D&D 5E Paladin just committed murder - what should happen next?

[Nagol]

It's possible for the DM to have set up a terrible play scenario and for the Paladin to have not acted good during it. The one doesn't excuse the other.

I firmly believe the DM shouldn't have used this scenario. I also firmly believe the Paladin did not act good in this instance. What's your argument that what he did was good?

(Keep I'm mind I'm not calling the Paladin evil in this instance, just not good)

I am not arguing that what he was good. I don't think it was wholly evil either. Probably neutral "I will save my life for something greater because I have no realistic recourse to save this innocent".

The paladin got mugged and gave in. It sucks. Kobayashi Maru scenarios typically do. The dragon is still responsible for the death. It took the overt actions leading to it.

My argument is really twofold. (1) Blaming the paladin for the death is blaming the mugging victim for being mugged. (2) Just as it is incumbent on every player to play well with others regardless of "what the character would do" it is incumbent on the DM to play well with others regardless of "what the universe would do". This does not mean all failings need to be glossed over or that falls cannot happen. It does mean that if you arrange a no-win scenario without intending such, you need to clean up the mess because no one else can. And if you arrange a scenario and think there is a win if the player does the exact one thing you're thinking of, that's generally a no-win scenario.

 

[Nagol]

Then perhaps your own ways of playing a dragon are clouding your judgement. Other DM's often run dragons much differently than you. So take however you would play a dragon and throw it out the window.

No. My experiences inform my opinion. Do not tell me what I may say.

 

[FrogReaver]

I am not arguing that what he was good. I don't think it was wholly evil either. Probably neutral "I will save my life for something greater because I have no realistic recourse to save this innocent".

The paladin got mugged and gave in. It sucks. Kobayashi Maru scenarios typically do. The dragon is still responsible for the death. It took the overt actions leading to it.

My argument is really twofold. (1) Blaming the paladin for the death is blaming the mugging victim for being mugged. (2) Just as it is incumbent on every player to play well with others regardless of "what the character would do" it is incumbent on the DM to play well with others regardless of "what the universe would do". This does not mean all failings need to be glossed over or that falls cannot happen. It does mean that if you arrange a no-win scenario without intending such, you need to clean up the mess because no one else can. And if you arrange a scenario and think there is a win if the player does the exact one thing you're thinking of, that's generally a no-win scenario.

I remember there was a school shooting where they had an officer on video standing outside the school doing nothing. The shooter is the one to blame for the deaths. But it's not like the officer is blameless either. The same with the dragon and paladin who does nothing.

By the way I believe the DM put in place a no-win scenario having a certain unrealistic expectation of the paladins behavior. In short the whole scenario for him was a mistake and played out like one.

 

[Blue]

I guess I should have expected that. Discussions like this always have some player arguing that the evil act their character did is not really evil. My usual response is short and NSFW.

What I read in the first post in this thread is a character performing a blatantly evil act. No attempt at exploring options (fight, flight, negotiation, anything), just, "Sacrifice a innocent to save my skin? OK." If a player did this in my game and then tried to argue that their character's act wasn't evil, I would stop the discussion and invite the player to leave.

Justifying evil acts with weasel words is bad, in-game and out. If your character is evil then be honest and own up to it. And then live with the consequences.

Wonderful pivot from telling someone how to run their character to finding something you can potentially righteously defend.

Ignoring everything about a single action vs. how they had been roleplayed up to this point and distilling the quote to "[...]not necessarily evil" - exactly the point that justifies you - is a wonderful example of arguing on the internet. When you don't have anything to back up your stance.

I have plenty of open points that you've ignored in my earlier comments if you actually want to talk substantively. If you just want to pound the pulpit have fun.

 

[Hawk Diesel]

The first bit you quoted is attributed to me, but I didn’t say anything about taking away spellcasting.

Sorry about that. Bad formatting. I fixed the post.

 

[Mort]

First, I will 100% agree that as presented this scenario was wholly unfair to the paladin's player - unless there is information we are missing.

That said:

I am not arguing that what he was good. I don't think it was wholly evil either. Probably neutral "I will save my life for something greater because I have no realistic recourse to save this innocent".

The problem I have, is the immediate "ok, here you go," handoff of the innocent victim. Outgunned or not, the paladin could have at least explored some options. This isn't some average untrained guy, this is a paragon of courage.

That BTW, is the real problem. You can argue if this was evil - it's much harder to argue that the Paladin's action wasn't cowardly. He just gave in, seemingly without a second thought - is that something we expect from a paragon of courage? Certainly, he has a problem with his oath!

