playing a paladin in world that is not black and white

[billd91]

The plan that I have is once we catch the guy I will notify the cyrean avengers who are waiting for us In Starlaska and they will sneakness to take the prisoner from us hopefully without getting caught and avoiding a conflict with the party.

Oh dear. If I were running this game, this would put your more in jeopardy of your paladin oaths than openly taking the prisoner to the Cyrean king. Do your work in the open. Your character has credibility and honor to uphold.
If your party is against you, there's simply not much you can do for your king. Engineering the kidnapping of a prisoner from your own comrades. I wouldn't do it.

 

[Storm Raven]

Oh dear. If I were running this game, this would put your more in jeopardy of your paladin oaths than openly taking the prisoner to the Cyrean king. Do your work in the open. Your character has credibility and honor to uphold.
If your party is against you, there's simply not much you can do for your king. Engineering the kidnapping of a prisoner from your own comrades. I wouldn't do it.

As DM, I would encourage this from a paladin. Doing what is, in her moral structure, the right thing even though that may have negative personal consequences is what being a paladin is all about.

 

[FCWesel]

Elf Witch, I think your Paladin is acting the right way. After all, in order to become a Paladin, your PC took oaths of loyalty and duty and such. Well, who did he make those oaths out to? I assume the King-In-Exile, and not the "Host King".

At my table you would be playing it right.


On a side note. If the Host King takes your character in, and specifically assigns you a mission and you agree to take that mission on, and then the Exile-King comes to you in secrecy to preform some other action that is counter to your previous obligation, then you have a moral problem. After all, your character made an agreement with someone, he SHOULD try and KEEP his promises...that's a personal thing. You have a oath of service to the Host King: You made a deal with him. On the other you have a duty to the Exile-King, whom you owe fealty. You have given your word to both, your honor is on the line to both men.

At some level I have to say, "Shame on your King." for putting your Paladin in this position. I could see this changing your dynamic with the king in a personal and professional way. After all, can you serve a man who would be so dishonest? Or is he honest and the enemy is dishonest, which means then you have to ask yourself, is usuing the tactics of the enemy the way to truly fight him? Do multiple "wrongs" make a right?

This is a PERFECT moral dilema for a GM to throw at a Paladin PC. He's right in following either or both or neither men's plans for the sake of "doing the right thing by his own personal moral feelings." Not everything is about following the orders of a King, Kings can do wrong, and a Paladin is obligated to think for himself for the better of all over the crown. Say a LG King suddenly orders a village burnt to the ground but won't say why to the Paladin. Does he blindly trust in the King and perform the act or does he investigate the matter and essentially refuse the orders given to him by his lawful master and king whom he has sworn oaths to?

By essentially cheating and lying (after the fact) to the Host King, he makes a bad name for himself and for his people and his King to the Host Kingdom.

Good stuff.


As other have said, I would have a sit down with your GM. Explain WHY you think your PC is in the clear and HOW you percieve the oaths and honors of a Paladin are set. I say be firm in your conception of your character, it is your GM's fault for not setting that clear with you at the start of the game.

In any event, I applaude your steadfastness and comment about taking the fallen paladin / avenger route if your GM is "a jerk" about it.

Good luck.

 

[Raloc]

I'd say from the OP that the paladin in this case is acting both lawfully (following the orders of her king and country, not those of outsiders) and good (apprehending someone evil). I wouldn't consider this a breaking of the paladin code, or either axis of alignment. In fact, I'd say the opposite: if the paladin in this case were to turn over the guy to Breland, that'd be a violation of her alleigance to the king (and thus to some extent the law axis).

 

[WayneLigon]

This is probably one of the best articles I've ever read on Law and Chaos.

Particularly telling is:

For a lawful good character such as a paladin, achieving goals in the right way -- that is, in a way that promotes the general welfare and doesn't unnecessarily imperil others -- is the most important consideration.

Now let's address the question of how the paladin's code of conduct governs her actions. A paladin is both lawful and good, and she must uphold both aspects of her alignment. Thus, if the laws in a particular realm are corrupt and evil, she is under no obligation to obey them.

So, the laws of the land are not nessesarily something the Paladin cares about to the point that disobeying them is going to even cause a dent in his paladinhood.

