Question regarding paladins

[Godie1803]

How far is too far? I understand that a paladin lives by a strict moral code that he must keep in order to retain his abilities and status as a paladin, failure to maintain this code results in partial or total loss of its powers (depending on the severity of his infraction).

My question is, what does it take to lose his powers?(partial and/or total). And having that in mind, what kind of outrageous crime must a paladin commit to fall from grace and be turned into a Death Knight? (since the MM states that Death Knights are paladins or L/G warriors punished by the gods for their acts)

[Yora]

This is something that is left to each GM to judge for his own specific campaign.
People have been having long debates about just that for over 30 years and never reached any kind of consensus.

[BWR]

Read "The Complete Paladin's Handbook". Seriously, it's the single best source you will find on what it means to be a paladin in D&D. It really should be required reading for any player and DM to try to stave off these ridiculous arguments that pop up all the time around here.

[Lord Torath]

The short answer is changing alignment or knowingly and willfully committing an evil act. If you unknowingly or unwillingly committed the evil act (eg. while under control of another), you can atone and regain your status.

What will cause you to change alignment and what counts as an evil act (and how much say you have in it) is what takes the 30 years of discussion to still not come to an agreement, and is best settled with an open and frank discussion with your DM. Seriously, clear this up before-hand to save yourself lots of grief and hard feelings later on.

[SiuiS]

How far is too far? I understand that a paladin lives by a strict moral code that he must keep in order to retain his abilities and status as a paladin, failure to maintain this code results in partial or total loss of its powers (depending on the severity of his infraction).

My question is, what does it take to lose his powers?(partial and/or total). And having that in mind, what kind of outrageous crime must a paladin commit to fall from grace and be turned into a Death Knight? (since the MM states that Death Knights are paladins or L/G warriors punished by the gods for their acts)

One of the canonical paladins (he is in a description of a magic item, specifically a holy sword) has temporarily lost his powers because he broke the wealth structure and carries around sentimental jewels from his adventures out of greed.

This sounds like "whatever could technically violate the rules' but what it really says is "whatever tells the best story". This is a fighter in possession of a great sleeping relic who must experience true and lasting change, giving up one of his character traits and re dedicating himself to the path of the righteous before he can again call himself a paladin. He isn't suddenly crazy bitter and evil, he isn't suddenly never going to be a paladin. He's damn interesting.

A paladin who glass temporarily for interesting reasons should be the goal, not just what the technical aspects outline.

[BWR]

Regarding Death Knights, the most famous example is Lord Soth. He was not technically a paladin, but he was as near as. He was a champion for justice and law and goodness until he fell in love with an elven woman he rescued. His love caused him to betray his oath to his wife and keep her as a lover. He slowly fell from grace, becoming more self-obsessed until he secretly had his wife killed and shacked up with his mistress. He became worse and worse until he was given a last chance to redeem himself by the gods. The gods were going to chuck a giant meteor at the world because they disliked a priest but gave the world and Soth a last chance. If Soth stopped the priest from his final act of hubris, Soth would be forgiven. After setting off, some people whispered untrue rumors of his lover's infidelity and enraged he abandoned his quest to spare the world great hardships and went home to kill his pregnant lover.
That was the event that caused him to be cursed and become a death knight.

So, going by that, it's not like every paladin who loses their powers becomes a death knight. I certainly don't think it unreasonable to assume such punishment is reserved for really bad stuff, not just some ex-paladin who wants to become an anti-paladin.

[Yora]

Isn't death knight something really cool for an evil character? Doesn't sound like a punishment.

[BWR]

Isn't death knight something really cool for an evil character? Doesn't sound like a punishment.

I think you're looking too much at stats and too little at fluff. Much of the fluff of undead, especially things like vampires and death knights, is that it is a cursed existence handed out as punishment or was contracted unwillingly. Sure, they don't want to die permanently and are generally screwed up enough in the head that they become evil even if they were previously good (vampires created out of good people, for instance), but the existence is generally portrayed as unpleasant and less desirable than being alive. Again to use Soth as an example, his emotions were muted to almost nothing, he spent most of his time moping about with a chorus of banshees who continuously reminded him of his failings and how all the **** that happened to him was his own damn fault. Every time he started to find something that could distract him from his depression life stepped in and screwed him over. I don't know about you but hanging around in a burnt-out husk of a keep with undead who either hate my guts or are mindless remenants of former comrades, being forced to feel the heat of the fire that killed half the world, constantly having my failures thrown in my face, knowing that everything that was once important to me is now dead and gone because of me and being unable to do anything at all about it: that isn't something that makes me think 'cool, I want that' even if I get a couple of nifty powers.

Not to say that there aren't death knights that revel in their undead status, like St. Korgath which AFAIK is the first dk to be stat'ed and given any sort of history and personality.

