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

[S'mon]

Anyway, getting back to the OP, I think Atonement is in order.

 

[Oofta]

It wasn't an 'army', there were maybe a dozen, and we did eventually beat them around 4th level, which being 5e was only a few sessions, and a few adventuring days.. In the initial encounter they didn't have any way to see that we were 1st level not 4th - not even any reason to think 5e NPCs understand the concept of Level, after all they almost certainly don't have one! And even at 1st level we might have killed one or two of the weaker ones, it's not like we were zero threat. I don't think our GM did anything wrong with how she ran it.

Likewise, I don't see a dragon as knowing whether any particular knight is 3rd, 7th or 15th level; they'll probably be influenced by apparent gear. Certainly a 7th level Paladin is going to appear competent.

Then you were facing a threat that was not that far out of your reach. The lone PC wouldn't have stood a chance against an adult dragon. It also sounds like you had your whole party to back you up, the OP's scenario is a lone PC against a dragon.

It doesn't matter what the dragon thought, it matters what the player thought. The whole point is that the player had no way of reading the DM's mind.

 

[Oofta]

Anyway, getting back to the OP, I think Atonement is in order.

Which is fine, assuming this is a 5E game (I assume it is) then he needs to do some kind of (non-magical) cleansing ritual or confession. Basically he needs to talk to someone about it. It doesn't need to be an atonement spell or anything similar.

I would try to explore with the player a fun way to integrate it into a long term PC arc.

 

[S'mon]

Yeah, no. Get that garbage out of here.

Alignment - at least in 5e, which is the edition being discussed in OP's scenario - has alignment as a description of general trends in your behaviour. One off-alignment act won't flip your alignment entirely. Barring magic items and/or planar corruption, you need to be consistently and willfully acting counter to the alignment on your character sheet for an alignment change to be warranted.

Well I have a pretty high bar for what constitutes an Evil act. Like, the villain might be a generally good guy who only murders people now and then. Then they're evil. Anyway, like I said, in 5e I don't track PC Alignment and what they put on their sheet is how they & their PC think they act, nothing in the rules forces me to agree or to correct them if I disagree.

 

[pemerton]

Edit: A paladin killing himself would also be both evil and unlawful, especially as the paladin was envisioned(after the Peers of Charlemagne who were Roman Catholic and Arthurian knights who were also Catholic). If a paladin finds himself in a position where he can only save himself or commit suicide, such as on the rope or with the dragon, he is obligated to save himself.

Being killed by a dragon isn't suicide in the relevant sense.

The point is to play a good and holy warrior with abilities. There are many varieties of those. Part of that point is that specifically when willingly violating things, you lose your abilities. That clause being written into every incarnation of the class where abilities could be taken away is proof that paladins are not expected to be perfect in keeping to their oaths and that they can be placed into situations such as the one in this thread and it's okay to make the hard choice to survive.

The AD&D PHB says (p 22) refers to "knowingly" performing a chaotic act and "knowingly and willingly" performing an evil act. The 3.5 SRD refers to "willingly" performing an evil act. Handing over the NPC is knowing and willing. Coerced acts are nevertheless willed acts (contrast automatism, or in the context of D&D magical compulsion).

The 5e SRD describes the Sacred Oath and Oath of Devotion as "commit[tin] the paladin to the cause of righteousness, an active path of fighting wickedness" which includes "protect[ing] those entrusted to your care". Giving up the NPC to the dragon clearly does not count as protecting someone entrusted to the paladin's care. (I am aware that the paladin in the OP is Oath of Ancients, not Oath of Devotion. But Oath of Devotion is clearly the most archetypal paladin.)

And for the sake of clarity: I am talking about what counts as doing the right thing and what counts as violating the paladin's oaths and obligations. I am not talking about the gameplay question of whether or not the paladin should lose his/her abilities (in the fiction) which is to say that the player should lose core elements of his/her PC (at the table). My understanding of 5e is that the notion of the "fallen paladin" following from a GM judgement call is not an inherent feature of the game. And personally it's something that I'm not a big fan of, as per the thread from 2011 that I linked to not that far upthread.

 

[pemerton]

The idea that a valiant death is pointless simply because it didn't achieve any practical, mundane outcome - eg the dragon wasn't defeated - seems already to be stepping out of the moral, ethical and theological perspective of a paladin.

Which goes back to the point I made upthread - if your game is one in which essentially expedience is the only, or at least the primary consideration, then of course trying to incorporate non-utilitarian worldviews like those of paladins, saints etc will cause problems!

