D&D 5E Oath of Vengeance Paladin?

[Eltab]

I like the suggestion to send BOTH Al Capone and Elliot Ness after this guy.

Lead off with an Army officer who wants to meet with him quietly to deliver a message: people know what you've done, and they are calling for the cops to arrest you. The cops may have backup - my unit - because your reputation is THAT bad. If you decide to chill out, it doesn't have to go down this way.
Shortly thereafter he gets a message from the Thieves Guild that somebody hired strong muscle, aimed at him. The local Guild would like to thank you for kicking out an interloper, but things are getting out of hand.

If he hasn't figured out how to keep his head down, he becomes a free-fire zone.

OOC, you should ask him if he has REALLY thought through his 'Greater Evil'. Help him research Prohibition.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Except that it describes that's exactly what they fight against...

Being Evil doesn't mean you can't fight evil. Evil fights evil on the regular. Oath of Vengeance specifies they fight against the "greater" evil, which you're cool with meaning "alcohol." With "greater evil" basically up to the character, it's easy to see a situation where you have evil fighting evil. "I burned that orphanage to prevent any child in it from being corrupted and I punched out that old lady because she was questioning my methods and instilling doubt and I stole her last 3 copper pieces because I'm hungry and the engine of justice cannot be expected to run on an empty stomach."

Not that this is inevitable, just that it's totally a thing that could happen and there's nothing in the books that stops it.

That's wrong. Hell, even in the Oath of Vengeance description it talks about them in exactly those terms EXCEPT when it gets to the tenets when 2/4 of them are extremely dubious and seem to allow a good or neutral character a license to do evil.

The only place it talks about paladins being "knights in shining armor" is under the Oath of Devotion, and the Oath of Vengeance specifically states "their own purity is not as important as delivering justice."

You can be Evil and swear an Oath of Devotion, though - "I will protect my Lord the Necromancer-Queen and defend her as she obliterates the world, because that it what this world deserves" violates no tenets of the Oath of Devotion. You can also be Evil and swear the Oath of the Ancients - "There is hope and light in the glorious world that I will lead us to, and there can be no imperfection or dissension, or there will be no happiness. That's why I hired the assassins to kill my rivals."

Paladins can be evil now, as long as everyone's on board. I could think of a few reasons why someone might NOT be on board, but there's nothing in the rules themselves preventing it.

I disagree. And you seem to disagree too with your final statement being good advice on doing just that. He's playing the character and class like the zealot it can be. Giving him something worse to go up against is exactly what needs to be done IF there's nothing in the rulebook that will encourage a Paladin from torturing innocent people because of their Oath.

I don't think any group should have to structure their game around a disruptive character, and I wouldn't if I were the DM, but if you don't mind, that's your prerogative. You know your group better than Some Jerks On the Internet.

 

[gyor]

The solution is simple, the Oath ofVengence Paladin a Avenger instead of a Paladin (because that's basically what a Oath of Vengence Paladin, a 4e Avenger using the basic Paladin frame work with a touch of greyguard, the way that the Oath of the Ancients Paladin is really the 4e Warden class using a 5e Paladin frame work but with a more fey and divine/religious bent, and the old fashioned Paladin being the Oath of the Crown and Oath of Devotion)

 

[gyor]

Doing things that are more evil then the evil that you will realistically fix by doing said evil is a violation of the oath, because it stops being the greater evil.

Example of a non violation of the Oath, using torture against an agent of an organization magically turning childern into whiskey, but no more torture then needed to find out the the lair of the organization so it can be stopped.

A violation of the Oath would be burning down an orphanage killing all the childern to kill the care taker for being a drunk, you've clearly become the greater evil by a large amount in that scenerio.

Its meant to allow for greater moral flexiblity like the 4e Avanger and the greyguard, not as a way to act like a pychopath towards innocent people on the flimsiest of excuses in the name of your greater good.

Now that being said, it seems pretty clear thst there are variations of the Oaths that add, replace, or remove elements.

Evil Gods could have Avengers in 4e, in fact one of my favourite characters in the 4e novel era was a Void Genasi Avenger for Shar.

So I would reasonablely assume there is a verison of Oath of Vengence that has no reference or requirement to good at all.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I'm a little surprised no one has mentioned the obvious here. Read the 4th oath tenet

"Restitution: If my foes wreak ruin on the world, it is because I failed to stop them. I must help those harmed by their misdeeds."

It isn't super clear cut and easy to adjudicate, but the 4th part of the oath is clearly meant to reign the Vengeance paladin in. It informs the player and DM that the paladin is not all about destroying the enemy, he cares about those harmed, about the innocents. So, can they torture someone, sure, but they aren't going to burn down a village normally.

Now, I also think the OP and the player realize that "Alcohol" would not normally be the "Greater Evil" in the DnD world... which actually leads to an interesting point.

"Fight the Greater Evil: Faced with a choice of fighting my sworn foes or combating a lesser evil, I chose the Greater Evil."

The oath never states what to do when confronted with a greater evil than your sworn foe directly, but if that last statement is taken literally then they always fight the bigger threat. So perhaps your paladin continues his campaign against Alcohol, but when a portal to hell opens up in the mountains he has to pack up and head that way. Just because he didn't swear to fight demons does not mean he isn't obligated to, after all the 4th Tenet points to the overall goal being the protection of the world and its people, simply through the preliminary destruction of threats rather than the reactionary method most Paladins would otherwise adopt.

