Advice DMing a hard line paladin

[Celedon]

Here is the story. It is the end of a long multipart module (6 months) it is time for the big showdown. In a party of four the group has to split up with two character running interference while the remaining two characters use their new magic key to get into the tomb of a cursed former champion of the people. The later two quickly dispatch the several wraiths in the tomb and find the former champion now undead and driven insane by the experience. The champion is now a Death Knight and high level Black Guard. Even still, he is wielding his old sword, an intelligent Sunblade with lots of nifty powers including Shocking Burst. But many of the powers don't work any more for the Death Knight, and he takes a negative level for just holding the thing. He was level 11 BTW, and effectively a CR 13, but he is pretty decked out in nice magical items including +3 plate armor.

The two character's are the party's main tank who is a fighter/paladin of 9th level who really is more of an ECL 11 due to his incredible statistics and his roughly equal ECL love interest who is an equal level ranger/rogue/cleric. The Death Knight is too tough for her to turn.

After a little good guy-bad guy role play jabs the combat begins. I call for initiative but the Death Knight delays until after he is attacked. After all, he used to be a paladin and still has some of the habits, plus he wants to see how the characters fight before he decides who to kill. The ranger/rouge/cleric circles around and goes for the sneak attack while the paladin attacks him dead on. The sneak attack lands and does damage while the paladin roles mediocre the first few rounds and discovers mediocre doesn't hit this foe. In the meantime the Death Knight decides to knock off the female first because she hit him and drops her after his second round of full attacks. She is not in hit point count down to death, and she was the only cleric the group knows of who can resurrect (from magic items and scrolls) since good clerics are few and far between in this game.

The paladin decides to whip out his Luckblade at this point and uses a Wish to Otto's Irresistible Dance the Death Knight. Then he uses the opportunity to disarm the Death Knight and grab the sword, immediately discovers it powers against undead and it's healing abilities. Things are looking up at this point. He saves the girl from dying at this point.

Now he still has a few rounds left. He could have just grabbed the girl and left the tomb locked behind him, sealing the Death Knight in. Or he could put the girl outside and return to fight the Death Knight. But he decides to take advantage of the helpless and unarmed foe and destroys it before it gets a chance to fight back while the spell binding it is still active.

Now, as the DM I am not quite cool with this because in the code of paladinhood I have published for the game I have the following:

"I vow here before my god and you that I shall never act in fear for lack of faith. That my actions shall be governed by my will to create the greatest good. I shall never abandon or attack the helpless either in my charge or before my sword."
My intention is to enforce the fact that a paladin does not attack a helpless foe. I could see the disarming bit because he is really rescuing a sacred relic that is an intelligent and good sword from an evil creature. It doesn't really belong to the thing any more, at least not in real sense beyond pure legality or possession. But to then deliberately destroy the creature while it is unarmed and can't fight back seems to be a problem. To my mind, it is the same a using a trip attack and attacking a fallen foe. In all chivalrous literature a knight does not attack a foe who is down and unable to defend himself.

My intentions are to impose a sanction on the paladin and have him loose his smite ability until he atones. This is symbolic because he struck when he should not have. I know that there will be resistance to my decision so I just want to see what the community itself thinks of this decision.

 

[Piratecat]

He'd be an idiot to not destroy the death knight as quickly and efficiently as possible. Undead are an anathema, evil personified. Anyways, anything that can fireball on a whim is not helpless. This wasn't a morally ambiguous situation by any means.

Oh, and welcome to EN World! It's good to have you.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

I would most definately not punish the paladin for attacking while a spell effect was going off. Especially not against evil, intelligent undead (were there special circumstances that let the rogue sneak attack it?).

Look at it this way, are the players actions easily justified? Will he argue with your decision or will there be hard feelings? If the answer is yes to either, then it probablly isn't worth the trouble. I only go after gross violations.

Besides (and I seem to be saying this a lot) it seems to be more fun for me to have those things play out as game world consiquences.

But if he had left the undead around, couldn't you have gone after him for "leaving evil to plague the world" or "not sending the soul of one of your brothers to rest"?

So, does this player have a history of problems?
Do you and he get along?
Will you both see this as a story telling opertunity, or will he see it as getting screwed?
Is your game more of a moral deliberative one, or a straight up kill-stuff game?
Would a punishment of this sort be a departure from the norm?

 

[jerichothebard]

A point - the historical code of chivalry which largely influences ideas about paladin codes of honor is basically derived from our "real" world, which seems to be largely lacking in fireball-at-will casting, magic-intelligent-sword weilding supernaturally-evil undead.

Thankfully.

Point being, you can't expect a code which is supposed to apply to normal mortal foes to exactly apply when faced with demon spawn or high-level, ultimately evil undead.

Under your own quoted code, "my actions shall be governed by my will to create the greatest good. " Under almost no circumstances would leaving a death knight alive and kicking be for "the greatest good".

