My Paladin killed a child molester (and now my DM wants to take away my powers!)

[DarkMaster]

Yep. Remember paladins aren't Jedi with their Vulcanesque notions of anti-anger and cool logic.

There is nothing wrong with paladin bringing the weight of his righteous wrath upon the head of some evil scum!

Control of yourself, self discipline is a major part of being lawful the paladin being the pinacle of lawfullness should reflect this in his behaviour

 

[ruemere]

Or it could have not turned into a very ugly hostage situation.

Betting a remote chance of a criminal acting nice (and submitting oneself to justice) against a high probability of bringing further harm to a child... I don't buy it, sorry.

When it comes to this choice, I'd still choose child's welfare.

You do realize that with this logic, the Paladin can literally justify anything? "I did it because he could have been a monk and it would have been worse if I didn't do it." "I did it because he detected as evil and I know that means he's done evil in the past. It's justice!"

Lack of a decisive action can be very bad. Furthermore, the sword is not meant as a subduing weapon, therefore, were the paladin to strike to stun the offender, it could be argued that the hero was taking too many chances.

Just because something may get worse (nevermind that the guy was unarmed and didn't have his pants on) doesn't justify using secretive lethal force. It's situations like this that have caused our refinement of our laws to determine when and when not to use lethal force.

As I said, all it takes to kill a helpless innocent child is one strong push. In other words, the criminal could have been considered both armed and dangerous.

The criminal in question has taken steps to renew molesting the child. In other words he had to be in a striking distance from his prey. Also, the paladin was not secretive, merely, unnoticed - for all we know the molester might have heard him and was pretending not to notice the paladin in order to gain access to a hostage.

Again, when faced with a choice between further edangering a child (by either warning the criminal or taking chances with a weapon unsuitable to subduing or by engaging a criminal in a wrestling hold [the paladin need not have to be a professional wrestler]) or risking accidental killing of innocent commoner, I would choose the latter. After all, the molester could be only wounded (and incapacitated) instead of being killed on spot.

And the paladin is both obligated to his code and beliefs and to defend the innocent. He must do both to be a paladin. That's why it's hard.

Hardly in this case. Paladin is a warrior, a killing machine dedicated to eradicating evil. If he refrains from doing his duty, it means that he grants evil a second opportunity to strike. And such an obvious evil at that.

No blackguards? Never a paladin proven to be less than holy? For your campaign, I'm sure this works, but we're talking about a different situation.

When a paladin makes a mistake, he is stripped of his powers. And because he stops being a paladin, he is judged as any normal person would be. However, as long as he retains his powers (see the conduct in PHB), he's the law.

Also, I fail to see why this situation, being so obvious, would require the paladin to act in any other way.

I think being required to do good ends with good means is what a Paladin really is.

Hah, that's the paladin's ideal. However, that's were the life (not the real life, merely my campaign's) comes in. Paladins strive to attain higher ideals, but they are human, they have their flaws - they just strive much harder than anyone else. They make mistakes, but they make up for them. They also do not waste their time with scoundrels.

Finally, returning to the situation, nothing the paladin did was final. The criminal can be brought back from the dead and properly tried.

Do you think he would have been "more right" if he would have turned the guy over to the locals?

Turn the criminal over for what? A trial and execution, perhaps?
If you consider a paladin to be a merely a divine pawn without any right to mete punishment, well, you're taking away everything from the class, both its role (a divine champion and judge) and its powers (by restricting them).

Not good.

Regards,
Ruemere

 

[nonamazing]

This has certainly become an interesting thread, with a large variety of different opinions. I happen to have some strong feelings about this situation, and I hope you will not mind if I share them here. I apologize if I come across as harsh or elitist--that's not my intention.

Here's how I feel: this group should not be adressing these sorts of mature issues. Can you really take something as serious, disturbing, and ugly as the forced rape of a child and turn it into a question about the rules of a fantasy game? Can you do justice to the importance of these themes by complaining about how your 'character' lost his 'powers'? And instead of sitting down with your group and talking over things, should you post this scenario to a bunch of strangers to make a ruling about?

You know, if something like this happens in a game and your only response is to argue with your DM about whether or not you broke a 'rule', then I really don't feel as though you have the level of maturity needed to handle these morally complex sorts of serious situations. If you're going to veer away from a high fantasy game, if you're going to choose to confront serious real world problems, than you owe it to yourself--and to your entire group--to do these things in a mature and respectful fashion. This goes for your DM as well. A group has to be able to trust and understand one another in order to roleplay serious ideas and concepts such as this. From what I'm seeing, your DM and you do not have this level of trust or respect.

