D&D 5E Player agency and Paladin oath.

[Mort]

So to start with I don't like Paladin PCs. Did not like them in 1Eor 3E, 5E is a little better but they still have that silly oath. They are great for that knucklehead NPC.

The oath is just fine if you want to play good guys - the problem here (as many have stated) the CN players in your group are not CN they are evil - full stop.

We have an oath of devotion Paladin in a game I am DM ing. His Deity is Tyr. He is Lawful good, the rest of the party is Chaotic (CN fighter, CG warlock/rogue and CN Barbarian). As an aside I am not a fan of CN players either but that is another topic.

The problem is that the charactets wrote CN on the character sheet but are playing CE. From the described situation THEY'RE fueling the conflict not the paladin - who (again, from what's written) is playing his oath and his alignment properly.

Well there is constantly friction in the party as to how to handle things. For example they typically want to kill prisoners after interogating and promising to let them go, they have no problem lying and well acting Chaotic.

That's evil not chaotic. Of course there will be conflict if a party member wants to prevent evil and the others want to instigate it.

The Paladin tries to role play his character with his oath but it is causing a lot of friction. It came to a head in the last game when they let a stone Giant go after they got done arguing with him. The two CN characters wanted to kill him because they thought he would come back and attack them. the Paladin stood his ground and said no way and drew a line in the sand, the CG warlock rogue sided with the Palidin but would have been fine with "looking the other way" if the Paladin did not make a big deal out of it. OF course they were ambushed by said giant and friends later that session. It could have been a TPK, and would have but I played the Giants poorly in battle, making some bad decisions and the party scraped out of it (barely).

The evil characters are causing the friction, not the paladin

I am really having trouble with this because I think in real life those characters would just part ways - the Paladin can't accept such behavior and the others can't stand the goody-goody Paladin. Of course in the real world parting ways means an end to our game. If it wasn't for his oath I think he would just relent and basically look at alignment as a guideline or belief instead of a code to live by.

I agree, the characters presented shouldn't adventure together.

BUT

It's not the oath, any good character would (well should) have a problem with the described evil actions. Trying to state the problem with the paladin player is misplaced.

As for solutions :

Make sure you and the players are on the same page. Personally, I think the best way is for the players to recognize evil when they do it and if evil is not the intent - then change that behavior.

But if you and they are OK with the actions - maybe have the paladin change to oath of vengeance or even conquest. Those would work much better with this group.

 

[TheSword]

Legally speaking, it came from the Geneva Convention at the end of World War I, which specifically bans the use of several uses of what was collectively viewed as horrific acts of dishonor and disrespect on the warfront, including things like biological/chemical weapons, killing prisoners that have surrendered, and certain forms of torture. But the idea of treating prisoners with respect and keeping your word definitely predates it conceptually and throughout most of history those who treated their prisoners poorly could largely expect the same treatment if captured or suffered severe issues when trying to be diplomatic as word got around quickly that they were not to be trusted. Hence why in my original post I suggest that if his players continue such behavior the logical result should be them slowly being ostracized by the very society they deem "civilized" if not outright hunted down by it.

At the end of the 30 Years War freedom of prisoners of war without ransom was agreed with France in the 1600. As I said this was during war though, not banditry or raiding. Actual criminals were treated horrendously.

Such societies also still largely distrusted those known as vigilantes widely as any who tried to wield the law without proper authority to do so were often quick to become the very bandits they were supposedly there to keep at bay. Also, the DM has given us no context on if his world has no such law enforcement/standing army or what his legal system is for the specific area of where these events took place. Even if we look at real history not every nation was the American Wild West, and if anything such lawlessness was almost the exception to the rule in terms of law enforcement; there is a reason why the image of the American Wild West and Americans as "cowboys" are largely viewed as incredibly "foreign" or "chaotic" by much of the world.

As late as the 18C in Britain often a private citizen would be paid by victims to track down criminals and bring them to justice. As this paid so poorly they often had part time jobs. There was no civil law enforcement to speak of beyond some small organized watch paid for by cities usually to protect property and paid for directly by the rich. They had Very little interest in crimes against the poor.

In RPGs are usually requested to investigate by local authorities (mayor, headman, noble, king). Those are the authorities as far as most crimes are concerned. I don’t believe the average person gave a damn about the average criminal. They certainly wouldn’t care if bandits got killed y the people sent to deal with them.

That all aside, even if we remove the good vs evil aspect of the argument over whether killing a criminal is wrong (It is still an evil act unless there is no means of bringing them to trial, the neutral response is to only bring them back if it is reasonable and the evil one is to kill them because "it's easiest"), we still have the law vs chaos arguement. If such systems exist, the concept of bringing them back alive if possible is the lawful response...

Bringing them back to whom? Trials in medieval times were very rare for all but the most notable (not serious, just notable) Quarterly sessions often took place a few times per year and there were very limited jails to hold people. Prisons as we Understand them now didn’t exist.

as is honoring your word that one would be let go. Said player in question was Lawful Good, and it's perfectly reasonable they'd be upset the group has effectively made them a liar against their will, paladin or not. I still maintain my previous statements...

