Player Dilemma

[DevlinStormweaver]

In last nights game we came across a goblin village and found a hut full of goblin children. As a Paladin I decided to spare teh children lives. My plan was to try to enlighten them at a later date. The p[roblem is one of my companions a dwarf who has the feat 'Foe Hunter' with goblins been his foe also found teh hut. I warnbed him off, but once i had left he snuck in and killed the all the goblin kids. He is know going around calling my Palidin a girl and boasting about the killings.

The problem I have is that I am not sure how to respond. My first thoughts are that my paladin does not want to carry on with the group due every one else not taking sides. I had hoped that in a party of supposidly good characters someone would have backed me up. Or do i try to reason with the dwarf and try to get hiom to see reason. But hesees his feats means that he needs to kill all goblins on sight. He has all ready killed two goblins who were surrending instead of questioning them.

Please can i have some advice.

(for further info, read my adventures on the story hour board)

 

[Crothian]

Claim him a murderer and bring him to justice. Suggest to the DM that his alignment should now be evil after his actions, and detect him as such, then kill him and sell his stuff to donate to a goblin orphanage.

 

[Sundragon2012]

In last nights game we came across a goblin village and found a hut full of goblin children. As a Paladin I decided to spare teh children lives. My plan was to try to enlighten them at a later date. The p[roblem is one of my companions a dwarf who has the feat 'Foe Hunter' with goblins been his foe also found teh hut. I warnbed him off, but once i had left he snuck in and killed the all the goblin kids. He is know going around calling my Palidin a girl and boasting about the killings.

The problem I have is that I am not sure how to respond. My first thoughts are that my paladin does not want to carry on with the group due every one else not taking sides. I had hoped that in a party of supposidly good characters someone would have backed me up. Or do i try to reason with the dwarf and try to get hiom to see reason. But hesees his feats means that he needs to kill all goblins on sight. He has all ready killed two goblins who were surrending instead of questioning them.

Please can i have some advice.

(for further info, read my adventures on the story hour board)

Honestly I wonder how you intended on enlightening them. Is their goblin fosterage amongst humans? Are there good aligned humanoid tribes who will take them in? Is the setting rather "enlightened" in regards to viewing humanoids as something more than vermin to be destroyed?

These all play into the reality of the situation.

If the above options are not available then was your character will to raise this children as his own?

If you cannot make that choice and there is no way to give them to someone else to raise would you leave them in the woods to starve to death?

Just probing here.


Chris

 

[reveal]

The player in question is confusing Foe Hunter with the ranger's Favored Enemy ability. Foe Hunter says "You have served as a member of a militia or military unit devoted to protecting your home from the fierce raiders who trouble the area." It gives you a +1 to fight your specified foe. Nothing else.

I agree with Crothian. Call out the dwarf as a murderer and bring him to justice. Go to the local authorities and turn in the dwarf. If it is not against the law, ask yourself if it is against your code as a paladin. If it is, you can no longer adventure with the dwarf because he goes against your personal tenets.

Killing him won't solve anything, but it may make you feel better.

 

[DevlinStormweaver]

Their is a druid grove near and my plan was to approach the head druid and ask for his assistant. One of my long term goals for my paladin is to set up settlements to help enlighten creatures who have strayed. THis was going to be my first challenge. I thought it would bring some good roleplaying experience.

 

[Sundragon2012]

I think these kinds of questions have to be considered in the game by the DM before they set this kind of situation up. I think that using standard D&D and its preposterously simplistic good/evil dynamic this was an evil act no matter what the circumstances. However in some settings, like Dark Sun, Conan, etc. there are different sensibilities and different assumptions. In a given setting, the killing of the goblin children may have well been the only option wandering adventurers could tale because in grittier settings these is no such thing as goblin orphanages and humans would rather kill the critters than take them into their home.

In most fantasy settings such as FR or Krynn I have never seen any resources for the systematic rehabilitation of humanoid children. In fact, when the human and elven armies strike back against orc and goblin hordes they defacto leave thousands of humanoid orphans who will die of exposure, disease, starvation, or predators or in other manners far worse than a quick sword thrust.

