Paladins with powers being deluded/deceived?

[Umbran]

Do you mean obvious and noticeable to the reviewer, or (echoing @Umbran ) that the reviewer thinks it should have been noticeable to the paladin? The former seems to fall into the "lawful stupid" category - so what if it was an arch-lich pulling your strings and hiding behind a bunch of magic above your level that stopped you from telling, I'm your omniscient deity and it was obvious to me so kiss your powers good-bye.

Whoever is doing the reviewing (a god, another paladin/cleric, or even the paladin's conscience as represented by the GM) - I would think that "reasonable effort" needs to be taken to avoid the issue. If there's a lich using mighty magics, then I can see allowing it to pass. But, if the paladin doesn't even ask the right questions so that the lich's magics come into play, we're talking dereliction of duty.

I will even go so far as to say that if the paladin botched skill checks to notice, he might still be held responsible (the power that be decides the paladin's failure, in the fiction, is an indication that he or she is unworthy) - being a paladin is *NOT EASY*. Note to paladins afraid of being deceived - don't use Wisdom as your dump stat, and take Sense Motive!

In 3e, Atonement makes all such failures recoverable, though. Specifically, the case of deception is easy to clear, so long as you find an appropriate cleric.

Is there anything in the 3.5 Paladin description that requires them to have a god or order or, like the cleric, can they just serve righteousness in general? If so, how does the concept of righteousness review or observe them?

The d20 SRD makes no stipulation that a god or order is required. Which makes sense, since clerics don't need an actual god, either.

Such could be reviewed through their own faith or conscience, as represented by the GM. Or perhaps the power comes from the metaphysical force of Alignment that judges the paladin. Or perhaps any code powerful enough to grant power has enough metaphysical oomph to judge the paladin.

If I had a player running an "I follow a personal code" paladin, I'd sure as heck want to see the code in writing before play begins.

 

[tomBitonti]

... the convicted stood before the tribunal.

"You have been convicted of treachery; of cold hearted murder; of corruption of the innocent; of consorting with demons. Your guilt is well proven. Justice demands your death."

"But mercy demands that we offer a chance at redemption: Do you repent these sins?"

The convicted sneered and spat. A foul epithet was answered by a quick blow. Struggling, choking, the prisoner was hauled to the execution block.

"Sir Benedictine, this task falls to you. We are saddened that our mercy has failed."

Sir Benedictine lifted his sword high overhead, steeling himself for the blow. He had discovered the crimes, and the task of the execution fell to him. He swung, hard and fast. The kill must be clean. He had no desire to inflict a cruelty, even on one who had fallen so deeply.

As the blow fell, he kept his eyes on the prisoner. To keep the blow true, but also, as his duty, to shy away not from confronting evil. The blow cleanly severed the prisoner's head, which fell into the prepared receptacle.

Sir Benedictine knelt then, to offer a prayer, and to begin the ritual of cleansing. He had only begun when a murmor arose in the chamber. Startled, he glanced upwards. Following the hand of the High Clerist, he glanced where it pointed. There bloody, but unmistakable, contrary to what he had just seen, lay the head of the Sir Benavue the Just.

Stricken, Benedictine reached, grasped, then lifted the gore spattered head ...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Being lawful means you are subject to higher authority. It's not reasonable for the Paladin to say to his superior, "Well, gee, I was decieved so I couldn't have been derilict in my duty to you and of course I have no need to apologize to you. You wrong me by suggesting so."

It most certainly is reasonable- that's the standard we have in criminal law. Its called mens rea- the evil mind. Having a culpable mindset.

If the crime in question has, as an element acting intentionally, if you don't have the proper intentional mindset, you're not guilty as a matter of law.

Even without the paladin's powers, you'd be convicted of arson and murder if you burned down an orphanage because "everyone inside was evil" without taking any steps to ascertain the veracity of the assertion. That the paladin has an Evilometer in his head makes his duty of care that much higher. Ergo, sloth brings him down when he doesn't act diligently in his duty.

But if he were genuinely deceived- the BBEG ensorcelled the orphanage so that it and everyone in it radiated evil like the C'thlhu Family picnic- then he's in the clear...IF he actually tried to detect evil before setting the fire.

 

[Celebrim]

It most certainly is reasonable- that's the standard we have in criminal law. Its called mens rea- the evil mind. Having a culpable mindset.

Concurrence is not required in a question of guilt for all crimes. The lack of a guilty mind doesn't excuse actions, and in any event, in the United States we no longer consider crimes from the perspective of mens rea anyway but from a question of culpability.

But if he were genuinely deceived- the BBEG ensorcelled the orphanage so that it and everyone in it radiated evil like the C'thlhu Family picnic- then he's in the clear...IF he actually tried to detect evil before setting the fire.

