Hey all.
I've got a player with a paladin (Human, follows Torag) that's seriously pushing, if not breaking, paladin/patron deity moral code/code of conduct. I'm trying to come up with a nice, lore-friendly, way to get the point across that, as a paladin, you have to be mindful of RP scenarios and your alignment more than other cases, without being a total buzz kill. This player is a lot of fun to have at the table, and the play format we're all part of (details at the bottom of the post) have made for some unique issues.
TL;DR, he was actively attempting to seduce the enemy we were fighting (a female derro). The issue at hand is kind of obvious, in that paladins rarely even travel with evil characters, and only work alongside them for seriously compelling reasons. To attempt to seduce one seems even a step beyond that, especially for a follower of Torag.
Side notes for play format:
I'm helping with a Pathfinder group on my university campus (a small, private, conservative university), and we have a weekly gaming group that meets. One of the games available for play is Pathfinder (derp). We frequently rotate DMs so that nobody is stuck DMing unless they just want to. Last meet, I was playing at the same table as this Paladin. Next meet I'll be taking over as GM. So I didn't have a say in the rulings for the situation initially. But I will in this next round. For a variety of reasons, mostly consisting of not turning off new players that may not be comfortable with more awkward topics arising, along with the small, private, conservative nature of the university at which we play, the other DMs and myself want to do something significant without the consequence of a full pally fall (because we don't want to ruin the game for the pally either.)
Full story:
We'd been hacking and slashing our way through a dungeon, and came across a Derro (CE) and a couple constructs. During the fight she goes invisible and levitates so we can't get to her. In order to get her into range, the Paladin decides to seduce her. Mostly because someone made a joke about his lance. Still, he wanted to try. He rolled an insane diplomacy check, so the DM allowed for it, but he went for the awkward route instead of the please-surrender route. The theme continued for a bit before she fled (my wizard shot a scorching ray at her).
My current plan is to cut back his paladin powers (like his LOH heals 1/2, or he can't smite, or he takes a charisma penalty due to lack of confidence/connection to Torag) and have a vision or a cleric of Torag come to him before they set out for the next leg of their journey and give him a nice, lore-friendly quest that's not too difficult (I don't want the rest of the party to be stuck waiting on him too long) to regain his powers and set him back on the right track. I don't want to make him undergo a full falling, because the DM in the last session allowed it to happen (I found out after the fact that he doesn't speak any of the Derro's languages, so it shouldn't have. but oh well, to little, too late), but I want it to be severe enough that he gets the point. Especially since, due to the come and go nature of the gaming group, we're allowing people to create new characters pretty much whenever they want to.
But until then, I just need some ideas for what kind of penalties to give the paladin, and what kind of quest to send him on.
Gods like to give warnings, and paladins can atone for doing stupid things.
Ah, this may not be quite so bad as you fear. Remember, redemption of the wicked is definitely Good. A Paladin can associate with Evil people if she is actively trying to turn them. Case in point, Seelah and Seltyiel, our Iconic Pally and Magus. And they do say Love Redeems.
I would suggest you take him aside and ask him(or maybe do it in a vision where a messenger of Torag comes to him wondering what the heaven he was thinking). If he gives this reason (you don't have to let him know you're looking for that reason if you don't want), you can let him go as long as he makes that clear.
Ah, this may not be quite so bad as you fear. Remember, redemption of the wicked is definitely Good. A Paladin can associate with Evil people if she is actively trying to turn them. Case in point, Seelah and Seltyiel, our Iconic Pally and Magus. And they do say Love Redeems.
I would suggest you take him aside and ask him(or maybe do it in a vision where a messenger of Torag comes to him wondering what the heaven he was thinking). If he gives this reason (you don't have to let him know you're looking for that reason if you don't want), you can let him go as long as he makes that clear.
Well, as a larger group that meets, we do want to make a specific in-game point (partly so that others won't start following that path) so that they don't scare off newcomers to the game. We have a lot of hyper-sheltered homeschoolers on campus and we want them to come out of their shells a little more instead of being scared off by intentionally awkward Lance of Injection jokes. So part of it is also making a bit of an example without being too severe.
