This is just seeing various opinions on how one would handle a situation. A paladin walks into a bar with detect evil active and everyone but 2 people in the bar pings as evil, at least, everyone he examined, at least 30 people. He walks up to the two and says "I am seeking to cleanse the world of evil, will you help me slay these ne'er-do-wells in this bar"
The two non-evil people are bouncers working for coin, not evil, just a job. They tie him up, and turn him into the city guard. He is punished for conspiracy to commit mass homicide in a way that doesn't instantly kill a character literally 15 minutes into a campaign, they break his sword arm, giving combat penalties until healed.
He trades his paladin levels for rogue levels, asks to change his alignment to LE, and goes along his way. He rejoins the party and begins to hunt down the people the group was hired to with his new found street smarts.
Two other party members are waiting for nobility to answer them at the door. He sneaks into the estate, steals dragon scale tapestry (it was an eccentric home), and leaves. The party finds out who the next target may be and, not knowing about the rogue's theft, offers their protection to the next likely target. He is left to guard the roof, he abandons his post, and steels gold and a trench coat that he insisted on.
Returning to the roof the thief, a shadow dancer pops in on him. They fight, he nearly kills the dancer who runs away into the night never to be seen again. The players meet back up and try to track the shadow dancer but fail.
The rogue attempts to lie to the other players, saying that the shadow dancer made off with plenty of nice, expensive things. They pass sense motive and he runs away, jumps on a horse and runs. The party warblade/spellslinger(weird I know) takes a shot and hits for 39 damage. The party arcanist summons a mount and goes after him. After getting out of the city into the surrounding farmlands the arcanist casts gravity bow, making the concentration check on the galloping horse, and shoots the rogue, knocking him unconscious.
I ask for your opinions on the players actions, was the punishment for the mass homicide excessive? Death would have been bad for the player so I avoided that. He then becomes a thief, acceptable, but then he ends up lying to the party and they had to chase him down.
How should I handle this in the future? I am trying to keep with the fact that actions have consequences.
This being a metropolis city the warblade asked if it would possible to find a wizard to curse him to prevent it all, as the party is only level 7 and the arcanist cannot do so yet.
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:(
Personally, the "paladin"(srsly now player?) got off very light for the "hay guys let's do some mass murders maybe?" thing.
Talking to the player about in-setting expectations and consequences is probably a good idea. As is, dude does not seem to be particularly party/group-friendly.
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1) The people at the bar does not detect as evil, unless they have 5 HD, or are clerics/antipaladin to an evil god. I'd guess that most common bar patrons isn't that high level. Maybe they were, but then there is probably something going on at that place (and his cause might be more just than it first seem).
2) The punishment wasn't too hard, a temporary penalty isn't bad. However I wouldn't have sentenced him with 'conspiracy to commit mass murder' (which in my book would result in a death penalty or very long incarceration). It would probably be 'drunk and disorderly', trying to pick a fight in a bar in a crazy manner. The sentence was fine though.
3) I wouldn't allow a sudden change of class/aligment. And the fact he did it, screams 'I feel wronged for the punishment, not being able to play my paladin as destroyer of all being evil'.
If it happens again, you should take the talk with the player this point, telling him how you see paladins and acceptable behavior, and working with him to make the event an interesting experience for his character to develop from.
4) When he feels wronged, and changes his character in an extreme way, a player is very likely to become disrupting to the game, which was the case.
It is very difficult to get to a good place from there, unless you talk it all out. Getting someone to put a curse/spell on him, to alter his behavior, is just enforcing his feeling of being told what he can and cannot do.
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1) If a paladin attacks someone unprovoked because they ping as evil on the radar, he isn't, and should not have played, a paladin. No paladin is going to walk into a bar and kill everyone for no reason.
2) Breaking his arm was excessive. Arresting him was not. Imagine if you we're a present day bouncer and a guy walked in asking for your help to kill everyone there. You'd have him escorted to jail as well. But injuring him because he's mentally unstable is a crime in itself.
