If the Paladin has seen convincing evidence of innocence, I'll repeat, that saying he's unable to act because it might not be true makes him unable to act in any way, ever. He could always be being manipulated, after all.
I understand what you're saying. But are you not dismissing that a group of equals has a "weight" of credibility that, at the very least, should cause you to reconsider your position of certainty? It's sort of like he's saying, "Here's what I saw. Here's what I know." And they're saying, "Wow. Ummm... he's a paladin. Wow. How can we, on the one hand, have all this evidence proving this guy is guilty and that paladin thinks otherwise? Well, you heard his testimony, what do you think? I think he must be mistaken. Both things can't be right, and there's a lot more evidence to contradict him. Maybe he was glamoured or illusioned. Yeah, gotta be magic somehow." I'm saying that the law he follows wouldn't be built to dismiss the weight of wisdom on the court (a quorum of minds, learned minds, wise minds...)
Anyway, as I said, I didn't want to argue and debate. I think we both know where the other stands. In the end, I was just looking for this stuff:
A proper deontological framework has specific acts that are never acceptable, no matter the cost. Doing such things is thus unacceptable no matter what. Having 'allowing an innocent to be harmed, when you have means to prevent it' as such a principle, is absolutely possible, and indeed almost required by the Paladin's code (that 'helping those in need' part).
But notice there are exceptions to that, too!
To put it yet another way, for a LG character (or at least a Paladin) laws are a means, Good is the end. He just thinks Laws are the best way to that end. When means fail, you try other means, not hold to your means over the ends.
But that is consequentialist in nature. Moral law is not sufficient, so we'll toss out moral law to achieve a moral end. Which brings me back to my original question and the one that I'm not sure you actually answered:
I'd say her Code and God would almost universally consider the second a higher priority.
You're saying that a paladins Code and God would almost universally consider the second (Good) a higher priority than the first (Law and Order). I'd just like to know what support you have for this claim.
As to your hypothetical, I'm sorry, I thought I did respond. But you're right, I didn't give it a great deal of thought or an appropriate answer. I don't have time right this second, but I'll respond to it in more detail tonight or tomorrow.
You're saying that a paladins Code and God would almost universally consider the second (Good) a higher priority than the first (Law and Order). I'd just like to know what support you have for this claim.
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.
It's quite clear from this that it is Evil that's the problem. Chaos is pretty much treated as a violation of the paladin's personal code, along with lying, cheating, using poison, and so forth. Not a great idea, but pardonable, especially if it's being done by someone other than the paladin, especially in service of a greater good.
You're saying that a paladins Code and God would almost universally consider the second (Good) a higher priority than the first (Law and Order). I'd just like to know what support you have for this claim.It's quite clear from this that it is Evil that's the problem. Chaos is pretty much treated as a violation of the paladin's personal code, along with lying, cheating, using poison, and so forth. Not a great idea, but pardonable, especially if it's being done by someone other than the paladin, especially in service of a greater good.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.
Ok, I can see that. Unfortunately, if you take the approach that these items in the code tell a paladin that good is separate from and higher than law and order/discipline and personal code, then that argument can be applied to have the paladin be chaotic good in all things. As a paladin, I should lie to convince a thief the merchant's home contains no jewels. I should cheat an adolescent at harrow to teach him not to gamble. Because an act of unlawfulness, to a paladin, is clearly not an evil act and law is always subordinated to good outcomes.
Ok, I can see that. Unfortunately, if you take the approach that these items in the code tell a paladin that good is separate from and higher than law and order/discipline and personal code, then that argument can be applied to have the paladin be chaotic good in all things.
Only if you have fate continually conspiring to have the paladin making a choice between Chaos and Evil. To the paladin, this is a choice between a venial sin and a mortal sin. Venial sins are, by definition, forgivable. They are not something to be desired, but if it's a choice between a venial sin and a mortal sin, the paladin will take the venial sin every time.
As for being chaotic good in all things, the paladin will only choose this if there's no way to be neutral or lawful while still being good.
Let's say the paladin comes upon the fight between Robin Hood (chaotic good) and the Sheriff of Nottingham (lawful evil). For some reason he has to pick a side in this battle. Let's say he came upon Robin and his merry men, knows what they're doing, and while he doesn't approve the way they're doing it, he's not going to stop them either. So he leaves and on his way through Sherwood Forest, he runs into the Sheriff of Nottingham who tells him that he's looking for some bandits in these woods and inquires if the paladin has seen any such fellows.
Let us also assume that the Sheriff is riding with his band of not-so-evil guardsmen, so the choice of killing the evil Sheriff is off the table, and all the paladin can do is either lie to protect Robin and his merry men or tell the truth and lead to their doom and the only local opposition to an evil an unjust ruler.
The choice is clear: the paladin lies. This is the same as saying "These are not the droids you are looking for" to the Stormtroopers or "We are not hiding any jews" to the Nazis.
Or, to go with the Nazi theme, it's exactly like the nun at the end of The Sound of Music who not only lies to protect the fleeing Von Trapp family, but also steals the distributor cap from the Nazi squad car. She confesses her sin to the mother superior.
Lying is a sin. Theft is also a sin. But done in the service of protecting innocents, especially children? Completely forgivable.
As a paladin, I should lie to convince a thief the merchant's home contains no jewels.
What depends on this and why would the thief believe you anyway? And who is the thief and who is the merchant?
If the thief is Robin Hood and the merchant is one of the supporters of Prince John....
I should cheat an adolescent at harrow to teach him not to gamble.
Is gambling a sin in your world or not? Depends on if its part of the paladin's code.
Because an act of unlawfulness, to a paladin, is clearly not an evil act and law is always subordinated to good outcomes.
It's a venial sin as opposed to a mortal sin. The paladin will still need to seek forgiveness and absolution, or at least do some penance, but venial sins can be forgiven.
And now all paladins are Catholic.
The choice is clear: the paladin lies.
Then the Paladin falls.
In 3.5, it needed to be a gross violation, but in Pathfinder any violation makes you fall. That is the rule.
Sure, you can get an atonement without issue, but you are fallen Paladin unless you can afford that atonement.
The choice is clear: the paladin lies.
Then the Paladin falls.
In 3.5, it needed to be a gross violation, but in Pathfinder any violation makes you fall. That is the rule.
Sure, you can get an atonement without issue, but you are fallen Paladin unless you can afford that atonement.
Citation?
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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.
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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 the atonement spell description in Spell Lists), as appropriate.
Pretty black and white: If you violate your code of conduct, you lose your paladinhood until you atone.
It's hard out here for a paladin.
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Only if you have fate continually conspiring to have the paladin making a choice between Chaos and Evil. To the paladin, this is a choice between a venial sin and a mortal sin. Venial sins are, by definition, forgivable. They are not something to be desired, but if it's a choice between a venial sin and a mortal sin, the paladin will take the venial sin every time.
This, this, a thousand times this.
To a Paladin, Chaos is bad, and if given a choice between Law and Chaos he will pick Law.
To a Paladin, Evil is even worse than Chaos and if given a choice between Good and Evil, the Paladin will pick Good.
Now, if (and only if) there is a choice between Chaos and Evil, then the Paladin chooses Chaos. Indeed, he must do so.
The venial/mortal sin analogy is perfect. A Paladin who runs around commiting acts of Chaos for the hell of it is rapidly NG and no longer a Paladin, but one who occasionally does so under extreme circumstances? He's fine.
As for your examples, jupistar, all are free of context, and would only be acceptable to a Paladin if the choice was between the listed Chaotic act and an Evil one. Generally speaking, there are numerous Lawful ways to keep the thief from stealing and to teach the kid a lesson about gambling, only if (for some reason) those Lawful methods are completely unavailable is the Paladin reluctantly forced to lie or cheat.
EDIT:
This edit has been slightly ninja'd. I still think it's relevant.
Pretty black and white: If you violate your code of conduct, you lose your paladinhood until you atone.
It's hard out here for a paladin.
Lying isn't necessarily a Paladin code violation. Not lying isn't a point on the code per se, it's an example of 'acting with honor'. Not acting with honor really will cause a Paladin's immediate fall, but there are times when it is honorable to lie (or at least to be deceptive). I mean, would you call the people who lied to the Nazis about the Jews they were hiding dishonorable? I sure wouldn't.
But let's please not get sidetracked on this, there have been several hundred post threads on the question of whether Paladins can lie, which strikes me as a bit off-topic for this thread.
Going by RAW, even if the paladin has "no choice", they will fall. However, they can always atone via atonement; there is no RAW for unforgivable sins in Pathfinder. So it comes down to, is your choice worth the stain on your honor/soul/whatever?
Keep in mind that this is just RAW. A paladin's deity may be (and probably is) much more understanding of such situations. But it behooves a paladin to find a solution, any solution, that does not violate the code.
If the Nazis ask you whether you are hiding any Jews, you're in trouble. Of course, this is a paladin we're talking about. A paladin would say "yes", defeat the now-hostile Nazis, lead the Jews to safety, then return with an army to take out Hitler. The paladin code isn't for the average mortal--it's for a champion of right.
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But that is consequentialist in nature. Moral law is not sufficient, so we'll toss out moral law to achieve a moral end. Which brings me back to my original question and the one that I'm not sure you actually answered:
Not necessarily. His Code specifically defines Good as more important than Law. It defines Law as a means to an end. How is following his Code not deontological, ethics-wise?
You're saying that a paladins Code and God would almost universally consider the second (Good) a higher priority than the first (Law and Order). I'd just like to know what support you have for this claim.
Kevin Andrew Murphy lays it out pretty clearly. Paladins don't fall for a single Chaotic act, they do for a single Evil one. They also have Detect Evil, and Smite Evil, not Chaos. I think it's clear where whoever's giving them these powers' priorities lie.
As to your hypothetical, I'm sorry, I thought I did respond. But you're right, I didn't give it a great deal of thought or an appropriate answer. I don't have time right this second, but I'll respond to it in more detail tonight or tomorrow.
Cool :)
Going by RAW, even if the paladin has "no choice", they will fall. However, they can always atone via atonement; there is no RAW for unforgivable sins in Pathfinder. So it comes down to, is your choice worth the stain on your honor/soul/whatever?
Keep in mind that this is just RAW. A paladin's deity may be (and probably is) much more understanding of such situations. But it behooves a paladin to find a solution, any solution, that does not violate the code.
If the Nazis ask you whether you are hiding any Jews, you're in trouble. Of course, this is a paladin we're talking about. A paladin would say "yes", defeat the now-hostile Nazis, lead the Jews to safety, then return with an army to take out Hitler. The paladin code isn't for the average mortal--it's for a champion of right.
There's a difference between a champion of right and Superman. A 1st level paladin armed with nothing more than an olive fork can't destroy Asmodeus and it's not dishonorable for him to not even bother trying.
And it's important to note that it's "acting with honor" that's on the code and not the sub-examples of ways to act with honor, because it's easy to carve exceptions to those if you just think a little bit.
Let's say, for example, the one about not using poison. Poison-use has recently been moved from the list of "evil" things to the list of "Paladin-taboo" things because poison is not evil so much as it is dishonorable. The classic example is the sword fight from Hamlet where someone poisons a blade. Dueling is supposed to be an honor combat, witnessed by the gods and decided by some mix of skill and divine wishes. Adding poison is cheating, and cheating is dishonorable.
But let's say, for example, the children in the orphanage are infested with giant ticks. If the ticks are pulled out, the children will die, and this even happens if the ticks are killed by most means. How is the paladin to protect the children from death by the giant ticks?
Fortunately, the local druid has made a present to the orphanage, a reliquary helpfully marked IN CASE OF GIANT TICK INFESTATION, BREAK GLASS. The paladin does but inside finds a bottle of poison, along with explicit instructions from the druid of how much poison to feed the chilren so as to kill the ticks and not the kids.
Now if we run paladinhood as an insane punchcard computer, the paladin loses his powers, then goes to the cleric, asks for an Atonement, and is all "Bless me father, for I have sinned" as the cleric asks him about his sin, hears the story of the ticks, the orphans, and the druid's bottle of tick-killing poison.
The cleric will be all "Dude? Seriously? You're having to atone for THAT? It's not dishonorable to use bug killer on bugs. It's what it's for. You're not supposed to poison blades for duels, or people at a dinner party, or god's forbid poison a well, but killing stupid vermin is completely honorable, especially if you're doing it to save the lives of a bunch of innocent kids. Duh." And if this really happened, any cleric capable of casting Atonement is also going to be capable of casting Commune and is going to be asking their god some questions like "Did you really strip of a paladin of his powers for using bug killer to save orphans from giant ticks? Isn't the spirit of the law supposed to be more important than the letter? Are you sure you're not Asmodeus because you sure sound a lot like him?"