Does anyone ever believe that commonly a train of humanoid children is in tow behind the victorious humans, elves and dwarves? No, they are killed or scattered into the woods to die in other terrible ways. Such is the reality of war in any consistant setting. Even the good guys leave orphans goblin children to starve and hopefully die because they know that if these creatures survive they will wage a new war in another decade or two.

I would say that this needs to be adjudicated based on the grittiness of the setting. If its a core campaign where D&D assumptions are assumed regularly fine the dwarf is a murderer but if the setting is more complex than that then he may have committed an act of mercy or at least did nothing worse than is always done to such creatures once their parents have been dispatched.


Chris

 

[Crothian]

Their is a druid grove near and my plan was to approach the head druid and ask for his assistant. One of my long term goals for my paladin is to set up settlements to help enlighten creatures who have strayed. THis was going to be my first challenge. I thought it would bring some good roleplaying experience.

It can, but only if the other player is willing to admit his character was wrong. Otherwise it will be like trying to convince a floor it is really a flower.

 

[Ellie_the_Elf]

I'm the DM in Devlin_Stormweaver's game - some of you might remember me posting a thread about problem players a few weeks back....well, this dwarf is played by one of those players- the problem is I think he gets a little *too* into his character, so because his dwarf is loud and overbearing, that's how he play sometimes. He interrupts when the party's split to search a room or something and I'm talking with someone else about what they're doing, stuff like that. He also has a tendency to try to skip through any roleplaying encounters to get to the killing, but claims to play for the roleplaying aspects.

(Incidentally, for those who do remember my thread, the psion who was causing me headaches is no more, and his player has now made a fighter who's fitting in fine)

But anyway, I've considered kicking the dwarf player out, but most of the group is against it to varying degrees- their argument is that since he is new to our group we need to give him a chance to get used to us and how we play. Maybe they're right *shrugs*

We also have backseat DMing problems from one or two players. I have one player who likes rules very much who frequently tries to overrule me. I tend more towards a rules-only-when- they're necessary approach.

Most of this, when discussed, has been put down to me being argumentative (which is true) and there have been veiled suggestions that I'm overreacting since I'm a girl and that's what we do (which may or may not be true, but is still annoying). Pretty much everyone agrees that most of the players have one or two extremely annoying playing habits, but none of us, myself included, really considers any one player to be enough trouble on their own to be kicked out.

So anyway- we have an interesting group dynamic! Sometimes it's like Jerry Springer with dice, but mostly we have fun when we play.

The paladin detected evil on the goblin kids, which came up as faintly evil. He was debating whether to take them along and try to redeem them or to leave them to fend for themselves when the dwarf took matters into his own hands. The dwarf is a cleric of Moradin by the way.

I may warn the dwarf about a possible alignment shift if he keeps attacking helpless foes. Since I only allow good alignments (after too many neutral PCs who saw any kind of neutral alignment to mean they could play chaotic evil without being smited by paladins), this would mean his character got NPC'd. Trouble is, I know exactly what he'll say- that goblins are his racial enemy, that he's been fighting them all his life (both of which are in his backstory) - and he's therefore justified in attacking them, because with his background, the only good goblin is a dead goblin. And I can see his point, but I also see Devlin's.....

So I guess I'm really looking for advice on the whole mess too

Ellie.

 

[LostSoul]

The player in question is confusing Foe Hunter with the ranger's Favored Enemy ability.

The ranger's Favoured Enemy ability doesn't have anything to do with having a maniacal desire to slay creatures of that type... does it?


Your Paladin should Detect Evil on the dwarf. If he shows up as Evil, SMITE HIM WITH FIERCE RETRIBUTION AND HOLY VENGEANCE! And let the last words he hears on this mortal plane will be your new war cry: "CALL ME A GIRL, WILL YOU?"

 

[reveal]

So I guess I'm really looking for advice on the whole mess too

Ellie.

I hate to say it, but I told you so. I told you he wouldn't change and I told you he was just going to continue to make you miserable. Now you're looking for advice on another mess he's caused. Here's my advice, again. Kick. Him. Out.