Paladins fall from grace for being good.

[Rumparum]

Just wanted to share my experience on attempt of playing Paladin of Iomedae.

By selecting dialogue options that I believed to be most fitting to my character and Iomedae-s dogma I found myself no longer able to progress as a paladin.

That's kind of big issue cause vast majority of choices marked as Lawfull is actually either straight Lawfull Evil or very close to Lawfull Evil. There's almost no Lawfull Good or Lawfull Neutral choices. That means if you try to Roleplay a Paladin properly - sooner or later you'll be a fallen Paladin just cause choosing mostly "Good" dialogues will push you to Neutral Good alignment that is no longer compatible with Paladin class.

It's especially weirid when you look at Seelah who's character is written as often ignoring Lawfull part of her faith in favor of Good. This creates immersion breaking situation where we are forced to click "Lawfull" choices even if they feel Evil.

Taking Seelah advice in most cases makes it even more absurd cause you're literally stepping off Iomedae-s/Paladins path by listening to advice from a paladin.

I'm curious what are others experiences on the topic? Is it something that will be addressed in the future or maybe other players got around it some way?

[Kasa]

That's a writing problem with owlcats game and the reason why in pathfinder the bag of tricks mod stopped lateral movement.

[Athos the Mad]

Originally posted by Kasa:

That's a writing problem with owlcats game and the reason why in pathfinder the bag of tricks mod stopped lateral movement.

Modding is the way to go. It's kind of bad so many things need to be modded even though they should be obvious problems if they played the game or listened to the early access reports.

[Zuloph]

Honestly in this game there's this great spell called Atonement, you can just buy scrolls of it. Then you can be a Paladin who just goes around kicking babies if that's what your character would do and every so often just buy an Atonement scroll (they're pretty cheap IIRC) and tell your god you're sorry and you get your powers back.

[Kasa]

Just looked it up to see what exactly bag of tricks did:
"Neutral alignment shifts don't cause movement on the law/chaos axis"

Meaning for example:
When being LN and choosing a NG choice will bring you closer to being LG instead of NG.

In this case what it happening is when your LG and you choose a NG response it's pulling you away from Lawful towards Neutral Good for some god awful reason.

[Planeforger]

What lawful options do you feel are too evil?

I mean, Iomedae is all about justice and righteousness, so you'd imagine a paladin of Iomedae wouldn't just forgive criminals or make peace with traitors. They'd mete out justice and punish evildoers.

[Naked Granny]

Paladins are not just good. They are LAWFUL good.

If you are merely good, you don't have what it takes to be a paladin.

If you never do anything lawful, you are not lawful.

It really is pretty simple.

[Grymm]

If you want to RP something that doesn't match Owlcat's version of Alignment, then either avoid alignment shifting choices for trivial things, or visit the Respec guy whenever your alignment is going funny.

[Soul]

Man that's dumb, there are totally evil paladins serving evil gods and neutral paladins serving neutral gods. That does it im doing a paladin mythic Devil playthrough somehow.

[Naked Granny]

Originally posted by Grymm:

If you want to RP something that doesn't match Owlcat's version of Alignment, then either avoid alignment shifting choices for trivial things, or visit the Respec guy whenever your alignment is going funny.

Or buy and use an Atonement scroll.

[Naked Granny]

Originally posted by Soul:

Man that's dumb, there are totally evil paladins serving evil gods and neutral paladins serving neutral gods. That does it im doing a paladin mythic Devil playthrough somehow.

They even have their own class!

It's called a Blackguard.

And the Chaotic Good paladins are called Rangers.

And the Law-Evil paladins are called Hellknights...

And the true-neutral paladins are called Fighters! Yay!

[Daliena]

Originally posted by Aunt Tony:

Paladins are not just good. They are LAWFUL good.

If you are merely good, you don't have what it takes to be a paladin.

If you never do anything lawful, you are not lawful.

It really is pretty simple.

Yeah, but there's the thing. You're supposed to act with both law AND good in mind, not ignoring one for the other and then doing it the other way around - letting criminals go because Good, then executing the next one who so much as looks at you funny because fascist- err, Lawful.

[Naked Granny]

Originally posted by Daliena:

Originally posted by Aunt Tony:

Paladins are not just good. They are LAWFUL good.

If you are merely good, you don't have what it takes to be a paladin.

If you never do anything lawful, you are not lawful.

It really is pretty simple.

Yeah, but there's the thing. You're supposed to act with both law AND good in mind, not ignoring one for the other and then doing it the other way around - letting criminals go because Good, then executing the next one who so much as looks at you funny because fascist- err, Lawful.

It is entirely your choice how to respond to situations.

Law is not the same thing as Good. The area they overlap is literally less than a third of their totality. It's a very narrow path.

It's not complex. It's not complicated.

Being a paladin is hard, and there is nothing about life that guarantees you never need to make difficult choices or that you will always be able to just do whatever you want without consequences. You wanna be a paladin? Do you really? Or do you just want the powers of a paladin without having to actually be one?

If the latter... you aren't a paladin and you deserve to fall instantly and immediately.

And, sadly, this is a video game, so they will allow you to just pay some gold and be a paladin again.

[Soul]

Well im gonna be a HellPaladin of Iomadae. Suck it universe.

[Planeforger]

Originally posted by Daliena:

Yeah, but there's the thing. You're supposed to act with both law AND good in mind, not ignoring one for the other and then doing it the other way around - letting criminals go because Good, then executing the next one who so much as looks at you funny because fascist- err, Lawful.

True, but letting criminals go isn't lawful good.

Unless you've given them some kind of trial, punishment, or atonement, then releasing criminals is arguably a chaotic act.

*edit* To put it another way, lawful good is like...Ned Stark. Sometimes you have to execute a traitor, even if they did it for good reasons.

[Naked Granny]

Originally posted by Planeforger:

Originally posted by Daliena:

Yeah, but there's the thing. You're supposed to act with both law AND good in mind, not ignoring one for the other and then doing it the other way around - letting criminals go because Good, then executing the next one who so much as looks at you funny because fascist- err, Lawful.

True, but letting criminals go isn't lawful good.

Unless you've given them some kind of trial, punishment, or atonement, then releasing criminals is arguably a chaotic act.

It is a chaotic act.

It's just that the reasons for doing a chaotic act are often "because I can use them" (evil), "because we need them" (neutral), "because they don't deserve to be prisoners" (lawful or good, depending on the details of why they're prisoners).

The game's writing already is extremely generous and forgiving of those sorts of situations.

It takes like literally two major Acts of the plot in order to shift alignment one step. That's a very consistent trend of behaviors, really, so I dunno why people whine about it.