Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Holy Bovine" data-source="post: 787152" data-attributes="member: 203">I agree that forcing a Paladin to choose between the lesser of two evils (assuming he makes the right choice! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />) can be a very fun and interesting scenario.  I was more concerned about immediately revoking a PC's Paladinhood for making a tough choice within even tougher circumstances.  Seems far too heavy handed for me and very DM Ex Mechania.  For example in my campaign just recently the party was trying to figure out what was happening in a nearby town.  People were disappearing and a strange man was searching for his 'carnival'.  Turns out that the carnival owner was a creature called the Jack of Tears (if you have read any Scarred Lands stuff you will know that this guy is Evil with a capital 'E', I modified him slightly and he was more of a worshipper of Chaos and Anarchy than evil) and he was taking some children away from the village to join his carnival.  He revealed to the party that he was only taking those children who otherwise would have died early deaths anyways.  Jack was accompanied by about 2 dozen of his cronies and was on the brink of overpowering the PCs and killing them all when he ordered his minions to stop.  He offered the PCs their lives and the promise that he wouldn't return to this town if they allowed him to return to his home with the children.  The children even told the PCs they wanted to go with Jack.  Reluctantly, and with much grumbling and gnashing of teeth, the PCs allowed Jack to leave with the children.Afterwards the players said it was one of the best games they had ever played.  I was surprised and thought they would be ticked because they didn't get a chance to kill Jack or even save the children.  I even had the townsfolk jeer and curse them for failing to save the children.  The Paladin did not lose his Paladinhood and the Neutral Good Cleric did not suffer sanctions from her goddess.  Why?  Because i put them into a situation where they were either going to die and fail or live and fail.  It would have been grossly unfair of me to impose penalties simply because they chose to live and fight another day (and believe me they really want to beat the Hell out of Jack! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />)Sorry for the long post but I felt that this example shows how I run the 'no-win' scenario.</blockquote>

Verification