A Paladin's Problem

[Goblyns Hoard]

Can you see the difference between my scenario and yours? In your scenario, there is no right answer to the question. The paladin is screwed regardless of what he does, in a way that makes no sense (how can the goddess expect him to both spare the child and kill the lich, if doing so is impossible?) In my scenario, there are two right answers: the moral right answer, and the goddess' right answer. The paladin must weigh them and decide which is more important to him, then pay the consequences of that decision.

I see your point but I disagree that it is necessarily that different from the choice I'm presenting. My choice equally presents him with two right answers, the difference is that in order to bring about the crisis of faith I have the ability to alter my deity's perspective accordingly in order to have the conflict. Maybe I haven't presented that as well as I could of - the idea is not that there is no right answer it's that the one the paladin selects will be the wrong one.

And before I get flamed for putting my player up in front of a no-win scenario - that's the idea becasue then we will get into some good roleplaying... I'm not just trying to 'win' as the DM, I'm trying to drive some character development that the player will enjoy. It does raise the odour of a rail-road I'm aware of that, and it may not be ideal but it was not meant to be a C-22.

That said I do like your version and it may work better. There are some in-game issues though. First my gods have no alignment, so Fera is not really bothered by good vs evil (though the paladin is), so it's a little more difficult for her to be against this maiden because she is evil. Plus there is the third option that they can work to redeem the maiden and prevent her destiny (I think the player would try for that one) thus neither killing the maiden nor allowing evil to rise. The whole "fate hasn't been written" arguement.

Bugger now I'm wondering which way to go.

Possibly if I go back to the child-phylactery concept and take your twist on the choice - Fera won't damn him for slaying the child, she sees the bigger picture that the undead creature (probably my half-fiend) is more of a problem. However some of the community would condemn him, and he would probably damn himself. Plus at least one of the other characters would make a strong argument against killing the child. Maybe that will get the role-play we're looking for, and trigger some of the crisis of faith in the way you siuggest - because his god is asking him to do something he finds reprehensible. It doesn't help that in the last game he just played the knight in shining armour that helped prevent the destruction of the town and is now one of it's big heroes.

Once again cheers all for the input - always helps

 

[was]

I guess that instead of having the child be the phylactery, you could have him or her be posessed by the lich (magic jar maybe?). Of course, the pc's won't know it, the child will detect as evil. Have the child along with other charmed/controlled children from the local orphanage/community repeatedly attack the npcs. Thus the pc's end up facing a blond little six year old girl with awesome necromantic/magical powers with a small army of children that the pc's must wade through to attack. That should provoke some sort of ethical crisis.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

I see your point but I disagree that it is necessarily that different from the choice I'm presenting. My choice equally presents him with two right answers, the difference is that in order to bring about the crisis of faith I have the ability to alter my deity's perspective accordingly in order to have the conflict. Maybe I haven't presented that as well as I could of - the idea is not that there is no right answer it's that the one the paladin selects will be the wrong one.

You aren't providing the player with two right answers, you're providing the player with two wrong answers. Regardless of which choice he makes, he's wrong. Thus, both answers are wrong. Either way, he ends up not doing what his goddess wanted him to do. He had no way to fulfill his goddess' desires, because not only does he not know which choice his goddess would have preferred, but you intend to change the goddess' preference to ensure that he's in the wrong.

Notice in my scenario that if the character chooses to follow his goddess' edict, everything is in accord. It's his own guilt and lingering doubt that his goddess' edict is correct that causes a crisis of faith. His goddess has told him to do something and he's done it, so technically he's done the right thing and his goddess will demand no punishment. But in his heart he may question whether his goddess is right, whether her wisdom is absolute, and that is what a crisis of faith is all about.

The second choice the character has is the "wrong" choice, that of openly defying his goddess' will by sparing the girl. It's a slightly different take on the first outcome, because here he begins with immediate conflict. Defying his goddess, he'll lose his powers and he'll either have to come to understand why his goddess was correct (and then Atone) to get back into her good graces, or reject her completely as fallible and wrong, and seek another path to replace the one he's forsaken (perhaps find a new patron god who believes as he has come to.)

And before I get flamed for putting my player up in front of a no-win scenario - that's the idea becasue then we will get into some good roleplaying... I'm not just trying to 'win' as the DM, I'm trying to drive some character development that the player will enjoy. It does raise the odour of a rail-road I'm aware of that, and it may not be ideal but it was not meant to be a C-22.

I understand that you have good intentions, but it doesn't just "raise the odour" of a railroad. It's a massive railroad of the highest order. You've decided that the character's goddess is going to be unhappy with the character, regardless of how the character chooses to act.

I can't stand that. Perhaps your player will love it. You're in a far better position to tell than I.

First my gods have no alignment, so Fera is not really bothered by good vs evil

If Fera isn't bothered by Good or Evil, then why does she care about the innocent or the lich? The entire crux of that dilemma is a moral one.

Plus there is the third option that they can work to redeem the maiden and prevent her destiny (I think the player would try for that one) thus neither killing the maiden nor allowing evil to rise. The whole "fate hasn't been written" arguement.

This is actually the very reason I devised my scenario as I did. It's easy for the player (and thus the character) to justify saving the maiden. To believe that you can change your destiny, yadda yadda. At the same time, a good goddess might very easily espouse a doctrine in which evil souls are marked, and destroying that soul before it has actually commited a crime is not a sin. Think of it this way, Demons and Devils are inherently evil. If a Demon appears in town, good folks of power will try to kill it, they won't wait until it kills a child before doing so. This maiden is the same way. She's essentially a human with the [Evil] descriptor. So the Church will want to have her killed, because she is inherently evil. But the paladin, believing in redeption, etc. may think that he knows better than his goddess, that he can change her, etc. etc. And when Man believes he knows better than God, you have a crisis of faith.