3) This guy is neutral or chaotic evil. He always has been. It sounds like his presence in the party has been very disruptive to the group.
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Oooookay, I gotta say, sounds like this fellow was playing Lawful Stupid, not Lawful Good, no insult intended despite the harshness of that statement. Let me explain.
There are many reasons why someone might ping evil that have nothing to do with them being evil. Off the top of my head the Succubus' profane gift and (I believe) being on the receiving end of an evil controlling or buff spell are two such ways. There should have been investigation, then a decision could be made. Walking into a bar full of patrons that ping evil and immediately begin making plans to murder them all is NOT paladin behavior.
Second, walking up to two strangers and asking them if they would assist him in the murder of several (to them) innocent strangers, regardless of whether or not they were actually hired to protect them, would be an INCREDIBLY foolish thing to do. Imagine such a scenario;
"I realize you can't see these people's auras, but I can and they are all evil. Wanna help me kill them? No, really, they're all evil! You must trust me, I'm a paladin, not a crazed mass-murderer!"
Nope. Not going to happen.
So, that being said, I don't think that the punishment was out of line, although odd. They had strange and harsh penalties for crimes in "olden tymes", so something like that could be explained away, but personally I wouldn't have done it that way. And I most definitely wouldn't have allowed the paladin/rogue swap. It sounds to me like this player was going out of his way to be disruptive, and best thing to do with that sort of player is ask them politely after the game to stop it, after explaining what and why you found disruptive, and removing him from the game if he continues his disruptive behavior. Is this the case?
The setting they are in is high powered and they were in the market district of a metropolis, the HD wasn't a problem, just the bar itself was a place criminals hung out, in a large, bustling market with exotic goods. Well those who weren't convicted anyways.
Fun is there for all, except him when he is caught. In the past we explained that paladins as a whole are not "All evil dies always", even with the example of the "evil" bartender who doesn't explain the "special ingredient" in his beer (hint: it's bad for you) that his patrons love so much.
I considered on the next crime's punishment going with mark of justice or some such, which, considering his decent diplomacy, he may be able to get removed, for a price. I also considered giving him a handler of sorts, having then watch him. Or asking him to work for the guards, to pay his debt to society.
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Wow, so everyone in that bar was either-
An Evil Cleric or Antipaladin
or
5th level or higher
That seems like quite the wretched hive of scum and villainy.
Any intelligent paladin would have seen that crew, realized they were in way over their heads and tried to leave without being noticed.
Then, they would have called for backup.
It's important to note that the guys in the bar weren't doing anything wrong at the time. They were just in a bar.
Detect Evil is a good springboard to figuring out what to do next, but is not a justification to kill someone. Being Evil isn't enough reason to put a sword in someone. That evil person needs to actually be doing something evil for a paladin to justify smiting them.
Which means what the paladin should have done is tried to catch them in the act of doing something bad.
Basically, it sounds like your player isn't familiar enough with the game to handle playing a paladin. Maybe having a more experienced player play one for a while to give them a good example of how not to be Lawful-Stupid might be a good way to start.
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1) The people at the bar does not detect as evil, unless they have 5 HD, or are clerics/antipaladin to an evil god. I'd guess that most common bar patrons isn't that high level. Maybe they were, but then there is probably something going on at that place (and his cause might be more just than it first seem).Basically this. If the paladin walks into a bar full of antipaladins and evil clerics there's something very bad going on and he should be more likely to lose his paladinhood for walking away than for trying to do something about it.
Nonsense! If the paladin immediately draws down screaming, "DIE, EVIL-DOERS!", well that's just plain dumb. He's in a bar with 30+ evil-pinging patrons. Three things are happening here.
1) Something is wrong with his ability.
2) Something is badly wrong with these people and they need help.
3) There are a huge batch of powerful, evil people here and he needs back-up, BADLY!
