Prickly moral situation for a Paladin - did I judge it correctly?

[nimisgod]

If the paladin dies, but kills, say, 2 of them before he does so, that's two less that will never plague the world again. The ones that got knocked out? Up again to terrorize the world.

So you're saying that killing the creatures is a much more permanent solution as compared to subduing them? Don't you think they've sold their souls to whatever fiend already? If they die, they become demons/devils. Whooopie.

But if you redeem them... then there maybe a god or two willing to help them to the right path. or maybe not. Better they die without a chance rather than have the Greater Good die, right?

I guess we just don't see eye to eye here.

Of course, as previously mentioned it's probably more safe to kill them. No, I'm not being faceteous. I'm just saying that a lot depends on how Force-user wants to run his game, concerning redemption of evil creatures. Some GMs give players that, others bite 'em in the back.

I believe that the Paladin should actually recieve bonus XP for this. This has been stated a few times, but here's the one that stick out:

1) They sacrifice adults to dark and evil gods
2) They attacked him.
3) How the heck is the Paladin supposed to subdue them?[snip]
4) What's the greater evil? Killing some demon workshipping, sacrificing cultists or getting you, your party, and countless others killed. This one kinda went along with three.
5) He stood up for what he thought was right. He didn't let the group pressure him into changing. This seems like good roleplaying, maybe its just me. He stood up and vanquished evil, according to his beliefs.

1) Okay.
2) And he's supposed to immediately retaliate in kind, acting like every other fighter around. Okay.
3) Strike for subdual (or punch). They'll be out for a few hours. Blindfold, gag and bind. It's not meta-gaming. How else do you deal with spell-casters? I mean besides killing them. Besides, its a monastery. I'm sure that the monks therein have an abundance of rope and cloth.
4) False Dilemma. These are not the only two options available.
5) IMO, there was a better way. He didn't take it. That does not deserve penalty but it doesn't deserve praise either in my book (which will differ from most GMs out there, I imagine). I award method as well as intention in my games.

Hey, I use lots of shades of gray in my games, and I like making the good/evil boundary fuzzy. But even *I* fail to see how, in any way, the paladin wasn't justified in killing things that were, effectively, as innately evil as real demons.

False Analogy. These kids were not innately evil. If they were innately evil, then they wouldn't need to be corrupted in the first place.

Sheesh, kill a few villages and they call you innately evil already. Flirt!

If they were innocent children once, then there might be a part of them that remained so. Or maybe not. But innately evil? Nope

 

[nopantsyet]

This is quite an interesting discussion. I have to say that there are solid arguments on both sides, but I think they really boil down to the perennial argument about Paladins. Should they smite anything that smells of evil or do they have a mission of mercy and redemption? And the DM can swing that as much as the particular god the Paladin worships can.

In the end, I prefer morally ambiguous situations, and would not be likely to impose a specific "correct" course of action on the character. Rather I would expect that the Paladin would articulate the the conflict, and make a deliberate decision based on his judgement. I still might rule in the end that there's some consequence to the Paladin's actions, but if the moral conflict is roleplayed out, it's going to be a correction, not a punishment. I think there's a big difference between misjudging a dangerous situation, and blatantly defying your god.

Also, I wouldn't tell a player his Paladin powers are at risk. If he blindly rushed in to kill in a morally ambiguous situation, I might tell him that something in his heart gives him pause as he raises his sword, making him wonder if it's just to strike down a child--even one so corrupted. That's likely to scare the player more than upset him, as he's more likely to see it as roleplaying his god instead of DM fiat.

Nice job on the setup, though. Sounds very cool. I'd say stick to your guns next time, even if in doubt and under fire. You can always decide on a lesser consequence than full loss of Paladin powers. Above all, have faith in yourself and Rule 0 and work out the details after the encounter's resolved.

 

[nimisgod]

I don't understand what the whole emphasis on "subduing" the evil children is for. What's the merit? They have slaughtered entire villages...[snip] ....The paladin must steel himself to the hard task at hand, and be fully prepared to hear the call to war, and to armour their heart to the need to bring fire and steel to the forces of darkness, no matter where they are, or what form they may take. Semper Fidelis, SHARK

While I admire your talent in writing, I think you make far too many hasty generalizations in your prose.

The punishment must fit the crime. Paladins do not kill each and every short-changing merchant nor every grumpy, child-hating old recluse. I would imagine that Village bullies and other simple-minded thugs wouldn't be put to the sword, but I guess, the Paladin's sword is without mercy.

Not all pantheons share your visions of the afterlife. A lot of this is obviously setting based and thus irrelevant to the argument.

I agree with some of your points though. A paladin is tasked with the responsibilities of his vocation.

