I played a paladin in a party with a rogue mastermind. It became obvious early that her expertise in persuasion would eventually, statistically; overcome my character and his oath as it regularly ran contrary to her goals and self interest. So I began to plan my characters future based on the knowledge that my fey patron would one day deny me.
Being an oath of the ancients paladin and my backstory having me a knight in the service of a good align Fey enchantress. So I thought upon losing my paladin abilities I'd go warlock and RP learning to use remnant fey magic that had once permeated my person. I felt it was a suiting punishment for transgressing my characters moral, and would be easy for me to role play. I like my character, didn't understand warlocks, didn't want to be a warlock, but still had a role to play in the grand scheme of things. As well as a strategic role as I was the only spellcaster in the party.
I know at this point your likely thinking "Well that's crap. She shouldn't be building characters just to control the party via dice rolls. That's as bad a paladin forcing their alignment on the other players." I agree, but it was our DM's first time running and I wasn't gonna let the campaign fall apart through infighting when an interesting interpersonal story arc was emerging.
I could let the rogue become the main protagonist, and accept a secondary role as loyal but reluctant, maybe even resentful sidekick. I was extremely excited for the moment that the mastermind at the height of power and privilege would ask something terrible of me and I could turn to her full of sorrow saying "O, how far I've let you lead me astray." before turning to complete the assigned task. I truly believe I could have told a grand tragedy with my own character arc if that game had continued instead of petering out.
This entire experience has left me with some questions. Have others role played smoothly through oath breaking? Have other's gone warlock after oath breaking? and Do other paladin players consider caster classes for oath breaker paladins? It just seemed more exciting than "*fart noise* you're a fighter til you get your crap straightened out."
I felt it wasn't what I was looking for. I was playing an Oath of the Ancients Paladin and the Oath Breaker depicted in the book seemed more geared to being the antithesis of the Devotion paladin as well as being overtly evil in the theme of its abilities. That and the vision of the character I had in my head wasn't compatible with that of a Dread Knight. I wanted to maintain his more gentle qualities so he'd be redeemable in the players eyes but not according to the oaths. I wanted to let the DM's story take precedence over my redemption arc and I don't think the group would have allowed that if my poor paladin was dying of spiritual cancer.
I think transitioning in to an Oath of Redemption Paladin might make sense. Knowing how fallible you are gives you the wisdom and patience to pursue this Oath to the benefit of others.
The outcome of persuasion checks against PCs should be determined by the players. Even for NPCs, no amount of persuasion will cause someone to do something fundamentally against their beliefs.
There was a lot of friction in the group at the time, and first to three persuasion check competitions were just we how reconciled differences in direction. While my character had fundamental beliefs, the rogue player had fundamental issues and is now regularly seeing a psychiatrist. We're gonna try playing again now that she's getting help.
A redemption paladin would be an excellent choice when paired with a mastermind but our third member was a barbarian and wanted to play it stereo typically. So I was resolved not to give entirely into the master mind's desire to negotiate with everything. Our DM was new and couldn't resist the urge to use a different creature every encounter. I was enthusiastic to indulge her in this. I usually DM and have a background in mini wargames. I was loving be able to flex those muscles without the usual worry that I'd destroy the party.
All issues aside I was having a blast, sometimes even because of the party of conflict. In hindsight even the mastermind agrees that it was wrong of her, but had created some pretty cool and dramatic scenes.
It's probably too late to make suggestions and you may have already made your decision...but have you considered going from an oath of ancients to a different oath of ancients? You may have served a "good" fey queen (from Seelie court) but maybe with the temptation of your party you got an invitation from a "non-good" fey queen (from Unseelie court) and swore a new oath with similar powers and different tenets. Maybe rather than spreading love and light, you spread mischief and darkness. Maybe your channel affects celestial instead of fiend. Maybe necrotic instead of radiant if you really want to go dark (but you can still have dark light with radiant if that makes sense).
It was too late when I started this thread. I just wanted to riff on these ideas since I didn't get to continue the character. I really like the idea though, could chew a few pieces off the trickster domain if you really wanted to make it unique from the original oath.
I love corrupted light ideas. If you haven't read "The Colour out of Space" by H.P. Lovecraft I highly recommend it. Pretty sure there's a moderately high level radiant spell for warlocks that is basically a small nuclear detonation.
I took a lot crap for this character, mostly because of my good alignment with hard and fast moral guidelines but also because I described all his radiant attacks as rainbows. I ended up having to compile a small dossier of classic renaissance paintings to show the group what a (for lack of a better term) "heterosexual" rainbow looked like. It would have been interesting to cast a spell and have my usual brilliant bursts of multi-hued smite replaced with a sickly green and yellow hues that caused the skin to fester.
Though I still think to this day staying a Paladin after breaking my oaths would have further splintered an ailing party. All three players' play styles were clashing, and the DM was favoring me heavily. (DnD was basically mine and the DM's first dates.) We got over a lot of these issues after this campaign ended and I took back up the heavy crown of DM command. I think everyone prefers the high fantasy, whimsical settings of my girlfriend over my realistic low fantasy settings, but I do have a better read on people than she does and balance the spinning the plates a bit easier. God do I miss my paladin, but his sacrifice got me the love and light of my DM turned girlfriend so at least in the real world he fullfilled his oaths.