Honestly only Lawful Evil champions the letter of the law over the spirit. If you have a code set up by a Lawful Good divinity, the important thing is honoring the spirit of the code, not the precise letter. The business about lying, cheating, or using poison is meant as an example of things that are generally dishonorable, not a checklist of black-and-white morality. If the shy, insecure, and frankly plump princess asks "Does this dress make me look fat?" the paladin does not immediately fall for saying "You look lovely" instead of "As Iomedae is my witness, verily, it does."
Protecting the innocent is also on his list of job requirements, and if it takes a bit of insincere flattery to protect a shy and vulnerable girl, then that's the choice he has to make.
Crushing the spirit of an innocent girl? That's an evil act, and that's the sort of thing a paladin should lose his paladinhood for.
Just wanna say there's some GREAT back-and-fourth in here. Very enlightening debate. :)
I also wanted to hop in and explain real quick that I specified that the sentence in my OP is being handed out by a fair/neutral party specifically to avoid the "Robin Hood" argument. ;)
That is to say, a Paladin gets Detect Evil at will for a reason. When he meets Robin and his Merry Men, he sees that they're up to no good to achieve a greater good, and there's no true evil among them. He may disagree with their methods, but greater good is being done, so it's enough to look away. When he later meets the Sheriff of Nottingham, he notices that the Sheriff's guards are not evil, but the Sheriff himself is, in fact, quite evil. So when the Law asks where the criminals are hiding, the Paladin doesn't have to give him a true answer, because doing so would be willingly aiding evil.
Going by RAW, even if the paladin has "no choice", they will fall. However, they can always atone via atonement; there is no RAW for unforgivable sins in Pathfinder. So it comes down to, is your choice worth the stain on your honor/soul/whatever?
Keep in mind that this is just RAW. A paladin's deity may be (and probably is) much more understanding of such situations. But it behooves a paladin to find a solution, any solution, that does not violate the code.
If the Nazis ask you whether you are hiding any Jews, you're in trouble. Of course, this is a paladin we're talking about. A paladin would say "yes", defeat the now-hostile Nazis, lead the Jews to safety, then return with an army to take out Hitler. The paladin code isn't for the average mortal--it's for a champion of right.
There's a difference between a champion of right and Superman. A 1st level paladin armed with nothing more than an olive fork can't destroy Asmodeus and it's not dishonorable for him to not even bother trying.
And it's important to note that it's "acting with honor" that's on the code and not the sub-examples of ways to act with honor, because it's easy to carve exceptions to those if you just think a little bit.
Let's say, for example, the one about not using poison. Poison-use has recently been moved from the list of "evil" things to the list of "Paladin-taboo" things because poison is not evil so much as it is dishonorable. The classic example is the sword fight from Hamlet where someone poisons a blade. Dueling is supposed to be an honor combat, witnessed by the gods and decided by some mix of skill and divine wishes. Adding poison is cheating, and cheating is dishonorable.
But let's say, for example, the children in the orphanage are infested with giant ticks. If the ticks are pulled out, the children will die, and this even happens if the ticks are killed by most means. How is the paladin to protect the children from death by the giant ticks?
Fortunately, the local...
The bug heresy. I like it. Poor paladin.
"Crushing the spirit of an innocent girl? That's an evil act, and that's the sort of thing a paladin should lose his paladinhood for."
C'mon, it wouldn't crush her spirit, it is just an uncomfortable truth. If the paladin opts for truth he isn't being a courtier, but he shouldn't lose his paladin abilities. That is just a bit silly, although I did like your tick example.
The bug heresy. I like it. Poor paladin.
"Crushing the spirit of an innocent girl? That's an evil act, and that's the sort of thing a paladin should lose his paladinhood for."
C'mon, it wouldn't crush her spirit, it is just an uncomfortable truth. If the paladin opts for truth he isn't being a courtier, but he shouldn't lose his paladin abilities. That is just a bit silly, although I did like your tick example.
So being just slightly cruel with an uncomfortable truth is not cause for loss of paladinhood but saying something kind but insincere is? A rather bizarre double standard.
But I'm positing more a case of the terribly insecure sheltered and not too-bright girl who, once she realizes she's been surrounded her whole life by lies and insincere flattery, leaps out of the tower window in a grand gesture of teen angst--and if you don't think that's possible, look at high school suicide rates.
I'm also thinking about a paladin being so high-and-mighty and preening about his virtue that he inadvertently causes great harm. A sin of omission rather than commission, but a sin all the same. If an innocent comes to a paladin needing protection but is instead given ugly truth, and this ends up leading to tragedy, is the paladin responsible? If you upheld truth but failed to protect the innocent, even from themselves, then you suck as a paladin.
I'd happily strip the paladinhood of a paladin who when faced with a choice between Kindness and Truthfulness, put Truthfulness on a pedestal and threw Kindness in the dustbin.
I'm responding to you as I read.
You are really getting into the emotive terms here, with words like "cruel" and "crushing the spirit of an innocent girl". Mundane everyday social sh*t, faux pas, this can't be a way to lose paladin abilities, surely. Or at least, I've never read that a frank paladin (Frank the frank Paladin) or an impolite one would lose their powers. Some people's emotions veer all over the place, and what then would happen, if the paladin lied (badly) and the woman got grievously offended? Would he lose his abilities then for trying to be kind, but the insecurity still led to inner turmoil?
"But I'm positing more a case of the terribly insecure sheltered and not too-bright girl who, once she realizes she's been surrounded her whole life by lies and insincere flattery, leaps out of the tower window in a grand gesture of teen angst--and if you don't think that's possible, look at high school suicide rates."
Likewise, if you want to take this further I can too. So our paladin is frank and truthful, and an "insecure sheltered and not too-bright girl" then kills herself. Is he going to lose his powers? He didn't push her. I worry pc attitudes that we MUST be complimentary and respectful even to the insecure, sheltered and not too-bright are shaping your views here.
"I'm also thinking about a paladin being so high-and-mighty and preening about his virtue that he inadvertently causes great harm."
Well he could be that, this is true. Or he could care far more for the real evil out there, and not care for giving false compliments or bolstering a brats self esteem. The world she "lives in is a sugar coated topping, there is another world beneath it, the real world."
Course, I have taken such a course through my life, and I have been called evil by some, evil for not giving easy compliments, not caring for popular opinions and showy courtier acts. I am no paladin to be sure, but not all paladins would be pc courtiers either, concerned to never hurt feelings. A harsh world will make harsh paladins.
Looking at your end sentence, you have answered my question. Frank is no longer a paladin. :'(
Poor guy, he failed his sensitivity training, because that is what is important as a paladin and the measure of whether you stay or are cast out.
Kevin, are you confusing nice with good?
It seems you are sure that a champion of good must always be nice and do what is decent? There are bigger things in play in a fantasy setting. Real evil to fight and counter. What if the paladin was a bawdy, rough joking knight before they went paladin? Will their non polite character doom them? Must they end their old selves and always be nice, always worry about causing minor offence? This seems off.
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Kevin, are you confusing nice with good?
It seems you are sure that a champion of good must always be nice and do what is decent? There are bigger things in play in a fantasy setting. Real evil to fight and counter. What if the paladin was a bawdy, rough joking knight before they went paladin? Will their non polite character doom them? Must they end their old selves and always be nice, always worry about causing minor offence? This seems off.
Ah, the "Into the Woods" dilemma. Indeed, nice is different from good.
Except when it isn't.
As I see it, a paladin is expected to be a paragon of all virtues, a shining beacon of goodness and hope. While the paladin's code can be based on the various historic codes of chivalry, most of those can be boiled down to the Golden Rule and the Wiccan Rede. If you cross "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" with "An it harm no one, do what thou wilt," you've got some basics of a moral compass.
Being a bawdy rough joking knight doesn't doom you, but it does if your bawdy rough jokes stray from merely causing offense to actively causing emotional harm and then you brazenly continue on your path, arrogantly denying the validity of the harm you've caused. This is a textbook illustration of the Sin of Pride.
If you want "Real evil to fight and counter," then the Seven Deadly Sins have to be at the top of that list, especially when you live in a world when these sins can take physical form as sinspawn.
Lust is also one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Precisely why are you telling bawdy jokes?
Certainly the dumb little princess in her sugarcoated world doesn't seem like a likely innocent to protect--surely the "real evil to fight and counter" must be lurking somewhere else--but if the Sin of Envy isn't working overtime in that court, with Covetousness and Wroth as backup dancers and cameo appearances by Gluttony and Pride, then you're not looking.
The Seven Deadly Sins are Lust, Gluttony, Covetousness, Sloth, Wroth, Envy, and Pride. They're countered by the Seven Heavenly Virtues, namely Chastity, Temperance, Charity, Diligence, Patience, Kindness, and Humility.
The insecure little princess is asking about whether she looks fat because she's under assault from the Sin of Envy, personified by all the girls at court who envy her higher noble status and work their damnedest to crush her self worth by making her aware of ugly facts like the fact that she is fat. The paladin's brutal honesty is something she's been steered towards by their machinations.
Envy is countered by Kindness. If the paladin had been kind, he could have tempered his truthfulness with some honest praise of some other feature and then segued into some parable of Shelyn about inner beauty being true beauty and how the only way one can counter envy is with kindness.
Now admittedly this isn't being a holy knight smacking down evil monsters with a big sword, but if the Sin of Envy is planning to possess the most envious person at court, transforming them into a sinspawn, there can be some actual smackdown, the whole thing made more tragic with the knowledge that moments before, this vile creature had just been a stupid jealous girl conspiring to destroy the dumb little princess.
Beating things with a sword is all well and good, but any fighter can do that. For a paladin to be any sort of champion of good, he's going to have to be embodying all of the virtues, or at very least trying hard and admitting his failings. Being unkind to the insecure little princess in her fake sugarcoated world because you want to fight "real evils" is playing right into the hands of the Sin of Envy, not to mention Wroth and Pride, because the paladin feels that he's more virtuous for fighting "real evils," angry that he has to deal with such foolishness as insecure noblewomen, and also a small bit envious of their "sugarcoated" existence because they've never had to face "real evil."
So would I pull the paladin's paladinhood for being unkind? In a heartbeat. I'd then let him deal with the Envy sinspawn as an object lesson, then after that let him visit a cleric for an Atonement where the cleric would tell him about the Virtue of Kindness, as embodied by Shelyn, and how such inner beauty is the only thing that can triumph over Envy.
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"
How does that work with smiting evil, and exterminating/banishing the fouls forces in the world? The class isn't about doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, it is a militant lawful good, not a nice lawful good that always has to watch what they say to young fat noble girls. Please correct me from something from the class description if I am wrong.
"to actively causing emotional harm"
Emotional harm is incredibly subjective, and emotional harm a very modern and questionable term is not used in the code of conduct or ex-paladin section. The problem with emotional harm is that the "victim" is able to claim all manner of major hurt from even minor comments, as we see today. You are binding too much of morality now, to this holy warrior of fantasy. Fantasy Golarion is not our world with its pc language and willingness to consider almost anything harm. In fact in your earlier example, you claimed that if the paladin doesn't lie and breach their code, they can be willfully and actively causing harm. What a tangled mess you are draping around the paladin! You can't concentrate on the emotional harm issue, without the glaring problem of what a paladin actually does. Kill demons, foul spellcasters, their servants, smash apart violent, sentient undead. This all involves emotional harm too you know. No one likes being smited, their door kicked in, being hit, taking damage, shouted at, told to convert and surrended etc etc. The paladin is first and foremost a warrior of light, they are not a warrior of niceties. Small breaches in decency and niceness are just that, minor and given the cosmic battles in play, insignificant.
"Lust is also one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Precisely why are you telling bawdy jokes?"
You want to police everything, this is just getting a bit silly. Rough warrior/masculine humour is not one of the seven deadly sins. A dirty joke does not make a paladin fallen unless you can find me the relevant material to prove it. Paladins are paragons of law and good against chaos and evil, but they are still human (if they are indeed humans, lol) and humans have wishes, needs and want to express themselves. A joke, a moment of expressed lust, I want canon material saying it makes you fallen, or this is just a baseless view.
"Now admittedly this isn't being a holy knight smacking down evil monsters with a big sword, but if the Sin of Envy is planning to possess the most envious person at court,"
Indeed, you are making this a Christian morality tale. Paladins are not Christians, not in Golarion, not in the Forgotten Realms, not in Greyhawk or Ravenloft.
