Why Should It Be Hard To Be A Paladin?

[Ridley's Cohort]

So police should just shoot anyone simpy because they look the part?

Outside of the industrial nations, that modus operandi is not exactly rare today. Is my Paladin required to play the part of Officer McFriendly patrolling a pretty American suburb?

CSI and D&D aren't yea dark ole days. The paladin can just as easily take a group with him, detain the bandits, and take them to his church for a good many divination spells as confirmation.

If there are 7th level Clerics at my beck and call and conveniently near by, I would probably do so. But somehow the bad guys have a habit of practicing their evil in very inconvenient locales. Maybe I should tell the DM that he is running his campaign wrong?

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Not really. In this system, you can be evil just by putting on the wrong helm or ticking off the wrong mage. That evil warlord who slaughtered thousands can just renounce his ways and, poof, suddenly become good. Or someone can make you register as evil, just because they know the local paladin is a bit overzealous in his duties...

With the exception of specific creatures, alignment is fairly mutable.

Under the RAW the Paladin is not required to care about such issues unless there is some good reason to believe the situation is fishy.

Paladins are not required to be perfect under their Code, only not do egregious things like killing innocents on purpose.

 

[Storyteller01]

Why aren't there a lot of threads about DMs revoking Druid powers? I feel that true Neutral is far harder to play than LG. I guess mileage really varies. Never see threads about Clerics getting their powers suspended, either.
The treatment of the subject is that there is no leeway at all for a paladin to make even the tiniest "mistake" and that the player of a Paladin will be getting a harshly graded pop quiz in Ethics for the next 30 hours of play time.

Druids and clerics have a lot of leeway as to how you can play them. As long as the alignment has Neutral in it somewhere you can play it. Even true neutral isn't as hard to play, if you look at all the animals that have it.

Clerics have it even easier. Just pick a god within one step of your own alignment and you're golden.

 

[Gold Roger]

In answer to your first question, yes I'm serious.

In answer to your second question, I allow that I might consider it evil. But not Evil.

The way I picture alignment in my head is that its a big, grassy field divided into the square of nine squares. There is plenty of room in each square for you to be standing near the middle or near one of the edges, even in one of the corners.

If you're a low down, no good dog kicker, (and I mean chronic dog kicker, not a good upstanding citizen who once kicked his dog for tearing a hole in the bathroom sheetrock because I'll tell ya that I didn't kick mine when he did that but I came awful close) then you are certainly standing somewhere near that line across the field where Neutral become Evil.

If you're an active pet torturer who premeditatively maims and inflicts pain on baby hamsters for the sheer fun of it on a nightly basis, I'll probably go ahead and slide you over the line into Evil territory. Now you're no Orcish Baby-Slaughterer or Undead Overlord Who Pushes Castles of Orphans Into the Ocean, but you qualify as Evil. And if a Paladin walks up and demands that you pay for your crimes then he's got every right to inflict justice upon you.

The bottom line is that I tend to run worlds that are grim and gritty where life is cheap and animal life is even cheaper. That doesn't mean worthless. But given that a family pet like a dog is going to be at least turned away from the table if not outright consumed for nourishment in the event of a famine, I'm not going to slap a "big E Evil" label on some mean old bastard who kicks Fido once in a while.

One final word on the ever popular topic of Redemption: I believe in it. Our aforementioned hamster torturer is absolutely free to turn away from his Evil ways and atone for his acts in whatever way he is capable of. Maybe he can donate pet hamsters to needy orphans that live in that castle by the sea until such time as they're either consumed during a famine (the hamsters I mean, not the orphans) or the whole lot of them are pushed into the sea by an Undead Overlord. Keep at it long enough and you'll be out of Evil territory and possibly could even become Good someday.

BUT, the Paladin doesn't OWE you a shot at redemption. If you were interested in redemption then you could have redeemed yourself yesterday or a week ago last Tuesday. But once the Paladin is on your doorstep, any chance at redemption he gives you is a gift, not an obligation. If he leaves you sitting with your head in your lap then that's your fault, not his. Evil doesn't rest and he can't always be bothered to sit around babysitting you to make sure that you don't go back to your old, hamster torturing ways.

Well put.

I simply don't believe in good=nice.

I love good PC's, I think I've ever made a PC that wasn't good. These guys will die to preserve a person they don't know, they go and fight Baddy MacEvilbob when they have nothing to loose and could easily run. But some of them are real bastards, that kick puppies, are mean to children, take every gold piece they can and start tavern brawls with honest hard working men.

Likewhise, some of my badguys di errands for nice old women without gain attached and might help the orphanage just over the street, but that doesn't stop them from selling out the town to the sieging orcs or sacrificing one of the children to some dark power once in a while.