After discussion with some friends, I think we're going to have one of Torag's messengers appear to him, take some of his mojo (maybe his spells and smiting ability, or halve the healing of his LOH ability) until he completes a miniquest. At the moment, it's probably going to be a simple retrieval quest, but one that would be a lot easier with his mojo. Not crazy hard, but enough to make the point.
Edit:
Especially because he wasn't trying to redeem the Derro lady. He was deliberately being awkward about it. And Torag isn't the most patient of deities which is why he doesn't get along with Sarenrae very well.
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I have a Paladin player in my group, so I have thought about what I would do if he started a downward spiral.
I would do a series of unsettling dreams with elements symbolizing his situation. The elements should be obvious enough to be meaningful, but they should not point at the exact situation that is the issue. If there are some vague elements, then the player may read some other things into it that you did not intend (which can be fun too). The whole thing would be on rails, so the player just has to listen to the story.
For instance, the dream on the first night may find the Paladin walking along a path carved into the side of a mountain. He does not know how he came to be there, but he knows that he must reach the top. Just after he starts his journey, he starts to hear the rhythmic chiming of hammers upon anvils. (One would hope that the player would figure out that this represents the journey towards Torag).
Along the way, he encounters other paths that branch off the main. Each path has some element that could tear the Paladin away: a fantastic treasure, an old foe he wants to kill, etc. The Paladin is torn away from the path by this distraction, but it becomes immediately obvious that each is false in some way. When he returns to his journey up the mountain, he realizes that the path has somehow narrowed and he cannot help but feel an uneasy foreboding.
I would repeat the dream for three nights. Each night contains one distraction and after each distraction, the path becomes more narrow. Each night, the foreboding becomes more deep until the last night when the path becomes so narrow that he fears he may tumble from the mountain.
If the player takes some action that indicates he is back on track, he will next dream of a peaceful walk along the mountain path and will wake the next morning refreshed.
If the player does not change his actions, he will continue to have unsettling dreams and will be unable to sleep through the night. During the day, he will feel like 'something is not right' and all he d20 rolls will be at -1. After a few more nights, all his d20 rolls will be at -2. After a few more nights, the next dream will be filled with walking along a darkened path down a mountain, alone. The next morning, his Paladin powers will be gone.
Anyway, just tossing it out there.
I'd thought about some dreams or things like that, but we don't want it to take that long for him to get the point and get back on track. After chatting with some of the other DMs, and looking into some of the next bit of the adventure, we've come to this conclusion:
He will be visited by a messenger of Torag. In person, and in front of the party. Torag himself actually plays a pretty important role in the rest of the adventure path we're going through (The Shattered Star). The messenger takes away some of his mojo, and explains that he must struggle to complete a mini-quest to prove he is still worthy to be a paladin of Torag. He also indicates some Obi-Wan/Anakin levels of "YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE," although it's a bit subtler than that movie, to encourage the player to keep going with his paladin.
Until he completes the quest, described below, his smite only does half damage, his LoH ability can only be used on helpless creatures, doesn't get to use his divine bond (just reached level 5), and any charisma-based checks are made at a -1 (or autofail if he's actively flirting as part of the check)
Mild adventure path spoilers below (but SUPER mild)
Since the Shattered Star adventure has them seeking out shards themed around the 7 deadly sins, and the next one they're going to get conveniently happens to be the Shard of Lust, part of his quest is to ensure that nobody is cursed by the shard during its retrieval. Part of this next set involved dealing with a tribe of troglodytes that are at war with some boggards. As part of this war, the trogs have lost their chief, and are currently being lead by the tribes cleric. Nobody in the tribe really wants to follow the cleric, and it's stated in the adventure text that once he is removed from power, the rest of the trogs could be pretty easily redeemed and made into non-evil allies if handled properly. There's also a room full of filth fevered (and completely helpless) trogs that were injured in fighting the boggards (that he would be able to use his LoH with).
He should be able to recover his powers in just the next session if he plays things right and is able to redeem the trogs. But at the same time, there are still plenty of opportunities for him to fall off the straight and narrow, so it's entirely up to him. I may also do that narrow-mountain path dream sequence as well for flavor if we need to.
