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Scenario: I am playing a Oracle of Lore 1/ Paladin of Irori 8. I recently took the leadership feat at level 9, due to a party concern of us being short on full blown healer. Yeah, we have lots of people that can restore hit points, but the major ailments that require stronger than a lesser restoration was starting to be a problem. Our player who took on the role of party healer had a change in his schedule so the need grew when he wasn't there. As a result, in game I had converted a worshiper of the Whispering way and it was decided that she'd best serve as a cleric cohort, with some feat rewriting. Cultist of the Whispering way typically channeld negative energy and had the feat Command Undead. Due to issues in another campaign entirely my GM does not like any thing that takes control of his creatures, but he had not explicitly forbiden it. Figuring it was still in line with the cohorts existing knowledge and skill set I gave her the feat that allow her to channel both positive and negative energy and the Command Undead feat. Irori, being LN, she filled all of the requirments to do this.
Situation: We encounter a ghoul while we were research recent attacks on the town of Carrion Hill. Instead of killing it out right, as it did not attack us the party questioned it. Normally, being a paladin, you usually have an obligation to destroy undead such as this on site, but I've always held the belief that Paladin's code allowed for the collaboration of forces in the face of a greater threat, so questioning the creature as we were not currently in combat and no one was currently endangered seemed reasonable.
It attempted to make requests that were far to outlandish to consider or would weaken the party considerably, (one request was that we would provide it some food. Seems harmless, until your realize that ghouls at recently killed humans!) It seemed like a combat was about to take place, when my cohort took a step forward and attempted to Command Undead. GM rolled a 4, so now the ghoul had to provide us with the information. We got our information, and as it would be dishonorable to slay the creature, left it in the depths we found it as we were certain it would not be able to threaten anyone in the world above.
A week later, I had to work, so I rejoined my group with about an hour left of game time, which the GM kept me out of it the whole time as he said I had an encounter separate from the group. Come to findout that while I was away 2 of the Player decided they wanted to suicide their character and ended up with a party verse party combat, with their new characters comming in afterwords. Just before we are about to leave the GM starts the separate encounter. He has the white lion servant of Irori approach me in my dreams and asks "Are you not well, my son?" I'm confused, given that I was unafflicted with anything I was aware of "I respond that I was fine". "But you travel with those who's company is not in keeping with our tenants?" My response was "Hey, GM, I wasn't even here when the party decide to split in 2 and kill of half of itself, I'm not even sure my character even knows about this as yet, as you kept me out of everything tonight" "No,no not about this, you compelled a sentient being the other day" "Huh?" "This is in violation of the lawful tenants of Irori"
At this point, the game breaks down, because I know what he was after, he didn't want Command Undead in the party. This would've been more simply done by taking me aside and saying explicitly, "Do not take Command Undead, I don't allow it in my games." Instead he does this and I can only totally disagree that my cohort using Command Undead violated the LAWFUL portion of my alignment. Now I've learned later that some people consider use of the feat and Evil act, but I was not aware of this at the time. Truthfully I consider all class powers and abilities to be neutral align tools (as without thought or conciousness you really can't have an alignment), their alignment determined by the actions of the individual using them.
But he wasn't concerned about it being a Evil Act. He was concerned that it was an Non LAWFUL act. If anything using Command undead would likely be considered a Lawful act, as you are compelling obediance to a law, that being the will of the user. Law doesn't really care whether you obey it willingly or not, it just requires obedience to the law, or there will be consquences. Laws are generally developed for the public good, and however temporary my cohorts control of the undead being was, it created a law where the public good was enforced, in this case we gained the information needed to stop a greater evil without either party actually comming to harm.
I believe the issue was resolved with me stating I'd remove the Command Undead feat, but I'm still bugged by this question. I don't think I violated the paladin code in the way he suggested, but I'd like to here the forum's interpretation here.
Thanks in advance for any and all commentary, regardless of whether you agree with me or not.
The spell Mark of Justice is on the paladin spell list and all about compelling the unwilling to comply. Forcing evil and chaos to obey is right in a Paladin's wheelhouse - More 'merciful' than simply killing them, yet necessary to prevent them from causing greater harm. Respecting free will is a Chaos thing.
It's always tricky when you try to rationalise what's really a metagame balance issue as something narrative, and very rarely works when you try to pin it to alignment.
Based on your description of events, the only thing I see you did wrong was leaving the Ghoul alive; its effectively immortal, and if anyone ever gets hurt by it, you had the chance to prevent that from happening. Thats irresponsible; I wouldn't say you should fall over it, but its not a great thing.
