Paladins with powers being deluded/deceived?

[Dannyalcatraz]

IMHO, merely being tricked into an evil act is not sufficient- willingness implies knowledge.

 

[delericho]

Does a Paladin get to keep his powers, if he believes he is pursuing a noble/worthy goal?

His goal is irrelevant. Are his actions Good?

The 3.5e Paladin code specifies that he loses his powers if he ever willingly performs an Evil act. If the Paladin is deceived, then that fails the 'willing' part of the requirement, so while he might feel bad once the deception is revealed, he does not lose his powers. Of course, justice then demands that he deal with those who deceived him.

IMC, there is a group(not the PCs, in fact the PCs often run afoul of this group) seeking to destroy all undead. While the upper tier certainly knows this to be a ruse, the level that the paladins are operating at certainly would not. In reality the group is seeking to open a way for the return of the elves, long since exiled from this reality/plane and now a malevolent, undead force.

Since undead are (almost) all Evil, as long as the Paladin continues to aid them in their public "destroy all undead" agenda, he should be fine.

 

[Imaro]

The 3.5e Paladin code specifies that he loses his powers if he ever willingly performs an Evil act. If the Paladin is deceived, then that fails the 'willing' part of the requirement, so while he might feel bad once the deception is revealed, he does not lose his powers. Of course, justice then demands that he deal with those who deceived him.

This, the paladin must knowingly commit an evil act.

 

[tomBitonti]

The 3.5e Paladin code specifies that he loses his powers if he ever willingly performs an Evil act. If the Paladin is deceived, then that fails the 'willing' part of the requirement, so while he might feel bad once the deception is revealed, he does not lose his powers. Of course, justice then demands that he deal with those who deceived him.

This gets us to a messy semantic point: If a Paladin knowingly performs an act which happens to be evil, even if the Paladin didn't know the act was evil, did the paladin knowingly perform an evil act?

Leaving aside questions of deliberately avoided knowledge, and of gross negligence, there is room to argue that commission of the act is sufficient. That doesn't fit modern legal thinking as to guilt (so far as I am aware), but modern thinking may not be an entirely suitable guide.

Thx!

TomB

 

[Imaro]

This gets us to a messy semantic point: If a Paladin knowingly performs an act which happens to be evil, even if the Paladin didn't know the act was evil, did the paladin knowingly perform an evil act?

Leaving aside questions of deliberately avoided knowledge, and of gross negligence, there is room to argue that commission of the act is sufficient. That doesn't fit modern legal thinking as to guilt (so far as I am aware), but modern thinking may not be an entirely suitable guide.

Thx!

TomB

will·ful also wil·ful (wĭl′fəl)adj.
1. Said or done on purpose; deliberate. See Synonyms at voluntary.
2. Obstinately bent on having one's own way.


Again, all we have to do is read the rule. Willfully means deliberately, so the paladin must deliberately perform an evil act. If he does not know the act is evil, then it's not willfully committing an evil act.

 

[Cadence]

Willfully means deliberately, so the paladin must deliberately perform an evil act. If he does not know the act is evil, then it's not willfully committing an evil act.

Agree completely.

If I didn't think the language was clear, my tie-breaker would be: "It's lawful good, not lawful stupid"... would brutally punishing the paladin for this be a really stupid/evil policy on the part of the gods?

When the paladin finds out later that he's been inadvertently helping the bad guys all along it might be more reasonable for his deity (or order or conscience) to want him to do some act of penance to make up for it.

 

[Umbran]

This gets us to a messy semantic point: If a Paladin knowingly performs an act which happens to be evil, even if the Paladin didn't know the act was evil, did the paladin knowingly perform an evil act?

I'll ask l the following - how dumb did he have to be to not realize it was going to have bad consequences? If the fact that the consequences were really well-hidden, then the paladin probably gets off. If you had to be pretty stupid, or sticking your fingers in your ears and go "Lalalala!" to miss it, then there's probably an issue.

Also, for some things, failing to look into the consequences sufficiently (failing "due diligence") is probably grounds for temporary removal of powers. Did you bother to look up what kind of people those elves trapped away were? No? You just took someone's word for granted? Um... negligence?

