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He cannot. A paladin must protect innocence at all costs. If people of the village are innocent, he must do whatever is in his power to stop the village from being razed, villagers from being slaughtered, raped and cetera. No good character would sit idly by and watch a village being razed. Neutral, perhaps, but never good.
I mean, of course the pally can allow the village to be razed, if he wants to spend a lot of time as a feat starved fighter. Letting all those innocents be slaughtered is grounds for power removal, and a quest of epic proportions to get atonement.
Can innocents be sacrificed? No.
Could a paladin, convinced that the village is about to be attacked by a force he couldn't stop, try to persuade the villagers to flee? Yes.
Would the paladin be the last person to leave the village? He'd better be.
More details would be better, but at first glance, I'm in agreement. No way.
"Only a sith deals in absolutes".
Generally - No, he can't let a town be razed for the greater good. If however, the choice at hand has obvious consequences - for example, saving the town would certainly doom the whole continent - he can make an exception. He should feel bad about it, but it's possible (in my personal view of paladins).
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Right now its just a hypothetical but if he could do something about it he/she has to even if there is a greater good at play?Can innocents be sacrificed? No.
Could a paladin, convinced that the village is about to be attacked by a force he couldn't stop, try to persuade the villagers to flee? Yes.
Would the paladin be the last person to leave the village? He'd better be.More details would be better, but at first glance, I'm in agreement. No way.
There is no greater good to a paladin. Every thought, action and deed comes from a profound belief in Law and Good. A paladin would not sacrifice any innocent life for any reason. It would be a betrayal of his most fundamental being.
Basically if you are playing a paladin you should always put others above yourself, protect the innocent and promote charity, peace and goodness wherever he finds it. He is implacable against those who think only of evil however.
So no a Paladin would not sacrifice anyone for any reason. It is too high a price to pay.
Yeah... the whole 'hypothetical' situation is entirely too vague to answer.
A paladin would do everything in his power to save as many people as he could. What 'greater good' could possibly get a paladin to turn his back on those in need?
If theres a bigger bad that he's on his way to slay, I imagine that he'd MAKE time to help the village against the wandering dragon... It's hard to imagine a quest that NEEDS completion that would cost more lives than a town under siege...
Plague maybe??
If the town was suffereing some incurable undead plague thing... and the king ordered it cleansed by fire before it spread across the continent... That MIGHT be a greater good...
The Paladin would never be walking through the streets with a torch... but would he be honor bound to risk the kingdom and defy the king when he has absolutely NO way to cure this...
I really wouldn't want to be put in THAT position... I don't know what he'd do....
Yeah, unless the paladin is occupied with something that is proactively and immediately working towards the greater good, he falls.
For example, the town is being attacked by demons, and the paladin is busy fighting off the demons' leader.
The town has been condemned by the gods, and the paladin is actively pursuing the portal to take him to the Most High Court where he will argue his case before a cosmic jury.
The town is doomed and the paladin is leading the children and elderly away from it, while the adults make a brave last stand.
I don't see too many scenarios where the paladin sees the town being razed, shrugs his shoulders and says, "ain't my job". Those that I do see end in an ex-paladin.
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What if a powerful devil captures a village and tells the paladin, that if he kills one villager the rest is allowed to live. The paladin can even choose the one he kills, other than himself. Would this paladin fall if he chooses to kill a villager?
You just asked if a paladin would fall because he followed the orders of an Evil fiend. I hope you see the problem with that. :)
But yes, he would fall. The Good choice would be to save all the villagers.
Yeah... I don't see a paladin accepting a deal from a demon CR20 or not as being 'good'.
Valid options I see here...
1) offers himself as the sacrificial lamb... (dies)
2) Fights the demon (dies)
3) An ally tricks him into using THEM as sacrifice... (Someone dies, Paladin is ticked.)
But no... pick someone out of the crowd and kill them? That's not 'hero' material.
Honestly, the devil is just screwing with him at that point. Either, he WANTS the paladin to fall just for fun... or his current armageddon scheme requires and innocent killed by a holy knight. And he's enableing the demon.
Either way the paladin wouldn't turn a blind eye and leave the village to it's fate.
Plague maybe??If the town was suffereing some incurable undead plague thing... and the king ordered it cleansed by fire before it spread across the continent... That MIGHT be a greater good...
The Paladin would never be walking through the streets with a torch... but would he be honor bound to risk the kingdom and defy the king when he has absolutely NO way to cure this...
