Story time, followed by discussion time.
I was playing a lawful good inquisitor of Torag. Key word, was. He is now lawful neutral. What caused the fall is this...
We pathfinders found cultists spreading diseased flowers in town, looking to spread the gifts of Urgathoa. A great practitioner of dwarven diplomacy, my character put an arrow through the head of one of the cultists. The other got a badger to the face, and a crossbow bolt to the stomach. This left us with a bemused crowd, holding said infected flowers.
A few failed diplomacy checks later, the crowd was still staring at us slack jawed. A few looked ready to leave. Knowing that spreading infected flowers through town was going to lead to bad times, my dwarf pointed his bow at the crowd and rolled an intimidate check to make them drop the flowers. Seeing as how he just straight up killed a cultist, it seemed like a good threat. The DM pointed out that there was a small child in the crowd. I proceeded to roll my intimidate check, and botched it. This led to the child screaming and running away with her infected flower. Our hunter sent his badger after her. Good times!
But this led to a quick discussion where someone pointed out that my character was supposedly "lawful good" and a lawful good character shouldn't threaten children with bodily harm/death. I argued that a lawful good character wouldn't let stupid humans get themselves killed. Said table also argued that Torag wouldn't approve of threatening children. At which point my dwarf threw his hands in the air, said "ye humans deserve what ye get!" and went off to find the town guards. I offered to change his alignment to lawful neutral, as he proceeded later argued with the party that it was the town guard's job to deal with tracking down said flowers/quarantine measures.
But this got me thinking, and I pose this for discussion...
(1) Can you be lawful good and threaten children with bodily harm/death?
(2) Different deities can be lawful good and have different points of view. Torag is lawful good, and he says this:
"Against my people's enemies I will show no mercy. I will not allow their surrender, except to extract information. I will defeat them, and I will scatter their families. Yet even in the struggle against our enemies, I will act in a way that brings honor to Torag."
That's pretty hardcore. Compare that to Iomedae:
"-When in doubt, I may force my enemies to surrender, but I am responsible for their lives."
Two lawful good deities. Two very different view points on surrendering.
So is lawful good based on your lawful good deity or is it something else?
(3) For a lawful good follower of Torag, was this a proper course of action?
* Capture cultists
* Question cultists
* Tell our resident great sword wielding giant of a man to execute said cultists after hearing what we needed.
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Note this isn't a complaint about losing lawful good. I've come to realize that said character really is lawful neutral, and I'm much happier playing him that way.
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From Ultimate Campaign:
"A lawful good character at the extreme end of the lawful-chaotic spectrum can seem pitiless. She may become obsessive about delivering justice, thinking nothing of dedicating herself to chasing a wicked dragon across the world or pursuing a devil into Hell. She can come across as a taskmaster, bent upon her aims without swerving, and may see others who are less committed as weak. Though she may seem austere, even harsh, she is always consistent, working from her doctrine or faith. Hers is a world of order, and she obeys superiors and finds it almost impossible to believe there's any bad in them. She may be more easily duped by such imposters, but in the end she will see justice is done—by her own hand if necessary."
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I would say that a Lawful Good character can threaten bodily harm to a child in order to get said to not interact with an object that he believes to be dangerous.
To be clear, you can be lawful neutral and still be an inquisitor of Torag. And if your alignment slid in one direction, it should be able to slide back in the other.
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"Like a cleric’s deity, an inquisitor’s deity influences her alignment, what magic she can perform, and her values. Although not as tied to the tenets of the deity as a cleric, an inquisitor must still hold such guidelines in high regard, despite that fact she can go against them if it serves the greater good of the faith."
I can see a lawful good inquisitor using threats to keep order and people alive.
Wait, aren't inquisitors supposed to be the ones that skirt, bend, and (in extreme cases) ignore rules of their deity for the sake of their deity's goals?
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Seems fine to me. If you had actually shot them it would certainly be an issue - but it seems like a 'spare the rod and let the child be infected by a plague' sort of thing.
Doesn't seem all that different from a parent who threatens to spank a child for running out into the street. The child might just think that they're being mean, but that's only because they don't understand that running out into the street could kill them.
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It's a bit different. This is more like pointing a gun at a child and saying you WILL kill them if they go into the street again.Seems fine to me. If you had actually shot them it would certainly be an issue - but it seems like a 'spare the rod and let the child be infected by a plague' sort of thing.
Doesn't seem all that different from a parent who threatens to spank a child for running out into the street. The child might just think that they're being mean, but that's only because they don't understand that running out into the street could kill them.
More like if they are standing in the street already and a semi-truck is currently bearing down on them.
