The party was going through a rural village on the way to Mendev, and our paladin of Erastil ended up rescuing an old man who was about to be lynched by an angry mob for being a devil-worshiper. After getting him out of town and patched up from his beating by the villagers, the old fellow admitted he really was a devil worshiper. He was a LE cleric of Asmodeus who had stopped in the village for supplies. Even though he was just passing through, the locals didn't take kindly to a self-avowed Asmodean being in their town and decided to burn him.
On one hand, the paladin prevented the murder of an old man by an angry mob of religious zealots. On the other, the paladin saved the life of an evil person and even went out of his way to heal him.
Should the paladin have fallen?
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Absolutely not. Absolutely nothing the paladin did violates Erastil's code.
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Saving an evil person is not in itself an evil act. It is still an act of good to save a life, even an evil one.
As the town was going to lynch the man, they were not acting within the law. This means saving the man is also not an unlawful act. If he were to be hung by the crown, or the local sheriff had arrested the man for devil worship, then it could be seen as unlawful.
However, as you've described the scenario, no. The paladin has done nothing to violate their code and require atonement.
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per raw yes but the raw for paladins is silly, so per common sense no the paladin should not fall
On the contrary. RAW for Paladins Code of Conduct:
"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.
Associates: While she may adventure with good or neutral allies, a paladin avoids working with evil characters or with anyone who consistently offends her moral code. Under exceptional circumstances, a paladin can ally with evil associates, but only to defeat what she believes to be a greater evil. A paladin should seek an atonement spell periodically during such an unusual alliance, and should end the alliance immediately should she feel it is doing more harm than good. A paladin may accept only henchmen, followers, or cohorts who are lawful good."
Helping those in need would include the priest in question, and although a worshipper of an evil god, there is no evidence he was harming innocents. As the paladin is not working with the man, only having helped them as per their code and been on their way, they are also not violating the second part of the code of conduct.
RAW, the Paladin is clean.
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Absolutely not. Certainly we must admit that it is possible for an evil person to be seek, and indeed obtain, redemption. While it's not feasible for a Paladin to give every evil person they encounter the chance to recant their evil ways, but they are not wrong any time they give an evil person a chance, even if they don't take it.
Becoming a Paladin pretty much means that you have official sanction to make these kinds of calls.
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The paladin code is a friend and a guide. Not a trap to nefariously lure unsuspecting PCs into.
The paladin helped save an old man. That's an appropriate thing for a paladin to do.
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per raw a paladin can not commit an evil act, paladin saves an evil person, any evil act that evil person does in now on the paladins hands and as such is now an evil act committed by the paladin
I think that the Principle of Double Effect should insulate the Paladin from any risk of falling here. After all, we'd want our Paladins to be able to do things for good reasons, even if they don't end up working out. It would be wholly unreasonable to expect even the best people to be omniscient and to be able to perfectly predict the future to behave in a moral fashion.
Well it does seem rather inappropriate for a Good character to give the benefit of the doubt to someone.
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Fair reminder that arguing with Lady-J in paladin threads about falling and morality is fairly pointless as they have a rather atypical view of morality that includes all form of killing being murder and almost any possible thing causing a paladin to fall.
killing people is evil no matter who is doing it however it is necessary in some cases but that's part of human nature every one is capable of great good but they are also capable of great evilThat's your opinion, it is not a universal fact. I would agree that murder is evil, but killing by default is not. These two things are not by any means the same thing.that's what murder is killing some one
killing is evil, orphaning children is evil, if you want to remedy that evil by killing the children that is evil, ignoring people in need to save the relm is evil, spending time that should be devoted to saving the relm to help those in need is also evil, war is evil, mass eradication of a species is evil the damning of souls to hell is evil, these are all normal adventuring actions done pretty much every day.
Thank you, oh raptorous truth bearer. That was quite enlightening.
My cat kills mice that he finds indoors. Is he evil?
I kill mosquitoes and other bugs that bite me. Am I evil?
Okay so killing is only necessarily evil when it involves two sentient beings?
So is euthanasia evil? Is killing in self-defense?
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So if my character mortally wounds an antagonist, is it more moral to allow the person to slowly die, suffering the whole time or is it ethically preferable to put them out of their misery? Are these two actions of equal moral weight?
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So, in your estimation there's no moral difference between ending someone's suffering, a hand's off approach that allows someone to suffer however much circumstances would dictate, and a hands on approach where you prolong someone's suffering as long as possible? The only thing that matters is that someone died and that's bad?
I have to say, this is a truly bizarre system moral reasoning I have literally never encountered before. Like most people default to "naïve utilitarianism" for ethical reasoning (which works pretty well!) but this is like some sort of extreme hardline consequentialism or something.
Like I am pretty sure that defining evil in such a way that it is effectively impossible to avoid, sort of defeats the point of even thinking about ethics, since at this point- who cares? If you torture an orphan to death that's exactly as bad as if you kill in self defense, or to end suffering, I guess.
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I feel like you're confusing the "good and bad" dichotomy with the "good and evil" dichotomy. Like the purpose of "studying ethics" is to have some insight on how to best live one's life, right? If thinking about ethics doesn't give us any sort of framework to use to decide between alternative courses of action, it's of no use whatsoever.
So while I grant in the course of a day or an adventure, everybody's gonna do some bad things, I would observe that it is nonetheless useful to differentiate between those bad things that are difficult or impossible to avoid and those that one would need to deliberately intend and work towards, and that there is a continuum between the two. But we want to caution people away from "tracking someone who was rude to you to their home and murdering them" as a behavior that is not beneficial for society, but we don't want people to worry about it too much if they accidentally kill the maniac who invaded their home with intent to kill you because of some perceived slight.
