Regarding Paladin that throw rocks (or whatever)

[hopeless]

Just been reading all 9 pages about a Paladin that was part of a perty travelling in Thar under orders from the Harpers to help clear out a fortress run by Ogres that were raiding and pillaging caravans and farms in the area.
After slaying all bar one of an orc company they questioned the survivor and once he spilled all he knew in hopes of being left alive which two of this party agreed to the Paladin who apparently objected to them questioning him in a language she didn't understand then confronted the orc believing he was lying and when he ran she chased him down on horseback and slew him meriting a bd reaction from the rest of the party because they had already developed a habit of releasing those they questioned prior to this exchange.
The pages I read suggested it was purely because Orcs are often CE and that the Paladin's use of detect evil that showed him up made her action quite justified.
However in a greyhawk campaign i was playing in where i ran a NG halfling sorceress another player (who normally runs the Forgotten Realms campaign where i run a LN cleric of helm/sorceror) ran a Paladin of Hieronimous.
In the first session he chose to have a pair of hlf orc barbarians become his squires, after the half orc druid located the source of an illness effecting the village the paladin chose NOT to reveal he had been sent to the village in pursuit of an evil cleric even though events clearly showed something evil was lurking nearby.
My sorceress was the only one to even bother checking the cemetary to make sure the dead hadn't risen.
That night the Paladin who stayed up alone save for the druid who chose to sleep in the tree at the centre of the village found himself confronted with an army of the undead, the others awakened joined in the fight and once over found the entire action was a diversion so the villain could kidnap the village leader's daughter whom had helped run him out of the settlement before any of the party pc's had arrived (a fact the sorceress figured out, which is why she visited the cemetary once the cursed skull was removed from the well by the druid and then destroyed by the paladin).
Withe the undead blocking pursuit the rest of the PCs returned to the tavern where the Paladinw as bitterly trying to get everyone to swear allegiance to his god as part of his way of getting a posse together.
My halfling remained on watch and saw the skeletons fall to the ground at dawn, checking to make sure they were actually down and out she returned to the inn to let the others know and despairing because the Paladin was still trying to force his edict she lead the others out leaving him with his two squires.
The subsequent hunt resulted in the villain's lair being surrounded and he used a darkness spell to prevent him being shot upon exiting his lair with his captive even though we hd him surrounded the Paladin refused to budge forcing me to intervene getting a kick in the stomach that allowed another PC running an elven fighter to grapple the evil cleric to the ground. Once secured we returned to the village whereupon the Paladin revealed he was under orders to pursue this cleric and bring him in over the objections of the mayor and everybody else.
This provoked the mayor and some trading visitors who held the paladin under bowpoint.
The druid having enough killed the cleric and at that point the Paladin's player declared he was going to return to Greyhawk with the corpse (even though the Dm had already declared any necromantic magic even some divination would result in corruption as per Book of Vile Darkness) .
Apparently he thought he had the right to do what he pleased regardless of local authorities since he was from Greyhawk a fact even the DM pointed out wasn't the case.
This was the least of his infractions another was ordering his two squires to dangle two goblin prisoners off a cliff edge and when their comrades chucked rocks down at him (and hit) he ordered them thrown off the edge, later on after his squires slew pretty much all of the tribe as part of a dm fiat my character located a survivor who had apparently been manacled to a wall in the chieftain's quarters, please note the dm did stress she had been abused quite badly and with only two PCs able to talk in goblin (the halfling sorceress and the cleric of the traveller) my character persuaded her to tell us what she knew of the goblin's lair pointing out to her that the Paladin who was watching wasn't someone to be crossed (I did this to the two other prisoners who laughed in response).
Once she did even though at no point did I say to the Paladin's player she had told us all she had known he tried to kill her out of hand and only the presence of the LG monk and the NG sorceress stopped him momentarily as the druid used an obscuring mist to allow the sorceress to lead the goblin captive to safety.
Using his detect evil in a goblin lair that should have been absolutely coated in evil he chased her down and struck her down from behind.
The DM later claimed she was evil ignoring the fact the Paladin's player had been repeatedly treating the rest of the party as insignificant even after we had saved his character's life on several occasions on which he never once thanked us in reply.
I did goad him after this pointing out he needed to atone something he ignored but did jibe back after my charcter was attacked after helping the dwarf to escape an attack by an aberration that looked like an enlarged otter with lobster claws.
I'm sorry for the length and repetition of this but arguing that Paladin's have the right to do this kind of thing is absurd, a Paladin is supposed to symbolise the faith he/she represent s and showing bigotry or racism even if the target registers as evil isn't something that should be treated lightly.
Yes that dwarf in the goblin comic is CE, but thats what such characters are portraying when they follow this idiotic viewpoint.
As fgor Ahlandra, the PHB may say she shows no mercy to evil, but it doesn't say what kind of evil... demons and devils are one thing but if they're prepared to kill someone just because they don't know better what does that make them?
Might never makes right, and anyone not prepared to learn from the past is doomed to repeat the same mistakes.
Sorry will have to dig out the rest of the notes, would like to hear if I've got this typed out right and not jumbled.

