t give a fuck.

I don’t play Paladins. Please learn how to read

>Free market Paladin
>First skill is "Objective Worth"
Was this written by Marx?

Also in Dark Sun. And of course in 2e you could play clerics of philosophies.

Theoretically there was nothing stopping you from being a cleric of atheism, which'd be appropriate for Athars.

Fuck this train of thought that says a Paladin has to have a god. They literally never have had to have one, where the fuck did you get that from?

No. Godless paladins are basicly a chad version of regular paladins who are so good at following their oath and doing good that gods actually decide to help them without being even asked. So technically, "a godless paladin" is an oxymoron,

It's the oath that empowers the paladin. It's magical.

If you can get supernatural powers by
>reading books
>playing instruments
>signing a contract with satan
>signing a contract with cthulhu
>signing a contract with jesus
>rubbing two sticks together and praising nature

then you can get powers by believing something really hard
Pacts have power. Even deceiving devils can't outright break them without rules lawyering. Is an oath not just another sort of pact?

That's the fruitiest set of ideals I ever saw. Paladins ought to be empowered by having a rigid code to live up to, but nobody could ever become a paladin of life's about the journey, maaan.

It comes from an ambiguous divine force that permeates all settings. It might be a joint account shared between the gods of good that chip in their magic mojo together. It might be that ambient magical energy can be shaped by oaths just as mages shape magic with ritual and purpose. It might be power of belief that shapes the planes. It might just be sheer reality-shattering willpower and you don't gotta explain shit.

>you can play a godless Paladin
Since when? I thought they just didn't have to be Lawful Good

This.

Thank you.

Jesus. Why is it so hard for people to understand that Paladins don't have oaths to a god, they have oaths to the Good, and that following those oaths is REALLY HARD and REALLY DIFFICULT?

You have to TRY to be a good person. That's what "paladins falling" is about - not gotcha moral bullshit where your "god" decides you killed the wrong orc baby but the kind of decision where you choose to prioritize one person over another because of expediency. You have to *try* to be good. You don't always succeed - sometimes you have to choose the greater good over the lesser, no matter how it hurts to leave anyone behind to die - but you have to make the attempt to do the best thing for the most people without letting your personal feelings get in the way.

It's a concept almost lost in modernity because people just can't grasp that morality isn't a spectrum, it's a stairwell. You don't stop climbing the stairwell and achieve a magical state of "am good"; you keep striving for it until you die, and if you slip and make some mistakes along the way, that's okay. It's when you start actively heading down because it's "too hard" to keep climbing that you should worry. That's when a Paladin falls, that's when a person "stops" being good. Not because they killed an orc baby or let the orc baby live on the whim of their dipshit Greek God wannabe patron.

Fucking Warcraft paladins ruined everyone's brains.

Since always.

If your DM allows godless divine classes they're a faggot

but dude there is no god lmao

Everyone is god, there.

Tying Paladins to gods is just how faggot DMs try to catch you with even more rules and restrictions

It's not literally about the journey, it's a metaphor for the fact that your actions are more important than the end result.
Strength before weakness also means that your job is to protect those who are weak with your strength.

This is just a return to the right state of things, also now they aren't just Fighter-Clerics

Don't you go blaming Warcraft for this shit, it bad DM's that ruined paladins. Remember the great 'the paladin fell' bubble during 3rd edition? You probably dont.
In warcraft, paladins get their power from a belief of what they see as right. Thats why the scarlet crusade can still use holy power, is that they have a rigid belief system in what they believe is right. A paladin loses their connection to holy magic when they have lost faith in themselves or the ideals they believed in. Like Arthas, Tirion or Benedictus. Fuck even Thrall lost his powers as a shaman because he broke his beliefs because he used the elements to kill garrosh. Thrall challenged garrosh to an honor duel and then broke the fucking rules after he started getting his ass kicked so he could get revenge on garrosh.

>you probably don't

Yeah I do, I just don't credit it as the sole arbitrator. I credit bad GMs before 3e getting reinforced by popular media that shaped the perception of fantasy at the time on top of the 3e "Paladins Fall" bubble. It's stupid to think that 3e is the sole arbitrator of this silly idea when there are far bigger examples of PALADINS FALLING for being BAD PEOPLE in major popular media - like, I dunno, fucking Arthas?

It led to this idea that Paladins are gotcha moments incarnate powered by deities who don't actually care if the paladin is good or not, because when bad GMs from before 3e got reinforced by the internet telling them this is hilarious and a major source of fantasy media telling them this is a thing, it reverberated. Blaming "just 3e" is so narrow I can't even stand it.

But yes, it's not entirely Warcraft's fault either, I'll give you that. Final Fantasy also probably helped out.

The rules of 3.0 left very little discretion when it came to the way paladin's lost their powers. it wasnt until 3.5 that they kind of but not really fixed it. 3rd edition had incredibly strict rules for paladins falling, to the point that farting in the wrong direction could cause you to fall. And considering the history of ARTHAS was over a decade old doesnt even explain the fucking half of it, remember THE FROZEN THRONE. 3rd edition's stupid fucking rules, in addition to bad DM's and the incidental release of WotLK didnt make paladins bad. Bad rules writing and bad DM's poorly managing campaigns is what made paladins bad. Fuck, the return of Tirion (from formerly being in the silver hand) coming back and returning to his beliefs was a major deal when it came to paladins in pop culture. The ASHBRINGER is one of the most iconic weapon's when it comes to paladins in pop culture, whether you play wow or not.

