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I think for most paladins they really should try to figure out why neutral followers of evil gods are following the evil gods and try to convince them that whatever parts of the evil god's religion they like they can find elsewhere.
Killing them off should not be plan A. That is neither Lawful nor Good.
Wait I misread Norsewolf's post. Nevermind. I thought he meant that a paladin choosing to stay his blade is just letting evil wind back for another hit on the paladin or on innocents.
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I'm really not sure that murdering the file clerk who works in an oppressive bureaucracy (who just happens to be a person who has a terrible job that they've got to do in order to keep their family fed) falls in the realm of "good".
I mean, the world might not be better off without that person, because then their poor family might turn to crime or starve to death and the world would be without the good they would have done otherwise. Perhaps had the paladin not killed the clerk, they would have eventually helped to work bring down the system from inside of it.
The problem with "the world is better off without this person, best kill them" as a paladin philosophy is that it's incredibly arrogant way to play a paladin, and I personally prefer Paladins be dutifully humble.
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Yeah, paladins are violent, but a good paladin is a protector, not a crusader. A crusader is a paladin bound to struggle with their code in my games. You kill when you must, redeem when you can, and above all, protect innocent life. Going around murdering Neutral followers of Asmodeus who are at worst complicit with evil is not following any of those three creeds.
Even killing evil people requires a reason. You can't associate with an evil farmer, but you also can't just kill her without knowing of a real harm that will come from the alternative. Killing without a clear sense of the "If I do/If I don't" is, at best, Gorum-style Chaotic Neutral. I wouldn't make a paladin fall for it immediately, but their god would issue a stern warning.
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I think a better comparison would be The Flash and Green Arrow. Oliver Queen DOES kill people. A lot.
So a paladin should kill every follower of Asmodeus?
No, because that wouldn't be lawful. Part of a paladins oath is to obey legitimate authorities, and oddly enough those authorities have asked not to be killed in the course if their duties.
However, if a paladin is in a situation where they are already swinging a sword at a follower of asmodeous and the smite doesn't bite as hard as it should, they can decide in the heat of the moment that that means there's hope for that one.. or they can just power attack instead. Either one is a valid option for different types of paladins. Paladin is not that narrow of a path that there's only one route.
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This for example is why the Flash is better than Batman. The Flash actually tries to redeem his rogues gallery, and succeeds. Batman doesnt kill them, but he doesnt even bother trying to make them better people, not even Two-Face who used to be a friend of his.
1) the flash is a god. Batman is a mortal. The flash can, and should, take risks batman doesn't because if batman tried that he'd be dead and a lot more people would be hurt
2) The flash's rogues gallery is nowhere near as crazy or evil as batmans. There's no redeeming the joker. The better argument is that NOT killing him is the easy way out that gets people hurt.
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Yeah, paladins are violent, but a good paladin is a protector, not a crusader. A crusader is a paladin bound to struggle with their code in my games.
That is inane.
A crusader is the very inspiration for a paladin: the errant knight adventuring in the world to smite evil where it lives because that evil needs to be smitten, no matter the risk to ones own life.
There is an "oath of the crusader" for a paladin that you know.. crusades.. against evil.
there is a tortured crusader archetype that has had it.. from his crusades.
The idea that paladins can't crusade is N V T S nuts.
You kill when you must, redeem when you can, and above all, protect innocent life. Going around murdering Neutral followers of Asmodeus who are at worst complicit with evil is not following any of those three creeds.
A LN cleric of asmodeous has gone well beyond complicit. They are in all likelyhood beyond redemption, and killing them would help save others.
Even killing evil people requires a reason. You can't associate with an evil farmer, but you also can't just kill her without knowing of a real harm that will come from the alternative.
Right, but we're talking about already being in some conflict with a LN cleric of asmodeous where swinging a sword at them was already on the menu. After you've reached that point, you don't need to stay your blade just because the smite isn't hitting as hard as you'd like.
Killing without a clear sense of the "If I do/If I don't" is, at best, Gorum-style Chaotic Neutral. I wouldn't make a paladin fall for it immediately, but their god would issue a stern warning.