I really wouldn't want to be put in THAT position... I don't know what he'd do....
Overall though, if a Paladin does everything he can to protect innocents I think he's in the clear. If he works non-stop to change the kings mind, refuses to take part, tries to get the peasants to a safe location where they can live like a leper colony, etc.
I also think that if the Paladin recognizes that he "allowed" something bad to happen and attempt to make amends by working harder, that would satisfy me as an observer. If the player plays up the tortured nature of his character after such an event I'd definitely allow an Atonement spell to work and even things out for him.
Also, a GM putting a paladin in a no-win situation like that, using CR 20s vs 5th level characters, is a dick.
A paladin shouldn't be forced into 'die or fall' situations. If he fights the demon (the right thing to do), perhaps the demon beats the holy hell out of him, leaves him at negative hit points and flies off, swearing that next time he won't get away so easy, but cursing the brave and pure heart of the paladin that prevented him from fulfilling his vile plan.
Indeed, the 'train tracks' dilemma is the dullest, most unimaginative plot you can throw at a paladin.
Unless the solution is to stop the train. Preferably with smite evil. Then it becomes acceptable.
So my idea of a pally is a charasmatic knight who has compassion for those who are weak and a seething hate for those who prey on the weak, is there such a pally that has no compassion for the weak?
There is a continuum of attitudes within any alignment. Some LG are very close to LN, or perhaps right on the line: inflexible, intolerant, perhaps even fanatical, inquisitor types. The Pholtans in Greyhawk are a great example of this.
Hi everyone,
I have a game where 2 members are ppallys and I have this question about the line that makes a lawful good act a lawful neutral act. Can a pally say allow a villiage to be raized when there is something they can do about it if it can be rationalised flr the greater good?
Hang on, if there is something they CAN do about it (i.e. they have an actual chance of success), how can they rationalize it for the greater good? I mean, if they have a pressing obligation (message X must get to important person Y), they have to prioritize, not rationalize.
This may not be a GOOD thing, but it's not an EVIL thing either. A Paladin can decide that getting sacred artifact X to holy ceremony Y to stop demonic invasion Z is more important than saving one village from a horde of 30-odd orcs. Both choices save lives, but the first saves many, many more lives. That is a definite 'greater good' moment.
Now, if allowing the village to be razed is part of the 'cunning plan' to lead to the enemy's eventual defeat (for example, counting on the post-slaughter celebratory drinking binge to incapacitate the orcs and make killing them dead easy), then the Paladin has a problem. He's treating the people's lives as a convenience, which is an Evil thing to do.
At most Paladin question it helps to ask:
"What would King Arthur, Bowen (Dragonheart), Sturm (Dragonlance) or Superman do?"
Sure they are all no Paladins (ok, Arthur eventually^^) but they are al the glorified, romanticied good and that is, what a Paladin ist.
He's the beakon of light in a dark world, someone who showas the folk that you can overcome every evil if your heart and doings are pure and good.
From this, I would, as a Paladin never leave a town where innocents are doomed to death.
Even if I would die if I defend these people, I would do. (This is something my DM always hates at my Paladins and why I'm not alowed to play one anymore :( )
Even if I would die if I defend these people, I would do. (This is something my DM always hates at my Paladins and why I'm not alowed to play one anymore :( )
This is as trying on DMs as having gotcha alignment journalism pulled on you as a player. The DM has a responsibility to ensure the paladin has an option that doesn't involve suicide or falling. The player has a responsibility to look for those options as well.
This seems to come up more with the paladin because they embody an alignment, but really, any alignment straitjacket, whether forced by the DM or donned eagerly by the player, is a pain in the ass in-game. No one wants to see a Lawful character that equates their alignment with 'slavish devotion to the written law, no matter which land I visit'. No one wants to see an Evil character that equates 'I must kill the rest of you in your sleep if you argue with me.' I had a 3e (new) player once sneak off and shoot arrows at one of the party members during a fight with a dire wolf because he was playing a CG elf and "elves reply...to serious insults with vengeance." (3e PHB) The fellow character in question had insulted him before.
There are some people who need to stay and die fighting the Balrog. There are others, who the story is really about, who need to bravely run away. The paladin doesn't always fall into the category of the former.
Being a paladin is kind of like playing Superman from a tempermental perspective. I am sure he could have killed Lex Luthor by now if he really wanted to.