Maybe that will get the role-play we're looking for, and trigger some of the crisis of faith in the way you siuggest - because his god is asking him to do something he finds reprehensible.

This is it in a nutshell. An important part of faith is believing that your god knows better than you do what you should do, and what is acceptible and what is not. When you start doubting that, your faith begins to falter.

 

[Goblyns Hoard]

If Fera isn't bothered by Good or Evil, then why does she care about the innocent or the lich? The entire crux of that dilemma is a moral one.

Nope - Fera is the Goddess of Life so she cares about the living and hates the undead. The use of the innocent is to make the paladin care because he is human. Fera doesn't care about innocence (she's also the godess of lust afterall) - her concern is the death of the undead creature, while the paladin (an earthly creature with all the ensuing morality) must also care for the child.

You're right on most of the rest though... I know I was presenting the player with a dead end scenario. When I said there were 2 right choices it was purely from the perspective of the paladin, not the perspective of the player.

The only place where your points don't fit into my world is the stuff about evil descriptors etc. My gods are completely free of alignment, they represent certain "platonic ideals" (for lack of a better term), but none of them represent good or evil. So Fera as the goddess of Fertility, Life and Lust is the goddess of nature, of animals and plants, of childbirth, of the passion of young lovers, of rape and of the vilest depravity of paedophilia. There has both evil and good within her... or maybe more accurately she has neither. Evil and Good are the domains of the angels and devils - but the gods are separate from those. The result she couldn't care less about a human who has the evil descriptor - she's more concerned about the monks that have taken a vow of chastity.

I see you're point about how that creates a crisis of faith - it just doesn't fit with the Paladin's chosen goddess.

So Kel (half fiend thrall of orcus that they killed a few games back) has some spiritual bond with a young girl in Arados (the town they're based in). The result is that he can continue to return as long as she is alive. The original mission to kill Kel was the result of a dream-message from Fera (because Kell was trying to raise an undead army), so that original message can get reinforced by further dreams from Kel (and the indication she isn't happy with the paladin as he obviously failed in his original mission). Kel himself will now be undead of some form - and of the intelligent rather than mindless variety, but exactly what I will have to think of. Over the game the party will learn of the bond between him and the girl, but will need to investigate fully on their own. Eventually it will need to be made clear exactly what the situation is, presenting the paladin with his dilemma. Any guidance he seeks will only indicate that Fera wants Kel permanently dead, and if he kills the girl it will only be his own guilt he needs to deal with - well that and the accusations of the town-folk that he is a child murderer.

Cheers for your points - I'm a lot happier with the whole scenario now.

 

[Aeric]

Any guidance he seeks will only indicate that Fera wants Kel permanently dead, and if he kills the girl it will only be his own guilt he needs to deal with - well that and the accusations of the town-folk that he is a child murderer.

I see a third option here that I'm surprised no one else has mentioned:

Find a way to imprison the lich/fiendish thrall/BBEG indefinitely.

He's still "alive," but in a position where he can't harm anyone. His continued existence may anger Fera, but at least no one suffers from the outcome of the dilemma (except the poor paladin, who I suspect would probably have to go on a quest to atone for this minor transgression). Once the child dies of old age, the followers of Fera are free to destroy the BBEG. The challenge, as it is in any story which involves imprisoning some Big Nasty, is that the Big Nasty has a tendency to escape. Used sparingly, it could provide for a nice recurring plot thread. You could even have it so that the child grows up to be sympathetic to the BBEG, as a result of the link between the two, so that the PCs find themselves opposed by the very soul they worked so hard to save.

Once the PCs are high enough level, they might even get their hands on a Wish or some other way to travel through time, skip ahead a hundred years, and polish the BBEG off themselves.

 

[Goblyns Hoard]

It's certainly an option - but I can see two problems the party may face.

The most obvious is actually finding someway of imprisoning it. Not impossible, and if they come up with something, it's certainly an option. May also not solve the crisis (My goddess still wants me to kill that child). The party also have other tasks on their hands so may not have the time to come up with as creative a solution.

As a point - this crisis of faith, while obviously a major thing for the paladin, is in fact a bit of a side plot from finding out how to kill the red dragon that is causing havok locally, so I don't want it to take over too much of the overall plot line. Not that I'm going to stop it, just that the party will then have to consider what letting a red dragon run around unopposed will mean for the locals.

Second problem - when Kel comes back I was thinking he would materialise from around/within the child and then take a new corporeal form... so escaping his prison. I had that idea as a way of them confirming the actual link between monster and child. So this would require the child to also be imprisoned or else he'd just kill himself to escape. Actually that may make the whole thing better... if they think of imprisoning Kel they then need to put the child in the same place in order to stop Kel from escaping... so imprisoning a child with an undead half fiend for her entire life. Better or worse than death?

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Actually that may make the whole thing better... if they think of imprisoning Kel they then need to put the child in the same place in order to stop Kel from escaping... so imprisoning a child with an undead half fiend for her entire life. Better or worse than death?

It brings to mind a timeless demiplane with all of its access-points cut off. Drifting in the Astral for all eternity. And a thousand years from now, another adventuring group searching for the half-fiend to learn some piece of forgotten lore that will save their world enters the demiplane, crossing an empty, barren plain of cracked earth only to find a single human child wandering listlessly across the plane, crying for the future she never had.

Is it murder if your victim is a child's future? A child's freedom?

I like it.