If i don't erradicate evil it will hurt someone else. This is as natural to a paladin as breathing. Something may hold a paladin back (such as the possibility of topling the social order and leading to galt, or no one trusting any paladin ever again if they wantonly break laws) but a paladin doesn't need a reason to find evil, determine that it is evil, and eradicate it.
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A Paladins first goal should always be redemption, followed closely by protection. It should never be extermination.
Shouldn't a Paladin's first goal be to destroy evil before it has a chance to corrupt, destroy, poison, torture, enslave, or otherwise harm anyone else? That IS protecting others.
A LN cleric of asmodeous has gone well beyond complicit. They are in all likelyhood beyond redemption...
For someone who seems to take exception with morally simplistic interpretations of paladins...
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If you're already in a fight, sure, you aren't obliged to break out the blackjack for neutral or evil creatures. I wasn't aware that was a base assumption of this conversation. My bad.
A LN cleric of asmodeous has gone well beyond complicit. They are in all likelyhood beyond redemption...For someone who seems to take exception with morally simplistic interpretations of paladins...
Putting the more proactive interpretation on the table as an option is certainly in character
I think a better comparison would be The Flash and Green Arrow. Oliver Queen DOES kill people. A lot.
That's because Green Arrow is at best Chaotic Good, if not at times Chaotic Neutral.
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A LN cleric of asmodeous has gone well beyond complicit. They are in all likelyhood beyond redemption...For someone who seems to take exception with morally simplistic interpretations of paladins...Putting the more proactive interpretation on the table as an option is certainly in character
Especially when you know the likely first response IN ANY OTHER CASE would probably be to have the Paladin fall for NOT ACTING when they could have. Snowflake NPC doesn't change anything.
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What kind of GM makes a paladin fall for not killing someone? Barring scenarios like "Either you kill this goblin or it eats a baby in front of you," that sounds like a predatory GM.
What kind of GM makes a paladin fall for not killing someone? Barring scenarios like "Either you kill this goblin or it eats a baby in front of you," that sounds like a predatory GM.
Paladin of Torag?
I am very open to alignment choices. Now a paladin is lawful AND good. So they must adhere to both aspects. Sometimes the good action is not lawful and vise versa. This is the crux of the paladin that they must find a solution against. That their character and their god need to find for a LG character.
Saying a paladin NEEDS to slay all followers of Asmodeous and saying one can not are both wrong in my opinion. How we understand alignment is different by each person. When I DM for paladins that do questionable actions I ask them why a LG person would do this. If they can give me a decent answer, fine. I am not asking the player to convince me into agreeing, but so I can understand where they are coming from. Now as the DM I get to roleplay their god and decide if they would agree. I would not be opposed to a god abandoning a paladin, but the paladin not falling. Then most likely another god would be willing to take them.
But there is a liberty among paladins to disagree. One LG does not equal others LG.
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It sort of begs the question (raises the question?), why a neutral person is working for an evil organization. The "it's a job" argument tends to fall flat in a reality with physical tangible evil.
Well, in the case of say, Cheliax, there's not exactly a whole lot of options unless you want to be a renegade. Of all the evil deities, Asmodeus is the least bad, really.
The paladin and any normal person would still be suspicious though. Both Detect Evil and Smite Evil will still work on the Succubus, regardless of redemption. That holy weapon will still give her a negative level.
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Suspicious should not equal "jumping from 0 to bloodshed".
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A Paladins first goal should always be redemption, followed closely by protection. It should never be extermination.Shouldn't a Paladin's first goal be to destroy evil before it has a chance to corrupt, destroy, poison, torture, enslave, or otherwise harm anyone else? That IS protecting others.No. Preventative annihilation is not protection, its genocide. Theres no redemption in genocide. This kind of action just makes good a different shade of evil, one that is considered acceptable to the common folk because "hes just killing the people who do the bad things"
Good, especially Paladins, should be good. An evil creature should not be able to say "were really not so different" to a Paladin. A neutral character should be able to be inspired by him to switch to good because he sees the benefits of good, not just because hes against the concepts evil enjoy.
Redemption will always be the number 1 goal in any conflict. An evil person destroyed at best stops his particular evil, but an evil person redeemed goes on to propogate more good.
Through a select, worthy few shines the power of the divine.