To sort of bring this to a larger level (and I'm sorry, I don't mean to be insulting, but I do feel passionately about this), think for a moment about what someone from outside the gaming community would think upon reading this thread. They would be apalled and horrified. To discuss this so coldly, to turn this into an issue of either "the DM screwed the player" or "well, there's this rule on page X of the whatever book that says this", completely makes light of the situation taking place in this scene. I'm certainly not saying that you can't use role-playing games to address mature themes--you most certainly can and it can be very rewarding to do so. But to turn such things into arguments about the mechanics of the game seems to rob it of its emotional power. I guess I'm saying that at a certain point, it becomes less important to consider the how of the rules and more important to look at the why of the story.

Look at the title of the thread. "and now the DM wants to take away my powers!" That's what is foremost in your mind? Why? Why not, "My character is suffering through a terrible crisis of faith at the moment" or "I feel as though my DM is creating uncomfortable scenarios" or even "I feel as though I have a greater understanding of the enormity of this issue and how it affects lives"?

I think I've sort of gone off on a rant, and I'm sorry. But seriously, carefully reflect on your group and the sorts of games you play. Is this really what you want to be doing? Are there perhaps other sorts of situations you might have more fun with? Do you feel as though you are showing proper respect to these issues? It might be a good idea to change the tone a bit.

Again, I apologize for ranting. I have the utmost respect for the posters here and I appreciate all of your intelligent points of view. Perhaps I'm taking all of this too seriously. But I do feel that some things are too serious to make a rules argument out of.

 

[Dragonblade]

And why the pretended molester cannot do the same, allowing a single individual to take such descision can only lead to one thing Chaos. Any metagaming answers like it's different he his a paladin is like saying that I could kill someone in real life because I am lawful good, metagaming is not good

But he is not just some individual. He is paladin, chosen by his god. And by the grace of his god, is given the authority to be judge, jury, and executioner.

Modern jurisprudence does not apply. In the D&D universe, his god is good and his god grants him the power to be judge, jury, and executioner.

That is enough. No mortal secular authority can trump that.

 

[DarkMaster]

But he is not just some individual. He is paladin, chosen by his god. And by the grace of his god, is given the authority to be judge, jury, and executioner.

Modern jurisprudence does not apply. In the D&D universe, his god is good and his god grants him the power to be judge, jury, and executioner.

That is enough. No mortal secular authority can trump that.

So this discussion should end right away, because all paladin whatever they are right and therefore can never lose their power.

If they are never wrong why is there a specific rule in the book saying that if they do not follow the path they lose their power?

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Exactly. The effect of a public trial and execution is to instill respect for the law, confidence in its ability to exact justice, and fear in those who would break it. All of those are good things. The effect of a secret execution is to instill fear in all (who knows what actually happened; two men went into the back and one came out with blood on his sword), to reduce confidence in the ability of the law to exact justice (after all, this had to be taken care of privately), to promote disrespect for the law (especially the notion of due process which is important for preventing injustice in many cases that look obvious but aren't), and emboldens those who might break the law (for good or bad reasons).

I think the law and chaos alignments are incoherent so I won't say it's Chaotic or that it's not Lawful. This particular action would be expected more of a Holy Liberator than a Paladin, and more of a Ghostwalker than either a paladin or a Holy Liberator. It is not unjust but it will have bad effects unless it is isolated. The paladin's god may be able to ignore it for now. The society in which it occurred should not. And neither should the paladin.

A paladin needs to do more than simply act justly. A paladin needs to act in a manner that will promote justice in a community as well.

And, on the Paladins as defense attorneys for monsters vs. SHARK paladins, sign me up for neither. (Though if I had to choose, I'd take SHARK paladins in a heartbeat. Given the choice between foolish weakness and perhaps overzealous strength, I'll take strength any day). The defense attorneys for monsters are aiding and abbetting evil. SHARK style paladins have it seems overly inquisitorial tendencies. However, in this case, even the SHARK paladins would act differently. After beheading the guy, they'd drag his corpse out into the town square, announce his crime, pronounce a judgement, and burn him at the stake posthumously thus effecting the public's edification.

Okay, fine. By all means let the paladin institute an ecclesiastical court consisting of himself. But let it proceed Lawfully, in public, by a due process. A divine law that proceeds in secret, without formal process, judges on superficial appearance without performing any investigation, does not allow any defence to be presented, and has a 'jury' consisting of a "GUILTY!" stamp is going to commit gross injustices, even though this may not have been one of them. And even if it didn't convict any considerable number of innocent people, it would never be able to create a lawful attitude in any community.

