[MENTION=18]Ruin Explorer[/MENTION] - your posts 215 and 216 are very good, but unfortunately I can't give you XP at this time.
It's not a "win" to do that, because that requires meta-game "knowledge" that orcs are always evil and impossible to redeem, even though love and faith, miracles and the divine! Knowledge, too, of something not true in normal D&D games/settings (certainly not the FR). Rather the DM has decided this, and when the PCs don't agree, inserts this meta-game knowledge and insists they act accordingly.
There's no dilemma for anyone who is Good. There is only one course, which is to try to save them. Neutral or Evil PCs might face a dilemma, but not Good PCs.
(It could become a dilemma if, by saving them, you had to risk other lives in a more immediate way - i.e. had to divert from stopping a dragon or something - but that's really just asking for splitting the party or the like.)
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PCs who aren't Good may have a choice, but most PCs, in my experience, are Good.
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D&D is a world of magic and miracles. There's a first time for everything. Orcs aren't demons in any mainstream D&D setting I'm aware of, they're living beings who make choices, and can choose not to be Evil, even if it's really hard. This world was the FR, specifically. The Paladin's brave counter-argument, was, as I recall, more or less that miracles happen, and it seemed to him that doing this not only broke his code, but dishonoured the gods by not allowing for that miracle (even if orcs were auto-evil).
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If we have orcs as manufactured monstrosities, created in the spawning-pits by a wizard, programmed from birth with pre-coded instructions from which they cannot deviate, that's something else, without the same moral dilemma, but it's also not what we had here (and it's basically "biomechanoids" or "robots", rather than typical fantasy orcs, I'd suggest).
What you describe in these posts is, to me, an example of excellent paladin/cleric play - the conviction that miracles happen, and that divine providence is both a mystery
and an inevitable reality. And a parallel conviction that human choices have to be humble in the face of that reality.
In my experience, it's not always easy to predict which way players will go with this sort of stuff. For instance, sometimes they (via their PCs) might express the view that they are
agents of divine providence in the gameworld, and hence have their PCs do something that the GM wasn't expecting, and perhaps isn't even comfortable with. Your group decided to save the babies. Their humility is displayed by choosing to do the right thing, and not taking it upon themselves to be the sole authors of whatever consequences ensue - the miracle of redemption is always possible, and it's not their place to foreclose the matter via murder.
I could imagine a different group, by reasoning along very similar lines, might decide to kill the babies - they have been sent as agents of providence to free the world of the scourge of orcs, and if that means killing babies then so be it. What the babies did to deserve death, and their fate in the next life, is a matter for the gods to know - mere humans don't take responsibility for such matters.
I think the fact that different players, playing with basically the same tropes and thematic outlook, can come to very different responses, is an excellent reason for the GM to let the events of play take their course. When I GM an RPG, what I am hoping and looking for (among other things) is to see my players engage in a sincere and spontaneous way with these sorts of thematic issues. I
want to be moved, surprised, sometimes even enraged, by their choices! Sticking my bib in as GM, to tell them how they should really choose, would be self-defeating and pointless.
being basically good IRL are never going to remotely comfortable with this genocidal approach/not-even-god-can-redeem-them approach (which would work for demons/undead), so there is an impasse.
PCs are played by human beings who actually care about stuff and have moral limits. No matter how many times a DM explains it's okay for me to kill helpless babies of a decision-making, binary-gendered, learning species, I am not going to agree. Nor would almost any adult I'd game with.
I think this is another good point. If my players come at a situation in a different way from me, because of their particular moral, aesthetic or other emotional/evaluative response, why would I want to force them to disregard their own reactions and embrace mine? Why would I want to turn their PCs into characters they would prefer not to identify with?
is that not the essence of faith? To believe in the power of his god, to trust that the divine will manifest its might through him and defeat the evil, even though the rest of the world scoffs?
If anything, there's an argument that this is exactly the type of paladin behaviour you should be rewarding, instead of punishing.
Tactically, the player chose a low-probability but high-reward strategy.I think that denying the paladin player that option is excessive.
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I think that this is an example of micromanaging player choices, which is the temptation of paladins for DMs, and should be avoided.
On the other hand it could just be hubris... stupidity... stubbornness... or guided by any number of other motivations, the facts are that he was a paladin of a god whose tenets included defense of the weak from the front line... The relevant question is... did he embody these ideals in his actions? Another question I'd be curious to know the answer to was did the player and his comrades think he did
upon charging to try and defend the shaman, the rogue turned to the Paladin and called him a coward and disgrace.
Like [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] said, in commenting on this episode I can only talk about what's been presented, and use it to make some more general points about my own approach to GMing.
Was the paladin being appropriately faithful/trusting? Or hubristic? Or cowardly, as the player of the rogue alleged? I don't think it's my job as GM to stipulate an answer to this by playing the paladin's god. If the d20 roll comes up 18, the paladin was in the right! If the whole things turns into a fiasco, and his companions shun him or jibe him or make him pay for the Raise Dead or whatever, then it turns out he was wrong, and
was being hubristic.
To me, it's a bit like the player of any PC coming up with, and then trying to implement, a wacky plan and other players criticising it as too risky, too crazy, whatever. Let the play of the game, the roll of the dice and the responses of the players to what actually happens sort it out.
If the GM is going to decide in advance what does or doesn't count as good play - via the sort of "micromanaging" that GSHamster describes - then what is the role of the players?
His deity gave him insight which let him know that his Turn attempts were almost impossible to pull off against such a foe, hinting that he should (due to greater probability of success) rather engage in melee should he wish to save his comrades.
