Oh silly PCs, what hast thou wrought?

[Noctos]

Absurd. Flat out absurd. When the DM allowed the Evil cleric into the party, he explicitly or more probably implicitly not merely gave the paladin carte-blanche to turn a blind eye to the cleric's misdeeds, but rather explicitly implicitly instructed the paladin to ignore them flat-out. Anything else would be dishonest. More loosely, the DM made the (again probably implicit) statement that no real problems would come from the cleric's actions, unless the cleric was really asking for it, in which case the DM would need to give clear warning. Remember: the DM is, clearly, making exceptions to the normal rules here. Players cannot guess where the DM will draw the line.

I'm guessing that here the DM gave merely hinted warnings that he *thought* the players *had* to pickup on, but they didn't. So the lesson here is twofold:
firstly, never, ever, assume that the players will pickup on hints.
secondly, if such a situation should come to unfold, it is the DM's fault and no negative consequences should hit the players.

wow that is wrong i would often drop sudle hints to things and when the players did get them wham smack the crap out of them

secondly your right in your world of DnD you can't have an evil priest hanging with a pally. true enough. but what it the pal had other plans like staying around the cleric in order to counter act any evil he might have planned. being a tattle tale on the priest in this story seems like that might have been likly. now that being said the pally should have smashed the zombies dead the moment they were set free.




on to the posters topic
i like the idea of a punishment but it seems to be that your players might take a diffrent standing than you want if you try and imprison them like i don't know kill the entire town rather than let them take any of there magical gear/ property.

i had a necromancer in a game and a very similar thing happened up the the first part of your description. where he forgot not to wonder in to town with a bunch of zombies in tow. but the village didn't come out and talk they straight attacked. believe it was an evil wizerd coming to disrupt there way of life. what did my party do run? oh no they proceed to kill every last villager (only like 60- 70 people) and then raise the entire thing as apart of his undead horde. and took everything the poor village had to offer. to the point i wanted to scream. as they tore apart the wood buildings and made them in to carts (fabrication spell) so they could tear down the stone building and load the rock on the carts. it was a very fun game after that as they continue to expand the undead army but he learned after the first village to never wonder in to town with undead in tow unless you wanted to destroy it. (how ever in my game no one played a pally or any lawful/good)

 

[Thunderfoot]

While she may adventure with characters of any good or neutral alignment, a paladin will never knowingly associate with evil characters, nor will she continue an association with someone who consistently offends her moral code. A paladin may accept only henchmen, followers, or cohorts who are lawful good.

I'm pretty sure by letting the LE cleric turn those zombies lose, they have become an oathbreaker.

Yeah, this - how does the LG Paladin not slay the maker of zombies on the spot, more over, why is the paladin ALLOWING the defilement of dead bodies in the first place. Something I am surprised that no one else has really commented on (only going off when they were set free? Shouldn't have been done in the first place.) SO many things wrong here.

 

[Kraydak]

This is the fallacy of the excluded middle. Either the GM must be fully restrictive, or must offer carte-blanche.

Not really. Paladins aren't allowed to work with or travel with undead-raising evil clerics. That is clear. The DM made an exception, which is perfectly fine for out-of-game reasons (although, as we have seen, it can cause problems down the line). That is also clear. What is never clear to the players is how far the exception goes unless the DM makes it crystal clear. Here, the paladin doesn't appear to have done anything that would warrant falling (or anything close to that) given that the DM said: traveling with a child-eating-zombie-raising-cleric is perfectly ok.

Mind, I don't think he figured on the child-eating aspect at the time. That was one of those "seemed like a good idea at the time, but in restrospect really dumb" thingies that should be retconned out of existence as a funny misunderstanding. Once you have committed to RL-group cohesion over rules minutia, you should never bring the rules minutia back without being crystal clear and getting the players' approval for exactly the reasons described in the original post.

I would agree that the GM offered the paladin the right to travel with the evil cleric, explicitly, but that doesn't mean carte-blanche to evil.

Do active evil? No. Ignore evil and not expect to get smacked around for it? Yes. Very much so. It also implicitly gives the cleric the right to not worry too much about what he does, because nothing he does should upset the paladin too much. The RL-group-cohesion stuff cuts all ways. Child-eating zombies break that right.

What it should have meant is cunning on the part of the cleric, and, possibly, a chance that either the cleric can be redeemed or the paladin turned.

So the evil cleric has to play as a not-evil cleric? Then just say no to the evil cleric. If you say yes to the evil cleric, then he gets to play as one (unless some more elaborate agreement is reached).

This is merely a bog-standard case of a permissive (no negative connotations intended, but it is the best word here) DM deciding to introduce "consequences" that interfere with the social-contract he has de facto constructed and being surprised that it went badly. It will only become a big deal if he decides to double-down, or one of the players involved gets irritated. I admit I have no right to complain if edge3343 feels insulted by what I've said, but I do feel that it isn't a big deal. This is a common, common, common DMing mistake and the best fix is to paper things over and keep on trucking. Anything else will result in at least one person feeling betrayed, and that is rarely good.

 

[pawsplay]

Wow, Kraydak, you and I have very different opinions on what constitutes absurdity.

 

[OSEZNO]

Stuff.

I disagree with you, but that's your style.

I don't see anything here is a problem or a mistake.
I would further detail why, but it isn't going to be doing me, you or the OP any favors since we all have our own styles, rationale, and logical processes.

 

[Numlock]

One important point everyone is missing (and not only in this topic, but in many discussions about rules) is that DM > DMG,PHB. If this DM has thought of a way of combining an LG paladin and a LE cleric, well, good for him. The DM should communicate this in a clear way to and with his players, as he differs from the rules they all know, but it's not a sin to change the alignment and class rules. If I wanted to have a CE paladin in my game, I'd just go ahead with it, coming up with a way to make that work, and communicating that to my players.