That's it exactly. Can you play a Chaotic Good Paladin? The rules of the game certainly allow for that. It all depends on which Oath and how serious the DM wants to be about Alignment.
I'd say that these Oaths would work; Glory, Redemption, Ancients, and Vengeance would be just fine.
As a DM you can certainly do whatever you feel right about his character's actions. But generally speaking, 5E's take on character morality and aligment is firmly in the hand of the player and if he wants to play his character a certain way, do what he feels right concerning the situation, punishing him for that sends a bad message in my opinion.
A lawful character has to follow some society's laws, though. They do not just make up a personal code to follow, that's really a chaotic thing.
So it’s impossible to be lawful, living in a wilderness by yourself with no law to follow?
Alignment is about how the character chooses to behave, not about what external factors tell them to do.
If you live out in a wilderness by yourself with no interactions with other people, the distinction between "lawful" and "chaotic" becomes meaningless.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
How about being Good or Evil? Law and Chaos are really just ways to approach how you deal with things you consider Good or Evil. I don't understand. It's been a long time since Paladins had to be Lawful Good and lost their powers if the DM decided they weren't playing it correctly.
Fifth edition Paladins don't serve the gods as such, they put their faith in ideals and then swear an Oath to support them. Some are better than others when it comes down to doing it, but there aren't any specific rules about Paladins losing their powers other than the Oathbreaker. and even then, they don't lose their powers, the just change them.
I do wish the OP would come back and tell us; what's her formal level of education, how old is her son, and what Oath did she think he broke?
She comes off sounding like someone with a Doctorate in History or Mythology or whatever, and she's trying to teach moral lessons to a child who is too young to understand what she's getting at.
And as I already stated, all of those oaths are written vaguely enough that they do not require a rigid code of behavior- there's a lot of wiggle room for paladins to determine how they carry out their oaths. And that means that they in no way, shape, or form force the paladin to be lawful unless you define "lawful" as "anything less random than a member of the Xaosects".
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I generally find it helpful to re-define a term when someone fails to understand it. I am not saying anyone has been incorrect about this really, but there does seem to be some confusion.
Good means "Compassion"
Evil means "Malevolence"
Lawful means "Orderly"
Chaotic means "Unpredictable"
Neutral means "Free"
You get two words for each Alignment (Alignment is your morals, that's good and evil, and your ethics, that's how you relate to society.) These are your tendencies. Few people stick with things all the time, they just tend towards them.
Lawful Good: You tend to like things orderly, and you act with compassion.
Neutral Good: You tend to be compassionate and you choose your actions freely.
Chaotic Good: You tend to be unpredictable, you never really know what you will do next, except that you act with compassion.
A Paladin's Oath is their guiding principles. They usually don't require any specific alignment, they just provide Paladins a different way of choosing how to act.
A long time ago, Paladins were required to be Lawful Good, and DM's were told to track their behavior on a 3 by 3 graph. Then some DMs liked to make them chose between the Lawful part and the Good part and then required them to be both at the same time. That made it nearly impossible to play a Paladin. We have come along way since then.
I've kind of stuck to talking about only the Good Paladins. I don't like bad guys, so it's hard for me to say anything nice about Evil.
Very well, I see your point. In your games it's impossible for a player character to be anything other than a Lawful Paladin. Are you going to also specify if player characters can only be Good?
I generally find it helpful to re-define a term when someone fails to understand it. I am not saying anyone has been incorrect about this really, but there does seem to be some confusion.
Good means "Compassion"
Evil means "Malevolence"
Lawful means "Orderly"
Chaotic means "Unpredictable"
Neutral means "Free"
You do realize that this is a completely arbitrary definition, right? For example, lawful neautral is often described as being the alignment of people who are anything *but* free, like a judge upholding a law they know can cause harm but it is "the law" so they do it anyway or an inquisitor torturing people to find the guilty and so on.
