Paladin moral delima

[Dausuul]

If you kill a leader in a LE society chances are that his successor(s) swear revenge to the paladin and those he is sworn to protect or that the lawful government itself gets overthrown by revolution. Even worse, the evil nation/cult that our anonymous "evil guy" is part of might declare war upon the order/nation the paladin is a part of and bring havoc to the paladin`s allies and innocent bystanders. Thus, our example paladin might loose his status for promoting chaos by agreeing to duell.

How do paladins in your game do anything? If they startle a butterfly and the butterfly flaps its wings, it could cause a thunderstorm that spooks a cow and the cow kicks an innocent milkmaid and breaks her leg and it gets infected and she DIES and now the paladin's killed an innocent person. Beige!

Besides the more obvious criteria -- that the threat has to be serious, and non-violent options must be impractical -- are two that stand out to me: (1) there must be serious prospectsof success; and (2) the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.

I'm not seeing how either of those is relevant. There are certainly serious prospects of success, and nothing to indicate the use of arms will produce additional evils. I mean, you could come up with some elaborate hypothetical scenario, but if you go that route you can come up with a reason not to do anything. What if you startle a butterfly?

 

[Umbran]

The paladin can lose status by failing to be lawful, failing to be good, or failing to follow his code, in particular.

Escaping quietly isn't evil, so no problem there.

Whether sneaking out counts as being unlawful, or against his code, would depend on the details of the cultural mores he goes by, and his code.

I think murdering his captor in his sleep is probably right out. But, unless his culture and laws imply that right of combat is the normal way to deal with such an issue, I don't expect there's a problem.

It might be different, for example, if he was captured according to his cultures' rules of engagement, and there was a tradition of prisoners being ransomed, such that escaping on his own was considered bad form.

 

[Janx]

As umbran points out, there are few situations where honor and protocol is on the line.

a paladin trading himself as a hostage to save others
a polite ransom (captive is treated well and in no actual danger)
paladin can't escape and bring his fellow prisoners

Otherwise, the first duty of a prisoner is to escape.
creating an escape plan and executing it is an orderly act

combat itself is a chaotic thing, if participating in chaotic things qualified as disbarrment from being lawful, the paladin class could not exist.

a paladin should utilize sound tactics. In combat, that includes subterfuge and misdirection. Using such does not include unethical or immoral strategies, such as lying to an ally or needlessly sacrificing men.

as such, unless there are more details to the OP, the answer is "no", there is no wrongdoing in the paladin sneaking out and escaping captivity.

 

[hopeless]

Paladin dilemma

I'd like to pose a concern to you for feedback:

If a paladin was captured, striped of his gear, and imprisoned, would he lose his paladin status if he escaped, recovered his gear, and got out of the enemy camp as quietly as possible?

I know it sounds dim and I'm not leaning on this, being a special circumstance and all. But if he had the opportunity to challenge his oppressor in a Lawful Evil society for his possessions and right of passage but chose to be sneaky instead would there be any divine punishment for cowardice or would that be stupidity instead?

What are your thoughts?

Unless your dm is seriously messing with you, then no you might get bawled at by your superiors' or clerics' of your faith but ultimately this is not about their misperception, this is about surviving to fight another day, unless this foe is holding a friend or ally of yours theres no reason to throw your character's life away unnecessarily, there will always be another time and learning from this might actually help you better prepare for the next confrontation after all.

Cowardice is when it endangers your comrades or allies lives by sneaking away it isn't cowardice to escape imprisonment and choose to learn from the experience rather than throw away the possibility your experience will provide much needed intelligence your fellows will need if they want to face this foe or his/her brethren.

However this is reliant on you having a dm who understands that there is no lawful stupid paladins only paladin players' who either don't want run such characters or use them to fulfil their ideas of what such characters would do.

Okay liked the honoured response bit!

Interesting point regarding what else is involved such as would the foe attack others in their care if the paladin escaped, but that would only be relevant if either they helped the paladin escape or the paladin was originally sent to help them escape.

I guess this requires more information if that is the case!

 

[Hand of Evil]

What is his CODE? This is why I always say make up a code to follow, that is what the Paladin is Lawful to! Example I use, the Boy Scout Oath, it is a good guideline.

 

[haakon1]

1. DM's decide what the requirements of a paladins behavior are - what is acceptable, what is not. These should be decided before play ever begins
...
3. In ANY circumstance in which a DM has failed to identify beforehand what a paladin IS ALLOWED to find morally acceptable that DM has BY DEFAULT given permission to the player to reach his own conclusions without being punished for failing to GUESS correctly.

OR, you could just play D&D.

A paladin is a hero. Play a paladin as a hero. Here endeth the lesson.

 

[hopeless]

Paladin, to be or not to be...

OR, you could just play D&D.

A paladin is a hero. Play a paladin as a hero. Here endeth the lesson.

I've met paladin players' who either showed how their code could be an advantage if played properly and those who showed just why most paladins in the forgotten realm books are lawful extremely stupid!

Sorry played in a greyhawk game where the forgotten realms dm ran a paladin pretty much as a crusader believing since his character was a noble from the Shield Lands he could pretty much get away with murder... several times in fact apparently a code of honour doesn't include redemption as far as his prisoners were concerned.

Didn't help the dm really wasn't bothered about his paladin roleplaying which was why I mentioned it depends on what your dm's view on such characters.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

OR, you could just play D&D.

A paladin is a hero. Play a paladin as a hero. Here endeth the lesson.

Yeah, if all things were equal I'd say the same thing. But when it comes to alignment and paladins in particular the most grounded, sensible player can't "just play" without knowing where the DM has planted the mines in his morality minefield. The player gets to make the decisions for his PC but it's the DM who decides where the edge is: what the paladins code is, what the alignment restrictions REALLY are (since its quite uncommon that two people at the table see a given alignment the same way without talking to each other first), etc.

I may not have a particular problem with "just playing" a paladin. You might not either. But the frequently recurring number of alignment and paladin "discussions" on any message board will tell you that there are A LOT of people out there who won't let that happen.

 

[GreyLord]

With 3e, everything everyone has stated sounds good.

From the sounds of it however, this question falls back to how a 1eUA Paladin may have had restrictions. At that time they fell under the Cavalier class, and many DM's may actually have ruled that the Paladin broke their code of behavior or ethic by sneaking away to escape. The DM may have fallen back onto this idea. AD&D and 3e are different however, especially UA AD&D and 3e...so I don't think this would be as applicable.

3e/3.5 was a different beast.

 

[Steel_Wind]

No and hell no. In any system -- at any time.

Lawful Good is not a synonym for stupid; nor is honourable another way of saying "suicidal".

In all honesty, I find these kind of questions quite aggravating, because so often they betray a tendency among some groups to enforce this sort of nutty code of conduct when discussing Paladins. There simply is no justification for this in any code of honour or alignment, for any version of the game, at any time, over the past 36 years the Paladin class has been in the game (since OD&D - Greyhawk).

No wonder the Paladin gets a bum wrap so often.