The Paladin killed someone...what to do?

[lukelightning]

Remember that there might not be any jails. The modern penal system is relatively new. In the past punishment was generally corporal. Lashings, mutilation, branding, etc.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

[snip]

It is a human thing to do. It is a human thing to become enraged when harmed, and to lash out against those who harmed you. It is people who declare an act good or evil, people who quite often know nothing of the circumstances surrounding the act.

There is no 'should be'. There is no 'must be' or 'has to be'. There is only 'is'. People are as they are, people do as they do. Sometimes what they do benefits society, that is to be encouraged. Sometimes what they do harms society, that is to be discouraged. And sometimes the effect upon society is not that clear.

And sometimes the righteous thing is the wrong thing.

Well in this case it would be a diety calling the act good or evil based if the Paladin falls or not. As I said before, In my campaign we have a Paladin of Hieroneous. I wrote up a code that lists the core tenents of the belief system. Several of them are not the most practical but the goal is to strive to uphold the beliefs in the face of adversity. It's not easy, and it isn't supposed to be easy. If the Paladin dies and then as he stands before H in judgement and says, "Well it was human to violate the code, or it wasn't practical to follow the code there..." I don't think that is going to fly.

 

[Arravis]

His wife is in danger.

Umm... she HAD been assaulted, past tense. There was no current immediate danger.

In a world of resurrection, death is not the huge, tragic, cry-in-your-hanky deal so many posters on this thread think it is. Death is only a temporary condition. It's like stun, only longer lasting and with a bigger pool of blood in the dirt.

By that logic, why not simply kill everyone everywhere and let the gods take care of who is good and bad? Why have any consequences at all?
Kill them all and let god sort them out? Yep... very paladin like.

 

[Chainsaw Mage]

sometimes the righteous thing is the wrong thing.

[Falls on the floor laughing]

Hee hee . . . I needed that, bro. Thanks for the laugh. [Wipes tears from eyes]

 

[howandwhy99]

"That's what jails are for"? Hey, death is a jail. In a world of resurrection, death is not the huge, tragic, cry-in-your-hanky deal so many posters on this thread think it is. Death is only a temporary condition. It's like stun, only longer lasting and with a bigger pool of blood in the dirt.

By killing the halfling, the paladin is making him less of a threat and reducing his chance of escape--that's it. It isn't like the paladin is destroying his soul with magic soul-destroying eyebeams.

I can't say I agree with you, but if a paladin were certain and had no other recourse perhaps your explanation might work. Even if the paladin did not lose his or her powers, a dubious act such as this would likely get reviewed ad nauseam later at the temple. At least until the paladin had proved himself through a number of other cases.

BTW - I love cubey!! And IMO you're comic is the best of an increasingly great magazine.

 

[tonym]

Umm... she HAD been assaulted, past tense. There was no current immediate danger.

GUY #1: Sir, your wife has been in a car crash!
GUY #2: Oh, you said "has been," that's past tense. Whew. No hurry to see her then, or find out what happened, thank god.

Sheesh.

By that logic, why not simply kill everyone everywhere and let the gods take care of who is good and bad? Why have any consequences at all?
Kill them all and let god sort them out? Yep... very paladin like.

[/QUOTE]

Haha.
That would be called a Crusade, a totally different subject.
And, yes, I agree: a Crusade is very paladin-like.

Tony M

 

[ThirdWizard]

I don't think it has anything to do with mercy, justice, lawfulness, or anything at all along those lines. I would condense everything down to a single question and deal with the situation on that before moving on. That question being: If it hadn't been his wife, would he have done the same? If he would have acted differently, then he is acting with passion in the interest of revenge.

Now, if he would have done the same in other given circumstances, it becomes easier to gauge, as you have multiple situations to draw a pattern from, and it becomes simpler to figure out the commonality among his actions to date. If you see a pattern that says "Lawful Good" then he's fine. If you see a pattern that says anything else, now might be the time to start enacting some kind of atonement.

Overall, he's on shakey ground, but he isn't necessarily in any danger of losing any powers.

 

[Arravis]

Comparing D&D archetypes to real world professions and beliefs is useless and futile. The two have nothing to do with one another. The crusaders had their own drives and motivations that have nothing to do with paladins as defined in the players hand book. They were as un-paladin like as you can get.

We are dealing with issues which are considerably less complex than those of real life. The players handbook provides some concrete data on the subject; including a clearly defined "good" and "evil", etc. Real life has none of those things, and it has no bearing on the issue at hand. We're talking about paladins as defined in the PHB, that's it.

As defined therein, a "sense of urgency", or "you hurt my wife", matter little in meeting the clearly stated codes for keeping paladinhood.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Besides, some people need killing.

Indisputably true.

This is, in fact, the Paladin's raison d'etre-- both in metagame terms, as well as the role of the paladin in the game "world."

He is uniquely equipped for it.

This whole situation reeks of "DM wants to mess with the paladin." Some DMs will stop at nothing to knock a paladin out of paladinhood.

Very true. Every time this thread pops up, I'm convinced it's the DM who needs to be stripped of his powers.

 

[Chainsaw Mage]

a dubious act such as this would likely get reviewed ad nauseam later

You mean like in this thread?