A Paladin in "Hangman's Noose" -- questions

[Douglas Muir 406]

Have a first level PC Paladin, planning to run this soon. I see a few possible issues:

1) The Paladin should Detect Evil and pick up that two of the jurors (Hobgoblin & gnome) are wrong'uns. I guess that's reasonable, but it could lead to an immediate splitting of the party.

(Incidentally, why is Patrissa the sorceress CN? She helped murder an innocent man to score a nice necklace, for goodness' sake. Everything about her description and play suggests CE or NE.)

2) The Paladin is all too likely to blow his smite on the untouchable Croaker, since it's "obviously" the boss. (Well, it sort of /is/ the boss. But this module isn't structured like a standard dungeon crawl, and smiting the Croaker will accomplish nothing and blow a major party resource. This is a killer module, and they're surely going to need that smite down the line...)

3) How to hang the barrister? If he dies in combat, okay, hang his body. But what if he's defeated but still alive? ISTM a Lawful Good paladin would be a bit conflicted -- it's obviously the right thing to do, but hanging someone without a fair trial is kinda problematic. No?

(I have an idea for a possible solution here, but I'd be interested to hear how others have dealt with this.)

Thanks in advance,

Doug M.

[gigglestick]

Douglas Muir 406 wrote:

Have a first level PC Paladin, planning to run this soon. I see a few possible issues:

(Incidentally, why is Patrissa the sorceress CN? She helped murder an innocent man to score a nice necklace, for goodness' sake. Everything about her description and play suggests CE or NE.)

CN characters tend to be very selfish, she didn't set out to deliberately make the man's life torture, but she did what she could to get what she wanted. That's CN. And CE, but still CN. Its why I don't allow CN PCs in my games.

[Kevin Mack]

Douglas Muir 406 wrote:

Have a first level PC Paladin, planning to run this soon. I see a few possible issues:

1) The Paladin should Detect Evil and pick up that two of the jurors (Hobgoblin & gnome) are wrong'uns. I guess that's reasonable, but it could lead to an immediate splitting of the party.

Not sure if it is 3.5 or pathfinder you are playing but in Pathfinder you do not detect as evil unless you have a certain number of hd. (exceptions to this are things with an aura like Cleric's, or Undead and outsiders)

[Douglas Muir 406]

Kevin Mack wrote:

Not sure if it is 3.5 or pathfinder you are playing but in Pathfinder you do not detect as evil unless you have a certain number of hd. (exceptions to this are things with an aura like Cleric's, or Undead and outsiders)

Right you are! It took me a little while, but the Detect Evil spell has a table -- otherwise ordinary creatures with an alignment don't register as evil until they have at least 6 levels or hit dice.

Okay, great.

-- Mind, they'll pretty soon /know/ the hobgoblin is evil. If nothing else, I'm giving him some classic bad guy lines to deliver. "Are you gonna bark all day, little doggie... or are you gonna bite?"

Doug M.