 

[Felix]

This is a PERFECT moral dilema for a GM to throw at a Paladin PC.

GMs shouldn't design moral dilemas for their paladin players; the normal course of adventuring is moral dilema enough without someone testing you to see if you answer "correctly".

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Legitimate authority is not conferred by possession of a particular piece of real estate.

Nor by watery tarts flinging swords about.

I'd concur, though, that tricking the party probably isn't kosher.

 

[FCWesel]

GMs shouldn't design moral dilemas for their paladin players; the normal course of adventuring is moral dilema enough without someone testing you to see if you answer "correctly".

There's ABSOLUTLY nothing wrong with setting up a situation for a player character and seeing how it pans out. That's pretty much how this game happens at every single moment of it.

Dramatically speaking, it's the point of a game for those more concerned about ROLE over ROLL (by this I mean more interaction based games over more combat based ones). Essentially though, there's no difference in setting up a moral quandry for a PC then setting up a battle encounter, as GM you design a scene and then see how the players react and roll/role.

The only caveat is that there's got to be a GOOD and HONEST understanding persepctive between players and GMs. Unfortunately, in this case, the GM was flat out incompetent in not establishing a set of principles or rules with Elf Witch, hence the problem at hand.


If things had been set up at the begining of the game properly and the GM through in the encounter with the two Kings, it becomes a GREAT RP moment for the player and their character: "Do they listen to the Host King and keep their personal honor, or do their duty and keep their word to the Exile-King? Both are good and bad. Doing one or the other is not nearly enough to lose their Paladin status really, neither is EVIL in any sense, but it does change how the two Kings will percieve and interact with them in the future.

That's a great moral diema for a paladin.

It's just bad timing that the GM decides to throw in his view over the Player's, effectively cutting Elf Witch out of his character, which I assume has been played the same way throughout the entire campiagn thus far.

 

[Shieldhaven]

I'm going to have to completely disagree with you, Felix. I think that a well-designed moral dilemma can add a whole lot of depth to a game. If the player never needs to think about how he's going to uphold law and virtue in the face of a dilemma, then a whole dimension of internal conflict is abandoned. In a true damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't type of situation, I think player creativity can shine even more than normal as they find a third path that passes, as it were, between Scylla and Charybdis.

I will say that I find it more interesting to threaten with things other than taking away a character's class abilities. This does rely on the player to have a sense of his character's conscience. Sociopaths Need Not Apply.

But then, a lot of my ideas on How Awesome A Game Can Be come from Sep's Tales of Wyre. What can I say, I'm a fanboy.

Haven

 

[Elf Witch]

Oh dear. If I were running this game, this would put your more in jeopardy of your paladin oaths than openly taking the prisoner to the Cyrean king. Do your work in the open. Your character has credibility and honor to uphold.
If your party is against you, there's simply not much you can do for your king. Engineering the kidnapping of a prisoner from your own comrades. I wouldn't do it.

I cannot tkae the prisoner openly to the Cyrean King it has to be done in secret. It is important that no one knows that the king questioned this man. That being the case I am pretty sure they are going to excute him after questioning him.

My paladin does not have a problem with this because this man has the blood of over a 1000 innocent Cyreans on his hands. He will be judged by the rightful ruler of these dead Cyreans.

And yes my character is working in the open her loyalty to the King is well known. Her king asked her to be included in the group.

I have tried to feel the other party members out about this situation and they simply want to be paid and since the King does not have the funds to pay what the King of Breland is offering they won't allow this prisoner to be turned over the Cyrean King.

One of the big problems I see here is what I see as the old fashioned way of bringing a party together. Everybody makes a character gives it a background and the DM fits it all together. This may work with simple dungeon crawls but in a game with a lot of political intrigue it does not work so well. The characters should have something in common.

I made my character first I had a concept and knew I wanted to play a paladin before anyone else had even chosen anything else. The DM told me he wanted to do a lot with the cyrean situation and we had a talk about paladins I had thought we were on the same page.

No one else made characters from either Breland or Cyre. The only reasons they are in Breland is that they were in an Airship crash and got caught up in an Orc attack on one of the camps. So they have no loyalty to either Breland or Cyre.

my character is ina rough situation. Betray her king or betray the party.