Quote from: infinitum3d;889707No one said Do Nothing. They said Do something without hurting people. That's a big difference.

Define "hurt".  Because in D&D (which I'm assuming you're playing) without a weapon, against a bunch of guys with weapons (or just gnashy monsters) who don't want to talk, you're dead.  And let's face, there are a LOT of monsters that don't want to talk to some whiny human.  Like Elves.

Quote from: infinitum3d;889707No one said Do Nothing. They said Do something without hurting people. That's a big difference.

Can you use a net?

Am I the only one who remembers that the "old school" Paladin isn't a generic holy warrior of any random god, but rather the explicitly Christian Mallorian chivalric knight as filtered through Three Hearts and Three Lions?

Again, I agree that being a jerk is wrong. I was hoping someone would have an idea of how to be a jerk without being a huge jerk, but the doo doo ice cream reference was excellent.

Now- as for other ways to be effective during combat without causing harm;

Nets, buff spells, meat shield (I'd be willing, it's not doing harm, but it is allowing harm to happen, so questionable) all sound like good options.

I'd still try to convince the others in my group to try NON violence first, but I wouldn't stop them from defending themselves if the SHTF.

I think I can do this in a mature and respectable way, which is probably what the DM and the Deity would accept.

Thank you all for the suggestions and comments and if anyone has any other NON violent combat ideas, I'd love to hear them!

Quote from: infinitum3d;889707No one said Do Nothing. They said Do something without hurting people. That's a big difference.

Just the paladin specifically? So they arent supposed to prevent the rest of the group. But might expect the rest of the group to help out once it is explained?

Dungeon delving is going to be a total pain in the ass. You can not logistically take prisoners after a point and CE monsters are going to gravitate to you like a bug zapper. If you have to get into combat then act as a shield for others and focus on healing if you have any spells or lay on hands left.

Failing all that. If in AD&D then dress up as El Santo and grapple everything into unconciousness at a 10% penalty to convert that 25% real damage into more grapple submission.

Some thoughts. Get into town or city and look for public works quests and requests. Help defuse arguments and disputes. Investigate a murder and bring in the culprit alive. Find a Druid to help calm down a rampaging bear. Heal the wounded and sick. Entertain orphans with your tales of heroism. Go shopping for better armour and shield.

Quote from: daniel_ream;889724Am I the only one who remembers that the "old school" Paladin isn't a generic holy warrior of any random god, but rather the explicitly Christian Mallorian chivalric knight as filtered through Three Hearts and Three Lions?

Nothing in my AD&D PHB indicates that. In fact it does not say they follow any god. It says that they hand over their tithe to "whatever charitable religious institution of lawful good alignment the paladin selects."

OD&D Greyhawk was much the same. No mention of getting powers from any gods. But a little more leeway in who they could tithe to. "Gifts must be to the poor or to charitable or religious institutions."

And also same in both revised AD&D and 2e.

Thought for sure there was a "paladins oath" in the PHB or DMG but not finding it.

Well, you're a paladin and not a barbarian. So you've got a decent Charisma and a bunch of diplomacy skills and shit, right? So the good news here is that the GM isn't completely screwing you so much as forcing you to focus on a different aspect of your class's skillset. You're probably more equipped to be an effective pacifist than any character class in the game other than a bard or...maybe a cleric depending on the spheres.

To make it fun, try to force the whole party to go pacificistic for the 30 days-  use diplomacy or intimidate rolls to diffuse fights before they start, work hard to find non-violent solutions to violent situations, argue tooth and nail against acts of aggression that serve no purpose other that loot or revenge.  In other words, play it straight, but entertain yourself by trying to drag the rest of the players in with you.

So to avoid doing harm, you have to pretty much force the rest of the party to also not adventure?  Or force them into the same activities that their neutered Paladin has to do, because of an Atonement spell?

That DM is a dick.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;889647Then that is not a good God and should not have a Paladin serving him.  A Good God would not force innocents to die to prove a single exceedingly petty point.  Unless of course, you think being a dick, like the Grecian/Roman Gods is somehow beneficial to humanity, despite most of them having a hard time keepin' it in their togas.

I'm sorry, but a good God, is like a good person.  Unwilling to stand by and let 'evil' win to prove a point.  They do something about it, and if they can't directly, they get someone (One of their paladins) to do it for them.

What you are advocating is the same behaviour that leads people to play Lawful Stupid Paladins, which in turn, makes for wonderful stories about how the class is bad, because it forces people to be dicks to each other.

You do like arguing the point you want other people to have made, rather than what they've really said, don't you?

No.  I haven't advocated anything of the fucking sort.  My true belief is in the first paragraph of the post you miscited.  But let me expound on it, in case there's any chance you'll misinterpret this one as well:

I firmly believe that the "Paladin," as usually presented in D&Dish circles, is horseshit.  Just about unique to the system, it's a class that has far less to do with any setting into which it's jammed as to an OOC mishmash of Arthurian legend as presented by Hollywood and modern-day sensibilities (heavily fueled by the common definition of "evil" as meaning "the Not Us people and everything they do"), and that said mishmash is held to override the tenets, doctrines and beliefs of the gods they allegedly "worship."  Any poll of gamers would vote paladins to be the class they hate the most to see others play, probably as strongly as all the other classes put together.

As much as anything else, the premise that paladins have to be "lawfulgood" (that being another rant for another day) is nonsense.  There is -- or should be -- nothing about deities which only allow those aligned with the abovementioned mishmash to have holy warriors sworn to their service, and to whom they accord special powers and impose special strictures.  Those strictures should align with the tenets, doctrines and beliefs of their god, whether or not that squares with your personal 21st century interpretation of "lawfulgood."  In particular, I expect that just about top of the list of the required strictures of most deities is obedience to their commands.  

