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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aenghus" data-source="post: 6687808" data-attributes="member: 2656">Nowadays I would never choose to play an old-school paladin in a new game until I had figured out how the referee runs his or her world and what the other players are like.IMO the problem with old-school paladins is they incorporate multiple game-endangering points of failure in one shiny armoured packaged. It can potentially all work out fine, but there are many, many examples of situations where it didn't.First, people disagree about matters of good and evil in the real world all the time, with lots more information and evidence around than in a mere game, where information bandwidth is massively limited even for face to face games, not to mind online games. In many cases the issue is a disagreement on the nature of good and evil between the player and the referee, which is far too easy to get personal and nasty.Secondly, the paladin has to get on minimally with the other PCs, some or all of whom may turn out to be evil or may turn evil during play. At which point the paladin under many codes has to shun the evil PCs, which directly contradicts one of the main mantras of D&D "Don't split the party". Even without that, paladins often are required to object to many fairly standard D&D tactics, which can be irritating and unfun to other players. Prisoners, truthfulness, tolerance of evil, association with evil characters, intolerance of others can all be game wrecking problems with the wrong handling and/or the wrong group or personality dynamics.Thirdly, the old-school paladin's code can be totally impractical in some settings, and in some groups. If there is no lawful authority, no judges, no law, the paladin still has to be playable despite there being nowhere to take prisoners. In a lot of worlds a paladin handing a monster over for judgement to a local lord would be treated like Don Quixote, with lots of eye rolling as they take the monster away and summarily execute him once the paladin has left. Being an example of Lawful Stupid and an object of derision by other players and even the GM himself isn't any fun. Paladins don't belong in every world, and even in worlds where they can fit, a subset of potential paladin-like concepts are probably viable, while others aren't.What it comes down to is better communication, and everyone being aware what each others expectations are beforehand to prevent gotchas and impossible Paladin dilemmas turning up every two seconds. As to the OP, there's loads of info I would need to make an informed decision - how much evidence of wrongdoing by the prisoner existed, the regions history of troubles with monsters, the legal position of monsters - are they legally people, and lots of other factors. I may be incorrect, but I felt there was subtext that the referee had plans for the prisoner's story that the execution disrupted, and there may be some resentment of that colouring the question of the paladin's actions.The sort of clarifying questions that can be useful for a referee on paladins is asking themselves is there *any* circumstances where a paladin executing someone is permissible or even expected? Sometimes the answers to these questions exposes the fact that there is no right answer and the paladin is being set up to fail, which is unfair to the player unless they want to play out said fall.</blockquote>

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