Why do people hate paladins

I really want to play a paladin but everyone tells me no why?

I think that there is a history of people playing Paladins like these stuck up Boy Scout types. One of the best characters that I have ever see what a Paladin that struggled to maintain his oath. As long as you don't try to make the other characters live up to the Paladins ideals, I would say go ahead and play one. As an example, pray for the rogue, but don't belittle him. I would also recommend that you not be so intractable when it comes to dealing with the less savory elements. A true paladin can keep the big picture in view. Dealing with a one evil in order to thwart another is not always a bad thing. The same paladin from above was our best negotiator when we were soliciting Orcus (in his own house) to help fight Demogorgon at the end of the Savage Tide adventure path.

Keith said: I think that there is a history of people playing Paladins like these stuck up Boy Scout types. One of the best characters that I have ever see what a Paladin that struggled to maintain his oath. As long as you don't try to make the other characters live up to the Paladins ideals, I would say go ahead and play one. As an example, pray for the rogue, but don't belittle him. I would also recommend that you not be so intractable when it comes to dealing with the less savory elements. A true paladin can keep the big picture in view. Dealing with a one evil in order to thwart another is not always a bad thing. The same paladin from above was our best negotiator when we were soliciting Orcus (in his own house) to help fight Demogorgon at the end of the Savage Tide adventure path. Truth! Couldn't have said it better myself

In my experience acted by a lot of players, paladins turn into a prime example of alignment completely dictating character behavior, not vice versa. Keith explained it very well, though, it's mostly a history with people that inspired those prejudices. And character conflict is one of the ways to solve this problem

Any good player playing a paladin dedicates to a cause, not to an ideal. And any good GM lets the rope fringe around paladins as well. I personally hate their mechanics. Huge ACs, incredible saves, massive damage, and great single target DPS, same round self-heals (swift). But I don't forbid the class, ever, since their touch AC makes them fun to nuke.

Alexander P. said: In my experience acted by a lot of players, paladins turn into a prime example of alignment completely dictating character behavior, not vice versa. Keith explained it very well, though, it's mostly a history with people that inspired those prejudices. And character conflict is one of the ways to solve this problem This is true, I understand in 4th edition their alignment is a little more flexible, but i absolutely hate pure lawful good honestly for me Lawful good characters are like being able to predict the end of a good book before you even get to chapter 2

I have to say, I really like the direction that paladins are taking in DnD Next. It is all about the oath and less about the alignment.

Aaron (DM) said: Alexander P. said: In my experience acted by a lot of players, paladins turn into a prime example of alignment completely dictating character behavior, not vice versa. Keith explained it very well, though, it's mostly a history with people that inspired those prejudices. And character conflict is one of the ways to solve this problem This is true, I understand in 4th edition their alignment is a little more flexible, but i absolutely hate pure lawful good honestly for me Lawful good characters are like being able to predict the end of a good book before you even get to chapter 2 Well, no. Lawful just means they follow a code of conduct, good just means they try to uphold socially correct morals and humanity. It's not about "I must save the princess and stop these bandits and refuse to live lavishly" but rather it's about doing your best to prevent the worst. Paladins function no differently than monks and their codes of conducts and personalities are often times very similar.

Keith said: I think that there is a history of people playing Paladins like these stuck up Boy Scout types. One of the best characters that I have ever see what a Paladin that struggled to maintain his oath. As long as you don't try to make the other characters live up to the Paladins ideals, I would say go ahead and play one. As an example, pray for the rogue, but don't belittle him. I would also recommend that you not be so intractable when it comes to dealing with the less savory elements. A true paladin can keep the big picture in view. Dealing with a one evil in order to thwart another is not always a bad thing. The same paladin from above was our best negotiator when we were soliciting Orcus (in his own house) to help fight Demogorgon at the end of the Savage Tide adventure path. Fantastic advice quoted above. To add, it's about taking full control of your character. A good roleplayer realizes that he is both playing a role and participating in a game. That means you are playing with and to an audience. As such, that audience needs to be catered to (and they to you). Giving other player characters a hard time when there's a whole world of truly evil things out there to smite is a little myopic not to mention annoying to your fellow players. This is likely their concern. So promise you'll be fully in control of your character and then make good on that promise by imagining ways your particular goody-two-shoes can turn a blind eye to the odd unlawful or questionable act. Or if it's D&D 4e, make an unaligned paladin and carry on.

