Judgement For The Damned--Paladins, Vampires; What Price For Victory?

[Particle_Man]

...the Barney Fief of paladins.

And...yoink!

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Hmmm, the Geneva conventions.... Ah yes. No uniform. Check. Bearing weapons openly? Doubtful. Not abiding by the rules of war. Check. Attacking civilians. (I'm guess yes). Not a signatory. Definite check. Nor in the service of a signatory to the convention. So, summary execution still sounds legit.... I'm not saying the described action is the right choice for the paladin, but it doesn't sound like the Geneva conventions would afford the tiefling any protection.

Frankly I do like the idea of imposing the Geneva Convention on paladins. They're not Nazis, they're not Communists, and they're not Mob bosses in plate armor. I think that medieval campaigns should be predominately evil with paladins as among the few bastions of righteousness in the world. Paladins shouldn't lower themselves to medieval standards. They should raise them. This is coming from a guy who doesn't like paladins.

When it comes down to Julia's death I can't understand what idiot would let this guy carry a sword and deal with matters of life and death. This guy is at least the Barney Fief of paladins.

 

[Thundering_Dragon]

Regardless of the morality of the decision, the tactical logic of openly and boldly denying the Vampires bargaining stance was a poor call. Even the most ill concieved plan of rescue at least has a chance of saving the hostage, but the Paladin in this scenario basically said, "kill her, don't kill her, you're still dead". I would impose a -10 Wisdom penalty to represent the actual mental faculties of the Paladin, but, that's me.

On to the next issue, I think the Paladin broke the Lawful side of his alignment, and at least skirted the Good/Neutral/Evil axis here. From what you're describing here, this seems to be a military type mission, and once you take prisoners in a military campaign, you do not make arbitrary decisions to suddenly kill them because the enemy forces just fragged a buddy of yours. It's tempting, but resisting temptations like that is what seperates the good guys from the bad guys.

He clearly violated the Lawful side of his ethos, making an on the spot judgment without taking time to think it through and consult with others. Lawful characters are supposed to make calls based on deliberation and methodical process, not snap judgments based on their own personal thoughts or opinions.

In any case, this sounds like a fantastic campaign. The way you described the situation and the way it was occured was very thematic and entertaining. If your players get treated to the same descriptions, they must be having a blast.

 

[Belen]

SHARK- great to have you back! It has been too long since we have seen your posts.

 

[glass]

My bad. For some reason as I was reading the first post, my brain read the post date as SHARK's join date, so I thought the original post was posted in 2002. Oops.

I do that all the time!


glass.

 

[Rackhir]

From SHARK's second post it sound like the paladin acted mostly out of personal emotion. While he had both "Good" and Lawful reasons to have executed her, they were not the primary motivation. He did no wrong in executing her, from everything I gather about the campaign and setting she should have been and would have been executed eventually. However, he did it not out of a lawful reason or a capital G "Good" reason, but out of personal anger and sorrow.

So I would require the Paladin to atone, no penalties for now, but when he gets back to a higher authority to report, they would chastise him over his reasons for acting. Then they would assign him a fairly light and easy atonement designed to reenforce the idea that why one acts is important too.

To paraphrase Star Wars "Emotion, strong emotion. Leads to the darkside it does." A Paladin needs to have "better" reasons for executing someone like that.

 

[Voadam]

Greetings!

Do you think that Berenar made the right decision? What do you think that the party should have done?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

In what sense are you asking? And are you asking about the decision to attack the vamp instead of negotiating or slaying the tiefling or both?

Are you asking if as a paladin should there be any paladin power conseuences for his actions?

I would say no, I would not rule that he did anything evil or grossly in violation of the code so I wouldn't revoke his powers. The paladin is trying to play the hammer of good against evil and I wouldn't mess with him for these actions.

Tactically? Possibly though attacking first instead of declaring his intent to attack would have been better.

Never negotiating for hostages is a reasonable tactical choice and if the evil minion deserving of death has no more use alive then killing her before she becomes a liability is also a tactically reasonable decision.

 

[mmadsen]

Never negotiating for hostages is a reasonable tactical choice...

The complication is that you'd like to present a very credible threat that you never negotiate with hostages -- so that no one takes any of your allies hostage -- but once your allies are held hostage, you obviously want to negotiate for their release.

 

[sword-dancer]

Since I could clearly accept that the valnorrean churches, orders etc have a no negotiations politic, i could accept the charge.

But what the pally did was murder, not coold blood but in the heat of the moment, but murder no less.
And therefore he would be an ex pally.

 

[Voadam]

The complication is that you'd like to present a very credible threat that you never negotiate with hostages -- so that no one takes any of your allies hostage -- but once your allies are held hostage, you obviously want to negotiate for their release.

No.

You are assuming the hostage's life is the most important issue for the group. Tactically you consider your objectives and priorities and act efficiently to meet those. If your sole objective is to kill the vamp, for example, then the fact that he has a hostage is to your tactical advantage as he is pinned down holding her instead of fleeing and therefore vulnerable to the smiting that breaks apart his physical form. If one of your priorities is to never treat with Evil, then again negotiating goes against that. If one of your priorities is taking the long view and setting the example that paladins don't ever negotiate for hostages to set up a credible threat of never negotiating so the tactic is used less against paladins then sacrificing the current valuable hostage meets that objective.