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Several people up-thread have mentioned variations on "How do they know you're really a Paladin?". Probably because the real Paladins are going to cut you into little pieces if you're not... I doubt fake Paladins are going to get off easy. So, for awhile you fake it, word gets around and your head leaves your shoulders. And the next would be fake "paladin" considers a new scam.If an order of Paladins was willing to slice and dice someone for wearing paladin armour and doing good deeds without the direct ascent of god, I don't think I'd consider them the good guys.
I don't think that's the issue. The issue would be someone impersonating a paladin and pretending to do good, until they find an opportunity to cheat and steal from the people they've lied to.
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Makes me think of the Aes Sedai from Wheel of Time. It was common knowledge that they could not tell a lie, could not create weapons, and could not use their power as weapons except to defend themselves and others. But not everyone completely believed this, many were rather skeptical of these oaths, some believed the oaths were just myths... Some in small towns believed the Aes Sedai were just myths...Even were one to assume that the Chelaxian authorities were 100% certain they were dealing with a paladin, I imagine many of them might be of the opinion that the whole 'Paladin's Code' business is just good propaganda. Believing that someone *really* never lies might be too absurd for many evil characters.But this proves the point being made. A paladin in Cheliax is treated with mistrust and suspicion, as the government knows he is opposed to their purpose at some point. Maybe not in the exact action they're doing now (because they're both lawful) but at some point they're going to be opposed to one another.Yes and no.
The Cheliax government will be wary of the paladin, but that's not the same as mistrust.
If the paladin straight-up vows that he is not there to mess with the government or its citizens while he is visiting their nation, they will believe him despite being opposed to him. Why? Because he's a paladin.
Paladins are so trustworthy that both their allies and enemies trust them. Now, their enemies will also trust that the paladin will oppose them; but they will still trust his word.
How much people believe are myths in The Wheel of Time is really rather silly. It's never clear why no one ever just hauls a few trolloc corpses down south to get those nations to commit troops to fight the blight etc.
How much people believe are myths in The Wheel of Time is really rather silly. It's never clear why no one ever just hauls a few trolloc corpses down south to get those nations to commit troops to fight the blight etc.
I always took it as the people in charge probably knew the truth, but since it wasn't a substantial enough threat to their country they were content to let the borderlands deal with it.
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The authority of ANY class is entirely dependent on the GM. NO class automatically starts with any built in authority over the game world. BUT if certain classes in a particular GMs world are part of some specific organization then they would have authority based on that.
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How much people believe are myths in The Wheel of Time is really rather silly. It's never clear why no one ever just hauls a few trolloc corpses down south to get those nations to commit troops to fight the blight etc.I always took it as the people in charge probably knew the truth, but since it wasn't a substantial enough threat to their country they were content to let the borderlands deal with it.
Maybe the rulers do know; but it's still silly. If nothing else, a group like Luka's circus would have a stuffed one as an attraction.
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There is no such thing as a "short" paladin thread.
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You talking to me? Hey! You talking to me? I know your not talking to me.
"Or us?"
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The problem with this is that people have a very "modern" version of how law enforcement works that isn't very compatible with a more Golarion-esque medieval/Renaissance world. The idea of a professional "standing" police force is not super realistic; law enforcement was very DIY in those times - apprehending a criminal and taking them to a judge was indeed your responsibility, and sometimes expected of you (see hue-and-cry laws, tithings, and other real medieval legal enforcement techniques).
So while I understand where you're coming from and the kind of behavior you want to curb and why... I'm afraid history isn't really on your side.
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The problem with this is that people have a very "modern" version of how law enforcement works that isn't very compatible with a more Golarion-esque medieval/Renaissance world. The idea of a professional "standing" police force is not super realistic; law enforcement was very DIY in those times - apprehending a criminal and taking them to a judge was indeed your responsibility, and sometimes expected of you (see hue-and-cry laws, tithings, and other real medieval legal enforcement techniques).
So while I understand where you're coming from and the kind of behavior you want to curb and why... I'm afraid history isn't really on your side.