Working with someone with the mere ability to command undead? Who care about that though. Especially if its not their primary combat tactic, and was instead a remnant of a past life that was managed to be put toward the purposes of good; thats laudable to the extreme!
Based on your description of events, the only thing I see you did wrong was leaving the Ghoul alive; its effectively immortal, and if anyone ever gets hurt by it, you had the chance to prevent that from happening. Thats irresponsible; I wouldn't say you should fall over it, but its not a great thing.
I was going to point that out too. Depends on your individual code though. If you have a prohibition against or lack authority to kill prisoners, or if you are showing mercy for the sake of possible redemption, could be OK, but also the authority of a Paladin in the wild can be to act as a Judge, with the same power to condemn and execute the reredeemably evil, same as a court judge may. In the case of a ghoul, capture, interrogation, judgement, followed by lawful execution could be a routein proceedure for a Paladin, not an alignment problem at all.
I was going to point that out too. Depends on your individual code though. If you have a prohibition against or lack authority to kill prisoners, or if you are showing mercy for the sake of possible redemption, could be OK, but also the authority of a Paladin in the wild can be to act as a Judge, with the same power to condemn and execute the reredeemably evil, same as a court judge may. In the case of a ghoul, capture, interrogation, judgement, followed by lawful execution could be a routein proceedure for a Paladin, not an alignment problem at all.
The key is, never promise it mercy or let it believe that you'll let it live. Decieving it would be completely unnacceptable.
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I see. I was kind of worried about leaving the ghoul alive as well, but felt at the time that destroying it would put me at odds with the party, and it felt dishonorable to attack it while it was defenceless. My character has plenty of time away from the party, due to their recent misadventures, so I will go back to the GM about returning to it to hopefully redeem it and send it to its eternal peace.
First of all i don't think that Irori has paladins (doesn't have a paladin oath in the faiths of balance like Abadar has).
Aside from that, i don't think that compelling an undead to give you information is an evil act (hey if it was the dominate person spell would have the evil descriptor) but i do find you at fault for not destroying the undead afterwards, i might even go that far and tell that depending on the deity*, the paladin could fall for that action.
*(serenrae paladins for sure)
I have one question for you: did you have reason to believe that, if allowed to live, the ghoul would take an intelligent life in the future? It all boils down to that. If the answer is yes, you should have executed it. If no, you shouldn't have.
As for the use of command undead, your GM shouldn't be getting on you about that. There are domination spells on the paladin spell list, after all.
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@Kelsey: Where we encountered the ghoul was a vast distance to the surface, of the town, we left with the belief that after we found whatever creature was attacking the town, we'd seal up the passage here. Additionally, the ghoul admitted he was a scavenger, not a killer. He'd been living off of the dead bodies he'd been finding in the aftermath of the creature's attacks. Ofcourse, on reflection once we kill of the main creature that was attacking, he'd probably have to resort to attack people again. So in the end I am going to have to go back and finish it.
@leo1925: I'd put together this character Months before the faiths of balance came out and truthfully I haven't even read it throughly yet to see what would apply to the character. But I'm no going to change the patron deity this late in the game.
If the Paladin had entered the encounter and declared the Ghoul evil and entered combat then that would have been totally within his alignment. I am putting aside the good or evil debate on the Command Undead ability because I was unable to find a specific stance on undead for the Irori faith. But a Paladin is both Lawful and Good. While I may not be considering the use of command undead evil, I do consider the use of a compulsion spell during negotiation tantamount to stealing and a tarnishing of a paladin's ethical code.
That's an interesting distinction, and one I like; that said, I think in this case the player and GM need to hash out the definitions and ramifications of alignment.
Very much boils down to perception, it seems. Your paladin had felt the negotiations were leading to a bloody battle, in which his cohort's spell prevented potential bloodshed. (good pally)
The GM thought that the negotiations were still ongoing and there were no imminent hostilities, the info was manipulated out of the ghoul (tricky pally).
I think that a friendly warning was ok, however reading the initial post, it wasn't made clear EXACTLY what the god was unhappy about. It looks like the player took that all Command Undead uses are inherently unlawfully, but according to the GM it seems that only using it to circumvent negotiations is unlawful.
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Very much boils down to perception, it seems. Your paladin had felt the negotiations were leading to a bloody battle, in which his cohort's spell prevented potential bloodshed. (good pally)
The GM thought that the negotiations were still ongoing and there were no imminent hostilities, the info was manipulated out of the ghoul (tricky pally).
