Is this an evil act?


Advice

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The party is about to enter a tomb in between two cliffs roughly around 200 ft apart. On the opposite side of the tomb, the party notices a pair of sleeping wyverns.

The paladin (Paladin of erastil) says "lets kill the wyverns before we enter the tomb" (he also said out of character that the wyverns are going to attack the party so it's best to kill em before they kill the party and was metagaming).

The party pulls out it's bows and wakes up the wyverns, kills one of the wyverns. And the other one runs away because she was mortally wounded.

I told the paladin that he lost his powers cause he committed an evil act by acting a sleeping sentient being that was not evil. And I told him that he essentially killed 3 wyverns as the pair had a nest and that the one wyvern wouldn't be able to properly hunt and feed her litter of wyverns (2).

His argument was that they were monster and needed to be purged from the land.

So my question is that is what he did an evil act in killing the wyverns while they are asleep. At the very least the action is cowardly, as paladins' should not attack sleeping foes.


Alignment always depends on the gaming group, but I think your call is fair. You should have given him a warning beforehand if you didn't.


Your call seems fair (if harsh), Role Playing is part of the game. I wouldn't consider it evil as he obviously saw the wyverns as threats, but it was a bit cowardice. The honor code is part of being a Paladin. At least there's atonement for him to regain his powers.

Silver Crusade

Harsh IMHO.

Whilst Wyverns are not evil as such they do represent a significant threat to communities. A Wyvern would not think twice about carrying off a human to eat, plus Wyverns are described as "nasty, brutish, and violent reptilian beasts" with a significant territory that they threaten.

As such a Paladin has a duty to remove that threat especially a paladin of Erastil. Pragmatic? Certainly; hardline? Probably; chaotic or evil? Not in my opinion.


I would consider it an evil act, but I would probably be a bit more lienent with the whole losing powers thing. Of course if this wasn't his first offense, then by all means.


I think most decent DMs would have their god give a tap on the shoulder before they commit something that is considered an atrocity, of which killing two ravenous man-eaters in the pursuit of a greater good is questionable. I wouldn't consider it meta-gaming to assume a territorial Wyvern will attack a group of intruders. Btw, were they going to attack? Unless there is a clearly established code of conduct(and this is the third warning or something), taking his powers, while fair, isn't appropriate. The removal of a Paladin's powers will deeply affect the player and the party, and should be taken very seriously. Consider disabling an ability or two, temporarily, and giving some clear visual signs that he has done wrong.

A bit on the Wyvern:

Wyverns are nasty, brutish, and violent reptilian beasts akin to more powerful dragons. They are always aggressive and impatient, and are quick to resort to force in order to accomplish their goals. For this reason, dragons generally look down upon wyverns, considering their distant cousins nothing more than primitive savages with a distinct lack of style or wit. In most cases, this generalization is spot-on. Although far from animalistic in intellect, and capable of speech, most wyverns simply can't be bothered with the subtlety of diplomacy, and prefer to fight first and parley later, and even then only if faced with a foe they can neither defeat nor flee from.

Wyverns are territorial creatures. Though they occasionally hunt in small groups for large prey, they are generally solitary creatures, hunting in areas ranging in size from 100 to 200 square miles. Wyverns have been known to fight to the death among themselves for the right to hunt a territory rich with prey.

Although constantly hungry and prone to mayhem, a wyvern that can be befriended (usually through a delicate combination of flattery, intimidation, food, and treasure) becomes a powerful ally. They often serve giants and monstrous humanoids as guardians, and some lizardfolk and boggard tribes even use them as mounts, although such arrangements are quite costly in terms of food and gold, for few are the wyverns who would willingly serve as steeds for lesser creatures for long.

Depending on the Paladin's god, it might be his charge to destroy creatures that are "constantly hungry and prone to mayhem". While I agree that a Paladin should be discerning in his choice of foe and tactics, a DM should be forgiving of what is a very gray area in the game. If this sort of behavior continues, consider allowing the player to rewrite his character as a Cavalier from the APG, or a Fighter/Cleric.

tl;dr Nerfing a Paladin nerfs the party. Make sure you're doin it right.

edit: Didn't see...ERASTIL!? God of the hunt...finding a sleeping creature is a Hunter's dream, and they killed them with bows...Erastil's holy symbol! It's like an offering! Eradicating threats to civilized life and hunting are Erastil's portfolio. A Paladin of the Hunt should be allowed tactics - possibly even using poison - that a normal Paladin of a good god might be denied. Code of conduct should ALWAYS vary by deity.


I wouldn't have judged it an evil act, but I can understand that someone would. I mean they are described at brutal, and not very diplomatic, and look like aggressive predators. Knowing they are intelligent is unlikely, and I would treat them the same as an enraged animal: if it is in my way, take it down. As I would treat it ingame as an animal, there is no honour to upkeep.

But it's okay if you have a different opinion, but you should have told your player this, he probably didn't want to do something evil, and he told you what he intended to do.

However as it is already played out, at least let him atone without the 2500gp for delibarate evil acts.

I think this is a situation where something looks evil, and the paladin is allowed to be sneaky, a trap by an evil villain to make a paladin kill a good person could not be better.


sir_shajir wrote:

Blablabla...

The paladin (Paladin of erastil) says "lets kill the wyverns before we enter the tomb" (he also said out of character that the wyverns are going to attack the party so it's best to kill em before they kill the party and was metagaming)...blablabla

This.

Your ruling was absolutely correct.

_IF_ his reasoning would be that the nearby village is threatened by the wyverns or they try to remember if they heared complaint at the inn the previous night about lifestock being carried off...things are different.

If you reason that you kill a creature to protect others, for a greater good, and give a believeable reason that what you are doing is for a cause, go ahead.

If you are in the middle of nowhere with the next settlement 3 days away, and kill a creature because it MAY be a threat later, thats cowardice and an evil act.

Aside from that, he never even verified that they are what he thinks. At 200 ft., detect spells fail. They could as well have been "awakened", a "companion", a "cohort", a wizards pet, whatever. They may be anything.

Just because the book says they are nasty, doesn't mean ever single member of the race has to be the same.

and THAT all aside...did anyone of those chars make a knowledge check to find OUT that they are brutish, nasty beasts? Didn't sound like it. Could be they are good-aligned creatures watching over the land, for all THEY know.

In my eyes, your call is perfectly fair.

They used metagaming(about the beast AND about what could possibly happen) to formulate an attack with no in-game reason as to WHY they attack.

Thus, it was an unnecessary killing.

If you want to be nice, allow them to retcon that and use PROPER, IN-GAME reasoning as to why they killed them, and tell them that next time, they won't get off easy.

Your ruling was perfectly fine, in my opinion.


Like a lot of the others here I'd say your ruling was fair, but harsh. Ambushing sleeping monsters in a nest is far from noble, honorable, or really good. All things of which a paladin is supposed to be.

That being said, I wouldn't call it quite as obvious so I think a warning about the quality of the act would've been fair. If he really had no clue, I'd cut him more slack this time but make it clear he needs to really think about his actions in the future. The paladin's a powerful class but the conduct guidelines are there for a reason.

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber

Did he detect evil to see if the wyverns were, in fact, evil? According to the Bestiary, they tend toward neutrality. So you've got a character who lives by a code that insists he "protect innocent life" and who would fundamentally believes in "respect for life"- a character who follows a god that has "no grand plans to eradicate chaos and evil from the world"- killing sapient, non-evil, non-hostile entities because at some point in the future they might do something? It doesn't matter what sort of spin gets put on it: that's an evil act.