 

[Herobizkit]

*LOL* let me be the first to congratulate you on finding EnWorld's #1 can of worms... the ubiquitous Paladin thread.

I can sum up what you're trying to understand about Paladins.

There are two kinds of morality you're struggling with. One is the 'real-world' morality where sentient beings deserve the right to a fair trial, presumed innocent until proven guilty, and (generally speaking) sentient races strive to be 'good' and are punished when they go against the laws of society. The other kind is the 'fantasy-world' morality, the one that D&D is designed around with their wonky alignment system. 'E' in your alignment means 'Evil', a force that truly exists and motivates people to do Bad Things in order to further the cause of Evil (at least, from Evil's [and here you can use whatever you like; Demons, Devils, Evil God/desses] point of view). "Monsters", ie Evil non-standard D&D core races, are irredeemable and must be put down so that Good may flourish in Evil's wake.

Chasing down an Orc because it's Evil is what Paladins do. Your Paladin has no reason to let the Orc live; to the Paladin, all it will do is return to its kin and perpetuate more Evil. If your party has a habit of releasing Evil prisoners, the Paladin must consider if this is in the best interest of Law and Good. Personally, MY Paladin may have allowed the Orc to return home in order to track it to its lair and kill the rest of the tribe.

In regards to the delivery of the evil cleric's corpse, good for you! Your church sent youo there to remove the Evil cleric from power, and you wanted to return home to prove it was done. Sometimes being a Paladin means taking the Law into your own hands. To quote the movie Boondock Saints, "The laws of God are higher than the laws of Man". So what if you piss off the Mayor; if the Mayor wants the Evil cleric to live, apparently the Mayor must either be in league with the Cleric, or unaware of the cleric's Evil influence. 'Course, the cleric's dead... and if the Mayor isn't willing to take the word of a Holy Crusader, well... too bad for him.

And that goes for the Paladin's party, too. If your Paladin is under the belief that, for whatever reason, the party is running counter to his goals, the Paladin is well within his right to abandon the party... but he should at least try and sway the party to his way of thinking before he decides that it's a wasted effort.

In regards to bigotry, yup, you can still be Lawful Good and be a racist, purist, and an ass, so long as you're furthering the Cause.

Quick solution? Ditch alignment altogether, with a few exceptions. The really Good and the really Evil creatures and NPC's would still register as [Good] and [Evil] for the purposes of detects/protects/Holy and Unholy weapons, but without alignment the DM is free to waive the usual alignment crap and run a morally ambiguous game.

Out of the box, though, "E" means Evil, and Evil must be stopped, no matter the cost. At least, to a Paladin.

 

[Simm]

I'm sorry but the rules say you are wrong

"Good" implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient creatures.

So as long as an enemy has an intellegence more than 3 and retain vital sign you must respect it's existance (no killing for no reason).

"Evil" implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some creatures have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convinient. Others actively persue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.

So:
Altruism- good
Respect for life and dignity- good

Hurting and killing others- evil
Lack of compassion- evil
Persueing evil- evil

This paladin lacks compassion and dosen't respect the dignity of living beings.
Therefore he is evil.


The end doesn't justify the means.

 

[hopeless]

One Paladin of Hieronimous too far!