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I'm not really sure what he did wrong. If it was consensual, he certainly broke no laws and there's no rules that Paladins can't *ahem* enjoy the company of others. Yes, it was incredibly awkward and probably inappropriate for a game setting, but I see no overt wrongdoing. The Paladin is fine.
The PLAYER, however ...
What you need to do is talk to the player and tell him that such behaviors are not appropriate at your game table, as you don't want such activities taking place in your game. Set a movie or ESRB-style rating of PG or PG-13.
I'm not really sure what he did wrong. If it was consensual, he certainly broke no laws and there's no rules that Paladins can't *ahem* enjoy the company of others. Yes, it was incredibly awkward and probably inappropriate for a game setting, but I see no overt wrongdoing. The Paladin is fine.
I'm not saying it's against the LG alignment. I've no issues of pallys getting some periodically. And honestly, if he followed a different deity, like Caden Calen, or if the enemy wasn't evil, I'd probably just take him aside and ask him to keep in PG or PG13 and leave it at that. The issue is that he freely chose to follow TORAG. And that he wasn't trying to redeem the soul of the enemy, nor was he trying to seduce her to defend the rest of us, nor was he misleading her to try and win. He was doing it in a non-chivalrous way, which is, while not outside LG, definitely outside of Torag's tenets. That's also why I'm not taking away all of his mojo.
I actually really like playing paladins, and giving them some depth and quirks within the bounds of the deity and alignments isn't hard to do. I don't want to ruin paladins for our player, but I need to be harsh enough that other people don't start to follow suit (to keep the tables PG/PG13). Especially since you can choose any pretty much any of the deities you want As of right now, he shouldn't have any problem getting his mojo back in one session unless he actively continues toeing the line.
After this week, we'll probably let him choose to continue following Torag or pick another deity, since he probably didn't put a lot of thought into it, but make him come up with his take on that god's code of conduct so that we can all be on the same page for future adventures.
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Keep in mind that Diplomacy doesn't normally work in combat. Even an "insane" Diplomacy check isn't going to make the person shooting at you suddenly want to shack up. Diplomacy is Diplomacy, not dominate person.
More to the point, that is a player problem, not a paladin code problem. I recommend, as others above have, that you talk to the player out of game about roleplaying and setting the tone of the game.
Keep in mind that Diplomacy doesn't normally work in combat. Even an "insane" Diplomacy check isn't going to make the person shooting at you suddenly want to shack up. Diplomacy is Diplomacy, not dominate person.
More to the point, that is a player problem, not a paladin code problem. I recommend, as others above have, that you talk to the player out of game about roleplaying and setting the tone of the game.
It's possible that this particular derro is the one who is a xenophile that uses enchantment magic to shack up with experimental subjects, and she's quite mad, so it could be possible.
Anyway to the OP, for one thing Torag's entry indicates that he does not have any non-dwarven paladins, so if this character is the one exception to that rule in the world, he had best follow the ways of Torag beyond reproach. We had a problem with a player once who clearly wanted his elven paladin to follow Cayden Cailean (an illegal alignment choice) and then demanded to be allowed an elven paladin of Torag. The GM allowed it, but the player just had the character be drunk all the time because "dwarves like to drink!" and followed approximately zero of Torag's tenets. Eventually the GM had a vision from Torag and the character lost his sponsorship, settling on Sarenrae instead.
Lance of Injection jokesBeautiful.
Ew... Gross.
I'm not really sure what he did wrong. If it was consensual, he certainly broke no laws and there's no rules that Paladins can't *ahem* enjoy the company of others. Yes, it was incredibly awkward and probably inappropriate for a game setting, but I see no overt wrongdoing. The Paladin is fine.I'm not saying it's against the LG alignment. I've no issues of pallys getting some periodically. And honestly, if he followed a different deity, like Caden Calen, or if the enemy wasn't evil, I'd probably just take him aside and ask him to keep in PG or PG13 and leave it at that. The issue is that he freely chose to follow TORAG. And that he wasn't trying to redeem the soul of the enemy, nor was he trying to seduce her to defend the rest of us, nor was he misleading her to try and win. He was doing it in a non-chivalrous way, which is, while not outside LG, definitely outside of Torag's tenets. That's also why I'm not taking away all of his mojo.
