Why Should It Be Hard To Be A Paladin?

[delericho]

IMO this sounds stupid. The adventure could state that eating an apple evil but it don't make it so.

If I had felt that killing the child wasn't evil, I would have said as much. However, in the RAW, these 'evil' humanoid races are not irredeemable. As such, killing a defenceless child out of convenience is evil.

Now, if your campaign world works differently, it may be that the child is destined to become evil and has no choice. In this case, I would accept that killing the child would be equivalent to putting down a dangerous dog, which I don't hold to be evil. However, published adventures, by their nature, have to stick to the RAW or else they vastly reduce their utility to DMs.

 

[Numion]

If I had felt that killing the child wasn't evil, I would have said as much. However, in the RAW, these 'evil' humanoid races are not irredeemable. As such, killing a defenceless child out of convenience is evil.

Now, if your campaign world works differently, it may be that the child is destined to become evil and has no choice. In this case, I would accept that killing the child would be equivalent to putting down a dangerous dog, which I don't hold to be evil. However, published adventures, by their nature, have to stick to the RAW or else they vastly reduce their utility to DMs.

Killing the child may or may not be evil. I just think its stupid for the adventure to say it is.

 

[delericho]

Killing the child may or may not be evil. I just think its stupid for the adventure to say it is.

I disagree. Killing the child is probably one of the first solutions that would occur to the PCs. As such, the adventure had to address it. That being the case, and given the alignment as stated in the SRD, anything other than a clear statement that killing the child would be evil would be totally unacceptable.

(That PCs in general are far too quick to draw swords is a whole other rant. Frankly, I'm somewhat concerned that there might be something to the criticisms of our hobby, that perhaps D&D, and video games, and all the ultra-violence on TV and in the cinema is de-sensitising kids to such things.)

 

[Rel]

(That PCs in general are far too quick to draw swords is a whole other rant. Frankly, I'm somewhat concerned that there might be something to the criticisms of our hobby, that perhaps D&D, and video games, and all the ultra-violence on TV and in the cinema is de-sensitising kids to such things.)

Can you cite examples of the heroes of video games, TV and movies killing children?

 

[delericho]

Can you cite examples of the heroes of video games, TV and movies killing children?

Fortunately, no. The closest that springs to mind is Jack Bauer's staging such a thing to extort information from a known terrorist. As I said, I'm getting increasingly worried that we might be going wrong - if I knew of specific examples where that had been done, then I wouldn't be worried there might be a problem, I would be quite certain that there was one.

That said...

I think a large part of any problem we have is poor labelling of adult material and/or poor enforcement/parenting. I have no problem with the existence of questionable, or even outright dangerous material, provided it's clearly marked with an "Adults Only" sign, and provided vendors ONLY sell the material to adults. (If parents then let their children be exposed to it, that's still wrong IMO, but it's their prerogative to choose.) In general, I don't believe in censorship, but I do believe in correct labelling, and I do believe that the right to choose for children must lie with the parents (as a practical manner, I don't think society can prevent a parent who is so-minded from exposing their child to whatever they wish).

 

[Thurbane]

It seems to me that there is an unspoken assumption that being a paladin should be difficult, that DMs should go out of their way to make life hard for a paladin, and that deciding to play a paladin character is the equivalent of hanging a "kick me" sign on your back.

I don't agree that DMs should go "out of their way" to make life hard for any character, but then again, anyone who lives by a strict moral code will always encounter more problems (especially moral dilemmas) than someone who does not.

What I'm curious about is, why should that be the case? In previous editions of the game, the paladin was supposed to be more powerful than an ordinary fighter, so a role-playing restriction was inserted to balance out a mechanical advantage (to a lesser extent, this was also true of the ranger).

However, now that the paladin is better balanced against the other classes, why not give it a bit more leeway? If you're DMing a paladin and you're unsure whether the character did something against his code of conduct, or whether what he did was actually an evil act, why not give him the benefit of the doubt? If you're the type of DM that removes a paladin's powers for the slightest infraction, what do you do to compensate?

As far as I'm concerned, "balance" was never really a primary reason behind a Paladin's code of conduct. From a purely mechanical sense, Paladin's already paid this price in higher XP cost per level than ordinary Fighters did (in 1E and 2E).

Playing a character with a strict code of morals, honour and virtues will always be tougher than playing someone without such a code. For instance, a Samurai's code of Bushido can be just as tough to roleplay as a Paladin's code of conduct. I don't feel that it is some sort of witch-hunt to persecute players who want to take a Paladin, but an inherent feature of the class itself.

Part of the problem I see is that people tend to take on 1 of 2 primary mindsets when playing a Paladin: The Punisher, or Ghandi. There is a lot of middle ground between those two extremes, and, IMHO, most "intelligently" played Paladins should probably be somewhere between those two polar extremes.

 

[The Sigil]

As far as I'm concerned, 90% of the problems that crop up with paladins aren't "paladin" problems at all. They're "alignment" problems masquerading as paladin problems.

Specifically, a LOT of people seem to really chafe at the very idea of Lawful Good - either the paladin player doesn't really like the restrictions that maintaining such an alignment places on his actions or the DM (or other players) don't like the idea of a Lawful Good person in their group (probably because the character, if not the player, is perceived as "holier-than-thou" from the get-go).

FranktheDM had it right - the problem is that the player and the DM have to see eye-to-eye on what the paladin should do, and absent great DM-player communication (to the point of either reading each other's minds or being extremely like-minded in the first place), there needs to be an in-game mechanism to allow that.

But again, 90% of the problems that seem to crop up with Paladins is that someone (DM, player of the paladin, or another PC) doesn't like the idea of alignment in general and "Lawful Good" and therefore tries to sabotage the paladin (consciously or unconsciously). Probably because most of us feel the need to be law-abiding citizens most days and would just like to kick evil's butt without having to worry about protocol when we're gaming as heroes... which is very much Chaotic Good to Chaotic Neutral behavior...

And of course, it goes without saying that an Evil PC game is no place for a paladin PC.

 

[Storyteller01]

Can you cite examples of the heroes of video games, TV and movies killing children?

Not children, but Kratos (God of War) does a good job of killing civilians. One fight against a pair of cyclops all but require you to kill running citizens to regain life.


But then again, this deviates from the thread discussion.

 

[Sejs]

Not children, but Kratos (God of War) does a good job of killing civilians. One fight against a pair of cyclops all but require you to kill running citizens to regain life.


But then again, this deviates from the thread discussion.

Warcraft 3, Prince Arthas (a paladin, no less) and his troops have to kill nearly an entire city's worth of otherwise innocent civilians. From his own kingdom.

Emphasis here being the have to. Those same civilians have been eating a necromantically tainted grain that carries a plague that kills anyone infected and then raises them as undead. Undead who will then run rampant, killing their loved ones and spreading the infection further. There's also a certain demon lord present (responsible for the plague) that gleefully runs about sucking the souls out of those rised as undead and consuming them.

So, yeah. Paladin. Killing innocent civilians. For their own good.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

When I chose to play a paladin I hoped to have scenarios of triumphing over wickedness and getting plenty of cheers from the people. I was also expecting some of the wicked baddies to use sneaky and really underhanded tricks, which would challenge the conventional methods for victory. So there I am with a character that needs to triumph, but the triumph needs to inspire the people.

Yeah, that sort of paladin is just gotta be hard to play.

Then again, to date all the tricky issues have solved by pretty easy solutions. You know, stuff like divinations, flat of the blade KO's, sense motive/religious knowledge... hmm, and sometimes just taking a few unretaliated hits.

Which sort of says that that sort of paladin is also not so hard to play.