(Yet another) Paladin behaviour question

[Johno]

Just to stir things up some more, I thought I would quote "Faiths and Pantheons" from the Tyr entry (not the same God, but one that allows Paladins and has the retribution domain):

"Deliver vengence to the guilty for those who cannot do it themselves." (His lost men, clearly, couldn't exactly do it themselves. Also note the use of the word vengence, not justice)

But the PALADIN should follow what is just, as he is a paragon of Good and Law. Irrespective of what Fighters who follow the same god would do (and are not bound with such strictness to Good and Law.

"Without a civilized legal code with which to guide their judgements, they often default to a doctrine roughly equivalent to 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth'." (Again, clearly the Bandit Kingdoms don't have an established legal code, so this default would have applied).

But the presence of a legal in the bandit Kingdom is irrelevant: The Paladin should be following his own fine tuned sense of Law, Good, Justice and Retribution.

It strikes me that acting this sentence in this fashion upon these mercenaries is cowardly, vain, and self-defeating as it does nothing to prevent the CE Church from recruiting more mercenaries to do the same again. Indeed, should the deed become known, it might spark a nasty movement against whatever Church the paladin represents...

How many times can the paladin travel to the tent city and execute in secret those participants in the CE Churches plot to destroy Goodness?

That said; I hope you guys had fun.

 

[Westwind]

We had a lot of fun (I play neither the Paladin nor do I DM, but it was a blast). For the sake of arguement, let's assume the Paladin's patron was Tyr. If the dogma detailed in Faiths and Pantheons is correct, then the Paladin (in my opinion) should embody that dogma, not all strive for the Galahad-esque ideal (which, in the FR always struck me was the role of Torm and in this campaign is the area of another deity). I love playing the shining knight, don't get me wrong, but I don't think a church would ever say "I know all our holy texts say this, but you have to act differently."

To answer a few questions:

The bodies of his men were pretty horribly mutilated. Even though these bandits aren't part of the CE church, they are not nice guys. I think this entire thing is a distraction from something else (or someone setting up the CE church), but that's just my character's view. It was an ambush, had they met in the open field under the "rules of war," I suspect the Paladin would have been more forgiving, if that's the right word. It's a dangerous job, after all.

I never asked, but I would bet the Paladin never considered himself an honorable knight. He's actually pretty humble (which makes the amount of damage he can dish when he gets angry shocking) and sees himself as the arm of the church. He wears fullplate and carries a longsword, but that dosen't make him a Knight, per se. He tries to embody the ideals of his Church, that's all (although that gets tricky at lot, my CG character gets in fights with him about what to do with certain unfair--but "just"--laws.)

 

[Celebrim]

I have several serious problems with the Paladins behavior.

Let me first state what those problems are not:

1) The Paladin sought vengence. I'm ok with that. He is well within his rights to want to slay these people.

2) The Paladin executed villains. Again, I'm ok with that. He is well within his rights to want to slay these people.

3) The Paladin resorted to cunning to identify his foes and separate them from thier allies. Again, I'm ok with that. Sometimes you have to use cunning ambushes and such in battle.

The problems arise with his specific application of his rights.

1) The Paladin was duplicitous. It is not ok to mislead people into believing that he wants to hire them when what he really wants is to kill them. A Paladin can be as stealthy as he wants and can in the course of a lawful war, perform ambushes and so forth, but he cannot deal dishonorably with his foe. This particular lie would have been a minor problem except for the fact that...

2) The Paladin gave his duped foe no alternative to a speedy death. Having deceived his foes, the Paladin has no business placing himself as the judge, jury, and executioner of his foes. The Paladin should have honorably confronted his foes (even if doing so might have been less advantageous) and told them that they must either submit to trial or face him (or he and his allies if confronting them at once) in honorable combat. When he has clearly placed his foe in an untenuable position, he _must_ honorably given them chance at surrender unless his foe is some being beyond reasonable hope of redemption (like a fiend).

3) The Paladin executed them for having committed war crimes. This is always a tricky situation. Were the Bandits acting as lawful combatants on behalf of some sovereign power with the legal right to field combatants? Given that they were hired and that his own men were lawful combatants (and not innocents). I think that generally a distinction is made between common soldiers and those that ordered the war crimes.

