JacktheRabbit
Explorer
During our session tonight, the party's paladin got in trouble. He was carrying an injured NPC to safety. Unfortunately, an adult dragon cornered him.
"Give me that man, and you can live. I hunger" it said. I had hoped he would stare it down with a bit of god-fuelled determination.
Just a minor quibble here. You are the DM, I assume he started at 1st level or so and has played up to 7th level. At this point you should have some idea how the player will act in most situations and the player should have some idea of how you play as DM.
You assumed he would stand tall and back down a hungry dragon.
He assumed you would have the dragon attack and eat him.
So either your campaign does not have much roleplay in it (ie mostly straight up combat) so neither of you really knew what the other was expecting here or, at least one of you completely misread the other based on the campaign up to this point.
Also, in game question. Why did the dragon want the man? Did he know the player was a paladin and he was trying to mess with him? Was the man quite fat and tasty looking? What caused this situation?
Final point, the Paladin did NOT commit murder. The dragon committed murder. All the Paladin did, in his players eyes, was chose to NOT commit suicide.