MyPCsCommitSuicide's page

To the OP: No..but

This is the essence of temptation - which is something that paladins will deal with all their lives. I would say that there needs to be a trade off or cause - effect for the paladin to fall. Knowing whats going to happen is one thing - trying to act upon it (benefit from or change the course) is another. Also, I am assuming that the paladin cannot outright kill the demon so he is "forced" to talk to it, otherwise he should have put it to the sword or died trying.

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So in your example - say the paladin does stop the battle - something else terrible should then happen because of the change in what was fated to happen (a bunch of other innocents die due to the fight not occurring, or a greater evil happens).
Also, if the golden light is something that the paladin doesn't question (without praying to his god for guidance, or asking his god if this is his will) and keeps following those directive - yeah, he will eventually do something that will cause him to fall.

Directly communicating with a great evil on its own, even breaking a tenant of his orders faith - no.
I would think that the tenant is their for a reason - and is not just a blind rule without thought placed into it. Let me expand: it's there to protect the weaker members of the faith for the purpose of protecting them from falling to temptation.

Right now the pally's biggest sin is his arrogance in thinking he could interact with evil without it casting a shadow on his soul - there have been many characters from faith who broke the rules and dealt directly with evil - but these were powerful fellows - exemplars in their faith. The pally being a PC can conceivably be (or is on the path to) being an epic, divine character that can deal with evil without falling to it.

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The pally may need to be taught a lesson in humility and consequence of letting evil in the door - fall, as of right now - no.
Continue to manipulate him into unquestioningly following this miraculous golden light...

Hey, thanks for being one of the few people in this thread who was actually helpful and not a dick. I will use this advice

I currently run a homebrew campaign with 6 PCs, one of which is a paladin. The main goal of the campaign is to travel to the center of an area of magical corruption and try to put a stop to it. Nobody knows what causes the corruption, and it is spreading quickly.

In their endless quest to completely ignore the main plotline, they managed to go on a plane-hopping adventure.

So, here's the problem. During this plane hopping escapade I thought it would be fun to have the party approached by a deal-making demon. He asked if anyone interested in making a deal please enter his tent. The demon's intent was to slowly steer the party towards the center of the corruption, because he too had a vested interest in it being stopped (More on that later). Now, I was hoping that one of the neutral characters would be interested, and if all else fails the LE Gunslinger might be game... but I was wrong.

The paladin stepped up.

The paladin entered the demon's tent, arms crossed and head full of "I'm so g**@%&n good there's no way this demon can pull one over on me"-ness and asked what the demon wanted. The demon simply said he wanted to show the paladin something, and that all he required was that the paladin place his hands on the same table the demon was. The paladin obliged. The demon showed him a battle that would take place in the future and how to stop it. But that wasn't all he did.

Now the paladin sees "Holy" golden light on areas and people of interest, actually caused by the demon, whom the paladin allowed into his mind.

So the question is this, should the paladin fall for making a deal with a demon? One of the main reasons I'm leaning towards yes is that one of his god's things is: "never associates or parleys with evil gods or fiends."

I know that this particular scenario doesn't exactly follow the rules listed here because I didn't warn him that "Hey by the way making deals with the devil is like, not a good thing to do, or smart either." But at what point am I holding his hand?

So, should the paladin fall?