I would allow, even applaud, a paladin that backed out of the bar and went for help. There are more ways to deal with evil then immediately trying to kill it.
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The two that didn't ping may very well be 4th level evil guys.
The guy obviously didn't really understand the whole 'detect evil/how to respond to a ping' thing.
Also, the best way to deal with this type of bad behaviour is with realistic in-world consequences. If some NPC did to the party what this paladin/rogue did....yeah, they'd kill him.
I hate PvP, but in this case, he started it, he suffers the consequences.
Talking him through this out of game will help, but in the end he'll either get it or he won't, and if he won't its kinder to put him to sleep let him leave the group.
This is not what the Paladin did. He tried to recruit everyone non-evil available. That's getting backup. In a realistic setting they're not high level, they're classes with auras. Sworn to evil, but not particularly powerful.
Being a paladin isn't supposed to be easy. If the GM's going to be a jerk about it it's better to go out doing what's right than compromise. And then find a GM that either openly forbids paladins or is narrativist enough to not place them in impossible situations.
2 bouncers in a bar where everyone is evil? Yeah, the paladin was stupid.
Take Star Wars Mos Eisley Cantina, The Most Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy for example. If a Miraluka Jedi (Miraluka have the ability to tell if someone is more light or dark because they can see the Force itself, so kinda if you are dark side you warp the Force around you, if you are light you are in harmony with it. Basically Detect Evil and Detect Good, rolled into one) walks into the Mos Eisley cantina, odds are she's gonna see a lot of dark siders. So, if she walks up to the two Gammorean bouncers that are pretty much not light or dark and says "Hey, I'm a Jedi, this whole place is full of dark siders... help me clean up this cantina" the Gammoreans are going to do the very same thing to that jedi that was done to the paladin.
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I disagree with you Atarlost,
Being a paladin isn't supposed to be easy, but its not a suicide mission either.
If he is outclassed, he can notify the authorities, and he would likely be in a position that they would take his warning seriously.
Maybe he simply notes that it's a wretched hive of scum and villainy, and returns when he has gained enough power to properly cleanse its taint.
Walking around spoiling for a fight, with detect evil on constant sweep is going to be wasting your time and power.
Even if they ping evil, murder in the streets isn't exactly 'lawful' behavior within a city anyway.
Very Respectfully,
--Bacon
I am reminded of a story I heard about a game run by a TSR employee back in the day.
Paladin of Torm, God of Law. The party is in Calimshan, and they see a wizard ordering around his elven slaves. The paladin immediately takes offense to the evil slavery he is seeing and, while he doesn't kill the wizard, he does threaten him and help the elves escape. BAM Just lost his paladinhood.
Why? He broke the law. Is slavery evil? According to TSR back in the day, yes. Slavery is a Lawful Evil institution. Problem with the paladin is, he broke the lawful portion of his alignment by forcing the wizard who lawfully owns elven slaves to free his elven slaves. Torm, the God of Law, would very much strip him of his paladinhood in a heartbeat. Even as a Lawful Good deity, the paladin should work within the system to rescue the slaves and not break the law. This is why paladins are so hard to play... a Lawful Good rogue can still bend the laws or even break them occasionally... a paladin cannot.
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Ahhh lawful stupid, forevermore reminding us why immature players should not be trusted with paladins. As for his activities as a rogue? Seems to me that behaving like that as a rogue is the sort of thing that should be expected. He's just uh... going about it wrong, and really ought to make sure he's got a good bluff score before lying to the party. The name of the game is not getting caught, and well, he got caught. Bring down the hammer hard.
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I am reminded of a story I heard about a game run by a TSR employee back in the day.
Paladin of Torm, God of Law. The party is in Calimshan, and they see a wizard ordering around his elven slaves. The paladin immediately takes offense to the evil slavery he is seeing and, while he doesn't kill the wizard, he does threaten him and help the elves escape. BAM Just lost his paladinhood.
