D&D 5E Oath of Vengeance Paladin?

[Phantarch]

some good ol' blue and orange morality (which I am purposely not linking so that if anyone find their way into a trope-spiral though time it is of their own doing, and not because I put a primed productivity-nuke in their hands).

Curse you, [MENTION=6701872]AaronOfBarbaria[/MENTION]. Curse you!

 

[Ovinomancer]

... Let me ask you something; have you ever not been able to play a game you wanted, or been able to watch a movie because your family or another obligation dragged you along somewhere and you made the best of it? Yeah you had fun, but it wasn't what you wanted to do.

Again, the zealotry is what makes the character fun but there should be personal consequences he has to deal with. These personal consequences have to extend to the whole party without something that specifically targets the character or binds the character against doing that.



The class literally says "their own purity is not as important as delivering justice" and "By Any Means Necessary" is one of its very tenets. That is not blame shifting at all. That's IN the tenets of the class. I would be more in the right to strip him of his power if he held back from potentially accomplishing his goal.



I don't know how to make it more clear to you that the desired goal is something that can give consequences to his character without bogging down the campaign. Like... I don't know what more to tell you. This IS a topic about having an issue with Oath of Vengeance paladins. I mean that IS the title. I have no idea what you're looking for. You want me to just say "Oh yeah you guys are so smart. I can't believe I never thought to tell the player he can't role play like that because I don't like it" ... For like the 10th time now, that's not the problem.

If I pay attention, the only problem you're articulating is that you want to have a handle to reign in this character's deplorable actions, but will only consider a method that is written into the class to do so. The reason for this is because you don't want to have repercussions for the paladin's actions to impact the other characters at all, and you refuse to accept a discussion with the player to find a middle ground because he's done nothing wrong, is a fantastic roleplayer, and because it's really the class that's requiring him to act this way.

If that is correct, then there is no solution for you. There are no such handles within the class for you to accomplish this without having done the work ahead of time. Sorry, hope you manage to have a fun [-]outing with the family[/-] game in spite of this.

 

[Shirebrok]

[...] I'm trying to find a way to handle the situation more specific to the character without making the consequences for his actions affect the whole party and railroad everything to him.

The game can hardly progress if we are constantly having to deal with his stuff. He's driving the action away from what everyone else wants to do. They might be having fun doing whatever but they don't have the freedom to role play and do their things when the only consequences for him role playing his character are going to bog down the campaign as a whole instead of targeting him specifically.

I don't think this is possible.

Let's look back at what I presume was Session Zero.

Yes it does, especially in the context of the character and the campaign, which had a lot to do with alcohol. The premise was for the party be going around the world trying to find the best drinks... A tavern hopping road trip. The Paladin works for the government and makes it his sole duty to find anything and everything wrong with these taverns so he can shut them down in the name of righteousness, no matter how petty the reason. The other party members have some of their own reasons for going tavern scouting, whether it's a fighter looking party and have a good time, or a pirate who wants the Paladin to succeed so he can make a killing by bootlegging.

What I gather from this is that Frank the Tank and Johnny Bootlegger decided to go on a realm-spanning journey to partake in lands' finest alcohols. For some unfathomable reason, they both agree that Dry McProhibition should tag along.
That, to me, is the first sign of a defective party.
If you ask me, the natural conclusion to this setup is Frank and Johnny ditching Dry, and/or Dry reprimanding Frank for his destructive behaviour and possibly shanking Johnny for aspiring to become an enabler and turning a profit from it.

In other words, Dry set himself up to be an antagonist.

I seriously doubt there's anything you can do to him in-game that won't force the spotlight on him. His goal is contrary to those of his travelling companions. Of course anything that happens as a consequence of his actions will shift all attention to this one character.

And this why I agree with many other posters in this thread. This isn't a problem with the rules or lack thereof. It's a metagame problem; one about the players and their expectations.

I know you're thinking "No, it's not! I've already said it a bazillion times!" But when I look at the evidence, I can come to no other conclusion.