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He purposefully ignored the vision sent to him by his deity. Not once, but twice, while his allies were desperately scrambling to do his work/his duty. Engaging the dragon in melee is his sworn duty, attempting to Turn is calling upon the Deity of his power. When the deity tells you the latter is not a viable option and you persist, you are directly disobeying a superior's orders.
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This part you (the player) already agreed to when you signed up to the play the character, too late to throw that in as a problem.
It is true
of the PC that he is sworn to carry out his god's will. But the
player is there to play a game, not just to dance to the GM's tune.
It's one thing for the GM to provide the player with relevant information (eg that the chance of successful turning is very low). But if the player decides to continue taking that chance (eg because the player has decided that the chance of success in melee is comparably low or even lower), then I don't see that it's the GM's job to step in and micromanage.
Fine, but then you're using a reskinning technique. No problem, I've done it in the past, but what you have here is a player that wants to play a cleric or paladin, but prefers the mechanics of the fighter or rogue class.
I don't agree with this analysis.
One of the PCs in my 4e game is a drow sorcerer/bard, who is also a Primordial Adept (theme) and Emergent Primordial (epic destiny), in the service of Chan, Queen of Good Air Elemental Creatures. The same character is also a member of a secret, primarily drow, sect that worships Corellon and is devoted to liberating the drow from the yoke of Lolth and undoing the sundering of the elves. He wears a symbol of Corellon which (being a symbol of the god of magic) lets him recall a low-level spell once per day (a bit like a Pearl of Power; in the 4e system it is a species of divine boon from DMG2).
This character is not a reskin. But divine (or quasi-divine, in the case of the primordial Chan) entities are as central to the play of this character, arguably moreso, than they are to the play of the cleric-ranger in the party (who is an undead and demon hunter devotee of the Raven Queen, but who mostly remains aloof from the theological arguments that increasingly break out among the other PCs).
D&D, at least as I play it, is a game in which supernatural forces are rife, and real, and play a role in the lives of characters beyond those with the divine power source. This approach is the clear default for 4e, but I think has been an implicit approach in other editions too - eg the war between Law and Chaos in early D&D and B/X, and the role in the Greyhawk campaign of gods, demigods and demons that Gygax talks about in his DMG. I think it makes for fun and satisfying high/gonzo fantasy RPGing - the tropes are readily available and reliable, the stakes can be drawn clearly yet have a degree of thematic depth and resonance, and it marks a difference between fantasy gaming and simply mediaeval gaming with a veneer of magic on top. (Not that there's anything wrong with the latter - but I personally wouldn't use D&D for it.)
In this style of game, leaving the players with a meaningful sphere of action means the GM leaving it to them to decide, to a significant extent, what the gods demand and what counts as honouring those demands. For instance, with the sorcerer I mentioned, it is the player who has decided that this cult exists, and that Corellon wants them to undo the sundering of the elves, and hence that the proper attitude towards Lolth-worshippig drow is pity rather than hatred. I'm not going to step in and rewrite all this - that wouldn't make for a better game. My attitude towards the player of a paladin or cleric is the same.
It treats D&D as a game without an implied setting
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I don't go to D&D for generic fantasy, I go to it for a specific kind of D&Dish fantasy, and in that kind of fantasy a character with the fighter abilities is powered by himself, while a character with the abilities of a paladin is powered by an external source.
I don't really understand this point - I agree that D&D has an implied setting. But as I've tried to explain, both in my previous paragraph and in my quote from Gygax and in my reference to the Law/Chaos war that was an element of earlier D&D, I think an inherent aspect of that implied setting is that not just the clerics and paladins are bound up with supernatural forces.
Basically, you don't have a problem with attitude, it's a matter of intensity
This sounds like an allusion/reference to something, but if it is I've not got it, sorry.
But treating it literally - my problem is with a GM unilaterally contradicting a player's conception of his/her PC, and what is proper for that PC, and on that basis rewriting the PC. If the player and GM want to rewrite the PC together - eg the player deliberately chooses to have his/her PC turn on his/her god - then that's a different thing altogether. And, as I said, there is plenty of material over multiple editions of D&D to support the player and GM working out consequences together.
For our group to abandon the paradigm of DM judgement, it would have to mean an immediate and real improvement to our game, that we don't see happening.
I don't think anyone is asking you to play the same as them. But I don't see how the 5e paladin (as presented, say, in the last playtest packet with one LG and one LN/N oath) makes it hard for you to do what you want to do.
Nowadays my default DM solution to the "baby orc" dilemma is to avoid it entirely
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I consider it a special case of the "prisoner dilemma" i.e. what does the party do with prisoners. Similarly, I don't dwell on the prisoner dilemma nowadays unless it's a major theme of the campaign. My game time is valuable and I don't find the issue interesting most of the time.
I don't use baby orcs/goblins whatever - when the PCs in my game assault goblin or hobgoblin fortresses there are no non-combatants. They've never asked where the children and civilian goblins are, and I've never felt any need to address this.
Prisoners, on the other hand, are a recurring part of my game. The wizard/invoker has a habit of killing them, which shocks the other PCs (and their players). More often , prisoners are released on their own parole, after swearing appropriate oaths etc. Except in one or two special cases where it was known to the players from the get-go that the prisoner was not going to keep faith, the whole table has always taken it for granted that these prisoners keep their word and don't go back to their lives of wrongdoing. Or to put it another way (which fits with your comment about "valuable table time") - the decision to parole the prisoners is about the players expressing their PCs' values; it's not about setting up a potential challenge/threat to recur in the future (the exception being that small number of special cases where it's obvious in the whole situation that this is what is happening).