As for Paladins having to be lawful, there is no requirement of that. When it comes to fulfilling your oath, your alignment is more telling of *how* you choose to do it than anything else. A Lawful Good Vengeance Paladin might choose to avenge a murdered relative by making sure the murderer is tried and sentenced whereas a Chaotic Good vengeance paladin might set out to ruin the murderers evil crime syndicate, vigilante style. A chaotic neutral Crown paladin might punish those who break the law by pranks or ridicule and so on.
One of the problems I have had with trying to define Chaos is that it's not really possible to say anything about it in a nice way. How about this; People who are Chaotic decide things for themselves. Chaotic Good people are Nobel. Chaotic Neutral people are Selfish. Chaotic Evil people are Violent.
One of the problems I have had with trying to define Chaos is that it's not really possible to say anything about it in a nice way. How about this; People who are Chaotic decide things for themselves. Chaotic Good people are Nobel. Chaotic Neutral people are Selfish. Chaotic Evil people are Violent.
Again, all of those are completely arbitrary lables. You can be Lawful Evil and be selfish, you can be neutral good and be violent. None of those things really has anything to do with what alignment you have.
But for a Paladin, there is DEFINITELY a right or wrong. That's the point of a Paladin! So there must be a right answer!
In my day, a Paladin HAD to be L/G, so the issue here is that being good would mean you break the law. However, following/upholding the law would mean you are being either "neutral" or "evil". As a Paladin (at least old school), you can repent for being unlawful and remain a Paladin, but if you ever do anything evil, you lose your paladinhood, irrevocably!! Now, you are just a fighter (you don't keep any other paladin abilities you already had).
So the answer would be that the paladin is in a sucky situation and probably would be better off choosing to break the law and repent than to allow an evil act and lose his paladinhood, forever.
In 5E, there may be alternatives to this quandary which are much less detrimental (if you aren't L/G). It's a great point about imposing today's morality on yester-year's values. We are doing that all of the time nowadays. If he has no real knowledge of how things were in that period (and if you are using a period as a baseline) then it's a good opportunity for some learning. However, to maintain smooth game play, you may just want to go ahead with him using what he does know at the time of the decision. If it is ok to put women to death for disobeying in your campaign, you may simply state that, as a paladin, his character would know that it isn't against the law in that culture in your setting. Then he could act on that knowledge.
Can't speak for prior editions but for 5E I'd worry less about the 'lawful good' thing and more about the specific oaths associated with the subclass in terms of consequences for breaking it. IE, did the actions betray the tenants given for that oath.
What good and evil people would do aside, "Lawful" is entirely about the internal laws of the character, not the laws of the land they are in. Whilst someone might decide to make a character who obeys and upholds all laws of the land, that does not mean that this describes all "lawful" people.
A paladin who has sworn to always protect the weak, shelter the downtrodden and never allow violence to befall any who have not earnt it is a lawful good paladin. If they walk into a city where a law allows nobles to hit peasants without consequence or rebuttal, they will not stand idly by and let those weak downtrodden people have violence befell on them just because it's "legal". They will snatch the nobles hand out of the air, and might throw them off their horse for good measure.
"Right" and "Wrong" is entirely subjective, as it should be for an interesting world, and so a Lawful Good paladin who has sworn to protect nature might face off against a Lawful Good paladin who has sworn to protect the peasants who are hunting. They are both Lawful Good, but the peasants are "wrong" in the eyes of the nature paladin, and the nature paladin is "wrong" in the eyes of the protect-the-weak paladin. They will fight each other, both thinking that they are "Right", and both continuing to be Lawful Good.
It is the common custom of the internet that anything in all capital letters is a "shout" in text format. She shouted "PALADIN" at us and then asked a question about Alignments.
She's got a story that's a mixture of Midsummer Night's Dream and Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale" Then she said "I told my 12 year old son that he is Imposing modern moral standards on historical different moral standards. I feel that this would break the law and go against his alignment. Who is right?" Her child is, that's who. What other moral standard can a 12 year old boy have than the modern one?
She only posted twice after she created the thread, and her answers were short, and vague. She never answered a single direct question from anyone.
I suspect that she is a school teacher, and she's made 18 posts in total, almost all of them were about playing with her children, and she said that the other one is 10.