A number of players say "Let's go on an epic bender!" and this one guy answers "Cool, I'll be the one who won't partake, and whose goal is to prevent you from having that fun!"
That, right there, isn't the class or the oath talking and making those decisions. It's the player. No matter how much one tries to hide behind the age-old argument of "That's what the character would do!", this is one irrefutable truth.
A character, by itself, is nothing more than a collection of words and numbers on a page. It does not have a mind of its own, let alone control over a human being. It is a puppet, inert until a player breathes life into it by pulling the strings. If the puppet/character is being disruptive in any way, it's because of the puppeteer/player.

The end result that's probably going to happen is me telling him "hey just scale back the zealotry a bit". I don't want the campaign to be railroaded by him, and I know he's not trying to make it that way, but following his Oath so rigidly is making it that way.

You've already entertained the idea of talking about it to the player. Give it a shot. In my experience, not only is it the best solution, it's also the easiest.

 

[IlluminatedSeraph]

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.

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.

I'm not sure this is actually a problem with the design, so much as it is a potential fault in group-character integration. But your remark about Batman here actually made me think back to the first page idea about sending other paladins to confront the character - if you read enough Batman comics (particularly the stuff by Frank Miller), you actually see that the other superheroes frequently have a problem with what they see as Batman's myopic obsession with crime and extreme methods. Some of those stories then take it into a place where there's direct conflict (see Dark Knight Returns, for instance) and in others there's a place for compromise - where Batman accepts that there are other important evils that are greater than crime that sometimes need to be put ahead of his sworn enemy.

So I think that is actually a really good set of examples to follow dramatically when you're trying to work forward from where you are in the game - a combination of his friends (the party) trying to talk to him about the bigger picture and the Justice League (the other paladins) trying to stop him from getting more "out of control" in his quest. And yeah, the Al Capone element is also good as a way to give him proper Batman stories to do when he isn't doing bigger-picture plots.

 

[CyanideSprite]

It's intentional. It allows a broad breadth of characters same as any class. It's up to you and your setting to reign in undesired behavior. You can't divert responsibility for reigning in your players onto the "rules" the way many DMs did in earlier editions.

Yes you can. That is what the tenets are for. All 3 Paladins can be held to a standard of conduct or else have their powers taken away. However, the Oath of Vengeance class has its stipulation to allow an otherwise GOOD character to do evil acts. Rules are good for a class that is based around a code of conduct.

In other words, Dry set himself up to be an antagonist.

That isn't an issue. The whole party is looking for this special ale. His motives for it aren't really that big of an issue. It's what he's willing to do to get to it.

A character, by itself, is nothing more than a collection of words and numbers on a page. It does not have a mind of its own, let alone control over a human being.

You can say a puppet crafted to be a brown dog is a pink cat when laying on the ground without a puppeteer touching the strings but you can still see what it is. If someone might know something they're not interested in sharing, does that make it okay for a good character to start torturing them on the chance it could lead them to their sworn enemy? If they didn't, they would have let their qualms get in the way which is directly against their tenets. It's easier to argue he should lose his paladin status for NOT torturing her and possibly letting his sworn enemy get that much further away, which is incentive to do that.

I see what you're saying though and yeah you're right. He COULD have some internal conflict as a character about doing dubious things, it's not entirely in the class, but that is something about all 3 Paladins that isn't present in the other classes; it encourages certain behaviors and has the possibility to punish them for not adhering to them. The puppet has form regardless of the puppeteer.

I have the other trick available to DMs of just having everything he does, no matter how heinous, always end up being relevant or even having a plot twist that there is an alcohol based conspiracy going on and the Brimstone Ale is poison of Zehir sent to actually brainwash people. That would absolve him of the moral conflict if he ends up torturing someone I had planned to be innocent or does something equally disruptive.

 

[Herobizkit]

We're all poking and prodding the specimen (the issue on the table) to see how it works and what we can do to remedy it.

