The Pink Dice Chronicles

We brushed over an interesting code that can be used for playing a paladin in our " Paladinic Philosophy 101: Another Way to Play a Lawful Good Paladin Without Being Lawful Stupid " segment. This paladinic code-based paladin is interesting but still lacks some of the element of growth we might really want to explore with a paladin character.  In this segment we are going to consider "the struggling paladin". Paladins, like nuns and priests and other spiritual folks, are real people.  Real people have their faults and their struggles.  Priests and nuns and paladins can mess up with both their deity and the law just like anyone else.  They can pay the price like anyone else.  In the case of the struggling paladin, we pick a vice that becomes the paladin's daily struggle.  This struggle will sometimes force the paladin outside his normal bounds, and he will maintain some sort of daily atonement to try to keep himself forgiven for the mistakes he or she makes...

Quite a few years ago I found an excellent reference for explaining paladinic philosophy based on the Path of Honor .  TL; DR on this is pretty simple.  Paladins have a set of privileges that can be earned or lost based on how an individual person acts.  A number of these privileges are default privileges that everyone gets by default and can only lose: Life -- Privilege to not die a meaningless death Well-Being -- One should not have their health intentionally compromised by another Procedure -- People should be allowed to do what they want by the paladin, so long as it doesn't infringe upon others' privileges Esteem -- One has the right to courtesy and respect Beyond these default privileges are additional ones that can be earned: Confidence -- trusted by the paladin Deference -- a person's word is trusted in a given area Command -- a person can direct the paladin Absolute Command -- a person can direct the paladin without question So when playing a la...