NO ONE LIKES A PALADIN: ROLL A NEW CHARACTER

[I’ve received request to do more DnD based posts, so let’s give this a crack.  I’m going to do the best to translate for my non-nerdcore audience out there.]

The paladin, upon initial glance, appears to be one of the most, if not THE most, powerful classes available in Dungeons and Dragons.  To summarize, a paladin is a holy warrior, combining the combat prowess, weapons and armor abilities of the fighter with the holy magic of the cleric, meaning that they can fight in armor with powerful weapons while still casting magic.  On top of all that, they get their own unique ability to heal themselves or other party members, PLUS they get an innate bonus to resisting the effects of magic spells cast against them.  I’m sure there are other cool things they get, it’s been a while since I looked, but the point is, they are stacked.  But what’s the catch?  There’s always a catch, and for the paladin, it’s a big one.  The paladin HAS to be of lawful good alignment.  To explain that again, every character in the DnD universe has a certain “bent” as far as morality is concerned, ranging from Good to Evil and Lawful to Chaotic.  Some are Robin Hood (Chaotic Good) types, who do what is right no matter what the law says, others are unscrupulous mercenaries (Neutral to Choatic Neutral) that do whatever gets them paid, and others are tyrants or psychopaths (Lawful or Chaotic Evil).  The Paladin is a bastion of all that is good, righteous, holy and lawful, for if they deviate from that path, they lose all their powers…and that makes them worthless.  No one likes a paladin, leave the party and roll a new character.

And next time, put some stats in strength and constitution

Why am I being so unfair to the paladin?  Because their oath to lawful goodness SERIOUSLY hamstrings their ability to be a worthwhile contributor to the party.  All that fighting ability, the heavy armor, the spell casting, the healing, absolutely WORTHLESS without the ability and intent to use it to get the job done.  A character who refuses to take the RIGHT course of action, irrespective of its goodness or lawfulness, is an awful character, and I’d gladly take a one legged kobold barbarian with gumption over a jacked up paladin any day of the week.  To idly watch a plan fail despite having all the tools necessary to make it succeed because it conflicts with YOUR personal code of ethics calls into question your dedication to the success of the party, and ultimately your dedication for your own success.

Ok, sometimes the metaphor needs explaining, so let me do that here.  Paladins are EVERYWHERE in the training world.  They are the people that REFUSE to deviate from their own code of ethics as it relates to training.  These are the people that refuse to ever do anything other than a set of 5, who refuse to do anything other than full body training, who refuse to do giantsets at fear of being too fatigued to hit heavy lifts in training, who refuse to let form deviate in training, etc etc.  And in true Paladin fashion, many times these people began their journey with innate advantages that allowed them to maintain these ethics for a LONG time.  They had superior genetics (as much as I hate to make mention of such a thing for the can of worms it opens), an excellent foundation in athletics beforehand, natural sense of kinesthetic awareness, etc etc, that allowed them to make significant progress without deviating…but eventually it DOES stop working.  Everything works, but nothing works for ever, and after a while, it becomes times to get a little chaotic evil.

Dude, too far

Yes dear reader, sometimes you have to give in to chaos and evil to achieve a greater good.  At this time, I’d like to very much point out my hamfisted metaphor before someone tries to implicate my blog as a calling for radical violent revolution or government overthrow, as once again, I’m just talking about lifting weights.  Anyway, sometimes, you have to break all of the laws set before you and do things downright evil.  You have to let form break down and risk potential injury, you have to overtrain and overreach, you have to push too hard, bite off more than you can chew, train VERY stupidly, mix the wrong bodyparts together, etc etc, to finally do SOMETHING different enough to start growing again.  Sometimes, you have to break codes and oaths and alliances and allegiances in order to truly benefit YOU in the longrun.  If you are “Westside or Die”, I hope you are ready to cash in on the latter the one day that you might need to start running some Sheiko instead.  If you believe everything over 5 reps is cardio, get ready to call yourself a cardio bunny when the time comes to actually get out of your comfort zone and start growing.

And some folks truly buy into the Paladin mythos; they believe that the INSTANT they abandon their oath, they will lose their powers.  These are the weenies that run 5/3/1 for 3 weeks and talk about how they lost ALL their strength during that time…after 1 cycle of the program.  But because their feeble minds can’t grasp how sub-maximal training works, they default to believing they have upset their gods and experienced their wrath.  These people do 1 week of conditioning and talk about how their recovery was crushed.  They spend 3 days NOT stuffing their faces with fastfood, drop a few pounds of bloat, and freak out thinking they lost all their muscle in that time.  These paladins are so vested in their oaths that they make them self-fulfilling prophecies.

Always pick the barbarian

I’ll take a party of bloodlusted lunatics over a party with 1 paladin in it any day of the week.  Lunatics may be unpredictable, but they are predictably so, and the random genius theory dictates that one day, they might ACCIDENTALLY succeed through their chaos.  But the Paladin is static, and as such they start out day 1 doomed to eventually fail as a result of their inability to deviate from their oaths.  A paladin will sit back and watch you get slain by the town constable, because the constable is within his lawful rights to do so, while some deranged chaotic evil barbarian will save your life one day simply because THEY want the satisfaction of killing you themselves…but at least they saved you.  An uncertain death tomorrow is always a superior choice compared to certain death today.  When given the choice, be chaotic, not lawful.

Don’t be a paladin.  No one likes a paladin.  Go roll a new character.  Preferably a barbarian, but hell, I’ll even take a bard over a paladin.