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

[edbonny]

If he killed the molester, would he lose his powers?

Not if the blackguard was going to pick up where the molester left off. Is the blackguard saving the girl or just saving her for himself?

 

[edbonny]

A post of doubles

 

[tarchon]

It's a minor infraction, deserving some minor penalty.

The arguments for this being a lawful act by nature sound a lot like Judge Dredd-style "lawful - "I am the law!" so whatever I think is just must be lawful.

If you need an argument for why justice is better served with a trial, public trials and executions are usually much more effective as a deterrent than a summary private execution in an abandoned warehouse.

 

[Nuclear Platypus]

The paladin is a religious warrior.

He is a defender of innocents, slayer of evil, and symbol of justice.

Not local laws... JUSTICE...

He is the sword of his god. He's built to be the hand of his lord's retribution.

He is not a police officer.

HE IS THE LAW!

It comes down to this: Ask your game master if the character's god advocates turning over the defiler to a MORTAL COURT, as opposed to his hand-picked paladin for justice.

Now local law might run him in, but all religions get persicuted sooner or later...

The paladin can throw himself upon the mercy of the court to decide his fate thus fulfilling this 'lawful' side everyone keeps bringing up. Yes he did kill a man but what the man did was far worse and good is FAR more important than order / chaos. That trial could dredge up more filth as other victims step forward to testify in the paladin's defense. A paladin should defend those who cannot defend themselves as they are champions for the Forces of Good (not necessarily gods).

If the sword don't fit, you must acquit!

Ok that didn't make a lot of sense.

 

[Carpe DM]

An excellent discussion. I will add to it, I hope, rather than repeat the many excellent points made so far.

The paladin acted neither lawlessly nor evilly, and thus retains his powers.

I think that people are right to distinguish Medieval Law from Modern Law. Yet the distinction does not create a difference. Both societies permitted the Paladin's actions here:

1. Lethal force is, in modern societies, authorized to prevent rape.

2. A party is authorized to use lethal force on behalf of someone who cannot, IF that person is authorized to use lethal force.

A. Lethal force is, in medieval societies, authorized to prevent rape. In fact, lethal force was permitted to oppose far lesser crimes, including theft.

B. Nobles and (to some extent) Knights in medieval societies were possessed of the Low Justice and the High. The killing of a commoner was lawful on the facts as the Paladin knew them. This presumes the Paladin was part of a church hierarchy or knightly order.

Under the facts as given, the paladin's acts were in fact lawful, no matter the temporal context. Perhaps people were not aware of the modern legality of lethal force on behalf of a third party, but we can put that to rest now.

 

[Zimri]

Yes legally he was probably eight to do what he did. That doesn't show me that attacking a much weaker foe, that is unaware of your presence from behind is honorable, and paladins are supposed to be honorable. Robin Hood wasn't a paladin, neither is Nomad (from marvel) Wolverine is close but acts to rashly. Under most circumstances Cyclops and captain america act most paladin-like as does aragorn (if I remember my tolkien correctly)

 

[takyris]

Ditto the "No Punishment" folks.

Mostly for the same reasons Henry mentioned: the paladin is the representative of his Lawful Good god. As long as he's a paladin, he isn't going to smite anybody who doesn't (in his judgment at the time) deserve it. As long as he still has his powers, everyone in the world will know that he acted in a faithful way.

Cowardice: No. He didn't sneak in. He just didn't announce himself. He is allowed to announce himself, but not required to do so, especially if he believes that the situation would become bad by him doing so -- the paladin entering the evil wizard's lair doesn't have to ring the bell. Stealth is a completely valid option, and striking by surprise is honorable unless you're talking about duels. Paladins have the option of delaying their initiative to wait until attacked, but they also have the allowance of making their own judgment. A kid's life could have been at stake.

Unarmed: You know, if this were true, then the best way for an evil cleric to defeat a paladin is to have one his his suicidal henchmen run up to the paladin with a greatsword and then, as the paladin begins to swing, the henchman drops his weapon and turns around. Bam! Instant loss of paladinship. The unarmed thing is just good tactics on the paladin's part. Again, he had the OPTION of attacking unarmed as well, or letting the molester get a weapon, but he is not required to do so.

Minimal Force: I agree with the person that says that the DM wants to play both sides, here. If you're playing in a gritty world where graphic evidence of sexual assault is presented, then the paladin shouldn't be given lip about killing those evil people when they are clearly caught in the process of beginning to commit the same crime again. You want a Lawful Good person who specialized in subdual damage? Play a monk. Monks can do subdual all over the place. Unless you're playing in a modern-ish low-death world where
the PCs aren't supposed to ever try to kill the bad guys, then there's no problem here. (Note: My PCs are in a d20 Modern world. They're government agents. They do Treat Injury checks after shooting bad guys. The difference between this and a fantasy world is huge. And Forgotten Realms is a fantasy world.)

So, no. No punishment. Sure, it would have been better if the 5th level paladin had True Seeing active, so that he could clearly make sure that the bad guy wasn't actually a celestial, and the kid wasn't a demon using an illusion to throw the paladin off. It would have been better if the 5th level paladin used all his powerful divination abilities to make sure that the guy wasn't mind-controlled or under the suggestion that the kid is actually his girlfriend, who likes it rough. You know what would've been fantastic? If the paladin had cast Wish to go back in time and stop the bad guy from doing this in the first place! That would have been awesome!