You guys have Paladins all wrong period. Pick a militant god and it's open season on evil. This includes lopping of the heads of you're enemy. Most of any of the real Paladins in history where butchers!! Why you ask? Easy there victims did not have the same faith as you simple.

I agree with murdoc, pick Bahamut, or Heironous, and you're a butcher running around the battlefield with a bloody cleaver. No better than a low intel barb.

Josua J. said: I agree with murdoc, pick Bahamut, or Heironous, and you're a butcher running around the battlefield with a bloody cleaver. No better than a low intel barb. I think the issue here is less so much on the avalability of a class and more on the representation of the character. Here I post a question: "What is the difference between a Paladin, a Fighter, or a Knight?" Answer: Nothing! They're all very martial classes and can exhibit religious backgrounds. The problem most people have with Paladins is that many portray thems as this staunch pillar of chilvary which to be fair can be on interpretation. However, many people have said to consider the Paladin in a different iteration, as a teacher, a scholar, a messanger, or a torch bearer. There is nothing wrong with having a series of morals; Batman has them, Spiderman has them, heck even some politicians say they have them....course the jury is still out on some of them. You just gotta understand that a code of morals should be the ideal, not the requirement , to being a Paladin. Example: I've played many a paladin: I've played with Rogues, Wizards, Barbarians, Warlocks, Evil Characters and once with an Elf....I hate elves. The common theme I have is "For the Greater Good", it doesn't matter what you do so long as you do it for the greater good of the people, the code, or yourself. You wanna be honorable in combat: Then tell the party to get into position as you distract the ogre with a challenge. You wanna be respectful to authority: then be mindful that power is a priviledge not a right, if a noble is himself unlawful then prompt the people to revolt. You wanna be devout: Then "pray", you don't gotta be forcing in other peoples' faces just show your faith in a sensible way.

jacob b. said: I really want to play a paladin but everyone tells me no why? It's that holier than though smell, it's impossible to get out after the paladins been around and it puts off the ladies. Seriously though, try pitching more than 'I want to play a paladin' (if that's what you're doing); sell the character, not the class, find out about the game and figure out how your character will fit into it and convince the GM that they want you as a player because your character will add to their game. I think you'll find that if that's true, the class won't matter.

The Question said: I think the issue here is less so much on the avalability of a class and more on the representation of the character. Here I post a question: "What is the difference between a Paladin, a Fighter, or a Knight?" Answer: Nothing! They're all very martial classes and can exhibit religious backgrounds. Paladin can heal and turn undead, Fighter is a load of feats, and knight is a paladin minus the heals and turning. Other than that I like your advice.

