Law vs. Good - The paladin's dilemma (Advice needed)

[hopeless]

Reg: Paladins

Running interference.
The player running the Paladin runs a Forgotten Realms campaign which has apparently been run using 1st, 2nd and now 3rd edition. He aged my cleric 60 years under 3.0 rules and then said it would costs 28,875gp to get a miracle cast on my character and when we got back there and conveniently I was carrying a ring of wizardry and enough money to cover the rest he then turned around and said there wasn't anyone who could cast the spell.
My character has been recently assassinated, he then asked if I wanted to run the assassin!
I'm taking a break from that club and intend to plan a Kingdoms of Kalamar campaign where I intend to teach him the error of his ways but I rather doubt he'll let me have the chance since in both instances I seen him run a character they've both been fanatical divine types with homocidal tendencies.
Anyway answering these threads is my way of finally understanding why he does these things, and no it still doesn't make sense but until I find another group I'll see what develops.

 

[LostSoul]

Let the player decide if he broke his oath. If he did, let the player decide what, if any, mechanical changes should be made.

Play his mentor as his mentor; if the mentor thinks that our Pally did something wrong, then he should let him know it.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I'm not quite sure what the paladin was doing entering into this agreement in the first place. The purpose of holding a hostage is to hold a threat over someone. Most typicaly the only real power the hostage holder has is to kill the hostage. Had the kobolds broken their agreement, would the paladin have killed a helpless hostage kobold? That's probably another arguement entirely.

Regarding what did happen, I would say that if the Paladin did enter into the agreement, he broke his word by his actions. Unless the paladin was bound by oath to defend the dwarf under all circumstances, his helping the dwarf made him equally responsible for breaking with agreement.

The arguement could be made that the paladin would have been justified in helping the kobolds take down the dwarf who violated the terms of the agreement. If I were the player, I would have attempted to restrain the dwarf and restore the agreement. If the kobolds still attacked the paladin because he was with the dwarf, then he can defend himself and he didn't do anything wrong at all. The paladin is not responsible for the foolish actions of others.

 

[Jim Hague]

I'm with others on this - why did he agree to this, again? It seems a little murky, though perhaps there's more details we're not getting. His going along with the dwarf is a mild code violation, certainly not worth an alignment shift unless it's part of a pattern of behavior. The Superman advice is dead on.