D&D 5E Paladin just committed murder - what should happen next?

[MonsterEnvy]

Oath of the Ancients

Kindle the Light. Through your acts of mercy, kindness, and forgiveness, kindle the light of hope in the world, beating back despair.
Shelter the Light. Where there is good, beauty, love, and laughter in the world, stand against the wickedness that would swallow it. Where life flourishes, stand against the forces that would render it barren.
Preserve Your Own Light. Delight in song and laughter, in beauty and art. If you allow the light to die in your own heart, you can't preserve it in the world.
Be the Light. Be a glorious beacon for all who live in despair. Let the light of your joy and courage shine forth in all your deeds.

Thanks this is helpful.

 

[Nagol]

Can we all at least agree that under the traditional definition of good that this paladin was not good in response to this trial?

Traditionally good is that the ends don’t justify the means. the means should be good and the ends as well.

Yeah, but that is blaming the victim in this case. The paladin was mugged. He had a choice, fight the mugger and almost certainly die or give in to the mugger and get blamed for being mugged.

Now, could the paladin have decided to die? Yep.
Is there any information in the player's hands that the mugger is unwilling or unlikely to kill him? Not in the description we've been given.
If the paladin decided he didn't want to die, is there any stratagem with player-visible reasonable outcome he can use where he isn't blamed for being mugged?

If the answer is no, congrats DM, you unleashed a screw you scenario!
Can screw you scenarios exist? Sure.
Do you want anyone to play a paladin again? Then they shouldn't exist save extremely rarely in the game.

 

[Wiseblood]

Diplomacy: Yes you could eat this man and me too. Spare us and I will bring you a team of oxen or a herd of goats to feast on. Surely such a venerable paragon of draconic might has an appetite such that we morsels would not sate it.

( I might have saved us both and then some for 60gp.)

 

[Stalker0]

It is always amazing to me how different people see alignment.

So to confirm, many people on this thread believe that if someone holds you at gunpoint, takes away someone from you, and you don’t try to get yourself killed by stopping them...that you are a murderer and an evil person.

Really? People really feel that way about this kind of situation?

 

[Krachek]

Paladin was put in a gotcha.
Impossible to fight, impossible to save the npc.
A long term penalty would be harsh,
Amend could be tough, if it need to slay the adult dragon. CR13+
He got to take some level before its entire party can tryout,
Not willing to sacrifice itself for nothing is not an evil act.
So I would give no blame to the paladin.

 

[Celebrim]

Oath of the Ancients

Kindle the Light. Through your acts of mercy, kindness, and forgiveness, kindle the light of hope in the world, beating back despair.
Shelter the Light. Where there is good, beauty, love, and laughter in the world, stand against the wickedness that would swallow it. Where life flourishes, stand against the forces that would render it barren.
Preserve Your Own Light. Delight in song and laughter, in beauty and art. If you allow the light to die in your own heart, you can't preserve it in the world.
Be the Light. Be a glorious beacon for all who live in despair. Let the light of your joy and courage shine forth in all your deeds.

So aside from metaphorical/light language about light, that as pretty bog standard Paladin Oath that could be within framework for a 1e AD&D Paladin of a deity of Light.

Divorced from the metaphorical language, this is a "Paladin of Hope". Everything he's supposed to represent is Hope.

So you have a champion of Hope who has just decided that the situation was hopeless, and so he could abandon his duty to "stand against the wickedness that would swallow". I mean this was a literal test of that.

 

[Celebrim]

It is always amazing to me how different people see alignment.

So to confirm, many people on this thread believe that if someone holds you at gunpoint, takes away someone from you, and you don’t try to get yourself killed by stopping them...that you are a murderer and an evil person.

Really? People really feel that way about this kind of situation?

Not exactly, but close enough.

If someone is loading gays on a boxcar, either I volunteer to get on the boxcar with them, or else I'm participating and validating.

If someone says, "All the Jews stand up.", if I don't stand up too, I'm participating and validating.

If someone grabs a child in front of me, points a gun at me and says, "I'll kill you if you try to stop me.", then I say, "Fire the gun, but you will only have the child over my dead body."

 

[Nagol]

Diplomacy: Yes you could eat this man and me too. Spare us and I will bring you a team of oxen or a herd of goats to feast on. Surely such a venerable paragon of draconic might has an appetite such that we morsels would not sate it.

( I might have saved us both and then some for 60gp.)

Talking is good! It might have gone somewhere if the player was quick enough on his feet to contemplate that while staring at the loss of his PC. It is a stratagem. As a player, I'd put it near last resort because the large evil critter in front of me already told me its demands, but it's something.

You might also not have save anyone anything and just got eaten though too.

 

[Umbran]

I mean, the very first time we meet Rogers he's fighting a bully twice his size despite not having any chance of winning, and he refuses to give up and keeps saying stuff like, "You want more. I can keep this up all day."

Yeah. Steve is more than willing to take pain for principle. And he's willing to risk his own death.

And sometimes his 'lawful stupidity' (if you want to think of it that way) gets more serious. In 'Infinity War', Vision makes the statement that for the good of the universe he has to be killed, and Rogers vetoes this plan because it involves making a dishonorable choice.

As I recall, this was more complicated than that. For one thing, Wanda also originally rejected this plan, rendering Steve's opinion of it moot. And I am not sure that rejecting the first immediate plan to sacrifice a life counts as stupid, when another plan is in place before the end of the scene, and they are off to Wakanda...

... and there, we realize that the plan to destroy the Mind Stone was nonsense all along, as by then Thanos had the Time Stone, and could replay events until they came up in his favor. We get to wonder how we measure the moral or ethical value of either the pragmatic or idealistic approach, when they both have the same results.

Rogers essentially says, "Saving the universe is less important than maintaining our moral integrity."

That's one way to consider it. The other is to note that Steve didn't know how things would unfold, and makes a choice to preserve lives (and resources) as long as possible in the face of uncertainty, where the Paladin facing the dragon probably knows there's no way he gets anything good out of the conflict.

Where is the line between good sense and giving up?

My personal feeling is that at some level paragons like Rogers are offensive, not just because of 'lawful stupid', but because by upholding a higher standard they imply the rest of us aren't meeting it. And contemplating that we might be falling short makes a lot of people offended.

I think that may mean either sometimes we have to stop worrying about what other people think, or engage in a race to the bottom, because the only acceptable standard is the one the least of us can hold.

 

[CamHallulis]

Diplomacy: Yes you could eat this man and me too. Spare us and I will bring you a team of oxen or a herd of goats to feast on. Surely such a venerable paragon of draconic might has an appetite such that we morsels would not sate it.

( I might have saved us both and then some for 60gp.)

A paladin would traditionally have an almost insane Charisma surely he could reason with a draconic being and offer a greater meal then that he would gain from any two humans unless they were immensely obese.