Why are Hellknights and Conquest Paladins so cool?

Why are Hellknights and Conquest Paladins so cool?

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    They appeal to the inner edgelord while allowing for a veneer of martial discipline and directly encouraging a might makes right and ends justify the means philosophy. I think they're cool, too. Having the inverse of a paladin as a possible threat makes them that much more impressive.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      I wouldn't really say they're the opposite of a Paladin, they're more of what Gygax originally intended the Paladin to be.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        I don't think severe punishment is Evil, as long as it's within the severity of the crime. Back in the 1980s, when my dad was a child about twenty years before I was born, a family moved into our small town in bumfrick, Oklahoma from California. Now back in the day, California wasn't as extreme as it is now but they were still city-slickers, more or less, but that's beside the point. Anyhow, the family consisted of an older man with dreadlocks, his younger wife, and their eight year-old daughter, and things were going fine but over a few months people started to notice that he was a drunk that spent most of his time at home and his wife and daughter were going to the grocery store and school, respectively, with black eyes and bruises some days. Word gets around and it's assumed that he's a wifebeater, but instead of contacting the government, because this was bumfrick, Oklahoma in the 80s, my grandfather, several of his drinking buddies, and my father and another, older teenager, got together and hatched a plan. They went and cut his house's phoneline, then the kid went to the door and knocked on it saying he needed to talk to their dad.

        Once he answered it, sober, two pipehitters drug him out, knocked him in the back of the head, and they kidnapped him. I'm talking the whole deal, tied his hands, threw a sack of his head, and tossed him in the back of their truck, while the eight or so men involved, grandpa and co., drove him down to a muddy swamp. This was in the middle of summer so you can imagine the mosquitos. They took him out of the truck, stripped off his shirt, tied to him to a tree, and then started drinking, carrying on, and cutting switchcane. Once they'd cut a couple dozen branches, they started whipping his back.

        >1/2

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Everyone there did at least five times, most did around ten, and my dad says he laid into him thirteen times to impress the older folks. They whipped him for about two and a half hours, told him if he told the police they'd kill him, and then they left him there in the swamp overnight. Come 2PM the next day a search party finally found him and he was almost dead. He spent about a month in a distant city hospital trying to recover. The injuries were horrific, they'd stripped him down to the bone in some spots but he didn't talk. Everyone there was wearing a mask or bag on their head and he didn't know the kid who knocked on his door, so he didn't know who to report. Once he got well enough to move, he went back down to bumfrick, Oklahoma, got his family, and left back for California.

          That was Evil, I think. Not extremely so but it was a wildly disproportionate punishment driven mostly by spite for him because he was from out-of-state and they all wanted to one-up each other to show much of a man they were. If he's still alive today, that poor bastard is probably still traumatized and I'd bet my left hand he never came back to Oklahoma without looking over his shoulder. Now, if they'd just beaten him normally, that would've been mostly proportionate and it was still well out of the bounds of law. What I'm getting at is that Evil is both willful and disproportionate. Personally, I think he had something coming to him but they went too far. My grandfather was very proud of it for years but didn't ever talk about it unless he was drunk. The others were the same. Oklahoma hasn't gotten much better since the 80s. You should probably never come here. I'd say about 60% of the population is Chaotic Evil beneath a surface friendliness. The monent society stutters it'll be Mad Max in camo and overalls. Fantastic inspiration for games, people from around here tend to be good roleplayers once they get engaged in my experience.

          >2/2

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            I don't think severe punishment is Evil, as long as it's within the severity of the crime. Back in the 1980s, when my dad was a child about twenty years before I was born, a family moved into our small town in bumfrick, Oklahoma from California. Now back in the day, California wasn't as extreme as it is now but they were still city-slickers, more or less, but that's beside the point. Anyhow, the family consisted of an older man with dreadlocks, his younger wife, and their eight year-old daughter, and things were going fine but over a few months people started to notice that he was a drunk that spent most of his time at home and his wife and daughter were going to the grocery store and school, respectively, with black eyes and bruises some days. Word gets around and it's assumed that he's a wifebeater, but instead of contacting the government, because this was bumfrick, Oklahoma in the 80s, my grandfather, several of his drinking buddies, and my father and another, older teenager, got together and hatched a plan. They went and cut his house's phoneline, then the kid went to the door and knocked on it saying he needed to talk to their dad.