There are your Oath reasons to reign them in and prevent them from "justifying anything" Justifying a lot, sure that's the point to prevent the bad guy from "surrendering" to spare his own life, but not anything goes

 

[Coredump]

The Oath does not absolve the Paladin from acting within his moral code, it does not protect him from societies moral code, nor societies laws.

He may be feel forced to bend his moral code (aka alignment) in order to conquer the greater evil, but as soon as he starts willfully breaking his alignment....he has *changed* alignments. Further, society will view him as that new alignment, and may arrest him for breaking any laws. The 'any means necessary' is not a free pass to do whatever evil acts he wants without consequences. Evil is as evil does....

 

[Horwath]

Your player just lost track of what if greater evil. while alchohol can be a bad thing I would not call it bane of all existance.

And as stated before "by any means necessary" does not exclude you from the hand of law or your party members.

Yes you can torture prisoners for information on their "crime lord" but maybe those prisoners have rights that you just broke, so you better do it in secrecy and with party member that are onboard with your methods.

A Vengeance paladin might ally himself with the tribe of goblins and arm them to attack the stronger tribe of orcs that are pillaging villages only later to mop up the survivors of that battle.

He might poison the wine of some corrupt politican rather tha charge in and cause unneccecary bloodshed.

Basically, when thinking of Vengeance paladin, think; I'm Batman.

 

[Phantarch]

Basically...think; I'm Batman.

I find this to be a good rule for life in general...

 

[CyanideSprite]

I'm a Banana, the point isn't that a Paladin can be evil without being a Death Knight, it's that a character who claims to be good and THINKS they are absolutely good and righteous in their cause has a license to do very dubious things to get to their sworn enemy.

Regardless if you think Paladins should be allowed to be evil without being something like Death Knights (and I do disagree with you on the Oath of Devotion being evil like that. That clearly goes against tenets such as helping the most and harming the least), by the Oath of Vengeance, they can do a lot of things that would normally not be good or even neutral because it fights their "sworn enemy". And outside of coming up with a variety of NPC scenarios to combat this and suddenly make the focus all around this character, there's very little to deter the character from those actions outside of the DM just saying "hey don't do that", which I try to avoid when someone is role playing a character very well and they technically aren't doing anything wrong. If he's a zealot who believes alcohol is the source of all evil and he's not going to stop at anything until every last drop of it is destroyed, then that's great. I just wish that as a Paladin, there was more in the rules to describe conduct

You as a DM may want to put tighter rails on what your party is or is not, but I like to reward great role playing and that usually starts by allowing a character to be the character they imagine within the context of the written rules (hence this debate) and a little tug and pull.

 

[CyanideSprite]

The solution is simple, the Oath ofVengence Paladin a Avenger instead of a Paladin (because that's basically what a Oath of Vengence Paladin, a 4e Avenger using the basic Paladin frame work with a touch of greyguard,

Yeah it says they are basically Avengers in the description. But they don't have the whole different kind of training and Avengers were like holy ninjas. The Oath of Vengeance Paladins are basically Batman but they don't have anything to morally restrict the Paladin, which is exactly what makes Batman's methods so Batman-y. They left out the most important bit.

I'm a little surprised no one has mentioned the obvious here. Read the 4th oath tenet

"Restitution: If my foes wreak ruin on the world, it is because I failed to stop them. I must help those harmed by their misdeeds."

It isn't super clear cut and easy to adjudicate, but the 4th part of the oath is clearly meant to reign the Vengeance paladin in. It informs the player and DM that the paladin is not all about destroying the enemy, he cares about those harmed, about the innocents. So, can they torture someone, sure, but they aren't going to burn down a village normally.

Now, I also think the OP and the player realize that "Alcohol" would not normally be the "Greater Evil" in the DnD world... which actually leads to an interesting point.

The problem is with how subjective "greater evil" is. This character isn't even trained in religion. He isn't even very religious (you don't even have to be according to the Paladin description by the way. Half your "holy" power comes from sheer determination apparently). He believes the source of all evil is alcohol and he actually does help those who have been harmed by alcohol. He believes alcohol drinkers are victims of a heinous system designed to get them addicted and brainwashed. He doesn't have to be right that alcohol is the most evil thing in the world. He just has to call it his sworn enemy, rationalize it as the greater evil, and set off to go put a stop to it.

The Oath does not absolve the Paladin from acting within his moral code, it does not protect him from societies moral code, nor societies laws.

He may be feel forced to bend his moral code (aka alignment) in order to conquer the greater evil, but as soon as he starts willfully breaking his alignment....he has *changed* alignments. Further, society will view him as that new alignment, and may arrest him for breaking any laws. The 'any means necessary' is not a free pass to do whatever evil acts he wants without consequences. Evil is as evil does....

Yeah all his actions he rationalizes as "it could help me put a stop to alcohol once and for all". And yeah there has been some great suggestions of role playing scenarios to reign him in. If he was torturing for fun or for something completely unrelated, yeah. But if he suspects someone might have the slightest knowledge about a magic item that could help him scry a legendary brewery's hidden production location, he'll do anything to get that knowledge.

Your player just lost track of what if greater evil. while alchohol can be a bad thing I would not call it bane of all existance.

It's not the player; it's the character, and more to the point, that the character can exist as a holy warrior out to do "good" and not have any negative divine consequences befall him for that outside of homebrewed rules.

And if you were a player in this, your character would be more than free to try and convince him that alcohol isn't the greatest evil