Why? He broke the law. Is slavery evil? According to TSR back in the day, yes. Slavery is a Lawful Evil institution. Problem with the paladin is, he broke the lawful portion of his alignment by forcing the wizard who lawfully owns elven slaves to free his elven slaves. Torm, the God of Law, would very much strip him of his paladinhood in a heartbeat. Even as a Lawful Good deity, the paladin should work within the system to rescue the slaves and not break the law. This is why paladins are so hard to play... a Lawful Good rogue can still bend the laws or even break them occasionally... a paladin cannot.
^^ This. People call what OP's player did lawful stupid, it is not, going into a legal establishment and murdering it's patrons because they are evil is a chaotic act. A paladin follows the laws not just good vs evil.
I would not have let him suddenly turn evil just because he felt wronged, the transition from a crusader of good to a selfish and evil person is a long an wretching road.
For those who opposed his sudden alignment change I see that it likely should have been long, but his character was crushed. And now he seeks vengeance upon the city, as I learned was legitimately his plan, thus he changed to rogue. I'm thinking of letting that be, it seems to represent his mind for good being utterly crushed, much like his arm, but ignore that for now.
Assuming that the arcanist and warblade turn him into the authorities, what should this punishment be. The stolen objects were from a local noble and included jewelry, some
Gold bars, and a nice, dark coat. The warblade may return the items and handle it himself, but if he doesn't, what should this punishment be, extended incarceration? That he may escape from and become a fugitive, but in the process make friends in low places?
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Honestly, he should retire the character and try a fresh start. He wasn't RPing a paladin with his idea of slaughtering a bar full of people just because they ping on the evil scale. For all he knows, they are good people drinking the local specialty brew that has a few drops of devil blood as an ingredient.
That is a story problem. The bigger problem is the player. By being disruptive, out for revenge and acting with a pvp mindset vs the rest of the group, he is disrupting gameplay. Based on the description of what has happened, it looks like he is angry at you personally, and is trying to destroy the campaign out of revenge. You should have an open talk with him about it, try to clear the air, and move on. If that doesn't work, in game consequences aren't the answer, booting the player is.
Under most paladin codes, the paladin should have fallen the moment he decided to kill people for pinging on his holier-than-thoudar.
I stopped reading after that.
You need to takl to the player and ask what he expect from the game. If you cannot find common ground with him. Let him play Nintendo at home when you guys plan next.
Best thing we ever did with Paladins was get rid of the Detect Evil ability.
Well, second best thing actually, but our conversions of Paladins to avatars of primal alignments isn't really for this thread ;-P
I am playing a Paladin myself , I don't see myself as the PURE good.
From my experiences as a GM Paladin players often forget about the "law" aspect.
This means respective laws of the country or area where the group is.
If slavery is allowed by law, I have to respect that law because ... when in Rome do as the Romans do
If I can make sure that someone will atone for his or her wrongs I give him another chance it happened some times during our campaign.
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Sounds like some good and fun PvP there. Really, they should just have the Rogue dig his own grave and be done with it. And new (hopefully less antagonistic) PC for the player.
Reminds me fondly when we were all running to be the first to kill the shaman PC who had thoughtlessly summoned a hurricane right where we were all standing. The mage stunned him at range and the barbarian decapitated him with great enthusiasm, with the rest of the party cheering. The shaman's player's next PC was a bit less over-the-top ;-)
Good old times, I say. Nice to see that the tradition is still alive and kicking :-))
Oh great a paladin alignment thread, .
Now that I've had my sarcastic statement, I will say that Paladins despite being Lawful Good it doesn't mean they obey all laws everywhere. I recall that there is a cannon example in one of the adventure paths where a paladin is in Cheliax attempting to subvert the government and freeing slaves if I recall correctly.
So, just because you happen to be in a country that permits slavery doesn't mean you can't free them. However, how you go about it may depend heavily on your god and what kind of deity they are (and what your GM thinks your deity is). So, a Paladin of Abadar might just walk up to the slave owner and offer to buy all the slaves regardless of price and then set them all free as soon as the deal is done. Another Paladin might sneak in at night and set them free. It's unlikely any of them can justify killing the slave owner unless they commit some other greater evil such as openly abusing slaves. Even this is likely to have variation.