PS:The paladin is allowed to kill(the bad guys), but his conscience would not allow him to just stand by and watch people.
The paladin does not know what CR's are. :)
More seriously though he would try to fight the monster anyway to hold it off, while the people escaped. It would probably not save all of them, but it may buy time for some of them to escape.
Yeah... I don't see a paladin accepting a deal from a demon CR20 or not as being 'good'.
Valid options I see here...
1) offers himself as the sacrificial lamb... (dies)
2) Fights the demon (dies)
3) An ally tricks him into using THEM as sacrifice... (Someone dies, Paladin is ticked.)
But no... pick someone out of the crowd and kill them? That's not 'hero' material.
Honestly, the devil is just screwing with him at that point. Either, he WANTS the paladin to fall just for fun... or his current armageddon scheme requires and innocent killed by a holy knight. And he's enableing the demon.
Either way the paladin wouldn't turn a blind eye and leave the village to it's fate.
This came up in an ethics class. The situation was you come upon a group of bandits with guns ready to slaughter a village. You try to talk to their leader to spare the village. He agrees on the condition that you would have to pick a villager to kill. The professor asked us to raise our hands if we would kill a villager or not and discuss our reason why we would or would not. Overwhelmingly the class said they would and argued that it was ethical to do so, because otherwise the rest of the villagers would die.
Only a handful out of a class of 150 said they would not and rather have all the villagers be killed because it was their belief that any killing by their hands is wrong even if killing one can save many.
See the thing is lawful good is so nebulous, lawful good to a utilitarian vs a kantian is very different.
I think it is the lesser of two evils, but the lesser of two evils is still evil and therefore not an option for the paladin. Real life good and what is good in the game are not the same. The game has it defined so that discussions like this don't bog down play time.
PS:I have no issues discussing this on a message board, just making a point.
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However, I have presented situations to players where there are no good/correct choices, just various shades of gray. For example whether they are willing to sacrifice their arm permanently (low magic campaign) to save a comrade. Knowing that losing his arm the rest of the party will be likely captured and sitting ducks. What do you do?
Not knowing more than this brief description, I can't comment on it much. But it also doesn't align with my statement since I was talking about false dilemmas.
An easy black and white game is what makes paladins boring. If everything he came upon is evil then it is simple but when he is forced to make gray choices that is where drama comes in at least for mature role-players in my experience.
No doubt, so long as those choices are not heavy-handed railroading to fallen paladin status.
At most Paladin question it helps to ask:
"What would King Arthur, Bowen (Dragonheart), Sturm (Dragonlance) or Superman do?"
I see I was ninja'd by about 50 minutes.
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I had a 3e (new) player once sneak off and shoot arrows at one of the party members during a fight with a dire wolf because he was playing a CG elf and "elves reply...to serious insults with vengeance." (3e PHB) The fellow character in question had insulted him before.
Don't let him read Elves of Golarion if you're going to have any half-orcs in the party.
As to the subject, paladins and any other good aligned character should always be able to take a third option whenever the basic options presented are "bad" and "bad and you should feel bad". Or make one.
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I suppose here is a good place to include my own paladin story. I ran a one-shot game while deployed, and my commanding officer wanted to see what it was like. He borrowed the rulebook for a week, and then came to the table. He, of course, rolled a paladin.
This little adventure had all the characters wakeup in separate rooms of a dungeon with no idea how they got there. A magic mouth informed them of the situation, that they were being tested, to see if they could escape before the poisonous atmosphere killed them. Yeah, it was inspired by Saw.
In any event, they avoided the little traps here and there, joined together with an NPC I included, and explored the dungeon top to bottom. In the last room, they found what seemed to be a portal, but it was inactive. Across the top, written in Infernal, it read 'Sacrifice opens the path'.
What did my party do?
What does my CO as paladin say?
'Yeah, sure.' So they attacked and slaughtered him, using his blood to open the portal.
I'm pretty sure I'm justified in saying he fell for that.
Well, it was rushed, as he only had about an hour to spend on it. And I never did get around to telling him the consequences. :)
He may not have understood his role in this?
In Korea, one of my senior NCOs was running a game after I taught a few how to play. (Passing on a tradition that my NCOs in Campbell had to me) I was playing a ranger and one of the guys, brand new to the game was playing a paladin.