Except that, like all the other options, it wasn't really within the paladin's abilities at the time, so he had to go by the evidence he saw. And he believed at the time that killing the guy was the most righteous action. Case closed. If the paladin is consistently or egregiously wrong, overlooking clear evidence or compelling arguments to the contrary, then that becomes a different issue. But I don't see it here.

 

[Torm]

What would a blackguard do in this situation? If he killed the molester, would he loose his powers?

It seems to me that Blackguards, evil though they are, are individuals like anyone else. One might walk back out "not having seen anything", one might watch and enjoy and go brag about it, one might back out quickly, wait a while, and then go brag to his acquaintances that he watched and enjoyed it (even though he didn't - reputation, you know), one might kill him because he's breaking the law and here's an opportunity to kill someone slowly and painfully, one might kill him for being sloppy enough to get caught, and one might even kill him for the very same reasons a Paladin would - even some people who are extremely evil have the same gut reactions as decent people about certain things. Or put another way, you DON'T want to be a child molester in prison - even the other inmates regard you as scum, and a good number don't come out alive.

Remember, even some Nazis loved puppies.

As far as whether he'd lose his powers or not, I suspect it depends on what he did and who he's in thrall to. Heck, some Evil gods might take his powers even if they agreed with what he did, just to make him beg and "quest" to get them back. Evil so-and-sos.

 

[Epametheus]

I've read up to page 10 of this thread.

I vote "keeps powers." Taking care of the child and dealing with the townspeople should be messy enough. At worst, he might deserve a slap on the wrist for acting on impulse; I'm picturing the pally drawing his sword and whacking the guy in one motion. Modern day cops are trained to take people alive, but knights sure as hell aren't, and simply not thinking to deal subdual damage doesn't surprise me.

The fact that the molester had his back turned is damn near irrelevant, since I'm sure the paladin would've charged no matter which way the guy was facing. The pally wasn't thinking of terms "he's dangerous, so I'll take him from behind;" he was thinking more in terms of "WTF DIE." Impulsive? Yes. Dishonourable? Arguably, but I'll go ahead and say no.

Also, keep in mind that executions were public spectacles in medieval societies. It would be very unlikely that that was the first person that the child ever saw die violently.

Anyways, I don't have a problem with the paladin's player lumping pedophiles into the "kill on sight" category along with demons, devils, trolls, and red dragons.

 

[Herpes Cineplex]

One of the reasons I don't like paladins, beyond the arguements they spawn, is that once a situation occurs that creates an arguement, someone invarably accusses the DM of "kick-the-paladin" or some such.

That in and of it self, the idea that in every game, every situation should be solvable using a very rigid code of behavior or else the GM has it out for the player really gets my goat. [...]

I don't think that every encounter must be solvable without breaking a paladin's code just because a paladin is part of a group especially when, when a paladin isn't part of a group, such requirements aren't necessary.

I think this line of argument falls apart when you stop to think that the only reason any character encountered the rapist in the first place was because the GM wanted the paladin to encounter a rapist, to see what he would do, and to slap him down if he didn't follow the unwritten, unspoken, and (as the argument with the paladin's player shows) apparently unknown paladin's code that the GM felt he should.

In other words, this whole scenario sounds like a trap set by the DM for the paladin. If there hadn't been a paladin in the group, probably this whole thing wouldn't have happened at all...and by that comment I don't mean that there wouldn't have been an argument over whether it was acceptable to slice the rapist's head off, I mean there probably wouldn't have been a rapist in the first place.

And I don't begrudge GMs who look at a class like paladin and think that it would be fun to see how that character would react to morally challenging situations. It is fun, and within the context of the game I think it's perfectly acceptable for there to not be a solution that allows the paladin to obey both his code and his heart. You can do some really cool stuff with those situations.

But before you can do that, I think the GM and the player need to sit down OUT-OF-CHARACTER and establish exactly what the paladin's code is, or the GM needs to give VERY EXPLICIT WARNINGS about actions that the player doesn't seem to think will get him kicked out of the paladin club but the GM does. (Just saying "Are you sure? Because you can kill him in one hit..." doesn't do the job as effectively as "Are you sure? Because that goes against the code your order taught you..." in this situation.) Otherwise, you might as well just play three-card-Monte with the paladin's player and take away his character's paladinhood any time he can't pick out the queen.

If you don't give an explicit warning or otherwise make the code clear to the player ahead of time, if you instead get mysteriously coy when the paladin is on the brink of making a huge mistake and then spin around after the mistake is made and say "Uh, no, in my setting, that's grounds for losing paladinhood, and I don't care what you think your character's code allows"...well, that's kick-the-paladin. It's unfair to the player, because the player can't read your mind and know all the paladin-code revisions you've concocted for your setting automatically; you need to actually tell the player what those revisions are if you expect them to be followed, or accept that you will create arguments and bad feelings and pick up the "Don't play paladins in my game, because I will screw you over" tag on top of all that.

That's all worst-case scenario stuff, obviously. I'm willing to believe that in this case it was an honest mistake, but I also stand by my belief that the entire rapist thing was thrown in specifically to take a poke at the paladin's ethics and thereby endanger his paladinhood, and that the critical gap between what the player thinks those ethics are and what the GM thinks they are is just going to lead to more catastrophes like this unless they both sit down and actually discuss in detail what standards this character is going to be expected to live up to.

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and i'd hate to game with anyone who disagreed with that