The paladin did exactly the right thing, IMO. Undead - particularly undead of formerly good champions - are an abomination to be destroyed at any cost.




oh, and a side note - unless your ranger/rogue/cleric has some special ability I'm not familiar with, sneak attacks don't do damage to undead.

jtb

 

[weiknarf]

It seems to me his actions were governed by the second sentence in the oath.

The thing was undead; he didn't kill it, he laid it to rest.

 

[MarauderX]

That's quite the code. It limits a paladin player's actions at certain points, which I am reading more and more of these days, and not liking it that much. Paladins, IMO, should be free to make decisions like every other PC so that the player isn't limited from doing what she wants. Consequences? Of course, and the player shouldn't be surprised. I like your solution of the loss of smite until atonement, though this situation is not as clear-cut what the paladin had done wrong.

He solved what he thought could be a future threat. He assessed the situation and realized that he had the time and opportunity to thwart this foe forever, and could still get away with the girl and save her. In a logical cause for good he decided to stop the BBEG, not only for himself, but for his sig-other, their children, the nearby village, for puppies and kittens everywhere...

It's a tough one to adjudicate unless the situation was pretty well role-played out, and that the paladin knew somehow of the BBEG's repentance or other reason to be merciful. If not, then he can't be expected to kill anyone according to an interpretation of the code, as he would need to stabilized them once they reach negative HPs.

But if the situation has already been judged a violation of said code (debate or not, rule-0 wins), enforce it. Again, I like the no smite until atonement as it could be worse.

 

[fafhrd]

Being undead, wouldn't the Death Knight be immune to precision based damage(i.e. sneak attacks), negative energy(negative levels), and compusion effects(Irresistable Dance)? Unless you have housed ruled otherwise, it seems the whole affair should have gone differently.

Edited to remove idiocy

 

[billd91]

"I vow here before my god and you that I shall never act in fear for lack of faith. That my actions shall be governed by my will to create the greatest good. I shall never abandon or attack the helpless either in my charge or before my sword."
My intention is to enforce the fact that a paladin does not attack a helpless foe. I could see the disarming bit because he is really rescuing a sacred relic that is an intelligent and good sword from an evil creature. It doesn't really belong to the thing any more, at least not in real sense beyond pure legality or possession. But to then deliberately destroy the creature while it is unarmed and can't fight back seems to be a problem. To my mind, it is the same a using a trip attack and attacking a fallen foe. In all chivalrous literature a knight does not attack a foe who is down and unable to defend himself.

My intentions are to impose a sanction on the paladin and have him loose his smite ability until he atones. This is symbolic because he struck when he should not have. I know that there will be resistance to my decision so I just want to see what the community itself thinks of this decision.

Death Knights are subject to mind-affecting compulsion spells? I don't have the book handy on that so I can't check. Anyway, on with my comments...

If you're going to ahead with the paladin losing his smite ability, make the atonement fairly easy. Destroying a death knight, even a helpless one, is morally unambiguous. It's the RIGHT thing to do. Would you penalize a paladin who destroyed a staked (or otherwise helpless) vampire? I hope not.

As far as attacking a tripped foe, tripped does not equal helpless. Sure, prone characters have some penalty, but they most certainly can defend themselves. A paladin might consider it in poor form to stab someone who tripped at his feet, but it's good way to get someone you might want to capture rather than kill. If they've fallen, disarm or grapple them and you'll have a slightly easier time. In that case, the intention of not causing too much harm should trump the fact that the opponent was off his feet as far as being a good paladin.

 

[Celedon]

Being undead, wouldn't the Death Knight be immune to precision based damage(i.e. sneak attacks), negative energy(negative levels), and compusion effects(Irresistable Dance)? Unless you have housed ruled otherwise or I'm wrong about his undead status(I don't have access to the death knight material), it seems the whole affair should have gone differently.

You are right, it was immune, but she tried it and being "stabbed in the back" kinda set the thing off, even though it was no more hurt than it would have been from a frontal attack. He is insane remember?

I don't think the holy power of the sword really is a negative energy attack, so I would not have allowed him to resist it because he was undead. However the idea that he might be immune to compulsion never really crossed my mind. I guess they slipped that one past me.

Hmm, seems like popular opinion is the paladin acted correctly. I guess I am just an old stick in the mud then. I haven't sanctioned him yet (he had not tried to use smite since the fight) so I guess I won't be doing so.

I guess you are right, it was an act of mercy not an act of evil. The spirit of the rule is what counts.

 

[Hjorimir]

I've been thinking a great deal about these Paladin threads lately and have remained relatively quiet. I think the best advice I can offer is this: without being ridiculous, play and DM in a manner that provides the greatest amount of enjoyment for everybody. That really should be the bottom line.