 

[DarkMaster]

This has certainly become an interesting thread, with a large variety of different opinions. I happen to have some strong feelings about this situation, and I hope you will not mind if I share them here. I apologize if I come across as harsh or elitist--that's not my intention.

Here's how I feel: this group should not be adressing these sorts of mature issues. Can you really take something as serious, disturbing, and ugly as the forced rape of a child and turn it into a question about the rules of a fantasy game? Can you do justice to the importance of these themes by complaining about how your 'character' lost his 'powers'? And instead of sitting down with your group and talking over things, should you post this scenario to a bunch of strangers to make a ruling about?

You know, if something like this happens in a game and your only response is to argue with your DM about whether or not you broke a 'rule', then I really don't feel as though you have the level of maturity needed to handle these morally complex sorts of serious situations. If you're going to veer away from a high fantasy game, if you're going to choose to confront serious real world problems, than you owe it to yourself--and to your entire group--to do these things in a mature and respectful fashion. This goes for your DM as well. A group has to be able to trust and understand one another in order to roleplay serious ideas and concepts such as this. From what I'm seeing, your DM and you do not have this level of trust or respect.

To sort of bring this to a larger level (and I'm sorry, I don't mean to be insulting, but I do feel passionately about this), think for a moment about what someone from outside the gaming community would think upon reading this thread. They would be apalled and horrified. To discuss this so coldly, to turn this into an issue of either "the DM screwed the player" or "well, there's this rule on page X of the whatever book that says this", completely makes light of the situation taking place in this scene. I'm certainly not saying that you can't use role-playing games to address mature themes--you most certainly can and it can be very rewarding to do so. But to turn such things into arguments about the mechanics of the game seems to rob it of its emotional power. I guess I'm saying that at a certain point, it becomes less important to consider the how of the rules and more important to look at the why of the story.

Look at the title of the thread. "and now the DM wants to take away my powers!" That's what is foremost in your mind? Why? Why not, "My character is suffering through a terrible crisis of faith at the moment" or "I feel as though my DM is creating uncomfortable scenarios" or even "I feel as though I have a greater understanding of the enormity of this issue and how it affects lives"?

I think I've sort of gone off on a rant, and I'm sorry. But seriously, carefully reflect on your group and the sorts of games you play. Is this really what you want to be doing? Are there perhaps other sorts of situations you might have more fun with? Do you feel as though you are showing proper respect to these issues? It might be a good idea to change the tone a bit.

Again, I apologize for ranting. I have the utmost respect for the posters here and I appreciate all of your intelligent points of view. Perhaps I'm taking all of this too seriously. But I do feel that some things are too serious to make a rules argument out of.

I guess this must touch you, but what about the molester who got killed with almost no proof an not a single chance to defend himself. Or the thousands of soldier that might be fathers that were killed by the barbarian in my campaign when the group I DM invaded an enemy citadell. These events never occured for real. If we were to stop at every single attrocity that this game can bring we would be playing a RPG about the Teletubbies

 

[jgbrowning]

How does one deal with these apparant contridictions from different D&D books?

"Good is the awesome holy energy that radiates from the celestial planes and crushes evil. Good is selfless, just, hopeful, benevolent, and righteous." BoED
"Attacks evil on sight" Lamassu (always LG alignment)
"Fights evil without Mercy" Alahandra under LG in PHB.
"Violence against evil is acceptable when it is directed at stopping or preventing evil acts from being done."BoED
"The means of violence must be as good as the intention."
"Practices that inflict undue suffering upon the victims goes beyond the pale of what can be considered good."
"Violence cannot be considered good when it is directed against noncombatants" BoED
"Subduing opponents and turning them over to the city watch is preferable" BoED
"Tempting to treat foes as they have treated others, to exact revenge for slain comrades and innocents, to offer no quarter and become merciless. A good character must not succumb to that trap. Good characters must offer mercy and accept surrender no matter how many times villians might betray that kindness or escape captivity to continue their evil deeds" BoED
"A good character approaches every encounter with orcs, goblinoids, and even the thoroughly evil drow with heart and mind open to the possiblity, however remote, that his opponents might some day be transformed into allies. Creatures that are "usually evil" can be redeemed. This is not to say that a good character's first thought in an ambush should be, "How can I redeem these poor orcs?" However, if the ambushing orcs end up surrendering, there is ample opportunity to seek their redeption"


To me, these quotes mean that good has to try and be all of these things. If any aspect of being good is ignored, the overall goodness of the creature is diminished. It's all right to attack evil, but you should try to deal with the problem in other ways per the "good code" before attacking even though attacking evil is good. I don't view these as contridictions, but as complementary goals that aim towards a single higher goal: That of "Killing Evil by turning Evil into Good." Or I guess, more simply, redemption. Killing evil is easy, turning evil into good (and therefore really killing evil) is hard.