But what do you call a paladin who kills everything that registers on his evil-meter? A blackguard-to-be. A paladin who is nothing more than an evil-whacka-mole is nothing more than a glorified fighter, IMO.

A paladin is a holy warrior and more... (blah blah blah, I said this all before).

Well, obviously our ideas of the Paladin differ far too greatly. That's fine. To each his own

 

[Tom Cashel]

Instead, the paladin hacked down another child, this one a young boy apparently no more than eight.

I also immediately thought of Village of the Damned.

I see this a lot--self-righteous players not understanding what it really means for a paladin to hold himself to a higher standard than his enemies do.

Then again, there's not many role-models in this world, now are there?

 

[mroberon1972]

Wow, everyone seems to be on the "They're not children, they're evil cultists" bandwagon.

Is a child held responsible for its acts? Can a child be expected to resist the temptations of a demonic power?

It seems the forces of darkness need only travel about, possessing or otherwise corrupting young'uns, and pretty soon (since said young'uns are to be exterminated when found by the Good Guys) there'll be no more young'uns left. If paladins are not here to protect children from evil, who is?

Bunch a heartless bastiches.

"The innocence of children is not through purity of spirit, but of weakness of limb."

I remember being a child once. Many of us were NOT nice. And we choose to be that way.

Mr. Oberon

 

[Olive]

Indeed, paladins are more than mere *holy warriors*, however, anything else they may be is secondary to their first, and primary, purpose: that of being a HOLY WARRIOR.

This is a funny thing to say given what you say in the last paragraph about DM/Player communication.

On another note, it always amazes me why so many people seem to expect paladins to be some 20th-century version of a social worker or defense lawyer; paladins are warriors first and foremost, and are charged with bringing war to the forces of darkness.

In YOUR campaign sure. I don't see why people get so upset if I want my paladins to be different. You don't want social workers, I don't want above the law cops.

I think that while many people seem to want to force the paladin into some other role, it seems like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole--such is simply not the paladin's primary purpose. Other types of characters exist to fulfill other kinds of callings and professional skill sets. Such other callings are not necessarily inappropriate, and can even be fun and interesting to play, however, the paladin does not seem to be the ideal character-type to explore such a calling. This stark difference in philosophy also seems to be at the root of many DM/Player conflicts; the player sees the paladin as a holy, righteous champion that rides forth to crush evil, while the DM expects the character to be some kind of social worker. These two vastly different roles have entirely different assumptions built into them, and such differences can't really be resolved en media res, but rather, should be hammered out prior to making up a paladin character.

The paladin's primary purpose is CAMPAIGN SPECIFIC!!! In my campaign there are no paladins without gods. In yours there may be. In you ampaign paladins are holy, righteous champions that ride forth to crush evil, in mine they are the defenders of an oppressed ethnic group. I'd never want to play in your campaign, but you'd almost certainly never want to play in mine.

It would be nice if for once people could discuss the specifics of a paladin situation, keeping in mind the specifics of the campaign rather than always telling people that they are WRONG!!! paladins should be like I like them etc.

This really does sound like a failure in comunication between DM and player about the paladins role.

 

[ForceUser]

Are Aasimar vulnerable to "___ Person" spells? I honestly can't remember.

Whoops. Bad me and bad aasimar player for forgetting this.

One question that hasn't really been raised: What was your thought on the kids? I mean, were these kids wickedly tricked by some malicious force, or were they children who made a reasoned choice to become immortal in return for doing evil deeds? If the former -- if they were now charmed or dominated -- I wouldn't have had them radiate evil, and I would have offered up some clue to the paladin that they could be redeemed. If the latter, I wouldn't have dinged his paladinism.

Imagine a trio of spoiled brats, issue of some hedge knight, who got used to being doted upon. Imagine then the father falling on hard times, and the luxury going out of their lives. Imagine three very petulant children with no understanding of "papa is flat broke now" demanding to continue the pampered lives they'd once been blessed with. Imagine a powerful fiend, in the furtherance of spreading evil, capitalizing on this by offering the children immortal playtime - to never grow up, to never want for anything - if they'd but do one small thing for him in return.

Even a child can kill, once properly tempted and corrupted. From there the brood grew. Fast forward a few generations and here we are. The party noticed early on how quaintly archaic many of the names of the children were...

Despite all that, let me just say that this sounds like a really interesting adventure, and a great attempt to make something that is creepy and (judging by the number of posts) morally challenging or disturbing enough to be worth whatever trouble it caused. Every DM has accidently tossed the PCs in over their heads once or twice. Don't beat yourself up. We're debating abstracts here, now, and I don't think any of us think you're a bad DM.

Thanks, I needed to hear that. I try very hard.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

ForceUser -- Don't let all these people disagreeing with you get you down. It sounds like a fun situation, aside from the disagreement.