"So would I pull the paladin's paladinhood for being unkind? In a heartbeat. I'd then let him deal with the Envy sinspawn as an object lesson, then after that let him visit a cleric for an Atonement where the cleric would tell him about the Virtue of Kindness, as embodied by Shelyn, and how such inner beauty is the only thing that can triumph over Envy."
Very preachy. It also is not in the forces of good's interest. It is very easy to be considered unkind by other humans. They get offended quickly and passionately, even if one doesn't do anything wrong, or you didn't lie effectively, or at the right time. If paladins lost their powers for any act of unkindness, how many paladins do you think there would be? No. These are just your views. Paladins fight to bring about a better future, causing offence doesn't come into it, and rightly so. Because a paladin trying to bring law, order and a safe sanctuary to a troubled region could easily offend all manner of chaotics, neutrals, even other lawfuls with what they say, suggest or act to bring about. Using violence brings a lot of passionate opinions after all, including condemnation, even if you do end evil, even if you save people they might not see it that way.
I'm looking over the code of conduct, and it says they do not lie. It is a minor breach, but not a major breach since it isn't a greatly evil act. So the lie to the little fat girl question has been answered. If you can find something that the paladin must always take great pains never to offend or hurt the feelings of someone, I will listen. Provide page numbers please.
Composed by a friend:
Frank was a Frank Paladin, and he was forthright and forward with his fellows but alas he was fully a fool when he foolishly made a little girl cry, and that is the story of how Frank the frank paladin because Frank the fallen Falladin.
I'm looking over the code of conduct, and it says they do not lie. It is a minor breach, but not a major breach since it isn't a greatly evil act. So the lie to the little fat girl question has been answered. If you can find something that the paladin must always take great pains never to offend or hurt the feelings of someone, I will listen. Provide page numbers please.
Sure. Here we go:
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.
The "and so forth" is the elastic clause of the paladin's code. The code of what is honorable is not limited to a short list of virtues such as Truthfulness, Fairness, and an aversion to ignoble weapons such as poison, but those are mentioned to give examples so that a common sense examination of any particular set of virtues and sins will put the virtues on the "do" list and the sins on the "do not" list.
Take, for example, Bravery and Cowardice. Does it say anywhere that paladins must be brave and can't be cowardly? And isn't this whole "cowardice" thing a subjective perception anyway? If you say that your paladin is bravely making a strategic retreat from the possessed chipmunk that ran out of the Worldwound, why shouldn't your GM believe you? And who is this Iomedae who's looking down from the clouds and frowning at you? Who is she to judge? Show me where, specifically, it says a paladin must be brave and can't be cowardly or I can't pardon my own sins or simply declare they're not sins to begin with?
Honestly, this very quickly becomes silly. Paladins, with their whole "Aura of Courage" power that they get at third level and even broadcast this immunity to fear to their allies, are obviously supposed to embody the virtue of Bravery/Courage and not the sin of Cowardice. This is not a stretch. It's common sense. You don't get to pretend the "and so forth" doesn't exist.
But if you're unclear on what the "and so forth" in the code means, turn to the introduction of the paladin class and read what it says about paladins:
Through a select, worthy few shines the power of the divine. Called paladins, these noble souls dedicate their swords and lives to battle against evil. Knights, crusaders, and law-bringers, paladins seek not just to spread divine justice but to embody the teachings of the virtuous deities they serve. In pursuit of these lofty goals, they adhere to ironclad laws of morality and discipline.
So, as to the question of whether Kindness is a virtue and Cruelty is a sin, if you go to the list of "virtuous deities" that paladins can serve, you've got Shelyn, the Eternal Rose, goddess of Beauty and Kindness, who opposes her brother, Zon-Kuthon, god of Torture and Cruelty.
Now I suppose you could say that your bawdy crude joking paladin doesn't worship namby-pamby nicey-good Shelyn, but instead serves Iomedae, the Inheritor, bad-ass righteous crusader chick. In fact, that's even how he prays to her, "O bad-ass righteous crusader chick, bless me!" She's a warrior, she knows barracks-room humor, and she's not offended at all by being called "chainmail chick." It's probably not made it onto the church's official list of holy names, but everyone knows who you're talking about.
So lets look at the virtues chainmail chick--ahem, Iomedae--embodies.
Iomedae(pronounced ahy-OH-meh-day) is the goddess of righteous valor, justice, and honor. Having served as Aroden's herald, she inherited many of the Last Azlanti's followers upon his death, and continues to espouse the ideas of honor and righteousness in the defense of good and the battle against evil.History
As a mortal, Iomedae was a Chelish human who led the Knights of Ozem in the Shining Crusade against the forces of the Whispering Tyrant. In the fall of 3832 AR, Iomedae, was the last mortal to pass the Test of the Starstone and ascend to godhood. Her actions took the notice of Aroden. She became his herald, replacing the slain Arazni. She served him in this capacity until Aroden's death in 4606 AR.
RelationshipsIomedae views Abadar, Cayden Cailean, Erastil, Sarenrae, Shelyn, and Torag as the equivalent of allies. She harbours a grudge against Pharasma, for keeping secret the demise of Aroden. With the exception of Asmodeus, she never associates or parlays with evil gods or fiends. Even with Asmodeus though, Iomedae treats him with extreme caution, and never in more than an advisory role.
Now, if you look at this description, Iomedae is not the goddess of Kindness, but she is the goddess of Honor, and she is allied with Shelyn, goddess of Kindness--and she's also opposed to all the evil gods, including Zon-Kuthon, god of Cruelty.
Now comes the question of "What Would Iomedae Do?" (WWID) when faced with the situation of the fat insecure little princess and the whole sugarcoated court that's really more of Shelyn's province than her own. But Shelyn wasn't available, or more to the point, none of the courtly romantic gallant paladins of Shelyn were available either. All that was available to root out evil in the pretty sugarcoated court was the bawdy crude crusading knight of Iomedae who's really great at smacking the evil spawn that crawls out of the Worldwound but kind of sucks at this court intrigue stuff.
What Iomedae would do is she would soldier up. Honor demands that she help an ally, even if the situation is unfamiliar, awkward, or strange. Evil is evil and needs to be opposed no matter what the battlefield, and while she's much more comfortable laying the smackdown on some demonic monstrosity that crawled out of the Worldwound, some demons are subtle. There might be a disguised succubus tempting folk with lust, charming them, and having them do her evil bidding, or it might be Jealousy, the Green-Eyed Monster, whispering in little girls ears and encouraging them in petty cruelties which will culminate in some grand tragedy. And Iomedae's paladin? Same thing. Soldier up, bucko. Here's Shelyn's checklist of the virtues she embodies, and while they may not be Iomedae's cardinal virtues, she still thinks all of them are a good idea, and are certainly better than their matching sins which will not be tolerated under any circumstances.
So as to the question of whether all paladins must be Kind, if you look at Iomedae, you'd think she might be brusk, disciplined, military in her precision with no time for mollycoddling, expecting folk to have a stiff upper lip because don't you know there's a war with evil and we're in it. But Cruel or Envious? Never. Same with her paladins. And if dealing with those suffering from emotional wounds or scarring, Iomedae might be awkward with such unfamiliar territory, but would do her best because that's what honor demands and she is the most honorable of goddesses.
She doesn't expect any less from her paladins, nor will she tolerate anything less.
Emotional harm is incredibly subjective, and emotional harm a very modern and questionable term is not used in the code of conduct or ex-paladin section. The problem with emotional harm is that the "victim" is able to claim all manner of major hurt from even minor comments, as we see today. You are binding too much of morality now, to this holy warrior of fantasy. Fantasy Golarion is not our world with its pc language and willingness to consider almost anything harm. In fact in your earlier example, you claimed that if the paladin doesn't lie and breach their code, they can be willfully and actively causing harm. What a tangled mess you are draping around the paladin! You can't concentrate on the emotional harm issue, without the glaring problem of what a paladin actually does. Kill demons, foul spellcasters, their servants, smash apart violent, sentient undead. This all involves emotional harm too you know. No one likes being smited, their door kicked in, being hit, taking damage, shouted at, told to convert and surrended etc etc. The paladin is first and foremost a warrior of light, they are not a warrior of niceties. Small breaches in decency and niceness are just that, minor and given the cosmic battles in play, insignificant.
.......
Very preachy. It also is not in the forces of good's interest. It is very easy to be considered unkind by other humans. They get offended quickly and passionately, even if one doesn't do anything wrong, or you didn't lie effectively, or at the right time. If paladins lost their powers for any act of unkindness, how many paladins do you think there would be? No. These are just your views. Paladins fight to bring about a better future, causing offence doesn't come into it, and rightly so. Because a paladin trying to bring law, order and a safe sanctuary to a troubled region could easily offend all manner of chaotics, neutrals, even other lawfuls with what they say, suggest or act to bring about. Using violence brings a lot of passionate opinions after all, including condemnation, even if you do end evil, even if you save people they might not see it that way.
Sensitivity to others and not giving offense is honestly not a modern concept. Check out this listing:
The Knights Code of Chivalry was part of the culture of the Middle Ages and was understood by all. A Code of Chivalry was documented in 'The Song of Roland' in the Middle Ages Knights period of William the Conqueror who ruled England from 1066. The 'Song of Roland' describes the 8th century Knights of the Dark Ages and the battles fought by the Emperor Charlemagne. The code has since been described as Charlemagne's Code of Chivalry. The Song of Roland was the most famous 'chanson de geste' and was composed between 1098-1100, describing the betrayal of Count Roland at the hand of Ganelon, and his resulting death in the Pyranee Mountains at the hands of the Saracens. Roland was a loyal defender of his liege Lord Charlemagne and his code of conduct a description of the meaning of chivalry.The Knights Code of Chivalry and the vows of Knighthood
The Knights Code of Chivalry described in the Song of Roland and an excellent representation of the Knights Codes of Chivalry are as follows:
To fear God and maintain His Church
To serve the liege lord in valour and faith
To protect the weak and defenceless
To give succour to widows and orphans
To refrain from the wanton giving of offence
To live by honour and for glory
To despise pecuniary reward
To fight for the welfare of all
To obey those placed in authority
To guard the honour of fellow knights
To eschew unfairness, meanness and deceit
To keep faith
At all times to speak the truth
To persevere to the end in any enterprise begun
To respect the honour of women
Never to refuse a challenge from an equal
Never to turn the back upon a foe
Of the seventeen entries in the Knights Codes of Chivalry, according to the Song of Roland, at least 12 relate to acts of chivalry as opposed to combat.
Really, this is not a modern concept or modern sensitivity. This is something codified a thousand years ago.
Certainly, there is wiggle room. You're supposed to avoid the "wanton giving of offense." Not all offense, just doing it wantonly.
The truthfulness? Yes, it's there. So is honoring and respecting women. So is avoiding "meanness" which is another word for cruelty.
The "ironclad laws of morality and discipline" referred to in the Core Rules paladin introduction? This is one of them.
Certainly it's not the only one. Let's look at another.
The chivalric virtues of the Knights Code of Chivalry were described in the 14th Century by the Duke of Burgandy. The words he chose to use to describe the virtues that should be exhibited in the Knights Code of Chivalry were as follows:Faith
Charity
Justice
Sagacity
Prudence
Temperance
Resolution
Truth
Liberality
Diligence
Hope
Valour
The Knights Code of Chivalry as described by the Duke of Burgandy.
That has some different items, but still has the same basic idea.
I'm perfectly fine with having fantasy paladins coming up with some different code from those above, but there should still be similarities and it shouldn't be just whatever the player makes up at the moment, especially since it's the GM and not the player who plays the god or goddess and says what's okay with them.
The LG gods and their associated LN and NG gods are basically in agreement as to what's lawful and good, and only quibble about priorities and what's ranked over what. Shelyn likely ranks Kindness and Beauty over Truth. Iomedae almost certainly ranks Truth over Kindness and doesn't even rank Beauty as a virtue unless you're talking inner beauty. After all, there are an awful lot of pretty succubi out there, so beauty is no guarantee of goodness or righteousness. And even Shelyn would agree that inner beauty is more important than outer beauty.
Ok, I'm back. I apologize for the delay (haven't been at my computer for almost 48 hours).
But that is consequentialist in nature. Moral law is not sufficient, so we'll toss out moral law to achieve a moral end. Which brings me back to my original question and the one that I'm not sure you actually answered:Not necessarily. His Code specifically defines Good as more important than Law. It defines Law as a means to an end. How is following his Code not deontological, ethics-wise?
