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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Pendragon" data-source="post: 2379958" data-attributes="member: 707">I can.  In this situation, my paladin would grant his foe the mercy of an honorable death.  I'm sorry, but I stringently disagree with those who believe that a request for mercy must always be answered, or the paladin is somehow being dishonorable.  When you engage in battle with a paladin, you have entered into mortal combat.  If you lose the battle, you don't get to weasel out of the penalty by crying out for mercy.And let's not forget, unless, as Ravlek mentions, the paladin's god is St. Mercy, there are other virtues that must factor into the paladin's decisions.  Such as justice.  Where is the Justice for the dozens, perhaps ever hundreds, of victims of the evil cleric, if the paladin stays his hand?  What about the divine wrath of God, that a paladin is charged with delivering upon the wicked?Certainly, a paladin can and should be encouraged to redeem where he can, to show Mercy where it would serve the cause of Good.  But to claim that any villain can escape righteous justice by crying out for Mercy is, again, IMO a fallacy.The War Against Evil is not an English tourney between fellow knights of Christendom, where honor demands that mercy asked is mercy received.  It's a battle between the righteous and the wicked, and the righteous are doomed to failure if they never actually take down the wicked.  Mercy where it is feasible, Justice and Righteous Wrath where it is not.  (And by feasible I don't mean convenient but rather, has a decent chance of effecting actual change.)Again, I disagree.  I addressed why in my previous post, and have elaborated in this one.  This isn't a tourney between knights.  Justice and Righteous Wrath are paladin virtues just as strong as Mercy and Compassion.  The Forces of Evil do well to fear paladins for a reason.  They relentlessly pursue Evil's destruction.  They do not relentlessly pursue Evil's destruction...unless Evil asks them not to.It'd be a strong argument, since it'd be true.  Assuming the paladin knows the other PC is evil, of course.That becomes the paladin+party's struggle.  To keep the forces of Orcus from exacting revenge on the turncoat priestess.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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