I actually really like playing paladins, and giving them some depth and quirks within the bounds of the deity and alignments isn't hard to do. I don't want to ruin paladins for our player, but I need to be harsh enough that other people don't start to follow suit (to keep the tables PG/PG13). Especially since you can choose any pretty much any of the deities you want As of right now, he shouldn't have any problem getting his mojo back in one session unless he actively continues toeing the line.
After this week, we'll probably let him choose to continue following Torag or pick another deity, since he probably didn't put a lot of thought into it, but make him come up with his take on that god's code of conduct so that we can all be on the same page for future adventures.
Talk to him about Torag, but don't just force him or make him fall. Its entirely possible he doesn't see things the same way you do, and won't take punishment well because he won't see that he has done a thing wrong. If its all in good fun in the moment its a big bleh to make him fall, and its hard to see that its awkward to others sometimes when your on the smiling end. Mutual communication is important.
Also, Torag doesn't say a thing about Chivalry last I checked. Where is this from? I thought his big thing was being tactical and was pretty distant from his followers, wanting them to take their own path to make them stronger.
Many people will get very upset if you start slapping penalties down on them with no warning. I understand it may feel awkward, but Talk to the player individually first. Something along the lines of:
"Look, we noticed you are not playing to the Lawful Good paladin code. I wondered if there was a reason for that. Are you trying to go for the fallen holy man that eventually redeems himself, have some other interpretation of the code, or did you just not understand how the paladin code works?
Also, While I found it hilarious, I think the innuendo was bothering a few of the other players. So try to tone that back a bit."
See what he says. Proceed from there.
This looks like more of a warning situation than a punishment one. If he continues to act that way, then yes, power loss or reduction is a viable option. Power loss at this stage is probably overkill, and may discourage future paladin play.
Yeah, that was my initial thought, but we don't want to drive away other players that aren't comfortable with that kind of behavior at the table while potentially letting him continue this path.
Talk to him about Torag, but don't just force him or make him fall. Its entirely possible he doesn't see things the same way you do, and won't take punishment well because he won't see that he has done a thing wrong. If its all in good fun in the moment its a big bleh to make him fall, and its hard to see that its awkward to others sometimes when your on the smiling end. Mutual communication is important.
Again, one of the reasons why the shacking attempts is an issue for our game group is because of the location in which we play and the potential new players we have. During the last session, some of the other players were, while not joining in, were definitely amused and carrying on running jokes for the rest of the session. To stop something like this would require us calling out the player in front of all the other players (a bit more overt than we'd like), or giving him a vision/dream and letting him decide how to rectify the situation (giving the player more control over the outcome).
Admittedly, it would have been better to talk to the player after the session ended last week, but he left too quickly for that to really be an option, and the leaders wanted a consensus on what the best course of action would be so that we'd all be on the same page for whoever ended up running his table. None of us want to call him out on things in front of everybody, but due to the nature/composition of our play group, we can't let him continue this way regardless of what deity he actually follows. The fact that he follows Torag is just giving us a bit more lore-friendly ways of solving the problem due to the conservative nature of Torag and how he doesn't associate with enemies. We don't want to make him take a full fall, which is why he still keeps some of his paladin powers, and, frankly, some of them won't even make any difference in this upcoming session so it won't be as harsh as it sounds. But this player is experienced enough to know better than to just completely ignore his deity's tenets.
I may just give him a -1 or -2 charisma penalty for the adventure and pile on additional mojo-loss penalties if he does the same things again, since there's going to be another female NPC in this section too.
Again, one of the reasons why the shacking attempts is an issue for our game group is because of the location in which we play and the potential new players we have. During the last session, some of the other players were, while not joining in, were definitely amused and carrying on running jokes for the rest of the session. To stop something like this would require us calling out the player in front of all the other players (a bit more overt than we'd like), or giving him a vision/dream and letting him decide how to rectify the situation (giving the player more control over the outcome).