Perhaps he is forgivable, but he is certainly not 'in the clear'.

And again, modern law generally isn't interested in concepts like 'Purity'. A LG deity may well very much be interested in such matters.

 

[tomBitonti]

... the King's Confessor stood grimly before the council.

"Sir Benevue's assistant was found, poisoned, after the indident?"

Yes, nodded the High Clerist.

"Was there any sign of his acting contrary to his vows?"

The Clerist glanced to his aide. The aide answered, tremulously:

"Departed Sir Benevue the Just was undergoing a penance of silence, solitude, and prayer. Only his assistant was permitted contact."

The Confessor's countenance deepened to a scowl. "Something was missed. Continue your investigation."

A pause. "Until this matter is resolved, a Ban is pronounced upon your order. You may assign a single Knight to continue the investigation outside of the Ban, and, you may assign a single Knight to seek out the transgressor, who has fled."

The High Clerist paused, ashen faced. Across the monastery, a collective wail arose as the Knights of the Silver Chalice felt the loss of grace.

"Benedictine shall have the honor of seeking the transgressor. I leave to you the nomination of one who shall continue the investigation within."

The Confessor nodded. The judgement was harsh, but fitting.

 

[Cadence]

Stepping aside from the Paladin for a second...

My short answer to this is that the 3.5 alignment descriptions are generally incoherent to the point of being meaningless if not clarified in some fashion. They are also generally in contridiction to the alignment descriptions from earlier editions. It should be obvious that being guided by a personal code (ei, one you set for yourself) is in immediate conflict with the notion of respect for authority (ei, someone with the right to set rules for you).

RAW of the edition being played seemed llke a good place to start for answering a rules question, and the earlier edition's alignment rules don't seem much, if any, closer to perfection than 3/3.5/PF's to me.

So where do you put a person who rigidly follows a fixed personal code, and follows other laws unless they contradict that code? By 3e RAW it is LN. It is decidedly not CN in 1e or 2e as it directly contradicts the "places randomness and disorder [at the top]" and "there is no order to anything, including their own actions", and it isn't N as it contradicts the balance between all things. Are they somehow unaligned?

Who determines what a valid law is? If the LG king is overthrown and the a CE one legally takes up the scepter that signifies rulership, do all the L characters in the kingdom have to just submit and do whatever the new king says? If you're visiting another country, which laws do you follow? If the king starts to go insane with Wormtongue whispering in his ear, all of the followers get drug along? Can an areligious kings never be lawful since there is no highest authority beyond themselves to write the laws? What if you're raised in the wilderness that has no king or whatnot? Two LG generals at a border find in a border dispute that each country's respective laws demand that the other immediately be driven out... let the slaughter commence?

 

[N'raac]

This is a really good question IMO.

In brief, my answer would be, "Whether or not it fits with your conception, it doesn't seem to fit with how narratives about transgressions usually work."

In narratives about transgressions, the 'power' almost never acts to stop someone from committing the transgression. There could be a variaty of explanations for this:

1) If you intervene to prevent the transgression, you are basically violating the free will of the person's involved. It could be argued that this would be a worse crime for a diety to commit than transgression being commited.
2) It could be that the LG diety sees the chastisement, atonement, and redemption process as being the lesser of several evils it is forced to choose between when his servants are misbehaving. An example would be Arthur's mortal combat with Lancelot in the movie Excalibur, where Arthur's transgression is ultimately made to serve good - humbling both Arthur and Lancelot and bringing them into friendship.
3) In the case of dieties which are explicitly not omniscient (like most D&D dieties) it could very well be that the diety easily misses an act of impending evil amongst all it must keep track of, but quickly becomes aware of actually committed evil - the blood of an innocent crying out from the ground, for example.

From a practical standpoint, direct divine intervention used all the time is going to be unbalancing and railroading in a game.

I don't disagree, however it does point to the hypocrisy of expecting perfection on the part of the Paladin himself. So I am back to the honest error of the Paladin versus a clear transgression, either deliberate or grossly negligent.

I generally agree, but only because you added the 'gross conduct' clause. When my players running a Champion (homebrew 'Paladin' class) commit minor transgressions knowingly or especially unknowingly, I typically don't deal with this by way of loss of status immediately. Rather, the Champion recieves warnings via dreams or other omens that something is wrong with his conduct. These become progressively worse if he doesn't correct the situation, and might ultimately lead to loss of status if ignored.

This, to me, would make for a much more compelling narrative for the deceived Paladin. Something is not right. He knows it. How does he determine what it is?