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I know it is just me, but I just can't wrap my mind around a non-lawful inquisitor.
It seems clear to me that you are bringing a lot of baggage into the class that isn't necessary. Appropriate, but not necessary.
My CN gunslinger will be taking levels of inquisitor soon, to better serve Besmara and her own wealth.
I think there is a lot missing here. I would love to hear from one of the other people at the table, if possible. I think the failed social checks may have a lot to do with what happened, possibly a strict DM too.
Setting aside the specifics of the situation: having good intentions on its own does not make your actions good. A Good result obtained through evil actions could fall anywhere across the spectrum from good to evil depending on the severity of the actions in question. Everyone is going to have different levels of tolerance for this and different breaking points for saying when an alignment shift happens. So I can understand both sides in principle even if I may disagree on the specifics.
For my part, I've recently experimented with changing "Good/Evil" to "Merciful/Ruthless" alignment. No other changes, they're the same old alignments we all know and love just with a new name tag. It actually goes a long way to help get the emotional baggage off the table and bring a semblance of objectivity to something deeply subjective. Also I just realized that my slight rewording makes it painfully obvious that Torag is not lawful merciful :-P
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For my part, I've recently experimented with changing "Good/Evil" to "Merciful/Ruthless" alignment. No other changes, they're the same old alignments we all know and love just with a new name tag. It actually goes a long way to help get the emotional baggage off the table and bring a semblance of objectivity to something deeply subjective. Also I just realized that my slight rewording makes it painfully obvious that Torag is not lawful merciful :-P
They're rather different concepts. The only philosophy or religion I can think of where all good is merciful are some extreme branches of Buddhism. The vast majority have some sort of righteous judgment involved by the good deities/world after you die. Whether heaven/hell or reincarnating as something up/down the chain.
Besides - I don't think that any adventurers could be entirely merciful. It's not really part of the job description.
They're rather different concepts. The only philosophy or religion I can think of where all good is merciful are some extreme branches of Buddhism.
This was one of my first issues when I first considered the approach... until I realized I literally didn't need to change the definitions aside from the words in question:
GoodMerciful implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings.GoodMerciful characters make personal sacrifices to help others.
EvilRuthless implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Someevilruthless creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursueevilruthlessness, killing for sport or out of duty to someevilruthless deity or master.
Besides - I don't think that any adventurers could be entirely merciful. It's not really part of the job description.
What's the problem? You don't need to be of the merciful alignment.
However, Apsu's Paladin code says that if someone uses the chance you gave them to do bad, then bring down the thunder upon their head. Basically, there are no third chances.
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They're rather different concepts. The only philosophy or religion I can think of where all good is merciful are some extreme branches of Buddhism.This was one of my first issues when I first considered the approach... until I realized I literally didn't need to change the definitions aside from the words in question:
GoodMerciful implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings.GoodMerciful characters make personal sacrifices to help others.
EvilRuthless implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Someevilruthless creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursueevilruthlessness, killing for sport or out of duty to someevilruthless deity or master.
Except - those aren't what those words mean at all.
Simple Definition of merciful
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: treating people with kindness and forgiveness : not cruel or harsh : having or showing mercy
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: giving relief from suffering
That has nothing to do with dignity, altruism, or making personal sacrifices.
Simple Definition of ruthless
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: having no pity : cruel or merciless
Being ruthless doesn't have anything to do with causing additional suffering. Often it has connotations of being quick, clean, and efficient, but heartless. Actively pursuing ruthlessness doesn't even make sense because it's just something you do along with other actions.
How do you have wars between angels and demons when the angels keep showing mercy? etc.
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This whole thing sounds like it started with a misunderstanding of the alignment system, and continued with a quick change to an alignment which should not happen except under extreme circumstances anyway.
Not to mention "threatening, but not harming" is not killing someone. And should not have the same, or even worse, consequences.
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Story time, followed by discussion time.
I was playing a lawful good inquisitor of Torag. Key word, was. He is now lawful neutral. What caused the fall is this...
I call BS on this. One social error (don't threaten little kids!) doesn't take away your whole alignment. So, what, you can never make a mistake? You don't wake up every day and one day you're LG, the next you're LN, the next you're NG, ... depending on what mood you were in that day. You were trying to keep a bunch of people from dying. It was a tense situation.
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A few failed diplomacy checks later, the crowd was still staring at us slack jawed. A few looked ready to leave. Knowing that spreading infected flowers through town was going to lead to bad times, my dwarf pointed his bow at the crowd and rolled an intimidate check to make them drop the flowers. Seeing as how he just straight up killed a cultist, it seemed like a good threat. The DM pointed out that there was a small child in the crowd. I proceeded to roll my intimidate check, and botched it. This led to the child screaming and running away with her infected flower. Our hunter sent his badger after her. Good times!