I think he was playing Lawful Good, and just like when the class was created, the moral lesson she wanted him to learn was that if you're not Lawful Good, you can't be a Paladin.
That's it exactly. Can you play a Chaotic Good Paladin? The rules of the game certainly allow for that. It all depends on which Oath and how serious the DM wants to be about Alignment.
I'd say that these Oaths would work; Glory, Redemption, Ancients, and Vengeance would be just fine.
<Insert clever signature here>
Chaotic does not mean that one acts in a completely random way.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
As a DM you can certainly do whatever you feel right about his character's actions. But generally speaking, 5E's take on character morality and aligment is firmly in the hand of the player and if he wants to play his character a certain way, do what he feels right concerning the situation, punishing him for that sends a bad message in my opinion.
Not true. You don't have to follows laws to be lawful.
That doesn't automatically make the character lawful though.
So it’s impossible to be lawful, living in a wilderness by yourself with no law to follow?
Alignment is about how the character chooses to behave, not about what external factors tell them to do.
Sure. But you can still be a Paladin even if you don't spend every living moment trying to uphold your oath.
If you live out in a wilderness by yourself with no interactions with other people, the distinction between "lawful" and "chaotic" becomes meaningless.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
How about being Good or Evil? Law and Chaos are really just ways to approach how you deal with things you consider Good or Evil. I don't understand. It's been a long time since Paladins had to be Lawful Good and lost their powers if the DM decided they weren't playing it correctly.
Fifth edition Paladins don't serve the gods as such, they put their faith in ideals and then swear an Oath to support them. Some are better than others when it comes down to doing it, but there aren't any specific rules about Paladins losing their powers other than the Oathbreaker. and even then, they don't lose their powers, the just change them.
I do wish the OP would come back and tell us; what's her formal level of education, how old is her son, and what Oath did she think he broke?
She comes off sounding like someone with a Doctorate in History or Mythology or whatever, and she's trying to teach moral lessons to a child who is too young to understand what she's getting at.
<Insert clever signature here>
Yes, but that doesn't mean that they are "lawful." This entire debate is silly and circular.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
And as I already stated, all of those oaths are written vaguely enough that they do not require a rigid code of behavior- there's a lot of wiggle room for paladins to determine how they carry out their oaths. And that means that they in no way, shape, or form force the paladin to be lawful unless you define "lawful" as "anything less random than a member of the Xaosects".
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I generally find it helpful to re-define a term when someone fails to understand it. I am not saying anyone has been incorrect about this really, but there does seem to be some confusion.
You get two words for each Alignment (Alignment is your morals, that's good and evil, and your ethics, that's how you relate to society.) These are your tendencies. Few people stick with things all the time, they just tend towards them.
A Paladin's Oath is their guiding principles. They usually don't require any specific alignment, they just provide Paladins a different way of choosing how to act.
A long time ago, Paladins were required to be Lawful Good, and DM's were told to track their behavior on a 3 by 3 graph. Then some DMs liked to make them chose between the Lawful part and the Good part and then required them to be both at the same time. That made it nearly impossible to play a Paladin. We have come along way since then.
I've kind of stuck to talking about only the Good Paladins. I don't like bad guys, so it's hard for me to say anything nice about Evil.
<Insert clever signature here>
Very well, I see your point. In your games it's impossible for a player character to be anything other than a Lawful Paladin. Are you going to also specify if player characters can only be Good?
There was a time when that was true after all.
<Insert clever signature here>
You do realize that this is a completely arbitrary definition, right? For example, lawful neautral is often described as being the alignment of people who are anything *but* free, like a judge upholding a law they know can cause harm but it is "the law" so they do it anyway or an inquisitor torturing people to find the guilty and so on.
As for Paladins having to be lawful, there is no requirement of that. When it comes to fulfilling your oath, your alignment is more telling of *how* you choose to do it than anything else. A Lawful Good Vengeance Paladin might choose to avenge a murdered relative by making sure the murderer is tried and sentenced whereas a Chaotic Good vengeance paladin might set out to ruin the murderers evil crime syndicate, vigilante style. A chaotic neutral Crown paladin might punish those who break the law by pranks or ridicule and so on.