Oh snap, this topic is always brought up at some point or another during a gamer's career and is one that has a multitude of factors most of which have not been brought up yet. I should also warn that my opinion is probably going to offend some people. Just some fair warning. As mentioned you can play a paladin that upholds justice but in an sound way. Hell you can play a Judge Dredd type char that is harsh....tons of ways, but that has already been brought up and I don't want to cover what people already have said. First and foremost jacob, don't let people tell you what you can or should play. If you want to play a paladin and the group doesn't want you to then I say play a paladin if only for the sole purpose of pissing them off. While it is true that many players play their paladins as "boy scouts" much like Superman and that is honestly one way to play them, a really fun way actually. Now I understand that no one likes Superman, but bear with me. People that play the character as a "boy scout" tend to play them in as a fairly simple minded way, thus the term "Lawful good does not mean lawful stupid" was coined. This is due to people playing paladins that give away the groups position when sneaking, charge blindly towards the enemy regardless of surroundings etc. While your paladin can be leading the charge at all times he doesn't have to do it in a way that is not still tactically sound. Now a reason I see and hear used to explain why people don't want paladins to be played is due to the rogue, and to me that is just effing dumb. The same people telling you not to play a character because it is stereotyped to act a certain way are then having the gall to play a rogue in such a cliche and stereotypical way that it shows they have zero fucking creativity. What do I mean by that? I'm talking this compulsive rogues that feel the need to try and steal everything if given the chance. You know, the morally gray thieves that seem to think the only way to play a rogue successfully is by attempt to rob everyone. There are so many ways to play a rogue; from the guy that explores dungeons liberating treasures to the master tinkerer who just loves taking things apart and figuring out how they work to the guy the towns guards call in to rescue hostages from dangerous situations. Hell you could even play a robin hood type character that steals from villains and donates the cash to orphans. But no, it's always the same god damn cookie cutter character, and the players bitch about a paladin because they don't want to have to deal with the repercussions of playing their rogue. Which brings me to my next point, the struggle of good vs. mercenaries. I have noticed that parties rarely are comprised of good people fighting for the sake of good. They mostly tend to gravitate around mercenaries trying to get rich and powerful so they can prove to people of that world that they in fact have the biggest and baddest dicks out there. Chaotic Neutral or True Neutral are some of most popular alignments in the older systems and in 4th edition you have 3 gods that are good aligned (or lawful good) and the other like 10 are all unaligned. So thus a reason people do not like paladins is because someone is attempting to play a character that is actually good when they just want to be able to do whatever they want with no moral backlash. As that is an easier role to play, it really is. If the party was going to be a party of do gooders that were out to save the world then they would be welcoming a paladin if not encouraging someone to play a paladin as the beacon of all that is good and holy (they are instruments of a god after all). Which brings me to my last point. People that have a problem with you playing a paladin (specially those that know you as a player) tend to be very narrow minded players. That's right, I said it. One of the longest campaigns I have played in was an evil campaign we played for almost 4 years..maybe more. In it one of the new players decided that he was in fact going to play a paladin, and this is back in 3.5 where they had detect evil at will. Now you might be saying to yourself "But wait! Why play a paladin in an evil campaign and is that even possible?" and if you are, then you probably fall into the narrow minded player category unless you are new to D&D then you get a pass. It is entirely possible to play a paladin in an evil game and very rewarding but it all depends on the other players. Now we weren't playing evil characters that went around brutally killing babies (all the time)...we were playing smart, coy evil characters that tried to be as sly as possible as to not alert the entire god damn world to our evil plans. So when the paladin joined up we kept up the facade of not being overtly evil. The player of said paladin did not scan us to see if we were evil because he had no reason to. Paladins don't go around detecting evil all day, every day (despite how people play them). The paladin did struggle with the dark world that seemed to be full of corruption as he played the boyscout role to the point where he was faced with a situation where a crime lord wanted his gear in exchange for a woman's life. The paladin gladly agreed. I should also mention that the crime lord and his cronies were all were-wolves and we were level two/ But still, he gave up his possessions and saved a woman because that is how his character was. This paladin lasted for 5 levels with us before he finally snapped due to the overt corruption (the party was branded as criminals as the lord was someone we fucked over to save the city) and became a fighter and then blackguard. My point though is that we had a rogue in our party, we had an evil cleric in our party and yet we still had a paladin play with our group for several months. Were there times when the party had a moral debate about certain actions? Yup, but that made the game all the better as it forced us to all think out side the box. So in closing, don't let people with a narrow view of the game ruin your fun. Just as there are many different ways to play a paladin from Boy scout to Judge Dredd there are just as many variations of every character. You just need to find players will to expand their horizons and maybe play a party of do gooders...just saying.