But gross transgresssion of the code, so that the player IMO ought to have thought twice about doing something so rash, would draw loss of status - albiet with a chance of 'simple' atonement. If for example my player's current Champion of Aravar (the God who protects traveller's on their way the after life), was tricked into doing something rash like waylaying and killing an innocent traveller or participating in an act of piracy on an innocent merchant or defiling the bodies of the dead, that would draw immediate censure even if the character thought he was doing the right thing or didn't realize what he was doing. In fact, it would draw immediate censure even if he'd been dominated or charmed into doing those things.

That said, I believe there are things a player can easily overlook which his character would not. In such instances, pointing out the inconsistency of the proposed course of action with the code of the deity seems perfectly reasonable. I don't expect the Paladin to use his player's knowledge of ballistics to build a handgun. Similarly, I will not restrict the Paladin's knowledge of his religion to the knowledge of the player.

Heh. Not all atonement need be some vain glorious deed like killing a dragon.

Slaying the dragon may be atonement for the Paladin, but to the player it's a loot and xp factory. Maybe atonement requiring a loss the player feels is better atonement for carelessness of both Paladin and player. "Our Blessed Leader dictates that, to atone for your sin, you must sell your magical arms and armor, seek out the child of he whom you have slain and gift this wealth to him. So it is written. So shall it be." Imagine the response of the player...

 

[Umbran]

Who determines what a valid law is? If the LG king is overthrown and the a CE one legally takes up the scepter that signifies rulership, do all the L characters in the kingdom have to just submit and do whatever the new king says?

Generally: Alignment is not a straitjacket. Alignment does not determine action. Alignment is the *result* of actions. Being lawful does not actually mean one must follow laws. One is judged to be lawful instead because one almost always follows the law.

For your specific example: if the king is "overthrown", that probably means the new leader is, in some sense, not the legal ruler of the realm, or they came by their rulership illegally (say, the king's brother kills the king - he's the heir, but came to the throne by skulduggery), so no, lawful characters are not bound to follow them.

For the paladin, the answer is actually pretty clear: "...a paladin will never knowingly associate with evil characters, nor will she continue an association with someone who consistently offends her moral code." So, once that ruler solidly shows his or her stripes, the paladin would be obligated to resist their rule. Since the paladin is kind of the epitome of such things, it follows that others of the same alignment could safely follow the same basic plan of action.

If you're visiting another country, which laws do you follow?

All of them, until such time as they seriously conflict. Then, you stick by the ones you are personally sworn to uphold first. Many a good story is based on the conflict of rules of different cultures...

Can an areligious kings never be lawful since there is no highest authority beyond themselves to write the laws?

Usually, even kings without religion have traditions and codes of honor that are held equal to or above their own power. A king that does not keep up their own end of oaths of fealty, for example, isn't going to be called "lawful".

 

[Celebrim]

RAW of the edition being played seemed llke a good place to start for answering a rules question, and the earlier edition's alignment rules don't seem much, if any, closer to perfection than 3/3.5/PF's to me

Sure, but I'm saying that the 3.5 rules are literally incoherent, in that the answer we would come up with depends entirely on which section of the rules we are quoting. The description of LN IMO contridicts the description given for Law in the section on Law! If I quote the section on law, you'd never get the idea of a 'personal code'. Yet this strange concept shows up in the section on LN.

So where do you put a person who rigidly follows a fixed personal code, and follows other laws unless they contradict that code?

Is the personal code externally reviewable, understandable and subject to enforcement? If so, the 'personal code' isn't personal. But if the 'personal code' is not externally reviewable, is not understandable to anyone but the one that holds it, and is not enforceable, then exactly where you have to put that depends on the nature of the code - probably CG, CN, or CE depending on the details. Fairies of myth after all follow codes, and there are all sorts of stories about tricking or placating fairies by having knowledge of their code. But one would not thereby claim that the fairies are 'Lawful Neutral'.

Utlimately, the notion of 'follows a code' is a bit of a red herring. All alignments follow some sort of code of conduct, even if it is only, "Always look out for your own interests." Madness of the 'antic disposition' sort, falls under CN precisely because it reflects the idea of a completely incomprehensible and unreviewable personal code. Madness of say the sociopathy sort, isn't CN, but that's another conversation.

Who determines what a valid law is?

The person with authority to do so.

If the LG king is overthrown and the a CE one legally takes up the scepter that signifies rulership, do all the L characters in the kingdom have to just submit and do whatever the new king says?

The lawful neutral ones certainly do, if the ruler legally took up the scepter. They may personally despise him, but without a legal recourse for disposing him, it is the essential nature of LN to say that greater wrong would be perpetrated by usurping a lawful ruler than anything else that is possible. Of course, actual Lawful leaning nations have all sorts of traditions and rules that exist at a higher level than any mortal ruler which the ruler is expected to be subject to, and in your particular example its highly unlikely that existing law recognizes right of conquest or any other sort of usurpation. The legal ruler would not be the one that overthrew the LG king, but rather the LG kings legitimate heir. Now concievably, the LG ruler could be overthrown by an enemy, and the legitimate heir could be CE, and indeed in that case the LN characters are required by their honor to swear fealty to him.

