After reading all of this, two or three warnings, a deleted post, and a few attempts to bring a true face to all this crazed matter.
Something else is still missing.
The player in question, was responding to the scene, as any home owner, husband and expected father would react.
He was home. Not on a mission, not slaying some brute monster. He was home.
Awaken, and asking a trusted friend to lookover his spouse, indicates to me, that there is a personal history as said by the original starter of this theme, too long to get into. He leaves a trusted friend to protect his wife.
Now by the door or by some small interior room, where the messenger starts to get all vaguee, on what the message is.
That now irks the owner of the home, on something is now suspicious, plus keep in mind, this man was awaken from his sleep. Time unknown.
While this is going on, the PC friend, trusted to the nines, fails to see the danger, and trouble starts.
Somehow, the wife becomes alert, and screams a cry. Being pregnant, the danger tickles the sixth sense and knowing too, that being a paladin's wife, does have its dangers also.
Downstairs, the father to be in question, is quiet irrate, ang gets rough, after the questions asked, are getting no where. To his satifacation.
Upstairs, near a adjoining room, a second PC, a cleric, jumps out of the bed, as fast he can get his underpants on, rushes there in time, to be told...that the attempt met with failure, from the intruder. The Cleric ascertains as much they as could, that everything is alirght, leaves to give the husband of the wife, the good news.
Meanwhile downstairs, the roughness goes to a body movement restriction, the distress and growing angry is ever present in the human male dealing with the said suppose to be messenger halfing. At some point, either by noise or vocal conversation, he learns of the assualt done to his spouse, who is carrying the future of the family line.
The husband, the father to a soon newborn child, and man of the house(if this so), is now truly insense and much anger seeps pass his own reasoning of control.
Said Cleric reaches the room, and confirms, to the much angry man, who is holding in restrainted, the halpless halfing. It was the worst news to confirm his own suspicions.
He declares death, for the indirect assualt and deception done to him, and he is angry at himself for falling for it and it left his wife and soon to be mother, with babe, unprotected.
His venting cannot go to the escaped other intruder, it can't go his friend, who failed in their duty to safeguard her, first of all, on the first bout.
What is the old saying, "Wrong place, wrong time"....the entire scene was rich with emotional pulls, and every piece said here, just flare the persona's worse fears.
That whoever organized it, wanted to show that the man of the house, the husband, the father to be, and his dear friends, cannot protect the one person, in that family.
His wife, and the babe who is in her womb.
And you said, this man was chaotic??
Please take a look here, and view carefully...all of this is seen from the character's perpective, and not one mention of him, being a paladin.
No God, no SRD, no RAW, nothing else but the emotion rollcaster that went through that man should be the only thing that should matter.
And what matter to that man, that husband, that father to be...someone trepassed on his home, his 'castle', someone else was the trickster, used to detain, distract the man, the lord of the manor? To hurt his charges, his family...please
Folks, what has transpose there in that house, was all legit...and nothing, nothing short of a total confession may not save that halfing.
In the old days, when someone directly or indirectly partakes on a venture to bring harm to someone's else family, and you are caught in the act, guess what, you share what the punishment is.
When it comes to a wife, your lover, your friend, and expecting...to give birth to a child from your blessed union. And someone wants to harm them?
Run or die...
And live with consquences thereafter...
Oh, one more thing, that is what you get, when you wake up a person from a good sleep.
Galfridus said:
Yikes, quite a few responses since lunch. I've kept some details vague because this is a continuing adventure, and some because it's a long-running game and providing full context is pretty much impossible. That said, here's some more grist for the mill:
The paladin is awakened (by a servant) and told someone has a message for him. He summons another PC to watch over his wife and heads downstairs, where he meets the halfling who begins delaying him.
At the same time, someone sneaks in to his wife's bedroom (yes, past the PC who is watching) and "does something" to her. At the time, what it was is not clear, but she was alive and not obviously harmed. The PC drives the "attacker" off (in essence, they teleport away).
Another PC, a cleric, roused by the struggle, bursts into the room, sees that the wife is alive but confused, and gets a quick summary of what happened. He runs downstairs.
Meanwhile, the paladin has grown suspicious and begins questioning the halfling, then grabs him. When the halfling refuses to give answers (who sent you, what are you doing here), he gets a little rough. The halfling tells some obvious lies, and the paladin gets a little rougher.
Then the PC cleric arrives and announces that someone has assaulted the paladin's wife. After a few more questions and non-answers, the player says "I break his neck." I verify that his intent is to kill. Since the halfling is a) pinned and b) already at low HP, I say he is negative HP and dying. (I had foregone rolling damage for the various attacks during the interrogation in order to maintain the flow of the scene.) That's where the session ended.
Game time elapsed between the assault and the end of the session was a minute or so.
(Of course, since there is a cleric standing right there with a Heal spell prepared, the halfling is likely to live.)
===
I didn't intend to have the halfling die and was not trying to bait the paladin into anything.
It's hard to describe how a particular campaign uses alignments; I would say that this one falls more toward Good and Evil as moral absolutes, but that means different things to different people.
To simplify things rather a lot: the Paladin was not legally justified to execute the halfling, as no lives were in danger; he did not (and does not) know if the halfling is evil; he has good and sufficient reason to presume that the halfling was involved; he knew his wife was attacked but still alive.
I consider this chaotic as the paladin disregarded laws he had sworn to uphold for no reason other than personal vengeance. The evil part depends a bit more on the nature of the person involved, and the paladin's failure to discover further details about that nature. That does seem a bit weaker than the chaotic bit, on further reflection.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
. Of course, the ultimate cheesy ending would be for him to go on a murderous rampage after someone told him his wife was killed and become a blackguard. Then, the next campaign could be about his twin children (his wife lost the will to live and died in childbirth) with him as an evil NPC. 
Okay now that I've read that...
