@Herobizkit: As this is the "older editions" board, I think most of us are assuming the Paladin is, and is required to be, LG. Still a fair point - 4e is now an "older edition", and a lot of variants no doubt have Paladins of other alignments.
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Paladin behavior question
- Thread starter Whizbang Dustyboots
- Start date
Celebrim
Legend
tl;dr: I need more information.
I have no paladins per se in my campaign world. The champions of Herakore the Hunter are called Paladins, but they are mostly CG and so not paladins as you would first think of them.
Even if I did have paladins, 'paladin' the class would not be a status within the game world. Merely having the class 'paladin' wouldn't tell me how this would effect your status as a paladin. As the defender of good and law, exactly how this would be judged would be judged according to the paladin's legal and social status within the society.
Does the paladin have the legal right to play judge, jury, and executioner? Did some legal authority with the right to do so, confer on the paladin the right to bear arms and the duty to dispense justice? It's not enough to say that some god conferred that right, since presumably it is a lawful god that conferred it, and as a lawful god they would have given the order to some proxy and made use of the chain of command and established this commission publicly. So what exactly was this paladin commissioned to do, and are they through this action living up to that commission.
For example, I have a PC in my campaign that is a 'Champion' (basically a Paladin, but more flexible in how you build one). His champion status is conferred by the god Aravar, who is the LG god of Death and Travelers responsible for protecting the souls of mortals after death and conveying them to their next lives. His membership of the class itself conveys no special commission. His actual rank in the temple hierarchy is simply Templar - simply a warrior sworn to protect Aravar's temples and priests. As duly authorized agent of the Templar of Aravar, the larger society recognizes he has certain rights.
1) He may freely travel armed without a special license so that he may protect and render aid to travelers.
2) He may operate a hostel with a special license. Essentially, he has the right to operate a homeless shelter.
3) He may tend and prepare and dispose the bodies of the dead without a special license and has a right to be present when any body is prepared or interred, and in general, the law will recognize his right to order a body burned or otherwise treated specially if his motive is to protect the community from harm. That right can be contested by the next of kin, in which case he'd have to testify before a judge and present evidence.
4) He has a right to be present at any execution.
That's about it. He has no special right to go around arresting and executing people without a warrant. If people end up dead around him, he needs to be able to prove self-defense by basically the same standards as anyone else. As far as losing his status as a champion, failing to render aid to a traveler in need or allowing or participating in the desecration of the dead would be bigger issues than whether he beheads an ogress.
However, it is also the case that this PC is also a knight in the service of the Benevolent Despot of Amalteen, which confers on him the rights of nobility and so long as he is in Amalteen he can act as a legal magistrate as authorized by the Despot. Therefore, he is also judged according to whether he lives up to the chivalric ideal, and failing to do so would probably win disapproval by Aravar of some sort.
The Paladin's of Herakore the Hunter would have lost their class abilities by agreeing to the deal in the first place, and would have had to kill the ogress to make atonement. Herakore doesn't enter into agreements with evil. That would have been the breaking point. But the bright champions of say Shining Justinian, who is LG and has a very different notion of how good is upheld, if they had executed any one with even a drop of mortal blood in them without fair trial, that would have threatened their status as champions. In this case, the reasoning would be that if it was moral to enter into an agreement with the villainess in the first place, her past crimes can't be used as evidence of her villainy now, nor is their sufficient evidence to assume she isn't possibly a victim here, nor may anyone be convicted and put to death merely for unproven speculative future deeds. Where is the evidence? Why was she not put to trial? It would appear that a proper balance between mercy and justice would require giving a tied up person the benefit of the doubt, at least until and if she can be proven to be lying. Justinian doesn't consider executions a private matter, but something society does as a whole. The village needs to see that justice is done. Cart her back to town, put her on trial, and behead her in the public square if she deserves death. It's not like the paladin was acting in self defense here.
At the very least, in this case a PC Champion of Justinian in my game would probably raise his god's eyebrows, and would and should expect some chastisement regarding this improper behavior. Ignoring such chastisement repeatedly would least to loss of class abilities. Willfully disobeying the chastisement of their god would call for permanent loss of ability. And, if Justinian knows that the villainess was on some path to redemption where she might repent of her deeds, preventing this act of repentance and restitution would probably confer immediate loss of class abilities until the champion atoned. If the champion himself knew that the villainess was 'innocent' of the recent trouble, that would be immediate and irrevocable.
