Paladin breaks word - appropriate atonement

[FreeTheSlaves]

Tonight my paladin character realized he had broken his word, in both spirit and letter. Okay no big whoops, I mean nothing harmed but nonetheless he will need to atone.

So anyway what are some good atonements for oathbreaking?

Thanks

 

[GwydapLlew]

Go the Celtic route and make a vow and keep it. You can't take back the past, but you can atone by voluntarily submitting to one and keeping it in the future.

 

[DragonLancer]

Tonight my paladin character realized he had broken his word, in both spirit and letter. Okay no big whoops, I mean nothing harmed but nonetheless he will need to atone.

So anyway what are some good atonements for oathbreaking?

Thanks

Right now I want to say a simple slap on the wrist.

Whats the details of the situation?

 

[Sejs]

Tonight my paladin character realized he had broken his word, in both spirit and letter. Okay no big whoops, I mean nothing harmed but nonetheless he will need to atone.

So anyway what are some good atonements for oathbreaking?

Thanks

Details. Need 'em.

Not all infractions are equal.

 

[Brimshack]

Details would be good.

One approach you might consider isputting the Paladin to some degree at the mercy of the one's to whom he provided his word. He can offer a service. If the individual says nevermind, then he is atoned. He can stipulate that it must be something consistent with his code. Once done, he is atoned.

As an example, a Paladin once did somethign like this in my world; it actualy owed a demon a favour (can't remember why). ANd the demon was the BBEG of a series of games that were coming to a clase soon. The demon was told that if it demanded something the Paladin could not do, then it would get nothing. So, it demanded the Paladin take no action against it during the coming battle. The Paladin was free to slay everything else (as staying out of the battle altogether was not a viable demand), but she had to stop short of attacking the demon. It added an interesting bit of role-playing flavour to the battle. ...but that's just the extreme end of the spectrum. Hopefully, it'll be something reasonable.

 

[Li Shenron]

Tonight my paladin character realized he had broken his word, in both spirit and letter. Okay no big whoops, I mean nothing harmed but nonetheless he will need to atone.

So anyway what are some good atonements for oathbreaking?

Thanks

I don't know if I understand right, but I'll assume that the Paladin made an honest mistake (otherwise, if he deliberately broke his word for good purposes a bigger atonement should be considered - and if he did for non-good purposes [including "just to make his life easier"] maybe no atonement could be enough).

In case of an honest mistake or an overlook, I wouldn't be too hard, and maybe I'd even just require to seek for a cleric, get the atonement spell, describe it as a "prayer session", and nothing else.

But of course adding some minor quest or even just a penitence to be done during downtime can bring in some flavor.

Some ideas on top of my head:
- perform some mundane service for X days (e.g. act as a simple servant at a temple, clean up the stables at the paladin order, build a shrine): some sort of manual labor may be a good penitence especially if the breaking of the code was done for pride
- vow to give up something that the paladin likes for X months (assuming the paladin still has something to give up, like a minor vice)
- renounce to use one device or feature during the next X weeks, for example his favourite sword or spell or his mount: don't necessarily make the feature stop functioning, let the feature work as usual so that he has to resist using it. This makes adventuring slightly more difficult, but be careful that the penalty is just a burden for the paladin without actually increasing too much the risk of failure (evil should not really have an advantage!)

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

Okee dokee, some basic details.

*Some RttToEE Spoilers*
































The heroes form a temporary alliance with an evil cult to destroy another stronger evil cult. The head of evil cult1 was about to sacrifice an innocent on an altar to bring favour for the expedition. The heroes weren't in a good position to resort to force to stop this and also they didn't want to derail a golden opportunity to destroy the more powerful cult. The Knight (my paladin) only just succeeded at using hurried diplomacy to avert the innocent sacrifice by promising to return with a sacrifice from the stronger cult...

Ideally, my Knight was going to grab some evil conjured creature of the stronger cult and return with that as a sacrifice. Hmmm, a bit dodgy eh?

The expedition succeeds beyond expectations but evil cult allies become unconstrained victors, slaying surrendering cultist mercenaries under a flag of truce. (A potential sacrifice amongst them - double dodgy?) So the alliance is cancelled then & there & they're told to depart. They recognise the heroes power and so reluctantly flee.

One prisoner is liberated from the strong evil cult but is broken and mutilated.

I had intended my Knight to return to the evil cult with the prisoner as the sacrifice but then immediately declared that oath fulfilled and then to swear another oath to liberate and protect their sacrificial prisoners. Which later struck me as 'legalese' sidestepping and also a needless risk to an innocent (incoming fireballs anyone?).

That all aside, the head of the original cult was wrathful at our treatment of her cultists and used a divination to plan a suitably deadly reception for us. Regardless, it was our (uniquely neutrally aligned) assassin that started hostilities first with a well placed death attack... Yeah, we're getting a bit of a rep for getting our retaliations in first.

Then all hell broke loose and before we knew it bodies were littered all over the place, with the head cultist amongst them. My Knight never fought, saw, or talked to her, he was busy battling a conjuror's summonings over there.

Right I think that about covers the basics. So as I see it he genuinely was going to return a sacrifice, but didn't.

(side issue - although given his intentions it may well should've been a bluff)

And after all this I'm thinking of having him consult a wise priestess and do an atonement. The new dm would no doubt appreciate some help so he can have this high priestess pinpoint the failing(s) and assign an appropriate mission so as my Knight can learn the error of his ways.

Btw, because this is mainly solo stuff it'll be handwaved as part of our downtime. We go heavy on downtime so this atonement could take up to a year or even be ongoing throughout his lifetime.

 

[GwydapLlew]

I'm going to try avoiding derailing this thread into Yet Another Paladin Thread, but I would imagine that if your paladin is allying with evil cults and promising to bring sentient sacrifices as payment, there may be more serious transgressions for which you'll be needing an atonement.

Just sayin'.

 

[monboesen]

Code of Conduct
A paladin must be of lawful good alignment and loses all class abilities if she ever willingly commits an evil act.

Additionally, a paladin’s code requires that she respect legitimate authority, act with honor (not lying, not cheating, not using poison, and so forth), help those in need (provided they do not use the help for evil or chaotic ends), and punish those who harm or threaten innocents.

Associates
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.

Is this the Paladin code you are following? If so, the lack of returning a prisoner would be the least of your problems if I DM'ed the game.

By that code the actual serious transgressions are IMO.

1. You shouldn't have allied or cut deals with an evil cult.

2. You shouldn't accept human sacrifices/torture and the likes no matter the circumstance. And you should certainly not bring prisoners to their sacrificion (the on ly honorable way to deal with that promise would have been to put forth yourself as the sacrifice)

3. You should not associate with assasins, evil or otherwise (nor anyone else who to your knowledge regularly cheats, lies, uses poison, stabs people in their sleep and so on).

 

[Sejs]

Thanks for the details, Free.

Given the situation: oathbreaking, no tangible atonement needed. Say a few prayers and spend some time thinking long and hard on the situation and why what happened, happened.

Associating with an evil cult and making the promise to secure living sacrifice to fuel their dark rites, on the other hand...