No it doesn't. Nowhere does it define it thusly. What it does do is imply that Evil is worse than Chaos. But that's not the same thing and you can't, as a result, rationally make this assumption. If there were text that stated, "You must commit good acts that you encounter" or "you must only associate with good people", then that would be understandable. If you could logically make this assumption, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation. See, my whole point of contention is that people separate the two notions of Law and Good and then compare the two concepts for primacy of value.
That's great and all, but for a paladin, it becomes a singular concept, as I've said. It becomes like honey water. The paladin likes honey water, but doesn't care much for honey or water separately. You don't take the honey away from the water and say "paladins like honey more than water". Water alone is not enough. Honey alone is not enough. Lawful Good combined is what he is. Law is Good and Good is Law.
You want to say, "Well, if he can't have both, but can have one, which will he take?" He might take neither. See, that becomes a horribly subjective question, then. Everyone assumes that the "protecting an innocent life" is so Good that no matter how strong or credible the law, court, or ruler - he would break the law. There is a Lawful response and there is a Good response (but no one is just Lawful or just Good), and then there is the Lawful Good response.
Regarding the OP, his little black book says, "No. You don't do it." He has no directive to protect innocent life. He has a directive to "help those in need (provided they do not use the help for evil or chaotic ends)". The exception tells you everything you need to know. Breaking out of a prison a man he believes to be innocent is the very definition of what he's not supposed to do, because he providing help to someone in need, but that help is being used to break and flee the Law.
Being Good, he does desire to "protect innocent life", but he is not solely Good. He is Lawful Good and tries to protect innocent life when he can. But physical limitations aren't the only constraints on a paladin.
Break down his three main directives:
- 1) Must be lawful good - not truly a point of contention - protecting innocent life is not part of being Lawful Good, it is simply what Good people do, when they can
- 2) Must never commit an evil act - not acting is "not committing an evil act", by definition
- 3) Must never violate the Code of Conduct - not truly a point of contention, either - if he breaks this guy out of jail, it's a chaotic action that violates the "help those in need" clause
You're saying that a paladins Code and God would almost universally consider the second (Good) a higher priority than the first (Law and Order). I'd just like to know what support you have for this claim.Kevin Andrew Murphy lays it out pretty clearly. Paladins don't fall for a single Chaotic act, they do for a single Evil one. They also have Detect Evil, and Smite Evil, not Chaos. I think it's clear where whoever's giving them these powers' priorities lie.
Yeah - not acting evil is primary and not acting chaotically is secondary. I can stipulate that this is implied.
Say there's a young girl of 16 or so being forced into marriage with a man in his 30s who's known for being violently abusive to his women. Indeed, he's buried several already, and as a devotee of Zon-Kuthon, their deaths were the least of the awful things he did to them. She begs the Paladin's help. I think we'd all agree the Paladin must help her to escape her situation, so as to avoid being tortured, raped, and murdered.
Agreed. Forcing someone into a torturous and dangerous situation is against the principles of Lawful Good characters and Paladins in particular.
Now, let's add a couple of things to this: She's a princess, and her marriage to this man (a King, actually) is all that's keeping him from invading her (Lawful Good aligned) country and causing a bloody war. And her betrothal is entirely legal by the laws of her country. Indeed, breaking it is a crime (specifically, high treason). We'll assume (for the sake of argument) that only breaking the betrothal can save her. Does the Paladin's answer to her cries for help change?
One would assume that if the country is Lawful Good, the only way such a thing could be legal is if it were an exception to the rule and that such legislation was done with a utilitarian position of protecting a multitude of innocents at the cost of the few or the one. "Shoot the plane down or let it ram another building like the first two did?"
Now, in my opinion, if it does, he can't be called a proper deontolgist (since he's letting consequences get in the way of his principles). Nor a Good man. And so no Paladin.
Of course it changes and it changes for very deontological reasons. A paladin doesn't break the law of a lawful good society without sufficient reason and this girl isn't sufficient reason. To a paladin, the law of a Lawful Good society is practically as Good and unquestionable as the Sun rises. It has produced a different and unfortunate scenario:
The first scenario is, "Save an innocent life."
The second scenario is, "Save an innocent life and put in jeopardy the lives of a thousand thousand people and violate the law which has come down on the side of the multitude."
Thus: to act in a chaotic and Evil way (saving one and putting a thousand at risk) is not the paladin way, it is the way of chaos. He would not violate the law to save the girl.
This law is one that a great deal of good people, paladins included, would probably never write. They wouldn't make this sort of utilitarian decision (the Spock Rule), because many people do not do see Good and Evil from a solely utilitarian viewpoint. Instead, they might see War as justified, instead; that defense of the individual is the purpose of a society. "If the whole is willing to abandon the part, then what value is the whole to each part?", they might ask.
It really depends on the ideology of the nation, obviously, but at some point, ideologies that claim their goal is "good" become "evil to the rest of us".
Regardless of how people equivocate, "Lack of action" is not an "act of omission". They are not the same. Letting a girl fall to her death is simply not the same as pushing her. It might be bad and condemnable, just not in the same way (like theft and slander are different things, both condemnable in their own way).
To help you understand the distinction, imagine a simple act:
1) To lift a rock.
I, the paladin, ascribe no moral value to the lifting of rocks. However, I am told by the King who I revere for his wisdom and goodness, "It is decreed that no one shall pick up this green and purple rock." Now, picking up that green and purple rock is an evil thing, because it violates the law. I don't need to know that picking up the rock also uncovers a well of evil power that will put the lives of the multitude in jeopardy. That may be the reason the King made the decree, but it had no bearing on my thinking.
Ok, wipe that away and start over. Imagine a simple act:
2) To lift a rock.
I, the paladin, ascribe no moral value to lifting rocks. Now, imagine a girl is about to die. She's a sweet and good girl who she has a natural power that courses through her and that power also sustains her life. That power has healed many sick and hurting people. Only, for some reason, she is dying, the power within her is dying. She points at a rock and says, "Please, good warrior of Serenrae, bring me that rock. It contains the element I need to renew my strength." Picking up that rock is now a good thing because it saves a good person's life.
Now, wipe that away and start over. Imagine a simple act:
3) To lift a rock.
I, the paladin, ascribe no moral value to lifting rocks. However, I am told by the King who I revere for his wisdom and goodness, "It is decreed that no one shall pick up this green and purple rock." Now, sometime later, a girl is about to die. She's a sweet and good girl who has a natural power that courses through her that sustains her life. That power has also healed many sick and hurting people who she has touched. Only, for some reason, she is dying; the power within her is dying. She points at a rock and says, "Please, good warrior of Serenrae, bring me that rock. It contains the elements I need, while here in my circle of magical runes, to reinvigorate my life." The rock she weakly points to is the rock the King told me not to pick up.
What do I do? I am a paladin; I am a champion of the law and of goodness. I must trust in the judgment of my King, even though I don't understand it and think it's wrongheaded and capricious. I say, "My lady, I may not. I would give you my life, if you can use it. But to bring you that rock violates the Law. Is there not some other way I can save you? May I not bring you to the rock? May I not find another rock of similar power? May I not..." No? I cry as she dies in my arms. I yell at Serenrae. I yell and blame my King's decree. But never, unless I grow weak of heart, do I touch the rock.
I wrote and deleted so much more. I thought this example might suffice to illustrate the distinction that inherently exists in your hypothetical situation. Saving the girl is like moving the rock in the third imagining. I trust in the judgment of my God first and my church second and in my King third, and lastly and in some distant place, in my own. I don't have personal codes. I don't have personal laws. I follow the laws and codes of something greater than me, because I trust in their inherent goodness.
I, the paladin, ascribe no moral value to lifting rocks. However, I am told by the King who I revere for his wisdom and goodness, "It is decreed that no one shall pick up this green and purple rock." Now, sometime later, a girl is about to die. She's a sweet and good girl who has a natural power that courses through her that sustains her life. That power has also healed many sick and hurting people who she has touched. Only, for some reason, she is dying; the power within her is dying. She points at a rock and says, "Please, good warrior of Serenrae, bring me that rock. It contains the elements I need, while here in my circle of magical runes, to reinvigorate my life." The rock she weakly points to is the rock the King told me not to pick up.
What do I do? I am a paladin; I am a champion of the law and of goodness. I must trust in the judgment of my King, even though I don't understand it and think it's wrongheaded and capricious. I say, "My lady, I may not. I would give you my life, if you can use it. But to bring you that rock violates the Law. Is there not some other way I can save you? May I not bring you to the rock? May I not find another rock of similar power? May I not..." No? I cry as she dies in my arms. I yell at Serenrae. I yell and blame my King's decree. But never, unless I grow weak of heart, do I touch the rock.
I wrote and deleted so much more. I thought this example might suffice to illustrate the distinction that inherently exists in your hypothetical situation. Saving the girl is like moving the rock in the third imagining. I trust in the judgment of my God first and my church second and in my King third, and lastly and in some distant place, in my own. I don't have personal codes. I don't have personal laws. I follow the laws and codes of something greater than me, because I trust in their inherent goodness.
Your paladin is an idiot and so is his supposedly "wise" king. The dying girl is also lacking in sense, though likely she can be excused because she's dying and delirious.
The situation we have here has been described before, and even in fantasy. Check this out:
Ozma turned to Ojo.
"Did you pick the six-leaved clover?" she asked.
"Yes," he replied. "I knew it was against the Law, but I wanted to save Unc Nunkie and I was afraid if I asked your consent to pick it you would refuse me."
"What caused you to think that?" asked the Ruler.
"Why, it seemed to me a foolish law, unjust and unreasonable. Even now I can see no harm in picking a six-leaved clover. And I—I had not seen the Emerald City, then, nor you, and I thought a girl who would make such a silly Law would not be likely to help anyone in trouble."
Ozma regarded him musingly, her chin resting upon her hand; but she was not angry. On the contrary she smiled a little at her thoughts and then grew sober again.
"I suppose a good many laws seem foolish to those people who do not understand them," she said; "but no law is ever made without some purpose, and that purpose is usually to protect all the people and guard their welfare. As you are a stranger, I will explain this Law which to you seems so foolish. Years ago there were many Witches and Magicians in the Land of Oz, and one of the things they often used in making their magic charms and transformations was a six-leaved clover. These Witches and Magicians caused so much trouble among my people, often using their powers for evil rather than good, that I decided to forbid anyone to practice magic or sorcery except Glinda the Good and her assistant, the Wizard of Oz, both of whom I can trust to use their arts only to benefit my people and to make them happier. Since I issued that Law the Land of Oz has been far more peaceful and quiet; but I learned that some of the Witches and Magicians were still practicing magic on the sly and using the six-leaved clovers to make their potions and charms. Therefore I made another Law forbidding anyone from plucking a six-leaved clover or from gathering other plants and herbs which the Witches boil in their kettles to work magic with. That has almost put an end to wicked sorcery in our land, so you see the Law was not a foolish one, but wise and just; and, in any event, it is wrong to disobey a Law."
The difference here is that while Ojo's attempt to save his uncle from being petrified doesn't have a ticking clock, the dying healer does. One also assumes that, as in both scenarios, the legal authority who made the law, and is in the position to make exemptions or suspensions, isn't convenient to wherever the quandary is happening. In Oz, the only two licensed practitioners of magic are the Wizard and Glinda, being in the Emerald City and the southern Quadling country respectively--not very convenient to the rest of Oz. In the scenario with the rock and the healer? Obviously the king who made the decree isn't there.
And it should be stressed that while the law was undoubtedly passed for a good reason, that doesn't make the law inherently good in and of itself. If the healer dies, an evil thing will definitely occur. If the rock is taken? Well, the law will be broken, yes, but it may be that the law was passed for a six-leaf clover situation, to keep the magic rock from being used for evil purposes. If the king were there in such a situation, he would surely permit the healer to take the rock.
Then again, the magic rock might be the power crystal that's charging the warding circle keeping the great peril in the vault of doom and taking it out would be a very bad thing, though it would still save the life of the healer.
In any case, the wisdom of the state is clearly questionable for making such laws without the reasoning behind them being clearly known. Likewise, the goodness of the state is also questionable for not providing sufficient channels for people to use things for legitimate purposes.
The paladin who lets the healer die because of his blind trust in his idiot king would quickly be an ex-paladin in my game, no matter how much weeping he did about needing to uphold the law because the inherent goodness of law. It would be like someone withholding lifesaving medication from a dying person because it isn't their name on the prescription bottle. And, it should also be stressed, there are usually laws that cover such things. If you need to break a law to save a life, you are expected to, and indeed there are laws that will charge you with criminal negligence if you don't.