Now, in any event when the player said that he wanted to commit homicide because his Pali-dar was going off that should have conveyed that the player does not understand what many of us consider acceptable behavior for a paladin. Knowing someone is evil is not enough to justify killing them.
Not to mention that as a GM you got this scene wrong in the first place. As somone else mentioned you need to be at least 5th level, a evil cleric or antipaladin, or an evil outsider or undead to have an evil aura which can be detected by detect evil.
So....mistakes all around!
I am playing a Paladin myself , I don't see myself as the PURE good.
From my experiences as a GM Paladin players often forget about the "law" aspect.
This means respective laws of the country or area where the group is.
If slavery is allowed by law, I have to respect that law because ... when in Rome do as the Romans doIf I can make sure that someone will atone for his or her wrongs I give him another chance it happened some times during our campaign.
The difficulty is getting a bead on what 'lawful' is as well as what 'good' is, technically speaking. We finally defined it this way, and it has worked well:
The Paladin's 'lawful' aspect is his strict adherence to a code of conduct that is absolute, regardless of the laws of the land he is in. There is leeway in that code of conduct that prevents him from ever falling into the 'Lawful Stupid' trap. For instance, if he cannot abide slavery, there are a million ways to work to bring about the downfall of slavery other than charging the slavers in the market, sword drawn... in fact, most of the other options would probably be more effective relative to his goal.
The concept of 'Good', especially as it applies to non inherently good or evil creatures (like outsiders) ultimately comes down to selfishness vs. selflessness. All good in our world today grows from the selflessness of an individual while all evil that we see stems from the selfishness of someone. We all look to our own welfare certainly, but when we willingly and knowingly do so at the expense of the welfare of others, well, that's when we begin down the road to evil. When we actively embrace and exploit such a philosophy, then we have crossed the line completely. Meanwhile those who risk themselves or sacrifice to serve others (first responders, members of the clergy, social workers, philanthropists, etc.) are the definition of good. Also remember that it comes down to motivations rather than actions - if the Paladin wants to do good and believes that he is, its awful hard for him to fall unless the GM is deliberately being an ass.
Unfortunately, the paladin's actions and words at the beginning of your story are a caricature of paladinhood, and not what I call a "human" response. One who has spent his life becoming a paladin would not be so naive to believe that the only two non-evil people in a room packed with evil people hold his same conviction or beliefs. Stories like this are what lead to the "lawful stupid" moniker.
Didn't people under effects of infernal healing detect as evil as well? (I read that "special ingredient" in the beer thing)
Also - a little mistake on the GM side as well, at least point-of-view wise - bouncers are hired to keep order, not to call in the cops to everyone that says dumb stuff. They could well start out with explaining that just being evil or selfish doesn't mean anyhing, those people aren't doing anything wrong here and if he has proof of their wrongdoing he should get the cops here anyway cause killing people that did nothing to provoke a fight (not to mention anything that leaves capturing them alive out of the question) isn't good at all and if the so-called paladin wants to root out evil from the world then he should start with himself and his murderous motivation.
Emphasise the point by his deity turning away from him if he persists. Very visible if he tried to Smite Evil in there to suddenly hear "it doesn't work - nor do any of your paladin abilities".
And the sort of behavior he shhowed was clearly chaotic evil. Even neutral evil is described as doing what you want as long as you know you'll get away with. He just went in to make a mess not caring about consequences. Rovagug would be proud.
To put it another way:
Good vs. Evil is not Bears vs. Cowboys. They aren't teams.
To put it another way:
Good vs. Evil is not Bears vs. Cowboys. They aren't teams.
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Yes they are!To put it another way:
Good vs. Evil is not Bears vs. Cowboys. They aren't teams.