I think that a friendly warning was ok, however reading the initial post, it wasn't made clear EXACTLY what the god was unhappy about. It looks like the player took that all Command Undead uses are inherently unlawfully, but according to the GM it seems that only using it to circumvent negotiations is unlawful.
I think that you probably got it right. If this character had in the past played any kind trick like this, or had done anything in character I'd almost agree 100%, but I hadn't so I'm still a little confused about it.
I was of the opinion that negotiations were done, or that the creature was just messing with us, wasting time till it could find a chance to strike. He had said that the creature we were looking for had passed through here recently, as was evident from the corpse he was eating. Either way, no acceptable options had been presented and it looked like we were going to have to fight with the creature. Which would've been counter productive, because at the time we believed the creature knew something itself, not that it would be handing us a book.
I never intended to force an atonement casting, any redemption questing... I was simply trying to roleplay a diety taking a personal interest in the moral path of her paladin.
I freely admit there is a great deal of fault at my feet for this. One, that I allowed a Paladin to start the game without a written oath, code, and a player-GM understanding of where the line would be. Bad on me.
I tried to do the mystical diety thing. This allowed things to be unclear, and lead to hard feelings at the end of a long day of gaming (My party basically imploded because I'm enforcing a character death before new characters can be introduced and I had two players force death in intraparty combat where I was able to basically walk away from the table except for initiative order)Again, both points bad on me
I'm not the perfect GM (I'll never be able to memorize all of the rules and rulings), but I do try to grow and learn as a GM... so I thank those who are posting their opinions.
Don't get me wrong, I think you handled the situation as best as possible, I think the deity making a moral suggestion is much better than "you lose your powers, now do nice things or your stuck being a fighter"
Besides, your paladin player was just confused and the thread was quite respectful, not one of those "My GM is out to get me, should I punch him in the face/find a new group" thread.
The funny thing is I am a player in Carrion Crown, and our Paladin seemed to find no issue with finding the ghoul some "meat"
Making other people do want you want is a staple of law in D&D
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Well I was going to first suggest talking to the GM away from the game and get a better understanding. The other thing I was going to suggest is the two of you work out a code of conduct for the paladin so you know.
To me this sounds more like a misunderstanding. Where the player thought combat was about to happen and to avoid it used a spell. While the GM felt things was fine and the paladin decided to "cheat". I understand both points of view.
Me if I was the GM and felt that way I might have had the god send a little dream to get the point of cross to show more patients and also made sure the player OOC knew what was what.
I think with you both talking this would be a good time before the next game perhaps in emails to hammer out a code of conduct to avoid any future problems and chalk this up to lesson learned.
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Okay, so I spent a few days musing over what Jeremy said above and it still bugged me because although it sounds like a lawful arguement I think the key here is the context of the situation. This was not a negotiation for property or power or influence. The characters did not go in expecting to come away from the situation with a great gain that would better their lives. We were looking for information about a creature that had murdered a lot of innocent villagers and guardsmen. This information wasn't something that we could go "Oh well, we couldn't get it, lets try another source. Or lets spend time researching it." We were on the clock, because everytime the creature manifested in the town above people were going to die. This wasn't about us "as much as stealing" the information as it was trying to protect lives. Essentially, the ghoul had us in a blackmail situation, which we walked into willingly unaware of the situation, as it was using unreasonable requests to either force us to attack him or give up without it. It really didn't appear that he would've given the information up at any event, as his last request was "give me 6000 gold" when he had just a moment earlier tossed a small fortune of valuables, likely worth more than what was requested, at the party saying he had no need for such things. It was only after this last request, when it seemed like nothing else was likely to work but violence, which we were trying to avoid as we believed he himself held the information (not the book he gave us after the fact), when my cohort stepped in and commanded him. I essentially attempted 3 times to have a LAWFUL dealing with the creature, who I KNOW was evil (we found him because I used my detect evil, not as a result of me using detect evil after the fact) before I decided that the interests of GOOD must prevail over the lack of results so far.
Furthermore, throughout the entire adventure so far I have tried to play the merciful paladin, unless I had compelling reasons not to do so, more often than not sparing my foes to seek a court/peer appointed justice, however that might be found.