Called paladins, these noble souls dedicate their swords and lives to the battle against evil. Knights, crusaders, and lawbringers, 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. As reward for their righteousness, these holy champions are blessed with boons to aid them in their quests: powers to banish evil, heal the innocent, and inspire the faithful. Although their convictions might lead them into conf lict with the very souls they would save, paladins weather endless challenges of faith and dark temptations, risking their lives to do right and fighting to bring about a brighter future.
Role: Paladins serve as beacons for their allies within the chaos of battle. While deadly opponents of evil, they can also empower goodly souls to aid in their crusades.
Their magic and martial skills also make them well suited to defending others and blessing the fallen with the strength to continue fighting.
Code of Conduct: 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.
You might have the wrong class. Paladins of Sarenrae, and possibly Shelyn might focus more on redemption, but Paladins are crusaders and warriors. Paladins of Ragathiel might try to look at actions over Type, ever with Outsiders, but the potential risks for holding off and letting known evil continue when it could have been stopped and others saved should outweigh sometimes people can change.
Id also really question how many times that a paladin encountered a Succubus where they where not actively engaged in vile schemes, outright conflict, manipulating/seducing/Dominating others, etc, that a DM would expect a Paladin to hold back and find out if this one is, while litteraly made up of the very essence of cruelty, savagry, and torment, they are also the one unique Chaotic Evil Outsider thats also Good?
The question is: Should the DM make a paladin Fall for accidentally slaying a good-aligned being due to (logical) biases? 99.9999999% of demons are evil after all.
Also, at what point has a Paladin taken "reasonable care" in making sure he doesn't accident attack an innocent?
Two? Which two?
Ragathiel is half DEVIL not DEMON though...
And? Devils are Evil.
I dunno...fallen angels seem like a copper a dozen. Alignment subtypes aren't complete locks.
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Wow... he's the son of a Devil who battles his dark side, not automatically evil, but happens to be good.
You sound like you subscribe to the racist Paladin philosophy.
"Their kind's all evil. Born that way. Only we to redeem 'em is death"
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Alignment typed Outsiders are physical embodiments of the very things that those Alignments value
Until they need to be characters, that is. Alignments are vague and confused and commonly disputed. Saying "this outsider is the physical incarnation of evil" is essentially just a go-ahead for your players to go whack at them, which is fine, but it's a terrible way to conceive of any being that has the ability to make decisions.
So alignment typed outsiders are the physical embodiment of their alignments (which is more or less meaningless anyway since no two players agree on what any given alignment means, really) when they need to be punching bags or stat blocks, but if the GM has to portray one in a conversation, they simply can't be that because "I am evil for evil's sake, rawr" is alternatively the least interesting character imaginable, and incapable of making decisions.
Legit question: Do aligned outsiders have Free Will?
Perhaps this is a better question for a separate thread?
Yes, but was that HER free will, or Desna's will?
"If this target is evil..."
You know it doesn't actually say, "If this target is of an evil alignment...". Any means of being "evil" is evil. As for actual intent, it's hard to say what was intended, but since it inititially seems strange to us that the aura doesn't qualify the target as evil, then maybe that interpretation is wrong.
This for example is why the Flash is better than Batman. The Flash actually tries to redeem his rogues gallery, and succeeds. Batman doesnt kill them, but he doesn't even bother trying to make them better people, not even Two-Face who used to be a friend of his.
Actually Batman has tried to redeem his rogue gallery multiple times even visiting the Joker in a mental asylum to redeem him. The Joker subsequently escaped, crippled Batman's sidekick, and tortured Commissioner Gorden. He and other Batman villains tend to do stuff like that a lot. Over and over again. Two-Face as well.
Redeeming someone, especially in a world like Golarion where you have different species of beings whose biological psychology could very well mean their ability to process or even have empathy could be highly limited, is in my opinion highly difficult, time-consuming and by no means guaranteed to be a success just because you had a decent diplomacy roll.
But, hey, being Good-aligned or a Paladin isn't supposed to be easy. If a player wants to kill bad guys when it's convenient and redeem others when it's convenient than they probably should be Neutral, which to me is the best alignment anyway.
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Legit question: Do aligned outsiders have Free Will?
Perhaps this is a better question for a separate thread?
World is deterministic, nobody has free will!