Paladins in Second Darkness - DM Advice?

[Draga, of the mist]

I'm about to start a new AP, and was thinking about Second Darkness - but some of the players want to play paladins. I have heard that this can be a bit difficult, and was wondering if anyone had any success with pallies in this AP?

[Darkwolf]

Depends on your view of the Paladins code. I'm not DMing, but our group just started chapter 6 and we have a Pali in the group.

By the letter of the law, the very premise of the 4th chapter should cost a Paladin his powers, if your willing to stretch the limits a little, for 'the greater Good', then it's doable. Even so, it's still possible that he would be asked to do things that would absolutely cross the line and not exactly be in a position to refuse.

Spoiler:

A possible way around that would be to run the 'house servant' sections as they are and give the party enough heads up about the 'expedition' type sections where there will be combat involved, so the poor Pally can Atone for his necessary transgressions.

[Gorbacz]

You don't need to reach part 4, even. In the very first adventure:

Spoiler:

The party is supposed to be working for a shady boss of a gambling den. Oh, and he is NE.

[Eben TheQuiet]

incoming novel!

My DM ran us through this portion of the game, and we had a pally. Here's how it played out in our group - and I pretty much thought it was crap, so I'm sharing to hear feedback and possibly to shed some light for ya, Draga.

the DM basically (without giving the pally fore-knowledge or anything) decided that undertaking this quest was against the paladin's code and stripped his powers. The paladin (luckily for the DM) was a rather laid-back player and rolled with it, but it really rubbed me wrong.

The DM knew we were running a path that necessitated doing things against the Code (at least his interpretation of it), and deemed it okay to not only let the player go in unknowing, but to strip his powers without him realizing it was gonna happen.

it's a communication and expectation issue in my mind. If you want to let the paladins in and still make them feel like they are "toeing the line", then find a way to do it without immediately removing the bulk of his class abilities.

As a player, that just sucks.

I say, give him roleplay ramifications first. Every day he wakes up after doing the necessary evils, have him feel filty in his soul. Each day the strain grows… eventually, if he doesn't roleplay daily repentance in secret or something, begin to make it difficult for him to sleep or somehing, and he begins to wake Fatigued.

I'm not necessarily talking about the Atonement spell… just some nightly/mornig prrayers where he asks for the ability to withstand the oil tarnishing his pure spirit.

If he doens't take the hint, and you still think it's important from a character developemnt standpoint, point it out to the player out of character.

If you give him in-game cues as well as out-of-character clues, and he doesn't feel it's necessary to repent in some way, then maybe you can consider removing powers.

All of this is assuming you gave any player (before he rolled up a paladin) the heads up as to what might happen in this type of campaign.

What are yalls' thoughts about this?

[Gorbacz]

Second Darkness is crap, that's what my thought is. Avoid. :)

[ZeroCharisma]

I have a Paladin in my current Second Darkness group. He is a human paladin of Torag, named Apose. Before the campaign I ran a brief solo adventure for each character. In the Paladin's, he consults with a senior knight of his order who provides him with a few pitiful possessions and explains his mission and why he has been sent to Riddleport, a notorious den of thieves. I picture the guy as the dude from Morrowind. Elder scrolls aficionadoes know who I mean...

Apose is tasked with investigating the Gold Goblin and Vancaskerkin. In this, he is cast as the highly upright, highly moral undercover agent. He is instructed to basically keep his mouth shut and his eyes open and report back regularly.

This is aided by the fact that I wanted the characters not to have any concept of class within the game world, so I decided that turnabout was fair play. There is no way that Vancaskerkin himself would say: "This guy's a Pally, let me feed him to the hogs"

Spoiler:

Furthermore, while they figured out V. was evil fairly early on because of Apose's abilities, I went to great lengths to stress that many of the people of Riddleport are, in fact, evil and seem to get along with one another just fine (relatively). He also basically (as per the AP instructions) wound up trying to convince them that he was seeking reform and redemption.

In the end, though, when they had had enough of Saul's shenanigans, they Charmed him and wound up killing him while he had his guard completely down. The rest of the party was considerate enough to send the Paladin out to get milk while they did.. or something like that... Furthermore, killing Vancaskerkin at that point was essentially Justice as he had tried to kill them at least twice, proving he was beyond redemption.

As far as what is going to happen in Chapter IV, I gave the paladin an amulet from the Knight of Torag that allows him to atone once a month if he is doing Torag's work. Hopefully he will have the sense and good timing to save it and use it at the appropriate time, because he will most likely have to do things that he (and Torag) would find distasteful.

Anyhow, in a nutshell, I don't think its a deal-breaker as long as GM and player can work together to "find the middle path"...It might be significantly more difficult with a GM who did not recognize the myriad shades of grey that span from capital "G" Good to Neutrality.

[Anburaid]

I think that a paladin undercover in the middle of Riddleport offers some interesting RP opportunities. I suggest looking at it through the lens of undercover cops. Many of them have to lie, cheat, steal, and commit crimes just to get by, and often suffer from psychosis of some kind or another for what they see and do. Maybe look at movies like the Departed for inspiration.