Your paladin is an idiot and so is his supposedly "wise" king. The dying girl is also lacking in sense, though likely she can be excused because she's...
Well, considering I'm the one who wrote the paladin and the King, I can only perceive that you're using that term "idiot" towards me. Of course, that makes me question the target of its applicability. I wasn't trying to describe a perfectly viable situation, but rather the scenario of a law (like your six-leaved clover) where the consequences are not known. In truth, if such a rock were to exist, the King would probably have the rock well-guarded and anyone who came for it repulsed and perhaps told why.
The purpose of the example is to show the notion that not everyone sees themselves with the same hubris you suggest is appropriate for someone not an "idiot" (that their judgment is superior to another's or to another group). Someone who would look at these scenarios, descibed in single-paragraph form, and nitpick them is overanalyzing the form and not paying attention to the substance.
Let's just say the King didn't explain his reasons to the Paladin because he was afraid the Paladin would be tempted by the power available in the well. A power that could put him on par with the Gods might even corrupt a Paladin. Maybe he didn't think he should lie, either, because he knew this Paladin was loyal and righteous. It's irrelevant. And that's the point. A Lawful Good person doesn't put himself and his opinions and his thinking and his beliefs above that of those he considers his righteous authorities. And that's the point. And maybe the King didn't know there was a valid use for the rock. Or maybe he didn't have time to explain any further, because an emergency existed in the realm and that had to be dealt with. All of this is irrelevant.
You may not like it. You may think it's stupid. You're also probably not Lawful Good.
The problem with the six-leaved clover is the perfect example of why people in positions of power should be very careful about the laws they make--as some people uphold the law exactingly, especially when they have faith in the wisdom and righteousness of those in power.
The paladin who lets the healer die because of his blind trust in his idiot king would quickly be an ex-paladin in my game...
As is your choice. It's rather clear to me that I wouldn't play a paladin in your game. I don't like the notion of playing a Lawful Good character and being told I must play him Chaotic Good, because that is your reasoning here.
Deontologists have a legitimate argument, whether you like it or not, regarding upholding the Law of a Good and Just rulership. The rules support such characters, clearly. What if the paladin were an idiot in truth (like Int 7) and he was told the reasons, but couldn't remember (or even remember that he was told--he was distracted in the moment by a shout and the King's explanation was lost)? Should he ignore the law or his duty, then? Or what if he was smarter (like Int 12), but he couldn't understand the reason for they were subtle, but no less severe? Should he ignore the law or his duty, then?
If I misinterpreted your usage of the word "idiot", please forgive me.
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In real life, many religious traditions have a "confessor," and a religious confession is not only not allowed to be revealed by religion, but is protected by law. A Roman Catholic priest (for example) is hearing the confession of a rapist (for example) in a formal Sacrament of Penance (confession, for example), and can't reveal to the police who the rapist is. And if he did, it could not be used in court in most jurisdictions.
I understand the reason for the law, but what is correct (priest doesn't say anything) vs what is right (rapist is stopped) are at odd ends.
Your Cleric 11/Paladin 1 of Abadar is requested to cast atonement by a neutral evil Skinsaw Man who may (emphasize may) be trying to repent. Before casting you agreed on an oath to Abadar to keep what he has revealed confidential, part of the Atonement spell perhaps. Do you do the right thing, or the correct thing?
Negative cookies to the first person who says, "It's Pathfinder, you kill him and take his stuff."
Your paladin is an idiot and so is his supposedly "wise" king. The dying girl is also lacking in sense, though likely she can be excused because she's...Well, considering I'm the one who wrote the paladin and the King, I can only perceive that you're using that term "idiot" towards me. Of course, that makes me question the target of its applicability. I wasn't trying to describe a perfectly viable situation, but rather the scenario of a law (like your six-leaved clover) where the consequences are not known. In truth, if such a rock were to exist, the King would probably have the rock well-guarded and anyone who came for it repulsed and perhaps told why.
The purpose of the example is to show the notion that not everyone sees themselves with the same hubris you suggest is appropriate for someone not an "idiot" (that their judgment is superior to another's or to another group). Someone who would look at these scenarios, descibed in single-paragraph form, and nitpick them is overanalyzing the form and not paying attention to the substance.
Let's just say the King didn't explain his reasons to the Paladin because he was afraid the Paladin would be tempted by the power available in the well. A power that could put him on par with the Gods might even corrupt a Paladin. Maybe he didn't think he should lie, either, because he knew this Paladin was loyal and righteous. It's irrelevant. And that's the point. A Lawful Good person doesn't put himself and his opinions and his thinking and his beliefs above that of those he considers his righteous authorities. And that's the point. And maybe the King didn't know there was a valid use for the rock. Or maybe he didn't have time to explain any further, because an emergency existed in the realm and that had to be dealt with. All of this is irrelevant.
You may not like it. You may think it's stupid. You're also probably not Lawful Good.
The problem with the six-leaved clover is the perfect example of why people in positions of power should be very careful about the laws they make--as some people uphold the law exactingly, especially when they have faith in the wisdom and righteousness of those in power.
Kevin Andrew Murphy wrote:The paladin who lets the healer die because of his blind trust in his idiot king would quickly be an ex-paladin in my game...
As is your choice. It's rather clear to me that I wouldn't play a paladin in your game. I don't like the notion of playing a Lawful Good character and being told I must play him Chaotic Good, because that is your reasoning here.
Deontologists have a legitimate argument, whether you like it or not, regarding upholding the Law of a Good and Just rulership. The rules support such characters, clearly. What if the paladin were an idiot in truth (like Int 7) and he was told the reasons, but couldn't remember (or even remember that he was told--he was distracted in the moment by a shout and the King's explanation was lost)? Should he ignore the law or his duty, then? Or what if he was smarter (like Int 12), but he couldn't understand the reason for they were subtle, but no less severe? Should he ignore the law or his duty, then?
If I misinterpreted your usage of the word "idiot", please forgive me.
My usage of the word "idiot" was to my perception of the king and his laws, simply given the situation, especially the paladin who reveres the king for his "wisdom and goodness," despite the fact that the only thing the paladin can detect supernaturally is evil.
The paladin knows the king to be non-evil and I'm assuming assumes the king to be good as well, judging by the kings actions and acts, popular public opinion and whatnot. The wisdom of the king? Unless the paladin has a "detect wisdom" power, this is again a matter of the paladin's perceptions of the king's actions, public opinion and so on.
But let's cut away from your king and on to Ozma. She's got the same public reputation of being wise and good, but she's equally much an idiot. She was having a problem with evil magicians, so she banned all magic except for that done by the Wizard and Glinda, then for good measure, banned the collecting of all common spell components. While this may have had the desired consequence of cutting down on the number of wicked witches and evil magicians, it's also encouraged rampant disrespect for the law. Dr. Pipt, the Crooked Magician--a brilliant magical researcher and alchemist, and neutral as they come--pretty much blew the law off. This is indeed a common theme throughout the books.
In any case, Ozma ends up pardoning Ojo for his crime of picking the six-leaf clover and lets him keep it for making the potion that will unpetrify his uncle. This is good, certainly, but it would have been wiser and more good to have crafted the law with specific exemptions. But as you say "The problem with the six-leaved clover is the perfect example of why people in positions of power should be very careful about the laws they make--as some people uphold the law exactingly, especially when they have faith in the wisdom and righteousness of those in power."
My contention is that the enforcer's faith in the wisdom and righteousness of those in power is misplaced, and similarly those in power sometimes have a misplaced expectation of common sense on the part of their enforcers.
The other trouble with the law is that it is generally the work of generations. You may have a Good and Just ruler who is also Wise and all the other desirable things, but he's inherited a body of laws crafted by many others, some of whom were neither Good nor Just, and some of whom weren't very Wise either, and while the Good Wise Just king has tried his damnedest to strip all the Evil, Unjust, or just plain Idiotic laws out of the books, it's entirely possible something slipped through the cracks. Indeed, it's probably inevitable, and that's why corner cases should be brought in for judgement.
Beyond that, however, there's the problem of the paladin enforcing the law without understanding it. Yes, he may have faith is the wisdom and goodness of his rulers, but faith in something doesn't make it necessarily so. And if a paladin commits an evil act due to misplaced faith...?
Let's say there's a plague in the village. People are dropping like flies and the good king whom the paladin believes to be wise tells the paladin that he has good information that the plague has been caused by a witch, and as he has outlawed all witchcraft in his kingdom, she must be stopped so the village can be saved!
So the paladin goes off, finds an old lady in a cottage with a bubbling cauldron and all sorts of queer vials of preserved animals, overturns the cauldron, smashes all the vials, kills the witch's hissing black cat familiar, and drags her back to face the king's justice while she claims she's not a witch, she's an alchemist, she was working on a cure for the plague, and the paladin killed her pet cat!
As it turns out, she is right--she's not a witch, she is an alchemist (and that's not illegal), and she was working on a cure which is now ruined. And the paladin murdered her pet cat. And because he poured out the cure, everyone in the village dies.
So, how's that faith in the king's wisdom doing now?
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No it doesn't. Nowhere does it define it thusly. What it does do is imply that Evil is worse than Chaos. But that's not the same thing and you can't, as a result, rationally make this assumption.
I...really think you can. There's not actually any text about Law in the description at all (well, there's the fact odf a Code and 'respecty legitimate authority' but those are tangentially relate to Law itself at best) while the entire description and Code talks nonstop about doing Good thingsand smiting Evil.
That's rather compelling evidence, IMO.
That's great and all, but for a paladin, it becomes a singular concept, as I've said. It becomes like honey water. The paladin likes honey water, but doesn't care much for honey or water separately. You don't take the honey away from the water and say "paladins like honey more than water". Water alone is not enough. Honey alone is not enough. Lawful Good combined is what he is. Law is Good and Good is Law.
I actually agree with this. Sorta. Law is indeed important to the Paladin, and he vastly prefers honey water to either on their own. But sometimes, he's only gonna get one, and in those cases, he's obligated to pick honey.
Regarding the OP, his little black book says, "No. You don't do it." He has no directive to protect innocent life. He has a directive to "help those in need (provided they do not use the help for evil or chaotic ends)". The exception tells you everything you need to know. Breaking out of a prison a man he believes to be innocent is the very definition of what he's not supposed to do, because he providing help to someone in need, but that help is being used to break and flee the Law.
But that's not the end either he or the prisoner is attampting to reach (which is anthing but Chaotic). He's using Chaotic means to achieve an end both Lawful and Good (overturning a false conviction, and hopefully convicting the guilty party).
•2) Must never commit an evil act - not acting is "not committing an evil act", by definition
Regardless of how people equivocate, "Lack of action" is not an "act of omission". They are not the same. Letting a girl fall to her death is simply not the same as pushing her. It might be bad and condemnable, just not in the same way (like theft and slander are different things, both condemnable in their own way).
I think we may have just found the true heart of our disagreement:
Is standing by while an Evil act committed, while you have the power to stop it, an Evil act in and of itself?
I would say 'Yes, it is.' The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas was brought up earlier (and, I believe, linked). I would uncompromisingly say that those who stay in that society commit an Evil act...and so do those who leave without helping the child. Why? They had the power to help and chose not to. Is that as Evil as commiting the act yourself? No. Is it an Evil act? Yes.
I trust in the judgment of my God first and my church second and in my King third, and lastly and in some distant place, in my own. I don't have personal codes. I don't have personal laws. I follow the laws and codes of something greater than me, because I trust in their inherent goodness.
Huh? Where does it say Paladins arbitrarily put the judgment of anyone who happens to be a lawmaker or wearing a crown over their own? That's stated nowhere, and a realy stupid attitude to boot. A Paladin could put the judgment of a wise and good King he knew personally over his own, or he could put his own judgment over that of a King he knew to be cruel and capricious.
Always disobeying authority regardless of it's quality and legitimacy is an act of both hubris and Chaos, and not something a Paladin would ever do...but always obeying authority without ever questioning it's provenance or judgment is every bit as foolish, and (while a more Lawful mistake) is not appropriate behavior for a Paladin either. He has been chosen by the Gods as an arbiter of Law and Good and the King has not (unless the King happens to be a Paladin*). Putting the King's judgment definitionally above his own also puts it above the Gods' and is, quite frankly, every bit as much an expression of hubris.