Either one of two things happened. One possibility is the player was metagaming, assuming the wyvern to be evil (when a Knowledge (Nature) check would have told him that it wasn't necessarily so). If the player wanted to play a paladin of Erastil, he should have done the research into what that kind of character would be like. He should have taken ranks in skills that would aid that role. He shouldn't have been playing a crusader intent of killing every "monster" he encountered. In essence, he should have never gotten to the point in which this even occurred. The other possibility is that the character made a mistake. He assumed the wyverns evil, and in his misguided holy fervor he caused a family to be murdered.

Regardless of why it happened, it did. And the consequence should be the irrevocable loss of paladin status. If the player screwed up, it's a lesson to him to get his act together. The platitude "with great power comes great responsibility" is never more appropriate than to this case. There are a huge number of boons to being a paladin, but they come with the price of playing the character correctly. There should be no leniency for a player who takes up that mantle carelessly or shoddily. If, on the other hand, the culpability is the character's, then his boss has basically told him "You know, I don't think you're cut out for this job, because, truth be told, you suck at it."


I agree with the sentiment that while it being a good or evil act can be debated (I think the reasoning was fairly neutral), it was pretty clearly not honorable, and would violate their code of conduct anyway. Your ruling was fair; anyone playing the paladin class should be expected at least to know what the code is, but newbies should probably get off easier to keep up the fun factor of the game as they learn it.

In summation, use smaller steps for new players, but if it was a veteran, good call.

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Yes I would consider it a evilish act. But I would have him receive a warning first before yanking the powers. Unless he has done this before and ignored the warnings.


Pretty harsh if you ask me. I know I would walk away from a table over something like this. No code is detailed in the Core Rulebook. Lawful Good does not mean Lawful Stupid. Paladins are not required to be stupid. If you as a DM have a particular view of how the Paladin should behave you might want to share it with him, you might want to write up a code for him to follow, this way there is no confusion.

As it stands though with his god, there is probably nothing wrong with what he did.


So, you punished the knight for killing the dragon(s)... Awesome.

This is a very good example of why Paladins don't belong in most games.


Kerym Ammath wrote:

Pretty harsh if you ask me. I know I would walk away from a table over something like this. No code is detailed in the Core Rulebook. Lawful Good does not mean Lawful Stupid. Paladins are not required to be stupid. If you as a DM have a particular view of how the Paladin should behave you might want to share it with him, you might want to write up a code for him to follow, this way there is no confusion.

As it stands though with his god, there is probably nothing wrong with what he did.

right here: search moar...

Code of Conduct:

A paladin must be of lawful good alignment and loses all class features except proficiencies if she ever willingly commits an evil act.

Additionally, a paladin's code requires that she respect legitimate authority, act with honor (not lying, not cheating, not using poison, and so forth), help those in need (provided they do not use the help for evil or chaotic ends), and punish those who harm or threaten innocents.

Associates: While she may adventure with good or neutral allies, a paladin avoids working with evil characters or with anyone who consistently offends her moral code. Under exceptional circumstances, a paladin can ally with evil associates, but only to defeat what she believes to be a greater evil. A paladin should seek an atonement spell periodically during such an unusual alliance, and should end the alliance immediately should she feel it is doing more harm than good. A paladin may accept only henchmen, followers, or cohorts who are lawful good.
Ex-Paladins

A paladin who ceases to be lawful good, who willfully commits an evil act, or who violates the code of conduct loses all paladin spells and class features (including the service of the paladin's mount, but not weapon, armor, and shield proficiencies). She may not progress any further in levels as a paladin. She regains her abilities and advancement potential if she atones for her violations (see atonement), as appropriate.

As said, without a knowledge check or in-game reasoning, all they did(for what they know) could be to have slain chaotic good fey creatures that watch over the forest.

There was no REASON and no RESEARCH. It was a killing of something that was neither reasoned for nor based on knowledge.
Thus, an evil act.

If you go into a tavern and bash in a random guests head, thats STILL an evil act, even if that guy was a demon worshipper that killed 5 people. As long as you don't KNOW that, the act is evil.

Contributor

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I think the sticking point here is "sentient" and the question of how sentient is sentient.

If the paladin (of Erastil, god of the hunt) had come upon a nest of sleeping rattlesnakes--even magical sleeping rattlesnakes--and whacked their heads off, everyone would be saying "Good job!" unless you suddenly found out that these were TALKING magical rattlesnakes, either due to some druid throwing an Awaken spell or some god doing the Aslan shtick and deciding that a bunch of Narnia-style talking animals would be kewl.

Wyverns? They're basically giant flying poisonous chimps. They are not up to human standards or even dumb monstrous humanoid standards. Goblins and ogres can beat them at twenty questions. Their most enlightened thought would be "George, tell me about the rabbits."

The question here is, is your interpretation of Erastil, LG god of the hunt, who is written up as terribly old-fashioned, going to be okay with a paladin killing giant flying poisonous chimps?

Personally, I'd think Erastil would be somewhere between Wotan and Teddy Roosevelt on his big game hunts, so his attitude would be "Bully!" for the paladin killing any and all wyverns except for any of the young. If he found any of those, his responsibility would be to adopt them as pets (a la TR and the original Teddy bear) or find someone else to adopt them as mounts or menagerie exhibits or just use them to restock a game preserve for future hunters.

One thing you need to be clear with with all paladin players is what their god is cool with and what he isn't. It isn't fair to simply spring your interpretation on them with no warning, but by the same token, you should never let paladin players or cleric players for that matter attempt to steamroll you with what their god thinks.

If your Erastil is not like my Erastil (that being a cross between Wotan and TR), you need to convey to your player exactly who your Erastil is.

Also, it's not metagaming to perceive nearby large predators as a threat, especially if you're going to be going into a tomb and later coming out blood, wounded, and possibly carrying corpses of your friends which any hungry predator would interpret as an easy lunch. Doubly so with dragons who are like magpies and like shiny stuff and would want to take any treasure you took from the tomb.

Giant poisonous magpie-chimp hybrids? Yeah, those are a threat. No metagaming about it.


I personally agree it is not an evil act.

It is, on the other hand, acting without honor. He should have woken up the Wyverns and allowed them to flee if they chose to. It doesn't matter if the wyverns wouldn't have fled, it matters that the paladin chose a cowardly and honorless way of combat by surprising a sleeping opponent.

Essentially, if the wyverns were replaced with, say, devils. A sleeping salamander, for instance. And the paladin sees him snoozing and runs up and kills him... without stopping to talk to him to discover that he's a salamander who put on a helm of opposite alignment and became Lawful Good and decided to become a paladin of Sarenrae (an actual character in my universe, who runs an extradimensional magic item shop along with a lawful evil ghaele azata who befell the same fate of wearing the helm of opposite alignment). He'd fall. Not because he killed the good salamander and that's evil, no no. Salamanders are universally chaotic evil. He's acting in the right to try to smite it. But he's not acting with honor. He should wake the salamander up, explain that he is here to kill it if it means harm to the people of the land and if it does, tell it to get its things and prepare for combat.

A paladin is lawful good. That doesn't mean lawful nice. But it still means that the paladin must be the shining example of purity in the heart of darkness. A paladin can never compromise.

