Oath of Independence | Paladin Sacred Oath, and turning elements into ideals

"The cold never bothered me anyway."

Yes, I'm not ashamed to admit I loved Frozen (and Frozen II!) and still do! Not that that would be surprising, really. After all, in the post right before this I praised a Barbie film as a childhood favorite. Anyhow, here we have another sacred oath. This one is probably my most thematically stretched, but it was done to fulfill an interesting challenge: a friend invited me to create an ice-themed subclass, and I found myself wanting to make a paladin. But how do I turn ice into an ideal?

I am very much of the mind that all paladin subclasses should be strongly rooted in an oath with tenets: in other words, a commitment to a way of life. I do think there's enough flexibility for creative avenues that imagine oaths as contracts or as relational vows. But for the most part, a way of life is found in the pursuit of certain ideals. The Oath of Devotion commits a paladin to traditional ideals of high moral character; the Oath of Conquest commits a paladin to strength above all, and so forth.

Ice and snow are, simply put, not ideals. Nor are they beings with whom a paladin can form a relationship. How, then, do I turn ice into an oath?

To be completely honest—I cheated a little. I found something else that ice was already related to: the movie Frozen and more specifically, the song "Let it Go." The lyrics define a new way of life that Elsa intends to pursue, one in which she is free from the constraints set by others and defined only by what she values. These are pretty robust tenets on their own! The "cheating" comes in by taking advantage of the thematic relationship that already exists between the lyrics and the frozen imagery of, well, Frozen. Were it not for the movie, the link that I take advantage of here wouldn't quite exist. After all, if all you had to go on was the flavor text, without any of the context from the film, are you certain you would totally buy the assertion that the frozen mountain is the ideal example of independence?

Still, I think it's ultimately worth it to have this subclass. It also speaks to a broader idea I sometimes rely on when I make sacred oath homebrew: sometimes elements need to stand in as metaphors for ideals. In other words, sometimes the relationships between abstract beliefs and concrete things becomes useful for making mechanics. Having ice as a metaphor for independence made creating this subclass a lot easier! Creating ice-themed Channel Divinity options was fun and opened up interesting creative space.

I have done something similar once before, but in the other direction. I started the Oath of Detachment from the abstract premise of pure neutrality. From there, in the process of creation I moved the oath into the more concrete realm of arcane magic, using arcana as an elemental metaphor for neutrality. Without that metaphor, it isn't entirely clear what spells would go on the spell list or what would replace Consecrated Casting. Elemental metaphors can bring the abstractions of an oath into a more easily-defined realm of design.

So, when you make sacred oaths and struggle to tie mechanics to the tenets, consider developing a concrete metaphor for the abstractions of ideals.