So far as it goes, pretty much every city detailed in Golarion *does* have a standing police force, be they called the Watch, the Guard, the Militia, or the Dottari...
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Right, ninja'd before I could mention the same thing.
Golarion is clearly heavily anachronistic setting.
Though to be clear on the topic, Rome certainly had standing police forces.
But to the thread topic, it just isn't black and white, and context will assert itself.
Not really particular to the Paladin here in all honesty, although that seems to be OP's experience.
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I also wonder how much fun jurisdictional disputes would be in this sort of thing. 'I'm sorry, Sir Paladin, but your authority is not recognised here. We appreciate your eagerness to serve the law but remember, you are not above it.'
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Paladins certainly lend themselves to roleplaying policing authority, but any class should be able to achieve that through roleplay and actions. But any class can end up in any profession. Wizard slumlord. Druid P.I. Sorcerer preacher. Class isn't character, character isn't class. I am looking forward to playing a paladin with near ocd with a compunction for following the rules. I think it'd be counter to his very type to have any real authority. It's all about the character and what the player wants to do with it. GMs should help actualize it within reason.
Extremely important, talking to the GM. Don't try to force things on him, but if you want that princess barbarian ballerina, stick some ranks in Knowledge (Nobility) and Perform (Dance). Who's gonna laugh? WHO?! (Well, if you went with Perform (Comedy), everyone. Princess barbarian ballerina comedian!)
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If a rogue can lie his way into a keep or past a guard, then certainly a paladin can truth his way in.
....(and why is it no one ever complain when rogues do it??)
The key difference is that some truths will not get you in.
Telling the guard that you are one of the King's elite investigators, and need access to a crime scene, may get you in. In fact it will probably get you in.
Telling the guard that you are a plumber, and here to fix the sink, will not.
Telling the guard that you are a wizard will probably not get you in either.
Just being a "paladin" is probably closer to the third one to the first. Truthful or not.
The big surprise to me is that the article needed to be written at all.
Is it that common for players to think that because they're Paladins, they're agents of the law by default?
Following a particular PFS scenario, the paladin at the table posted this to Meetup:
After *deeply* considering the validity of phrases such as "I am the law!", Sahira sends a missive to her companions stating that if they adventure together again, she will happily take care of all of their healing needs. // Good game, y'all. Sorry about the mess! :)
The paladin caused all of the characters to get arrested, along with several unfortunate consequences.
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Several people up-thread have mentioned variations on "How do they know you're really a Paladin?". Probably because the real Paladins are going to cut you into little pieces if you're not... I doubt fake Paladins are going to get off easy. So, for awhile you fake it, word gets around and your head leaves your shoulders. And the next would be fake "paladin" considers a new scam.If an order of Paladins was willing to slice and dice someone for wearing paladin armour and doing good deeds without the direct ascent of god, I don't think I'd consider them the good guys.
read a good short story about that once. Didn't end well for the charlatan.
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For what it's worth, "Justice" can easily be "Arresting individuals and handing them over to the local civil authorities for a fair trial".
And in particular, "justice" almost never involves taking an investigation out of the hands of the local civil authorities. As per the OP: "Having levels of Inquisitor doesn't give you the ability to walk onto a murder scene and start ordering around NPCs like you're a watch detective, for example. Being a paladin doesn't automatically make you a recognized secular authority like a sheriff."
Nor does justice involve breaking laws yourself. From the article cited in the OP: "The marketplace is bustling, and stall owners are hawking their wares at the top of their voices. Jewelry, tonics, fresh fish, and the finest dates you've ever tasted are all on offer. Then, from the corner of his eye, the paladin sees two kids stealing bread. He shouts at them, and they run. He gives chase, shouldering a wide swath, and demanding the thieves surrender. He runs them down, after several blocks, and when one puts up a fight, the NPC gets grappled for his trouble."