My character was based on a minature he had painted and described as a "Sorceror/Druid" so I declared that was the character I was going to run in his Greyhawk game that he openly stated was using rules from the Book of Vile Darkness and some optional restrictions on spells such as removing raise dead for example.
I pretty much designed the character in a fortnight and handed it in including background details explaining why my character had to multi-class and I even left a way out in case it was needed by giving a restriction that i had until 4th level to successfully bind a familar or I had to multi-class. I used the PHB rules for most of it except I used the Book of Familiars to explain why I could obtain a Fetish familiar which if I wanted to continue as a sorceror meant it would be bound to a small copper bell that was described as a family heirloom (and otherwise unremarkable bought from the PHB as normal).
I made a point of selecting only spells without material components since my character wasn't from a high class or wealthy family given she was raised by her uncle after fleeing the Shield Lands around the time the Horned Society invaded (although I thought it was Iuz leading to my character's open disgust of such deities) and caused the death of my character's parents.
Now she only carried as weapons a sling, a half spear and a single dagger since I couldn't afford a Light Crossbow since i bought a scroll of sleep and a potion of cure light wounds explaining both as being bought from members of both sides of my character's family, the scroll from her tutor and the halfling that raised her and the potion from her maternal great aunt who wanted her to become either a druid or cleric of her faith based on the Quintessential Halfling which I had planned but not fully explained to the DM that "Maia" was the Halfling name for Ehlonna with the only difference was that Maia's favoured weapon was a dagger since at that time I had hoped the Races of the Wild would have halfling deities for Greyhawk instead of a reprint of Forgotten Realm deities other than the new thief deity.

Now for the Paladin, after the first adventure ended and we ended up travelling to Greyhawk with him, I had spent most of the reward money for rescuing the village mayor's daughter (50gp each) on a tent that was intended for the family member my character had been staying with since her house had been burnt down (the dm decided the mayor would help those without homes to rebuild them ignoring the fact that I was roleplaying my character).
It was during the second adventure that it was revealed the Paladin was wearing FULL PLATE armour and wielding an apparently MASTERWORK weapon which he got by persuading the dm to let him use 1st edition rules to roll up his character's starting money.

That second adventure forced me to select Identify as my 3rd level spell having learned on my way to Greyhawk that the DM had decided Sorceror's were dependent on scrolls for their spells even though that rendered Sorcerors' effectively pointless since they're supposed to be a SEPARATE character class (Had I known at that point it would have meant my character becoming a Wizard but by then there was no point). So the magical items we found the Crystal Ball was returned to the mage who issued a poster indicating a 5000gp reward for the return of his crystal ball which the dm then declared was a misprint and was actually about 2000gp.
it didn' matter in my case since all i wanted was training as the Dm declared he was a sorceror so I was able to pick up Read Magic and Identify although I had been trying to run a character not dependent on material spell components and wizard scrolls either not that i knew of this dependency until AFTER the first adventure!
The items we found that I remember was a +1 silver plated broadsword which i thought was a bane weapon. The Paladin sold it to gain extra funds for a trip down south so we lost the only enchanted weapon we had. The other two was a Ring of Protection +1 that I offered to the Monk since the druid had by this point bought some hide armour leaving me and the monk as the only characters' not wearing armour. The Paladin snatched it later declaring nobody had wanted it even though as noted above as a LG character in FULL PLATE he had the highest AC in the party even if the Monk had 18 for both Dexterity AND wisdom, which I don't know since I didn't peek at the others characters.
The last item was a Cloak of Elvenkind which i ended up having, I did however ask the only elven member of the party at that time if he wanted it which is something that would never have crossed the "Paladin" player's mind.

Now when we headed south his another player joined in taking up the role of a rogue since the closest we had to that was a bard. By the time we reached the site of the third adventure we had lost three player's mostly because I had in the first adventure had suspected the cleric must have been using a wand of animate dead but since i wasn't present when the cleric was stripped had run my character as not knowing one of the half orc barabarians was carrying it.
When we were ready to leave we had to pick up the barbarians as the town guard at the gate wouldn't let them enter with their great axes and anyone else with a weapon larger than a dagger had to hand theirs in or pay a fine of about 50gp or less but great axes weren't allowed in any case.
They didn't turn up until we were ready to travel south and when they did i found out about the wand and pretty much figured out what it was and although I deliberately excluded the Paladin from the conversation he jumped in and forced the Barbarian to hand over the wand something he certainly wouldn't have succeeded at if the DM hadn't been outright helping him as well as allowing him to use info his character didn't have.
He, his wife and the other barbarian player didn't bother turning up after that and the only excuse they came up with was that he had turned down a variant monk character one of them wanted to play. Back then I didn't think about it but now it certainly doesn't hold up to scrutiny since he did try to run the barbarian and did quite well from my point of view.

