When Paladins Go Terribly Wrong

[Tiama'at]

I'm pretty sure Bahamut (The Platinum Dragon) is LG - the whole owning a residence in the Seven Heavens kind of cinches it right there.

Perhaps you are thinking of Tiamat, his nemesis, the five-headed (or leather wearing dominatrix ala Dragonlance art) dragon who controls a hordes of dragons in the Nine Hells?

 

[tburdett]

A paladin should try to educate and convert a being who is marginally evil. Any creature that was unwilling to give up it's evil ways would be fair game for a paladin. Evil left to its' own devices will spread like a disease. It is clearly the paladins job to eradicate that disease.

Creatures, or beings, that are 'evil' by their very nature are fair game. Paladins do not try to convert demons or devils, they hunt them down and eradicate them.

"The Church didn't make it- the founder of the Damidrian Empire and the greatest Paladin in history, Mazrimian I, made the law according to the dictates of his God, Bahamut. According to Bahamut (Lawful Good), those of divine blood (the nobility) have more rights than those who do not posess it- and he gives the power. Slaying a sorcerer of divine blood in good standing with the Imperial Guild of Mages for killing two bargemen was out of line for the Paladin, and more in line with the behavior of a Chaotic Good champion... such as a divine liberator."

This is not a law created by a Lawful Good diety, this law is cleary Lawful Evil. A law created by those in power to protect those in power. This law reeks of injustice, and no Paladin would heed or obey it.

Do your players a favor and disallow the paladin class. Only a fool or a masochist would attempt to play a paladin in your game.

 

[Tiama'at]

I view it this way. If we all were playing a ranger's track ability differently wouldn't we all want clarification on how its done? I view the paladin's code and morality an integral part of the class and like all parts of every class it should, IMHO, not be open to vastly different interpretions.

Not vastly different ones, no.
But some on-the-spot clarification in unavoidable. It's a case where the game world expects the Character-paladin to have had several years of training, including lessons learned about philosophy and the impact of act and thought on the nature of good and evil - things most Players of Paladins do not have.

A good base for good is a start. This topic is of interest to me since I just rolled up my first ever paladin for a friend's game. There are actually two of us (paladin PCs that is) who, ironically enough are using The Deed of Paksenarrion as the basis of our PCs' morality (an odd case of parallel development, neither one of us knew what the other was planning, much to the DM's amusement). My concept behind my paladin is to understand how to live Lawful Good without being a moralistic/preachy anal retentive. But since we both are drawing on the same book for inspiration we sort of defined how LG is going to be interpreted for the game (after DM's consent). If this had not been the case then a quick talk with the DM while rolling up the character is in order.

As for my, as a player and DM point of view on the "evil detected is justified murder" I'd say no. The player character in this case made no attempt to discover the nature of the evil on the gypsies. Is a man evil because he is afflicted by an evil curse, or are you merely detecting the curse when sensing evil on the person? The answer may have proven important if the question were even asked by the player (who does seem to be a bit twinkish here), but it wasn't. Paladins must have brains as well as blessings and brawn, and he acted without them. By not thinking he comitted as sin almost as bad as the actual act (murder) itself.

- Ma'at

 

[I'm A Banana]

To give the guy some credit, I could see a case where an LG god favors the nobility.

It's kinda Nitzche-ish....where the ones in charge are morally and ethically better than those otherwise.

But that would mean, IMHO, that the nobles would be held to *very* high standards (basically a ruling class of paladins), they might have special king-powers (like a paladin), and paladins would be from the noble class (being the only ones pure enough to have it).

It also means that when a noble ceases to be LG, that they would undoubtedly be put to the blade quite quickly, lest they corrupt the others....

 

[Kyramus]

just a thought, but what IF you didn't take his paladinhood away?

Say the god left him but someone else notices and takes over granting him his abilities, warping it to the side of evil.

Later on detecting evil will actually detect good, and he would start attacking said good people.

He'd probably wonder why the law is after him and the group until it is revealed that the village they went to were full of good hardworking people.

heck have the evil deity's cleric be somewhere nearby to cause or misdirect the paladin even more.

A fallen paladin is so much sweeter when turned to evil. Great role play aspect for the other players as to whether to give him up to the law or keep going and try to watch his backside.

 

[Tonguez]

Re: Re: Re: Re: When Paladins Go Terribly Wrong

Tyler, you apparently are a little unclear on the concept of Lawful Good; the god you are describing is Lawful Evil, not LG. Do you even know the meaning of the word justice (one of the cornerstones of LG?)

Oh, well.

Excuse me but what right do you have to determine how Tyler defines Lawful Good or how he plays gods in his game?

If Tyler chooses to define his culture this way then thats the way it is and noone here should be naysaying that point.

Besides irl Nobility have always been considered 'Better' than Commoners - closer to the gods and of greater purity of spirit. The King rules by Divine Right within the Great Chain of Being - to deny this is evil....

 

[Bastoche]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: When Paladins Go Terribly Wrong

Excuse me but what right do you have to determine how Tyler defines Lawful Good or how he plays gods in his game?

If Tyler chooses to define his culture this way then thats the way it is and noone here should be naysaying that point.

Besides irl Nobility have always been considered 'Better' than Commoners - closer to the gods and of greater purity of spirit. The King rules by Divine Right within the Great Chain of Being - to deny this is evil....

At least it shows that there could easily be a misunderstanding between the player and the DM with the "LG" concept and the "how to play a paladin" too...

 

[jgbrowning]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: When Paladins Go Terribly Wrong

Excuse me but what right do you have to determine how Tyler defines Lawful Good or how he plays gods in his game?

