Paladin vs. Tomb Raiding

[DRD1812]

The comic is old, but the situation just came up. My players are raiding the tomb of this legendary hero, and every couple of chambers they encounter new inscriptions or magic mouth spells saying, "Let him rest," or "Do not disturb his slumber."

Now aside from the fact that the party is pissed at this ancient adventurer for trying to kill them via half a dozen deathtraps, the paladin is beginning to have qualms. "Is it right to steal from the dead?" he asks. "He has done us no wrong. We don't need anything from here. We're only stealing from this tomb to enrich ourselves."

Dude's got a point. How would you respond to that if you were his GM? More generally, is stealing from the non-evil dead for personal gain an evil act?

[Tarik Blackhands]

Context needed.

Are you pillaging a great hero's tomb just because you want to line your pockets? Paladin should have a problem with that.

On the other hand, putting the restless dead to rest is a worthy cause, or recovering an artifact/useful thing that the person was buried with to defeat *target here* are similarly good reasons to go tomb raiding.

For the last point though, I'd put it as a neutral act honestly. Usually (with a few exceptions abounding like cannibalism or making undead) evil requires you to hurt/oppress others. As the general saying goes, the dead can't take it with them (unless undead natch), so you're just being a self interested jerk by grave robbing a good guy. Objectionable by a paladin? Probably. Fall territory? I wouldn't do it anyway. You can have the paladin's patron deity express disapproval for his actions if he goes through with it, give him some troubling dreams, etc, but leave it at that unless this sort of thing becomes a habit.

The last thing to do is in the last chamber, confront the spirit of the great hero and have him ask why the hell these yahoos are looting his resting place. It's easy to explain away taking away from moldering bones, less so an actual person. May be enough for the other folk to grow a conscience.

[Scrapper]

If their purpose was to recover an artifact for an up coming battle or to prevent it from falling into a know enemy/villains hands, pushing on would make sense, but I agree with the paladin in this case, plundering for personal gain with out a great evil involved does seem very wrong. The paladin should try harder to argue the point to leave, and should be awarded experience if they do leave, with or with out having convinced their fellow party members to do so as well. Bonus points if they can reset some of the traps on the way out or even add more...
Even more disturbing, the paladin discovers the entombed hero was an ancient member of their church and may have to choose between bringing justice upon the party or renouncing their faith...

[Malefactor]

Honestly? A good 90% of the paladin's wealth probably came from when he killed people and then looted their corpses. If he didn't have a problem taking things from people he brutally murdered, suddenly having moral qualms about it just because he wasn't the one to kill them and they've been dead longer is a bit silly. Besides, he can always rationalizes it that if he goes through this tomb and loots stuff, the things he looted weren't doing the world any good gathering dust in a boneyard, but if he takes them he will be able to make use of them to smite the wicked, which a far desirable outcome. I mean seriously, what good is a holy avenger doing buried in cairn?

[Dasrak]

Really depends on the cultural and/or religious values. I wouldn't regard tomb raiding as evil under normal conditions, but depending on the cultural background you're coming from it could be mildly or strongly chaotic. Religious tenets could also flat-out prohibit such behavior. So the Paladin may very well have legitimate problems with doing this. On the other hand, the Paladin might come from a faith or tradition with very different ideas on how to handle the dead and not have a problem with relieving old bones of valuables.