            Once he answered it, sober, two pipehitters drug him out, knocked him in the back of the head, and they kidnapped him. I'm talking the whole deal, tied his hands, threw a sack of his head, and tossed him in the back of their truck, while the eight or so men involved, grandpa and co., drove him down to a muddy swamp. This was in the middle of summer so you can imagine the mosquitos. They took him out of the truck, stripped off his shirt, tied to him to a tree, and then started drinking, carrying on, and cutting switchcane. Once they'd cut a couple dozen branches, they started whipping his back.

            >1/2

            I think disproportionate retribution is exactly what Gygax is advocating for though. The quote "Nits make lice" that he used is from a colonel that executed Native American women and children as retribution for raids that had been conducted by the warriors after treaties were renegotiated and native land was drastically reduced. This is Gygax basically saying "If an enemy commits an Evil, go after the bastard's children and put them to the sword, then slowly torture and mutilate him to send a message."

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              Gygaxian alignment seems to be less related to out-group morality and more to in-group morality, how one behaves to their friends, family, race and so on. Per Gygax, the difference between Lawful Good and Lawful Evil isn't the propensity for torture, but rather, the target of said torture, which is some bronze age shit. Likewise on theft, murder, and the like. Little in the way of restrictions on actions, but its direction is ironclad. That's why there's a massive amount of argument, I think. Some people think theft, murder, torture, even things as debauched as rape and necromancy, are morally permissible as long as they're directed to an enemy race, orcs, kobolds, etc. or those who've broken their bond with humanity, such as brigands and cultists and the like, while some people think that the morality of actions is universal and should be consistent across the board, as it were. Both are using the same definitions for fundamentally different worldviews, which leads to a great deal of confusion. I'm a proponent of retributive justice but I'm not under the delusion that it's Good, I just don't care if it's Evil or not. Hand for a hand, eye for an eye, it worked for Hammurabi, there's no reason, assuming a lack of corruption in the courts, that it shouldn't for us. On the subject of legal corruption, I remember the persian judge who was skinned for taking a bribe and then had his skin draped over the chair of his successor, who was also his son. I think Gygax would've gotten a kick out of that but really, nobody should look at Gygax of all people and take his word on the nature of Good and Evil. Just look at the hollywood years.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              >white man bad
              You sound like a cuck and a gay.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Point to where I said that.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                It can be reasonably inferred by your pushing of the "colonialism" narrative (as if that's somehow evil.)

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Point to where I said that.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                see

                It can be reasonably inferred by your pushing of the "colonialism" narrative (as if that's somehow evil.)

                >It can be reasonably inferred

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Sounds like projection.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >No I just demonized Gygax by comparing him to le racist genocidal white man bro you're just projecting!
                kek

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You're the one who made the assumption that making that comparison means demonization. That's all you bro.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >killing women and children to dab on the libtards
                This is getting out of hand

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Everyone there did at least five times, most did around ten, and my dad says he laid into him thirteen times to impress the older folks. They whipped him for about two and a half hours, told him if he told the police they'd kill him, and then they left him there in the swamp overnight. Come 2PM the next day a search party finally found him and he was almost dead. He spent about a month in a distant city hospital trying to recover. The injuries were horrific, they'd stripped him down to the bone in some spots but he didn't talk. Everyone there was wearing a mask or bag on their head and he didn't know the kid who knocked on his door, so he didn't know who to report. Once he got well enough to move, he went back down to bumfrick, Oklahoma, got his family, and left back for California.