3rd edition was so poorly written that they had to release 3.5 and it was still a fucking mess. Bad rules are why we had so many paladins falling. Fuck even Final Fantasy only has a few paladins (Cecil being one) and you could put more blame on him than world of warcraft.

Depends on the setting, but since people take FR as "The Setting", it stuck.

You can fluff it however you want, but I'd say that the oath itself is magical and its taking probably requires a significant amount of ritual.
Now, it's probably still a divine magic ritual, which I'd say implies the existence of some kind of religion that doesn't require gods, like Buddhism.

It's not even always true in FR. It's just the more common variety since gods are constantly meddling in that setting.

my paladin worships logic.

You're welcome!

old Dungeons and Dragons, WoD, and Jim Butcher's books all establish basis for "faith-based" magic(I'm sure there are more, these are the one's that come to mind immediately.) that doesn't require belief or fealty to a divine entity. If you really can't imagine how that functions in a fantasy world, I'd hate to see how vanilla your games are.

At level 2 paladins get magic and smites and haven't yet taken any oath. If they multiclass they never will. So... yeah.

There are other classes with divine abilities that come out of their asses, so how Palading specifically is a problem? There is plethora of monsters that don't need divine intervention, yet they also have holy powers.

I would say, that literally ANY god that sees the Paladin's code worty just sneaks some powers. Or that the power comes from within, formed by his sheer will. Really, fluff however you like.

Personally, I still require paladins to follow a god, just not lawful good. That makes him a champion, a paragon of said god's agenda, a chosen one. Somewhat of an romanticized version of a knight.

Besides, these floral knights are fucking awesome, what else do you need?

But Paladins in 5th don't have to be good, so what exactly are you rambling about?

>now that you can play a godless Paladin
As opposed to what?

In OD&D's Greyhawk release, in which Paladins were first introduced, they were servants of the Lawful Good alignment.

Their devotion to religious orders is a later introduction and in no edition of D&D, ever, was it strictly required that a Paladin be a devotee of a divine power.

Paladins were godless since the very first paragraph introducing them in D&D.

Because they were knightly heroes.

Sometimes I wonder if all these idiots that need rules to cover everything were the same idiots that "upgraded" d&d at some point, wanting to fill every single plot hole that wasn't necessarily a plot hole, but made these idiots sperg out of their mind upon seeing a part of the setting not explained point to point.

Replace 'good' with 'tenants of your oath', concept and point stays the same: a paladin cannot fall unless he chooses to. It is only when he decides to give up is when he loses his powers. To struggle beneath the burden you carry, to falter, take a few steps back or even take a break, those are all normal and fine.

Eberron was big on leaving decisions about the setting up to the GM, even going so far as providing a pantheon with the caveat "they may not even exist if you want, it's your game"

That's because Eberron was for 4rries who are so stupid that they need that shit spelled out for them.

But paladins in 5th can't fall. You shouldn't even roleplay a paladin ignoring tenents of his oath. They are truly driven individuals.

Whenever a player strays away from his oath, as a GM, forbid him from doing so instead of making some stupid falling. If player won't listen, forbid him from playing a paladin instead.

There is an archetype specifically for paladins who fall and refuse to try and redeem themselves.

Yep, it's oath adherence.

Similar to how, in fantasy, a lawspeaker can physically damage you by showing you the law you broke, and cursing your name.

And then they bind you forever to this world until such time as you make good on your punishment.

How the fuck do trolls get their (You)s in Veeky Forums now that you can bait with such little effort, does it just come from their sheer adherence to their autism?

DELETE THIS

I think it funny because "servant of the lawful good alignment" means that they're literally devoted to a huge cosmic force. It's basically being a servant of any early form of law, back when the laws that govern the path a soul follows and the codified criminal law were all in the same book, with law as this universal force guiding men to goodness and transcendence. It's the law that builds society and brings life into the world, protects and uplifts innocents, punishes the wicked, and hurries them all along to their postmortem destinations, not the law of any one country. It's religious inherently, but not necessarily theistic as it doesn't depend on small deities.

You can view it as cause and effect, simple justice, or divine retribution, but it's important to note that it's the result of a cosmic force.

It's an old understanding of paladins, but I think it's a rather good one.

>Paladins now get their powers out of the oath themselves.
>tfw literal paladins are now literally geas warriors from irish folklore.
>This guy is now an epic level paladin

I'm liking this new version.

There isn't enough play with geases and LAWspeaking in D&D.

If someone is bound to do a thing, then by god, they should have to do a thing, and even death should not allow them reprieve from the thing they are bound to do.

I stand corrected.

That archetype doesn't make sense, but whatever, it exists.

Isn't that basically the whole point of revenants?
Also I agree. Archetype where you gain more power the more you limit yourself with geas when?
Instead of falling by stopping an evil but legal execution the new fall will be getting stuck between 2 of your geas like cu chulainn, who was stuck between denying hospitality or eating dog meat, both of which he had swore off. Guy lost all his powers as a result right before a massive battle.

>Oathbreaker

Revenants should be more universal.

That's just the first ideal user

I believe a fall should be a much more orchestrated event. Not just a "I take this action even though it will cause me to fall" and more of a "I realize the chain of actions that have brought me to this point have damned me, my oath is already broken" and with the realization comes the fall.

What

Why do you only get your oath at level 3 then?

No, Dark Sun had clerics of Elemental Spirits.

does a fedora come with the 5e PHB?

PHB page 82

I'm not going to spoonfeed you an excerpt. Read the book instead.