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

[chaochou]

The paladin should have confronted the dragon. If you’re genuine about role playing a character of faith, not just paying lip service for the image rights, there’s great honour and worth in martyrdom.

 

[MoonSong]

This thread goes in circles... I think there's and argument to be had (on what is exactly "willing"), but that would be best suited for a new thread. So I'm out of this one.

 

[Oofta]

The paladin should have confronted the dragon. If you’re genuine about role playing a character of faith, not just paying lip service for the image rights, there’s great honour and worth in martyrdom.

I'm not into playing or expecting lawful stupid paladins.

There is no honor in throwing away your life needlessly. It's the ultimate example of hubris. Unless you have plot armor there are always going to be opponents you can't defeat and Innocents you can't save.

 

[Hussar]

Hang on a tick.

@pemerton: This is your 2011 example:

An actual play example, concerning a paladin in a Rolemaster game. RM is a game with random crits, and is also one in which defeat of foes frequently occurs by disabling them via accumulated penalties to action, perhaps leaving them maimed but allowing their bleeding to be staunched so they can be taken prisoner/sent on their way/whatever. The first time the player of this paladin actually killed an NPC in combat was when he rolled a death crit - 00 on the percentile dice - and therefore beheaded the foe. This sent him into a period of deep mourning and introspection, and he wandered alone away from the rest of the party. I (as GM) rolled a random encounter, got a low level demon, and proceeded to have that demon appear near the paladin and begin taunting him for his conduct. I assumed that the paladin would attack the demon, on the grounds that demons speak falsehoods and not truths, but in fact he interpreted the whole thing as a sign from his god that he had done the wrong thing and deserved punishment. He therefore let the demon beat him to a pulp, until - realising that there was no more sport to be had here - it let him go. The paladin in question spent the next part of the campaign trying to atone for (what he took to be) his wrongs by building housing for refugees fleeing war in a neighbouring country.

This is precisely what I've been advocating all the way along in this thread. The player determines if his character has or has not violated his oath and the DM then uses that determination to continue play.

So, why are you arguing with me? We would both do, apparently, exactly the same thing - leave it up to the player.

 

[FrogReaver]

That is wrong on the face of it. Kamikaze pilots, for example, could not fulfill their objectives and come out alive. There are more modern examples as well.

As far as the whole "death before dishonor" thing goes, well, the unbelievable evil that has been done in that name is a list far too long to list here.

But, ok. Why don't the baddies just kidnap some random person, and demand that every paladin in your world fall on their sword? After all, what's the difference? The NPC will die if the Paladin's so not kill themselves, therefore, according to your logic, exterminating every paladin in the world would take a couple of weeks at most.

Seems a simple answer to getting rid of paladins from the game. @lowkey13 would be proud.

Kamikaze who lived

 

[FrogReaver]

So what is your ruling? How do you address it?

Do you rule that the best response the player could think of at the time was not good enough? That they can no longer be an oath of the ancients paladin?

Yes. The player and ultimately the Paladin misjudged the situation. I think the DM's play with the dragon was sound. He was not setting up a no win situation but instead was allowing the scene to naturally progress. It can't be stated enough that the Paladin only ever made an argument to the dragon that he should live. He hadn't yet made a case for the NPC's life. The DM could have framed the scene a little better to make that crystal clear, but his framing was still adequate.

So I think the Paladin's response wasn't good enough. As for my ruling, the Paladin violated his Oath. The initial requirement of violating your oath is atonement. The result of repeated violations is more, ultimately to the point of becoming an oath breaker.

 

[pemerton]

The players know that. The paladin probably doesn't.

The paladin also doesn't know that there's no chance of persuading the dragon, or of some other solution. THat's the player's knowledge driven by his/her understanding of how his/her GM runs the game.

 

[FrogReaver]

This is true. When one chooses the lesser of two evils, one is still choosing evil. There's no argument there.

I would add, though, that we should try to tease out between events that are tragic versus events that are immoral, especially when it comes to the pc class of the paladin. I don't know enough about the original scenario, but it's often easy to confuse tragic for immoral, both in the real world and in rpgs.

I think that when the only options are legitimately evil options then that's where the idea of the greater good comes in. The Paladin's predicament doesn't meet this criteria for the lesser of 2 evils becoming good, but similar but slightly different situations could have.

 

[pemerton]

While I agree with you, don't you think it funny that Gygax's 1e AD&D definition of Lawful Good is "the greatest good of the greatest number, and least harm to the rest" - ie a Benthamite Utilitarian standard?

Yep - I think I might have posted about this upthread (though maybe it was in the recent lewpuls alignment thread).

Gygax, in his definition of good, is completely casual across different notions of the good, including utilitarianism as you say, human rights (which is what he mentions in his stand-alone definition of good in his DMG, though to a Benthamite those are nonsense on stilts), truth and beauty (in his PHB), etc.

That's one reason why I think debates about whether good characters can be utilitarian or not is hopeless - alignment does not resolve moral philsophical debates but straddles them by brining all the standard views into the definition of good. For a paladin, I think it then makes sense to go to the archetype, the "code" etc. In 5e the Oath of Devotion looks pretty non-utilitarian and standard duty/honour to me.

 

[FrogReaver]

Yeah, take away my geek card.

A better example would be Sophie's Choice - a woman forced by the Nazis to choose between her two children. One of whom will live, one will die.

Again, while Sophie blames herself, I don't think she did anything wrong or evil. Had she not chosen both children would have died. The player in the OP's scenario believed he could either leave the NPC with the dragon or they would both die.

To me, it's the intent and reasoning behind the paladin's choice that matters. He saw only two options: both he and the NPC die or only the NPC dies. Since he was on a mission to save the world, dying for no reason would have been the more evil choice.

I agree. Sophie did nothing wrong or evil. But it's not solely about belief. Some of the most evil people in history believe they are doing good and yet that doesn't make them good. Like the old proverb says, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". Belief nor intent alone just are not enough to move something from immoral to moral. Justifiable belief that you are in a no-win situation is one of those somethings that allows the otherwise immoral act to shift to being moral IMO. That's what's different about Sophie's case and our Paladin's case. The Paladin had an obvious good option to try. That he didn't try it showed he was more concerned with his personal safety than the safety of the one in his care - aka immoral. In fact, the player even essentially confessed to that, "I didn't want to lose my character and couldn't think of a way that out that would guarantee my character's safety"