Crap goes down in the palace and the evil prince has us surrounded. Paladin looks around, grabs the princess and holds a knife to her throat. "We're leaving, don't follow us." Upon our escape, the DM starts to yell at the player. "You can't kill her!" Player - "I wasn't going to, but they didn't know that." DM - "But...you're a paladin! You're lawful!" Player - "I'm not lawful to HIM!"
Best paladin I ever saw. Way more than any of my own.
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This came up in an ethics class. The situation was you come upon a group of bandits with guns ready to slaughter a village. You try to talk to their leader to spare the village. He agrees on the condition that you would have to pick a villager to kill. The professor asked us to raise our hands if we would kill a villager or not and discuss our reason why we would or would not. Overwhelmingly the class said they would and argued that it was ethical to do so, because otherwise the rest of the villagers would die.
Answer, to your slimy socialist prof (those bastards delight in cooking up these kinds of BS situations to warp minds):
"Since the bandits are obviously hesitant to simply add me and my friends to their to-do list of those-who-must-be-slaughtered, even though me and my friends would be witnesses -- it is reasonable for me to conclude that me and my friends must be heavily armed.
So, I roll for initiative after Bluffing, then mow 'em all down in the surprise-round!"
See the thing is lawful good is so nebulous, lawful good to a utilitarian vs a kantian is very different.
Which is why I always say (if you ask me) that a lawful-good player is the only person who can properly play a paladin -- everyone else, players and DMs alike -- is just BSing their way through it and making it up as they go along.
If you also ask me, and even if you don't, I'll tell you that 3.5's PHB alignment descriptions and paladin intro text are better than Pathfinder's:
Background: No one ever chooses to be a paladin. Becoming a paladin is answering a call, accepting one's destiny. No one, no matter how diligent, can become a paladin through practice. The nature is either within one or not, and it is not possible to gain the paladin's nature by any act of will. It is possible, however, to fail to recognize one's own potential, or to deny one's destiny. Occasionally, one who is called to be a paladin denies that call and pursues some other life instead. ... All paladins, regardless of background, recognize in each other an eternal bond that transcends culture, race, and even religion. Any two paladins, even from opposite sides of the world, consider themselves comrades.
Love it. Just perfect.
This came up in an ethics class. The situation was you come upon a group of bandits with guns ready to slaughter a village. You try to talk to their leader to spare the village. He agrees on the condition that you would have to pick a villager to kill. The professor asked us to raise our hands if we would kill a villager or not and discuss our reason why we would or would not. Overwhelmingly the class said they would and argued that it was ethical to do so, because otherwise the rest of the villagers would die.Answer, to your slimy socialist prof (those bastards delight in cooking up these kinds of BS situations to warp minds):
"Since the bandits are obviously hesitant to simply add me and my friends to their to-do list of those-who-must-be-slaughtered, even though me and my friends would be witnesses -- it is reasonable for me to conclude that me and my friends must be heavily armed.
So, I roll for initiative after Bluffing, then mow 'em all down in the surprise-round!"
See the thing is lawful good is so nebulous, lawful good to a utilitarian vs a kantian is very different.Which is why I always say (if you ask me) that a lawful-good player is the only person who can properly play a paladin -- everyone else, players and DMs alike -- is just BSing their way through it and making it up as they go along.
If you also ask me, and even if you don't, I'll tell you that 3.5's PHB alignment descriptions and paladin intro text are better than Pathfinder's:
Background: No one ever chooses to be a paladin. Becoming a paladin is answering a call, accepting one's destiny. No one, no matter how diligent, can become a paladin through practice. The nature is either within one or not, and it is not possible to gain the paladin's nature by any act of will. It is possible, however, to fail to recognize one's own potential, or to deny one's destiny. Occasionally, one who is called to be a paladin denies that call and pursues some other life instead. ... All paladins,...
I gotta agree. Not everyone can play a paladin. I would stab someone in the face or give a convenient lie that would be sending me for one to many atonements most likely. My next goal is to play a LG character though that is actually lawful good.
In case anyone is wondering it is the lawful part, more so than the good party that is restricting me.
The distinction for Lawful/Chaotic that works for me is something like this:
Lawful means that you place primary focus on community, country, society, etc. You judge yourself and others by the standards of your community. The rules are there to benefit the society as a whole.
Chaotic means you place primary focus on the individual. You can still have a sense of community, but it is the individuals responsibility to judge themselves. They may get their personal code from outside sources, parents, mentors, community leaders, but they interpret it themselves.