Thanks to all that awnsered.

the idea is either playing with one is a pain because you have to be good or end up with your brain matter hanging off their mace . being one is a pain because if you step over the moral line no matter what reason or you come up against or are with a seriously annoying wiz or sorc who casts alignment change , you loose all your divine power becoming just an epic villager .

The main problem with the paladin (at least in older editions) was that he had big advantages like saving throws, hit points, weapon selection and added supernatural and plainly magical abilities. These abilities were all very well put into rules, so you could depend on them. This was balanced by mainly three rules: only a certain amount of magical equipment was allowed, a certain amount of gold was lost and the paladin had to adhere to a code of conduct. Now, D&D being itself, the restriction on magical equipment was either easily circumvented or simply a gamebreaker, thus not truly noteworthy. The lost gold ... really, there is only so much you can do with gold and it became quite useless after level 5 or so. Remains the code of conduct to balance the paladin, which, of course, led to a certain kind of GM that was greately shoehorning the paladin into the one and only one allowable behaviour. That behaviour again soon was accepted as normal by paladin players, which led to the prevailing notion of a paladin being the lawful stupid annoyance Phisto Roboto described. Add a certain amoung of other reasons and finally the paladin became a certain stereotype which people hated and thus banned from their game.

Hi. In my current games over two years we have had a Paladin dwarf. Now my opinion on this is simple. I played and read some of the Warcraft books and the games etc. Now their Paladins still retained their powers as long as the person believed they were doing good most of the time. This is how I feel about any Paladins, even lawful good ones. Unless the god strictly is against what the player believes was correct in the situation, there is no repercussion. A Paladin can kill a whole bunch of towns people if he truly believes there is a good cause to it. However if he found out that they were innocent then id say he would feel remorse for it and it leads to him losing his "way" and must redeem himself to regain his powers. I deal with it on a situation by situation basis. Our Paladin plays in this similar sort of conduct. He breaks laws, drinks alot, and questions certain morale decisions but accepts them as the best decision to achieve the goal for greater good.