In any case, I don't think the God of the Hunt is going to be very impressed with someone shooting fish in a barrel.

Liberty's Edge

sir_shajir wrote:


His argument was that they were monster and needed to be purged from the land.

So my question is that is what he did an evil act in killing the wyverns while they are asleep. At the very least the action is cowardly, as paladins' should not attack sleeping foes.

I might have missed a statement about him having a prior record of such deeds, or having been given a warning - Apologies if I missed it.

If he didn't have a prior record and he was never given a warning, you have created a gaming group that will cease playing paladins in the game.

He's endured years of paladin training and is LG because that is what feels right in his soul. A "gut feeling" warning, or even an out of game warning as to how you interpret and enforce paladin codes at your table may have been a better long-term solution.

To answer the question- it could be seen as a evil act, however I think it could have unfolded in a direction better for your game.

**Disclaimer** This is not me saying how anyone should play the game, but only speaking from 20 years of GM'ing and having made every mistake in the book at some point.


Kevin Andrew Murphy wrote:

Also, it's not metagaming to perceive nearby large predators as a threat, especially if you're going to be going into a tomb and later coming out blood, wounded, and possibly carrying corpses of your friends which any hungry predator would interpret as an easy lunch. Doubly so with dragons who are like magpies and like shiny stuff and would want to take any treasure you took from the tomb.

Giant poisonous magpie-chimp hybrids? Yeah, those are a threat. No metagaming about it.

they were sleeping. How exactly do you know those are poisonous? Predators? They were big.

Also, Mr. Druid would like to have a word with you about killing all potentially threatening predators in his area of the ecosystem.

They could have been night-active, not interested in big game, whatever. Unless you DO a knowledge check and get results, for all you know they could be something COMPLETELY different and the DM just uses "look like wyverns" as point of reference for PLAYER imagination.

Even then, dealing with them later would have been a very valid option, from the safety of the tomb to fall back into and rest once that's cleared.

As said, the paladin was punished for his lack of in-game research and reasoning, never bringing up his god, any knowledge-check, or any other reason except "Lets kill them, they could be dangerous".

Scarab Sages RPG Superstar 2013

Actually, my answer is pretty cut and dry on this. Totally not evil. If the paladin had burned out a nest of giant poisonous snakes before continuing, you wouldn't have judged him as evil. The Intelligence 7 beast, described as unreasonable, fight-first, and always hungry, with a deadly poison, is less an immediate threat? You can't let them attack you, and you can't negotiate with them.

The absolute most I would use to punish this paladin is a warning in a dream or some sort that all the creatures of nature deserve a chance at parley. Then again, I would probably just let my gang rp it out, and they'd come to the game-friendly conclusion that the wyverns are a threat, people come first, and wyverns can't be trusted not to poison the heroes and eat them.

I like putting my paladins in morally challenging scenarios, but this is absolutely not an evil act to me.


Steven T. Helt wrote:
The Intelligence 7 beast, described as unreasonable, fight-first, and always hungry, with a deadly poison, is less an immediate threat?

and the paladin(not the player) knew that from WHERE in his reasoning?


You punished a paladin because he killed a beast. That is ridiculous in my oppinion. Aren´t paladins allowed to kill any creature that is not evil? If a beast is neutral he can´t kill it? Of course he should be able to. Most beasts are neutral, but it´s not evil to kill them. It seems to me that many ppl think paladins are supposed to be stupid don´t do anything until something attacks you, thus losing the initiative. Ridiculous imo. But I would agree with the post above me, if you are that narrowminded in your views of that paladins god, please please please give him the detailed charter of how you want him to act. That being said, give him the option to reroll a character, cause it certainly doesnt sound fun to be a paladin in this world.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber
sir_shajir wrote:


So my question is that is what he did an evil act in killing the wyverns while they are asleep. At the very least the action is cowardly, as paladins' should not attack sleeping foes.

So you let a player play a paladin without spelling out exactly what his god (the DM) expects from a paladin? And now you want to punish him for not reading your mind?

If you DID explain what a paladin is to you, and the player still chose to go against it, by all means slap him down.


sir_shajir wrote:

The party is about to enter a tomb in between two cliffs roughly around 200 ft apart. On the opposite side of the tomb, the party notices a pair of sleeping wyverns.

The paladin (Paladin of erastil) says "lets kill the wyverns before we enter the tomb" (he also said out of character that the wyverns are going to attack the party so it's best to kill em before they kill the party and was metagaming).

His argument was that they were monster and needed to be purged from the land.

So my question is that is what he did an evil act in killing the wyverns while they are asleep. At the very least the action is cowardly, as paladins' should not attack sleeping foes.

The paladin was absolutely right in what he did. Wyverns, while neutral, are ravenous monsters that will eat weaker creatures without consideration - much like a tiger will eat a human if it gets a chance and is hungry enough. Does a paladin lose his powers for hunting tigers near a village of innocent folk? Of course not.

Yes, the wyverns are (stupidly) intelligent, sentient creatures, and they'll eat people for neutral reasons (food/defend territory) rather than malicious pleasure. BUT THEY'LL STILL EAT PEOPLE.

Furthermore, since they're territorial, they will attack the party when they wake, or are very likely to. Should the paladin give up a superior tactical position, which will save the lives of his companions from an inevitable fight? Of course not! Paladins are trained warriors and this is smart tactics.

You're looking at paladins as if they're Lawful Stupid or bound by the romanticized notions of Chivalry (which nobody ever really followed worth a damn). They're not. The code of conduct has been pretty simplified, and hey, let's look at his stated motivation:

"Hey, those Wyverns are probably going to attack us. We should take them out while we have a strong advantage."

That's not metagaming, that's seeing a very real threat and preparing a response. Note he did not say:

"Hey, those Wyverns might have some treasure."
"Hey, we could make some nice armor from Wyvern skin."
"Hey, Wyvern poison sells for a ridiculous amount of money."

Those would have been examples of a greed-motivated (evil?) attempt to kill off the wyverns.

You're looking way too hard for a reason to strip the Paladin of his powers. This isn't a clear-cut evil act, it's not really even a nebulously evil act, and at worst it might be a slightly chaotic act (see monster -> kill monster). But a paladin's code isn't there to make the paladin do dumb things that get everyone in his group killed. It may restrict the way the group does some things, but there are reasonable boundaries.

Take for example, the 'not lying' part of the code. Broadly applied, this would mean that the paladin doesn't allow his party fellows to engage in deceptions as well. Even more broadly, this would have the paladin prevent the wizard from using illusions, which are basically deceptions.

So all of the sudden, if the wizard uses Mirror Image in a fight and the paladin doesn't protest, does he lose his paladin abilities? See how fast this gets absurd?

A paladin is also supposed to protect the weak. What happens when lying is the only way to protect the weak? IMO the point of the paladin's code is to do good (with a lawful slant), so long as the paladin is trying to do good, minor code quibbles can be set aside. Of course the paladin should try to do things the 'lawful' way whenever reasonable, but again, they're not Lawful Stupid, nor is their code of conduct.

So yeah, a statement of "Hey, Wyverns are ravenous monsters that are a threat to the local populace, and will probably try to eat us if we give them half the chance. Let's fill them full of arrows so they can't poison us to death." is IMO an entirely reasonable and non-evil response to the situation, even for paladin.


I would call it a "questionable act". As was stated earlier, there are other things to take into account.

