7 Ways to Tell Your Paladin is Lawful Stupid

We have all been there. There is always that one guy in the group who wants to play the Lawful good Paladin, and your GM lets him. You mentally groan knowing exactly what to expect.

7. He goes over every detail of the plan a million times to make sure no laws are broken in the process. You have created a plan, maybe it involves killing the cultists in their sleep, and he disapproves. This leads to number three.

6. He is constantly watching the Rouge of the group for any signs of lawbreaking. This is also known as constantly using Detect Evil. Meet a person on the street and he does Detect Evil. If they’re evil he automatically attacks them.

5. If he quotes a law (usually incorrectly), it is to win an argument (even if he has already won). This one happened to me once, he wasn’t a paladin, but he was certainly convinced he was. We were on a ship at sea and he went on about how it was the law for certain treatment of workers. The captain of the ship looked at him and said “That’s on land.” He still didn’t get it!

4. If the bad guy has gotten away a million times he still refuses to kill him on principal of needing to take him to the proper authorities. You know this is your worst nightmare. Like some bad recurring anime villain you have caught the bad guy a dozen times red handed. You all hate him, you know if you don’t kill him right here and now he’ll escape and bother you again but the Lawful ‘good’ character demands justice be served.

3. One or more of the other characters have died as a result of his “genius” planning. You all had the plan figured out, then the Paladin decided to change it because it’d work better and make it “good”. Well for whatever reason it didn’t work and now you have a TPK on your hands.

2. Spouts about religion he follows often and demands the rest of the party and/or anyone he meets convert. Every time you enter a new town he takes to his soap box and spouts about his god and how the law should be followed. You hide and pretend you don’t know him, not that he doesn’t go off about it when it is just the party and you can’t get away from him.

1. Has faulty logic. Yep that’s right, he uses fallacies to back up his arguments. Learn how to refute them and defeat him, even if it is in your own head that you have.