Phisto Roboto said: Oh snap, this topic is always brought up at some point or another during a gamer's career and is one that has a multitude of factors most of which have not been brought up yet. I should also warn that my opinion is probably going to offend some people. Just some fair warning. As mentioned you can play a paladin that upholds justice but in an sound way. Hell you can play a Judge Dredd type char that is harsh....tons of ways, but that has already been brought up and I don't want to cover what people already have said. First and foremost jacob, don't let people tell you what you can or should play. If you want to play a paladin and the group doesn't want you to then I say play a paladin if only for the sole purpose of pissing them off. While it is true that many players play their paladins as "boy scouts" much like Superman and that is honestly one way to play them, a really fun way actually. Now I understand that no one likes Superman, but bear with me. People that play the character as a "boy scout" tend to play them in as a fairly simple minded way, thus the term "Lawful good does not mean lawful stupid" was coined. This is due to people playing paladins that give away the groups position when sneaking, charge blindly towards the enemy regardless of surroundings etc. While your paladin can be leading the charge at all times he doesn't have to do it in a way that is not still tactically sound. Now a reason I see and hear used to explain why people don't want paladins to be played is due to the rogue, and to me that is just effing dumb. The same people telling you not to play a character because it is stereotyped to act a certain way are then having the gall to play a rogue in such a cliche and stereotypical way that it shows they have zero fucking creativity. What do I mean by that? I'm talking this compulsive rogues that feel the need to try and steal everything if given the chance. You know, the morally gray thieves that seem to think the only way to play a rogue successfully is by attempt to rob everyone. There are so many ways to play a rogue; from the guy that explores dungeons liberating treasures to the master tinkerer who just loves taking things apart and figuring out how they work to the guy the towns guards call in to rescue hostages from dangerous situations. Hell you could even play a robin hood type character that steals from villains and donates the cash to orphans. But no, it's always the same god damn cookie cutter character, and the players bitch about a paladin because they don't want to have to deal with the repercussions of playing their rogue. Which brings me to my next point, the struggle of good vs. mercenaries. I have noticed that parties rarely are comprised of good people fighting for the sake of good. They mostly tend to gravitate around mercenaries trying to get rich and powerful so they can prove to people of that world that they in fact have the biggest and baddest dicks out there. Chaotic Neutral or True Neutral are some of most popular alignments in the older systems and in 4th edition you have 3 gods that are good aligned (or lawful good) and the other like 10 are all unaligned. So thus a reason people do not like paladins is because someone is attempting to play a character that is actually good when they just want to be able to do whatever they want with no moral backlash. As that is an easier role to play, it really is. If the party was going to be a party of do gooders that were out to save the world then they would be welcoming a paladin if not encouraging someone to play a paladin as the beacon of all that is good and holy (they are instruments of a god after all). Which brings me to my last point. People that have a problem with you playing a paladin (specially those that know you as a player) tend to be very narrow minded players. That's right, I said it. One of the longest campaigns I have played in was an evil campaign we played for almost 4 years..maybe more. In it one of the new players decided that he was in fact going to play a paladin, and this is back in 3.5 where they had detect evil at will. Now you might be saying to yourself "But wait! Why play a paladin in an evil campaign and is that even possible?" and if you are, then you probably fall into the narrow minded player category unless you are new to D&D then you get a pass. It is entirely possible to play a paladin in an evil game and very rewarding but it all depends on the other players. Now we weren't playing evil characters that went around brutally killing babies (all the time)...we were playing smart, coy evil characters that tried to be as sly as possible as to not alert the entire god damn world to our evil plans. So when the paladin joined up we kept up the facade of not being overtly evil. The player of said paladin did not scan us to see if we were evil because he had no reason to. Paladins don't go around detecting evil all day, every day (despite how people play them). The paladin did struggle with the dark world that seemed to be full of corruption as he played the boyscout role to the point where he was faced with a situation where a crime lord wanted his gear in exchange for a woman's life. The paladin gladly agreed. I should also mention that the crime lord and his cronies were all were-wolves and we were level two/ But still, he gave up his possessions and saved a woman because that is how his character was. This paladin lasted for 5 levels with us before he finally snapped due to the overt corruption (the party was branded as criminals as the lord was someone we fucked over to save the city) and became a fighter and then blackguard. My point though is that we had a rogue in our party, we had an evil cleric in our party and yet we still had a paladin play with our group for several months. Were there times when the party had a moral debate about certain actions? Yup, but that made the game all the better as it forced us to all think out side the box. So in closing, don't let people with a narrow view of the game ruin your fun. Just as there are many different ways to play a paladin from Boy scout to Judge Dredd there are just as many variations of every character. You just need to find players will to expand their horizons and maybe play a party of do gooders...just saying. This. I have been in many games on roll20 now and 50% of them (and any other game I play) are comprised of the same hooded, mysterious one named figure as a pc. They are just as boring (imo) to play as a LG Pally. Personally Paladin is my favorite class. I have never felt like they get their due in 3.5, but I LOVE them in DnD Next. 4e is our current game of choice, and they are powerful but not overwhelming. They are also not restricted (as mentioned) to LG, though seeing that as a limitation I think says something about the creativity of both player and dm. For me my biggest issue with playing a paladin comes when interacting with the rogue or the mercenary group members who have no loyalty to an actual cause. When the group 'bends to the paladins will' this can be a problem, but no more so then when bending to the unscrupulous halfling we all have played with. ahemOOTSahem... I play a paladin 50% of the time, and they are never the same. Some are religiously bound to tradition, some to a law, some to their own code. Unfortunately playing LG to it's full intention is often seen as fanatical and unworkable. I had a paladin leave a group because they refused to attack an obvious bad guy who had just slaughtered a village simply because they knew (out of character) that he was too powerful to beat. So, Fero Stonewind left to go on sabbatical and a less morally righteous character took his place, no hard feelings on either side. As Phisto says play the character you want, but be prepared for some push back if you are too stringent on your options.