Lesson learned: if you want to be nice, become better at Diplomacy.
Your inquisitor had another option with the child. He could have stepped up to her and used the Steal combat maneuver to take her flower. An unarmed child wouldn't take an attack of opportunity and her CMD should be quite low.
Or if your inquisitor had enough coin, he could have offered to buy back all flowers for 1 gp each.
Also, an Intimidation check is not necessarily a threat to kill. Sometimes it is just being loud and boisterous and demanding your way. In this particular case, however, I think lots of townsfolk would assume any order your inquisitor gave had an implied threat to kill.
(1) Can you be lawful good and threaten children with bodily harm/death?
(2) Different deities can be lawful good and have different points of view. Torag is lawful good, and he says this:"Against my people's enemies I will show no mercy. I will not allow their surrender, except to extract information. I will defeat them, and I will scatter their families. Yet even in the struggle against our enemies, I will act in a way that brings honor to Torag."
The child was not your enemy. The flower in her hand was your enemy. The child is an innocent fooled by the innocent appearance of the real enemy. That is the heart of the issue: you treated an innocent as an enemy because you were not guided by compassion. Hence, lawful neutral.
he [The GM] proceeded later argued with the party that it was the town guard's job to deal with tracking down said flowers/quarantine measures.
Nope, it was the party's job. You made the right call there. The GM could have a backup plan that if the party failed, then he can say that the town guard managed the cleanup quickly enough, but as the situation was, those flowers were too dangerous to scatter around town for the hours that the town guard would have required.
As a fellow Inquisitor player, I think you're better off. Lawful alignments get in an Inquisitor's way.
Leave it to paladins to follow every inane law to the letter while the enemy mocks those laws. An Inquisitor is all about delivering wrath and vengeance on behalf of their god, and pursuing their enemies to the ends of Golarion if necessary, stopping at nothing until the hunt is over and the enemy is slain.
Leave it to paladins to capture the enemy leader and send him to court, where the enemy's power, wealth and influence virtually guarantee that they will escape justice. An Inquisitor needs no constables or magistrates, an Inquisitor delivers justice with blades drawn and blood spilled in the night.
In other words, Inquisitors don't need no stinking alignment restrictions ;)
Except - those aren't what those words mean at all.
Eh, I'd have to disagree, the dictionary definitions aren't very far far off the marks at all.
"treating people with kindness" does fit with altruism. "not cruel or harsh" does fit with dignity. I'll grant you that "making personal sacrifices" doesn't fit as well, but it's hardly an incompatible notion. On the other side of the coin, "having no pity ; cruel or merciless" does lead quite well into the statement "implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others."
Meanwhile, it's not like good and evil do much better as labels:
a (1) : virtuous, right, commendable <a good person> <good conduct> (2) : kind, benevolent <good intentions>
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a : morally reprehensible : sinful, wicked <an evil impulse>
b : arising from actual or imputed bad character or conduct <a person of evil reputation>
That's extremely vague to the point of being useless outside of cut and dry cases, hence the problem. While people coming from a common culture will find a lot of common ground, there will also be areas of strong disagreement (as evidenced by the existence of this and many other threads). Exactly what constitutes "virtuous" behavior and what constitutes "morally reprehensible" behavior isn't always going to be agreed upon. And to be clear, that's also true of "merciful" or "ruthless". The point isn't necessarily to clarify, but rather to see if changing the labels helped get rid of the moral baggage attached and makes it easier to just roll with how the GM calls it.
In any case, I apologize if this has derailed the thread. I thought my experiment was an interesting observation on how emotional baggage can affect the alignment debate, and didn't mean to invite a particular critique of my homebrew.
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The only thing that will help the Alignment system is to get rid of it.
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I wouldn't call any of the OP's actions unlawful or ungood, but I'm also one of those annoying people who think that players and GMs should have a conversation about alignment before play begins.
Fireballing a crowd to death could be justified to stop a plague under Pathfinder rules unless they constitute a large fraction of the total population to which the plague could be spread.
Sure, worked out fine for Prince Arthas Menethil.
Back to the OP, though, I do think that so long as it was a threat that was all bark and no bite (which it obviously was - you didn't *actually* shoot the child when they ran), you'd be in the clear to stay LG, at least so far as I'm concerned. I'd say most parents can relate that sometimes you need to pull out that authoritative, "scary" voice to snap a child's attention if they're in danger and not paying attention.
Remember, a paladin can be a Hellknight, so that above PF quote about "extreme" LG is pertinent.
