D&D 5E Player agency and Paladin oath.

[TiwazTyrsfist]

Please let's take a moment to examine the Tenets of the Oath of Devotion

• Honesty: Don't lie or cheat. Let your word be your promise.
• Courage: Never fear to act, though caution is wise.
• Compassion: Aid others, protect the weak, and punish those who threaten them. Show mercy to your foes, but temper it with wisdom.
• Honor: Treat others with fairness, and let your honorable deeds be an example to them. Do as much good as possible while causing the least amount of harm.
• Duty: Be responsible for your actions and their consequences, protect those entrusted to your care, and obey those who have just authority over you.

Emphasis added.

So the real, actual problem here is the rest of the party PROMISING TO LET THEM GO and then reneging.

Questioning an evil person who attacked you, even under the effects of a truth spell, doesn't violate his oath.
Killing a prisoner, who could reasonably be expected to bring harm to innocents after that, or to attack the party again, doesn't violate the oath.

No, the only part of all of this that ACTUALLY violates his oath is the rest of the party LYING and promising to let the prisoner go when they plan to kill them.


So, it seems like a pretty easy problem to solve.
1> Remind the players (All of them) to read the tenets of the paladin's oath and point out that doing things that actively put the Paladin in conflict between them and their oath is a jerk move.
2> Remind the Paladin in specific that his oath is just freaking riddled with loopholes. HIS word is his bond. The OTHER players can lie, and as long as he doesn't support or affirm that lie, he's in the clear.
3> Remind the Paladin and possibly yourself that 5e actually removed alignment requirements from Paladins. They could be Chaotic Evil and, as long as they marshal themselves enough to NOT BREAK THE SPECIFIC TENETS OF THE OATH, remain a Paladin in 'Good Standing'.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

Please let's take a moment to examine the Tenets of the Oath of Devotion

• Honesty: Don't lie or cheat. Let your word be your promise.
• Courage: Never fear to act, though caution is wise.
• Compassion: Aid others, protect the weak, and punish those who threaten them. Show mercy to your foes, but temper it with wisdom.
• Honor: Treat others with fairness, and let your honorable deeds be an example to them. Do as much good as possible while causing the least amount of harm.
• Duty: Be responsible for your actions and their consequences, protect those entrusted to your care, and obey those who have just authority over you.

Related to lying about letting them go. As soon as you take someone prisoner and promise to free them, they are in your care.

Killing a prisoner, who could reasonably be expected to bring harm to innocents after that, or to attack the party again, doesn't violate the oath.

This is totally a tricky thing that makes any character with an oath fun and difficult to play. A thing that my honourable barbarian character is faced with often. He believes in mercy. If you show mercy, you are giving someone a chance to change their ways.

So, who is reasonably expected to bring harm to innocents? The evil cultists of slaughtering innocents? Probably.
Random Bandit? Maybe or maybe not. So, how do you judge them? It's tough.

Even letting a goblin go could be difficult if you later find out that it later killed someone. But should you limit your Mercy to only humans?

The giant in the situation wasn't likely to harm an innocent way up in the mountains.

Anyways, I'm not disagreeing with your post. I just find that stuff to be fun to RP. There are total loopholes. A Paladin shouldn't try to use loopholes but he might. They are people and not perfect. They will make poor choices and then feel bad for those choices and then try to do better.

I agree with you that the other PCs should be more respectful of the paladins ethics and not blatantly force him to make poor choices - unless they are purposely trying to make him fall. Which would be fun too. "C'mon, kill him. Everybody's doing it!"

 

[Lanefan]

1st, make sure that there is no PvP action, unless madatory by overall story.

2. players should let other players play out their characters until those actions fall into PvP area.
If you have a thief in a party, you paladin should not go out of his way to make count of every second that the thief is out of sight.

ofc, thief should NOT steal from party ever. unless the story demands it without question.

Let 'em fight, I say, if it's what they want to do. I've run crazy, hilarious (for all involved!) sessions that were nothing but PvP.

3. unless given official outhority, PCs should not hold justice over other PCs, and as stated should turn a blind eye to some actions.
Handing out justice to thieves, murderers from PC ranks in up to DM via NPCs

If turning a blind eye is what the character would do then fine - but not all characters (including many non-Paladins) would do this.

Sometimes a blind eye won't be turned; instead, a gauntlet will be thrown. Let it land, and let the challenged respond as he-she will.

 

[Lanefan]

So, it seems like a pretty easy problem to solve.
1> Remind the players (All of them) to read the tenets of the paladin's oath and point out that doing things that actively put the Paladin in conflict between them and their oath is a jerk move.

Jerk move? Or merely a move designed to make the Paladin uncomfortable enough to want to leave?

Hell, if I'm playing a CN or even CG type the last thing I want to see (in character) is some law-enforcing Paladin (or any other very-Lawful type) join the crew; and so if one does I'm going to do what I can to ease it out - if I think I've got support from the rest of the party either tacit or stated, which in the party under discussion would seem to be the case.

If the rest of the party is more likely to support the Paladin, I'm in for a long-term headache; so be it.

And this is all in-character, mind. Out-of-character we're laughing and joking about it; if not it's being taken far too seriously, which is probably my cue to wander off and find another game.

 

[auburn2]

Which is also fine, but I think the DM put the players into a no win situation. Sounds like the PCs are expected to kill every potential adversary on sight if they can't communicate with them.