And yes, fidelity to the tenets and practices of the faith ought to form a paladin's guide to life.  If that's such a tight straight-jacket, and the party's one of those relentlessly pragmatic ones where RP considerations must never get in the way of people doing things the way they want in the fashion they prefer, then the player should -- wait for it -- not play a paladin.

There.  That's what I advocate.

Now as far as what a "Good God" would do or not, I'll refer back to Genesis 22, where the Judeo-Christian God most of Earth worships commanded Abraham to slit the throat of his son, and praised Abraham for determining to go through with it in obedience to his god instead of tossing his knife to the ground and shouting "Fuck you, I'm not worshiping any god that orders me to kill a child!"  How about 2 Kings 2, where God sends bears to tear apart three dozen children for the heinous crime of calling Elijah bald?

Demonstrably people have differing takes on how a "good god" acts.  Certainly the D&D source material traditionally has.

Quote from: daniel_ream;889724Am I the only one who remembers that the "old school" Paladin isn't a generic holy warrior of any random god, but rather the explicitly Christian Mallorian chivalric knight as filtered through Three Hearts and Three Lions?

Inspired by Galahad, Percival, and Ogier the Dane (aka Holger Carlsen)? Most definitely. Explicitly Christian? Definitely not.

Quote from: Ravenswing;889784Now as far as what a "Good God" would do or not, I'll refer back to Genesis 22, where the Judeo-Christian God most of Earth worships commanded Abraham to slit the throat of his son, and praised Abraham for determining to go through with it in obedience to his god instead of tossing his knife to the ground and shouting "Fuck you, I'm not worshiping any god that orders me to kill a child!"  How about 2 Kings 2, where God sends bears to tear apart three dozen children for the heinous crime of calling Elijah bald?

Oh you with your reading, and your logic, and your citing primary source material.

Quote from: Omega;889736In fact it does not say they follow any god.

Correct. It's common misconception that Paladins must follow some deity. I'd love to learn where did it originated from and why people continue to claim that it was like that "since the beginning of RPG business".

Fun fact: I can't say how things were in each and every edition of D&D, whether it was introduced officially or in a 3rd party's sourcebook, but it was totally ok to create godless clerics.

DARKSUN was the setting when it was possible by default (IIRC), and I'm sure I've seen a godless cleric archetype in Pathfinder (not exactly D&D, but not that far either).

Quote from: Christopher Brady;889759So to avoid doing harm, you have to pretty much force the rest of the party to also not adventure?  Or force them into the same activities that their neutered Paladin has to do, because of an Atonement spell?

That DM is a dick.

He asked how to have fun with it. If I was the player that's how I'd have fun- make all the other players suffer with me, or deal with me some how, or the GM say uncle and lift the restriction.

Quote from: Ravenswing;889784And yes, fidelity to the tenets and practices of the faith ought to form a paladin's guide to life.

Well of course they should. And if those tenets include standing by and watching a bunch of innocent people get butchered because your god told you that you weren't allowed to draw your sword, then that god either isn't lawful good, or your GM is a jerkoff trying to make a hamfisted point about real world theology.

Paladins aren't just holy dudes.  They're holy WARRIORS.   They exist to serve the tenets of their god through warfare. The premise includes not just that you follow the tenets of your god, but ALSO that your god's tenets entail a need to have guys in platemail with swords roaming the countryside looking for things to kill.  If there's a god that's going to constantly issue decrees that make the paladin wonder why he even has a sword, then the most logical conclusion is that that god probably shouldn't have paladins.

QuoteNow as far as what a "Good God" would do or not, I'll refer back to Genesis 22, where the Judeo-Christian God most of Earth worships commanded Abraham to slit the throat of his son, and praised Abraham for determining to go through with it in obedience to his god instead of tossing his knife to the ground and shouting "Fuck you, I'm not worshiping any god that orders me to kill a child!"  How about 2 Kings 2, where God sends bears to tear apart three dozen children for the heinous crime of calling Elijah bald?

The god of the Old Testament is pretty clearly lawful netural as WoC defines alignment.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;889813Correct. It's common misconception that Paladins must follow some deity. I'd love to learn where did it originated from and why people continue to claim that it was like that "since the beginning of RPG business".

Fun fact: I can't say how things were in each and every edition of D&D, whether it was introduced officially or in a 3rd party's sourcebook, but it was totally ok to create godless clerics.

DARKSUN was the setting when it was possible by default (IIRC), and I'm sure I've seen a godless cleric archetype in Pathfinder (not exactly D&D, but not that far either).

The Forgotten Realms actually.  I believe in 2e.  And I think it's a bit of a misreading too.  See, in the Realms, everyone follows or believes in at least ONE, because if you don't, you get to spend eternity wandering some ethereal plane, whereas if you worship a God, you get to go to whatever 'heaven' or 'hell' in the afterlife.

So, in the 2e Realms all Paladins tended to follow a God.  In 3e, they made that assumption board wide, in that most paladins now served a God, although one of the later 3.x source books created/allowed the 'Justice Blade' type, in which the Paladin could serve Good, which meant most Good Aligned Gods shared their power to imbue said Paladin with the class' blessings.

And it's been run with ever since.

Ravenswing, I'm not talking 'real world' Gods here.  I'm talking Fantasy.  We know that the Bible makes the Christian God into this monster so that the laypeople fear Him.  Despite preaching love and understanding often in the same breath, but that's likely more people wanting to keep the 'peasants' in line, than actually believing that God is this brutal monster.

Quote from: Ravenswing;889784I firmly believe that the "Paladin," as usually presented in D&Dish circles, is horseshit.  Just about unique to the system [...]

No.

For people who like to wank on about Appendix N so much, you "old school" fuckers can't seem to be bothered to read any of it.