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This was one of those "brilliant" 4:00 am ideas, but one that I think has enough merit to start a discussion on.
It seems like discussions on how GMs can make a Paladin fall have been around since the class itself has, and while it sometimes crushes my faith in my fellow GMs, I have to admit that some people make incredibly elaborate plots to make some Paladin characters fall (for whatever reason). However, Paladins are easy to make fall (harder depending on how well the player controlling the Paladin plays), because it's not that hard to set up some no-win situation where the Paladin directly or indirectly performs an evil action (or at least an action that the GM considers evil enough for a fall). But what about the other way around?
So as the thread title suggest, I've got a challenge for you all:
For whatever reason, your party's roster is now the home of an unabashedly chaotic evil Anti-Paladin. For whatever reason, you as a GM have decided that the Anti-Paladin needs to fall.
How do you do it?
Have the Anti-Paladin be left a huge pile of money, but before he can have it, he must protect the benefactors cute fluffy bunnykins for a year and a day. Of course, whoever holds Bunnykins at that time becomes the rightful claimant... now have every bad guy try get the rabbit.
If Bunnykins dies or is abandoned, all money goes to an orphanage and the lost puppies home as a donation on his behalf.
Anti-Paladin now forced to do something good.
Have the Anti-Paladin be left a huge pile of money, but before he can have it, he must protect the benefactors cute fluffy bunnykins for a year and a day. Of course, whoever holds Bunnykins at that time becomes the rightful claimant... now have every bad guy try get the rabbit.
If Bunnykins dies or is abandoned, all money goes to an orphanage and the lost puppies home as a donation on his behalf.Anti-Paladin now forced to do something good.
Wouldn't it just be easier and more in the nature of a rampantly chaotic evil Anti-Paladin to just kill everyone and burn down the orphanage/lost puppies home and take the money?
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Oh look. This is why we can't have bad things.
Some people just can't deal with depravity in the game. I blame it on the moralistic younger generation.
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This can go one of two routes. A good GM only sacks a Paladin if they absolutely, 100% deserved it. A bad GM will sack them for committing any act that is chaotic or evil in nature. For example, seeing a demon and smiting it is always a good thing, because demons are evil. Bad GMs will make said demon LG without warning the player, thus making the Paladin fall.
Anti-Paladin's fall: Bad GM: If your Anti-Paladin ever follows the tenets of his deity, then he is being orderly, thus he must be sacked. If he doesn't follow the tenets of his deity, then he is probably doing good, hence he must be sacked. Anytime that A-Paladin follows an order, upholds ANY tradition, or spares anyone's life, he must fall.
Anti-Paladin's fall: Good GM: If the Anti-Paladin shows signs of goodness, like being peaceful to villagers, or helping them, or sparing the lives of any good creature, then he treads dangerous ground and may need to be smote by his god.
The big thing to note is that a good GM drops Anti-Paladins for committing good acts, whereas a bad GM drops Anti-Paladins for committing lawful acts. Good/Evil is the mission, law/chaos is the means and ways you go about it. Although a massive breach in your law/chaos side could be punished, the good/evil side is the most important, and the more clear-cut side. It is very obvious what is good and what is evil in 90% of situations. Dropping a Paladin for being too lawful or too chaotic is very nitpicky, unless it is a far too obvious and continual breach.
If the Antipaladin falls in love and performs an act based on that love. For instance putting herself at risk to save her love. Having a goal of protect my love is decidedly non evil and unselfish so I doubt it would get the "interfere with his goals" exemption. If the antipaladin saved her rich benefactor to continue making money sure thats not going to make them fall but if you can get them to show genuine concern for another creature I would consider it fall worthy.
Also a little more tricky but if the antipaladin places an others priorities or rules above their own they would be breaking the law/chaos axis.
A lot of it comes down to motivation. What acts a paladin can or can't perform are generally decided by others for the benefit of others while an antipaladin follows her own goals for her own benefit. Both sides of her alignment is important however the good/evil one is probably more important and certainly easier to rule on.
