BSF
Explorer
Death Knights are abominations against life. Losing powers for destroying one is akin to having to atone for destroying an evil item. Evil magic items can be intelligent, undead can be intelligent. Evil items can corrupt and kill, undead can corrupt and kill. Evil items laying on the table are potentially helpless, undead rarely are. Even if this Death Knight/Blackguard was under the affects of a compulsion, it is hardly helpless - at least in the sense of the helpless condition.
Without it's sword it still has a nasty touch attack, as well as spell-like abilities. At the moment that it was liberated from it's undead husk, it was unable to effectively attack. Depending on a definition of Honor, that might be a problem. Still, you need to really consider the long lasting implications here.
A staked out vampire is helpless, but how can you honorably destroy one? Leaving it's coffin out where the sun can hit it is akin to leaving a human opponent staked to a beach below the high tide mark.
Technically, any time the paladin drops a foe, and does not check for a pulse and then possibly lay on hands to stablize that foe, the paladin might be abandoning the helpless.
Would you/have you penalized a paladin for either of these situations? If not, why? What is different? How should the paladin have handled this situation? Leave the Death Knight be to kill and corrupt another day? Hope the undead creature of Death would repent and see the error of it's ways? Wait until the spell wore off and then give him back the sword so they can fight it out honorably? Capture the Death Knight and hope it conveniently forgets that it can create abyssal fire at a thought?
You are looking at yanking the Paladin's smite ability because he commited an error in your opinion, but it is not clear that there was a way out of this situation short of simply pounding it out, blow for blow, with the Death Knight and trusting that good would win.
If you want to punish the punish the paladin, give him a negative circumstance modifer when dealing with other honorable NPC's. They can sense that the paladin somehow violated the tenets of an honorable fight at some point. If the player feels the honor violation, he should be asking for forgiveness anyway.
Without it's sword it still has a nasty touch attack, as well as spell-like abilities. At the moment that it was liberated from it's undead husk, it was unable to effectively attack. Depending on a definition of Honor, that might be a problem. Still, you need to really consider the long lasting implications here.
A staked out vampire is helpless, but how can you honorably destroy one? Leaving it's coffin out where the sun can hit it is akin to leaving a human opponent staked to a beach below the high tide mark.
Technically, any time the paladin drops a foe, and does not check for a pulse and then possibly lay on hands to stablize that foe, the paladin might be abandoning the helpless.
Would you/have you penalized a paladin for either of these situations? If not, why? What is different? How should the paladin have handled this situation? Leave the Death Knight be to kill and corrupt another day? Hope the undead creature of Death would repent and see the error of it's ways? Wait until the spell wore off and then give him back the sword so they can fight it out honorably? Capture the Death Knight and hope it conveniently forgets that it can create abyssal fire at a thought?
You are looking at yanking the Paladin's smite ability because he commited an error in your opinion, but it is not clear that there was a way out of this situation short of simply pounding it out, blow for blow, with the Death Knight and trusting that good would win.
If you want to punish the punish the paladin, give him a negative circumstance modifer when dealing with other honorable NPC's. They can sense that the paladin somehow violated the tenets of an honorable fight at some point. If the player feels the honor violation, he should be asking for forgiveness anyway.
