So many topics about Paladins falling. But what about other classes?

[Atarlost]

Lincoln Hills wrote:

Villain: Note to self. For guards, employ only orphans. With disabilities. Who are going to send most of their pay to their families. Their adopted families, obviously.

No, not their adopted families. Hire only orphans who are also single parents.

[SAMAS]

Starbuck_II wrote:

memorax wrote:

Starbuck_II wrote:

Yeah, I'm going to say he shouldn't have fallen.

Guards helping evil are serving evil. You can kill them freely.
Why would detecting evil help? They still serve evil.
What were they supposed to do? Let the bad guy get away?

No he should not have let the bad guy get away. Yet he could have tried to do subdual damage to the guards to knock them out. The guards were hired to do a job fair and square. Did they like protecting the BBEG no. But they were payed. It was a job nothing more. Like police officers having to protect a rapist or a murder. Does that make them also rapist or murders as well. I think not. The player was a little too trigger happy. Attacking anything he suspected of being evil. Paladins are not vigilantes last time I checked.

So, he had a right to kill guards who protect evil.

If Police officers are acting as guards for a terrorist. They are dirty cops and you can kill them freely.

Not so much a right as a probable necessity. Still, he could entreat them to laying down their arms and leaving/surrendering first.

[ParagonDireRaccoon]

There's a lot of room to have fun with a paladin if the party is on the same page. If I remember correctly, Neverwinter Nights had a mechanic where the strength of a paladin's abilities was affected by how lawful and good they were (Neverwinter Nights had a scale of 1-100 for both lawful and good, which was affected by decisions you made). There was an encounter (I don't think it was part of the storyline and was more of a side quest) where you had to track down a minotaur gladiator. The gladiator had refused to throw a fight and had to flee for his life. If you turned in the minotaur you collected the reward and got points of lawful but lost points of good. If you let the minotaur go you lost points of lawful and got points of good. You would only fall if you did an action that broke the code in a big way (I think my paladin fell once for my cohort hitting bystanders with collateral damage from an AoE spell) or if lawful or good dropped below 50.

So if a group is on the same page and has house rules everyone enjoys it can be fun for everyone. I mentioned earlier AD&D had a very strict paladin code which had a little room for interpretation, so sometimes a group will have players with differing interpretations going back 20 or more years. Part of the reason paladins can disrupt a group is if one or two players have interpretations that aren't on the same page as the GM and group it can cause disruption ('the paladin should have lost all abilities for not tithing enough treasure' or 'the paladin should fall for working with a LE cleric to save the orphanage').

[memorax]

MrSin wrote:

Alternative character interpretation, its a lot of trouble to do subdual, much less to everything you run into, and you usually don't think twice about the guards who are busy stabbing you. In a lot of situations post initiative, its really hard to just ignore or figure things out and the expectation is usually that you fight to the death(or subdual, I guess.)

True but the guards already disliking guarding the BBEG would have surrendered in a heartbeat if the player would have asked them to drop their weapons. Instead he saw the BBEG and started hacking left and right. Nor was it the first time he did something similar.

Starbuck_II wrote:

So, he had a right to kill guards who protect evil.

If Police officers are acting as guards for a terrorist. They are dirty cops and you can kill them freely.

So Paladins in your games are vigilantes in your game. Got it.

No room for any shades of grey. The bartender who serves dinner to a BBEG deserves to be killed. The guy who drives him around in a carriage the same thing. The fruit vendor who gives the BBEG directions well he must be the spawn of Rovagug. He must be killed as well.

SAMAS wrote:

Not so much a right as a probable necessity. Still, he could entreat them to laying down their arms and leaving/surrendering first.

Again no one said the BBEG had to get away. I wanted the Paladin player to stop him. All he had to do was ask the gaurds to lay down their weapons. Instead of playing as a Paladin he acted like a vigilante and cut down the guards without mercy. The wanted to surrender but the Paladin just cut them down. I don't test Paladins in my games too often. That time it was a test and he failed. What happens if the BBEG asked a young child for directions. According to some here the Paladin is within his rights to kill the child as he "helped" the BBEG.

[SAMAS]

I don't think it was that simple. Like any alignment, there is still a fair bit of leeway in what Lawful Good entails. Not every Paladin has to act the exact same way.