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As for the rock example...it realy depends on circumstances. But the Paladin and the king really are both morons in that one. I mean, the King could explain the Law (in which case the Paladin will know why breaking it is bad), and the Paladin could take the dying girl over to the rock. I mean, I get what you're aiming for, here, but it's not an equivalent situation for several reasons.
*A Paladin probably shouldn't ever disobey the direct orders or commands of a higher ranking Paladin he knows not to be Fallen. I mean, that's an authority you can trust not to lead you wrong.
So, how's that faith in the king's wisdom doing now?
Wow. I have several problems with this. But primarily, it doesn't address anything of relevance. Let's take the issues individually.
1) All you've done is poorly (in my opinion) attacked the intelligence of the Paladin's position. While you may think the Paladin's position is stupid, it doesn't make it any less his. If you want to discuss the stupidity of such a position, I would be glad to, but I want it clear what we're discussing.
2) You've used the stupidity of the paladin at judging a person to be a witch as evidence of a poor choice of the King to outlaw witchcraft. It is a huge non-sequiter. The former is in no way related to the latter.
3) If the paladin, doing his duty, but due to reasonable error, causes an evil outcome, his culpability is greatly reduced or even negated. The error your paladin makes is not even reasonable. He is impulsive, makes a snap judgment, and causes harm. But if he didn't behave entirely foolishly (e.g. by appearances, he had every reason to believe she was a witch and her reaction to him surprising her was to make a movement he mistook as aggressive spellcasting and so he upended her brew, stepped on her cat to get to her quickly to interrupt her spellcasting, and then gagged her to prevent further casting [and causing her to be mute so she couldn't explain anything to him]), and instead simply made a reasonable mistake that any person might make, it is nobody's fault. S*** happens, all the time, in life. He would probably feel responsible, even if it was completely understandable and his actions completely justified.
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I know you think this Paladin's position is stupid. I'm going to give you a very simple argument. My goal is not to prove it right (because I don't think such a thing is possible), but to prove it's viability. The argument will be example-based. Consider:
Let's stipulate that there are two people, Persons X and Y.
X is very well-read, smart, wise, deliberate, open-minded, and broad in his thinking. His focus in life and study is philosophy, jurisprudence, religion/theology, governance, social theory, and international relations.
Y is very bull-like, strong, competent, focused on matters of practicality, and filled with salt-of-the-earth common sense. He is a defender of the good and right.
Now, in questions of judgment, especially matters of practicality, Y is almost always right. In fact, 99% of his judgments are right and accurate. But in matters of law and justice and relationships and contracts and criminality--wisdom in the affairs of men--X is almost always right. In fact, in such cases, X is seen to make the right decision by the large majority of the populace 99% of the time.
Interestingly, being closely related, X and Y are often in each others company and often have the opportunity to view and judge the other's positions on things. X often gets wrong the things that Y gets right in the matters of practicality (how much hay to store for the winter, how to best hunt the boar, the nature of animal tracks, and the heart of individual men), even when he's sometimes sure he's right, and Y often gets wrong the things that X often gets right in the questions of theology and philosophy and justice (adjudicating things too harshly or incorrectly, not seeing deep subtleties in the law or jingoism, failing to find the right middle path to walk between two warring countries), even when he's sometimes sure he's right. Certainty is not an inherent indicator of accuracy.
We'll say, for simplicity, that X is more often correct in matters of the mind and Y is right in matters of practical life. But let's stipulate that X is right in matters of practical life 85% of the time and Y is right in matters of the mind 85% of the time.
Now here's the point ->
If X puts matters of practicality in the hands of Y, it would be, overall, the correct thing to do. It doesn't matter how sure he is that he is right and Y is wrong on any particular matter. If he doesn't contest it, he's sure to be fine 99% of the time.
The same is true of Y in regards to X. If Y puts matters of the mind in the hands of X, it would be, overall, the correct thing to do. It doesn't matter how sure he is that he is right and X is wrong on any particular matter. If he doesn't contest it, he's sure to be fine 99% of the time.
Whereas, if either does all the deciding himself or only chooses to follow the advice of the other when he is not, himself, absolutely certain, he will be right less often than he should be.
Now, we could reduce X and Y to be exactly equal and if they put their faith in the other, they're going to be right an equal amount of times. The only time it ever becomes a problem is when the leader is more stupid than the follower in the area of his leadership.
That's just one argument for obeying authority and putting faith in one's King or Parliament or whatever ruling body you decide... like a court. There are others. He puts his faith in those that have collective wisdom or deep education and learning in matters of governance or who are privy to special information or... whatever. Arrogance in oneself is not the Paladin way. It is the way of chaos.
No it doesn't. Nowhere does it define it thusly. What it does do is imply that Evil is worse than Chaos. But that's not the same thing and you can't, as a result, rationally make this assumption.I...really think you can. There's not actually any text about Law in the description at all (well, there's the fact odf a Code and 'respecty legitimate authority' but those are tangentially relate to Law itself at best) while the entire description and Code talks nonstop about doing Good things and smiting Evil.
That's rather compelling evidence, IMO.
No it doesn't. The code says nothing about Good. His associates can not be evil. His actions can't be evil. The best you've got is that he projects a Good aura and his weapons are treated as good-aligned at 14th level. But nothing in his code implies supremacy or separateness. There is certainly a directive that he is *required to follow* about respecting authority, acting honorably, and stays Lawful Good (not Neutral Good or Chaotic Good).
That's great and all, but for a paladin, it becomes a singular concept, as I've said. It becomes like honey water. The paladin likes honey water, but doesn't care much for honey or water separately. You don't take the honey away from the water and say "paladins like honey more than water". Water alone is not enough. Honey alone is not enough. Lawful Good combined is what he is. Law is Good and Good is Law.I actually agree with this. Sorta. Law is indeed important to the Paladin, and he vastly prefers honey water to either on their own. But sometimes, he's only gonna get one, and in those cases, he's obligated to pick honey.
Honey Water = Lawful Good? Therefore, Honey = Lawful? I agree! :P
In reality, I don't agree. I think, as I said, that Lawful Good is a holistic viewpoint. It is more like a solution, than a mixture (which is why I used honey water). Look, the easiest way to say this: we both agree he wants what is Good. But because he is Lawful Good, what he deems to be Good is different than what you or I might deem to be Good, because Law and Order is mixed up in that assessment, whereas, for you and I it's not.
The point is not that he doesn't believe in Good. Of course he does. The point is that his vision of Goodness is a deontological one instead of a consequentialist one. You continue to use a consequentialist worldview to describe the efforts a paladin would make--that he acts against the law to effect a specific outcome, hoping that he can make that outcome happen (and then claiming that outcome would be lawful somehow). That is not his way. ad nauseum ad nauseum
Regarding the OP, his little black book says, "No. You don't do it." He has no directive to protect innocent life. He has a directive to "help those in need (provided they do not use the help for evil or chaotic ends)". The exception tells you everything you need to know. Breaking out of a prison a man he believes to be innocent is the very definition of what he's not supposed to do, because he providing help to someone in need, but that help is being used to break and flee the Law.But that's not the end either he or the prisoner is attampting to reach (which is anthing but Chaotic). He's using Chaotic means to achieve an end both Lawful and Good (overturning a false conviction, and hopefully convicting the guilty party).
I know you know what you're saying. You're saying that he's breaking the law of a legitimate authority (breaks his code) to bust a person out of jail (breaks his code twice over) by assumptively assaulting the innocent guards (breaks his code and is evil) with the hope that the consequences of his actions will bring about some nebulous notion of "correcting injustice and thereby being lawful" (which is consequentialist in thinking and is not LG [which, incidentally, is against his directive, too]).
I just have yet to understand how you justify this reach. I throw "Code Code Code" at you. You throw Good at me and even that "Good" is nebulous, indeed. You stretch to reach "lawful ends". You ignore the code breaking and evil that he does in the process. You ignore the impracticality of widespread vigilantism. You ignore so much in your effort to keep your position. I originally wrote, "I repeat, how do you justify this?" I've changed my mind. I really don't want to keep at it.
I think we may have just found the true heart of our disagreement:
Is standing by while an Evil act committed, while you have the power to stop it, an Evil act in and of itself?
I would say 'Yes, it is.' The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas was brought up earlier (and, I believe, linked). I would uncompromisingly say that those who stay in that society commit an Evil act...and so do those who leave without helping the child. Why? They had the power to help and chose not to. Is that as Evil as commiting the act yourself? No. Is it an Evil act? Yes.
Maybe we did, but I doubt it. Ultimately, there's no dictionary where the definition of the word "act" includes not acting. In criminal law, there is a concept of "omission" in actus reus that is constituted an act for purposes of determining criminality. But this is only true where a person is duty-bound, by law, to make bodily movement to effect a certain outcome. You'd be very hard-pressed, indeed, to prove that this legal obligation extends to a person to act *against the law*.
It is certainly not a plain reading of the word and you will not find it written that way in any common sense in philosophical circles, either. Any such moral obligation becomes radically subjective. You say, "Only when death is on the line." (with a lisp, like the Sicilian in the Princess' Bride?) What if the prisoner is to be subject to 40 lashes by a cat-o-nine-tails which might kill him due to his age or frailty? What if, instead of hanging, he's given a sentence of life, but the prison system is known for it's harsh cruelty to prisoners due to overcrowding or undeveloped prisons (much as if he were being subjected to torture for the entirety of his sentence)? Where does the paladin's moral obligation in opposition to the law end? Anything done to this prisoner, if he is innocent, is an undesirable outcome. Thus anything to prevent that is Good. Every outcome is truly irreparable and many possibilities are worse than death to many people. Where do you draw the line and how do you justify the line being drawn there?
Huh? Where does it say Paladins arbitrarily put the judgment of anyone who happens to be a lawmaker or wearing a crown over their own?
And I didn't say that, either.
That's stated nowhere, and a realy stupid attitude to boot. A Paladin could put the judgment of a wise and good King he knew personally over his own, or he could put his own judgment over that of a King he knew to be cruel and capricious.
Yep. I did say, "However, I am told by the King who I revere for his wisdom and goodness..."
Always disobeying authority regardless of it's quality and legitimacy is an act of both hubris and Chaos, and not something a Paladin would ever do...but always obeying authority without ever questioning it's provenance or judgment is every bit as foolish, and (while a more Lawful mistake) is not appropriate behavior for a Paladin either. He has been chosen by the Gods as an arbiter of Law and Good and the King has not (unless the King happens to be a Paladin*). Putting the King's judgment definitionally above his own also puts it above the Gods' and is, quite frankly, every bit as much an expression of hubris.
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As for the rock example...it realy depends on circumstances. But the Paladin and the king really are both morons in that one. I mean, the King could explain the Law (in which case the Paladin will know why breaking it is bad), and the Paladin could take the dying girl over to the rock. I mean, I get what you're aiming for, here, but it's not an equivalent situation for several reasons.*A Paladin probably shouldn't ever disobey the direct orders or commands of a higher ranking Paladin he knows not to be Fallen. I mean, that's an authority you can trust not to lead you wrong.
Oh Lord, you too? I feel like I'm arguing against a tag team, now, one feeding off the other. This "moron" and "idiot" crap is not usually your style. In spite of the terminology, neither of your combined arguments seem to amount to much. You are arguing against the wisdom of the Paladin's position, not the validity of it being his position.
It's as if you've decided that the Paladin is stupid and since he's stupid you must point out it's stupid so that the Paladin will no longer be stupid. The problem is twofold. One, it's not stupid. Maybe wrong, but not stupid. I've illustrated multiple reasons why not and in multiple ways. You using these terms is a thinly veiled attack on me. Either I'm an idiot and a moron for proposing these notions or I'm not. Take your pick. I'm more than happy to pick up that gauntlet, but I'm going to assume that's not where you wish to take this conversation. But two, even if the paladin's position is stupid, you've not shown why it's not the case that it is his position.
And yes the analogy is equivalent. In both cases, the rock and the marriage, he would be acting against the interest of the multitude for the sake of the one. The difference is that in the first case, he seems to know it, and in the second case he doesn't. But in neither case does that fact matter. Both cases are about the paladin taking a submissive role to legitimate, rightful, Good authority - even when they make decisions that the Paladin can (in the case of the marriage) understand or can't (in the case of the rock) understand or doesn't (in the case of the court) agree with.
So where does "I follow the wise and just decrees of Good King X--" shade into "I was only following orders"?
Just because someone is good does not mean that they are wise, and just because they are good and wise does not mean they cannot be mistaken or misinformed.
At some point a thinking person has to compare what they are told with what they are seeing with their own eyes. This isn't arrogance or chaos. This is admitting they may have been misinformed, deliberately or accidentally, or even concluding that the law, which they had formerly thought just and/or wise, is in fact unjust and/or foolish.