Wyverns may not have an evil alignment, they usually (not always) commit what other civilized people would consider evil acts.

They see humanoids and other "lesser" beings as food. It's perfectly rational that a paladin would want to kill any wyvern they encounter because they might threaten a nearby community or maybe even threaten the party later when they are looking for food.

An uneducated Paladin might even consider a wyvern as an animal... a mindless beast that kills indiscriminately. Therefore, not worthy of a fair fight. Just kill it so it doesn't do more harm. By that rationale, I could see him destroying the eggs and young. Think about it... exterminators kill adult rats and baby rats, alike. And questionable things have been done in the name of God. It all depends on the Paladin's faith (God he worships) and culture... And intelligence. :)

If anything, he shouldn't lose his powers, but if you (playing the part of the Gods) decide it is not a "good deed", then give him a warning in the form of omens from his God.

i.e. A priest of Torag will find his shield is slightly cracked (not enough to hinder anything) and he isn't able to repair it. Once the priest gets the hint and either rectifies the situation or at least learns that he did something wrong, the shield is mysteriously repaired.

But, no... I wouldn't take his powers.

Unless he was laughing with joy about slaughtering a living creature in it's sleep.

Scarab Sages RPG Superstar 2013

TriOmegaZero wrote:

So you let a player play a paladin without spelling out exactly what his god (the DM) expects from a paladin? And now you want to punish him for not reading your mind?

If you DID explain what a paladin is to you, and the player still chose to go against it, by all means slap him down.

Exactly my thinking. If he wasn't warned, and the paladin is trying to save party lives by killing the wyverns, no evil deed was committed.

As for how the paladin might know the disposition of the wyverns, what is it first about them that screams 'reasonable, sentient non-monster'? Moreover, how high can the Arcana DC be for someone in the party to give them the lowdown on a commonly occurring staple of the game? They have big teeth, don't engage in conversation and those huge stingers drip wicked poison. In fact, if your bard or sorcerer gave you the bestiary lowdown, they'd be considered evil by common associations.

I am not really moved by the sleeping argument. However, it does have an argument. Can a paladin slay a sleeping cleric of an evil god, rather than wake him up and challenge him? I don't see what not. I think the 'lawful stupid' argument trumps the sleeping point.

Contributor

MordredofFairy wrote:
Kevin Andrew Murphy wrote:

Also, it's not metagaming to perceive nearby large predators as a threat, especially if you're going to be going into a tomb and later coming out blood, wounded, and possibly carrying corpses of your friends which any hungry predator would interpret as an easy lunch. Doubly so with dragons who are like magpies and like shiny stuff and would want to take any treasure you took from the tomb.

Giant poisonous magpie-chimp hybrids? Yeah, those are a threat. No metagaming about it.

they were sleeping. How exactly do you know those are poisonous? Predators? They were big.

huge stingers on the ends of their tails = poisonous

huge fangs in their jaws = predators

Being a paladin, the character also did "detect evil" beforehand to make sure they weren't creatures from hell which deliberately try to confuse you by having horns and cloven hooves which properly belong to herbivores, not soul-eaters, and I think Mr. Druid would even agree with that.

MordredofFairy wrote:
Also, Mr. Druid would like to have a word with you about killing all potentially threatening predators in his area of the ecosystem.

That's nice. My paladin is worshiping Erastil, LG god of hunting, which generally puts him at odds with Mr. Druid anyway. Different priorities.

MordredofFairy wrote:
They could have been night-active, not interested in big game, whatever. Unless you DO a knowledge check and get results, for all you know they could be something COMPLETELY different and the DM just uses "look like wyverns" as point of reference for PLAYER imagination.

I'm sorry, but even with no knowledge from reading any edition of the MM or bestiary, only an idiot would think that a creature with huge predatory jaws and a huge poison-dripping stinger is not a poisonous predator.

I do not require knowledge checks for players to look at something that looks like a crocodile to realize that it isn't likely a nice friendly animal they should go up and pet.

MordredofFairy wrote:
Even then, dealing with them later would have been a very valid option, from the safety of the tomb to fall back into and rest once that's cleared.

And if you're fleeing from the mummified morlocks seething out of the tomb like an undead anthill when you've failed to secure the area?

The paladin has chosen to secure the area outside before going into the tomb rather than later.

If you think that later is a "very valid option," you're wrong.

MordredofFairy wrote:
As said, the paladin was punished for his lack of in-game research and reasoning, never bringing up his god, any knowledge-check, or any other reason except "Lets kill them, they could be dangerous".

Do you have to bring up your god to do the sort of thing your god does? Erastil's holy symbol is a bow. The paladin is using a bow. Erastil is the god of hunting. The paladin is hunting.

For all the difference it makes, the paladin could say, "Oh, wait, before we go into that tomb, we should get some provisions. Look, I see some giant rock squab!" and started shooting at the wyverns and it would be perfectly valid.

I mean, they're dwelling on the sides of cliffs. That's perfectly natural for pigeons, isn't it? Okay, they have scales and poisonous stingers and big nasty pointy teeth. Some mad wizard probably went nuts trying to prove a point with his pigeon breeding experiments.

If the GM wanted players to make knowledge checks, he should say something like "You see some large scaled creatures in a nest. They have two legs, two wings, a long tail with a stinger on it, and large jaws with big sharp fangs. Make a knowledge check to figure out what they are."

The paladin could just say, "I don't care what they are. They sound dangerous. I'm shooting them before they wake up."

The DM could say, "But what if they're sentient?"

The paladin could reply, "Are they living in a house? Are they wearing clothes? Do I see any decorator items or coffee table books in the nest?"

DM: "Um, no...."

Paladin: "Then it sounds like dangerous wild animals to me. I'll let the taxidermist tell me what it is when I get the corpse back to town."


by the logic of most of you, a paladin is perfectly fine killing a gold dragon, too, which is lawful good.

It's a big beast with scaly hide, claws and mighty fangs that breathes fire.

don't bring meta-game knowledge into the characters.

Oh, also kill the

couatl:

A couatl is about 12 feet long, with a wingspan of about 15 feet. It weighs 1,800 pounds.

As native outsiders, couatls must eat. They prefer the same foods as true snakes, such as mammals and birds, though they have been known to eat evil humanoids.

attack: poisonous bite
Alignment: Lawful Good

and the

Guardian Naga:

Although ferocious in shape, with radiant scales, cobra-like hoods, and powerful serpentine bodies, guardian nagas serve as dutiful protectors of places of fundamental power and sanctity. Their scales often bear elaborate patterns similar to those of exotic jungle snakes. A typical guardian naga stretches 14 feet long and weighs approximately 350 pounds.

attack: poisonous bite or poison spit.
Alignment: Lawful Good

How about the cattle-eating

Giant Eagle:

A typical giant eagle stands about 15 feet tall, has a wingspan of up to 30 feet, and resembles its smaller cousins in nearly every way except size. It weighs 500 pounds.

Attacks: claws and bite
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

or the woodchuck-scaring living tree, a

Treant:

It's a living tree, that can't be natural!

Yet against those who would threaten the forest, especially loggers who seek to harvest wood for lumber or those who try to clearcut a section of forest in order to build a fort or establish a town, the treants' wrath is swift and devastating. They are particularly gifted at tearing down what others build—a trait that serves angry treants well.