In this case, I don't think your Paladin should've fallen. Those men, after all, did choose of their own free will to take up arms and put themselves between the Paladin and Evil. While I, being in that situation, would've asked them to surrender/stand aside, I would not have had much expectation of them all doing so (as a player I have no way of knowing you would've had them all comply), and still would've cut down all those who did not with no hesitation and only moderate remorse. My showing up with sword in hand was really all the warning needed, and the entreatment would just be me making sure.

Now, had you made it known that those men were forced to fight for the BBEG (as opposed to being paid), and I had done that, by all means I should've fallen.

[memorax]

SAMAS wrote:

Now, had you made it known that those men were forced to fight for the BBEG (as opposed to being paid), and I had done that, by all means I should've fallen.

I made him fall because the guards asked if they could surrender and the Paladin refused. As the guards knew that they were outmatched by both the BBEG and the Paladin. They may have been paid yet they REALLY did not want to be anywhere near the BBEG. Nor go up against the Paladin. I did give the player a chance to change his mind. The other players tried to do the same. He refused and killed off the guards. To me that is grounds for making the Paladin fall.

That is why I like the Inner Sea Gods book. Every core god that can have Paladins has a Paladin code written. Same thing for every god that can have anti-paladins.

[SAMAS]

Wait, they really DID surrender (as fas as I'm concerned, asking is as good as doing)?

Yep, he should've fallen hard, then.

[Starbuck_II]

memorax wrote:

SAMAS wrote:

Now, had you made it known that those men were forced to fight for the BBEG (as opposed to being paid), and I had done that, by all means I should've fallen.

I made him fall because the guards asked if they could surrender and the Paladin refused. As the guards knew that they were outmatched by both the BBEG and the Paladin. They may have been paid yet they REALLY did not want to be anywhere near the BBEG. Nor go up against the Paladin. I did give the player a chance to change his mind. The other players tried to do the same. He refused and killed off the guards. To me that is grounds for making the Paladin fall.

That is why I like the Inner Sea Gods book. Every core god that can have Paladins has a Paladin code written. Same thing for every god that can have anti-paladins.

Now see you left out that information.

While he doesn't have to ask for a surrender (why trust evil to keep its word?; he should have no reason to refuse the surrender given to him.

Did you ask him why he refused their surrender?

[memorax]

I left that out my mistake.

He played his character like anyone who even remotely associated with evil was evil. Period. To him a npc giving directions to a evil npc (BBEG or not) would put the person who helped him in the same category. Little Timmy giving directions to Abraxus the evil overloard were one and the same. Then again from the looks of it the player was used to playing Paladins a very rigid way and used to getting his way from other DMs. That did not happen at my table. He left the game shortly after.

I just found it strange having to explain that killing a opponent that surrendered was wrong. One would think it was just common sense. If the guards defended the evil BBEG then imo it was fair game. The guards said that they surrender. I had the guards even drop their weapons. The Paladin was I think between levels 5-10. Don't remember for sure as it was years ago. The guards even as a group were no challenge. The other pcs were just too shocked and stunned to do anything. Who expects a Paladin to just slaughter a opponent who surrenders. There was a general "did that just happen" feeling going around after the fact. It was a lesson learned as a DM and player. That not every player can run a Paladin.

[GypsyMischief]

So uh...totally off topic, kind of, being that this thread was intended to Not be about paladins, I once participated in a game where a paladin fell for directly forsaking his alignment. It was a somewhat bizarre situation, as the cleric belonged to a human-supremacist sort of racist church whose faith strongly objected to the bonds he had forged with his demi-human party mates. Upon interacting with another member of his clergy for the first time in several months the cleric found himself disgusted by the ignorance of his faith, and cast his holy item to the ground..

Pretty killer Rp moment, but made his character completely useless.

[Deadmanwalking]

GypsyMischief wrote:

So uh...totally off topic, kind of, being that this thread was intended to Not be about paladins, I once participated in a game where a paladin fell for directly forsaking his alignment. It was a somewhat bizarre situation, as the cleric belonged to a human-supremacist sort of racist church whose faith strongly objected to the bonds he had forged with his demi-human party mates. Upon interacting with another member of his clergy for the first time in several months the cleric found himself disgusted by the ignorance of his faith, and cast his holy item to the ground..

