Order of the Stick: How long will they put up with Miko?

[Kahuna Burger]

Or are you saying it is their fault because of the bump after preventing the deliberate blow up and therefore the accidental explosion?

Wouldn't it then be wisperfoot's fault for hiring the lawyer that belkar was chasing?

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Wouldn't it then be wisperfoot's fault for hiring the lawyer that belkar was chasing?

Or Miko's fault for leading them in that direction in the first place?

 

[Storm Raven]

We have no idea what would have happened if they never came along. We can speculate, but we don't know. They pretended to be royalty, and the inn got blown up because of that.

No, the inn got blown up because assassins were trying to kill them while they were posing as royalty. Their actions didn't lead to the inn being blown up (to be specific they were not the proximate cause). The assassin's actions led to the inn being blown up (transferred intent is still intent). The OotS gang could be said to be wrong for posing as royalty when they were not, but the destruction of the inn hangs on the assassins, not the OotS.

 

[Zappo]

I don't think the OotS has any guilt at all regarding the inn's destruction. The dwarf assassin had the explosives, set them, and was handling fire irresponsibly close to the fuse. In any modern court, there would hardly even be a case.

I think that the OotS pretending to be the King and cohorts wasn't entirely correct, but considering that they were indeed going to pay, this was a very minor issue.

There are only three ways someone could blame the OotS for the inn's destruction.

First - because you claim a supernatural correlation (karma or divine retribution), eg. what Miko is doing. Ain't that easy; there is no guilt, so let's find an invisible one that can't be disproved and claim that the accused has to disprove it. A classical. I wish Durkon cast a good Commune and set Miko straight on what "the gods" did and didn't, but she probably wouldn't believe him anyway.

Second - because the real culprit has fled, and you need someone to blame and ask for damages, and therefore involvement translates to guilt, eg. what the innkeeper is probably going to do. That's easy too; there is no guilt, but who cares? They were there, that's enough, fork over the money already. Another classical.

Third - based on the fact that if they had slept in the ditch, the inn would be standing. The idea that this translates to responsibility is a logical fallacy of the highest order. And if it was true, it would also imply that they have the merit for saving the King's life, something which arguably overcomes the wrong of destroying the inn.

 

[StupidSmurf]

Which is the trouble, to some she is a parody. To others, she is just a normal paladin and the reason why LG charactes make for bad party members. They sell out their parties faster than CE due to nebulous reasoning and unstated codes that lead to inflexable judgements that cause them to betray the party to some local authority figure or even attack if they won't turn themselves in. LG characters, exemplified by paladins, tend to have no sense of loyalty or respect for fellow party members being only interested in themselves and their beliefs.

Whoa whoa whoa.....hold on a moment...

Permit another perspective to enter in here, mon. Paladins in my campaign uphold Law. And in my campaign definition, there's three levels of Law.

Divine Law, as handed down and enforced by the gods and their agents
Temporal Law, as created and enforced by political entities (city-states, kingdoms)
Party Law, as a mutually agreed upon set of rules governing the adventuring group.

A paladin in my campaign is expected to respect all three. That makes them EXTREMELY trustworthy, since the last theing they'd ever do is sell out the party. In my campaign, if you can't trust a paladin, who can you trust? They are the elite, the best of the best.

Now, granted, there are circumstances that can skew things. A nation with laws that permit slavery and press gangs violates the whole philosophy of "good". A nation with tyrannical laws violates the good Divine Laws that a Paladin follows. The Paladin is answerable to a higher power and that power's laws, and since a paladin is Good, then he/she serves a good deity. And I can't see a good deity saying "Thou shalt hose thy party, vea verily, and let them hang out to dry and twisting in yon wind, forsooth!"

In my campaign, a Paladin's first loyalty is to the patron deity. Second loyalty is to just governments, and third is to the party. HOWEVER, if one of the tenets of the patron deity is "Be trustworthy and loyal to your friends and allies," then there should be no cause for concern.

Nebulous reasoning? Hah. Try running a Chaotic Neutral if you want to see nebulous reasoning.

 

[shilsen]

Seeing the OOTS become the feature of a paladin thread is damn funny.

 

[Sejs]

It's GOLD! It has NOT been destroyed!

Actually, going by D&D rules (which OotS plays off of), gold is an object like any other. And it has taken enough damage to be destroyed. There are no special damage rules for gold (or other metals) taking damage from fire (except that they take 1/2 damage, like almost all other objects).

Actually, unless I'm mistaken wasn't the gold stored in a number of Bags of Holding? You know, that extradimentional storage you can never have too much of?

Those same bags that have a nasty habit of voiding their contents to the astral plane when ruptured? Their money is probably perfectly intact... where ever things that are 'forever lost' wind up, that is.

Edit: Tch, damn. Day late and a dollar short. Lord Vyreth already covered the bag thing.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Actually, unless I'm mistaken wasn't the gold stored in a number of Bags of Holding? You know, that extradimentional storage you can never have too much of?

Those same bags that have a nasty habit of voiding their contents to the astral plane when ruptured? Their money is probably perfectly intact... whereever things that are 'forever lost' wind up, that is.

No, haley explicitly said that her bags of holding (which she presumedly had on her) were full of gold from lich-boy's dungeon, so they had to physically move the big mundane sacks one at a time.

 

[painandgreed]

Whoa whoa whoa.....hold on a moment...

...to some...To others...

What happens in your campaign hardly affects how people outside your group play paladins. I could go on and on about IMC explaining how paladins should be played but it wouldn't change how I have experienced them being played. I've seen paladins being played with very little party conflict, and I've seen them come to life or death blows because the party wouldn't follow some trivial detail the paladin thought important. don't even think you can make a statement that one was being played "better" than the other, just that Miko's attitude is the same or even less harsh than many have seen people play paladins.

 

[Sejs]

No, haley explicitly said that her bags of holding (which she presumedly had on her) were full of gold from lich-boy's dungeon, so they had to physically move the big mundane sacks one at a time.

*checks* Aha, 243. Just as you said.

Yup, guess it's still around, then.