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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Pendragon" data-source="post: 1857306" data-attributes="member: 707">This is absolutely the wrong answer.  The ends never justify the means.  Save the world at the cost of an innocent life, and you've damned yourself and the world together.This is not a moral conundrum.  It's a Catch-22.  Damned if you do, damned if you don't.  The paladin is screwed no matter what decision he makes, no matter how he plays his hand.If your paladin player is interested in having a Crisis of Faith, then I suggest you do something along the following lines.  Introduce a beautiful, sweet, innocent young maiden, then have clerics of Fera come to the paladin (or send the paladin a dream) in which the maiden must be killed, for eventually she is destined to become a terrible Queen of Evil.  The goddess' doctrine claims that her destiny is evil, and thus she is evil even though she has yet to do any wrong.  She Detects as Evil.  Now the paladin has a choice: kill the maiden (and thus satisfy his goddess' demands), or refuse to kill the maiden, and defy his goddess.If he chooses to kill the maiden, he'll be haunted by the act, guilt-ridden, and may eventually come to doubt his goddess' wisdom leading to the Crisis of Faith the player wants.If he chooses to spare the maiden, then he comes to his Crisis directly.  he believes his goddess is wrong, and will have to pay the consequences of his loss of faith.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.</blockquote>

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