Should the Paladin pay for Evil Magic Items he wants / has destroyed?

[gizmo33]

I guess the paladin should also compensate the PCs for:
1. the value of the BBEG as a slave or sacrifice to a demon-lord since the PCs could have used him for that, but the paladin wrecked that by killing him.
2. the value of the BBEG's slaves that the paladin insisted on freeing
3. the amount of loot that the other PCs could have gotten by joining the BBEGs gang and terrorizing the country side.
4. the value of the treasure and experience that the party could have gained had the BBEG been left alive to create additional mayhem and spawn additional adventures for the PCs.

In other words, I agree with King Henry on this, as soon as the PCs start seeing the BBEG, or his evil loot as being of value then the paladin has no business listening to their concerns.

However, I think that calling things evil just because they were owned by someone evil is wrong (since it's factually incorrect) and I don't think a paladin would act on a whim like that - meaning he would only destroy things (like creatures) that he KNEW to be evil.

 

[sword-dancer]

And that's why it's good that LG churches are only advisers in most countries and don't have any legitimate authorities. We can see at the Theocracy of Pale in the Greyhawk setting how much a country where a LG church is the ultimate authority sucks (honestly, not even paladin players want to come anywhere near this nation)

Most churches and their orders have full authoritie over their clerical and order members, often so absolute that they could only be legitimate judged by them.

And most Knights of Solamniaare AFAIk were lawful good and ruled Solamnia.

A successful LG terrain mades only normally for poor adventuring place.

 

[Mirtek]

Most churches and their orders have full authoritie over their clerical and order members, often so absolute that they could only be legitimate judged by them.

Yes, but that gives them no authorities to judge anyone else. The paladin's group is not bound by their rules and judgements at all (maybe the cleric is)

And most Knights of Solamniaare AFAIk were lawful good and ruled Solamnia.

Hm, must be annother very depressing country

A successful LG terrain mades only normally for poor adventuring place.

On the contrary, the theocracy is just screaming for some NG/CG heroes to liberate them from the dictatorship of these law-loving fundamentalists

 

[sword-dancer]

Yes, but that gives them no authorities to judge anyone else. The paladin's group is not bound by their rules and judgements at all (maybe the cleric is)

Tell that The clerics of Tyr, that he could not judge you in lawless Lands, Zhentil Keep is considered lawless.

Hm, must be annother very depressing country

No, not when the knights ruled it till the comet fell.

On the contrary, the theocracy is just screaming for some NG/CG heroes to liberate them from the dictatorship of these law-loving fundamentalists

Therefore it is not a functioning lawful good realm.

 

[Mirtek]

Tell that The clerics of Tyr, that he could not judge you in lawless Lands, Zhentil Keep is considered lawless.

Especially a cleric of Tyr should understand that he has no authority to judge anywhere if the rightfull authorities didn't extend their rights to him. He should strife to convince as many authorities as possible to embrace the virtues of Tyr, but he can't judge in Zhentil Keep and especially can't judge anyone just for being from Zhentil Keep unless he just broke the law of a country where this cleric has been granted these authorities.

Therefore it is not a functioning lawful good realm.

As if such a thing could ever be functioning. Law and Good simply oppose each other on a fundamental levels. You can try to bridge the gap, but eventually the risk of failure is just too high. That's why all these LG guys fall toward LN and finally LE and all these LG celestials fall and become archdevils while the CE guys and celestials can do nothing but to pity them.

BTW: Before we continue this discusion we should better start a new thread, as we're too far off topic. And I guess an own thread about this topic has the potential to easily reach get more sites than the threads about demonlord power

 

[Hypersmurf]

And so we have yet another case where the SRD and core books and errata don't agree.

In this case, the Core books had the new rule in two places, and the old rule in one place. The errata just corrected the one place to match the two places.

-Hyp.

 

[irdeggman]

In this case, the Core books had the new rule in two places, and the old rule in one place. The errata just corrected the one place to match the two places.

-Hyp.

Right but the SRD didn't keep up. Most of the time it has the errata and errata that wan't posted as errata but WotC revised the rules when they reprinted them.

Usually the SRD is the most up to date rule source, but now even that is called into question.

 

[Sarellion]

Even if secular law and religious law are divided rom each other in your setting what do you think the local authorities will say when you, a wandering mercenary in their eyes, complain to them about the paladin who wanted to destroy unholy and evil weapons instead of selling them for profit?

And if I judge medieval authorities right, they will probably have a law or just the will to confiscate stuff without recompense that the religion they practice finds harmful and is supposed to kill good folk and do evil. Even members of secular authorities nearly always practice a faith.

That stuff is probably as illegal in most areas in "normal "settings as hard drugs are in the world today. You can argue if unholy is really that bad objectively, but probably people will give you a really weird look when you admit that you carry around (or sold) a weapon that is especially good at killing good hearted people, merciful healers, angels, champions of the good gods and zealous crusaders, too (to have a bad example in the mix).

 

[Jdvn1]

I voted yes (a year ago), but now I disagree with myself.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

My personal opinion is that if a paladin is adventuring with a party who wants to sell Evil items rather than destroy them, he's probably adventuring with the wrong party.

My feelings exactly. Only if the paladin were adventuring with an amoral mercenary company would this kind of arrangement make sense, in which case it wouldn't make sense for the paladin to be in the group in the first place.

A paladin is going to be adventuring with others who don't want to see Evil thrive, even if they aren't as zealous about it as he is. Evil items are destroyed, and the items that remain are divvied up.