Lastly, and this is mearly a counter to the Dresden Files reference, but while Morgan was what I'd call a Lawful Good Character (at times venturing on Lawful Neutral) he's far less concerned about the Code of Honor than he was knowing that regardless of the circumstances his enforcement of the Laws of the White Council protected more lives than not. Where Harry was concerned he always believed he was dangerous, but not evil. There is the distinction. If he knew you were evil, and you weren't protected by the Seelie Accords, you were ground beef, you just didn't know it yet. The distinction again with the Seelie Accords was that it also protected people more than it harmed them. As far as the best analogy of a Lawful Good character would be Michael Carpenter. 100% Lawful Good for all intents and purposes paladin, who followed his faith as the Law as it represented the good for all of the people he dealt with, which is more of what I model my character after.
Okay, so I spent a few days musing over what Jeremy said above and it still bugged me because although it sounds like a lawful arguement I think the key here is the context of the situation. This was not a negotiation for property or power or influence. The characters did not go in expecting to come away from the situation with a great gain that would better their lives. We were looking for information about a creature that had murdered a lot of innocent villagers and guardsmen. This information wasn't something that we could go "Oh well, we couldn't get it, lets try another source. Or lets spend time researching it." We were on the clock, because everytime the creature manifested in the town above people were going to die. This wasn't about us "as much as stealing" the information as it was trying to protect lives. Essentially, the ghoul had us in a blackmail situation, which we walked into willingly unaware of the situation, as it was using unreasonable requests to either force us to attack him or give up without it. It really didn't appear that he would've given the information up at any event, as his last request was "give me 6000 gold" when he had just a moment earlier tossed a small fortune of valuables, likely worth more than what was requested, at the party saying he had no need for such things. It was only after this last request, when it seemed like nothing else was likely to work but violence, which we were trying to avoid as we believed he himself held the information (not the book he gave us after the fact), when my cohort stepped in and commanded him. I essentially attempted 3 times to have a LAWFUL dealing with the creature, who I KNOW was evil (we found him because I used my detect evil, not as a result of me using detect evil after the fact) before I decided that the interests of GOOD must prevail over the lack of results so far.
Furthermore, throughout the entire adventure so far I have tried to play the merciful paladin, unless I had compelling reasons not to do so, more often than not...
No Insult, but have you read the City and The City? WORTH IT!!
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Was there any actual punishment or just your god visiting you and letting you know what her expectations are?
This seems very important to me as a GM and player. One thing I like to do is have the deities give warnings or advice before any punishment is handed out.
I don't know how I would have handled this in play. I do know that one thing I do is talk to the player or GM (depending on my role) and explain what I think a paladin of god X is like. Then I listen to his or her opinions and see if we are going to be in agreement. There have been times when I didn't think that playing a paladin with a particular GM was a good idea and there have been times when a player didn't want to play a paladin with me as GM.
I'm very lenient as a GM. There is a lot of gray area in the game and it's something I take into account. I do track things and make sure that I intervene when I think that someone is violating their code. Often, I let the player know as soon as possible. Sometimes, it's fun to do it in game. I just make sure that I'm fair to the player at all times.
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Sorry, but my big beef with this entire discussion is that the creature compelled was Undead. To me, this means the ghoul is:
1) Already dead, so there is no moral code regarding its rights as a living creature from a Paladin perspective because it's not a living creature.
2) Inherently evil - They EAT PEOPLE. Anything goes when combating or coercing this menace from a Paladin perspective.
In other words, I see nothing wrong with the Paladin's actions in dealing with it.
The GM's argument that compelling the ghoul to give up a book is akin to stealing implies that the dead can own property. Lawfully, this is not the case, so compelling the ghoul to hand over the book does not in any way break the Paladin code.
Further, compulsion is an acceptable tool when used to promote the greater cause. Some entities will not cooperate willingly, and need a little push to help them do the right thing (Of course, this applies to living beings. As I mentioned before, anything goes with Undead).
As others have pointed out, the only issue is that the Paladin left the Ghoul alive, not that he had his minion Command Undead to obtain information the Ghoul otherwise would not have shared.
Just my 2 cents. YMMV.
The paladin's cohort forced the ghoul to comply with the party on their quest. Ghouls are generally antithetical to the gods, due to undead being an aberration to the natural order; their uncontrollable hunger might be an additional "black mark" in Irori's eyes as it shows their lack of enlightenment. I think that in Irori's eyes, that would clearly mark them as "lesser" unenlightened creatures. Though they are intelligent, they cannot help but be led by their base passions.
In that case, isn't the paladin's cohort, by forcing compliance, simply acting within his/her rights, both as that creature's superior and in order to avoid meaningless violence? It's a bit like forcing compliance on an animal - and while ghouls aren't as unenlightened as animals, they are essentially in the same direction.