What options did the PCs have? Talking to the giant was not possible. Letting the giant go meant an ambush they could not avoid.

Personally I would have allowed some form of crude communication, maybe the giant they let go finds a translator. Something. Anything really other than effectively telling people they have to play evil characters.

Listening to the giant was possible with magic, they just did not want to waste it. As was taking reasonable precautions after an obviously angry and relatively powerful foe ran off in anger. Either of these would have prevented the ambush.

I certainly never expected them to kill the giant.

 

[auburn2]

Meh. "I murder a person or two sometimes but I am not evil because I also do a lot of charity" doesn't work with me. T

There is a difference between killing someone and murdering someone and there is plenty of killing in 5e, including a lot which is routinely engaged in by good and even lawful good characters.

If you get down to it, sneaking up on the bandit hideout and then ambusing and killing them and the leader would constitute "mass murder" in any civilized society.

 

[MGibster]

If you get down to it, sneaking up on the bandit hideout and then ambusing and killing them and the leader would constitute "mass murder" in any civilized society.

That seems like something the Greeks would have been into and they seemed pretty civilized. Hell, their heroes were pretty into killing their enemies and looting them.

 

[auburn2]

Wait, so not even a prisoner? Just a giant they encountered who ran away?

Yeah, the characters who wanted to kill him are Evil. Full stop.

Yeah a character who ran away and happened to live in the area that they are invading and have to invade to complete their quest. If this was a Goblin cave and the Goblin guarding the entrance to the cave sees you and runs off - is it hands off until he comes back with the Goblin horde? Can't kill him to keep from raising the alarm?

Of note, they observed and confronted the Giant first, they could have attacked him fromm hiding and didn't. To compare with the Goblin example above - most characters in the Goblin situation above would sneak up and slaughter the guard if they could and they certainly would try to kill him before he ran off and raised the alarm.

I'm not saying it was right to kill him but it is also not some outright chaotic evil act that would only be done by the most notorius of people to the point where it solely defines the character.

 

[Weiley31]

Honestly, I know "party-conflict" can be seen as annoying when there is infighting amongst the party, but sometimes it can lead to some good rping moments.

Yesterday, we had a new player join the group. Our Rogue, who has been playing his character Chaotic enough where it has gotten the party in hot water a couple of times, decided to steal from the new player. My character, who was interested in learning what the new player's deal was, decided to strike a conversation up while warning the new PC about the approaching rogue to earn the new PC's trust. This caused to rogue (to quote the rogue: snitches get stitches) to stab my guy in the back with a poison knife. Now my Battle Master decided to teach the Rogue a lesson, and he's lucky that my character, HELD BACK, because I scored a Critical Hit, but announced before hand that I was willingly choosing to do non lethal damage. My DM was confused on how I was doing that but another player at the table, whose been playing a long time as well with the DM, stated that yes you can do that to avoid Murderhoboing. My attack and the attack from the new PC dropped the Rogue down to 1 HP.

The new player plays his PC as a character who will NOT TOLERATE being crossed in any manner, and he was about to Coup De Grace the knocked out Rogue. My character, rasied his arm up and told the new PC, he's suffered enough, take his money but spare the Rogue's life because the Rogue has proven to be useful despite his Chaotic Stupidity. Luckily for me and the Rogue, I rolled 19 plus my +5 CHA on the persuasion check and my guy saved the Rogue's life by convincing the new PC. Although the new PC stated, however, that there must be a punishment enacted for the transgression: So the PC took the Rogue's Cloak of Elven Kind and then, not seeing it to his liking, gave it to my guy. Relax, I fully intend on giving it back to the Rogue once my Character isn't mad at the Rogue for stabbing him anymore.

It led to a nice discussion from the DM about how you would play your character. And it showed the new player about making rolls, interaction, a slight taste of rolling for damage in combat and all that. And it allowed the rogue player to realize that he was going a bit too "overboard" with going full on chaotic. Especially when trying to stab a person in the back who, despite having his own baggage to deal with, agreed in a way to help find a way to bring the Rogue's parent's back to life.


Outta game we're all busting out laughing and like having a good time. Even the Rogue player despite in game, the rest of the party+the new pc ain't exactly fond of the Rogue for not using a bit more common sense. But then again, four situations that almost killed the party were instigated by the Rogue who just LOVES throwing rocks at things.


Now the new player has never played DND before, but he's RPing his character SUPER WELL to the point where he managed to turn an accidental slip of the tongue, that almost exposed his intentions to our party, into a COMPLETE verbal reversal with his answers that ended up causing our party to unintentionally expose our reasonings for the current quest we are on while keeping his true intentions unknown to us. Meaning he has a way to play us into his hands and we are completely oblivious to it. It's great!

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yeah a character who ran away and happened to live in the area that they are invading and have to invade to complete their quest. If this was a Goblin cave and the Goblin guarding the entrance to the cave sees you and runs off - is it hands off until he comes back with the Goblin horde? Can't kill him to keep from raising the alarm?

Of note, they observed and confronted the Giant first, they could have attacked him fromm hiding and didn't. To compare with the Goblin example above - most characters in the Goblin situation above would sneak up and slaughter the guard if he could and they certainly would try to kill him before he ran off and raised the alarm.

Okay.