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Find something the anti-paladin loves more than power... use it as a lever. Presto... fallen anti-paladin.
My Fallen Paladin turned Blackguard, she fell from being a blackguard as well. All for the one thing that drove her to becoming a blackguard in the first place. She loved her people above any code or reason. And fell in love with a prince of her people. At a particularly low point where she was slaughtering the enemies of her people without mercy right down to the children themselves, her true love turned from her and said he cannot follow her down this vile path... "You have become as bad as the evil we fight against." It forced her to realize she would destroy the very thing she loved by embracing evil. So she forever lay down the mantle of blackguard and became ... a fighter. A featless fighter with the very hard task of redeeming herself in the eyes of her people.
I think it would be more interesting to find ways for the PC's to cause an enemy anti-paladin to fall.
Can an anti-paladin fall? Aren't they allready the lowest of the low?
Sounds more like ways to make the anti-paladin ascend. On that route, Redliska has the right of it: Love. Since the Paladin code makes no exception for controlling magic, I doubt the Anti-paladin code does either (why coddle the weak willed?), so a good enchantment spell, or well used philtre of love ought to do nicely. That in mind, Ilja's idea sounds even more amusing. Who among the party will volunteer to be the object of the enemy Anti-paladin's affections?
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This is why I would never allow a player to play an anti paladin, or a CE character at all for that matter. I can't see any possible way to enforce this other than something like:
"You encounter a group of kittens. Roll Will to resist petting and fawning over them."
*Antipaladin rolls a 1*
"You fail to resist the kittens. You now love them and their little kitten faces. You lose all of your powers."
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Can an anti-paladin fall? Aren't they allready the lowest of the low?
Sounds more like ways to make the anti-paladin ascend. On that route, Redliska has the right of it: Love. Since the Paladin code makes no exception for controlling magic, I doubt the Anti-paladin code does either (why coddle the weak willed?), so a good enchantment spell, or well used philtre of love ought to do nicely. That in mind, Ilja's idea sounds even more amusing. Who among the party will volunteer to be the object of the enemy Anti-paladin's affections?
Anti-paladins can't fall. They are free to be as good-aligned or evil as they wish.
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teach him the meaning of christmas in who-ville and make him eat roast beast with all the trimmings.
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This happened to a friend of mine, Duke Doom.
Six simple words.......the love of a good woman.
Man, he donated his spiked full plate to a museum, beat his sword into a plowshare, put his destrier of doom out to pasture,....it was lame. He started a toy business. He'd give money to the poor instead of kicking them like in the good old days.
So, I did the job on her........he got so freakin' mad, he burned 5 gnome villages to the ground. He tracked me down, and showed up at this bar I was passed out in, and although he initially meant to murder me in my stupor, instead he woke me up, thanked me for showing him the light, and got me drunk enough to pass out again. He said he was trying to kill me by alcohol poisoning, but,.....well, I know he has a reputation to uphold, and the whole "the love of a good woman" thing is pretty hard for our kind to live down. I know he was grateful.
So, anyway, I think that when we fall, what we're really doing is looking for inspiration. I mean, it's easy to lose your creative spark, you know?
I would point out that one act of kindness doesn't make you no longer evil.
One of the advantages of evil is that you don't have to consistently commit evil acts. As long as you murder innocent peasants every so often, you will continue being evil. If you give to charity or help others in the mean time, it won't change your alignment.
Different than good where you kill one infant and suddenly you aren't lawful good anymore.
Committing a good act still explicitly makes an anti-paladin fall. And this is potentially as bad as the paladin's version - although the anti-paladin can ALWAYS atone. Every time an anti-paladin aids an ally, adventuring companion, or minion they had better make sure said individual is helping to achieve the anti-paladin's nefarious schemes...
The anti-paladin might not risk becoming non-evil by such acts, but still risks losing antipaladinhood.
Well, it does help that the AntiPaladin code is a lot looser when it comes to acting like and tolerating the good guys as long as it serves your ultimate evil goals.
