Can you play a paladin without being a party pooper

[Disliker of the mary sue]

The paladin, probably the most controversial class in Dnd considering how many people have bad stories about them. From what a experienced dnd player I game with said being a paladin gives you a very strong leash to not screw around in the story because one bad screw up and you lose all your power and usefulness to the party. It apparently as difficult a task as keeping morality 10 in world of darkness (I still wonder how gm is suppose to determine if someone is thinking bad things but that another thread).

I also basically heard that you kind are the party pooper....for example your partly like plans an ambush and then the paladin comes along and say something along the line of "we can't do this the cowards way, we have to go right up to our foes and fight them fairly" or something like that. And if you party is having a moral discussion the paladin will make things a hundred times more heated.

Is their a way to play a paladin that doesn't really make the rest of the group want to just kill your character in their sleep?

[simply Nathan]

To my knowledge they aren't any bigger "party poopers" than Lawful Good Clerics as they have the same basic religious beliefs and behavior, and likewise lose their usefulness to the party if they fall out of favor with their deity.

I say what you do is take a look at those vows the Paladin takes and instead of being legalistic about it, ask the question "Why do they have this as part of their vows?" If you actually understand the reasoning behind the limitation you can play your character more intelligently.

The example you cited about ambush: The paladin isn't against launching a sneak attack because stealth is cowardly. If he was he'd be forbidden from being in a party with a Rogue or Ranger at all. It's because part of being a good and heroic adventurer is to not pre-emptively murder anyone who might be a threat; you're supposed to give them a chance first to show they are hostile, then give them a chance to surrender peacefully instead of going straight to killing.

If you already know your enemy is evil then the only obvious mundane advantage you can leverage in a fight that would be considered immoral is to use poisoned weapons. Poisons are, again, restricted from all Good-aligned heroes (and most Neutral ones as well).

So basically if people see the Paladin as a party pooper either they secretly want to play a Chaotic Neutral/Evil party or someone just doesn't know how to play the Paladin correctly.

[Randyman]

Read this: Powder-Keg of Justice

That's a well-played paladin, and no party pooper at all.

[WingedKagouti]

Originally Posted by Disliker of the mary sue

"we can't do this the cowards way, we have to go right up to our foes and fight them fairly"

As has been said above, this is not something a paladin should actually say when talking about a known enemy. That is something a Lawful Stupid Player would say (in some cases the L can be omitted).

A well played paladin might have other objections to using an ambush, but all but the most stupid ones realize that ambushes are a valid strategic option. And in some cases ambushes allow you to pacify targets without killing them much easier than if you faced them head on.

A well played paladin who wants to play with the party may not condone the actions of a thief, but (s)he should also understand the value of the thief. Thus (s)he might ask the thief to at least keep the obviously illegal activities out of sight of the paladin. The thief should of course also be smart about this and not pickpocket or steal from non-enemies while the paladin is around.

Also consider which god the paladin follows. Lawful Good can justify a lot of **** under the banner of the greater good: "We are just and holy, so everything we do is right. Opposing us is wrong and should be punished!" A gathering of paladins united in purpose is probably as bad for everyone else as an army of orcs would be.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Kenneth Latrans

So basically if people see the Paladin as a party pooper either they secretly want to play a Chaotic Neutral/Evil party or someone just doesn't know how to play the Paladin correctly.

It's not always the player, sometimes it's the DM. The problem is that paladins are the class where alignment restrictions matter the most, and alignments are somewhat unclear at best, and often *extremely* poorly interpreted. I've seen DMs decide killing the monster would be evil, but leaving it alive to attack innocents later would also be evil....

It's quite possible to play a paladin in a game where everybody has a sensible view of alignments and the players mostly want to play heroes. When some of the players want to play amoral mercenaries, or either the player or the GM have decided on an insane definition of Lawful Good, it does not work so well.

[Disliker of the mary sue]

Originally Posted by malloyd

It's not always the player, sometimes it's the DM. The problem is that paladins are the class where alignment restrictions matter the most, and alignments are somewhat unclear at best, and often *extremely* poorly interpreted. I've seen DMs decide killing the monster would be evil, but leaving it alive to attack innocents later would also be evil....