It's a constant tug-of-war between protecting the innocent and attempting redemption though actions of mercy, kindness, and honor. If a good person smites evil but is is never mercyful, never redemptive and never kind, that person is perhaps not good, but neutral. Being merciful is just as important as smiting evil, just as important as protecting the innocent. There is no aspect of "being good" that is more important than the others because "being good" is the whole package.

This is why I think being a paldin should be damn hard and full of tiny missteps. The paladin will never be perfect, but should always strive to that perfection. To me, that means he'll lose his powers now and then and atone to get them back. He'll do this a lot, because the world is an evil place and he's got a code that he must follow that doesn't make his path one that's easy to follow. His goal is not to just smite evil, but to increase good. Smiting evil is only one aspect of being a paladin.

What the paladin should be punished for is his failure by immediately using lethal force when presented with an "evil" that was easily and acceptably overcome without. Many arguements hang on the immediate need to protect the child as if the only method of doing so was through lethal force. This is not true, there were other ways, but none of those ways were as satisfying to the player and hence the PC. Even when we agree that the perp deserved death, his death is as least as just, if not more so, at the hands of the community than it is at the hands of the paladin because of all of the many associated benefits as stated by others throughout this thread.

In otherwords there were many other ways of using the good code to deal with the situation. Chosing to use lethal force means that there is no posiblity for mercy, forgiveness, and redeption to the perp. That means that although the paladin supported one aspect of his goodness (protecting the innocent girl) he failed to support several other aspects of his goodness even though he had the opportunity to do so. Hence, he suffers a small setback, makes his atonement, and in the future tries to find ways of dealing with circumstances that support as many aspects of good without opposing other aspects of good as possible.

In the end, although a paladin has the right and the goodness to kick butt and ask questions later when need be, that is far from SOP. A Paladin's normal behavior should be one primarily of Helping Others, Charity, Healing, Personal Sacrifice, Mercy, Forgiveness, Bringing Hope, and Redeeming Evil. It is only within these considerations that "attacking evil on sight" should be performed. It is only with all of these other aspects in mind at the same time that lethal punishment should be meeted out to the deserving.

joe b.

 

[DarkMaster]

How does one deal with these apparant contridictions from different D&D books?

.

You just made me think of something, was killing this guy the priority, no. The priority was to protect the little girl. What could the paladin do to help the little girl after such a trauma, serious psychological help will be needed. So yes the first thing is to make sure that the molester would not contact the little girl again but there are many more ways to do that than killing him, but after that the paladin should not simply walk away and say job well done, he should make sure that the little girl will be taken care of properly (not that he has do to it himself) Killing the molester was rewarding only for the paladin not the little girl.

 

[shilsen]

Nice example (that's from "Men at Arms" incidentally). I'm pretty sure Vimes might have done exactly the same thing in the same situation as Vindicator's paladin. But do you think Carrot (pretty good example of a paladin, IMO) would have?

With grim certanty. A child, with that situation? He runs quite a bit deeper than you think. In fact, I think vimes stopped him from that path once already if I remember correctly. Vimes knows that carrot could not handle the after-effects of such an act very well.

Actually I'm very sure the opposite has occurred (Carrot stopping Vimes from killing someone, as he did in "Men at Arms"), but never a case of Vimes stopping Carrot.

Capt. Carrot is far more than simply a paladin, he's so utterly and fundamentally GOOD that evil undead probably get negative levels just from being in the same room as him. Remember this is a guy with such charisma and force of personality that he's been able to single-handedly stop two armies from fighting and got them to play soccer instead (Okay, maybe it's not peace, but it's still an improvement). He IS a four color comic book character essentially. Also if I remember "Men at Arms" correctly at the end of the book, he cut down the BBEG without a moments thought or hesitation.

He stops Vimes from killing the BBEG when the latter is unarmed and helpless. And Carrot kills him without hesitation when he has re-armed himself and is about to shoot Vimes.