 

[Wiseblood]

Hussar,
Earlier you implied that the player would be metagaming if they assumed the DM would bail them out.

Would the player be metagaming if they thought the paladin believed their god would bail them out?

It could just as easily be that the player thought the paladin didn’t have faith and made a sacrifice to save his skin.

Or

The player metagamed and thought the DM would surely kill their character using a dragon and a moral dilemma but not take their powers away if they sacrificed this npc.


Metagaming abounds.

 

[pemerton]

I don't generally provide deus ex machina bailouts if they behave as such. If, at my table, you want to suicide your paladin charging an unbeatable dragon then you're welcome to do so.

This makes no sense to me. The dragon didn't turn up of its own accord - you (as GM) wrote it into the story! If that's acceptable, then why not the "deus ex machina bailout"? Or converesely, if you don't like the latter then why did you write in the former? To hose the paladin's player? Some other reason?

In the OP's scenario the PC talked to the dragon, and rolled well. Why did the GM apparently disregard that outcome and nevetheless have the dragon push the point? Is that some sort of anti-deus ex machina?

 

[pemerton]

Hussar,
Earlier you implied that the player would be metagaming if they assumed the DM would bail them out.

Would the player be metagaming if they thought the paladin believed their god would bail them out?

I was planning to post something along these lines - happy to have been beaten to it!

 

[5ekyu]

Being killed by a dragon isn't suicide in the relevant sense.

The AD&D PHB says (p 22) refers to "knowingly" performing a chaotic act and "knowingly and willingly" performing an evil act. The 3.5 SRD refers to "willingly" performing an evil act. Handing over the NPC is knowing and willing. Coerced acts are nevertheless willed acts (contrast automatism, or in the context of D&D magical compulsion).

The 5e SRD describes the Sacred Oath and Oath of Devotion as "commit[tin] the paladin to the cause of righteousness, an active path of fighting wickedness" which includes "protect[ing] those entrusted to your care". Giving up the NPC to the dragon clearly does not count as protecting someone entrusted to the paladin's care. (I am aware that the paladin in the OP is Oath of Ancients, not Oath of Devotion. But Oath of Devotion is clearly the most archetypal paladin.)

And for the sake of clarity: I am talking about what counts as doing the right thing and what counts as violating the paladin's oaths and obligations. I am not talking about the gameplay question of whether or not the paladin should lose his/her abilities (in the fiction) which is to say that the player should lose core elements of his/her PC (at the table). My understanding of 5e is that the notion of the "fallen paladin" following from a GM judgement call is not an inherent feature of the game. And personally it's something that I'm not a big fan of, as per the thread from 2011 that I linked to not that far upthread.

"Handing over the NPC is knowing and willing. Coerced acts are nevertheless willed acts (contrast automatism, or in the context of D&D magical compulsion)."

Wanting to understand this a bit, along with the comment about it not being suicide in this case to be killed by a dragon.

In this case, we have these facts in evidence from one side tedtimony.
Paladin was involved in world saving quest outside of this.
Paladin tried to carry some injured NPC to ssfety.
Paladin was caught and cornered by way beyond their power dragon.
Paladin tried to talk out of it, got "strong" result which led to the offer to give up the injured guy and leave.
Paladin agrees and lives - not a lot of detail about was he actually physically carrying etc during that part - the negotiation.


At this point, does it matter to you whether the paladin just walks away or physically hands over the injured? Is the paladin ok if he just walks away at this point? Was his fault the presumed physical act of "handing him over" or just the moral choice yo abandon him, stop protecting him?

Since the negotiation led to this offer, it seems obvious the remaining option either than the deal is fighting the dragon and both dead or just standing there waiting to be killed or accept the deal... barring of vourse some divine intervention.

Does the other wuest and its stakes and the consequences of falling here matter?

Finally, why is it evil acts are judged in the sense of immediacy, not longer?

Why isnt "instead of both falling here, let him go now, we lost this fight but not the war, then go work to rezz him and kill this dragon after saving the world..." a good act? Or at least a non-evil act?

This isnt end justifying means, this is seeing the difference in tactics and strategy... between a fight and the war - between a loss and a win.


I know you dont wsnt to engage on specifics of oath etc... preferring it seems more broad topic of evil... so ignore this last bit... but to me...


Seems to me that the whole ight of hope sorta thing is dependent not on dying when a fight goes bad, not suicide oneself into hopeless fight but picking oneself back up after a loss and turning things back around?