What I'm now seeing (since page 5 or so) is that the OP is looking for an in-game reason to give the player consequences for his actions when, in fact, is is the purview of the DM to create such things if they are absent - and said DM ins't prepared or doesn't know how to dole out said consequences for whatever reason.

Since the issue isn't with the character, but how the character is played, I have to assume that the player is the issue and the DM isn't ready to 'reel him in'. I'm betting said player is the charismatic person at the table that everyone likes and always ends up getting more than his fair share of the spotlight - but because hes' so dang likeable, no one wants to speak or act out against him.

You know why Batman has issues being Batman? He makes enemies doing the things he does. He alienates everyone to "keep them safe". He actively rails against the local police. People WANT to give Batman a hard time, as often and as painfully as possible.

The Batman in your game has a job; to regulate alcohol sales and consumption, but he's started a war on 'drugs' and it's making shopkeepers, vintners, caravan owners, and heck, even farmers nervous. It's clear this guy is abusing his power - when does someone call him on it? I wasn't exactly kidding when I suggested a Beer Baron. The Batman needs a target to hunt besides "alcohol"... and he might even create one himself if he can't find one.

Sorry that my thoughts are so scattered, but these are the impressions I've gotten from this ever-growing thread.

 

[Merchant of Shadows]

If you think that the player is doing things that are unsuitable for a paladin, then it only make sense that the other paladins in the setting do the same. This means that the alcohol in your setting is not evil (bad and evil are different things) similar to how undead for example are evil. The paladin in question cannot just decide that something (for example children) is the greater evil and start fighting it by any means neccessary. All he can do is to decide that he does not like said something and wants to fight it by any means neccessary. This breaks the Tenets of his oath and he becomes oathbreaker, hunter by other paladins and the law enforcing structures in your setting. It seems you don't like this resolutions so there is a good news for you. The oathbreaker is in the DMG and can be added to the game purely by DM decision, so you can just have your player loose his powers or just loose the additional powers his oath of vengeance is giving him. If you think this will make your player repent and start behaving more in line with the campaign expectation - go for it.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Also just a random thought spark.

Part of the issue if you want to look to the class and the oath the reel him in is the fact that the player chose something like Alcohol.

Let's say he'd chosen the Cult of {insert bad guy here} instead. Nothing in the Paladin oath gives a time restraint on fighting your enemy. It is assumed they joined the party to look for and fight their enemy, but if they don't find them in the next town that doesn't mean the paladin leaves the party to fight the rampaging orcs by themselves to go searching for the cult.

There is a limited scale and focus generally assumed by the choosing of their enemy. This player chose something that is probably more universal than bread. Every single town and city is going to have at least one bar, it is one of the conceits of DnD. So, your player never gets that downtime of searching for their enemy, they can always find it easily. Even if they are questing for a big item to do even more damage to "alcohol" they can still find bars and drinks without any effort wherever they go. It removes the assumed on and off switch.

And part of this archetypes story is generally how they balance their hunt and those they love and care about, so while the oath doesn't state needing downtime, it is something that is assumed within the story of the class.

 

[Maxperson]

I feel like the tenets "Fight the greater evil" and "By any means necessary" give a lot of freedom for the paladin to do extremely heinous things that are completely unsuitable for a paladin. Furthermore, even if they act completely evil, forcing them to be an "Oathbreaker" doesn't even make much sense since they aren't breaking their oath to do things like torture for the greater good... and it's hardly a punishment since Oathbreaker has so many benefits itself.

In a game I ran recently, a paladin in the group went Oath of Vengeance and declared alcohol to be the greatest threat to humanity after seeing so many bar fights, abuses in families, alcohol poisonings, etc, which all had alcohol in common. He went on a quest to abolish alcohol by any means necessary. During his adventures he would torture people or even use a Philter of Love to force someone to be obsessed with him for even the most vague information he could (like for information about a magic item that he rationalized MIGHT assist him in ridding the world of alcohol).