As for the salt-of-the-earth common sense defender of good and right versus the scholarly broadminded well read worldly guy, they are not only political stereotypes but also personifications of the middle ground fallacy and as such I wish them to both die in a fire. I would like my ruler to be a well-read individual who also possesses common sense, is at once broadminded and a defender of right and good, and I don't think this is an impossibility either. Individuals are not point-buy characters.
Nothing you've just said is even sensible as a response to what I said.
Ex. They were not stereotypes, they were archetypes used for example purposes. There was no middle ground fallacy here. In fact, the Law of Excluded Middle doesn't even have any sort of relevance at all. I didn't stereotype anyone, I simply made an example to illustrate a larger point.
You made three or four (I can't tell if the first interrogative and declarative sentences are related in point) points that are completely nonsensical to me. I'm sorry, but I have no idea how to respond to this.
Thanks for putting forth your interpretation on the paladin, Kevin Andrew Murphy. As many of us post our spiels on this board, I'd wager few put as much thought into their posts as you do. Furthermore, I genuinely like your interpretation of the paladin and find it every bit as appropriate as my interpretation of RAW's paladin as it jives with my admittedly idealized view of the class.
Frankly, I understand where you're coming from as of someone with, well, more "achievable" moral character than a paladin. But that's just it--the paladin is held to a higher standard than the squirming fits that appear to be going on in this thread. I can understand someone playing the paladin with this sort of mentality, and it's certainly no worse under any fair measure than the RAW Pathfinder paladin.
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That said, the text says that lying is dishonorable--no qualifier. The "elastic clause" is not a relaxing of the standards. It does not go back to "not lying" and add qualifiers for when it is, in fact, okay to lie. It is a restrictive clause; it adds to the list of dishonorable acts while leaving said list to the interpretation of the reader. But it does not leave to the interpretation of the reader whether lying is against the code--it is as explicit as can be. Lying is right out. To attempt to do good via a lie is to taint that good with the lie.
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Here's what I see when you bring the text into your interpretation (needlessly, by the way; your perspective needs no such justification to be playable): you parse the text, then seem to conveniently ignore or qualify the parts you do not like, much as some religious folk in real life parse their own tenets, then conveniently ignore the parts they do not like. (I won't even get into the similarities between the "not lying = not really" argument and arguments about the proper translation of "thou shalt not kill"--wait, I think I just did. Crap. Good thing I'm not a paladin. . . .)
Instead of doing this, why not simply say, "That's not how we do paladins in our game, because playing paladins like that is silly/boring/unfair/Lawful Stupid; I suggest you play it this way instead, as it is more realistic/interesting/fair/pragmatic"? Is it because it invokes the unholy spectre of house ruling? A lot of arguments here seem to come down to that, and I find it baffling--every single GM on this board house rules every session they play. The rules require it to be so by design, and it'd be a hellishly boring pastime if we were dead set against it.
Maybe that's the problem: I'm arguing RAW, which happens to coincide with my preferred interpretation of the paladin archetype, but we're in General Discussion, where RAW need not even make an appearance unless people want it to. Suffice it to say that I like your paladin and would gladly play it or in a game with it. I just like mine more, and believe that, intended or not, it aligns better with the printed text of the Core paladin. I feel that your interpretation jives better somewhere between mine and that of the Grey Guard prestige class from 3.5 (which is more relaxed still). And I like all three.
You are arguing against the wisdom of the Paladin's position, not the validity of it being his position.
It's as if you've decided that the Paladin is stupid and since he's stupid you must point out it's stupid so that the Paladin will no longer be stupid. The problem is twofold. One, it's not stupid. Maybe wrong, but not stupid. I've illustrated multiple reasons why not and in multiple ways. You using these terms is a thinly veiled attack on me. Either I'm an idiot and a moron for proposing these notions or I'm not. Take your pick. I'm more than happy to pick up that gauntlet, but I'm going to assume that's not where you wish to take this conversation. But two, even if the paladin's position is stupid, you've not shown why it's not the case that it is his position.
And yes the analogy is equivalent. In both cases, the rock and the marriage, he would be acting against the interest of the multitude for the sake of the one. The difference is that in the first case, he seems to know it, and in the second case he doesn't. But in neither case does that fact matter. Both cases are about the paladin taking a submissive role to legitimate, rightful, Good authority - even when they make decisions that the Paladin can (in the case of the marriage) understand or can't (in the case of the rock) understand or doesn't (in the case of the court) agree with.
I think the trouble here is that we're arguing about the paladin's inflexibility, his inability to ever admit that he was wrong or mistaken or his faith was misplaced.
I mean, look at the "legitimate, rightful, Good authority" business. I'm not saying that such an authority cannot exist--I'd certainly like it to--but how does a paladin know it when he sees it, and what happens when this "legitimate, rightful, Good authority" makes a mistake, or worse, over time becomes somewhat less good, if not downright evil? Those orphans that were going to be placed in foster homes? They were sold into slavery. The prisoners who were going to be ransomed? Well, they weren't willing to pay our price, so we killed them. We couldn't find the witch responsible for the plague so we just burned every grandmother we could find in the hopes we'd get her eventually.
And we're not even talking about a formerly Good authority that's forthright and open about its slide into evil. It might be nice if the former Good King X-- publicly announced his new devotion to Asmodeus, but it's a lot sneakier to just sell the orphans to the slavers under the table and if it's found out, claim that you were wickedly deceived. Blame the execution of the war prisoners on a prison riot. The dead grandmothers? Forge evidence of a grand conspiracy of evil witches, and if anyone has proof positive that you can't discredit that their grandma was innocent, plead that you are "only human" and hide your evil behind a mask of humility and crocodile tears. And if some paladin or similar busybody tries to "Detect Evil" on you? Either use Misdirection magic, or just do the expedient of making sure the Good King on the throne really is good. Just have him deceived as to what his government is really doing so he can deceive the paladin in turn.
How much has to be rotten in the state of Denmark before the paladin stops supporting it unquestioningly?
Maybe that's the problem: I'm arguing RAW, which happens to coincide with my preferred interpretation of the paladin archetype, but we're in General Discussion, where RAW need not even make an appearance unless people want it to. Suffice it to say that I like your paladin and would gladly play it or in a game with it. I just like mine more, and believe that, intended or not, it aligns better with the printed text of the Core paladin. I feel that your interpretation jives better somewhere between mine and that of the Grey Guard prestige class from 3.5 (which is more relaxed still). And I like all three.
The trouble is is that RAW can get into nonsensical situations if you follow the exact letter of the RAW like a computer program. Like my example of the paladin losing his paladinhood over a code violation for using poison to save orphans from giant ticks. How many times would that come across Iomedae's desk followed by nagging Commune spells from the clerics who administered Atonement before she decides the RAW is stupid and paladins shouldn't lose their powers for using bug killer on vermin. Killing ticks is not an honor duel. They do not get to name champions to fight in their stead.
As for the rest of it, I've been playing since 1st edition and my approach to the rules of any edition is as suggestions for how to play these sorts of characters, especially when you come to elastic clauses like "and so forth" in the paladin code. Thinks like "and so forth" are cues for the GM to use his imagination and logic or look to commonly available sources such as previous editions, historical sources like the Song of Roland or Catholic theology, and so on.
I will admit that I do like the Grey Guard class, though I do think it's a different thing than what I'm talking about.
But getting back to the "and so forth." Speaking as someone who has written game rules, language like that is used both to save space and to keep the interpretations from being too limited.
Thanks for putting forth your interpretation on the paladin, Kevin Andrew Murphy. As many of us post our spiels on this board, I'd wager few put as much thought into their posts as you do. Furthermore, I genuinely like your interpretation of the paladin and find it every bit as appropriate as my interpretation of RAW's paladin as it jives with my admittedly idealized view of the class.
Frankly, I understand where you're coming from as of someone with, well, more "achievable" moral character than a paladin. But that's just it--the paladin is held to a higher standard than the squirming fits that appear to be going on in this thread. I can understand someone playing the paladin with this sort of mentality, and it's certainly no worse under any fair measure than the RAW Pathfinder paladin.
<pedantic>
That said, the text says that lying is dishonorable--no qualifier. The "elastic clause" is not a relaxing of the standards. It does not go back to "not lying" and add qualifiers for when it is, in fact, okay to lie. It is a restrictive clause; it adds to the list of dishonorable acts while leaving said list to the interpretation of the reader. But it does not leave to the interpretation of the reader whether lying is against the code--it is as explicit as can be. Lying is right out. To attempt to do good via a lie is to taint that good with the lie.
</pedantic>Here's what I see when you bring the text into your interpretation (needlessly, by the way; your perspective needs no such justification to be playable): you parse the text, then seem to conveniently ignore or qualify the parts you do not like, much as some religious folk in real life parse their own tenets, then conveniently ignore the parts they do not like. (I won't even get into the similarities between the "not lying = not really" argument and arguments about the proper translation of "thou shalt not kill"--wait, I think I just did. Crap. Good thing I'm not a paladin. . . .)
Instead of doing this, why not simply say,...
A good post, you can see the camps and the possible expressions of the paladin across gms. I'm not sure if you think I am one of those engaged in a squirming fit, but I liked what you said nonetheless.
There is some vagueness in what the paladins code is and covers, and what is a minor and major breach of the code. Kevin tries to bring in more supporting material from knights, whereas I see them as warriors against darkness first, and being kind to fools as not a requirement Will minor breaches cause one to lose powers and require atonement? That is a serious question, but answerable by each dm.
Kevin is relying on many other non-pathfinder sources, and is being highly idealistic towards knightly codes, and applying them to the fantasy paladin. Which is not a knight, but is influenced by the historical material around knights. I very much disagree as to his exact interpretations on the paladin, that a little unkindness and some hurt feelings are grounds to lose your paladin status. In a well made and complex fantasy world, causing offence is all too easy.
The dispute makes sense though, because the knightly ideals are clashing with examples of characters more realistic and likely to exist (I've known a few Franks). Idealisations are just that, they are not real. The paladin though, is about trying to personify idealisations. The question is can they ever bend or transgress the ideal type? Well the class is clear that some transgressions are not on, but real characters will have a realness about them, and won't be machines of law and good that never cause negative feelings.
The knightly code came up last session actually. One of my players is a centaur knight. He is a new knight, young and brash and confident. They failed a quest, a social situation went very badly and the knight caused great offence--without at all intending it. They had burned an innocent inside a possessed house, to death, and were trying to explain this to the wizard wife. Now the wife went to hostile, and the centaur won initiative, so he cuts the unarmed non-evil spellcaster with his sword. He tried to defend his actions, she was about to attack, but the knight code is clear about attacking unarmed members of the populace--you don't hit them when they are not ready or real combatants. Winning initiative and thinking like an adventurer led to an easy breach of the code of honour!
So that was an amusing situation, the knight broke his code and chose to escape (cowardice?), not to stay and possibly die (breaching honour?), not to kill this person he didn't have to. The player worried about losing his abilities and I put him at ease, the knight can get away with a number of breaches of honour each day, before real penalties settle in. The paladin is not so lucky. If they make a great breach, they are out, until they atone and are back in. Small minor breaches though, if they lead to you being kicked out mean something else for roleplaying the paladin--you must exactly play the paladin how the dm wants, or they will punish you. Your character can not have a different personality to the paladin standard, they can not act differently to how the dm wishes. This is my main contention with Kevin, and why we were arguing over a minor situation of offence.
I agree, except that from my standpoint, the "minor situation of offense" is very often the major one.
Paladins are an ideal, but they're a fairytale ideal, and you can hardly read a fairytale where the poor beggar begging for a crust of bread isn't in fact an angel or a saint or the paladin's god him or herself coming in disguise to test him. If you fail a minor test of Charity, how can you be expected to succeed with a major one? And even if the beggar is in fact a real beggar, this doesn't mean the paladin's god or his agents aren't watching.
And, to be perfectly honest, Hell and its agents are watching too. One of the running threads of all of the paladin stories is how the forces of Hell are watching every paladin with glee, setting up tests and moral dilemmas so they can make him fall.
The business of the silly insecure fat little princess is one of these. It's a textbook test of the virtues of Truthfulness versus the virtue of Kindness. It may have been arrange by Heaven, manipulated by Hell, or just come about organically, but even so, Heaven and Hell would still be watching.
The only things we're dickering about is whether the "and so forth" in the Paladin's code is meant to include Kindness, Charity, and a host of other virtues, and whether Truthfulness can ever be relaxed if Kindness, the Protection of Innocents, or any other virtue depends upon it.