Is it already time to start up the puns again? Guess we'll all just have to grin and bear it.
Yes they are!To put it another way:
Good vs. Evil is not Bears vs. Cowboys. They aren't teams.
Oh. Well, carry on then.
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So participants in a good campaign rifle through the belongings of someone that has proven themselves an ally that has presumably not wronged them and discover an evil book. They determine based purely on possession of this book that the person is evil, and confront him about it while he's still extremely badly injured. The character becomes angry that its privacy has been willfully and unlawfully violated by persons he did not grant express permission to do so. Party promptly kills him in cold blood as a result of a completely understandable reaction, writing this off as a "good" action. Lawlwut
PS: What an unbearably dreadful experience for the player, that their character was hounded as such.
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So participants in a good campaign rifle through the belongings of someone that has proven themselves an ally that has presumably not wronged them and discover an evil book. They determine based purely on possession of this book that the person is evil, and confront him about it while he's still extremely badly injured. The character becomes angry that its privacy has been willfully and unlawfully violated by persons he did not grant express permission to do so. Party promptly kills him in cold blood as a result of a completely understandable reaction, writing this off as a "good" action. Lawlwut
PS: What an unbearably dreadful experience for the player, that their character was hounded as such.
The invasion of privacy was justified by it being done to try to find a method of healing him. Its discovery was accidental and would bring up a number of questions naturally. The party asked him why he had it. Given the text as is, we cannot assume whether they had decided him to be evil yet, to figure out that, we would need to have heard to tone of the speaker. In any case, the individual revealed their evilness by declaring his intention to get revenge on them by summoning demons.
Given this evidence, the party did no wrong in executing him.
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Except for the part where it's extremely common and justifiable to say crap like that when someone has violated your privacy to such an extreme degree. Furthermore, someone being of evil alignment does not justify killing them, let alone killing them in cold blood in an exceedingly dishonorable manner.
So participants in a good campaign rifle through the belongings of someone that has proven themselves an ally that has presumably not wronged them and discover an evil book. They determine based purely on possession of this book that the person is evil, and confront him about it while he's still extremely badly injured. The character becomes angry that its privacy has been willfully and unlawfully violated by persons he did not grant express permission to do so. Party promptly kills him in cold blood as a result of a completely understandable reaction, writing this off as a "good" action. Lawlwut
PS: What an unbearably dreadful experience for the player, that their character was hounded as such.The invasion of privacy was justified by it being done to try to find a method of healing him. Its discovery was accidental and would bring up a number of questions naturally. The party asked him why he had it. Given the text as is, we cannot assume whether they had decided him to be evil yet, to figure out that, we would need to have heard to tone of the speaker. In any case, the individual revealed their evilness by declaring his intention to get revenge on them by summoning demons.
Given this evidence, the party did no wrong in executing him.
O_o
I think this is awesome storytelling. Kind of reminds me of Jamie Lannister (except he lost his hand, not just broke an arm).
Then the character questions his own morality and turns to a darker path (that of an unscrupulous Rogue).
I know most players that would have been disappointed if that happened to their characters, maybe start a new one, but this player rolls with it and builds it into his story and character.
This is how I am trying to look at it now. He is planning to break out and possibly amass assistance to take down the city, and his former allies who betrayed him so horribly and the like.
I just hope PvP doesn't end up too one sided, which is possible as the warblade is quite good at optimizing, even with this odd build, and the rogue... isnt't.
So shall I just let it go as is? The players not in prison are still investigating their original, which the rogues robberies may complicate.
And I feel it will go to a city-wide PvP, the rogue and his gang vs the other players and the city guard.
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but honestly, if the party killed him, with that stories information, (metagaming or not) they would all shift down either to CN, or straight up evil. you not only rummaged through someones things, but then incapacitated a injured man and murdered him while he slept, I hope to GOD there were no paladins in that group.
THough, the "wait till I can summon a demon" part was a bit... lol.