I have a view of Paladins as they are described in the handbook in the opening pages before any of the oaths come into play as being the archetypal heroic knights in shining armor so this does NOT sit right with me but Oath of Vengeance seems to permit some ridiculous things without penalty. I'm not quite sure how to reign that in while giving him freedom to have his character because it made the rest of the neutral/good party members extremely uncomfortable.

Edit: I don't want to punish the player for role playing well. He does a fine job. His character is supposed to be "good" aligned, but there doesn't seem to be a penalty in any way for doing evil things to innocent people because of Oath of Vengeance's "By Any Means Necessary" tenet. There are some role playing things that can be done to reign him in, but I'm kinda hoping I overlooked a way to enforce a Paladin not harming innocent people when he's not breaking a tenet on a technicality.

There are two ways to go about this. The first way is to just hold the Paladin to the tenets of his 3rd level oath, which would, and in my opinion should, allow for evil Paladins. The second way, if you don't want evil Paladins, is to read the second section of Paladin. Specifically, "The Paladin swears to uphold justice and righteousness, to stand with the good things of the world against the encroaching darkness, and to hunt the forces of evil." That's an oath that applies to all Paladins. The other oaths are added to that. Any action by a Paladin has to fit both the oath above and the oath they select at 3rd level. That means that evil acts are out, even for an oath of vengeance Paladin. Committing an evil act is not upholding justice and righteousness. They would be allowed acts that are not good, but could not do evil.

 

[Arial Black]

First, the fact that the OoV guy follows his tenets to the letter does not prevent his alignment from matching his behaviour. Nor does the fact that he believes he is doing good while he is in fact doing evil.

Second, the fact that he is evil, or has become evil through his actions, in no way impacts his class abilities as game mechanics. There is no way to remove his powers because of his alignment, and you can only take away his powers based on his actions if those actions go against his tenets. Since he is following his tenets, he keeps his powers, whether he is evil or not.

Third, him being evil is not 'solved' by changing his game mechanics. It is 'solved' for him in exactly the same kind of ways as it would be for anyone else doing such evil: the only way evil can flourish is if good men do nothing. The other inhabitants of the world will not stand for his evil! They will view him as a misguided terrorist, and they cannot know about his class' game mechanics and do not care how he justifies himself. If he tortures kiddies, they won't care that he has an insane excuse!

Imagine that the police burst in on a guy torturing a kid, guns drawn. "Put the knife down and step away from the kid!"

"Oh, it's okay officer! I'm only torturing the kid because he might know the whereabouts of an object which might help me find the bastards who killed my tortoise!"

"Ah, terribly sorry sir! We didn't realise you had a good reason! Carry on then."

You're looking for a written rule to take his powers away. It's the wrong search; it would be the wrong solution.

The solution is simple to state: actions have consequences. The actions of the character in the game world should have the logical consequences in the game world, not on his character sheet.

If an assassin randomly murdered every passer-by he saw, with the excuse that he was given a silver piece in order to do so, this is not a problem with the way the class is written!

If a thief steals from his friends, with the excuse that it says 'thief' on his character sheet, this is not a problem with the way the class is written!

If an OoV paladin tortures kids on the flimsiest of pretexts, with the excuse that he believes alcohol is a greater evil than child torture, this is not a problem with the way the class is written!

Let him do evil and keep his powers, and then let the world react believably. In this case, 'believably' entails them hunting for the paladin and bringing him to justice for his crimes.

Another thing: if you have three characters who want to hunt the BBEG that you wrote an adventure about, and one player who deliberately creates a PC who doesn't want to do that, then why are they still with him? They should part as friends, and you as DM should allow the OoV to ride off into the sunset and allow his player to create a new PC who does want to go on the same quest as the others. DMs are under no obligation to write adventures for those who don't want to go on the adventure you wrote.

On the other hand, you might want to focus on this new, unexpected turn of events. If everyone is enjoying themselves, it's not a problem. You seem to be frustrated because the OoV seems to be 'getting away' with doing evil, but he is only getting away with it because you are allowing it, by not having the world react appropriately to this very real threat to their innocent, law-abiding citizens. Get your finger out and do something about it!