So context really matters.
I have no paladins per se in my campaign world. The champions of Herakore the Hunter are called Paladins, but they are mostly CG and so not paladins as you would first think of them.
Even if I did have paladins, 'paladin' the class would not be a status within the game world. Merely having the class 'paladin' wouldn't tell me how this would effect your status as a paladin. As the defender of good and law, exactly how this would be judged would be judged according to the paladin's legal and social status within the society.
Does the paladin have the legal right to play judge, jury, and executioner? Did some legal authority with the right to do so, confer on the paladin the right to bear arms and the duty to dispense justice? It's not enough to say that some god conferred that right, since presumably it is a lawful god that conferred it, and as a lawful god they would have given the order to some proxy and made use of the chain of command and established this commission publicly. So what exactly was this paladin commissioned to do, and are they through this action living up to that commission.
For example, I have a PC in my campaign that is a 'Champion' (basically a Paladin, but more flexible in how you build one). His champion status is conferred by the god Aravar, who is the LG god of Death and Travelers responsible for protecting the souls of mortals after death and conveying them to their next lives. His membership of the class itself conveys no special commission. His actual rank in the temple hierarchy is simply Templar - simply a warrior sworn to protect Aravar's temples and priests. As duly authorized agent of the Templar of Aravar, the larger society recognizes he has certain rights.
1) He may freely travel armed without a special license so that he may protect and render aid to travelers.
2) He may operate a hostel with a special license. Essentially, he has the right to operate a homeless shelter.
3) He may tend and prepare and dispose the bodies of the dead without a special license and has a right to be present when any body is prepared or interred, and in general, the law will recognize his right to order a body burned or otherwise treated specially if his motive is to protect the community from harm. That right can be contested by the next of kin, in which case he'd have to testify before a judge and present evidence.
4) He has a right to be present at any execution.
That's about it. He has no special right to go around arresting and executing people without a warrant. If people end up dead around him, he needs to be able to prove self-defense by basically the same standards as anyone else. As far as losing his status as a champion, failing to render aid to a traveler in need or allowing or participating in the desecration of the dead would be bigger issues than whether he beheads an ogress.
However, it is also the case that this PC is also a knight in the service of the Benevolent Despot of Amalteen, which confers on him the rights of nobility and so long as he is in Amalteen he can act as a legal magistrate as authorized by the Despot. Therefore, he is also judged according to whether he lives up to the chivalric ideal, and failing to do so would probably win disapproval by Aravar of some sort.
The Paladin's of Herakore the Hunter would have lost their class abilities by agreeing to the deal in the first place, and would have had to kill the ogress to make atonement. Herakore doesn't enter into agreements with evil. That would have been the breaking point. But the bright champions of say Shining Justinian, who is LG and has a very different notion of how good is upheld, if they had executed any one with even a drop of mortal blood in them without fair trial, that would have threatened their status as champions. In this case, the reasoning would be that if it was moral to enter into an agreement with the villainess in the first place, her past crimes can't be used as evidence of her villainy now, nor is their sufficient evidence to assume she isn't possibly a victim here, nor may anyone be convicted and put to death merely for unproven speculative future deeds. Where is the evidence? Why was she not put to trial? It would appear that a proper balance between mercy and justice would require giving a tied up person the benefit of the doubt, at least until and if she can be proven to be lying. Justinian doesn't consider executions a private matter, but something society does as a whole. The village needs to see that justice is done. Cart her back to town, put her on trial, and behead her in the public square if she deserves death. It's not like the paladin was acting in self defense here.
At the very least, in this case a PC Champion of Justinian in my game would probably raise his god's eyebrows, and would and should expect some chastisement regarding this improper behavior. Ignoring such chastisement repeatedly would least to loss of class abilities. Willfully disobeying the chastisement of their god would call for permanent loss of ability. And, if Justinian knows that the villainess was on some path to redemption where she might repent of her deeds, preventing this act of repentance and restitution would probably confer immediate loss of class abilities until the champion atoned. If the champion himself knew that the villainess was 'innocent' of the recent trouble, that would be immediate and irrevocable.
So context really matters.
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Celebrim
Legend
That seems reasonable. I'm a big fan of dreams, omens, and outright sending angels to scold and warn. I don't think this is a 'paladin has strayed so far he can never come back' situation, or even, 'paladin has strayed so far deity is rethinking the relationship' situation.