We travelled south and met up with a couple of elven rangers being played by two new player's and members to the club. Somehow they had messed up their starting money so they had to share a long bow and a quiver of arrows between them.
We reached the gorge and travelling within we started coming across a series of tombs until one seemed to go further in and being suspicious we sent in the rogue who promptly set off the alarm and most of the party ended up fighting a tribe of goblins inside that tunnel.
The only ones left outside was the druid, the paladin, one of the rangers and my sorceror after all whilst I had engaged in melee before it was only when things got desperate and entering that tunnel wasn't going to be one of them.
It turned out there was another exit from the goblins' lair which they reushed out to flank us, the ranger noticed them about the same time as the druid and whilst the druid held back to cast a flaming sphere I used a magic missile to take out the first foe as the Paladin ran to join in and almost immediately fumbled dropping his sword which landed at his feet instead of into the gorge where it deserved to go giving his attitude to everyone else.
My halfling used a Dancing Lights which thanks to it being run under 3.0 rules stopped the goblins from reinforcing the original attack force and after the Flaming Sphere my character used her Sleep scroll to secure two prisoners.

Only two members' of the party could speak Goblin, one was the cleric and other other was my sorceror so i ended up talking to them and although the Paladin shouldn't have udnerstood what they were saying the dm enforce this as I tried to persuade him that we needed them as prisoners so we could release them on our way back out especially as they had revealed there was a "giant" guarding a ruined bridge ahead of us and that was after the Paladin ordered the now npc barbarians to dangle the pair off the edge.
Their comrades started chucking rocks done from above and after being hit by one the Paladin had the pair chucked off the edge even though my argument was sound.

We got to the other side nd because the bridge was ruined we were trying to set up ropes to lower his mount to the gorge floor to avoid having to leave it behind. He chose to ride it across and whilst he amde the first jump he failed the second forcning me to race down the rope and squander one of the potions I had to save his life which because he still low on hp meant the cleric used up one of his spells to help and did he thanks us NOT A CHANCE!

The blood of his horse brought the "giant" out which was revealed to be troll and endangering myself I tried to draw it way from the others narrowly avoiding death in the process due to a shield spell which didn't stop me getting wounded.
Pulled up to the middle part of the bridge so i could use one of my mage armour scrolls on the monk who leapt across to fight troll aided by one of the npc barbarians whom had just returned from wiping out the goblin tribe (that isn't a joke by the way) and some flaming arrows courtesy of the elven rangers'.
Once the troll was slain we returned to the goblins' lair to get wood to make repairs to the bridge and my character found a sole survivor who i questioned until the Paladin decided enough was enough and tried to kill the prisoner who was manacled to the wall and was described by the DM as having been "seriously abused".
Both my character and the LG Monk intervened but the DM claimed one of the npc barbarians poked his head in forcing the monk to step in front of him allowing the Paladin a chance to move in. The druid cast an obscuring mist since he was listening in an unlike the paladin wasn't using info he certainly didn't know (he wasn't told about the prisoner he simply appeared as soon as I was discussing with her about infor on the lair) and my sorceror tried to lead the goblin to safety only to have the Paladin use his detect evil to hunt her down down and strike her down from behind even though she was the SOLE survivor of her tribe and I had plnned on keeping her with us until we left the gorge so the dm's later claim that she would have fetched help was an outright lie since they were already there anyway.

I'll stop there for now as I'd like to hear your point of view, or rather excuse to cover this charade...

 

[Herobizkit]

So as long as an enemy has an intellegence more than 3 and retain vital sign you must respect it's existance (no killing for no reason).

"Law" implies honor, trustworthiness, obedience to authority, and reliability. On the downside, lawfulness can include close-mindedness, reactionary adherence to tradition, judgmentalness, and a lack of adaptability. Those who consciously promote lawfulness say that only lawful behavior creates a society in which people can depend on each other and make the right decisions in full confidence that others will act as they should.

The Orc is Evil. It was attacking sentient creatures. Left to its own devices, it will do so again, becasue it's Evil. The Paladin can respect the rights of a sentient being, but he must also serve Law. Law dictates that you don't go around killing other sentient races. The Orc is guilty of murder -- the Paladin can turn it over to the village, who will likely kill it; let it go on its word, which might work but doens't punish him for his crime; or kill it where it stands, and all parties are served justice. The Paladin COULD have it "arrested", I suppose, but is that the kind of justice that is active in a typical D&D world?

This paladin lacks compassion and dosen't respect the dignity of living beings.

The well-being of a town of generally Good citizens is greater than the well-being of one Evil orc.

 

[Herobizkit]

hopeless: I read through your story, and I'm not sure if there's a question in there or what issues you're trying to address.

