I just had to look around at this point and see how the heck this thing was still going on. It's now roughly twice as long as when I stopped paying attention to it.
People just love to screw over paladins, don't they?
Anyway..... Some brief interjections on what I've skimmed over now.
Hyp: At most the paladin in the original post was somewhat dishonorable, but it could not have been a serious enough infraction under the circumstances to get his paladinhood revoked. Small, occasional acts of chaos will not an ex-paladin make.
RE: the invisibility. You should realize that it is no different from disguising itself; the imp did not want the humans to see its true form while making an agreement with it. The imp would expect humans to be leery of making any kind of deal with it if they saw it as a fiend; it wants their help to make the task easier so it doesn't have to risk itself so much, and its search might go faster with their help. So it wants them to make the deal and trust it.
It is being deceptive by avoiding revealing itself; do NOT confuse deception with 'lying' only, deception covers a lot more than just lies. A paladin cannot lie, but he is not incapable of deception; only incapable of lying, which is but one form of deception. The imp is deliberately hiding its true form in order to garner the trust of these mortals for its own goals, and knows they would likely refuse the deal if they knew what it was; especially that one human that detects as strongly good-aligned, as imps can detect good at will, so he'll know that at least one group member is likely to argue against the deal if the imp reveals itself.
ALSO: if the imp was just trying to stop demons from winning the Blood War or taking over the Prime Material, because it wants devils like itself to win or take over instead, then it would have told the PCs that it was seeking an item that would help it stop a demonic plot. That would have only motivated the PCs to accept his agreement despite his invisibility, and ensured that they would be more willing to help out and take risks for him. So most likely its motivations did not have to do with anything that the PCs, as at least somewhat-good people, would want to help with. It could have more easily garnered their trust or cooperation if it had used such an excuse.
Rystil: Regarding the last example, Sir Percival is screwed. Congrats, you've made a paladin fall. It isn't hard. And why must paladin-supporters be stereotyped as those of a mind that 'fiends must die and nothing else matters!' ?
Percival should have gotten a priest to discern the reasons for his detection of evil around his daughter,
as soon as he noticed it, and then tried to confront and deal with the matter immediately somehow. So he may have already lost his paladinhood anyway, for being a freaking moron and ignoring his duty and the entire frikkin' reason the Forces of cosmic Good gave him the ability to Detect Evil at will.
Percival can't kill his wife and child for being evil abominations, for it would be evil and dishonorable, so he would fall from grace and undoubtedly be scarred for life, probably falling into melancholy and/or rage against fiends for causing that situation to befall him. He might crusade against fiends afterwards, but he'll be a broken man, just looking to die, and he won't be a paladin anymore. He'll eventually end up on one of the Lower Planes after he's died, or at best one of the neutral and/or neutral-but-almost-evil planes.
He can't just try to ignore the conundrum and keep living with his fiendish wife and child. That would require forsaking his paladin code and becoming an ex-paladin. It would be the most agreeable choice for him as a person, but he would have to forsake his paladinhood and try to deal with the fact that his wife is a sworn servant of evil. He might at least eventually accept his situation and avoid breaking up the family. But he would have a great deal of trouble with the situation, to be sure. And he just might have to give in to evil himself in order to cope with it rather than going insane or something, becoming a blackguard. At the very least he'll become neutral and advance as a fighter if not turning to evil.
He can't just try to redeem his wife and child, purifying them or something and drawing them away from Evil. It wouldn't work. The wife had deceived him all this time rather than ever trying to find redemption or some kind of middle ground, despite
seemingly caring for him and finding kinship with him.
Which I take issue with anyway, as fiends should not be capable of love; it is a goodly emotion and requires some degree of compassion and a certain degree of selflessness (we're talking about D&D here, not real-world morality where it's debatable; D&D evil is capable of being monolithic, in fact it's what the Lower Planes are made of; and in D&D forces of alignment, love must surely be a 'good' thing given what goes with it, and thus not something that pure Evil can possess); fiends are selfish incarnations of Evil itself, and a fallen celestial/angel has accepted that suffusion of immense, primordial Evil into itself to become
powerful once more.
