A Completely Non-OD&D Look at Paladins (ENWorld)

[Crimhthan The Great]

Would you allow this paladin in your game? (new fiction added 11/11/08) (thread started at the beginning of 2005)
I would not, because this is not how I view paladins. I can see a really adult game with this, but not my style and it IMO completely perverts the concept of a Paladin, nevertheless interested in your comments.

shilsen writes
I was doing a writeup for a paladin character concept I had, and was curious how other DMs would react to it. So here are a few paragraphs about Sir Cedric. Simple question - would you allow this paladin in your campaign? For a more complex question - is there anything in the PHB paladin class which prohibits Sir Cedric (I personally think not)? Anyway, here goes:

This thread at ENWorld runs 20 posts per page for 49 pages.

Edit: In case you're interested in reading more about Cedric and don't want to wade through all of the thread, I've added some more fiction on pages 5 (here and here), 6, 7, 13, 14, 17, 18, 25 and 27. Enjoy!

If you go to the bottom of that first posts you can follow those links to more fiction of Sir Cedric.

[Crimhthan The Great]

At the bottom of the first page of the Sir Cedric thread is a link that does not work. Here is the updated link

Bad Paladin... or My First Paladin thread... aka The Sir Gaulstaff thread from 2004
It is 5 pages or over 80 posts long.

[hengest]

May 25, 2022 21:48:12 GMT -5 Crimhthan The Great said:

At the bottom of the first page of the Sir Cedric thread is a link that does not work. Here is the updated link

Bad Paladin... or My First Paladin thread... aka The Sir Gaulstaff thread from 2004
It is 5 pages or over 80 posts long.

I'll bite, although this is a little outside my wheelhouse. (I admit I'm not super attracted to this kind of explicity character-personality build.)

I like the basic idea, getting away from the paragon of perfection or rule-follower "template." The powers are a "gift" to someone who is in fact imperfect. 

Seems like that might give both the player and the ref some interesting freedom here.

[Crimhthan The Great]

May 25, 2022 22:27:22 GMT -5 hengest said:

May 25, 2022 21:48:12 GMT -5 Crimhthan The Great said:

At the bottom of the first page of the Sir Cedric thread is a link that does not work. Here is the updated link

Bad Paladin... or My First Paladin thread... aka The Sir Gaulstaff thread from 2004
It is 5 pages or over 80 posts long.

I'll bite, although this is a little outside my wheelhouse. (I admit I'm not super attracted to this kind of explicity character-personality build.)

I like the basic idea, getting away from the paragon of perfection or rule-follower "template." The powers are a "gift" to someone who is in fact imperfect. 

Seems like that might give both the player and the ref some interesting freedom here.

A lot of this depends on your views of Lawful or later on Lawful Good. A lot of these things want to go way beyond imperfect and embrace Chaotic or Chaotic Evil behavior and excuse that, but IMO their is a difference between imperfect, a fallen Paladin who must go on a Quest to redeem himself and a Paladin who is beyond any regaining of his powers due to his sharp jumping behavior.