Attacks: slams
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Surely, Giants are deserve swift punishment, especially those

Storm Giants:

Storm giants tend to be reclusive, prefering to dwell along remote coastlines or on tropical islands. Yet like their namesakes, they are prone to violent mood swings. Storm giants are quick to anger in the face of evil and can be brutal, dangerous foes when insulted.
Attacks: multiple
Alignment: Chaotic good

and those unnatural creatures that must have something in common with medusae for blinding you by even looking at them?

Nymph:

Many have lost their lives in vain search of the beauty of the nymph, and many more to the madness and obsession their grace has upon minds and bodies unprepared for their companionship. Yet the nymph herself is not a cruel creature—a guardian of nature's purest places and most beautiful realms.
Attacks: some, blinding beauty, stunning glance
Alignment: Chaotic good

All that and more(as mentioned, all good dragons), on a fleeting glance might warrant a kill first, ask later strategy.

_ALL_ that aside, in a fantasy game, its always a bad idea to let a first impression influence you so much as to make a kill decision without further verification.

I _NEVER_ stated that the act in itself is punishable, or that it was wrong to kill those wyverns. But doing something without a proper IN-character justification, or without proper character knowledge, justifies a response, even if just to force them to think it through more thoroughly from their characters standpoint, instead of their players.

There is plenty of stuff that, on first sight, would need killing. And ALL animals are considered Neutral.

A wyverns description is:
"A dark blue dragon, its wings immense and its tail tipped with a hooked stinger, lands on two taloned feet and roars a challenge."

Only, it was probably curled up and sleeping 200 feet away from the characters. It's not even about them being intelligent beings, it's not about their temper. It's just not okay for a good-aligned character to kill stuff purely on the instinct that it MAY pose a threat later, or because it "looks dangerous". Playing it THAT way seems lawful stupid. Ask questions later, if it looks nasty, we'll take it out right away.

Even if they KNEW those were wyverns, know about WHAT wyverns are(that is, someone MADE a proper knowledge-check), then it's even worse. They should then know that Wyverns ARE intelligent and CAN be bargained with.

If you are a Wyvern, with a slightly below human intelligence(not chimp here, 7 int can be a player character by point buy), would you attack well-armed human adventurers on sight? Most likely not. You, unlike a common animal, are well aware of the danger they pose. Other animals are easier to fight, and you couldn't use their fancy stuff anyway.
Probably you are even smart enough not to prey on humans at all, or very seldom, expecting that those pinkies respond to being harassed too much, they ARE smart and living in groups, after all.

So EVEN assuming they knew about wyverns, it's still the wrong course of actions. They can enter the tomb, and IF they come out spent and battered and ARE, indeed, for WHATEVER reason, challenged by the wyverns, they could probably barter their way out by offering plenty of food(2-3 cows per adventurer or something like that). Wyverns are aggressive, but not mindless. Being offered more food than stands before you VS flying right into those guys that officially slaughtered your "neighbours" and seem dangerous...well, why risk something if you have young ones that could use the food.

I stand by what i said, the call was justified.

If they did NOT make the knowledge-checks or find out about them, that was a mistake.

If they DID make the approbiate checks, and decided to just kill them, that was wrong.

Either way, the reasoning was off, and based on out-of-character knowledge. (No reason they'd attack later, unless you, as player, expect that).

Again, as said, the deed in ITSELF, is fine. The reasoning, i'm at odds with. If you kill them and USE them for provisions, sure.

If you just go into the woods, enter a cave, slaughter all the bears there and leave, thats not fine. If you enter a meadow and practice shooting moving targets by killing 3 dozen sheep, thats also not find.

Even if Erastil is your God, he is a god of hunting, and hunting tends to be done for another reason than "killing". It's either for foraging, for population control, or for defense.
By your reasoning, it would be perfectly fine for any predator to be extinct, since you are working on a kill on sight-basis here. Thats not what a hunter does.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber
MordredofFairy wrote:
by the logic of most of you, a paladin is perfectly fine killing a gold dragon, too, which is lawful good.

I can't take you seriously after that statement.


one tought that might help this discussion is "why are they neutral?"

from the description of the wyvern, it seems to me that they are predators that don't make a difference between sentient or non-sentient prey. If this is true, they have to be evil unless they are not sentient enough to make a difference between sentient and non-sentient creatures.

So they are a lot like animals, only more intelligent. Would it be okay for a paladin to kill an animal in this situation? My answer would be a yes, because they would treathen his mission, and likely attack him to eat him. (they don't know he is too strong, he is smaller than them = prey) Killing a sleeping animal would be the humane way to go, it's not the unhonourable way.

Perhaps it would help to tell us what you wanted the paladin to do. How I see it, he would have to march up there, get attacked, use nonlethal damage to knock them unconscious, lay them in shackles and take them with him, so no other predators could kill the shackled wyvern while he is away.
This is why I tell my players up front that I don't like paladins, and that they will suffer terribly when playing one. (so far I never had a paladin I had to GM). I tell you this, to say that it is okay to think that paladins are stupid, but tell your players.


Here's my take.

Assuming YOU'RE the dungeonmaster......your word is final bla bla bla....

from my standpoint, as dungeonmaster, the most important question is this: what, if anything, interesting do YOU have to create/storytell/whatever, given that this kid just lost all his f&@#ing powers?

I personally think it's NOT evil, and I'm sure the character doesn't think it's evil either. Or if he does he won't admit it.

That's.....beside the point.

Your saving grace is in presenting something storywise that is completely awesome, and would not have been possible without this (unfortunate) turn of events. THAT'S where the big payoff is anyway.
THAT'S where you create a f#&+ing campaign that these guys talk about decades later. THAT'S what all these mechanics are there for anyhow, to spur conflict and drive excellent storycrafting.

Otherwise, it's just a big ethics argument between a lot of pissed off people, none of whom probably have Philosophy degrees, so it's probably not even relevant to anything.


Warning: This anecdote will not be helpful.

When I was running my campaign a few years back, the PCs were climbing a mountain to find an alternate route into the dwarven hold. They came upon a giant, sleeping. The fighter Coup de grace'd it with his spiked chain. It was a adolescent stone giant (not evil) and clearly helpless. Before it died it just looked up into the player's eyes and said "...why?" before convulsing and dying.

Killing something while it sleeps? Not honorable. Killing something from afar? Not brave. Killing something before assessing the situation and without knowledge of its intent, especially when Paladins have lazy-mode i.e. detect evil? Not good, very lazy. I'd say that's his freebie, and he had better keep a lid on the murdering innocent creatures in their sleep or the next time POOF no more pally powers.


TriOmegaZero wrote:
MordredofFairy wrote:
by the logic of most of you, a paladin is perfectly fine killing a gold dragon, too, which is lawful good.
I can't take you seriously after that statement.

perfectly valid for you. Just shows that you tend to mix up player knowledge with character knowledge.

Either that or knowledge-checks are ridiculously easy in your world.

Check your bestiary, or monster manual.

Wyverns don't look that much more dangerous or less impressive than a gold dragon, or copper dragon.

Unless dragons are really "popular" in your world, the color-code thing can't be taken too serious, especially since dragons are often intelligent enough to hide their true selves, and even if, it should be obscure folklore.

Even if you claim that color-coding is perfectly valid in your world and shiny dragons are good dragons, they have darkvision and blindsense, even. No need to light up their lairs/hoards. In the dark, all dragons look alike- as they'd probably do in bad lighting.

Note that that should be "killing in its sleep".