I would suggest that a paladin in this situation might be given some leeway. Perhaps when communing with his/her god, the pally has to make a roll to show true repentance for the minor infractions of the day. If he fails, then he loses his abilities until he can make another attempt at redemption, perhaps doing a good deed in the nest of thieves to show his devotion. But be careful differentiating between unlawful acts and evil ones. Dance around the grey line between them, but make sure that if the player is having the paladin do something evil, he knows it. Who knows, your paladin may just decide to take the leap.

Ultimately the image of a paladin's faith is made a more dramatic a story element when it is in doubt.

[Fubar]

Bah paladin's can go anywhere!

Check out Fubar
Intimidation
Judge Jury Executioner
Extrordinaire!

Can someone give an example of one of these situations that a paladin can not escape from with his paladinhood intact!

[Joey Virtue]

Gorbacz wrote:

Second Darkness is crap, that's what my thought is. Avoid. :)

I disgree I have read through it, and I enjoy it alot I think it can be a lot of fun to play and run.

I think it is a great RP challenge for the DM, remeber in Pathfinder they have lowered the restrictions on the Paladin the iconic paladin is regularly grouped with iconic Neutral evil PC

I think if the Paladin gets carried away he can lose his paladin powers but if is wary of the darkness and evil then he should be alright and book 4 could be a challenge

[Joey Virtue]

Draga, of the mist wrote:

I'm about to start a new AP, and was thinking about Second Darkness - but some of the players want to play paladins. I have heard that this can be a bit difficult, and was wondering if anyone had any success with pallies in this AP?

If you are running it in Pathfinder Rules set i have converted the entire thing I have a thread in The Second Darkness forum. Im using Herolab so I dont have a Word Document like I Did for RORLs. Check it out it could be helpful

[Draga, of the mist]

Joey Virtue wrote:

If you are running it in Pathfinder Rules set i have converted the entire thing I have a thread in The Second Darkness forum. Im using Herolab so I dont have a Word Document like I Did for RORLs. Check it out it could be helpful

Got a link?

[LazarX]

Paladins face a much greyer world than average in the Golarian setting compared to Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk, perhaps even more greyer than Eberron. DM's and players require a different focus of thought.

We had a similar situation in the network game Living Force where a good deal of your missions was on the beheft of various crimelords and such.

My suggestion is that DMs in particular need to think farther ahead perhaps than they are used to and decide for themselves who to handle the ethical and moral quagmires that may arise for a Golarian adventure and should consider a more organic approach to these questions. As there were very good ways to rationalise why Jedi were involved in the adventures of the Cularin system, similar justifications can be made for the presence of Paladins even in Second Darkness. It is the incumbent responsibility for GMs to work out various scenarios and possible outcomes before presenting the adventure to his players.

However in short, taking a job from a NE crimelord is not the same as making said individual one of the Paladin's trusted associates. Again, Riddleport is a cesspool of corruption and a DM who thinks that Paladins should only be dealing with it's citizens at the point of the sword is the problem, not the class itself.

[KenderKin]

I think that the letter of the law people are looking at things a bit skewed and illogically.

A paladin hears about a most noble quest that will improve the lives of many. Deciding to go does not imply any relationship to the person telling you about it whether they be good/evil or indifferent....

The same can be said for persons following the paladin into the danger.
Are any of them good/evil/ or indifferent? Paladin thinks to himself I am on a most noble quest I wish these people would stop following me.

Or possibly the paladin associates with those he has chosen to and ignores or works on redeeming those not so inclined!

What if one of those evil people gets attacked at the same time as the paladin likely the paladin will assist them rather than have them perish unredeemed......

[Joey Virtue]

Draga, of the mist wrote:

Joey Virtue wrote:

If you are running it in Pathfinder Rules set i have converted the entire thing I have a thread in The Second Darkness forum. Im using Herolab so I dont have a Word Document like I Did for RORLs. Check it out it could be helpful

Got a link?

I suck at links on this sight but if you go down the second darkness section in the formums you will see them under changes to second darkness, I did alot of work and made it more challengeing

The only bad change i made was in the first two books My Players wanted to start at 2nd level and how there is that small level gap between book two and three I elimnated it and increased the level of all the challenges in the 1st two books

EDIT Here is my attempt and making the link

http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizoPublishing/pathfinder/adventurePa th/secondDarkness/changesToSecondDarknessForPathfinderSpoilers
.

[Jam412]

Here you go. Link

[Draga, of the mist]

Joey Virtue wrote:

I suck at links on this site

|url= http://www.site.com| This is the link text |/url|

looks like:

This is the link text

Use [ and ] brackets, instead of |. You can see them if you click Show BBCode tags, below the posting text window.

[Joey Virtue]

Thanks guys I must be doing something small and stupid wrong, because I think my link was just like yours