I'd just like to remind people that good outsiders will nuke cities if they think the demon inside of them is going to take more lives than the population.
"Against my people's enemies I will show no mercy. I will not allow their surrender, except to extract information. I will defeat them, and I will scatter their families. Yet even in the struggle against our enemies, I will act in a way that brings honor to Torag."
Misinterpretation of the Torag Code, whether intentional or accidental has probably led to more Paladin falls than Iomedae's own strict standards.
Key item in that line is "My people's enemies. You are not in your homelands. No one here is threathening your dwarfhold, so it's in most cases, a severe reach AT BEST, to qualify anyone in this scenario as "your people's enemy."
Being a Paladin of Torag is not an excuse to be a LG murderhobo which pretty much describes your "diplomacy".
In short, your DM handled you with kid gloves.
Being a Paladin of Torag is not an excuse to be a LG murderhobo which pretty much describes your "diplomacy".
Only if he'd have *actually* shot the kid, which he didn't, despite the threat to do so. He easily could have, so his inaction speaks much louder than his words.
Torag's "people" includes more than just dwarves. And not all dwarves are Torag's people.
Lawful: you believe in following laws and structure. Good: you believe in doing good. Lawful good.
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In regards to the OP, those actions sound more chaotic good, but a one time instance without harming anyone is hardly worthy of an alignment shift.
I could definitely see a Lawful Good Inquisitor threatening a crowd that included a child if the Inquisitor was doing it to protect them from a possible calamity and felt they were out of options. Actually going through with it would be a whole other issue entirely of course. That said your GM probably has their own interpretation of what is acceptable for inquisitors of Torag, you should probably make sure you're both on the same page about that when moving forward.
Single acts, especially those with good intentions, generally shouldn't lead to immediate falling or alignment changes. Many deities have subtle ways of showing disapproval that GMs can utilize in such a case. Followers Cayden Cailean for example, may find their drinks inexplicably turn sour. I couldn't find anything like that for Torag but a GM could probably come up with something in a similar vein that is appropriate for Torag's portfolio, such as a follower finding it difficult to heat up his forge.
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Threatening someone with great bodily harm is not the same as doing great bodily harm to them. Saying a lawful good character cannot use intimidate to prevent untold death and destruction is ludicrous. Good societies use threats and intimidation all the time. The whole concept of heaven and hell is basically a threat of eternal pain and suffering if you don’t’ act in the prescribed manner. So telling a small child that he is going to burn in hell for all eternity if he does a particular action is fine. But telling him to drop a disease infected flower, or you will beat the crap out of him is evil. Considering he is a child his fortitude save is probably low so the flower is more than likely going to kill him anyways. It will not only kill the child, but it will also kill multiple other people.
Inquisitors are allowed great freedom in how they act as long as they are acting in the interest of their deity. I don’t really think that letting a child spread a disease is in the interest of Torag. In fact the entire crowd should have been contained until after they had been checked for the disease. Allowing infected people to spread a dangerous disease is neither a good, nor lawful act. Preventing the spread of said disease on the other hand qualifies as both lawful (in the interest of the community) and good (helping people).
Also note that bluff is an inquisitor skill which means they are pretty good at telling lies.
I think it's really a matter of intent. An empty threat (and it was indeed empty, because you didn't shoot the child) doesn't constitute evil behavior. It may constitute neutral behavior, but a good character can take neutral actions without sliding down the alignment scale.
Yes, there are definitely better, more diplomatic ways you could have gotten the flowers back, but it doesn't sound like your character's very diplomatic given the handling of the situation. Just because he's not nice doesn't mean he's not good.
I generally think it's more important to consider the character's intent and thinking. If they're trying to do good, they're probably good, unless they're ACTUALLY killing people to do so.
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"Against my people's enemies I will show no mercy. I will not allow their surrender, except to extract information. I will defeat them, and I will scatter their families. Yet even in the struggle against our enemies, I will act in a way that brings honor to Torag."Misinterpretation of the Torag Code, whether intentional or accidental has probably led to more Paladin falls than Iomedae's own strict standards.
Key item in that line is "My people's enemies. You are not in your homelands. No one here is threathening your dwarfhold, so it's in most cases, a severe reach AT BEST, to qualify anyone in this scenario as "your people's enemy."
Being a Paladin of Torag is not an excuse to be a LG murderhobo which pretty much describes your "diplomacy".
In short, your DM handled you with kid gloves.
I always thought you had to actually kill something to be considered a murderhobo, not just yell out a bunch of empty threats.
Personally, I think his GM was overly harsh, I think he was confusing "good" with "nice". Those are not the same thing, especially when we're talking about an Inquisitor.