The paladin. A story and a question.

[Demmero]

"Hey Galahad you just slew something that your deity reviles and has declared should be hunted and destroyed what are you going to do now ........ ?"

"Ummmm stand here and let the followers of the big bad thing elbow and headbutt me to death thus losing the overall war while winning one small battle"

Yeah THAT sounds exactly like what should happen.

So...should a true paladin act like Sir Lancelot storming the castle in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," killing everything that moves? Make an assumption that there's evil afoot and kill, kill, kill until the evil's been cleansed?

The bottom line is that the paladin's actions killed what seems to have been a benevolent spirit and the LN monks who were protectors of a nearby village. Now that village is likely to be sacked by goblin raiders and its inhabitants slain. All because of what the paladin did.

Should there be no repercussions for all these needless deaths?

Would the allegedly LG undead-hating god find such casualties "acceptable losses" for the destruction of one undead entity?

I'm not buying it.

 

[Drowbane]

Paladin had every right to slay the Ghost (though I agree that by flavor it should have been some sort of "deathless"... a la BoED and ECS)...

I think he should have attempted to subdue the monks however. And if that failed, he is still right in defending himself.

As to the village, once he becomes aware of the goblin-threat, any Paladin worth his holy avenger would go stomp said threat.

Now lets look at the same senario with a L/G Cleric of a god of undead-smiting... without all the baggage of the Paladin, do any of your opinions change?

 

[WayneLigon]

During WWII, an American soldier is part of an elite secret organization charged with killing any Nazi in the US. He walks into a church and is approached by a man in a Gestapo uniform. The soldier shoots the man dead. He then is attacked by club-wielding priests who scream that the man killed their friend and that he was a GOOD Nazi. The soldier shoots them both dead in self-defense.

The soldier does not have a virtually infalable means of determining whether or not the Nazi is in fact a Good person or not. No real-world analogies have any place here, since no-one in the real world has access to Detect Evil, nor is the real world dealing with objective morality.

If the god the paladin serves demands the death of any and all undead regardless of their alignment, then I submit the deity in question has been poorly designed by the DM.

 

[Slife]

The soldier does not have a virtually infalable means of determining whether or not the Nazi is in fact a Good person or not. No real-world analogies have any place here, since no-one in the real world has access to Detect Evil, nor is the real world dealing with objective morality.

If the god the paladin serves demands the death of any and all undead regardless of their alignment, then I submit the deity in question has been poorly designed by the DM.

Ghosts can be any alignment, but all undead detect as evil.

 

[WayneLigon]

Ghosts can be any alignment, but all undead detect as evil.

I see nothing in the spell description to suggest such a thing, only that being also undead is a special case for an evil creature, strengthening it's aura. The spell description is pretty clear: 'You can sense the presence of evil.' It doesn't say 'or undead regardless of alignment'.

 

[Demmero]

Paladin had every right to slay the Ghost (though I agree that by flavor it should have been some sort of "deathless"... a la BoED and ECS)...

I disagree strongly. As has been mentioned, ghosts can be of any alignment; if an undead-hating paladin doesn't know that, maybe he's in the wrong line of work. And the paladin was a guest in the temple--he wasn't brought there to kill ghosts. Lastly, there is no mention by the OP that the ghost ever attacked the paladin.

I can understand why the paladin might kill it in a fit of over-zealousness--this is not a "lose your powers moment" for me.

I think he should have attempted to subdue the monks however. And if that failed, he is still right in defending himself.

I agree strongly. We're not told the manner in which the monks attacked; if they frothed at the mouth and attacked without grousing about the paladin killing their ghostly spiritual leader...well, the paladin isn't a mind-reader. Still, the first monk is described as a "frail, elderly man" (and may have passed a Detect Evil test) and lets the heavily-armed stranger into his home without a moment's hesitation. For the paladin to jump to the conclusion that this guy's running a "sanctuary of the profane" doesn't wash with me.

As to the village, once he becomes aware of the goblin-threat, any Paladin worth his holy avenger would go stomp said threat.

Agreed again. But what if he never becomes away of the mess he's created?