If you start parleying, you will obviously figure out a difference, but they never went so far. Just stating that a young gold dragon sleeping in a sunny nest enjoying the evening sun would just as well trigger that response from the paladin(potential danger, mighty claws, mighty fangs, obviously predatory...where's my bow)

Contributor

Gold dragons generally wear jewelry and live in fancy palaces. People can figure out based on context that they're civilized sentient creatures even before they start chatting.

They're also famous and their fame precedes them enough that if for some reason you encounter a sleeping gold dragon wearing no jewelry in the middle of the wilderness, you don't accidentally mistake it for a winged crocodile.

Coatls are outsiders and as mentioned with the hooved horned devils earlier, outsiders are kind of confused about what goes on on the prime material plane. I'm sure a poisonous snake with tropical bird wings made perfect sense to a good spirit for some reason.

Guardian Nagas? There's that whole "cobras as icons of good" trope from Buddhism ported into Golarion here. Don't peer to hard at the 4th wall. Just let characters know that they're supposed to be good. They have the same PR departments as the gold dragons.

Giant Eagle? It's a large raptor that can carry off lambs and even small children. Exactly what is the problem with killing it?

Treant? It's a scary walking tree. If it starts talking, it's proven it's sentient, so you should follow sentient rules there, but same thing with the talking bear and the talking wolf.

Storm Giant? It's an unusually tall man with funny colored skin. It's a safe bet he's sentient. If he's not evil, your paladin should have no trouble talking with him. The whole "giants are evil" thing doesn't really hold water. If you encountered a civilized ogre and a cannibal halfling, you'd know who the evil one was.

Nymph? You were blinded by an unusually beautiful woman with no clothes. So far as you know, it's a hot nudist sorceress who hit you with Cause Blindness.

Generally speaking, use common sense. Characters will have actually lived in their worlds and will know something about it without Knowledge checks for everything.


"Just shows that you tend to mix up player knowledge with character knowledge."
This reminds me of something: the paladin has had YEARS of training, to know what is good and what is not. the character should know what makes him loose his powers. Your Player didn't know something the character knows, so it is the GM's duty to tell him what his character is supposed to know.
player vs character knowledge goes both ways


sir_shajir wrote:

The party is about to enter a tomb in between two cliffs roughly around 200 ft apart. On the opposite side of the tomb, the party notices a pair of sleeping wyverns.

The paladin (Paladin of erastil) says "lets kill the wyverns before we enter the tomb" (he also said out of character that the wyverns are going to attack the party so it's best to kill em before they kill the party and was metagaming).

The party pulls out it's bows and wakes up the wyverns, kills one of the wyverns. And the other one runs away because she was mortally wounded.

I told the paladin that he lost his powers cause he committed an evil act by acting a sleeping sentient being that was not evil. And I told him that he essentially killed 3 wyverns as the pair had a nest and that the one wyvern wouldn't be able to properly hunt and feed her litter of wyverns (2).

His argument was that they were monster and needed to be purged from the land.

So my question is that is what he did an evil act in killing the wyverns while they are asleep. At the very least the action is cowardly, as paladins' should not attack sleeping foes.

I think that the Paladin here chose the convenient option, rather than the right option, which would have been to try and negotiate with the wyverns (because they can be negotiated with, after all). It's not a wilfully evil act in and of itself because of the nature of the deity (Erastil) and the fact that wyverns are generally a threat to civilisation. It is a step down a very slippery slope ... I'd pose him with some more issues like this before condemning him.


He didn't take the rewards of the hunt (that the proper Paladin of Erastil would have done) and thus dishonored the wyverns by treating them as mere target practice. xp


Kevin Andrew Murphy wrote:

Gold dragons generally wear jewelry and live in fancy palaces. People can figure out based on context that they're civilized sentient creatures even before they start chatting.

They're also famous and their fame precedes them enough that if for some reason you encounter a sleeping gold dragon wearing no jewelry in the middle of the wilderness, you don't accidentally mistake it for a winged crocodile.

Coatls are outsiders and as mentioned with the hooved horned devils earlier, outsiders are kind of confused about what goes on on the prime material plane. I'm sure a poisonous snake with tropical bird wings made perfect sense to a good spirit for some reason.

Guardian Nagas? There's that whole "cobras as icons of good" trope from Buddhism ported into Golarion here. Don't peer to hard at the 4th wall. Just let characters know that they're supposed to be good. They have the same PR departments as the gold dragons.

Giant Eagle? It's a large raptor that can carry off lambs and even small children. Exactly what is the problem with killing it?

Treant? It's a scary walking tree. If it starts talking, it's proven it's sentient, so you should follow sentient rules there, but same thing with the talking bear and the talking wolf.

Storm Giant? It's an unusually tall man with funny colored skin. It's a safe bet he's sentient. If he's not evil, your paladin should have no trouble talking with him. The whole "giants are evil" thing doesn't really hold water. If you encountered a civilized ogre and a cannibal halfling, you'd know who the evil one was.

Nymph? You were blinded by an unusually beautiful woman with no clothes. So far as you know, it's a hot nudist sorceress who hit you with Cause Blindness.

Generally speaking, use common sense. Characters will have actually lived in their worlds and will know something about it without Knowledge checks for everything.

all fine points, if you want to make it so. The problem is, those are all sentient good creatures that can cause all kinds of problems(yes, Giant Eagle has Int of 10 and is neutral good).

And are potentially NOT necessarily recognized as good.(Sure you can help the players with the guardian Naga...but then you break immersion. Sure, about the wyverns, i would also probably have CALLED on a knowledge-check and given them additional intel before they finalized their plan, but to each his own. The guardian Naga is fair game, if they spot it first and attack in a surprise round making assumptions and nobody has a proper knowledge for it, i won't stop my players...knowledge checks at every corner are uncalled for, there you are right, but knowledge also shouldn't be "useless" and vegetate same as professions...if a player invests, reward them, if they don't, use their lack of character knowledge to set up interesting situations.)

Then still, the wyvern has a wisdom of 12(or more than the average human). An int of 7(or below human average, but significantly more than the village idiot), and a charisma of 9, around human.

So score 7 for:
Intelligence determines how well your character learns and reasons.

Score 12 for:
Wisdom describes a character's willpower, common sense, awareness, and intuition.

and score 9 for:
Charisma measures a character's personality, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and appearance.

Heck, that sounds like the party barbarian!(Except he made charisma the dump stat, not int). They even have the same temper!

The thing is, even if you don't require knowledge-checks for everything the players do, sometimes, they are called for.
And aside from a Zoo, how many wild animals have YOU seen? I don't know where you live, but i have never seen a wolf, or a bear, in free nature. Let alone tigers, condors, kangoroos or a platypus.
Assuming they know some stuff about the world is fine.
But if they ACT without knowledge, or based on WRONG knowledge, then it will have in-game repercussions.
It was a willful act, he was not tricked into it or anything, it was his own decision. Wether he KNEW something or not(with or without a knowledge-check), he killed either something that COULD be a good creature because it looked dangerous(if he did not know) or something sentient very similar statwise to humans(if he did know).

As was said, those same stats could make an barbarian. Which looks menacing with his greataxe. And stands on a bridge. Sure you can launch arrows into him from afar, but probably you'll come close and find out if he wants to extort money for crossing or is there for another reason.