It's quite possible to play a paladin in a game where everybody has a sensible view of alignments and the players mostly want to play heroes. When some of the players want to play amoral mercenaries, or either the player or the GM have decided on an insane definition of Lawful Good, it does not work so well.

Oh yeah forgot about that aspect...the DM...the Dm can be a real dick abut that apparently since he is the final judge of what makes a paladin fall. Heard of ******* Dms that give you the option to have billions of people die thuse losing your palidan powers or disobey your vows which will get rid of your abilties and will actively prevent them from taking any third option.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by malloyd

It's not always the player, sometimes it's the DM.

......and with prepared material it can be the writer. For example, after we have a TPK in Age of Wyrms I bring in a Paladin because of all the demons and undead.

No sooner than I had done that the plot ends us undercover in The Evil City and I['m dancing around my alignment as fast as I can.

I can assure you that the _next_ time we went undercover in The Evil City I was a True Neutral Rogue. Actually everyone in that campaign was Neutral. It worked really well. I've had a lot of Neutral characters in adventure Paths who found that Alignment worked well.

We do have a Paladin in our Carrion Crown game and so far no land mines but there are definitely no such character types among the pirates of Skull and Shackles.

So far Carrion Crown actually has been about fighting monsters of one sort or another and this might actually carry all the way through. It's probably an exception though. I've seen very few recent adventures that were Paladin friendly.

So it may not be the party, it may be the whole genre.

[Kromm]

I've gravitated toward paladins whenever I've played the D&D family of games. I prefer the lightning-bolts-and-pillars-of-salt approach: the paladin as justiciar of Zeus or Old Testament YHWH, going about smiting Evil, with the ends justifying means whenever said means don't actively endanger the deity's own personal faithful or those of his close divine pals. Less Boy Scout or self-sacrificing saint, more instrument of divine wrath against Evil. And I've always been fortunate enough to have DMs who've agreed: As long as any slaying, ambushing, looting, and general murder-hobo-ness is always harming Evil folk and never harming Good folk, it's fine . . . no need to be some paragon of abstract virtue for its own sake, not in the gritty trenches of bloody warfare against demons, devils, and the undead.

I think there's room for the saintly, self-sacrificing ascetic and for the upright champion of Arthurian chivalry, but neither is a paladin. Those folks have other goals, rooted as much in mortal interpretation as in holy writ, and are often bound by their codes to not take action against Evil. I see a paladin as being bound to strike down Evil, even if the only tactically sound way to do so is from behind with poisoned arrows.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Disliker of the mary sue

I also basically heard that you kind are the party pooper....for example your partly like plans an ambush and then the paladin comes along and say something along the line of "we can't do this the cowards way, we have to go right up to our foes and fight them fairly" or something like that. And if you party is having a moral discussion the paladin will make things a hundred times more heated.

Is their a way to play a paladin that doesn't really make the rest of the group want to just kill your character in their sleep?

When I played D&D the main problem we had with Paladins was the people who played them as Chaotic Evil while claiming they were playing them as Lawful Good.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

......and with prepared material it can be the writer. For example, after we have a TPK in Age of Wyrms I bring in a Paladin because of all the demons and undead.

No sooner than I had done that the plot ends us undercover in The Evil City and I['m dancing around my alignment as fast as I can.

I can assure you that the _next_ time we went undercover in The Evil City I was a True Neutral Rogue. Actually everyone in that campaign was Neutral. It worked really well. I've had a lot of Neutral characters in adventure Paths who found that Alignment worked well.

We do have a Paladin in our Carrion Crown game and so far no land mines but there are definitely no such character types among the pirates of Skull and Shackles.

So far Carrion Crown actually has been about fighting monsters of one sort or another and this might actually carry all the way through. It's probably an exception though. I've seen very few recent adventures that were Paladin friendly.

So it may not be the party, it may be the whole genre.

Playing Rise of The Runelords now with a paladin, inquisitor, and a monk (as well as some other classes without alignment restrictions or powers that they'd need atone for). So far we haven't run into any problems. Everybody we have had to kill has been evil and doing something illegal anyway. It probably helps that both the paladin and the inquisitor feel that their authority is legal and the GM agrees.