Some wise old man once said that "with great power comes great responsibility." As a sort of a god's representative on earth, a paladin's got some serious responsibilities when he acts in his god's name. And I strongly believe the paladin example in this thread acts with heinous disregard to those he's supposedly helping. It sounds to me like he's awfully high and mighty (he reasons that there HAS TO BE a reason why his god would lead him to the monastery in the first place--he doesn't seem to consider the possibilities that maybe this temple is just a spot between where he started and his next big adventure/mission or that maybe he's supposed to help these monks with some honorable task...say, protecting a nearby village from marauding goblins) and single-minded (Ha! Found an undead! That means this is a sanctuary of evil!).

This paladin just reeks of self-righteousness. He seems to focus only on the need to wipe out undead, and woe to anyone who crosses his path while he carries out his "duties." He's acting like an undead hunter like Van Helsing (sorry to bring up an example from a bad movie), not a paladin. He's dangerously close to operating under a "kill-'em-all-and-let-the-gods-sort-'em-out" mentality; in this case, when the god sorts them out, he finds one destroyed benevolent ghost, two dead LN monks who were defending their ghost comrade, and likely an entire village slain by goblins. And again I ask: are those "acceptable losses?"

Now lets look at the same senario with a L/G Cleric of a god of undead-smiting... without all the baggage of the Paladin, do any of your opinions change?

Such a priest would be in a load of trouble, too, IMO. But being a paladin means living with the "baggage" of its code of conduct. If that baggage is too heavy, play a fighter. Or Van Helsing

To me, too many people play as Double-O-Paladins, with a license to kill anyone who gets in their way.

 

[Belbarid]

Was he wrong to kill the monks? Of course not.. they attacked him first. They were justified in attacking him, and thusly he was justified in killing them. If a Lawful Good person thinks you're an enemy and tries to kill you, you are still Lawful Good if you kill them in self defense.

?!?!?!?!?!?!

Yes- they attacked him. So he tears them apart for it? Were they Evil? Paladins are held to a higher standard, and self defense doesn't cut it. He deliberately killed two non-evil people when there were other options. Did it ever occur to this paladin to explain his actions? If he was able to kill the two monks with no (reported, at least) problems, he was tough enough to take a hit or two. Probably good enough to deal non-lethal damage. He didn't- he chose to kill two non-evil people.

 

[CrusaderX]

?!?!?!?!?!?!

Yes- they attacked him. So he tears them apart for it? Were they Evil? Paladins are held to a higher standard, and self defense doesn't cut it. He deliberately killed two non-evil people when there were other options. Did it ever occur to this paladin to explain his actions? If he was able to kill the two monks with no (reported, at least) problems, he was tough enough to take a hit or two. Probably good enough to deal non-lethal damage. He didn't- he chose to kill two non-evil people.

?!?!?!?!?!?!, right back at ya.

There's nothing wrong with a Paladin, or any other LG character, fighting LN foes who attack first. Would trying to reason with the attackers be nice? Sure. Would that have even been possible? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe the Paladin should have said "Stop!" while whacking them with his sword. But the Paladin didn't start the melee, and it's unreasonable to claim that Paladins can't fight back against LN foes while being attacked. Because if so, then the bane of a Paladin's existence aren't demons, devils, or undead, but rather LN foes who can beat on a Paladin all day long without fear of reprisal. :\

 

[Falkus]

There's nothing wrong with a Paladin, or any other LG character, fighting LN foes who attack first

Except you're forgetting one tiny little thing here. The paladin attacked first, by killing the ghost.

 

[Allandaros]

He's acting like an undead hunter like Van Helsing (sorry to bring up an example from a bad movie), not a paladin.

Er, you realize that Abraham Van Helsing was from the novel Dracula, right? Bram Stoker? Father of All Vampires (unless you're playing White Wolf, in which case it's Caine)?

Ahem.

I submit an alternative thought experiment. Consider the same situation, but instead of having a ghost as the undead, it's a lich. (And suppose that the paladin's able to kill off the lich just as easily.) In this situation, I doubt that people would be so quick to judge the paladin. I mean, dude, a LICH. They're all evil and undead and creepifying mage-like and stuff.

Another point - I'm not sure that it's fair to say the paladin is responsible for the deaths of the villagers. A man leans on a wall, which looks to be sturdy. Turns out that the wall is actually really flimsy, and leaning on it causes it to collapse and kill the doggy on the other side. The man may feel really bad (and should!) but there's no reasonable way for him to have known that the wall was going to collapse if he leaned on it.