That's pretty damn selfish right there. Instead of accepting her fall and the loss of divine, holy power, she pledged herself to evil masters in order to become powerful again. She did not take any harder path of self-improvement (through level advancement or whatnot, or through redemption as a celestial/angel). She is Evil with a capitol E now. She should not be capable of love anymore. Lust is the only thing even remotely close to being mistaken for love that she should be capable of at that point. The erinyes should not have been living with the paladin for any reason other than to try corrupting him towards evil.
Sir Percival is an ex-paladin regardless of what he does. His daughter is naturally evil as a half-fiend, his wife has long been pledged to the service of evil, and he can't just abandon them and forget it all. It would be evil. So he has to either deal with the situation somehow, becoming an ex-paladin in the process, or he has to leave it and become an ex-paladin just the same.
As for the earlier scenario:
Rystil Arden said:
Let's try another scenario. I'm interested to see what the 'Kill all fiends' people say for this one:
The end times are near. Orcus has nearly completed a ritual that will infuse the soul of the entire world with negative energy, which will turn all the living into undead, allowing him to rise from the formerly pure Lifepool, now the Deathpool, and rule over his new world of the dead. To finish the ritual, Orcus needed to place three magical foci in three different planar locations. The only way to stop him now is to break into one of them and destroy the focus before Orcus notices the intrusion and sends his strongest minions to stop the heroes, or comes himself!
Unfortunately, finding the foci, which are each on a special demiplane with a special key pass phrase, is a difficult task. Even a Miracle spell can reveal only this: Two of the foci's pass phrases are known only to Orcus himself, as he has killed the ones who created these places and eaten their souls. However, he made a crucial flaw with the third--he had thought the creator of the demiplane, the angel Anyiel, was destroyed, but actually, she had Fallen, and that is why his magics had told him 'The Angel Anyiel is no more'.
Anyiel is now an Erinyes. The group contacts her and finds that she has already heard of their exploits. Though she fell from grace, Anyiel is still a creature of order, and indeed, she has a strong attraction to paragons of Law and Good that remind her of what she has lost. Furthermore, she thinks the group's paladin, Sir Pelinor, is quite handsome. So she makes the following request: "I want to have a nice candlelight dinner in Sigil with Sir Pelinor in Sigil. If you all promise me that and also promise not to harm or hinder me in any way, I shall be glad to provide you with the pass phrase you seek. After all, it is not as if I want to see Orcus's chaos envelop your world."
So what does Sir Pelinor do, people on the 'Kill all fiends!' side? I'll present some options--or you can pick your own.
A) Sir Pelinor has a nice dinner with Anyiel. Anyiel tells him the pass phrase. He returns to his comrades and they use the pass phrase to stop Orcus's plan. Anyiel returns to Baator and tells all her Erinyes sisters about her hot date with Sir Pelinor.
B) Sir Pelinor refuses because this requires contact with an evil outsider. Orcus turns everyone in the world into undead and rules the world.
C) Sir Pelinor agrees, but when they meet at the restaurant, he decapitates Anyiel. Take that, bitch! On the downside, Orcus becomes supreme ruler.
D) Sir Pelinor agrees to the terms and has dinner with Anyiel. The moment she whispers him the pass phrase he sneers 'Foul creature. I can't believe I had to pretend to have a civil dinner with you,' and decapitates Anyiel. Then they stop Orcus.
E) Sir Pelinor says nothing as his party agrees for him and makes the arrangements. He goes to the appointed restaurant in Sigil because he overheard the party's agreement. Then he sits at the same table with Anyiel--not because he's having dinner with her or anything, oh no. In fact, he's not really associating with her, but that seat happened to be open. Once she gives him the pass phrase (assuming she does so despite his rudeness), he grins and pulls out his sword.
"But you promised..." she protests in horror, a helpless and betrayed look in her eyes.
"Stupid hellspawned bitch, I never agreed to your terms. Only the rest of my group did. Now rot in the Hells where you belong!" and he decapitates her. Then he and his comrades stop Orcus.