4) The bodies of the executed were treated barbaricly with no real justification. Having executed the foes, the Paladin was somewhat bound to bury them in a lawful fashion unless some much more pressing need prevented it. Leaving the bodies on the field of battle to press on to rescue the Princess is fine. Burning the bodies in some sort of mass cremation is fine, if better arangements can not be made without causing undue economic suffering (on someone other than himself!). Disentigrating them because all bodies (his own men included) are being disentegrated because of a plague is fine. Disentigrating them so he can more convienently murder thier fellows is not.

All this taken together is very bad because it hints that the Paladin is not really taking his code that seriously and is looking for ways around it. It is clear that he is trying to obey merely the letter of the law and not the spirit of it, and that is enough I think to attract the disfavorable attention of the deity. One minor transgression can be overlooked, with the Paladin merely recieving a warning. Serious planning to premediatatively perform a variety of transgressions concurrently is a problem.

The biggest problem is probably in fact that the Paladin had so many resources at his disposal and the Justest and most Honorable plan he could come up with is this? Seriously? With all these resources I think he could have managed to think of a plan that relied on far fewer moral ambiguities. Instead, it is clear that the primary impetus behind the plan was not its justness or honorableness, but the fact that it was of all the plans the Paladin could think up the one that exposed him to the least danger without clearly breaking the letter of the law as the Paladin understood it.

Celtavian is I think in the right. Given the obviously tremendous resources at this Paladin's disposal, rounding up the bad guys would not have been too much more trouble.

 

[da chicken]

Excellently stated Celebrim.

If it were me, I would have gone to the Bandit Kingdom with my cohort and five of my most powerful followers. You stated the action had been determined to be a crime against the Church, so you should treat it as such. I would have hunted down each merc and confronted them. I'd offer either fair trial by combat, or fair trial by a jury of his peers (or whatever is appropriate for your campaign). Alternately, if the Church had given you death warrants for them men, I'd go ahead and kill them when they were found.

In other words, think of an American old west marshall hunting down a group of outlaws with a posse. That's pretty much how a paladin of a LN/LG church of retribution should react.

[Sounds like you're a Paladin of St. Cuthbert. Paladin of common sense is some good, eh? ]

 

[AuraSeer]

IMO the paladin was acting dishonorably, because he did not allow for the possibility of surrender. In fact, I think your DM dropped the ball by having all the bandits fight to the death. At least a few of them should have realized they were outclassed, and thrown down their weapons to ask for mercy.

As it was, the paladin had no way to accept a surrender. He would have needed to either turn them loose, or kill them anyway. Killing a surrendered opponent is absolutely dishonorable, and probably evil to boot. Letting them leave would have screwed up the rest of his plan, and I doubt it would have served his idea of justice (even if the bandits submitted to a Geas or Mark of Justice).

If the paladin were really intending to Do Right, he should have been ready to manacle them and stick 'em in a portable hole. Or have a sorcerer friend teleport them directly to the temple courts. Or any of a dozen other methods, all of which are accessible to a high-level character.

Since the PC did not make any such provisions, it seems that he was not out do justice; he was out to kill people. That may seem like a fine distinction, but that's why a justice-seeking holy warrior is different from some angry guy with a sword. This PC was the latter.

 

[Celtavian]

Re

"Without a civilized legal code with which to guide their judgements, they often default to a doctrine roughly equivalent to 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth'." (Again, clearly the Bandit Kingdoms don't have an established legal code, so this default would have applied).


Tyrran's would never have done what this Paladin did. They still follow the law of Tyr which is righteous and just. It may be an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth, but that doesn't mean the dead don't receive decent burial and a trial. He is supposed to help civilize such lands, not do whatever act of vengeance he wishes because no law exists.

Tyr's followers may carry out revenge, but they don't engage in mass slaughter and the cover it up by disintegrating the bodies. I just will never see why a Paladin of retribution would hide his act of vengeance behind such veils.

Why didn't the church demand open retribution? Would not the church have sent a stronger message if the Paladin had killed the bandits openly? The bandits would have then known that to strike at the followers of this church invited war with the church and its followers. I am sure from now on bandits from that area will avoid tents.