The paladin got mugged and gave in. It sucks. Kobayashi Maru scenarios typically do. The dragon is still responsible for the death. It took the overt actions leading to it.
My argument is really twofold. (1) Blaming the paladin for the death is blaming the mugging victim for being mugged. (2) Just as it is incumbent on every player to play well with others regardless of "what the character would do" it is incumbent on the DM to play well with others regardless of "what the universe would do". This does not mean all failings need to be glossed over or that falls cannot happen. It does mean that if you arrange a no-win scenario without intending such, you need to clean up the mess because no one else can. And if you arrange a scenario and think there is a win if the player does the exact one thing you're thinking of, that's generally a no-win scenario.

Again, fully agree the scenario was bad.

BUT, this wasn't some random victim. This was a paragon of courage who has powers above mere mortals. And he has responsibilities that come with those powers - regular men can stand back. He can't, not without consequence.

 

[5ekyu]

As I read more and more about this situation, I want in the next PHB the following errata to the Paladin...

"Players may ask the question out-of-character to the GM "what does my character know the teachings of my order would either require or point me to do?"

As in, then cplayer haven't been shown the light, the player has not had the education or divine inspiration and levels of actual hands on divine work on what his earth requires... but the character has.

As in, putting this "quandry" squarely back on the GM before the scene is resolved to either point to the "oath friendly option" (or admit there isnt one) is key.

Oath of ancients for me given a current world-leading quest does not lead me to seeing not choosing to fight and die here as oath breaking.

But then I draw a heavy distinction between trying and failing and breaking an oath. Thebpaladin tried to save someone by carrying them away. They failed when they got cornered by the dragon.

The both die or injured guy dies options presented are not ones that to me fault the character. The player not figuring out some other way, there, on the spot, is not oath breaking... it might be seen as a failure go achieve the miraculous but nothing in the oath requires a batting average of 1000.

 

[Oofta]

As others have brought up, the question about whether it was a good move from the DM, and whether it was an evil act for a paladin are two separate issues. I'll add that both depend on having more information than we have.

Some assumptions that people seem to be making are (to elaborate on and add to my previous ones):
1) It was obvious to the player that if the paladin didn't give up the NPC their character would die. Sub assumptions to this might include:
1a) The paladin was alone and overwhelmingly outmatched.
1b) The paladin was in a blind alley situation with literally no way within the game rules to escape the dragon.
1c) Dragons in this game are not known to negotiate. It is worth noting that D&D editions (including 5e) actually often say that certain varieties of evil dragons will negotiate and be willing to leave you alone in exchange for treasure or such, though the player may not be familiar with that.
1d) The paladin didn't have any tricks up their sleeve to allow them to sacrifice themselves and save the NPC.

As far as 1a)...


We weren't told it was a red dragon. So let's assume the evil dragon right in the middle of the power curve: the green dragon. Even a level 7 wizard/sorcerer/warlock with Con 12 would be unlikely to die to a single failed save against the dragon's breath weapon (though they would be very likely to drop to zero). A level 7 fighter/paladin/ranger with Con 14 has a slightly better than average change to still be standing after a failed save. It is unlikely that anyone will die in the first round, and ever after the dragon's spot in initiative, it is likely that there will still be people up. Most characters will likely get a chance to act in the first round. A party of, say 5 full-strength well-built and well-played PCs could totally defeat that dragon in a stand up battle (which the dragon would likely be smarter than to actually get into, which is a separate point in favor of this not necessarily being a no-win scenario). It's also a reasonable assumption that someone in a typical level 7 party has access to revivify and up to 4 potential spell slots in it, so it's quite likely that all of the PCs would walk away from this battleground alive.

Now, is this what would happen with a typical group of 5e players? Probably not. But with a little time I could build a party of five 7th level characters (who are optimized for general adventuring--not optimized against green dragons in particular) who would have say a 70% or better chance of taking out the dragon with no dead party members afterwards, and something closer to a 95% chance of at least driving the dragon away (or escaping it) without a TPK. And I'm not even an expert optimizer. There are almost certainly others on these forums who could build a four character party that could do it, and build it faster than I could. People claim 5e is easy mode for a reason. Again, this isn't what would happen with probably most groups, and we don't know if the party is at full resources, etc. My point here is just that, with the information we have been given, defeating (or at least driving it off and having at some members of the party survive to drag your corpses back to a 9th-level cleric for raise dead) the dragon in a fight is not off the table as a reasonable possibility.

Several thoughts if the paladin had decided to fight (or thought he had to fight). My understanding may not be 100% correct.

• The NPC is dead the first round, first breath weapon attack whether or not they make their save.
• It's my understanding was that the paladin was alone.
• If I were to run this dragon, it would never get within more than 10 feet of the paladin.
• Depending on the paladin's oath they might have some tricks up their sleeve, it depends on oath and whether they have spells slots left.
• But no good spell options? Throwing a single javelin per round is going to be a death sentence. The dragon will just fly around waiting for the breath weapon.