Well, you keep naming a thing about the player, but then going on about his character ingame. You can't deal with player problems ingame. There's no guarantee it won't happen again on another character, or that those types of jokes won't continue out of character.
Have you all got contact info with eachother or a facebook page to handle communication outside? I can't imagine the pains if you don't, with scheduling and the like. There's also nothing wrong with am impartial "Hey hey guys, lets settle down." either.
Many people will get very upset if you start slapping penalties down on them with no warning. I understand it may feel awkward, but Talk to the player individually first. Something along the lines of:
"Look, we noticed you are not playing to the Lawful Good paladin code. I wondered if there was a reason for that. Are you trying to go for the fallen holy man that eventually redeems himself, have some other interpretation of the code, or did you just not understand how the paladin code works?
Also, While I found it hilarious, I think the innuendo was bothering a few of the other players. So try to tone that back a bit."See what he says. Proceed from there.
He’s right. No, no punishments. After all, these are a matter of opinion. Just have him wear a Phylactery of Faithfulness. Then, have the device warn him. Then and only THEN, if he disregards that warning, have there be consequences.
This was a one time act, apparently done mostly as a joke. A penalty for that would be wrong.
Esp as paladins are supposed to be into redemption of the wicked, and that *COULD* quaify.
Wait, so he was trying to seduce someone mid-fight?
He thought that by brandishing his "lance" for SIX SECONDS he could get an evil opponent so hot that they would stop attacking?
Forget Paladin Ethics 101, this guy needs Women's Studies.
Yeah... I was definitely NOT the DM in that situation. The pally then tried to give me a hard time, as I was the only female at the table. He didn't seem to understand that you can be as suave as Fred Astaire, but not even a natural 20 on your diplomacy check will endear you to me, much less get you laid.
Though, he actually wields a lance. He didn't actually drop his pants - it was just jokes being made in character. He was a bit more poetic when trying to convince the Derro to come down from above us and "shelter in his arms" I think is what he said. But it wasn't done in a surrender-and-we-will-not-harm-you way. Especially when he decided that my wizard should come along for the Shard of Lust specifically so he could make me touch it and get the corresponding curse.
I think our conclusion for now is to have him visited in a dream and given a warning, along with a quest to make sure nobody is cursed by the Shard of Lust that they're going to retrieve, along with a warning that if he continues down the path he stepped toward that he will lose mojo. He'll have several interactions on this next stage of the adventure path that involve female NPCs, and I plan on dropping in some Torag-friendly things he can do, like the abandoned forge that someone mentioned, to start encouraging him to do some research on his deity to help him roleplay more effectively. So if he tries to seduce the women he runs into instead of staying focused on strategy, and mission completion, he can lose some mojo mid-adventure. Then if he hits other checkpoints, he can regain it.
Actually if he accepts a surrender he should fall as a paladin of Torag... Torag isn't the nicest guy in the world.
Talk with him though if you think he's giving you personally a hard time, or get someone else to. He sounds a little socially awkward if he's trying to tell you to get the sin of lust... for whatever reason.
Actually if he accepts a surrender he should fall as a paladin of Torag... Torag isn't the nicest guy in the world.
Talk with him though if you think he's giving you personally a hard time, or get someone else to. He sounds a little socially awkward if he's trying to tell you to get the sin of lust... for whatever reason.
True, Torag is definitely Lawful Good and not Lawful Nice, but I wouldn't call for a fall over accepting a surrender, especially for a first offense. And I wasn't offended at being given a hard time. I'm more concerned with lore consistency. I think we'll talk with him after the session this Friday, regardless of how it goes and let him know that he can change his patron deity if he wants without consequence, but that in future sessions he'll be held to the tenets of whatever deity (if any) he chooses and that consequences for falling can be really critical.
Still, a Phylactery is a Must Do in this case, and for almost all Paladins. This prevents any such misunderstandings. Just do it.