I say that it can be, depending on the situation, since in Pathfinder--unlike 3.5, which I Rule Zeroed away--the source of paladinhood depends on gods rather than a nebulous quasi-sentient force of Lawful Goodness that acts like a giant idiot computer program. With Pathfinder? Gods and their minions, a whole heavenly host of angels, saints, and other divine beings bearing a strong resemblance to medieval Catholic theology.
Since there are sentient beings in charge of overseeing a paladin, one assumes they're somewhat smarter than a computer program and moreover have some leeway in judging any particular act, and also have their own value system. Consequently my contention that NG Shelyn would place a higher value on Kindness than Truthfulness, whereas LN Abadar would value Truthfulness as a higher virtue than Kindness. LG Iomedae would then glare at both of them and coldly inform them that Honor is a higher virtue than either of these. Sarenrae would then contend that Mercy is the highest virtue, so if they're truly penitent, she redeems fallen paladins all the time, since she's the goddess of redemption.
Honestly, this isn't even Rule 0. This is playing the gods in character. The judgement of the sin is going to depend on the priorities of the patron.
I think the trouble here is that we're arguing about the paladin's inflexibility, his inability to ever admit that he was wrong or mistaken or his faith was misplaced.
Actually, I'm willing to accept his mistakes and errors, and not make him fall. I'm quite ok with that. To err is human, to "arrr" is pirate, right?
I mean, look at the "legitimate, rightful, Good authority" business. I'm not saying that such an authority cannot exist--I'd certainly like it to--but how does a paladin know it when he sees it
I don't see this as being a grave problem. Wisdom is always relative, so even that is usually pretty easy to see. But legitimacy and rightful are really the same thing (and I shouldn't have placed such redundancy together), it should have been "legitimate, wise, Good". I think most of these things tend to be self-evident. Though people can be led astray, as you suggest below.
, and what happens when this "legitimate, rightful, Good authority" makes a mistake, or worse, over time becomes somewhat less good, if not downright evil? Those orphans that were going to be placed in foster homes? They were sold into slavery. The prisoners who were going to be ransomed? Well, they weren't willing to pay our price, so we killed them. We couldn't find the witch responsible for the plague so we just burned every grandmother we could find in the hopes we'd get her eventually.
And we're not even talking about a formerly Good authority that's forthright and open about its slide into evil. It might be nice if the former Good King X-- publicly announced his new devotion to Asmodeus, but it's a lot sneakier to just sell the orphans to the slavers under the table and if it's found out, claim that you were wickedly deceived. Blame the execution of the war prisoners on a prison riot. The dead grandmothers? Forge evidence of a grand conspiracy of evil witches, and if anyone has proof positive that you can't discredit that their grandma was innocent, plead that you are "only human" and hide your evil behind a mask of humility and crocodile tears. And if some paladin or similar busybody tries to "Detect Evil" on you? Either use Misdirection magic, or just do the expedient of making sure the Good King on the throne really is good. Just have him deceived as to what his government is really doing so he can deceive the paladin in turn.
How much has to be rotten in the state of Denmark before the paladin stops supporting it unquestioningly?
Right. When the authority makes a mistake, it's the same as if the paladin himself made the mistake. By putting his faith in his commander, he takes on the responsibility of his commander, as well.
As for the slide into evil, I concede that such things can and do happen and it's incumbent on the paladin to continue to watch for this. At some point he would feel the evidence is overwhelming and it would require him to, in all righteousness, confront his commander. These are the things that make wonderful adventure arcs, in my opinion.
Kevin, the problem with the truthfulness kindness problem and the fat little princess is that you so heavily weigh giving offence. If the paladin tells the truth, she is fat, he has told the truth but been un-kind. You think that warrants him to fall. He did however, just tell the truth, which is indeed a part of his code. So he should fall for following his code, even if he does something that causes offence? If the paladin opts for silence, that too can cause offence, should he fall then too? It is not a part of the paladin code that they cannot cause offence by being truthful. As I said above, show me where for this specific example, do not try and bring in knightly codes from Earth into this, we are talking paladins in pathfinder or Golarion.
"Honestly, this isn't even Rule 0. This is playing the gods in character. The judgement of the sin is going to depend on the priorities of the patron."
This is good, now you are getting away from yourself and appreciating how the elements of the fantasy world would see it. If a god/goddess doesn't care much about offending little girls, as long as you stay the course of good, do your main duties you are fine. You present this offence like a slippery slope, truly there are more important things for a paladin. Ending evil as opposed to passing your flattery check, jeez.
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Kevin, the problem with the truthfulness kindness problem and the fat little princess is that you so heavily weigh giving offence. If the paladin tells the truth, she is fat, he has told the truth but been un-kind. You think that warrants him to fall. He did however, just tell the truth, which is indeed a part of his code. So he should fall for following his code, even if he does something that causes offence? If the paladin opts for silence, that too can cause offence, should he fall then too? It is not a part of the paladin code that they cannot cause offence by being truthful. As I said above, show me where for this specific example, do not try and bring in knightly codes from Earth into this, we are talking paladins in pathfinder or Golarion.
"Honestly, this isn't even Rule 0. This is playing the gods in character. The judgement of the sin is going to depend on the priorities of the patron."
This is good, now you are getting away from yourself and appreciating how the elements of the fantasy world would see it. If a god/goddess doesn't care much about offending little girls, as long as you stay the course of good, do your main duties you are fine. You present this offence like a slippery slope, truly there are more important things for a paladin. Ending evil as opposed to passing your flattery check, jeez.
Again with the "ending evil." How precisely are you suppose to "end evil" unless you're in the World Wound which is basically playland for subtlety-impaired paladins? Yes, we can all agree that a twelve-headed acid-spewing ginormous demon thingy is evil -- it's got everything but the "Smite me!" T-shirt -- but if you need your evil that obvious, your paladin with his "detect evil" is basically doing a reprise of Counselor Troi saying, "I sense great anger from them, Captain" as the Klingons are about to fire photon torpedos. Really? We needed an empath to tell us that?
Sometimes evil is more subtle than a monstrous demon trying to commit suicide by paladin. Sometimes evil disguises itself, appearing as something beautiful and wholesome, or just petty and banal. I mean, think of a succubus. Everyone expects that she might appear as the King's new trophy wife, acting sweet and wholesome even while corrupting everything and everyone, but that's almost a little too obvious. Who would suspect her to instead take the guise of the palace mean girl, and even if the paladin finds her out, what's he going to do? Take out his big sword and try to kill a twelve-year-old girl? "Save me! He's gone mad!" How many innocents can you get to spit themselves on his sword before you sprout batwings and vanish in a puff of hellfire?
As for the problem of Truthfulness versus Kindness, if you were dealing with Shelyn as your patron, an insecure girl asking a question about her beauty would be exactly the sort of testing moment Shelyn would be interested in, and the thing she would be interested in is not whether you cause offense but whether you cause hurt. Tell her that in the Mwangi Expanse, plump is beautiful, and they even have fattening huts there for their brides. (Or at least they do in some parts of Africa, so close enough for the fantasy analogue.) Or if you do make a verbal misstep and cause hurt, what exactly do you do about it?
Yes, I know. Real evil. But if your paladin can't cope with an insecure little girl crying because the mean girls made fun of her figure, exactly what are you going to do with the same little girl when her beloved mommy comes back as a vampire and you have to whack off her head? You're supposed to be a shining beacon of goodness, not just an assassin who specializes in killing evil.
"Again with the "ending evil." How precisely are you suppose to "end evil" unless you're in the World Wound which is basically playland for subtlety-impaired paladins?"
One imp, succubus, devil, ogre, evil courtier, blackguard, necromancer, rapist, dragon at a time. More at a time if you have great cleave. If you are against trying to end evil, trying to protect people and establish peace, justice, law and good government, then you might want to avoid playing paladins and stick with it can't possibly be done, how can you end them and the forces of evil attitude.
"Sometimes evil disguises itself, appearing as something beautiful and wholesome, or just petty and banal. I mean, think of a succubus. Everyone expects that she might appear as the King's new trophy wife, acting sweet and wholesome even while corrupting everything and everyone, but that's almost a little too obvious. Who would suspect her to instead take the guise of the palace mean girl, and even if the paladin finds her out, what's he going to do?"
You work out what she is, you work out how to kill her, you get help if you need it or have to, and then you do the deed. Revealing what she is before you kill her is advised. If you offend her, if you offend her friends at court, it doesn't come into it. Being a paladin isn't always about being liked, or hesitating when you need to act (oh how will I kill the well connected succubus?!? The answer is with massive damage and ideally back-up).
On kindness and not causing offence, you seem to be backing up and trying to draw on Shelyn especially. That is the deity likely to closest sponsor your view of what the paladin is. See what I mean? There is nothing that says you have to avoid offending people or hurting their feelings through fulfilling your code of being truthful. I especially liked your answer: well, the paladin should refer to other cultures where fat is great and considered a high status thing to be huge and corpulent. Very pc, hold on, my paladin didn't take anthropology.
I've never seen a paladin player that would try to coddle npcs like that, as if their character graduated from a leftist uni and then went into paladin.
Gorb old friend, how are you?
Make sure he is exceedingly modern in sensibilities, as if from our world, not Golarion!
Courtly romance and chivalry isn't exceedingly modern.
And with killing the evil courtiers, being evil generally isn't illegal. With courtiers, it's almost in the job description.
If a paladin kills an evil courtier who was not in league with the succubus, is he still being lawful?
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Make sure he is exceedingly modern in sensibilities, as if from our world, not Golarion!
Golarion is full of modern sensibilities. Women can go and do what they want to, African people aren't treated automatically as cattle just because of the skin tone, religious diversity is tolerated almost everywhere, openly LGBT people hold positions of power. If I wanted to play a simulation of medieval society, I'd play Ars Magica.
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Make sure he is exceedingly modern in sensibilities, as if from our world, not Golarion!Golarion is full of modern sensibilities. Women can go and do what they want to, African people aren't treated automatically as cattle just because of the skin tone, religious diversity is tolerated almost everywhere, openly LGBT people hold positions of power. If I wanted to play a simulation of medieval society, I'd play Ars Magica.
Honestly, none of these are necessarily modern notions. Relative freedom of religion was more or less the rule prior to the rise of Christianity, prejudice against black people per se was uncommon in almost all eras (only becoming truly common as the slave trade flourished), alternative sexualities were often practiced openly at various times and places (look at Greece!) and women doing as they pleased, while probably the rarest of these, was hardly unknown throughout history.
Of course, the same applies to the ideas 3.5 Loyalist was complaining about. Golarion has a clear and relatively coherent world, and nothing in it seems to me to contradict the idea of kindness and avoiding offense as good things. Perhaps not the most important things, but the value of courtesy as an unambiguous good is actually appropriate to a variety of Golarion's countries and Gods.
Now, I can see both perspectives on what a Paladin should do in such a situation, and honestly think it might depend on the Paladin which is appropriate, but I very much disagree that either is inherently wrong for Golarion.
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Killing ticks is not an honor duel. They do not get to name champions to fight in their stead.
I'm going to make my silly reply before I make my serious one.
Silly: Yes they can. They can summon their patron deity, The Tick of superhero parody fame! Spoooooon!
Serious: I'm impressed you're defending the Paladin at such length and detail. As someone with an interest in the Paladin class, you have my thanks.
Though this isn't your fault, I am kind of discouraged these sort of topics seem to keep coming up.
Paladins are a symbol of hope and virtue, but they remain mortal. I wouldn't hold actual Good Outsiders, embodiments of Good as a concept and philosophy, to some of the strict measures some people seem to apply to Paladins. The notion some seem to hold to of stripping Paladin class features over one or two modest violations of the code seems excessive, and... honestly Not Fun from a game design perspective.
Actually, one of the situations you cited about a Paladin breaking a law to save a healer's life has an interesting resemblance to an old video game, Final Fantasy IV (aka Final Fantasy II in earlier translations; long story). You actually start the game playing a Dark Knight who used to work under a Lawful Good king whose actions are becoming Lawful Evil. The Dark Knight initially obeys, but begins questioning these decisions. He eventually leaves the king's service, and 'atones' in spectacular fashion; after a lengthy quest to prove he truly wishes to set things right he emerges as a Paladin!
Granted, this was written by a Japanese staff back in the early 1990s and there may be little bits of culture dissonance on the finer points relative to what western audiences expect... but the basic story has some interesting parallels to points you're discussing.