Pretty killer Rp moment, but made his character completely useless.

Uh...spend like five minutes finding a new God? I mean, really, any NG through LN god will do...

Or just decide to be a godless Paladin. Which is totally allowed.

[GypsyMischief]

We were on some sort of island/railroad express with no real opportunity, otherwise of course that was the plan.

Ah, just realized I wrote Paladin when I meant to say Cleric in my initial post...way to go, me.

[ParagonDireRaccoon]

In 3E Oriental Adventures some classes had strict prohibitions that could cause them to lose abilities. I believe the Wu Jen chose prohibitions (can't eat meat, must always face a particular direction while meeting, can never cut hair or nails, a few others). Those didn't affect roleplaying as much, but usually strict prohibitions are setting-specific. Even the samurai has a lot more leeway than the paladin.

I've tried homebrew settings with more strict codes for rangers, druids, and clerics. It hasn't worked well, my idea of 'having fun trying to live up to a nearly impossible ideal' and 'navigating shades of grey through a lens of black and white' only appeals to a small number of gamers. There were mechanical benefits for the stricter codes and the stricter codes were optional (you could play a RAW ranger, druid, or cleric without the stricter code) but players who believe the paladin code should be enforced to the strictest possible interpretation would argue endlessly that any other strict code should be much less strict. There's a lesson there somewhere, probably that ideas I think are clever are never as clever as I think they are.

[QuietBrowser]

To sum up what most of the people have said on this topic, the reason that the paladin gets so much attention paid to its falling in spite of other classes being alignment tied is the following:

* Lawful Good alignment is one of the more "headcanon-prone" branches of the alignment tree. You have people who state it's about being good and staying true to your own personal code of law, people who say it's about being good and obeying all lawful authorities, people who say it's about promoting good by way of law, and probably a dozen other variants I can't be bothered to think of. Needless to say, if the player has one interpretation of lawful good and the DM has another, conflict happens. This is especially problematic because of people having a tendency to conflate Lawful Good with Lawful Neutral, and thusly have supposedly lawful good characters believe simply "Law = Good".

* Other classes with alignment ties are usually more broad in aspect. Being Lawful or Chaotic is a lot broader and easier to define, more or less, than Lawful Good is. The one other class that had similar amounts of alignment pain, the Druid, actually underwent a revision from 2e (where it HAD to be True Neutral - and True Neutral was defined in the most *ridiculous* fashion) because WoTC realized just how stupid its original alignment ties were.

* Players of Paladins are well-aware that their grasp on their powers, and thus their ability to not be sub-par fighters, depends on cleaving to their alignment. Thusly, many players over-emphasise in order to avoid falling... and tend to take it into directions that just tick off the DM and/or the rest of the party. Hence the "Paladins Suck!" meme that keeps bubbling around D&D and, to an extent, Pathfinder.

* As part of the "Killer DM" school of thought, some DMs enjoy puzzling out ways to cause Paladins to fall, either as a punishment for a bad paladin player, as a way of generating a backstory for a fallen/anti-paladin villain, or just for the fun of it.

* The existence of a whole other class that exists to be defined as "evil counterpart of the paladin" gives further fuel for the falling. Monks, Barbarians and Druids don't have antithesis classes, so their ability to fall is further ignored by comparison.

...Looking over this, and over all the other topics about falling paladins, makes me realize just how much I appreciate 4e for A: making far more succinct alignment descriptions (for example: Lawful Good is *explicitly* "believes that law and order are valuable, vital tools in the promotion and support of good, and laws that do not promote/support good must be changed"), B: removing the ridiculous idea of classes depending on character alignment to function in the first place, and C: peeled away that drek about paladins being Arthurian "knights in shining armor" and gave them a far more nuanced, viable role as "armored warrior-champions of the gods".

I mean, seriously. If I wanted to play a knight in shining armor in Pathfinder, I would play a cavalier - or, hells, even a Lawful Good fighter or magus - and never even look at the paladin.

[FarmerGiles]

MrSin wrote:

aegrisomnia wrote:

A paladin that kicks one puppy can kiss smite goodbye.

Unless its a demon puppy,

No such thing, all dogs to go the upper planes.