Another Paladin Question


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Zhangar wrote:
Caineach wrote:
Zhangar wrote:
Code of Torag wrote:
I will defeat them, yet even in the direst struggle, I will act in a way that brings honor to Torag.

Emphasis added. I'd argue that cutting down unarmed civilians does not bring honor to Torag.

Since the evil little old lady turned out to be a spellcaster (though I'm really curious as to what kind - adept? witch? cleric?), and was stupid enough to try throwing spells at an armed and angry paladin, I'd be inclined to cut you some slack (i.e., shouldn't fall), but you still made a mess of the situation.

What you described the lady doing was pretty creepy/weird, but it certainly wasn't a capital offense.

Speaking as someone who plays paladins: Just because someone is a petty jerk does not make it okay to kill them.

Also, if you merely knocked her out on your first swing, and used a second attack to finish her off, then you probably should be in trouble.

I strongly recommend using a sap next time. Or getting merciful on your earthbreaker.

Code of Torag wrote:
Against my people’s enemies, I will show no mercy. I will not allow their surrender, except when strategy warrants.

And I quoted the qualifier that follows the sentence you quoted =P

Also note the "except when strategy warrants." Torag does not give a paladin permission to turn his brain off. If you're in a situation where "show no mercy" is idiotic (like arresting a little old lady for a nonviolent crime), then you're expected to have some discretion.

Think for yourself, and don't be a disgrace.

"except where strategy warrants" refers to being able to exploit prisoners to your advantage, which I think is very much not the situation here. I think your qualifiers are explicitly not applicable to this situation.

Sovereign Court

His people's enemies? I don't think that woman was an enemy of the Dwarves.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Here is the issue I have with the "unarmed woman" portion. She is casting a spell. Is someone partway through casting a fireball unarmed? I would say no. They are about to unleash a huge weapon.

Which comes to a bit of a grey area. He may not know what spell it is. It could be a fireball that will consume the entire "orphanage", killing everyone inside. She could be casting a spell to provide better illumination. If the paladin doesn't have Spellcraft, he doesn't know what it is. That is where a bit of a judgement call comes in, and Sense Motive can be a helpful substitute. However, modern cops I believe are trained to assume a weapon when in doubt. That is part of why toy guns generally have bright orange tips, to make it obvious it is not a threat. An unknown spell is potentially more dangerous than pretty much any weapon the woman could be wielding.

So then the question is, does the paladin err on the side of caution for his allies, or the side of redemption. And this is where the many variants of paladin come into play, as there is no single way to play a paladin. A more redemption-focused paladin, such as Sarenrae or Shelyn, holding your strike or going none-lethal would be preferable. Not absolute, as the individual paladin would need to weigh the situation (where are the innocent children, if it is an offensive spell, can they weather it). However, paladins of Torag are incredible severe. For a paladin of Torag, after you declare yourself an enemy you should expect no quarter. Not interrupting the caster to protect those around them would be a betrayal of their code. For lethal vs non-lethal, Torag's code sets a clear precedence of "if you are my enemy, I will not hold back".

TLDR: Depending on the paladin's diety and personal code, the actions can be justified (or found abhorrent) quite easily. There is no single way to play a paladin, and for your average paladin of Torag, I see no reason to consider the OP's actions extreme.

Sovereign Court

He shouldn't fall, I agree, but, however, he should have legal ramifications, because, instead of going to the city guard with evidence, he committed vigilante justice (murder), and most guards take a dim view to that.


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Hama wrote:
He shouldn't fall, I agree, but, however, he should have legal ramifications, because, instead of going to the city guard with evidence, he committed vigilante justice (murder), and most guards take a dim view to that.

Vigilante justice isn't against the Paladin code. In most cases, it is explicitly what the Paladin should be doing.

Sovereign Court

I'm not talking about the paladin code. I'm talking about the rest of the world. Murder is murder. He broke the law.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I agree, there could be some legal ramifications. Granted, what those ramifications are depends a lot on the government in the area.

Paladins are known for being good and just, so in a good society, it is likely that his actions would be viewed in the best possible light. This does not excuse him from wrongdoing, but it will sway a he said/she said situation. Which is kind of what the current situation is. The paladin can say, "she was about to cast a spell, I had to act quickly and decisively for the good of my comrades and the innocent children who may have been harmed", and unless the party turns against him, the authorities will likely take him at his word. There might be some skepticism, but once it comes to light that this woman was kidnapping children and ransoming them back to their families, the reaction from the authorities may very well become "thanks for taking care of that for us!". Perhaps a few jaded guards are sick of those adventurers walking around like they own the place, but he would be by-and-large in the clear.

