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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7818057" data-attributes="member: 42582">Good post!The flipside of player's playing these sorts of PCs with sincerity rather than expedience is that the GM has to make sure that such sincerity is not - from the "meta" perspective - naive or foolish or pointless or self-defeating. Which connects to the double bind issue but goes further - without putting the paladin into impossible binds the GM might still frame and adjudicate things such that the paladin always or mostly "loses" because s/he acts with sincere devotion.How to avoid that without also avoiding sentimentality can be tricky, but that's exactly why and where - in a RPG context - we should be looking to the resolution mechanics to help with some of the heavy lifting. In the context of the OP"s scenario, it could be as simple as that a successful Persuasion check keeps the dragon talking long enough that rescuers have time to arrive, or something else comes up that needs the dragon's attention and so it doesn't have the time to finish off its confrontation with the palaind ("But next time we meet it will be a different story . . ."). And that's just what I came up with with a couple of minutes thought and not actually being there at the table.</blockquote>