This I agree with. It’s not Lawful Good behavior and it breaks the oath of devotion. That said It’s not evil to mislead someone to get information about other murderers. Neutral at worst. Perhaps the Paladin should have interrupted the interogation to make it clear that his companions weren’t going to let the criminal go. That clears the Paladin of deception.

If wandering adventuring bands are legally right to declare that bandits are wholesale evil and deserving of murder on the spot, so too could an order of priests dedicated to a god of Justice/Law to the very same group of adventurers using the same logic. After all they ARE murderers, even if those they murdered were criminals.

Bandits don’t have to be evil to be bandits. Neither do they need to be evil in order to be punished with death. The Bloody Code included such crimes as stealing goods worth more than 12 pence. Even at the end of the 18thC. I think it stretches credulity to think that adventurers charges by authorities to solve a problem of banditry or raiding would be considered murderers in turn... other than by those doing the banditry and raiding.

 

[TheSword]

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



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!"

As I said in my other post, stealing goods worth more than 12 pence was punishable by death as late as the end of the 18th C.

Other crimes punishable by death included ...stealing from a shipwreck, pilfering from a Naval Dockyard, damaging Westminster Bridge, impersonating a Chelsea Pensioner or cutting down a young tree.

You don’t have to be at risk of slaughtering innocents to be killed for your crimes in medieval times.

 

[jgsugden]

D&D is an RPG - a role playing game. Characters play a role in a story. Stories are generally all about one thing - conflicts.

When it comes to moral decisions in a game, there is no inherently right or wrong answer for the players to make. They should play their characters and have those characters act out their personalities.

As a DM, there is a right and wrong response to a moral decision. The right answer is the one that makes the game more fun for the players. The wrong one is the one that punishes or angers the players.

In an instance such as this, I would look for opportunities to turn this into an interesting question for the PCs to consider, or an opportunity to advance a story. Rather than just have a neutral stone giant decide he was going to hunt down the PCs and attack them, I'd have had it return in a different situation. Perhaps they'd encounter it near a town in danger, and the PCs would have a chance to persuade it to help defend the town in exchange for offerings from the town. It would remember all the arguments the PCs made about killing it or sparing it, and consider them in the decision.

 

[CleverNickName]

My players tend to confuse "a paladin" with "a fighter who went to church once."

 

[Bagpuss]

I am really having trouble with this because I think in real life those characters would just part ways - the Paladin can't accept such behavior and the others can't stand the goody-goody Paladin.

The real question is why would they be adventuring together in the first place? Did you not have a session zero and design characters together?

Of course in the real world parting ways means an end to our game.

Why? Can't the Paladin just come up with another character? I mean I assume you have some level of maturity.

If it wasn't for his oath I think he would just relent and basically look at alignment as a guideline or belief instead of a code to live by.

A well played Lawful character is just as likely to have issues in a Chaotic party as a Good character in an Evil one, the oath isn't the problem.

 

[Guest 6801328]

As word of their misdeeds spread, enemies respond by continuing to attack the anti-heroes while they are at 0 HP, making death saves....

 

[TheSword]

Allow the Paladin to fall... and rebuild as a fighter... great backstory... much less angst!

 

[Mort]

Allow the Paladin to fall... and rebuild as a fighter... great backstory... much less angst!

So punish the paladin's player for being only one to even remotely play his character properly (well from the OP the warlocks player wasn't to bad either, but the point stands)?

 

[Benjamin Olson]

In RPGs are usually requested to investigate by local authorities (mayor, headman, noble, king). Those are the authorities as far as most crimes are concerned. I don’t believe the average person gave a damn about the average criminal. They certainly wouldn’t care if bandits got killed y the people sent to deal with them.

They might care. If the locals are so unwilling to help subdue the criminals that out-of-town adventurers are needed its probably because there are social ties between those being subdued and the locals. Realistically, unless a gang formed out of the remnants of a foreign mercenary band after a war or something, your garden variety bandit probably is a local and probably has friends and family in the area.

Now D&D style bandits, who are always some mysterious group with no social ties who sprung out of the aether, I'm sure the locals don't mind you killing.

Bringing them back to whom? Trials in medieval times were very rare for all but the most notable (not serious, just notable) Quarterly sessions often took place a few times per year and there were very limited jails to hold people.

Trials were common enough. The quarterly sessions you are thinking of would be the higher courts for when someone of quality was tried for murder. A medieval English Shire, for example, had several subdivisions with Hundred Courts convening once or twice monthly and had authority to handle criminal matters.

But trials are for people trying to live peacefully within the society. At the point where bandits are being hunted down by adventurers they have doubtlessly ignored a court summons and been declared as "outlaws" meaning people outside the protection of the law whom any person may legally kill.