How Should the Paladin Suffer?

[Sejs]

His restoration will only come when he has freed the soul of the child,...

Which would be pretty bloody hard to do, as he's blind and mute. If he can't even see his socks to tell if they match how much luck would he have in saving the girl and defeating the Deadbeat Dad?

 

[Silveras]

From the sound of things, no punishment is needed.

He *did* make the promise too lightly, but that can be your hook to bring him back to the situation.

Every night, starting the night the girl is "Zombified", the Paladin has a dream. A dream in which he is standing in the woods, lush and leafy like the height of summer. Then the woods turn cold, the trees bare; and a little voice echoes "you PROMISED !" He runs through the woods, but only hears echoes of the voice "you PROMISED !". And he wakes in a cold sweat.

A promise to a little girl to always protect her, when she is scared in a big dark forest is not the same thing as a holy vow to always protect the king.

Oh, but they are the same thing. The one to whom you made the promise is irrelevant. Likewise, whether the dangers were shadows among the trees or assassins among the servants, a blanket promise of protection is equally binding.

The only difference is whether the deity of the Paladin is involved. An oath "I swear by the god X" is slightly more binding than "I promise", but more because the Paladin in that case has dragged his/her god into it. Now there are 2 entities (the Paladin and his/her god) who "lose face" if the Paladin reneges on the promise. The god typically won't stand for that.

If the Paladin "only" promised, s/he still has made a commitment. The Paladin's powers are predicated on the Paladin being the sort of person who follows through with commitments.

The other question is, what did the Paladin promise ? If it was to keep the little girl safe always, then the Paladin made an unwise commitment. If it was to keep her safe until he could return the little girl home, then that is what was done, and there is no "foul" on that.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

The party encountered dad while they were first level. He's a busy single parent and, while he works, his daughter stays at home. She's incredibly intelligent and precocious, and, in all fairness to dad, more than he can handle.

....

Ultimately, dad *loves* his daughter.

Ahem. True or False: "By brining a little girl back to her father who loves her, the paladin has knowingly committed an evil act."

My initial thoughts were to take away his powers at the moment the girl died. However, that kind of tips my hand a little bit. I plan on sending dreams that something is wrong to the entire party.

The reason I thought it would be a good idea to have some loss of abilities upon making the discovery is that charisma is the Paladin's prime requisite. In 3.xe, Charisma is force of personality. I figure having a six-year-old zombie look up at you and say "You promised" in an accusing voice, while making a slam attack might serve to shake your self-confidence, just a bit.

While I'm agaisnt taking anything from the paladin, if you are going to take something from him, then the dreams should be his and his alone. Unless the sorcerer's going to take a hit too? How about a bard? Will your cleric's turn undead become less effective too? That all uses charisma

Like I said before, atonement will be fairly easily obtained, because I don't want to screw the paladin. I just want a good way to portray what I think will be a very dramatic scene.

If atonement is easy, then there should never have been a loss in the first place. From what you've said so far, I have no reason to believe that there was any failing on the paladin's part. In fact, I see more justification (but still little) for you to strip him of his abilities after he comes in and solves the problem. You've got enough going to make it dramatic without any stripping of abilities. Play up the fact that daddy loves her, but she's hurting. With some luck and masterful DMing, you'll get the paladin trying to balance saving the girl, punishing the father, and teaching the father better.

But I am fully against any ability loss. In fact, unless your player is a better sport about this sort of thing than I am, it seems like a setup for hard feelings between you and the player, and a bit of a paladin trap.

 

[Beholder Bob]

Ignore the others - I love the set up you have! He he - twist that dagger. Game events should have some emotion connected to them, and this promises to be a rather gut wrenching event. I say good GMing!

BB

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

When the paladin made this promise, did you make it clear to him that it effectively meant that if he ever left the girl's side and something bad happened to her, his abilities would be in jeopardy?

There's a couple different ways to mean, "I will always protect you". One is the bodyguard's "Will literally always be in the same room with you to keep the bad away." Another is the more knightly, "I am always on call to come to your aid, should you need it."

Considering that the former would end his adventuring career, I'd assume he meant the latter. Also, you didn't punish him when he left her alone with Daddy, which would have been a breach of the first sort of promise. You have already tacitly agreed that he's not actually responsible for her welfare 24/7. To change your mind now would not be fair.

Ergo, he only gets punished if he hears about trouble and then fails to react. If you want to screw him over, make it so he has to choose between helping the girl and doing some other important thing.

I am total agreement. This seems an overbearing burden that is being used simply because the character is a paladin. If the character swore a solemn oath before his god to always protect this child from harm, then the player was stupid and should get all kinds of punishment. If he simply promised to protect her to allay the fears of a 6-year old child, then he did his duty and I would only expect that he would come if called, or if he knew she was in trouble. Would the paladin be forced to suffer if she fell out of a tree she was climbing and broke her arm? He was not there to protect her.

There should be no real (i.e. game term) penalties to the paladin. The only thing I've seen that I agree with is the idea of the guilt imposed on him when the child accuses him of not being there based upon her 6-year old's opinion of what that promise meant. The player can then roleplay however he feels he should.

 

[Abraxas]

"I engineered the situation so he would have the opportunity to blow it."

Here's a little more backstory:

snip for brevity's sake

OK, Having read the backstory - Punishment = NONE.
He still didn't do anything wrong - and it appears the player may not have understood that reassuring words = solemn vow (something that should have been explained before the character was ever created).

Like others have said - send prophetic dreams, if he chooses to ignore them then he is in trouble, otherwise its appears to be "Screwing with the paladin cause, as DM, I feel like it".

 

[WizarDru]

Well, if it were me, I wouldn't have killed the little girl in the first place. Now, maybe that's because I actually have a 6 year old daughter, and this sort of thing isn't 'intersting plot twist' to me, but disturbing. I personally would have set it up so that the girl could be saved, and the paladin would receive prophetic dreams. Either the process could be reversed, or it hadn't happened, yet.

A father who'd kill his 6-year old daughter and turn her into a brainless flesh-eating zombie does NOT love his daughter...not unless he's seriously and dangerously insane, IMHO.

As for the paladin, he's done nothing to provoke retribution.

In fact, I often wonder where the heck the good deity was in the first place. Apparently that deity is willing to strip an effective force for good of his abilities for a perceived slight, but couldn't be bothered to try and stop the event from happening in the first place. Why would the deity let the little girl be murdered and demand she be avenged, when a dream a few days earlier couldn't prevented the whole affair? Why does evil always get to be proactive, and good always reactive?

I'm all for giving the paladin moral dilemmas to deal with, but this sounds like a preconceived trap he had little chance to evade, based on the description above.

 

[jarlaxlecq]

sounds like another DM out for his player's blood
:\

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

As others have said, no punishment unless you want one of the themes of your game to be that rash oaths are dangerous and that promises are the same as oaths.

And, if you do want that to be a theme of your game, you STILL should not punish the paladin by taking away his powers. Making his rash oath is not anything peculiar to a paladin. If there is to be any punishment, it should be visited upon all characters who make promises that they don't keep--Paladin or no. Anyway, in order to do that kind of thing properly, it would need to be a real oath "By Thor and Baldur, may my strength wither if I ever fail to protect you" or something like that. From the sounds of things, you need to introduce such concepts to your game first (and give people a reason to make such oaths--perhaps it simply has social benefits inasmuch as people are expected to call down punishments upon themselves in the making of solemn oaths or perhaps the gods called to witness an oath actually help in the performance of it).

 

[takyris]

None. See all the other people who said "None" for the reasons why.