My Paladin killed a child molester (and now my DM wants to take away my powers!)

The god was not named yet. The paladin is a killer sure. But could you please answer on our emphasis on "It's important how you do something, not if."

We're not against killing, we're against how he kills.

And PLEASE. Read the rest of the thread instead of repeating arguments that were answered on page 3-8.

Wulf Ratbane said:

Just a hunch. The whole thing stinks.

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i agree.


but still the paladin still should've not snuck up on the situation.

first the molester would've known... the DM's fault

and second the paladin should've gave a warning. honor not for the molester but for his own personal code. the player's fault.

both did wrong.

Wulf Ratbane said:

"The child molester gets out on bail and murders the child in retaliation. You failed to act. You lose your powers!"

Just a hunch. The whole thing stinks.

Wulf

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Hehehe. I wouldn't be so hard with the DM, after all, he was willing to talk about it. I would rather say the DM was pretty mischievous and didn't really think about or wasn't experienced enough to deal with the problem... which is BIG.

And the problem here consists in different opinions about what is good, bad or acceptable. ENworld disagrees about that, the player and the DM disagree about that.

Darklone said:

The god was not named yet. The paladin is a killer sure. But could you please answer on our emphasis on "It's important how you do something, not if."

We're not against killing, we're against how he kills.

And PLEASE. Read the rest of the thread instead of repeating arguments that were answered on page 3-8.

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I've read the whole thread, but where has it been said that a Paladin can't attack from ambush? In this case it was tactically a superior move, since the Paladin could immediately eliminate any further harm to the child. Protecting the child is the number one priority here, right? Not protecting the Paladins honor.

A paladin must be a paragon of both goodness and lawfulness. Did the rapist perform an evil deed? Absolutely. As a paragon of good, did the paladin have the obligation to stop the perpetration of an evil act? Without doubt. I don't feel that the good/evil axis is in question here (although the paladin could have subdued the perp instead of slaying him outright).

I think what's more in question in this scenario is the law/chaos axis. The question of context has to be addressed. First, did the crime take place in a frontier town where there is no effective legal structure, a la American west in the 19th century? What about a land torn by civil strife where the governing legal body has either disintegrated or is powerless to enforce its own laws? Is the land governed by a morally ambivalent (neutral on the good/evil axis) or downright evil rulership? What about if the government is chaotic in nature, and believes that justice is determined by individual moral compasses rather than by an unyielding legal structure?

If any of the above circumstances were in effect in the town where the crime occurred, the paladin would not be able to rely on effective justice being doled out by the authorities. If the crime occurred in Thay or Zhentil Keep, the authorities might have instead arrested the paladin for the murder of an "innocent commoner" who was not doing anything morally objectionable in the government's eyes.

However, if the act were occurring in a lawful good society such as Damara or Cormyr, the paladin could have reasonable certainty that the law would mete out just punishment to the criminal, and have no compunctions about subduing him and turning him over to the proper authorities.

As a paragon of good and law, the paladin must not allow his code to be relative to the moral compass of his surroundings. To me it is one of the most difficult classes to play, because the paladin will almost always be in conflict with his surrounding environment, and most likely with his companions as well (unless they all are lawful good as well).

Just my two cp to toss into the ante.

And i hate when everyone comes with a rule or something about how should a character act according to his alignment.I think that two filthy words such as "neutral evil" or "lawful good" or something are not enought to descibe something so brilliant and complex as a man's personality.

_______________
The Wizard

Numion said:

I've read the whole thread, but where has it been said that a Paladin can't attack from ambush? In this case it was tactically a superior move, since the Paladin could immediately eliminate any further harm to the child. Protecting the child is the number one priority here, right? Not protecting the Paladins honor.

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I ambush another group of soldiers whose government declared war upon my king (or the other way round).

I kill an unarmed person from behind in his own house.

If you see no difference here... your problem. The DM in question saw one.

Your god is well within his rights to punish your paladin, because gods can be obsessively strict and not care about context. But gods can also make cold, unemotional decisions that mess things up more than they help things out.

Maybe your DM could have your PC 'hired' by a different god who thinks your killing of the pervert was just. And then the DM could have the paladins of your old god loathe your heretic-PC and constantly try to find you guilty of a crime so they can kill you...even though you are still a paladin, but of a different god.

This way the whole situation becomes a nifty source for RPing and plot complications.

Tony

jgbrowning said:

I was commenting that Wulf's and everyone else opinions that agree with his stance of "Black and White" as expresses in his quotation is inconsitant with how "Good" is defined in D&D.

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First, I sincerely doubt that the designers of D&D thought that their interpretation of Law, Chaos, Good, and Evil were as hard-coded into the rules as things like attacks of opportunity. Every creative person, DM's included, will express their own beliefs through their creations and thus we'll see different interpretations by different DMs.

Moreover, a DM might want to explore different conceptions of the good in a game. What would right and wrong be like in a lawless town such as Deadwood?

Second, page 105 of the PHB 3.5 describes Alhandra as "a paladin who fights evil without mercy and protects the innocent without hesitation..." This certainly seems consistent with the way Wulf and several others run the game .

I don't have the Book of Exalted Deeds but it sounds like it is trying to give examples of different conceptions of the good that have been held at different times and by different people. Like other resources, I suspect these are various suggestions or options for how to treat alignment in one's game.

I agree with your later criticism of utilitarianism but it also might be interesting, within a game, to see what kind of stories evolve from a world where utilitarianism were the divinely mandated conception of the good.

jgbrowning said:

I was commenting that Wulf's and everyone else opinions that agree with his stance of "Black and White" as expresses in his quotation is inconsitant with how "Good" is defined in D&D.

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The Book of Exalted Deeds does not D&D make. Your quotes from that book make me as happy not to have purchased it as I am not to have purchased its Evil counterpart.

Because (Book of Exhalted Deeds) "violence is not just a failure of diplomacy, it is a failure of good and a victory for evil."

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Oh, please. Violence is not always necessarily a victory for evil, not in the real world, and definitely not in D&D.

If every act of violence were a de facto victory for evil, there would be no good adventurers. You can hardly call this a tenet of D&D, unless you plan for your adventurers to treat every dungeon as a friggin' diplomatic opportunity.

The vast bulk of the D&D gaming experience is that violence is a perfectly acceptable solution, in some if not most encounters the characters will face.

This isn't to say that you don't kick ass and take names. This is to say that you kick ass and take names once every other possible attempt has been made to avoid kicking ass and taking names. This is what D&D good is.

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Again, if you truly live by that quote, there will be few good characters in your D&D game. I do not play D&D for a chance to enter the dungeon and talk the goblins out of their evil ways, or to otherwise exhaust every other possible attempt to avoid kicking ass.

It's preposterous to say, "This is what D&D good is." It's no wonder that philosophy was relegated to an optional product. Frankly I'm surprised you can even find it there. It flies directly in the face of all of the FUN of D&D.

Call me crazy, but thousands of years of relentless evil-good conflict abdicates the paladin from any, "Well, maybe this little goblin baby won't grow up to slaughter and pillage."

Evil is evil, and it is GOOD to kill it.

Wulf