I consider Lawful to mean a code that you adhere to, with your actions deciding if you are Good or Evil. A Chaotic person is just that: chaotic and going through life without any real long-term goal other than the next adventure.
To oversimplify things, Lawful/Chaotic = why you do things, Good/Evil = how you do things. Could very easily be seen the other way around.
Statik the Bleeder is a (un)holy crusader for Zon Kuthon. I wanted some sort of battle healer who focussed on melee but could heal and also buff/debuff a bit. Started with a LN Cleric who prestiged into Holy Vindicator but didn't like that very much, too much casty buffy and not enough slicey bleedy. I wanted a paladin for an evil god and didn't understand why you couldn't have one; I didn't want an Anti-Paladin, I wanted a paladin of Zon Kuthon, someone who clearly represents the church and leads the battle.
What I did was take the Anti-Paladin base and instead of channeling negative energy he channels positive energy. He is also LE, not CE. He doesn't use cure spells, but due to his calling, he is granted the ability a few times a day to make sure everyone doesn't die via his healing burst. He prefers using Touch of Corruption to using it for Channelling Energy. He uses a Vicious spiked chain (the cleric had the Murder subdomain and a conductive spiked chain) and a number of bleed effects to keep the blood flowing and Anti-Paladin 6/Holy Vindicator 2 gives him stigmata to carry on the blood.
PS: I think the opposite of Lawful Good is Lawful Evil, not Chaotic Evil but again it comes down to interpretation of alignments.
Sounds meta-gamey.
"I want everything a paladin can do without that annoying code of conduct getting in my way!"
People have always whined about not having multi-alignment paladins. This is because the restrictions on what paladins can do via the code is a restriction as apt as not having more class abilities.
Being Evil means being able to do whatever a Good person can do,and a whole lot more. It's because they can't do what Evil people can, that paladins are as strong as they are.
Basically, you took the healing powers of a paladin, threw out the code, and added some touch dmg instead of touch heal.
Meh.
==Aelryinth
Which is why I always say (if you ask me) that a lawful-good player is the only person who can properly play a paladin -- everyone else, players and DMs alike -- is just BSing their way through it and making it up as they go along.
I think we're ALL BSing our way through - how many players can actually swing a sword, let alone cast a spell...
What paladins can and can't do is going to depend so much on campaign setting. Slavery - normally defnitely right out, but if you're game is set in a version of Ancient Rome the paladin would be against mistreating slaves, not against slavery per se. An Aztec paladin wouldn't be against human sacrifice (I don't think, this one is more debatable). Regardless, I think paladins are pretty absolutist, things are either right or wrong and they don't handle grey very well. Burning a village down, not really even grey and any paladin should, I think, do everything they can to oppose it. I think the same goes for even 'small' evils, say theft. Theft when you're starving? Still probably not good, but a paladin could accept it with an intent to return and make recompense. 'Turning a blind eye', a big no to that - 'I'll just step out of the room while you torture the prisoner...'
On the other hand, paladins should, I think, take responsibility for actions...in the 'set-up' situations where if paladin doesn't perform X evil act the consequences are extreme I think the paladin probably would take the action, and the consequences - giving up her paladinhood and living with the guilt.
... if it can be rationalised flr the greater good?
Can a paladin choose the lesser of two evils?
The answer seems to be: no, at least not without feeling guilty."The boundary between lawful neutral and lawful good" isn't very clear and not necessarily relevant. The difference comes into play when your options are lawful evil act or a neutral good act. Lawful neutral knights would obey legitimate but cruel orders rather than undermining the system: killing prisoners, torching villages etc. Neutral good ones might sabotage the orders. Paladins might object and resign, but would not actively rebel - smart players would look for 'third options' as well (ie. finding out that the village is to be torched because the villagers have the plague, he pledges to cure all of them...)
I have actually never, in 30 years of gaming, played a paladin. However I have played many lawful good characters. I sort of like the idea that paladins are called, not trained. Some of my lawful good characters have been paladin-esque by nature, but not by class.
That's really just because I have never liked the mechanics of the paladin class. Plus I don't like the way many GMs interpret a paladin's motivations and behavior. So when I've wanted to play a heroic lawful good character with paladin like compulsions, I typically play a ranger or a fighter and just role play him like a paladin. Although I have frequently seen players challenged by the GM about their paladin's behavior (and usually I am in agreement with the player) my characters never get challenged, and I prefer it that way.