 

[Storyteller01]

Outside of the industrial nations, that modus operandi is not exactly rare today. Is my Paladin required to play the part of Officer McFriendly patrolling a pretty American suburb?

And those who get caught, either by lawful authorities or the bad guys friends, are usually punished for it (usually end up dead themselves). Since the gods are always watching, I don't see why they wouldn't be caught.

Even non-industrial nations have systems of judgement. One settled war crimes in a civil war with a system that effectively said 'leaders will be facing trial and corporeal punishment. Their underlings will present their case to you (you being the village where the person killed people) to ask for forgiveness'. A surpising number were forgiven, but they still had to go through due process.

There are plenty of examples of non-american judicitial systems with due process. There's a reason murderers were brought in front of kings. You don't have to be McFriendly, but you don't have to be the Inquisition either.

If there are 7th level Clerics at my beck and call and conveniently near by, I would probably do so. But somehow the bad guys have a habit of practicing their evil in very inconvenient locales. Maybe I should tell the DM that he is running his campaign wrong?

Given how often characters are raised, restored, or resurrected, I'd probably be screaming at my DM. Not much difference from carting around a detained body and a dead one, and all the above spells require clerics of higher than 7th level.

= not trying to be snary.

 

[Storyteller01]

Under the RAW the Paladin is not required to care about such issues unless there is some good reason to believe the situation is fishy.

Paladins are not required to be perfect under their Code, only not do egregious things like killing innocents on purpose.

Unless your playing a low magic campaign, simply existing means something may be fishy. When every village has the potential to have a spellcaster, going around smiting for smitings sake would get you in a heap of trouble.

But the point is not to kill innocents at all. Even in the dark ages, if you accidentally killed someone and were caught you paid the price. Your intentions didn't matter (or at least didn't mitigate your responsibility completely), it was your actions. They may not have to be perfect, but they have to be better than the average.

 

[Henry]

But the point is not to kill innocents at all. Even in the dark ages, if you accidentally killed someone and were caught you paid the price. Your intentions didn't matter (or at least didn't mitigate your responsibility completely), it was your actions.

Except that "the price" was most times an actual fee. If weregelds were something like their real-world equivalents, the paladin would be paying like 2 or 3 gold pieces for that accidentally slaughtered peasant, not his life, career, and total savings. Similarly, I'd rather see the paladin make an atonement for killing an innocent, but I'd have no problems when he kills a murderer who just repented five minutes ago, right after being caught.

 

[Storyteller01]

Except that "the price" was most times an actual fee. If weregelds were something like their real-world equivalents, the paladin would be paying like 2 or 3 gold pieces for that accidentally slaughtered peasant, not his life, career, and total savings. Similarly, I'd rather see the paladin make an atonement for killing an innocent, but I'd have no problems when he kills a murderer who just repented five minutes ago, right after being caught.

Largely based on the campaign then. I agree on the atonement, but if the killer was truely repentant I'd have to wonder. It would depend on the circumstances involved I suppose. Then again, if he truely repented he'd probably have you punish him anyway, or jump off a cliff, or into the local Evil Doom Machine That Will Destroy The World, etc.

 

[Numion]

And none of the above deals with the problem that Detect Evil is not infallible. A creature could be cursed to detect as evil when he is not. It doesn't happen often, but again it doesn't have to. If it can happen at all, the Paladin has to stay his sword until he can ascertain the truth.

And when is that? How does he know he's not been duped by illusions, modify memory, etc .. ?

All im saying is that the Paladin needs to be reasonably sure about his course of action. If he encounters an armed band that looks like bandits, acts like bandits and some detect as evil .. he's not obliged to gather evidence or do some other trivialities. Dispatch the bandits and not waste his time more when there are innocents to protect

 

[Storyteller01]

And when is that? How does he know he's not been duped by illusions, modify memory, etc .. ?

All im saying is that the Paladin needs to be reasonably sure about his course of action. If he encounters an armed band that looks like bandits, acts like bandits and some detect as evil .. he's not obliged to gather evidence or do some other trivialities. Dispatch the bandits and not waste his time more when there are innocents to protect

By detaining them and going to the church. It better to say 'sorry dude, evil illusions and all' than to go to some mother and say 'I didn't mean to kill him. He was evil at the time...'. Cops have opened fire on folks who looked like a given role. We know what that got them.

What if one of those bandits happens to be an important noble's third son? Even if he is evil, your character's life can get very complicated very quickly.

Could you define what acting like a bandit looks like? If only some detect as evil, why are they all going to die? Why are the non-evil folk there to begin with?

Given that he's an agent of the church, a paladin has more to lose if they don't make sure they're right. You now have a rampaging paladin screaming 'SLAY THE EVIL!', a large group of people praying they never see him in case he thinks they're evil, and a church that now has to comfort these people and tell them that no, the paladin is not certifiably insane.