That's called assault and battery. Even if the NPC was committing a crime, so was the paladin -- and while they only have the paladin's word of the NPC's guilt, the paladin was caught red-handed. Furthermore, petty theft (in most of medieval Europe) was normally only punishable by a fine, while crimes of violence (e.g., assault) would draw a much more severe punishment, often a death sentence in one of the myriad gruesome ways that the medievals liked to kill people -- hanging was common, but so were being thrown off a cliff, buried alive, burned, or chained to a rock below high tide line.
There's nothing special in the rules that suggests that a paladin caught assaulting two children (whom he claims are thieves) would be treated any differently from a druid or a sorcerer doing the same thing.
And THAT is the fundamental point that a lot of people, even on this thread, don't seem to get.
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That's called assault and battery.
No - it's called a citizen's arrest.
Even in the modern day (though it varies by state) "Some states prohibit the use of deadly force except in circumstances where the person making the [citizen's] arrest or someone else is faced with the threat of serious bodily injury or immediate use of deadly physical force. In these situations, the person making the arrest may use deadly force in order to prevent harm to themselves or others.
Other states allow people making a citizens arrest to use deadly force to stop a fleeing arrestee as long as the person making the arrest used reasonable methods in order to make the arrest. Some states go further and require that the person using deadly force first attempt to restrain the subject of the arrest, and other states require pursuit and an explicitly stated intent to arrest before using deadly force.". (source = findlaw)
It would be more broader in a medieval style society.
That's called assault and battery.No - it's called a citizen's arrest.
Not to the cop. If you're lucky, the judge might agree with you and let you out at the preliminary hearing. But you're both going to spend the night in the station.
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Not to the cop. If you're lucky, the judge might agree with you and let you out at the preliminary hearing. But you're both going to spend the night in the station.That's called assault and battery.No - it's called a citizen's arrest.
Possibly. (It depends upon the situation. I doubt that the police would arrest a shopkeeper who had grabbed a shoplifter, especially since there are additional laws making that kind of citizen's arrest easier to qualify for.) But the police being wrong about something change what it is.
And this goes back to the trustworthiness of a paladin. If it's a paladin who did it, the local guard will likely default into siding with them. Because... paladin!
Thieves in a market can expect mob justice.
What is described, though, is not "mob justice."
There's a reason that the "hue and cry" is so-named. One of the key aspects of the hue and cry is that you announce ("Stop, thief!") what you're doing so that everyone knows in advance what's going on and understands why you're pursuing someone -- and, incidentally, is also around to witness what is going on. (Canny thieves would take advantage of this by starting a hue and cry against an innocent person as a distraction.)
If you just all of a sudden chase through the market and start attacking two children, that's not a hue and cry. You forgot the cry. And, for that matter, the hue -- which is just an old French word meaning "shout." (A lot of common law legal terminology is like that; it's a combination of a French word and a Germanic word, so that both the French speakers and the English speakers of the 13th century would understand what was going on.)
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And this goes back to the trustworthiness of a paladin. If it's a paladin who did it, the local guard will likely default into siding with them. Because... paladin!
No more so than the local guard will side with the sorcerer, because... sorcerer!
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Just because the class name is Inquisitor, that doesn't mean Inquisitor has to be your day job. The Inquisitor can be any kind of sneaky undercover agent for his church.I guess the follow up article about inquisitors not actually being able to be neither inquisitive nor carry out inquiries nor Inquisitions....since no rules actually give them any authority to do so....
I'm converting my 10th level gunslinger to a 10th level inquisitor of Besmara right now (we're in Chap 4 of Skulls and Shackles).
Basically his schtick is that he's just so good at pirating that he's getting noticed by the Pirate Queen and hence the inquisitor spells (explanation of stat morph right there... he's keeping all his attributes mostly the same; just rejigging some feats around). No other motive than being a dam good pirate and wanting to kill other less worthy pirates and looting everything in sight. :)
So your entire point in that earlier post where you described the paladin being hauled off for assault was just that he didn't yell "Stop, thief!" properly?
No, it's that he is doing it, without enlisting the citizenry-as-a-whole.