Following up on my prior post though, my point is that how this is judged depends on the specific beliefs of the deity that the paladin is attached to. He's not a paladin in abstract; he is concretely the servant and personally selected champion of a specific deity and his role and authority depend not on his class, but on his social standing. The paladin isn't being judged in isolation, but according to how he is following a concrete code that is written down somewhere (lawful, remember?), and how he relates to his group (lawful), and whether he is obeying his superiors (lawful). This is at least as important as the question, "Was the paladin being good?", because as a lawful good character whether his actions are good are matter of law and custom.
Is it customary in your campaign world for this to happen? Or is someone going to be saying, "Bah. He wants everyone else to uphold the law, but when it comes to his actions, he makes his own law. Curse him and his god." Because that's not the sort of response his deity was going for when he made the paladin his champion among men.
Grogg of the North
Adventurer
In my game, I think the biggest strike against the paladin would be that the paladin executed a helpless prisoner. If your paladin is vanilla, then I would probably have an agent of their deity appear in a dream to them and the paladin gets scolded and reminded that the forces of good are watching his actions. If the player is exalted, then they fall. Playing an exalted character requires adhering to the actions/views prescribed in the BoED.
The deal with the villaness isn't necessarily wrong as long as everyone freely entered into in good faith and wanted to up hold the deal.
However, there are situations where the paladin's actions could be justified. Typically through the kingdom's culture, deity's views on evil, campaign setting, etc.
I find that in scenarios like this a "Are you sure?" is the DM's greatest tool.
The deal with the villaness isn't necessarily wrong as long as everyone freely entered into in good faith and wanted to up hold the deal.
However, there are situations where the paladin's actions could be justified. Typically through the kingdom's culture, deity's views on evil, campaign setting, etc.
I find that in scenarios like this a "Are you sure?" is the DM's greatest tool.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
She can reasonably be assumed to have directed the actions of the ogres and other humanoids that have been a recurrent, but not apocalyptic menace to the nearby village of Bootblack and to travelers on the Old Dwarf Road for decades now, certainly since her mother, the hag's daughter Gryla, died.
She's probably comparable to a bandit leader with delusions of genocidal grandeur.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
This was posted as an All D&D topic, and is tagged that way, so people on a variety of D&D boards can see it. In this case, the paladin is Lawful Good -- we're playing Castles & Crusades, which is 1E by way of D20 -- but if a player had come to me with an argument in favor of being a paladin of another alignment, I would have considered it. (I recently offered to convert the 1E Anti-Paladin class for a player in my tabletop game, for instance.)
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
When I started this game nine years ago, shortly after pre-ordering Ptolus from Malhavoc Press, I wasn't sure how many of my players had experienced a "core" D&D experience outside of derivatives like EverQuest and World of Warcraft.
So I came up with a setting that offered a pretty standard experience -- former dwarven stronghold taken over by a dragon centuries ago looms over a little town on the edge of civilization, but now that the dragon is gone, the status quo is thrown into question, including the dragon's former kobold servitors having power struggles amongst themselves and the arrival of various would-be adventurers in the region, including some who are not exactly on the up and up.
And while I dumped elves, halflings and orcs from the local area, the assumptions are otherwise in line with the 1E PHB years ago. So yeah, bog-standard paladin type, which has subsequently been fleshed out as time has gone on.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
The half-ogre witch literally said almost exactly that -- in Giantish -- as he chopped her head off.
More seriously, though, this sort of back and forth on paladinhood is explictly part of being a paladin in my campaign. The character in question was once a knight-aspirant in an order that serves the emperor of the church (essentially the pope, especially one with temporal aspirations). During that portion of the campaign, I consciously had a lot of different exemplars of different points of view on paladinhood be among the knights-aspirant and the knights themselves.
There are some who are much more in the mode of a Warcraft paladin and are a proactive ass-kicking sort of paladin. There are also others who are much more true blue, Superman-as-Boy-Scout paladins. All of them, as far as the players know, still retain paladinhood, although in the course of that adventure, the player character discovered at least two were now Lawful Neutral fighters who were attempting to get close to the emperor of the church to assassinate him. (The empire is splitting in three and the emperor of the church has recently announced that he's actually the emperor of the temporal empire as well, which does not sit well with everyone.)
Celebrim
Legend
The problem is that the 1e Paladin as specified in AD&D had almost all of its assumptions unstated, except for a few mechanical things like 'doesn't use poison', 'must employ good aligned henchmen', and so forth.