Plus, as anyone here ever heard of, "survivor's guilt"? Dramatically speaking, it kind of applies - the fact that a reasonable person would not convict you of a crime does not mean you don't carry a burden of guilt - this is mostly a role-playing hook, as the paladin goes and seeks an atonement spell, and show his dedication to his cause by continuing to pursue it even without the extra power...

This, of course, is all for the purpose of creating a more interesting and engaging game - the point isn't to remove power just to screw the player.

 

[Celebrim]

Again, all we have to do is read the rule. Willfully means deliberately, so the paladin must deliberately perform an evil act. If he does not know the act is evil, then it's not willfully committing an evil act.

Maybe this is a difference between editions, but as I understood the code if a Paladin committed an evil act unknowingly, then he lost his Paladin powers/authority until such time as he could Atone for the failing.

If the Paladin willfully and deliberately commits an evil act, he ceases to be a Paladin and can never again regain the status. He no longer has purity required to be a Paladin. This is how I've played since I don't know when, so I suspect these are the 1e rules. I'd have to look up the 3.0 rules.

Looking at 3.5, they seem to have become somewhat less strict, though you still have to convince someone to intercede with your deity and burn 500XP on your atonement.

In 3.5, looking at the rules I see that they've changed the wording somewhat from what I expected, but even so I think that focusing on the 'willful' part over simplifies even 3.5's version. Gross violation of the code of conduct, even if not willful, still counts as a violation. So for example, killing an innocent person in error particularly as a result of deception or negligence would I think count as a 'gross violation'.

 

[Celebrim]

IMHO, merely being tricked into an evil act is not sufficient- willingness implies knowledge.

Being tricked into gross misconduct - burning down an orphanage because someone told you the kids were really monsters in disguise or even simply because you were more willing to sacrifice innocents than risk your own skin - in my opinion would be (more than) sufficiant to count as a violation. At some point, it doesn't matter what you intended to accomplish or how you justify yourself. Ultimately, a LG Paladin doesn't get to judge and review his own actions; he is accountable to higher authority.

I might accept that this might not be true CG 'paladin', whose superior might well accept the Paladin's assertion that - even if he was being disobedient - he was acting according to his own consciousness provided it seemed an honest and fair answer. However, even a CG superior might well question whether the CG 'paladin' had sufficient good judgment to continue representing him.

Basically, I'd say put yourself in the 'shoes' of the Paladin's superior (generally, some LG deity), and ask yourself whether you (if you had the same beliefs as the NPC) would continue supporting the Paladin.

 

[N'raac]

It seems the question is more about how omniscient the entity/philosophy empowering the Paladin is, and how much or little action they take.

The Paladin has been deceived and is about to strike down an innocent person. Would it not be more in keeping with the tenets of LG for the Power in question to intercede to prevent that innocent's death than to punish the Paladin immediately afterwards?

I think the Paladin must know he is doing wrong to lose his Paladinhood. However, I also think that, learning how he has ben duped, he would not be much of a Paladin if he just shrugged his shoulders and said "Oops my bad". Rather, I would expect him to bend every effort to righting the wrongs he had committed.

The difficult question, to me, is whether the Paladin's powers can be used as a deception detector "Whoa, guys, something is wrong - my Lay on Hands isn't working! Something we are doing must not be as righteous and benevolent as we have been lead to believe!" As I don't want to eliminate the potential that a Paladin could be deceived, I think that forces acceptance that he does not lose his abilities if he commits an evil act accidentally or unknowingly, outside of gross negligence or wilful blindness.

Can the latter be easily codified? Probably not, but they tend to be pretty easy to see in practice. If the Paladin likes to wave his sword around in the town square, injuring someone innocent seems bound to happen sooner or later, and that seems pretty "knowingly" endangering innocent people to me.

In situations of doubt, I'm inclined to rule he keeps his powers, but that doesn't mean his superiors in his order, his religious leaders or the general populace has to extend the same benefit of the doubt. Maybe a month of scrubbing outhouses, or hearing the village priest admonish his parish to "Heed the example of CharacterName the Foolish - do not walk in his footsteps" might cause a bit more attention to be paid in the future.