This is assuming the standard behavior that I generally see from guards in my campaigns. Depending on the town, the legal ramifications could change drastically. If they are mistrust paladins, don't recognize the paladin's deity, are extremely strict about "no killing" even when doing good, or are corrupt, the reaction would definitely change drastically. But in generic good village #53, flashing his paladin credentials, revealing what she was doing, and saying "she refused to surrender and may have been casting a spell that would harm innocents. I did what Torag would expect of me", would probably alleviate most of the legal concerns.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I'm almost seeing this as like one of those really tough-to-call borderline cases that people trot out to discuss paladin alignment issues. But obviously there are at least some cases that do play out in reality. It seems like one would almost have to be there in the flesh to put a judgement on this thing it's that close. All the difference would be made by how the situation played out and how the actions were executed. This is a case of how you do it being almost as important as what you do.

On one the one hand, "come with us or die" may have been unnecessarily provocative (essentially a threat on her life) and prompted the spellcaster to defend herself. Perhaps it could have been worded in a more discrete, less threatening, or less ultimate fashion. And the paladin may not have had the authority to take her into custody or to render judgement upon her (at least from her perspective.) An unarmored old person probably wouldn't have been that hard to hit for nonlethal damage.

On the other hand, it sounds like the paladin did do a fair amount of investigation on this person. It's not like he JUST cast detect evil on her and then struck her down in cold blood. He also did give her a warning (even if it came off as merely a threat on her life) and initiated violence as a response to her almost certainly hostile act. In the heat of the moment when potential life or death were at stake (especially the life of children), a more rational plan of action (striking her for nonlethal damage) may not have made itself apparent. One can make a strong case for self defense.

I would be VERY hesitant to make the paladin fall- it's a gray enough case that it's sounds like it's almost a question more of tact and execution than right out breaking the paladin code. Legally there may be some ramifications, but unless some kind of moral lapse can be established (wanting to go around some legal process to take her in and deliberately invoking death threats to force undue cooperation), then I'd be relatively merciful. The god may even be angry, but any serious punishment from the divine perspective should be handed out only after the strongest consideration of alternatives has been made.

That being said, there's obviously a mismatch of perceptions here. Some discussion between the OP and the rest of the group is needed regardless of who was in the wrong and who was in the right. Probably preferably once tempers have had time to cool down.


I thought I should address a couple of points that keep being brought up:

1. I should have faced civil justice.
The entire party, despite me telling the guards I was the one who killed the old woman, were all taken down, processed, and made to pay a fine. One of the guards showed me how to get a warrant, so that I could avoid these problems in the future, and, because he admired my zeal, he became a contact in the city that I used later on in the adventure. One problem with the old woman was that she was renting the kids out to some of the most powerful and influential people in Absalom, which gave her a certain amount of clemency among the guards.

2. What I did was vigilante justice.
I would agree with this statement, if upon seeing that the woman was evil I had immediately smited her. However, I did everything I could to discover what made her evil, what crimes she was committing, and then I asked for her surrender. Only when she threatened me did I use lethal force. Also, later in the adventure, the party was accosted by several thugs. We asked them to reconsider whether their lives were worth the gold we carried. They decided it was and battle ensued. We killed all but two of them. No guards thought we had done wrong in this situation.

3. Torag's paladins must kill all their enemies.
I don't read the code this way. Word of God states that "Torag must take no prisoners" was meant for goblinoinds and orcs. That's how I read because the alternative is to be a butcher.

Sovereign Court

So everything is well. I like that.

Scarab Sages

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LazarX wrote:
A Paladin who can't moderate his responses between passivity and all out assault has quite frankly, a problem. Yes, she cast a spell. Spells by themselves ARE NOT that big a deal, unless they're coming from an extremely powerful caster, which she does not show herself to be. One lone frail woman faced with an entire equipped party... that does not give you license to go Judge Dredd on her.

Hmmm.

Frail?
Old?

So, in other words, she's not just an evil caster, but an evil caster who dumped her physical stats, to ensure a maxed-out casting stat?
Then doubled down on that with mental stat-boosting age increases, on top of the normal increases at levels 4/8/12, etc?