Sir Pelinor is also doomed to become an ex-paladin. If he refuses the offer, demons take over the world and evil wins. He will have failed in his paladin duties and become an ex-paladin, unless he can find some way to avert the demon apocalypse without making a 'deal with the devil'.
If he accepts the offer, he will become an ex-paladin but just might avert the demon apocalypse, and is likely to receive atonement if he seeks it after that violation. This is the choice Sir Pelinor will take unless he is too selfish or too disgusted by the devil's offer to even consider it. As a paladin he is sworn to serve the greater Good above all else; Law and paladinship are secondary to that.
If he is a proper paladin, he will make the personal sacrifice of his paladinship in order to serve the greater good, then he will seek atonement afterward with the understanding that he had to commit a sin in order to serve that greater good, because he was unable to find a different solution that would avert the demon apocalypse. The forces of Good will forgive him if he serves the greater good and truly regrets having felt the need to sin for the sake of that goal.
Optimally, he would find a better solution to the demon apocalypse, but if he cannot, then he is backed into a corner and must decide to sin and save the world, or let the world fall to Evil because of his unwillingness to make any self-sacrifice for others.
If Sir Pelinor refuses the offer without finding a better solution, he will become an ex-paladin for permitting the demon apocalypse to occur just because he has a 10-foot pole up his arse, and refuses to remove it for any reason whatsoever. And possibly also (depending on why he refuses) for putting personal, selfish priorities above the service of Good and therefore valuing himself and his own desires as more important thant he cause of Good and justice that he is supposed to be serving as a paladin.
Your options C, D, and E don't really work. They only serve to unleash Orcus' evil, or to make the paladin an ex-paladin while managing to at least save the world, not that it puts him in the good graces of the Forces of cosmic Good, since he was very unpaladinlike in how he handled it and did not respect the spirit of the agreement nor the burden of his duty as a paladin. If he slays the erinyes right after learning the password, he's badly violating his code. He's already going to become an ex-paladin for the 'date', but he has to suck it up and serve the greater good if he hopes to be allowed atonement. Slaying the fiend then and there will just be an additional violation and disrespecting of his code, acting so dishonorably and ignoring the spirit of the agreement.
The OP's paladin is not behaving in that way, though, and it is under rather different circumstances. Pelinor is aware that he has to go have dinner with a fiend in order to learn the secret that is needed to foil Orcus' plan and save the world.
The OP's paladin is being tricked into an agreement, possibly a very loose agreement (we don't know how it actually played out at the table), to go along with an invisible creature and help it find an item in the building while he and his fellows get some help from the invisible creature as they seek out their own objective within the building. Then he finds out later that the invisible creature is a fiend.
He isn't sure at first if there is sufficient basis in paladin terms for his group's agreement with the formerly-invisible fiend to be null and void now that new information has come to light and it involved the fiend's intentional deception. He doesn't want to break the agreement that he was at least partially involved in, but he also does not want to violate his oaths if going along would do so. He is not required to act without reasonable hesitation. And as long as he doesn't help the imp any further after learning its fiendish identity, he is not violating his oaths while he considers whether or not he should kill it, and when.
Once the agreement is fulfilled, he is not necessarily obliged to let the imp leave with its item. He has every reason to believe it is going to be used for evil (because it is an imp that is taking the item), which he cannot allow himself to be a knowing accomplice to. Though his group's agreement was to help the invisible creature for a while, the imp's significantly important deception in the dealing process may render it acceptable to the paladin's honor to smite the imp before it can make off with the item, though it is not quite honorable but merely a minor dishonor or something grey inbetween honor and dishonor.
Personally I'd just hate a DM that forced a paladin to deal with such a situation, as there is no possible way the paladin can avoid either losing his paladinship or teetering on the brink of doing so. It reeks of bad railroading and spite towards paladins. "Oh, sure, you wanna play a paladin, huh...? Great! Now I have a reason to screw you over royally for wanting to play a nice guy and challenge yourself, because you have no idea how much I've been waiting to piss someone off for bothering to attend my games every week!"
