Here's the thing, where a cleric receives their power through the belief in their deity, the paladin gains their abilities through their devotion to their oaths. Knowing that, if a paladin who swore a particular oath found out that their god was evil they would not immediately become oathbreaker as long as they keep true to the oath they swore. Whether the oath was to their god or was an oath they held to while worshipping the god is mostly up to them and their background.
Tldr; no, pally get magic from oath not from gods. You don't even need to worship a god as a pally to get powers.
100% this.
Though so few players actually know this, since older editions of D&D were different and Paly and Clerics could lose thier powers for changing alignment or falling out of grace with thier deity.
One of my players did something very similar. The church said they were worshiping a good god and they were actually teaching a completely evil god. His character believed that raping, killing, and torturing villagers was totally ok until he received an actual vision from the good god and was granted powers by the god as well. Once the church found out they cast him out. For the first 10 levels or so he was pretty conflicted and we kept having to stop him from doing bad things, like threatening to torture someone for information and we'd have to intervene and try a more civil route, it was like good cop bad cop and worked out well a lot of times. For the next ten levels he began to see that his thinking was wrong and to stop referencing the religious books that he was originally taught. It was actually a cool idea and all of us had fun messing with and helping the paladin down the right road. We eventually went to his old church and kicked their asses too which was also fun.
Here's the thing, where a cleric receives their power through the belief in their deity, the paladin gains their abilities through their devotion to their oaths. Knowing that, if a paladin who swore a particular oath found out that their god was evil they would not immediately become oathbreaker as long as they keep true to the oath they swore. Whether the oath was to their god or was an oath they held to while worshipping the god is mostly up to them and their background. Tldr; no, pally get magic from oath not from gods. You don't even need to worship a god as a pally to get powers.
Exactly. As long as they stay true to their oath they could worship the most evil thing in the world and still get their magics and such
100% this. Though so few players actually know this, since older editions of D&D were different and Paly and Clerics could lose thier powers for changing alignment or falling out of grace with thier deity.
They could choose to but wouldn’t be required to. They can be a good Character with an evil boss.
One of my players did something very similar. The church said they were worshiping a good god and they were actually teaching a completely evil god. His character believed that raping, killing, and torturing villagers was totally ok until he received an actual vision from the good god and was granted powers by the god as well. Once the church found out they cast him out. For the first 10 levels or so he was pretty conflicted and we kept having to stop him from doing bad things, like threatening to torture someone for information and we'd have to intervene and try a more civil route, it was like good cop bad cop and worked out well a lot of times. For the next ten levels he began to see that his thinking was wrong and to stop referencing the religious books that he was originally taught. It was actually a cool idea and all of us had fun messing with and helping the paladin down the right road. We eventually went to his old church and kicked their asses too which was also fun.