In short, it sounds like you have a DM who likes to play favourites and a party who likes to look out only for themselves.

 

[hopeless]

The Orc is Evil.

Any more than the mercenaries they had caught before and released once they had questioned the survivors?
They didn't say whether the Paladin had scanned them to see if they were lying yet from what was said I had to assume they weren't orcs so was it a racial issue rather than the fact they registered as evil even though both were raiding and pillaging those communities and caravans?

hopeless: I read through your story, and I'm not sure if there's a question in there or what issues you're trying to address.

I couldn't understand why the Paladin's player was behaving like he was, he has been spiteful on occasion and on one occasion this was to a new player who certainly didn't know the system and I admit to feeling guilty that all I did at that time was call a mutual friend to have a word with him since I was worried at his reaction.
When he ran his game he made sure people knew not to use info their character's didn't and I had been penalised a number of times when I blurted something out by mistake. His deliberate uses of this and the dm ignoring the fact he was doing so I had at the time thought was simply due to the fact it was the first time he ran a D&D game at the club (he ran a Call of Cthulhu game prior to this and was quite good at that).
The revelation about using 1st edition rules reminded me of the time I ran an Alternity game at the club and he promptly revealed after I checked their character sheets and found only the ones I generated was done properly and only one other player got within 5pts of what they had to spend. He claimed to be using an article from Dragon that allowed him to get points back by using his character background to explain them off, please note he never asked me beforehand and I was the one dming that game!


In short, it sounds like you have a DM who likes to play favourites and a party who likes to look out only for themselves.

I think he was returning the favour at first but then began making excuses for why the Paladin wasn't violating his code even though he wasn't charitable save for selling that magical sword to pay for a trip south and was annoyed when I tried to get through to him that he needed to atone for several acts of evil from my point of view that endangered the party fo no other reason than for him to glorify himself.

 

[heimdall]

The Orc is Evil.

Any more than the mercenaries they had caught before and released once they had questioned the survivors?
They didn't say whether the Paladin had scanned them to see if they were lying yet from what was said I had to assume they weren't orcs so was it a racial issue rather than the fact they registered as evil even though both were raiding and pillaging those communities and caravans?

I would rule that killing the orc without allowing for a chance of repentance was an evil act. It's one thing to do so in combat. It's another thing to slay a defenseless but intelligent foe who hasn't been given a chance to turn from his/her wicked ways. Likelihood of the orc doing so? Slim to none. But give him the chance first. If he refuses, then he has shown himself to be incorrigibly evil and then the punishment for his choice is death.

 

[Allandaros]

I would rule that killing the orc without allowing for a chance of repentance was an evil act. It's one thing to do so in combat. It's another thing to slay a defenseless but intelligent foe who hasn't been given a chance to turn from his/her wicked ways. Likelihood of the orc doing so? Slim to none. But give him the chance first. If he refuses, then he has shown himself to be incorrigibly evil and then the punishment for his choice is death.

Depends. Consider that a paladin is...

No. Wait. Can of worms. Let me rephrase.

Consider that a paladin can be considered to be something of a roving judge. If, in his considered opinion*, the orc is guilty of a capital crime, then it's well within the paladin's rights to exercise the option of the "high justice" - execution.

I'm basing this interpretation on, of all things, an Arthur Conan Doyle novel. (Not Sherlock Holmes - I'm talking about The White Company, a novel about a group of mercenary archers fighting in France.) At one point, the protagonist encounters a grim magistrate who's hunted down a criminal and proceeds (after a bit of exposition) to exercise high justice.

*And no, "I wanna kill something!" doesn't count.

 

[Rel]

I would rule that killing the orc without allowing for a chance of repentance was an evil act. It's one thing to do so in combat. It's another thing to slay a defenseless but intelligent foe who hasn't been given a chance to turn from his/her wicked ways. Likelihood of the orc doing so? Slim to none. But give him the chance first. If he refuses, then he has shown himself to be incorrigibly evil and then the punishment for his choice is death.

See, I'm a firm believer of evildoers having a chance for repentance in my D&D games. And fortunately, they did. They had a chance to repent yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that.

But when the Paladin shows up and takes you prisoner during the comission of Evil (and when I say Evil, I don't mean cheating on your taxes), the time for mending your Evil ways is at hand. He's going to make SURE you don't do any more Evil. Because he is authorized by god and the church to put an end to your crimes, permanently.

I'm not telling anybody else how to run their games, but that's just how I roll.

Not that I've run a game with a paladin in it for the last 2 years.