[Yora]

But that's mostly a Ravenloft thing and would have happened to him even if he was still a mortal man.
I do think it's rather doubtful for supposedly good deities to punish a former servant by making him stronger, helping him to commit more murder and pillaging, and making it harder for heroes to stop him. The death knight is the one suffering the least from such a punishment.

[BWR]

But that's mostly a Ravenloft thing and would have happened to him even if he was still a mortal man.
I do think it's rather doubtful for supposedly good deities to punish a former servant by making him stronger, helping him to commit more murder and pillaging, and making it harder for heroes to stop him. The death knight is the one suffering the least from such a punishment.

Dragonlance, actually, in the case of Soth. Anyway, the fluff of many undead has been being cursed somehow and being an unpleasant existence.
Yes, it's bloody stupid of the so-called good gods to punish people in such a way that they cause more harm, but that's part of the genre.

[LibraryOgre]

Falling can be any number of things... a moment's indiscretion that grows to horrible proportions, or a heinous act. The paladin is supposed to exist in a state of pure grace, and the idea is that any "sin" can disrupt that.

In practice, I try to make it a bit more obvious and unequivocal. A Paladin knows whether his religion is going to get him for killing prisoners, whether they're demi-human or humanoid... unless paladins are a brand new phenomenon, they've got experimental data, if nothing else.

A Death Knight is, IMO, a near-singular occurrence. I like to think of it as a divine curse deflected; while good wants them punished, evil wants them rewarded, and the aggregate is undeath.

[SiuiS]

Regarding Death Knights, the most famous example is Lord Soth. He was not technically a paladin, but he was as near as. He was a champion for justice and law and goodness until he fell in love with an elven woman he rescued. His love caused him to betray his oath to his wife and keep her as a lover. He slowly fell from grace, becoming more self-obsessed until he secretly had his wife killed and shacked up with his mistress. He became worse and worse until he was given a last chance to redeem himself by the gods. The gods were going to chuck a giant meteor at the world because they disliked a priest but gave the world and Soth a last chance. If Soth stopped the priest from his final act of hubris, Soth would be forgiven. After setting off, some people whispered untrue rumors of his lover's infidelity and enraged he abandoned his quest to spare the world great hardships and went home to kill his pregnant lover.
That was the event that caused him to be cursed and become a death knight.

So, going by that, it's not like every paladin who loses their powers becomes a death knight. I certainly don't think it unreasonable to assume such punishment is reserved for really bad stuff, not just some ex-paladin who wants to become an anti-paladin.

Lord Soth wasn't a paladin; he was a knigt of solamnia. Lord Soth's punishment isn't a fall from grace; it's a very large and potent curse as a campaign capstone. Lord soth is not a character; he was an NPC given a tragic backstory to make him seem more bad ass and worthy as a threat.

These are ideas for epic stories but they shouldn't be presented as default. I feel it damages the fabric of what makes a paladin special if all they are is "warrior with some rules and the Holy power source".

Yora: good and evil aren't a debit system. It's not a matter of bonus points for team evil; Soth is a cautionary tale for other paladins as much as a neutered and hurt Soth. Keep in mind he suffers eternally. A player who doesn't suffer isn't undead, in these editions. Being a vampire isn't a matter of being normal and having powers in the same way being an elf isn't just being a pointy eared human with better stats. If a player becomes undead and doesn't Roleplay it they are cheating just as much as if they became poisoned, petrified or dead and didnt Roleplay it.

A vampire is a body in stasis, whose soul is tortured by constant contact with the sucking void, who is a literal don't of unlife, a walking portal to entropy, and whose mid sees the world through an altered haze of black and evil energy warping thought and desire at all times, twisting a mortal creature into something that can only be described as a mockery. That's what this stuff meant in 1e and 2e.

[BWR]

Lord Soth wasn't a paladin; he was a knigt of solamnia.

He was not technically a paladin, but he was as near as.

The discussion was mostly about DKs, not specifically paladins, and looking at his and Korgath's story (who was a paladin at first), Based on these two becoming a DK isn't just a matter of being an evil person, it's about truly abandoning your principles and former alignment in such a way that you do far more harm than you ever did good.

[veti]

Lord soth is not a character; he was an NPC given a tragic backstory to make him seem more bad ass and worthy as a threat.

And that's why it's really a punishment. The Death Knight is no longer a PC.

In Call of Cthulhu, this is actually codified in the rules: when your SAN finally reaches zero, you hand your character sheet over to the Keeper, roll up a new character, and wait for your former self to appear as an adversary. A paladin who embraces evil to the extent of become a DK has completed the same character arc, and earned the same reward.

This shouldn't be remotely typical, though. Nearly always, a fallen paladin will remain loyal to their faith and seek redemption one way or another, or at the very least support their former cause in some other way. The exceptions become legendary, precisely because they're so rare.