Given time to prep, an environment where the dragon is at disadvantage and some luck and it's possible for a full party of fresh 7th levels. A solo paladin has no chance.

As others
2) A major assumption that is often forgotten in these scenarios is an assumption that you can trust the bad guy not to do the bad thing anyway, after he gets you to do your bad thing first. If you're wrong, now everyone did something that led to a bad consequence, and no good consequences came from it, because you assumed the bad guy would keep his word. Did the paladin have a reason to believe that if he turned over the NPC the dragon would in fact leave him alone, rather than fly off for a nice meal and then come back and pick off the paladin rather than having to fight both the NPC and the paladin at the same time? (One point of argument in favor of deontological morality versus consequential is the uncertainty of accurately predicting the consequences of an action in any particular situation.)

On the issue of DMing, we have different assumptions that have been made, which mostly center around an assumed lack of communication.
A) The DM viewed and presented this as a sacrifice yourself in vain for your ideals or sacrifice your ideals and live to fight another day scenario, instead of a scenario where the player, based on the campaign up to that point, would have reasonably expected that a choice to stand up to the dragon would lead to some sort of loss that was lesser than a TPK or permanent character death.
B) The player was unaware and/or not on board with the likelihood of his paladin being presented with difficult choices that might have major consequences for his character.
C) The player didn't view the choice as evil and/or a violation of his oath.

Again, my point is that we haven't been given enough information. In the interest of demonstrating how things could be different without some of those assumptions, the scenario might in fact have been something like the following.

Based on the OP my understanding was that the player thought it would be suicidal to not immediately acquiesce to the dragon's demands. If I were in this situation, that's what I would have assumed unless I had some foreknowledge of the dragon's behavior. Evil dragons tend to be arrogant, why would they care if some pipsqueak lowly human challenged them?

I also agree that different people view alignments (and oaths) differently.

I don't think we necessarily know all the details.

 

[5ekyu]

@Sword of Spirit
"Some assumptions that people seem to be making are (to elaborate on and add to my previous ones):
1) It was obvious to the player that if the paladin didn't give up the NPC their character would die. Sub assumptions to this might include:
1a) The paladin was alone and overwhelmingly outmatched.
1b) The paladin was in a blind alley situation with literally no way within the game rules to escape the dragon.
1c) Dragons in this game are not known to negotiate. It is worth noting that D&D editions (including 5e) actually often say that certain varieties of evil dragons will negotiate and be willing to leave you alone in exchange for treasure or such, though the player may not be familiar with that.
1d) The paladin didn't have any tricks up their sleeve to allow them to sacrifice themselves and save the NPC."

We know it was paladin trying to save someone by carrying them. That leads to conclusion about who the paladin believes is better able to run. Away at that moment.
We know the paladin was cornered by the dragon. There was not a mention of the Paladino's party being cornered. The party was not even mentioned as involved in this exchange.
Adult dragon vs 7th level pc.

One can imagine all sorts of things not mentioned that completely change the scenario... but this is what we know.

Oh, we also know there is an ongoing save the whole world quest, the player said the character did not want to die and wanted to continue that quest.

We can imagine this scene took place on the rock of dragon smiting but if it did the poster did not think that important enough to mention.

To me the paladin failed to save the victim... failing is not the same as breaking his oath.

As player I long ago decided to ask the GM "what do my years of learning this faith, its devotion and tenets tell me the right choices within my code and credo are? what do the many allegories, lore and parables tell me is the "proper" path?"

Then, whatever not I in character choose to do is fine with an informed eye, it's an informed choice.

If nothing else, it might serve to expose some cases of kobayashi maruing of players who made the mistake of playing a character with ties to the world under the wrong GM.

 

[FrogReaver]

Based on the OP my understanding was that the player thought it would be suicidal to not immediately acquiesce to the dragon's demands. If I were in this situation, that's what I would have assumed unless I had some foreknowledge of the dragon's behavior. Evil dragons tend to be arrogant, why would they care if some pipsqueak lowly human challenged them?

I also agree that different people view alignments (and oaths) differently.

I don't think we necessarily know all the details.

And yet we know for certain there was at least one course of action that would have been good and saved the NPC. So the player obviously misjudged the situation. The player didn't take the time to even try to validate his assumptions in the situation. He simply gave the dragon the NPC.

An insight check could have possibly given some information. Asking the dragon a probing question and then judging it's reactions could have also worked.

If I was a player my take is that the dragon took the time to talk to me instead of just snathching the NPC. The Dragon's desires aren't solely for food. Play from there.