About Paladins:[]
Paladins are one of warrior subclassed in AD&D 2nd ED (Fighter and Ranger being the others), restricted to Humans only, they require a very high charisma score, so are relatively rare for this reason alone.
The player is required to stick very closely to the ideals of thier Lawful Good alignment or risk losing their powers and also has to donate a portion off all income through adventuring to the church
Many people find them too boring or too restrictive to play for the above reason and then combined with the player of a warrior type character probably not wanting to potentially waste their only decently high stat on something that gives no tangible combat bonus, and losing the weapon specialisation of the pure fighter, yet others love them based purely on the concept of the class.
They are supposed to be the ultimate pure force of good in the world and are a sort of holy warrior, crusading knight, inspirational leader type character. The only one in fact without adding kits and a like from the Complete Fighters Handbook, awesome from a flavour point of view for them to exist in the world even if no one plays one.
There are some things gained by being a paladin however that may make up for the restrictions, such as saving throw bonuses, immunity to normal diseases, bonded mounts, once a day layon hands healing and some very watered down priest class abilities, detect evil and abilites gained through holy weapons
However despite the fact that in any given campaign there may not be a paladin present in my campaign that is allowing this world to organically grow around it someone is infact playing one, (with a very crap strength attribute as a result) this has provided the perfect chance to explore the Paladin Orders of the region, since clearly a Paladin has to belong to some sort of religious order or their existance in the world makes no sense.
The Paldains of Hirikith and Tausia:[]
After telling his life story, Delon the Mage went on to discuss some paladin orders with the Party's paladin, thinking that surely it was time he returned to his order, and mentioned how they all have a distinctive item that allows a knowledgeable observer to tell what order the Paladin belongs to just by looking at the paladin.
The destinctive item is presented to the paladin when they are promoted from initiate to full paladin, after passing the induction ceremony. This happens after returning to their order after a period of questing, and performing good deeds (at least level 4) and making a report to their order's master of what they have been doing.
Delon the Mage told the paladin what orders he was probably not from based on a number of factors and discussed some of the orders to give an idea of what form some of the distinctive items took, then asked the paladin what item he would be recieveing when he graduated from the ranks of the initiates (a way to attach the players character to one of the orders).
The orders that Delon the Mage was familliar with are as follows, not all of these were directly mentioned as some required the paladin player to say they were going to recieve the relevant item to learn the name:
The Protectorate
Order of the Earth
Ordo Divinus Interventus
A vaguely recalled unnamed order