One of the problems I have had with trying to define Chaos is that it's not really possible to say anything about it in a nice way. How about this; People who are Chaotic decide things for themselves. Chaotic Good people are Nobel. Chaotic Neutral people are Selfish. Chaotic Evil people are Violent.
<Insert clever signature here>
Again, all of those are completely arbitrary lables. You can be Lawful Evil and be selfish, you can be neutral good and be violent. None of those things really has anything to do with what alignment you have.
But for a Paladin, there is DEFINITELY a right or wrong. That's the point of a Paladin! So there must be a right answer!
In my day, a Paladin HAD to be L/G, so the issue here is that being good would mean you break the law. However, following/upholding the law would mean you are being either "neutral" or "evil". As a Paladin (at least old school), you can repent for being unlawful and remain a Paladin, but if you ever do anything evil, you lose your paladinhood, irrevocably!! Now, you are just a fighter (you don't keep any other paladin abilities you already had).
So the answer would be that the paladin is in a sucky situation and probably would be better off choosing to break the law and repent than to allow an evil act and lose his paladinhood, forever.
In 5E, there may be alternatives to this quandary which are much less detrimental (if you aren't L/G). It's a great point about imposing today's morality on yester-year's values. We are doing that all of the time nowadays. If he has no real knowledge of how things were in that period (and if you are using a period as a baseline) then it's a good opportunity for some learning. However, to maintain smooth game play, you may just want to go ahead with him using what he does know at the time of the decision. If it is ok to put women to death for disobeying in your campaign, you may simply state that, as a paladin, his character would know that it isn't against the law in that culture in your setting. Then he could act on that knowledge.
Pallutus
Can't speak for prior editions but for 5E I'd worry less about the 'lawful good' thing and more about the specific oaths associated with the subclass in terms of consequences for breaking it. IE, did the actions betray the tenants given for that oath.
That's the thing. Paladins in 5E don't have to be Lawful Good and previous editions are irrelevant.
What good and evil people would do aside, "Lawful" is entirely about the internal laws of the character, not the laws of the land they are in. Whilst someone might decide to make a character who obeys and upholds all laws of the land, that does not mean that this describes all "lawful" people.
A paladin who has sworn to always protect the weak, shelter the downtrodden and never allow violence to befall any who have not earnt it is a lawful good paladin. If they walk into a city where a law allows nobles to hit peasants without consequence or rebuttal, they will not stand idly by and let those weak downtrodden people have violence befell on them just because it's "legal". They will snatch the nobles hand out of the air, and might throw them off their horse for good measure.
"Right" and "Wrong" is entirely subjective, as it should be for an interesting world, and so a Lawful Good paladin who has sworn to protect nature might face off against a Lawful Good paladin who has sworn to protect the peasants who are hunting. They are both Lawful Good, but the peasants are "wrong" in the eyes of the nature paladin, and the nature paladin is "wrong" in the eyes of the protect-the-weak paladin. They will fight each other, both thinking that they are "Right", and both continuing to be Lawful Good.
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It is the common custom of the internet that anything in all capital letters is a "shout" in text format. She shouted "PALADIN" at us and then asked a question about Alignments.
She's got a story that's a mixture of Midsummer Night's Dream and Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale" Then she said "I told my 12 year old son that he is Imposing modern moral standards on historical different moral standards. I feel that this would break the law and go against his alignment. Who is right?" Her child is, that's who. What other moral standard can a 12 year old boy have than the modern one?
She only posted twice after she created the thread, and her answers were short, and vague. She never answered a single direct question from anyone.
I suspect that she is a school teacher, and she's made 18 posts in total, almost all of them were about playing with her children, and she said that the other one is 10.
I think he was playing Lawful Good, and just like when the class was created, the moral lesson she wanted him to learn was that if you're not Lawful Good, you can't be a Paladin.
<Insert clever signature here>