My point is that even if the players have BASIC knowledge over the world they live in, Wyverns are not exactly common near civilized settlements, if they heared some things about them, and only bad, maybe you could reason that you are doing the "world a favor". The paladin didn't reason except for "kill before being killed", which, as said, seems wrong, because EITHER he willfully killed a non-hostile sentient creature(if he knows something about wyverns), or he killed a non-hostile creature because of it's looks(because he doesn't know if thats a huge fairie dragon protector of woods, unless he encountered those things before or had them classified somehow.)

That is the reason why to me it comes down as wrong, either way.
With a proper justification or middle way, EVEN if based on WRONG character information("Those things are a menace, they are dangerous and attack humans on sight"), would have made his action more, if not totally justified.

But his reason was sorely "Potentially dangerous=>Kill", which seems wrong no matter if he KNEW or didn't know what those things were.


i do agree with you though, that the game tends to assume more of an attack-on-sight playstyle at times...as an anekdote of mine made me remember:

In Pirons bluff:

there is a tiefling cleric of asmodeus, which forged contracts with the citizens in the name of devils.
A Paladin in my play-group wanted to go back inside and slay her inmediately after our first visit, to which the ranger inmediately agreed. My own character and the rogue managed to stay their hand, preventing them from killing her.

In our reasoning, Andoran is a free country, and as the people aren't forced to worship devils, AND enter into those contracts of their own free will, it'd be nothing less than murder to kill the priestess, because while her beliefs may be different from ours, she did nothing wrong(helped that i played a lawful neutral character pointing out she was more at odds with the ranger, which was chaotic).

When i later looked at the adventure module, i found that they included complete combat stats and tactics for her, including what the group finds and can do with those pact papers etc...
it's almost as if it's expected she will be attacked, while not giving a reason to do so except that she's a devil-worshipper- which, near cheliax, shouldn't be too uncommon.

anyway, made me think...a whole LOT depends on the group, so please do acknowledge that in this thread i voice my personal opinion. Perhaps very insistently so, but it's perfectly fine however you want to run your game. I do see that point, i just want mine to be understood as well as many people seem to view this issue very one-sided and hack/slashy...


MordredofFairy wrote:

by the logic of most of you, a paladin is perfectly fine killing a gold dragon, too, which is lawful good.

Please. Dragons don't lair on a cliffside in the wind and damp. They have lairs in (at minimum) caves with traps and guardians and other obvious signs of higher intelligence. This was a clear case of obviously large, dangerous critters near the objective.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber
MordredofFairy wrote:
TriOmegaZero wrote:
MordredofFairy wrote:
by the logic of most of you, a paladin is perfectly fine killing a gold dragon, too, which is lawful good.
I can't take you seriously after that statement.

perfectly valid for you. Just shows that you tend to mix up player knowledge with character knowledge.

And AGAIN you choose to make assumptions based on ZERO information about the person speaking. Which is why I can't take you seriously.

Edit: Do me a favor. Find any statement I made about the wyvern in this thread. Then explain how it means I mix player knowledge and character knowledge. I'll be impressed if you can do this thing. BECAUSE YOU BLOODY WELL CAN'T.


While there will be differing versions of this: Good does not mean "kill evil stuff and take their loot". Yes, that's how we all play from time to time, but seriously, think about it. Good is about hope, mercy, forgiveness, tolerance and all those things that make us warm and fuzzy inside. And when we KNOW there is no longer a place for mercy or forgiveness, THEN we make a stand and fight against evil to win.

This was not how the paladin acted. He saw a sleeping nest of wyverns and justified killing them with "well, they might be dangerous to someone at some future point, best kill them off". If that's an acceptable justification:

"Oh, there's a bunch of orcs, hunting in their old hunting grounds. Those orcs are vicious brutes and might come to threaten a village somewhere!" - SLAUGHTER!!!

And then:

"Well, whaddyaknow, these caves contain the orc females of the tribe. Female orcs breed babies who will grow up to become vicious brutes who might threaten a village somewhere!" - MASSACRE!!!

And then:

"And as we said before, those orc babies we found here will grow up, and then become vicious brutes that might threaten a village somewhere!" - SKEWER!!!

And finally, before we end this little story:

"Those elves sure can build a nice town. However, their hunting grounds might become a threat to the local logging industry when the company wants to expand, which might lead to a few lost jobs in a village somewhere!" - GENOCIDE!!!

That something is dangerous is NOT, and will NEVER be, an excuse for killing it. This kind of thinking has lead to untold suffering in the world. It's not okay to torture people. It's not okay to kill them when killing is not needed.

If you want to play that game, let the paladin detect evil ability discern all people with the slightest evil in their hearts, and encourage the paladin to slaughter all of them, in the tavern, in the royal castle, in the poorhouse. After all, evil people are dangerous, aren't they?


helic:

Yep, dragons don't lair in cliffsides. They have lairs in (at minimum) caves with traps and guardians and other obvious signs of higher intelligence. This was a clear case of obviously large, dangerous critters near the objective.


Doesn't mean a very young gold dragon always has to sit in his lair and wait for visitors. They have a swim speed. Maybe he flew out, enjoyed the view, and took a rest.

No matter: The basic background of mentioning a gold dragon stands: Purely from visual input, it's a dangerous large predator that would be more than a match for a single warrior. And still is much more than that.

I tried stating that looks can deceive and players should NOT always act on first impulse on to what you see. If you graphically describe a dragon descend and land in front of a party, without mentioning it's color, and possibly leaving it's frightening aura on as a means of making an impression, the decision of wether to attack shouldn't be based on wether its scales are red or gold unless the CHARACTERS know the difference. Same as they shouldn't kill smaller creatures(that are even described as akin to dragons) that look faintly similar without KNOWING they are not good.

triomegazero:

MordredofFairy wrote:

TriOmegaZero wrote:

MordredofFairy wrote:

by the logic of most of you, a paladin is perfectly fine killing a gold dragon, too, which is lawful good.

I can't take you seriously after that statement.

perfectly valid for you. Just shows that you tend to mix up player knowledge with character knowledge.

And AGAIN you choose to make assumptions based on ZERO information about the person speaking. Which is why I can't take you seriously.

I make an assumption based on the information you provided.

a.: That you are not taking me serious for stating that, scale color aside, a youngling gold dragon would not look much different from a wyvern for an adventurer unless he can tell them apart for a reason.
Both are, in the widest sense, draconic. If you look at dragon illustrations, they vary quite a bit, in wing form and what not.
If it's fine for a paladin to kill anything that looks like a dangerous predator no matter what alignment it has or if it's sentient, then gold dragons are a definite "Go". And your reasoning was that it's got teeth, claws, a dangerous tail(i doubt you see poison dripping at 200 feet from a sleeping wyvern) and the paladin as hunter can freely kill it therefore.

Assuming, based on that, that you

b.: expect every character to be familiar with some basics, such as shiny dragons being good, how dragons look different from wyverns, that giant eagles are sentient and good(same PR-group as the guardian Naga), to me, provides the information i need to get an impression about you regularily mixing player knowledge up with character knowledge. That impression may well be wrong, but given what i have to work with, seems valid.
If i don't _HAVE_ knowledge(planes) and nobody else has, even your "basic knowledge of the world" leaves the couatl as a huge weird poisonous predator-thingie. Go ahead and cut your guys some slack. Mine won't even know it's a couatl to make sure no one familiar with the bestiary metagames. They'll know its a "Great serpent with multicolored wings and eyes that glimmer with intense awareness." What they decide to make with that, their decision. Parley or strike first.

c.: me merely mentioning a gold dragon as a predator makes YOU decide that i can't be taken serious without you really trying to argue my point or discussing the deeper parts of what i said.