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I played a paladin in a party with a rogue mastermind. It became obvious early that her expertise in persuasion would eventually, statistically; overcome my character and his oath as it regularly ran contrary to her goals and self interest. So I began to plan my characters future based on the knowledge that my fey patron would one day deny me.
Being an oath of the ancients paladin and my backstory having me a knight in the service of a good align Fey enchantress. So I thought upon losing my paladin abilities I'd go warlock and RP learning to use remnant fey magic that had once permeated my person. I felt it was a suiting punishment for transgressing my characters moral, and would be easy for me to role play. I like my character, didn't understand warlocks, didn't want to be a warlock, but still had a role to play in the grand scheme of things. As well as a strategic role as I was the only spellcaster in the party.
I know at this point your likely thinking "Well that's crap. She shouldn't be building characters just to control the party via dice rolls. That's as bad a paladin forcing their alignment on the other players." I agree, but it was our DM's first time running and I wasn't gonna let the campaign fall apart through infighting when an interesting interpersonal story arc was emerging.
I could let the rogue become the main protagonist, and accept a secondary role as loyal but reluctant, maybe even resentful sidekick. I was extremely excited for the moment that the mastermind at the height of power and privilege would ask something terrible of me and I could turn to her full of sorrow saying "O, how far I've let you lead me astray." before turning to complete the assigned task. I truly believe I could have told a grand tragedy with my own character arc if that game had continued instead of petering out.
This entire experience has left me with some questions. Have others role played smoothly through oath breaking? Have other's gone warlock after oath breaking? and Do other paladin players consider caster classes for oath breaker paladins? It just seemed more exciting than "*fart noise* you're a fighter til you get your crap straightened out."
Do you not know about the oathbreaker subclass?
I thought you would at least mention it.
I felt it wasn't what I was looking for. I was playing an Oath of the Ancients Paladin and the Oath Breaker depicted in the book seemed more geared to being the antithesis of the Devotion paladin as well as being overtly evil in the theme of its abilities. That and the vision of the character I had in my head wasn't compatible with that of a Dread Knight. I wanted to maintain his more gentle qualities so he'd be redeemable in the players eyes but not according to the oaths. I wanted to let the DM's story take precedence over my redemption arc and I don't think the group would have allowed that if my poor paladin was dying of spiritual cancer.
That's fair, I just thought it was worth mentioning.
The oathbreaker feels more like an antipaladin.
I think transitioning in to an Oath of Redemption Paladin might make sense. Knowing how fallible you are gives you the wisdom and patience to pursue this Oath to the benefit of others.
The outcome of persuasion checks against PCs should be determined by the players. Even for NPCs, no amount of persuasion will cause someone to do something fundamentally against their beliefs.
There was a lot of friction in the group at the time, and first to three persuasion check competitions were just we how reconciled differences in direction. While my character had fundamental beliefs, the rogue player had fundamental issues and is now regularly seeing a psychiatrist. We're gonna try playing again now that she's getting help.
A redemption paladin would be an excellent choice when paired with a mastermind but our third member was a barbarian and wanted to play it stereo typically. So I was resolved not to give entirely into the master mind's desire to negotiate with everything. Our DM was new and couldn't resist the urge to use a different creature every encounter. I was enthusiastic to indulge her in this. I usually DM and have a background in mini wargames. I was loving be able to flex those muscles without the usual worry that I'd destroy the party.
All issues aside I was having a blast, sometimes even because of the party of conflict. In hindsight even the mastermind agrees that it was wrong of her, but had created some pretty cool and dramatic scenes.
It's probably too late to make suggestions and you may have already made your decision...but have you considered going from an oath of ancients to a different oath of ancients? You may have served a "good" fey queen (from Seelie court) but maybe with the temptation of your party you got an invitation from a "non-good" fey queen (from Unseelie court) and swore a new oath with similar powers and different tenets. Maybe rather than spreading love and light, you spread mischief and darkness. Maybe your channel affects celestial instead of fiend. Maybe necrotic instead of radiant if you really want to go dark (but you can still have dark light with radiant if that makes sense).
It was too late when I started this thread. I just wanted to riff on these ideas since I didn't get to continue the character. I really like the idea though, could chew a few pieces off the trickster domain if you really wanted to make it unique from the original oath.
I love corrupted light ideas. If you haven't read "The Colour out of Space" by H.P. Lovecraft I highly recommend it. Pretty sure there's a moderately high level radiant spell for warlocks that is basically a small nuclear detonation.
I took a lot crap for this character, mostly because of my good alignment with hard and fast moral guidelines but also because I described all his radiant attacks as rainbows. I ended up having to compile a small dossier of classic renaissance paintings to show the group what a (for lack of a better term) "heterosexual" rainbow looked like. It would have been interesting to cast a spell and have my usual brilliant bursts of multi-hued smite replaced with a sickly green and yellow hues that caused the skin to fester.
Though I still think to this day staying a Paladin after breaking my oaths would have further splintered an ailing party. All three players' play styles were clashing, and the DM was favoring me heavily. (DnD was basically mine and the DM's first dates.) We got over a lot of these issues after this campaign ended and I took back up the heavy crown of DM command. I think everyone prefers the high fantasy, whimsical settings of my girlfriend over my realistic low fantasy settings, but I do have a better read on people than she does and balance the spinning the plates a bit easier. God do I miss my paladin, but his sacrifice got me the love and light of my DM turned girlfriend so at least in the real world he fullfilled his oaths.