Is this paladin in trouble?

[Endur]

How strict of a code will you require your Paladin to follow? Would you permit D'Artagnan or another of the Four Musketeers to retain their paladin abilities? After all, they had strife between King and Queen and the King's Ministers, and had to decide who to honor.

Superheroes, the stars of the Xfiles, and others often have to deal with conspiracies and wrong-doing by those in positions of power. If a paladin receives an illegal order, are they bound to follow it? bound to oppose it? etc.

What if they have no jurisdiction? How tight are they bound to authority?

All questions to consider.

Resonable arguments could be made that the Four Musketeers, Batman, Superman, Captain America, Spiderman, etc. are all variants of the Paladin class.

 

[Blackwind]

Zog: Yes, I suppose. I still don't understand Eberron's double standard for clerics and paladins. How and why are paladins "mystically called" to a higher standard? In a setting where alignment is supposed to be, at the very least, subjective... I could assume that the writers of that book actually meant "mystically" as such - that is, that the paladin has some kind of direct, personal gnosis of the divine reality, but somehow I think they meant "mystically" more in the common sense of "****ed if we know how, but it's sort of uncanny and supernatural and stuff." Even if the writers were using the word in the way that I would like to take it, I still don't understand why clerics aren't holy enough to have this inner knowing, when they get spells and other divine abilities just as paladins do. See, it's like a tree that I'm poking with a stick to see if it's hollow. The consistency is questionable.

LOL I hope that made sense. And by the way, I really loved Legend of Huma, but I hardly remember it as I was 9 or 10 at the time.

atom crash: Lane does have a commanding officer she can report to, and he's not a complete ***hole. And then there's Lord Kor (the King's brother and commander of the Citadel), whose life she once saved. But I don't really like the idea of a Phylactery. It just grates on me aesthetically.

Endur: These are all good points and I will take them into consideration when we work out Lane's code. The Four Musketeers are especially good examples because they, IIRC, were also directly loyal to the crown.

 

[kigmatzomat]

I recommend you look for some of the classical moral conundrums online. There are plenty of scenarios where there is no "right" choice, only shades of unhappy. Then explain which way your world's "Lawful Good" would lean and why. Note that "lawful good" and "in tune with the official legal code" are different things.

Good scenarios to discuss the legal response and the response called for by her Code & alignment:

Bandits caught mid-rape
Man accused of rape
Man cleared of rape charges but later proven to have done it.
Murder caught literally red-handed and bragging of success
Man accused of murder
Thief caught with crown jewels in hand
Thief caught with stolen bread

 

[Infernal Teddy]

Resonable arguments could be made that the Four Musketeers, Batman, Superman, Captain America, Spiderman, etc. are all variants of the Paladin class.

For some reason, I can't see the musketeers being seen as paladins. Swashbucklers, yes. Cool fighters, yes. Portos as barbarian, yes. Paladins? Never.

 

[Blackwind]

Resolution

In case anyone is interested in how this situation turned out:

Lane's player and a couple of other people from our group came over last night for drinks, etc (not game night). We got to talking about the campaign (of course) and I brought up the matter of Lane's code. Specifically, I explained the fact that her powers were dependent on her loyalty to this code of honor, and that I wanted to work out the general principles so that we would have some guidelines to work with. One of the other players, who is also a veteran of many campaigns, cut right to the chase and explained that if Lane fell from grace (and didn't atone), her stats would be screwed and she'd be better off having the character jump off a skybridge.

As it turned out, Lane's player hadn't really understood what it meant to be a paladin, or to be Lawful Good. I read her some choice excerpts from the PHB and she realized that her character's inner convictions were more NG than anything else, and that she wasn't really cut out for paladinhood. So I allowed her to rebuild her character as a NG Fighter 1/Rogue 1, and I think we all feel a lot better about the situation now. She had just gotten to 2nd level, and had hardly used her special abilties anyway. We didn't have to change anything about Lane's background or personality (fortunately, as she had written about two pages of it) - just her stats. She still works for the King's Swords, but doesn't have to worry about losing any special abilities if she decides to go freelance. Not to mention she'll get along better with all the elves and the pixie and whatnot...