I'd say aiding an ally or minion isn't a neccessarily a good act by any means. It's simply a matter of efficiency—live minions are more useful than dead ones. Allies have their pragmatic uses too.
Helping someone is a good act when it's motivated by benevolence. Making sure your minions live to serve you another day is, ultimately, still motivated by selfishness.
Someone already mentioned this, but I figure I'll throw it in to remind as well: mind-affecting effects.
If the paladin fails his will save at being charmed, dominated, etc, and becomes the vessel of good acts that counter his nefarious purposes, than he will 'fall' (or, if you prefer, 'ascend'), at least if the atonement spell is anything to go by.
Really not adding much, but giving my support to the idea.
Also, philter of love, helm of opposite alignment, hypnotism (dependent upon HD), and the like are all useful tools.
Heck, enough skillful diplomacy and/or charisma checks would be useful.
Bluff checks combined with modify memory could aid in getting them to the place you need, too.
Really, it all depends on what you want from them and how the GM interprets what they require to 'fall'.
One possible idea: force them into a situation in which doing anything to survive will eliminate great evil and aid many innocents (saving said innocents from their schemes). The only way they wouldn't be performing a 'good' act, in such a case, is by allowing themselves to die... which would definitely put a damper on their nefarious purposes and thus cause them to fall.
So, yeah, basically parroting others around here.
There's pretty much only one good, reliable way to make an antipaladin "fall". Stack saving throw penalties and hit them with heightened persistent beguiling gift and a helm of opposite alignment. If their alignment is forced to Lawful Good by a cursed item they can't be an antipaladin anymore.And funny enough, antipaladins are great for stacking saving throw penalties. The best way to achieve this would be with another antipaladin.
Interestingly, I could really see this being something that antipaladins do, especially if a fellow antipaladin gets in the way of their own nefarious schemes. Humiliation and hatred of themselves is a kind of torture, you know? And then the 'winning' antipaladin would get the 'bonus' of being able to torture and kill a newly lawful good creature.
Ah, ahah! But they need to serve angels, something that a chaotic evil antipaladin loathes to his core! Thus the torture! Bwahahahahah!
(Also, keep in mind, I'm not actually advocating doing this. The stuff indicates I'm kind of fooling around here. We're talking hypotheticals for a kind of serious but silly concept. Also, darning a pair of socks.)
This sort of thing is why I vastly prefer 4th Edition D&D. Paladins being defenders of the faith rather than tightly-constrained warriors of virtue? You don't see paladins falling so easily. (And you don't see Blackguards falling in any case.)
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Someone already mentioned this, but I figure I'll throw it in to remind as well: mind-affecting effects.
If the paladin fails his will save at being charmed, dominated, etc, and becomes the vessel of good acts that counter his nefarious purposes, than he will 'fall' (or, if you prefer, 'ascend'), at least if the atonement spell is anything to go by.
Really not adding much, but giving my support to the idea.
Also, philter of love, helm of opposite alignment, hypnotism (dependent upon HD), and the like are all useful tools.
Heck, enough skillful diplomacy and/or charisma checks would be useful.
Bluff checks combined with modify memory could aid in getting them to the place you need, too.
Really, it all depends on what you want from them and how the GM interprets what they require to 'fall'.
One possible idea: force them into a situation in which doing anything to survive will eliminate great evil and aid many innocents (saving said innocents from their schemes). The only way they wouldn't be performing a 'good' act, in such a case, is by allowing themselves to die... which would definitely put a damper on their nefarious purposes and thus cause them to fall.
So, yeah, basically parroting others around here.
I wouldn't go by the Atonement spell because it actually contradicts what the entry in the Paladin class says. Any time you are using your Will power save to fend off something then that is going against your will. Now, in the Paladin entry it says if a Paladin "willingly" commits an evil act", but by getting a Will save and using it then that nullifies the notion of committing it "willingly" even if under the effects of a Dominate. If they are below 8th level you still couldn't use Charm to make a Paladin do something they wouldn't normally do that would cause them to fall.