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Don't punish him. It's dirty, but not evil. I'd call it a borderline neutral event that would, over the course of many such events, cause him to shift alignment and therefore lose his powers, but Paladins can act in a way that isn't Lawful Good without losing their powers so long as it doesn't explicitly conflict with their code, which this really doesn't, so... yeah.
True, Torag is definitely Lawful Good and not Lawful Nice, but I wouldn't call for a fall over accepting a surrender, especially for a first offense. And I wasn't offended at being given a hard time. I'm more concerned with lore consistency.
Torag's paladin code says he doesn't accept a surrender unless its to take information. No mercy, allow no surrender except to extract information, honor to torag. Something like that. Don't have any of those darn books on me to double check.
Pretty sure he doesn't say a thing about flirting, or that that's really the problem since its made from out of game things.
True, Torag is definitely Lawful Good and not Lawful Nice, but I wouldn't call for a fall over accepting a surrender, especially for a first offense. And I wasn't offended at being given a hard time. I'm more concerned with lore consistency.Torag's paladin code says he doesn't accept a surrender unless its to take information. No mercy, allow no surrender except to extract information, honor to torag. Something like that. Don't have any of those darn books on me to double check.
Pretty sure he doesn't say a thing about flirting, or that that's really the problem since its made from out of game things.
Derp. I'd completely forgotten about that. Side note, that's the exact reason I had my pally follow Sarenrae. So much more freedom in how I act with evil NPCs.
Also, does anybody know where I can actually find a list of Torag's tenets? In a nice, organized list? Not like "He's the god of the forge, so don't make shoddy daggers. Also don't take prisoners." That would also be helpful in this situation, and I can't find an official list.
Hey all.
I've got a player with a paladin (Human, follows Torag) that's seriously pushing, if not breaking, paladin/patron deity moral code/code of conduct. I'm trying to come up with a nice, lore-friendly, way to get the point across that, as a paladin, you have to be mindful of RP scenarios and your alignment more than other cases, without being a total buzz kill. This player is a lot of fun to have at the table, and the play format we're all part of (details at the bottom of the post) have made for some unique issues.
TL;DR, he was actively attempting to seduce the enemy we were fighting (a female derro). The issue at hand is kind of obvious, in that paladins rarely even travel with evil characters, and only work alongside them for seriously compelling reasons. To attempt to seduce one seems even a step beyond that, especially for a follower of Torag.
Side notes for play format:
I'm helping with a Pathfinder group on my university campus (a small, private, conservative university), and we have a weekly gaming group that meets. One of the games available for play is Pathfinder (derp). We frequently rotate DMs so that nobody is stuck DMing unless they just want to. Last meet, I was playing at the same table as this Paladin. Next meet I'll be taking over as GM. So I didn't have a say in the rulings for the situation initially. But I will in this next round. For a variety of reasons, mostly consisting of not turning off new players that may not be comfortable with more awkward topics arising, along with the small, private, conservative nature of the university at which we play, the other DMs and myself want to do something significant without the consequence of a full pally fall (because we don't want to ruin the game for the pally either.)Full story:
We'd been hacking and slashing our way through a dungeon, and came across a Derro (CE) and a couple constructs. During the fight she goes invisible and levitates so we can't get to her. In order to get her into range, the Paladin decides to...
I was fond of warning dreams/nightmares.
Derp. I'd completely forgotten about that. Side note, that's the exact reason I had my pally follow Sarenrae. So much more freedom in how I act with evil NPCs.
Alternatively, they fit your ideas so you don't have to conform. Saranrae isn't big on giving you personal freedom on your interactions either. Goddess of redemption.
Also, does anybody know where I can actually find a list of Torag's tenets? In a nice, organized list? Not like "He's the god of the forge, so don't make shoddy daggers. Also don't take prisoners." That would also be helpful in this situation, and I can't find an official list.
Faiths of purity has the extra codes and tenants I think? I can't find it on anything OGL atm. Helps to keep a copy if you actually plan to use them and share it with the players, not everyone has access and it can drop a surprise on someone. Talking about your expectations is always important as a paladin, but if your rotating GMs that can be a little nutty. Again, handle it as a person instead of a character and it works out much better.