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And this goes back to the trustworthiness of a paladin. If it's a paladin who did it, the local guard will likely default into siding with them. Because... paladin!No more so than the local guard will side with the sorcerer, because... sorcerer!
Not really the same thing at all. False comparison. Sorcerers aren't known to be beacons of truth, justice, and the Lawful Good way.
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Not really the same thing at all. False comparison. Sorcerers aren't known to be beacons of truth, justice, and the Lawful Good way.
And this goes back to the trustworthiness of a paladin. If it's a paladin who did it, the local guard will likely default into siding with them. Because... paladin!No more so than the local guard will side with the sorcerer, because... sorcerer!
And nor are paladins, which is the central point.
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And nor are paladins, which is the central point.Not really the same thing at all. False comparison. Sorcerers aren't known to be beacons of truth, justice, and the Lawful Good way.
And this goes back to the trustworthiness of a paladin. If it's a paladin who did it, the local guard will likely default into siding with them. Because... paladin!No more so than the local guard will side with the sorcerer, because... sorcerer!
They kind of are. Arguably it would require a low DC knowledge check, but the paladin's code isn't a secret either.
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Jurisdiction another modern concept....
Great steaming piles of onions, no. Jurisdiction and arguments about who has it go back to before the development of written law in most of Western Europe.
If the knights of the Baron of Blarg wandered onto the lands of the Duke of Arglebargle and arrested a peasant of Arglebargle's, the result was likely to end in several deaths. The various feudal lords guarded their judicial privileges with ferocity, even when they were nominally fellow vassals of the same overlord
And as can be seen by the CRB in the paladin description they are categorized as "crusaders" by definition someone working outside of an areas governance, and "law-bringers" bringing law and order to places without it.....
... which, in turn, mean that if you wander into the Duke of Arglebargle's lands "bringing law and order" without you're likely to be killed as a peacebreaker, because he and only he has the rights of "high, middle, and low justice" on those lands. (Look up those terms if you like.)
Even the term "common law" reflects this. The term originated in England when Henry II established a set of laws overriding the traditional powers and privileges of the feudal barons, "common" because it was common across all of England (unlike, e.g., the Danelaw). He did this precisely to eliminate the kind of jurisdictional squabbles between petty barons that had plagued England since time immemorial (and that were particularly problematic in the wake of his somewhat controversial assension).
Or, in other words, "jurisdiction" has been an important concept in English common law since before there actually was an English common law -- and jurisdictional disputes are the very reason we have common law today.
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The reason for this continued circular logic is some of the OPs original assumptions.....
Here is one of them.
"However, nowhere in the class description does it say that a paladin is automatically granted the authority to enforce laws (his own, or anyone else's)."Countered by....
However, nowhere in the class description does it say that a paladin is not automatically granted the authority to enforce laws......
That's not a very good counter. Pathfinder is a permissive system; it says what you can do, not what you can't do. Nowhere in the class description does it say that a paladin is not automatically granted the ability to cast sorcerer spells, either.
They kind of are.
[citation needed]
Though at that point, how likely are they going to be stealing bread anyway?
Now if they're high-born kids or otherwise connected, it might be a different story.
Bored rich kids do stupid s--t for kicks. That's not merely a 21st century phenomenon.
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They kind of are.[citation needed]
Sure -
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 their lofty goals, they adhere to ironclad laws of morality and discipline.
And
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.
If that isn't the biggest beacon of truth, justice, and the Lawful Good way this side of Silver Age Superman, I don't know what is.
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You have to read pretty hard into that to get "officer of the law".
They kind of are.[citation needed]Sure -
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 their lofty goals, they adhere to ironclad laws of morality and discipline.And
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.
If that isn't the biggest beacon of truth, justice, and the Lawful Good way this side of Silver Age Superman, I don't know what is.
I don't actually see anything about authority in there. I see a lot about restrictions about the paladin's behavior, but nothing --- literally nothing --- about either authority or public recognition. I see someone trying to be a boy scout, but not anything that suggests anyone else gives a hamster turd about it.
Or that there's an investigator class...