Also, think of this scenario. The Chaotic Evil church finds out what the Paladin has done. This church decides to have one of its knights dress up as a knight of this church and then goes to another area and does the same thing except instead of bandits, it executes simple criminals in some village. The knight and priests use a zone of truth to determine if the villagers have committed some crime, then if sentences them to death if bad enough or just some other form of punishment like cutting a hand off for stealing or a whipping for some other transgression. It doees this all in the name of the Paladin's church using what happened to the bandits as fuel to the fire of paranoia. It does it all in a tent veiled in silence spells with an illusionary trial court.

The DM could easily use this against the Paladin. As I said before, what he did is something an evil church would have no trouble undertaking. Why? Because the way he carried out vengeance was rather evil.

I ask once again. What would you think of a justicator who killed a bunch of criminals in one on one combat without a real trial and then disintegrated their bodies? I mean think in terms of your own character. How he or she would feel about an organization that would condone such an act.

 

[La Bete]

obligatory disclaimer: Of course requirements of paladin behaviour change from campaign to campain, so it works for you then woo hoo!

A rule of thumb for this sort of situation is that if you have to justify an action, youve been bad... time for the rolled up newspaper.....

I wouldn't strip away the chars paladinhood, but would have his god at least a little grumpy with him. A lawful good fighter, with limited resources might do something like this and get away with it, but paladins are more spotless - the "justice must be done, and seen to be done" sort of people.

I think it is possible, and reasonable, to hold Paladins to a higher standard without them turning into wusses. as Celebrim pointed out, cunning is ok - and something you would learn as you gain experience, but as a paladin, deliberate deception (which this was) is generally a no-no.

my 2c... no, wait, we dont have them anymore.....

 

[Idayen Relanite]

i stopped readin about 2/3 downt he page, but have any of you guys read the books from the song of fire and ice series? well, everyone thinks there are 2 types a trials, 1 is trial by arms,a nd other is a trial in front of people, like in now days. The palidin just gave them a trial by arms.

If you think against this, then i would ahve to say your probably right, the palidin just tricked them into his tent and killed them 1 by 1

did he lie? i would have to say yes, was he actually going to hire them at ANY point?

he should loose all palidine abilities right there

did he not honorably bury the dead? well some cultures beleive burning bodies ...or disinigrating them ( like alot of people do to ahve there ashes spread) is just as honorable....


i might of missed a few, but when he lied he lost all his paladine abilities untill he did a quest or something to appease his god, unless his god sees lying so bad that he would enver again beable to be a paladin.


just a few points.

cultavian-

If this was my campaign i would hav ethe evil church do this it's very clever, and a very good way to punish the paladin if you didn't strip him of his pally hood.

 

[Idayen Relanite]

double posted :/

 

[Umbran]

2) The Paladin gave his duped foe no alternative to a speedy death. Having deceived his foes, the Paladin has no business placing himself as the judge, jury, and executioner of his foes.

Having a separate judge, jury, and executioner is a very modern concept. Don't apply modern judiceprudence to a pseudo-medieval setting.

The usual form of justice in such settings is either vigilante, or "bring him before the local lord, who'll hear the case and decide what's to be done" (which is judge and jury in one, without the help of a defense attorney, either!).

A paladin is specifically designed for this sort of work - being the arm of a good and just god in areas where the normal civil authorities cannot reach.

As for duplicity in coralling your evildoers being unlawful...

I unfortunately forget the details - one municipality (Los Angeles?) found it had a problem (I believe it was a large number of "deadbeat dads" not paying their legally appointed child support, but I could be incorerect). Rather than perform a lengthy, manhour-intensive and possibly dangerous roundup, they sent out letters: "Dear Mr. X - We are happy to inform you that you have won a prize in our lottery. Please come down to our clearing house to collect your prize." The prize, in my memory, was a large TV set, though I could be mistaken.

When the miscreants arrived...
"Hello, you are Mr. X? Can I see some ID? ... Okay, will you sign here, please? Thank you. Sir, you are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent..." And the guy is hauled off to another room, and the next guy comes in to get his prize.

All the paladin has really done is use camouflage of a type reasonable for the area. So long as he's straight up with the guy once he's found him (no killing him without telling him why), there's little problem. There's most certainly no problem with the trial-by-combat, as in most places, the miscreant brought to trial for this crime have gotten executed with no chance of self-defense.

Disintegrating the bodies? Hrr. That depends on the burial customs of the area. If, in this culture, the body is merely an epty shell of no import, then disintegration is okay. If they have deeply seated burial rituals, though, this wasn't good...