Wow. She sounds lethal.
Good job there was a paladin on hand, to be able to resist the DC 20+ spell saves she was about to unleash. The rest of the party would probably have been dead, or drooling murder-puppets, if he'd let her live.

Scarab Sages

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The above is meant to illustrate the folly of using the 'little old lady' justification, in any scenario set on Golarion, or any other setting where the PF rules represent the laws of the universe.

Little Old Ladies get kid-glove treatment on 21st-century Earth, because 21st-century Earth is a level-capped, non-magical setting, where the benefits of being old are limited to 'being able to count in Imperial units', or 'remember old radio shows'. The drawbacks of being old far outnumber these benefits, and include physical deterioration, memory loss, illness and organ failure.

Golarion is a magical setting, where;

age = experience,
experience = level gains,
level gains = logarithmic power increases (certainly for casters),
age increases magical-fuelling stats,
the decrease to physical stats are trivial to overcome via magic,
susceptibility to diseases depends more on level than stats,
diseases were made trivial to resist in PF Affliction rules,
skill ranks only increase, never decrease ("I used to have poor eyesight, but now I'm old, I've thrown my spectacles away. I can see a pin drop at 100 paces with my 10 ranks and skill Focus in Perception."

So, going easy on a hostile NPC, 'because they're old' has to be one of the most dumb things a PC can do.

Given that a PC can go from level 1 to 20 in a few months, and get an Archwizard Degree before they need to shave, anyone who's an adult, let alone got a few grey hairs, has to be assumed to be level 20+/Mythic.


Herodes Aemilius wrote:

The other day I was playing a paladin of Torag in the PFS module In the Service of Lore. We were asked to do several menial tasks one of which was to investigate an orphanage that the Silver Crusade was helping out. Basically the Crusade wanted to know if the head of the orphanage was misusing their aid.

When we first got to the orphanage, after hearing several disturbing rumors about the orphanage and the lady who ran it during our trip, I used my detect evil ability on the old woman and discovered that she was in fact evil. I shared this information with my group, and then I proceeded to ask some of the orphans what it was like living in the orphanage. Through a little role-playing I discovered that this woman was finding sick children, healing them, and then extorting the parents with the well-being of their child for the right to rent the child out to wealthy members of Absalom society. She then kept all of the money for herself and used the wealth to fund her drinking habit.

Now I knew she was evil-aligned, doing evil things, and most likely breaking the law, so I took out my Earthbreaker, descended the stairs and asked her to surrender or suffer the ultimate penalty of her evil deeds. Mind you she was surrounded by the rest of the party and her escape was cut off. However, instead of surrendering she immediately began casting a spell, and I responded by striking her down.

At this point everyone at the table got upset with me. They said that what I did was horrible and the DM even suggested that I might need a spell of Atonement before I could play at his table again. In my mind I did exactly what a paladin, especially one of Torag, would do. However, the rest of the party held a different opinion. I just wanted to see what you guys thought. DId I do right? Or do I need to Atone?

She was an evil spellcaster that "drew" on you the instant you revealed the game was up.

I would be entirely fine with you doing that at my table, and a paladin should never fall for killing an evil enemy refusing to surrender and starting to cast a spell.

She could be trying to teleport to escape (to do evil elsewhere) or about to blast your boots off; buff herself for the forthcoming fight or make your heart stop. You don't have to fight fair against evil by letting them hit you with a spell first (or let them magically escape). If they don't surrender when their crimes are exposed, they risk their life.

I made you a meme, and you have my sympathies:

http://memegenerator.net/instance/53730385

If this happened to me, as a bit of a smark arse I would ask where it says officially in the rules that a paladin needs an atonement for killing an evil spellcaster that didn't surrender once exposed and started spellcasting. Bet they can't find it. Why? Because such a rule doesn't exist.