          That was Evil, I think. Not extremely so but it was a wildly disproportionate punishment driven mostly by spite for him because he was from out-of-state and they all wanted to one-up each other to show much of a man they were. If he's still alive today, that poor bastard is probably still traumatized and I'd bet my left hand he never came back to Oklahoma without looking over his shoulder. Now, if they'd just beaten him normally, that would've been mostly proportionate and it was still well out of the bounds of law. What I'm getting at is that Evil is both willful and disproportionate. Personally, I think he had something coming to him but they went too far. My grandfather was very proud of it for years but didn't ever talk about it unless he was drunk. The others were the same. Oklahoma hasn't gotten much better since the 80s. You should probably never come here. I'd say about 60% of the population is Chaotic Evil beneath a surface friendliness. The monent society stutters it'll be Mad Max in camo and overalls. Fantastic inspiration for games, people from around here tend to be good roleplayers once they get engaged in my experience.

          >2/2

          Yeah, pretty clearly evil. As described, they never once tried to seek justice from a present authority or even to confirm that the guy did what they thought he did. They acted purely on rumor and hearsay, and the only reason why what they did wasn't a lynching was because the guy was found before he died of his injuries. It reads more like they took advantage of the situation to do some taboo violence with an excuse that it was justified, which is just evil wearing sunglasses.

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    edglelords get to be edgy, knowing they have the support of a god approving such edge.

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    People like playing the scary armored dude who brings order by force.
    It can be a little like playing Judge Dredd except instead of sentencing someone to 20 years in the cubes you cave their head in with your mace.

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    They make cool enemies that the party can fight against. Like a great boss for the current story arc they are.
    Even better you can just customize them as much as you want so it can be a fair match of 1 vs 4

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    They're metal.

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Thematically adjacent, I'm a big fan of the Dark Knight concept. In this case specifically someone who acts outside of the existing authority structure to met out justice even to those that the actual law would shield from consequence due to social status or corruption. Powered by their unrelenting rage in the face of evil, every Dark Knight has a story of how they got on this path and its always one that ended badly. So badly that they had to become this to make things right by their own hand.

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Because Lord Soth

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Horned knights are cool

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >*cuts your throat as you sleep*
    heh nothing personell low dex cuck

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >dex "chad"
      >universally reviled by society and condemned by the gods
      >can't fight, can't read, doesn't even have the balls to sell his soul
      >makes an entire career on cheap shots, poison, and skulduggery

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >Society and gods fear him, they can't do nothing to stop him
        >Doesn't even need to fight, read or sell his soul
        >Thrives because he can kill anyone with zero effort

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      How would having high dex have helped him if he was asleep?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        He wouldn't be sleeping, he would be sneaking in someone's house to slit their throat

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          I'm pretty sure that we are talking at cross terms. What you describe as being high dex sounds an awful lot like just being evil. If draining the blood of other people entirely replaces your need to sleep, thats also extremely suspect. What are you, a vampire?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            No, I'm actually being Good because Justice never sleeps, unlike Hellknight lawful evil garbage.

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I'm a fan of using plague knights as enemies. It's harder to get more on the nose about evil being corrupting than describing maggots wriggling in a man's swordarm while he talks about how his strength knows no limits.

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Conquest Paladins
    Am I the only who likes good-aligned conquest paladins? Yeah they use fear to get shit done, but so do cops and various superheroes like Batman, Spawn, or Ghost Rider.

    If anything convincing someone to flee or surrender out of terror should be seen as far more benevolent than just murdering everyone for even the most petty of crimes.

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Beucase you haven't emotionally matured since middle school.

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Law, Chaos, Good, and Evil are fundamental forces that make up the cosmology of D&D so it makes sense to have "paladins" along those axis as well.

    Then again, I've been heavily influenced by Elden Ring so all my Demons are now a proxy for something like the Frenzied Flame that wants to destroy reality and turn it into a swirling mass of whatever the frick it turns into for a few seconds of ADD and then changes again versus the bulwark of Law, both good and evil that resists them.

  14. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    For me it's Glory Paladins
    >disarms you
    >"Pick up your sword, I won't have the bards sing tales of me slaughtering unarmed foes."

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