If Tyler chooses to define his culture this way then thats the way it is and noone here should be naysaying that point.

Besides irl Nobility have always been considered 'Better' than Commoners - closer to the gods and of greater purity of spirit. The King rules by Divine Right within the Great Chain of Being - to deny this is evil....

Pretty much what i think too. Much of what has been said on this board about what LG is, is a modern mindset of good which is very dependant upon a divinity concept/humanism concept that is not aways applicable in worlds where the gods are active. In fantasy worlds were the very nature of reality is different, different concepts of good are equally as valid. And as you can see from the above, i view RL good to be a cultural creation and not an absolute. (which i also believe but thats a different point )

In fact, one could argue, that the modern mindset is an abberation considering the vast amounts of time humans have had differring concepts of good, especially considering that most of those people thought they believed in an absolute good world as opposed to a cultural good world, just like the moderns. This of course leads me back to wanting to have exactly what a paladin is supposed to be like more defined.

I've found the core of the arguement is really over killing. Some people think the act of killing is inheriantly wrong, others view killing is wrong in some situations, right in others. Since DnD is a game about killing, how a paladin's code and morals fit in with the concept of DnD killing would be a big helper. Most people fall in the latter category (killing is right in certain circumstances) and then all they do is argue over the specifics. Its these specifics that i'd like explained.

How evil does evil have to be before you can kill it? How much time do you have to spend trying to "convert" evil to being good before you can kill it? Do you have to try to convert every evil you meet? What's the nature of evil--- is it culture/genetic? Do some races/monsters have a prediliction towards evil that should be considered in adjucating a paladins actions against them?

So many questions that lead to vastly different interpretations, and hence to game conflict which is antithetical to the entire goal of the game: having fun.


joe b.

 

[carpedavid]

Absolute vs relative alignment...

One of the things that makes adjudicating whether an action is evil or good or lawful or chaotic is that, as modern, free-thinking people, we tend to have a pretty relativist view of alignments. Certain actions are justifiable in some situations, but not others. This "code of conduct" in any given campaign is up to the DM, and should be made clear to the players beforehand. It may, in fact, change from society to society, culture to culture, and nation-state to nation-state.

There is a slight problem with this, however. The only thing of value that I gleaned from the BoVD (and not because I thought it was distasteful - it just wasn't what I had envisioned) was the notion that the D&D universe isn't set up to accomidate "relative" alignments.

That is, in D&D, evil is Evil. With a capital "E." By the same token, good is Good, lawful is Lawful, and chaotic is Chaotic. Each of these is a legitimate force in the multiverse, and someone who has an alignment of neutral evil is, in fact, Evil.

It's set up this way, in part, because of the prevalence of magic that depends on alignment to work. Magic like "detect evil" for example.

Regardless of a paladin's code of conduct, one of their major defining drives is to vanquish evil. Therefore, smiting a child that vaguely registers as evil is really the same as smiting a demon that registers as evil, in the D&D multiverse. It's an unpleasant thought, one that most modern humans have trouble with, and provides a lot of the conflict that occurs between different players and DMs when it comes to alignments.

From a historical perspective, one could look at the Inquisition as a template for a mindset where evil = Evil, good = Good, and it's Good's job to destroy Evil. While the modern, more enlightened society looks at the Inquisition itself as evil, the Inquisitors, certainly thought that they were on the side of Good, and they used the most horrific forms of torture to save the souls of those that they accused of heresy.

At any rate, this conflict between absolute and relative alignments seems to be at the heart of most "paladin gone bad" stories that I've heard, and it really is the job of the DM to advise and adjudicate how this conflict resolves itself in his or her campaign.

DMG

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Re: Absolute vs relative alignment...

While you're correct about the evil of the child and the evil of the demon being of the same kind, I think that your conclusion that smiting them both is the same act is a caricature of the core D&D understanding of Good and Evil.

Let's start with the detect evil spell. The demon will register more strongly than the child on the spell. This indicates that D&D recognized differences of degrees of evil. In fact, demons in general register more strongly than humans in general. This indicates an inherent difference of degree in evilness.

Moving on to the Monster Manual, this is reinforced. The human child would come under "Often Neutral." (if humans were in the monster manual). This recognizes that the human is able to change his/her alignment and that neutral is the most common alignment. Demons, on the other hand are listed as Always chaotic evil. This means that, while there may be some demons who are of different alignment for some campaign specific reason, on the whole, they admit no variation in alignment. In general, they are probably not capable of changing alignments.

So, D&D recognizes that there's a difference between a bullying child and the Prince of Lies. If there's a difference between them, there's also a difference between smiting one and smiting the other.

Even if you were right about that though, the Inquisition would have nothing to do with it. The Inquisition was not about destroying evil but rather, at least according to the Inquisitors, about rooting out those who would undermine the Catholic society. A butcher who sold rotten meat or who beat his wife would have been considered evil but would not have been handed over to the Inquisition. Thus, it is actually a rather poor example of a historical situation where evil=Evil.

Regardless of a paladin's code of conduct, one of their major defining drives is to vanquish evil. Therefore, smiting a child that vaguely registers as evil is really the same as smiting a demon that registers as evil, in the D&D multiverse. It's an unpleasant thought, one that most modern humans have trouble with, and provides a lot of the conflict that occurs between different players and DMs when it comes to alignments.

From a historical perspective, one could look at the Inquisition as a template for a mindset where evil = Evil, good = Good, and it's Good's job to destroy Evil. While the modern, more enlightened society looks at the Inquisition itself as evil, the Inquisitors, certainly thought that they were on the side of Good, and they used the most horrific forms of torture to save the souls of those that they accused of heresy.