LG Paladin?

[Ysgarran]

The guestion about rogues
http://www.enworld.org/messageboards/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11385
got me wondering about this question:
Can a Paladin commit an evil act that would further the cause of greater good? I guess another way of asking this is "Does the ends excuse the means"?

Machiavelli proposed that a ruler may be sometimes excused
for performing acts of violence and deception that would
be ethically indefensible in private life. Is a Paladin capable of this moral calculation?
http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96may/machiavelli.html

In "Warrior Politics: Why Leadership demands a Pagan Ethos" Kaplan talks about how following very strict moral guidelines with no room for flexibility can lead to disaster. The lack of flexibility sounded like a Paladin to me.

In "When Celestials go bad" it was suggested that the greater good can sometimes out weigh the means. (Did I butcher the title of that article?).

A hypothetical situation:
There is a town with 10,000 people with a dike that has also has a prison with 500 prisoners. That dike protecting the town going to give way during torrential rains. There is NO way to prevent that from happening eventually. When that dike gives way 10,000 people will drown.

The collapse of the dike can be delayed if about 500 people work on shoring up the dike. Unfortunately many of those working on the dike will lose their lives when the dike does finally give way but the 10,000 (or 9,500) towns folk will be able to escape.

Different ways to deal with the problem:
1. Using leadership skills a character could convince some volunteers to give there lives so that a majority of the townspeople can escaple. This would be the Heroic way to do things.
2. You could force the prisoners to work on the dike.

If I was role-playing a Paladin in that situation I would promise a full pardon to all of the prisoners who worked on the dike and who survived. That probably would not pull in enough volunteers to ensure the dike lasts long enough.

Ysgarran.

p.s.
I thought about the flood scenario when watching this show:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/flood/
My hypothetical town doesn't really reflect what happened in Greenville. What really happened makes you wonder about human greed and some of the darker aspects of US history.

 

[Replica]

I think that alignment is relative. The evil villan may consider himself LG while the PC's would consider him LE. As long as commiting the act is not against the paladin's personal code, I see no problem with letting him perform what may, by some, be considered an evil act.

 

[Hand of Evil]

It is important that a DM define what his views of evil are in his game. Then have the paladin's code built around it.

Example of evil:
..Worship of the following gods...
..Slavery
..Murder (cold-blooded)
..Horse Thieft
..Orcs
..Spreading plagues
..Necromacy
..Consorting with demons & devils

Some of this will be based on the paladin's god and foe of their god but others would be based on world view/myth.

 

[Tonguez]

Can a Paladin commit an evil act that would further the cause of greater good?

Yes

As long as the Paladin is faithful to his 'code' and to his 'god'

Convincing others to sacrifice themselves for the greater good is not evil

Forcing others to sacrifice themselves is not evil (as long as the Paladin would sacrifice himself too)

Sacrificing 500 souls so that the god comes down and saves the town isn't evil either (if worship of the god involves human sacrifice)

 

[Plane Sailing]

For a very interesting take on this, I consider reading "Ringworld Engineers" by Larry Niven.

major spoiler for the book - turn away now!
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There is a creature called a Pak Protector who knows that if an orbital correction isn't made to the ringworld, billions upon billions will die. In order to save them it has to engineer something that will only kill hundreds of millions. But it is genetically engineered to protect its offspring at all costs, and can't bring itself to do it. However, it manages to doublethink its way to a situation where the heroes deduce what must be done (horrible as it is) and attempt to take the action - while all the time the Protector is going to be attempting to fight and kill them for trying to destroy some of its own people.

Rubbish synopsis, very interesting story - not least for the dilemma of knowing how to sacrifice the few for the many, but not being able to do so. personally, that is.

Cheers

 

[Ysgarran]

Ringworld Engineers.

Nice analogy, I have read the book but had forgotten about the situation. I've thought about going back and re-reading all the 'known world' series by Larry Niven.

I remember the battle between the Kzinti and the Pak Protector fairly clearly. The Pak Protector had to fight to because of the way it was 'wired' but the Pak did not fight to its fullest capabilities.

Side note:
Anyone ever come with a Pak Protector template?

 

[Tom Cashel]

NO!

See this thread for a similar discussion of "ends justifying the means": http://www.enworld.org/messageboards/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11314

You may choose to make it so in your campaign, but in the D&D rules alignment is not relative! There is a balance to the cosmos, and it all depends on good and evil.

As I said in the aforementioned thread, there is only one gray area in D&D where evil acts may result in good ends: it's called neutrality.

Perhaps a CG or NG individual could do such things, if the DM is lenient...but Good and Evil are absolutes in D&D. I'm not making any claims about the real world, mind you, but D&D isn't quite the real world.

Basically, what I'm saying is that paladins pay for their 27 special powers by having to stick to a code of behavior. It's not always easy to achieve good by doing good, but that's why they're paladins and they get all those powers.

How many Star Trek:TNG episodes have their been where someone says to Picard, for example, "We only have two choices! We can abandon them, or we can fight!" Good might be achieved by morally repugnant means, but Picard would always say, "Then we have to find another way."

In your example of the Failing Dike, the only "paladinly" thing to do is to use Leadership to convince people to help you, and then sacrifice yourself along with them when the dike goes. If you live, then obviously your god respects what a great paladin you are.

Nobody said it was easy to be a paladin; although people seem to want to make it that way. Hey, that's fine. To each his own. But that's not how the rules paint it.

 

[evileeyore]

GOOD is Good, EVIL is Evil.

That said any God that requires sacrifices (of the sentient kind) is EVIL. Thus will not have Paladins, as you can't be more than 1 step from your Gods alignment.

I know I too want to play an "Anti-Paladin", and not that crappy BlackGuard either. But WotC haven't made one (with the exception of the Holy Liberator... which was well done).

Anyway, really its up to the DM, does he stick strictly to the G vs E thing or let in some flex. I know my DMs don't, and I don't either.

Of course in the above example i wouldn't hit the Paladin too hard, if he "forced" the prisoners to work and die. Just add it to the tallies, when the Evil tallies hit too many (a personal judgement) he'd slip.

 

[Tom Cashel]

Well, it comes down to a difference in styles (as usual, with alignment things).

If the paladin forced prisoners to work and die in my campaign, he'd lose paladin status so fast his head would spin.

He'd have a chance to atone, of course...

 

[Oracular Vision]

GOOD is Good, EVIL is Evil.

That said any God that requires sacrifices (of the sentient kind) is EVIL. Thus will not have Paladins, as you can't be more than 1 step from your Gods alignment.

I know I too want to play an "Anti-Paladin", and not that crappy BlackGuard either. But WotC haven't made one (with the exception of the Holy Liberator... which was well done).

This is of course wrong. Read the PHB, there is NO limitation on which god a Paladin must worship or what alignment that God must have. He doesn't even need to have a god!

There is a limitation on not staying around evil people, but, by the rules, there is no restriction on you being a Paladin, of, say, Vecna. It would be a solo life (as you couldn't hang around his priests), and it implies you are gullible enough to have been fooled into believing the lies of Vecnian clerics. But Paladins don't have excess stats to waste on INT, so that could happen.