Jack Assery wrote:

Let me quote myself from an old thread for clarity:

Still say
1:detect evil
2:smite evil
3:rinse, repeat as necessary
and if needed
4:leave the philosophy to the philosophers.
The moral implications of eradicating an entire LE town is the same exact implications of eradicating a dungeon of LE people; it's just called an "urban" or "rural" backdrop.
He's 15th level, he's got s*** to do; he can't be bothered to figure out EVERY nefarious plot; just detect evil, destroy evil, keep on truckin. Detect evil is at will, who needs circumstances and backdrop? They didn't give him insight into why people turn to evil; just wipe it off the map before they destroy the neighboring GOOD (meaning neutral but bearable, barely) town.
Plus he probably dump-stat'd Int anyways so unless he's got some "investigative-type" around, he probably needn't bother looking for a reason, evil is reason enough. Probably best if he doesn't even bother trying to figure out reasons, smite evil don't give one s*** about reasons. What's the exact difference between a Paladin going into a dungeon or BBEG's lair and "forcing his LG morality" upon them? Setting? Most well built dungeons are akin to small establishments, especially the LE variety. I say it's the same thing, no problem; after all they're LE, he was breaking up SOME nefarious plot by doing so; does it matter if he doesn't know or care what it was?
This is a black & white topic, moral implications need not apply. Next people will be telling me that my pally destroying the cult's shrine to Dagon "was reprehensible destruction of their cultural heritage" or stopping them from opening a portal to the Old Ones "was interjecting my unrealistic standards upon them".

Not only destruction of cultural heritage, you also engaged in genocide against the fish people. You monster!

Tangled late modern silliness dragged into a fantasy where good and evil are clearly known and knowable.


Scaevola77 wrote:

Here is the issue I have with the "unarmed woman" portion. She is casting a spell. Is someone partway through casting a fireball unarmed? I would say no. They are about to unleash a huge weapon.

Which comes to a bit of a grey area. He may not know what spell it is. It could be a fireball that will consume the entire "orphanage", killing everyone inside. She could be casting a spell to provide better illumination. If the paladin doesn't have Spellcraft, he doesn't know what it is. That is where a bit of a judgement call comes in, and Sense Motive can be a helpful substitute. However, modern cops I believe are trained to assume a weapon when in doubt. That is part of why toy guns generally have bright orange tips, to make it obvious it is not a threat. An unknown spell is potentially more dangerous than pretty much any weapon the woman could be wielding.

So then the question is, does the paladin err on the side of caution for his allies, or the side of redemption. And this is where the many variants of paladin come into play, as there is no single way to play a paladin. A more redemption-focused paladin, such as Sarenrae or Shelyn, holding your strike or going none-lethal would be preferable. Not absolute, as the individual paladin would need to weigh the situation (where are the innocent children, if it is an offensive spell, can they weather it). However, paladins of Torag are incredible severe. For a paladin of Torag, after you declare yourself an enemy you should expect no quarter. Not interrupting the caster to protect those around them would be a betrayal of their code. For lethal vs non-lethal, Torag's code sets a clear precedence of "if you are my enemy, I will not hold back".

TLDR: Depending on the paladin's diety and personal code, the actions can be justified (or found abhorrent) quite easily. There is no single way to play a paladin, and for your average paladin of Torag, I see no reason to consider the OP's actions extreme.

Is she unarmed if she has touch spells and can kill easily while unarmed?


Snorter wrote:
Given that a PC can go from level 1 to 20 in a few months, and get an Archwizard Degree before they need to shave, anyone who's an adult, let alone got a few grey hairs, has to be assumed to be level 20+/Mythic.

Unless it's an Eberron campaign. In which case even the "ancient godlings of the realm" barely peak past 15th level.


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I actually think your Paladin acted with considerable wisdom and restraint! You used detect evil not as a justification for instant execution, but as a reason to keep investigating. Your investigation revealed some particularly heinous crimes and even then you acted with restraint, asking for surrender ("rent the child out to wealthy members of Absalom society" - maybe I'm reading into this too much, but holy crap is that evil! Slavery and/or forced prostitution of children would have my Paladin frothing at the mouth with rage. Especially from someone who is supposed to be protecting the weak!). I think Jack Assery's 'pulling a gun on a cop' analogy is spot on wit the spell - she refused surrender and took an action which could have been lethal (or allowed her instant escape, to do even more evil).

I am glad that your party was arrested by the watch and did not resist that arrest - again you continued to act Lawful Good and accepted the consequences for your actions.

I say bravo! A perfect example of a proper Paladin in action.

As a followup however: it should also be your duty to ensure that a proper new head of the orphanage is found. Doing good is more than smiting after all.


@DM Under the Bridge Thanks for the meme! I love it!
@Thaago Thanks for the encouragement, and you're right I should see about finding a replacement for the orphanage.

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