The Radiant Heart Badges are a Crux for RP

[JubJub]

The fact paladins can't agree is why for me they are so fun, everyone expects them to be goody goody and see everything the same.

[Royal Blood]

I don't mind the system I think it's fine really. If you don't want the mark on you then don't get it maybe the RH has a bad reputation but that's up to players to decide and fix. The RH like any faction or settlement relies on ambitious players taking initiative to make it into something. That also takes players working with them and not being rebellious forever.

[Memelord]

4) The way the Order of the Radiant Heart is handled in Arelith is an insult to the actual FR Lore of the Order, which is comprised of Paladins age 40+ who are agreed upon for having done meritorious deeds by their peers and recognized as people who have lived long lives despite their usually short life expectancy occupation. Meaning they're good at their job. Meaning they're badasses.

The RH on Arelith would make perfect sense, lore-wise, if they just changed the name to (wait for it) the Radiant Heart Auxiliary. Of course, even that stretches it a bit since to join the junior branch (the Auxiliary) you still need personal sponsorship from the royal family of a given nation. The actual Order of the Radiant Heart is permanently fixed at only 25 knights across all of Faerun, with membership only opening up to paladins aged 40 years or more in the junior order when one dies off or retires. There can be a theoretically infinite number of Radiant Heart Auxiliary chapterhouses of 40 knights apiece, though.

Option B is to just - well. Rename it to something 100% unassociated with the RH.

[DM Atropos]

I hate to be off-topic but I think it's worth mentioning that sometimes new players take a look at the forums and the discord to get a feel for the culture of the server. When we make posts, let's make sure we're not depicting the community as more fraught with exploits/toxicity/griefing than it actually is. Those concerns should be taken to the DMs, not public spaces.

<3 This.

Also I really like a lot of the not obsessively reiterative posts here. Keep it up.

[Richørd]

Yes, Arelith's Radiant Heart has a really bad PR. Loads of rumours. Some fact, some fiction. People that are giving any Paladin with a badge a skeptical gaze do so for good reasons.


Further I think that it was a very unfortunate design choice to place Arelith's Paladin HQ a few loading screens away from the church of Bane, within the same region and with the same big portal destination that members or both factions use to get to their place of prayer aka. their fancy clubhouse.

Sure, it creates "duality" and "conflict". But those are just big, cool buzzwords with barely any meaning behind them once they're put into context. "Duality" just means that you'll have lots of story contradictions and unecessary bad RP in some cases and "conflict" is in the end just who manages to gather more people to succeed at killbashing the opposing faction / sieging the opposing factions base just to achieve nothing substantial and be greeted by an impenetrable wall of PlotArmor.


As much as some people don't like to have this be the case it still stands as a fact that Paladins are mostly D&D's incarnation of the typical DEUS VULT crusading character.
What do I mean with that? Simple. I mean that Paladins are supposed to be absolute zealots that always strive to follow their chosen god's (or in their eyes : the god that has chosen them) dogma and code of conduct.
To quote Arelith's own wiki for Paladins...
Quote 1 :
All Paladins must have a patron deity, and for good reason, without it they'd lose the majority of their class abilities, and they'd have no idea how to live their lives. Paladins are required to have a code. They must live by a set of principles or ethics to maintain their class. If you want to arbitrarily decide how to do good, and do it without 'restrictions', the chaotic equivalent of the Paladin is the Holy Liberator.
Quote 2 :
What the Paladin must do in their life, however, is adhere to the tenants of their code, and do good. You must, and may not ever willingly commit an evil act for the sake of a sin. There are some murky waters surrounding this general statement, but it remains by and large inviolable. If the shopkeep is refusing to tell you where the evil ritual to bring ruin to the world is taking place out of fear of reprisal, you have permission to break his nose to get the information out of him. You're holy warriors, darn it. Not holy wusses.

A counterargument to the "crusader Paladin" topic I often see being brought up is that they're also just mortal beings and those tend to do mistakes like hanging out with evil guys, serving tea to necromancers, plunging cities into political unrest and leaving them open to hostile takeovers by evil forces ... sure, let's get into that.
Quote 3 :
Yes, it's possible and completely understandable to get the occasional naive Paladin, but they do not tend to live long or at all. Quixote should have been killed three times over, if he had not somehow chosen highly inept people to 'challenge'.

I guess my point here is :
Out of all factions I feel like the Radiant Heart deserved DM attention and assistance the most, even if it's just for a limited time to get it back on track and forcefully stop it from derailing itself.
Or go the way of the other extreme and just remove the RH entirely. Make the NPCs leave the island, let them leave the base behind for any upstart Lawfull Good faction to come and take over.
That'd just instantly solve the issue of the badges, get rid of a lot of the "chaotic" flavor that Arelith's RH has acquired over the years and also absolve the remaining Paladins from some of the sins of their predecessors.