And frankly, I can see why you'd react the way you did. I have a tendancy to get aggrivated when I think my players aren't listening. Once it went into a two hour arguement. Fortunately it was after the game.

Anyway, hope there's no sourness over the event.

 

[Agback]

G'day

I have evidently been getting quite unnecessarily steamed up, and I have written intemperate things. I guess an apology is due to ForceUser: Sorry.

Let's see if I can clarify some things.

Allow me to suggest in the nicest way possible that you might need to practice the delicate art of clarifying these things to the players through in-game cues, and doing so before they make crucial decisions. There isn't much game-play, and not a lot of fun, in making decisions without essential knowledge.

The wizard, in fact, later killed half of them with a single burning hands before he was dominated by the remainder.

It is a real shame that he didn't do this at the beginning, enabling the party to contain the menace. By wasting vital time on a useless subdual attack he left the party making much harder saves, and this very probably led to their TPC. And you all are going to be a long time living that down, because the players know in their hearts of hearts that what really happened was that the little monsters killed them all while they were dominated, but that you let them off by a clunky plot device.

The party suffered some very bad die rolls for their Will saves, unfortunately. I had not anticipated how greatly the dice would turn against them.

Unfortunately this is what happens. Either the players get incredibly lucky, and stomp the encounter that is supposed to drive them off in another direction. Or they get incredibly unlucky and get stomped flat just when they have to triumph to save the world: leading to a humiliating deus ex machina that makes the players feel that their characters were irrelevant all along, or else to an equally unsatisfying TWD (Total World Destruction).

I could admonish you to always have a backup plan, room for a major defeat that is not a TWD. In this example you might have been best to have the surviving monsters flee in panic. That way the players would have felt a real defeat (to make their future victories all the sweeter), but would not have been humiliated by a TPC and DexM. But, to be quite frank, I'm not that good, and I can really expect your to be that good either.

So, here's the distilled wisdom of 23 years of fairly intense GMing: A TWD is better than a DexM. The TWD destroys one campaign, but it gives the players the sense that the stakes are real in the next one. The DexM subliminally tells players that their decisions don't make any difference and that their characters' exertions are pointless--and the taint doesn't die with the campaign: it carries over until it is burned out with fire and the sword, amid the deaths of PCs and the lamentations of their players. It took me years to rebuild players' engagement with my campaigns after I clumsily created the impression that events were programmed and success certain.

One other thing: when things go wrong (especially through your miscalculation), try to turn the volume down, not up. Draw a veil of silence across the mess, don't pursue the PCs with unpleasant consequences, and do press rich rewards on them.

The design goal of the encounter had been to create a tense situation wherein the party had to fight off one or two of their own while dealing with the children.

Now you know that you just can't plan what players will do. "Don't worry about what is going to happen. Don't wait for it to happen. Stay alert, and see what does happen.

Adjudicating morality is tougher than I thought. If they want to keep playing I'll keep trying, though.

[Roy Baty voice]"That's the spirit!"[/Roy Baty voice]

You can't call yourself a horseman until you've been thrown on land and in water, into nettles, and over a barbed wire fence. And ridden a horse with your arm in a sling.

Regards,


Agback

 

[barsoomcore]

I remember being a child once. Many of us were NOT nice. And we choose to be that way.

Did I say they were nice? Did I say they didn't choose?

I said do we hold children to the same moral standards we hold adults? Of course we don't. We don't send a child to prison for striking his mother. We don't cut off a child's hands for stealing cookies. All cultures, to some degree, allow children a degree of latitude in their behaviour. You have to. They're just kids and they don't know any better, they don't understand (and aren't expected to understand) the implications of their actions.

That doesn't make them untouchable. That doesn't mean that killing them isn't the best course. Or perhaps the only course.

But all this nonsense about how they're NOT children is plain old make-yourself-feel-better justification. They ARE children. They've never had a chance to grow up and learn. They were taken by forces of darkness and corrupted and tempted and yeah, they've been around for a long time, but it's been under the influence of this evil. They never grew up.

While killing them is hard enough, the truly good thing to do is to help them. To save them. To go find the evil that's done this and bring IT to justice. Kill these kids, it'll just find some others. Even after the children have been killed (and I have my suspicions about that cardinal, but I'll leave that to ForceUser to determine), surely what obviously MUST be done is to find and destroy the fiend responsible for this horror.

ForceUser, great story idea. Sorry it was cause for some tension in your group but it sounds like everyone's being reasonably mature about it. And hey, look at this great discussion we're having!

SHARK -- you've been quiet too long, my friend. Good to see you, even if we are coming down on opposite sides here. Like that's never happened before.