LG characters on the other hand live in a tension. They must be both lawful and good and those things can be in tension. The situation you suggest would likely cause a schism amongst the LG knights - some of whom would take the more lawful part and some of whom would argue that the right to rule is predicated on the fact that the ruler's rule is just and good and is forfieted when this isn't true. Depending on the foresight of the previous rulers, this could be specified explicitly by tradition. For example, it might be in the power of the High Priest to declare the current ruler and apostate, relieving all the lawfuls of their obligation and oaths to the King. And so forth. But in a LE tending autocracy, obviously your LG inclinations are greatly in tension with the law... which sounds like a great basis of play as far as I'm concerned.

If you're visiting another country, which laws do you follow?

Your code will tell you. Generally lawful codes present a heirarchy of duties so that if your obligations are in conflict, you know which duty you have to fulfill. Generally speaking, your duty to your leige out weights duty to a local ruler if those two are in conflict. If the code doesn't tell you, you're up a creek without a paddle and you'll probably have to fish around for something else in the code that tells you how to behave.

If the king starts to go insane with Wormtongue whispering in his ear, all of the followers get drug along?

The lawful neutral ones do, although they may have great personal misgivings about it. After all, he is the King and can't be gainsayed. If their misgivings are grave enough, they may start looking for legal loopholes and the like, so that they can obey the letter of the king's commands but not the spirit on the grounds that the king's commands themselves are contrary to the spirit if the law. It's worth noting that this situation is exactly the one that prevailed in Theoden's court.

Can an areligious kings never be lawful since there is no highest authority beyond themselves to write the laws?

The highest authority need not be a diety, though in D&D it usually is. The highest authority could be a mortal law giver or simply a body of inherited written law. A good example of this IMO is from the biblical story of Daniel in the Lion's Den, where the King passes a proclamation, immediately regrets it, but finds himself unable to undo his proclamation because his courtiers (rightly) point out that by the law he is unable to do so - and the King just goes along with this because he knows that they are right (and he'll lose his lawful authority if he breaks the law).

What if you're raised in the wilderness that has no king or whatnot?

This is probably one of the reasons that D&D associated (wrongly) barbarism with chaos. However, if you are raised in the wilderness and lawful, then you are probably placing yourself subject to clan or tribal law, or even a Kiplng style 'law of the jungle'. Whatever is claiming an external reviewable code that must be followed, is the lawful influence in the environment. A lawful character raised in the absence of such a code would be really interesting, because he would feel completely rootless and without a place in the world, but I would guess would simply gravitate toward the first code that was revealed to him that fit his moral needs. Prior to that time he'd just feel that the world was somehow wrong.

Two LG generals at a border find in a border dispute that each country's respective laws demand that the other immediately be driven out... let the slaughter commence?

Yes. Indeed. Although, each of course would probably respect the other as a noble foe, and would seek to extend to the other all the curtsey and mercy that their honor and situation would allow.

 

[Cadence]

Stuck on personal codes that don't have outside enforcement...

The description of LN IMO contridicts the description given for Law in the section on Law! If I quote the section on law, you'd never get the idea of a 'personal code'. Yet this strange concept shows up in the section on LN.

Is the personal code externally reviewable, understandable and subject to enforcement? If so, the 'personal code' isn't personal. But if the 'personal code' is not externally reviewable, is not understandable to anyone but the one that holds it, and is not enforceable, then exactly where you have to put that depends on the nature of the code - probably CG, CN, or CE depending on the details.

A contemplative sword master comes up with his own elaborate code of conduct and has written it down. It takes into account his philosophy of what rules are required for a sustainable or improvable society. He does not believe in making personal sacrifices to help other individuals (it encourages the thriving of those who make bad choices) or in harming others for the sake of convenience (it stops the less millitant from thriving and contributing intellectually) . All 118 of the exhortations and prohibitions make sense in plain English/common. He will teach it to those who ask, but most find it too demanding and he doesn't seek out opportunities to spread it. He follows other laws and traditions that don't contradict this fixed code because he is innately in favor of order. No one external makes him stick to his code and he has no personal authority to force it on others. He is honest in all his dealings. He expects others to have and use a well thought out code of actions, whether divine, legal, or personal, and judges them based on how they follow it -- and he expects it to be an actual code and not just an excuse to do what they find easiest, most enjoyable, or most expedient.

If 3e is incoherent (and it would seemingly be LN there)... where does it go in the 1e/2e alignment system. It seems to contradict both good and evil, and it certainly doesn't "place randomness and disorder" above everything else.