Considering that it takes only a few words to make everything else i say into a "can't be taken seriously" i believe you are being the judgemental person here, not me for assuming your mixing knowledge up, which you yourself stated in another post...as in
"Guardian Nagas? There's that whole "cobras as icons of good" trope from Buddhism ported into Golarion here. Don't peer to hard at the 4th wall. Just let characters know that they're supposed to be good. They have the same PR departments as the gold dragons."
I mean, sure, drop them a hint or something. But still, what good is knowledge if you won't ever make a mistake in judgement without it? Just for providing meta-gamey statistics about whatever is out there?
I like for knowledge in my games to have more use than that, and like keeping my players guessing. Using a statblock with a "reskin" and not having the players KNOW what they are facing also provides long-term fun. Not that everything is mixed up, as you said, they know some stuff about their world, after all. But they should also be allowed to come upon new and unknown(to them) stuff. Especially if they've been through the monster manuals and bestiary and back again...


TriOmegaZero wrote:
MordredofFairy wrote:
TriOmegaZero wrote:
MordredofFairy wrote:
by the logic of most of you, a paladin is perfectly fine killing a gold dragon, too, which is lawful good.
I can't take you seriously after that statement.

perfectly valid for you. Just shows that you tend to mix up player knowledge with character knowledge.

And AGAIN you choose to make assumptions based on ZERO information about the person speaking. Which is why I can't take you seriously.

Edit: Do me a favor. Find any statement I made about the wyvern in this thread. Then explain how it means I mix player knowledge and character knowledge. I'll be impressed if you can do this thing. BECAUSE YOU BLOODY WELL CAN'T.

"I'm sorry, but even with no knowledge from reading any edition of the MM or bestiary, only an idiot would think that a creature with huge predatory jaws and a huge poison-dripping stinger is not a poisonous predator."

in response to my:
"They could have been night-active, not interested in big game, whatever. Unless you DO a knowledge check and get results, for all you know they could be something COMPLETELY different and the DM just uses "look like wyverns" as point of reference for PLAYER imagination."

you're welcome.
Unless your characters carry around a copy of the bestiary.
As mentioned, a dragon also has huge predatory jaws, and that poisonous stinger? 200 feet away and sleeping...assuming the CHARACTER knows the wyvern is a dangerous predator, but a proper dragon is not, is mixing knowledge, especially since the wyvern is described as a "A dark blue dragon"


It seems to come down to a case of whether the players were metagaming real-world knowledge or role-playing character ignorance.


I think the player was due a warning, at least. I've known DMs to think that if you DON'T kill the sleeping monster, you're more-or-less responsible for everyone it goes on to kill. I don't agree with it, exactly, but I've seen it - and the point is: These waters can be muddy. I know you heard the player explain his reasoning "out of game", but to my mind that's only MORE of a reason to tell him "out of game" what your ruling would be. The CHARACTER here has to be "Lawful Good," and could reasonably be expected to know what that entails even if the PLAYER doesn't appear to. ("Don't you think your character would find this a bit off-putting? They're asleep. You don't know what they are, etc." Your player could honestly disagree, like the TR example above.)

Maybe, from another point of view, the Paladin COULD cut down the Naga, and get a "slap on the wrist" (say, no powers for a week or so, plus some treasure and in-game ammendment as required) because, while killing the naga wasn't "good," maybe some gods (like a god of HUNTING) could at least understand the guy's reasoning.

Liberty's Edge

I don't know if I'd have taken away the paladin's powers, but I likely would've given a warning.

What bothers me more is the metagaming - not just knowing a wyvern's alignment without having your PC detect it; no, it's the overall utilitarian attitude some people take to adventuring that I object to, and killing a non-hostile beast while it sleeps falls right into this.

Actually, I think I'll make another thread about this idea.


Two things:

1. A Paladin falling from grace should be a big deal, always as a result of doing something that is either willfully or negligently evil. Neither of those is true in this case.

2. Hunters ambush prey all the time. That's kinda the point of being a hunter.

Seriously, Paladins are supposed to be held to higher standard, not an impossibly higher standard.


MordredofFairy wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

No matter: The basic background of mentioning a gold dragon stands: Purely from visual input, it's a dangerous large predator that would be more than a match for a single warrior. And still is much more than that.

I tried stating that looks can deceive and players should NOT always act on first impulse on to what you see.

Let's go back to the original post:

Quote:

The party is about to enter a tomb in between two cliffs roughly around 200 ft apart. On the opposite side of the tomb, the party notices a pair of sleeping wyverns.

The paladin (Paladin of erastil) says "lets kill the wyverns before we enter the tomb" (he also said out of character that the wyverns are going to attack the party so it's best to kill em before they kill the party and was metagaming).

The GM TOLD THEM IT WAS A WYVERN. Or at least that's the implication I got. He said it was a wyvern, assuming the players know what a wyvern is. If anyone is metagaming here it's the GM. We can't cry 'looks can be deceiving' when the GM is using metagame shorthand to basically tell what kind of monster it is. If he had said "a pair of large, reptilian winged creatures off in the distance", that'd be different, but that's not the information that we have.

You can't go telling your players "A pair of Wyverns" and then not expect them to use that information. This is the same situation as "You see an elf off in the distance" vs "You see a gnoll off in the distance" vs "you see a humanoid figure in the distance"; all three will produce different responses from the players.

If the group is told it's a wyvern, they should be able to use the basic common info on them (vicious poisonous predators). If they're just told "big winged reptile", then yeah, they should get better info before charging off on the offense.

And for better or worse, dragons are color coded for convenience in D&D, and it's pretty basic info (especially for adventurers and anybody with K: Arcana) that color = bad, shiny = good. And you only have to hear that once to remember it, and that doesn't mean you have K: Arcana because you know one useful fact. We're not talking esoteric monster info here, but the big basic monster types (dragon, wyvern, griffin, unicorn - anything used in heraldry especially).


sir_shajir wrote:

The party is about to enter a tomb in between two cliffs roughly around 200 ft apart. On the opposite side of the tomb, the party notices a pair of sleeping wyverns.

The paladin (Paladin of erastil) says "lets kill the wyverns before we enter the tomb" (he also said out of character that the wyverns are going to attack the party so it's best to kill em before they kill the party and was metagaming).

The party pulls out it's bows and wakes up the wyverns, kills one of the wyverns. And the other one runs away because she was mortally wounded.

I told the paladin that he lost his powers cause he committed an evil act by acting a sleeping sentient being that was not evil. And I told him that he essentially killed 3 wyverns as the pair had a nest and that the one wyvern wouldn't be able to properly hunt and feed her litter of wyverns (2).

His argument was that they were monster and needed to be purged from the land.

So my question is that is what he did an evil act in killing the wyverns while they are asleep. At the very least the action is cowardly, as paladins' should not attack sleeping foes.

I would have given him a warning to at least use detect evil first. Killing sleeping creatures is not evil. Waking them up so they can kill you is, however stupid.

The metagaming is an issue though.

In conclusion give him his powers back, and talk to him about the meta-gaming issue. IMHO. You also need to talk to him about what you expect from a paladin since no DM runs them the same way. That way he can decide if he wants to play one in your game or not.

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