Bright Justinian, The Hammer, The Clear Eyed, Who Brings Light into Darkness, God of Justice, Fairness, and Truth is my 1e 'god of Paladins', before my views evolved considerably. As such, most of what I say with regard to followers of Justinian applies here.
1) If you enter into a treaty with this brigand in the first place, then in doing so you are recognizing her legitimacy as a someone who can be lawfully treated with. As such, you are de facto not holding her past crimes against her as something which requires justice. You are essentially saying, "We can't justly address what has gone before this point, but so that this situation will not persist, let's clarify what just dealing will be between us in the future." or perhaps, "We mercifully forebear from holding you accountable for your past crimes, provided you enter into this agreement." You enter into that sort of situation when the past is complicated, restitution is hard, and attempts at justice now will only create further injustice and suffering. Fine. It might not be wise, but it lawful and good in intention.
But if you do that, you can't decide to hold those past crimes against her now unless she's broken the agreement. What evidence do they have that she's broken her agreement? What evidence is there that she hasn't been trying to uphold her end of the bargain? What evidence do they have that she is responsible not for crimes generally, but this specific crime? You can't go to court without charges, and you can't prove a specific charge by saying, "Well, we know this is a bad person." You have to prove the guilt of this specific crime, that she broke her agreement. Because if she didn't, the guilt is with those that did, and not her. The situation would be like holding a president accountable for warcrimes committed after the president was disposed by a coup, imprisoned, and a new regime was formed. Even if the president wasn't a nice person, even if the treaty was unwise, you can't hold the wrong person accountable.
In this context, executing the half-hag seems a lot like vengeance and not justice.
2) You can't execute someone for their future actions. That's not justice. You could hold her accountable for conspiracy to commit various evil deeds, if you could prove that she was not only planning such deeds, but had already taken concrete steps toward implementing them. But that's again prosecuting someone for something that they have done, not something that they might do in the future. So, with neither past or future deeds justly on the table, it's not at all clear what they could fairly try this person for. Being tied up? Being in the wrong family? Being ugly? Not being nice enough to the PCs?
3) The 'crime' here appears to be to have been tied up and been at the wrong place at the wrong time. In a strange sort of way, her ogre brothers have better followed the dictates of justice than the paladin has. How many times in movies does the vigilante leave the henchmen alive, but tied up and helpless, awaiting the judgment and mercy of someone else - presumably someone more ruthless than themselves. Now, I'm not saying a Paladin can be held to such a low bar as allowing evil to dispense justice, but the ogres appear to have done this very thing - they left the villainess who entered into what they considered a bad agreement to be dealt with by the Paladin, presumably because they knew that the Paladin was even more ruthless than they were, so that they could say that they wouldn't have their sister's blood on their own hands. When ogre butchers are teaching you lesson is justice, you probably aren't acting like a paladin. Your standards have fallen abysmally low.
4) You can't lawfully kill someone without trial except in self-defense. The prisoner was helpless. This wasn't self-defense. It wouldn't have represented an undo burden to cart her back to town and hold a fair and public trial, and even if it did, you can't just execute someone because giving them a trial would be burdensome. Maybe the legal authorities wouldn't have recognized the paladin's former agreement (in which case, if it wasn't a legal agreement, why did the paladin agree to enter into it), but that at least wouldn't have been the paladin's fault. He would have been accepting the judgment of his superiors. Is this paladin acting like someone that is used to accepting someone else's judgment, or is he acting (chaotically) like he is the source of judgment?
5) For crying out loud, if you could exercise mercy back when she was leading a band of brigands, what prevents you from exercising mercy when she is tied up by one? These actions make it look like mercy was never the issue, but rather that earlier they entered into the treaty because they feared her, and now when they don't fear her, they kill her. That isn't justice. That isn't idealism. That's a pragmatic cold-blooded calculation more suited to a Neutral character than one that is Good. It's almost like being good and doing what is right a secondary consideration compared to doing what is easiest and going with the flow. That doesn't sound like a paladin to me.
If you are serious about doing this the 1e way, Paladin to me 50/50 has just lost Paladin-hood depending on information I don't have about the villainess - did she have a legitimate grievance (was the sword stolen from her family?), was she capable of reform if treated kindly, is she still lying, is this behavior by the paladin part of a general disregard for the law, and so forth.
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