I would also observe, that there is a gradation of intensity for the various bad acts one could commit, and that some result in irreversible harms and some result in minor or forgivable harms. Like lying is fairly universally considered bad, but there is a significant gradation between incredibly minor lies of no consequence (e.g. "Oh no, I already ate, I'm not hungry") and grave lies of extreme consequence (e.g. accusing an innocent person of a crime in a courtroom). So I would argue that we would prefer to also emphasize amount or intensity of harm somewhere here, since we worry less about people politely excusing themselves from social occasions and more about potential miscarriages of justice.
So given the aforementioned examples, I would posit that we should probably reserve the "evil" label for those moral failings that are of sufficient intensity and are sufficiently deliberate that we want to condemn them without equivocation. Similarly we want to reserve the "good" label for those acts of moral virtue that are actually meaningful as to be models of behavior we want to emphasize to encourage (i.e. "honesty" is good, but honesty when ordering lunch is not laudable).
Furthermore I want to point out that, what you appear to be missing is that context matters a whole lot, or at least it should. If you tell your friend you will meet them at a time or a place there are circumstances that excuse one's absence (e.g. you were in an accident and were taken to the hospital) and circumstances that do not (e.g. you decided not to go and didn't tell anybody).
tl;dr the labels of "evil"/"good" are for discouraging/encouraging behavior when it is is actually important or useful to do so.
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that's what laws are for while it may have been lawful for the person to kill some one who broke into your house its still evil to do so
I disagree entirely.
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Conveniently, as we are playing a game, the all killing is evil must be an incorrect interpretation in the context of the game when there is an entire class built around being a paragon of virtue who kills things with swords. (Or what have you.) Sure, there are nonlethal options, but they are not the expectation, and certainly not what the iconic is depicted as using. We get plenty of art of Seelah slaying things with that sword, yet she's not fallen, therefore "all killing is evil" must be an incorrect interpretation of the definition of "evil" used in Pathfinder.
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she should have based on raw a raw that i chuck right out the window when anyone plays a paladin because paladins by raw can not function and have some of the dumbest restrictions in the game. also anyone who self proclaims them selves as vitreous and then goes around killing thing is both dilutional and a hypocrite you cant be a being of virtue and be a murder hobo.
Murder hobos kill, but killing at all does not a murder hobo make.
Nearly every society on Earth has among its foundational lore some version of the virtuous warrior who fights and slays evildoers. This is fantasy; that is the narrative the paladin explicitly draws on.
There are contradictions baked in the rules, and there are contradictions introduced through interpretation.
You are interpreting the rules of the game wrong.
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Isn't the Mother Teresa person who was like "It is virtuous to suffer so poor must suffer" and refused to help poor to move up in from not being poor as result?
Anyway, I think you guys are getting derailed. Game mechanics wise, killing intelligent being isn't inherently evil act, now whether it is in real life depends on your personal ethics and philosophy :P Either way, you can't argue that paladin should fall based on your real life personal ethics as game rule wise it definitely isn't the case.
That said, you have rather weird grasp of ethics. If evil you believe everyone does something evil and that can't be avoided due to impossibility of it, that just sounds like excuse to me "Oh no, I had no choice but to do evil, so I'm not responsible for my actions!" type deal.
Paladin didn't detect evil on him first? Regardless, now preach to him how Erastil saved his life, and try to redeem him. After it fails Pala can say "at least i tried" go do his business.
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Paladin didn't detect evil on him first?
Wouldn't have mattered, even if they did. As a paladin you're probably not too fond of lynchmobs, regardless of who is the victim.
This said, I don't think that any Paladin I have played so far would even have bothered thinking about using that ability before rescuing that old man.
On a more general note, I'd rather use the situation as a plot hook than to punish the Paladin player. I mean you can use that to set the Asmodean priest on his path to redemption, or you could set him up as a future opponent in case he continues his evil ways. I find that to be much more interesting than to think about if the Paladin broke any codices or whatever.
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Where two interpretations of something in the game exist, and where one of them makes something unplayable, but the other is quite playable, the playable one is the correct interpretation.
After getting him out of town and patched up from his beating by the villagers, the old fellow admitted he really was a devil worshiper.
Preventing a stranger from being murdered = not evil.
If you were trying to be one of those annoying "ha ha you fall" GMs, the only thing that even needs to be questioned is what the Paladin did once he knew he was dealing with a cleric of Asmodeus. Try to redeem him? Murder him? Say, "Well, good luck with that," and walk away? HA HA WHATEVER YOU DID WAS WRONG YOU FALL!
Paladin didn't detect evil on him first?Wouldn't have mattered, even if they did. As a paladin you're probably not too fond of lynchmobs, regardless of who is the victim.
This said, I don't think that any Paladin I have played so far would even have bothered thinking about using that ability before rescuing that old man.
On a more general note, I'd rather use the situation as a plot hook than to punish the Paladin player. I mean you can use that to set the Asmodean priest on his path to redemption, or you could set him up as a future opponent in case he continues his evil ways. I find that to be much more interesting than to think about if the Paladin broke any codices or whatever.
In my games paladins like to sweep everybody with their radar powers.
and peace of death is not what they deserve. The suffering of life ,
inflicting pain upon each other and themselves being puppets of their primitive instincts is the punishment suitable for their wretched ways.
Dread of eventual death that spares no one is all they deserve.
Especially those who pretend everything is so nice and dandy,
not even being able to understand there can be alternative outlooks on the world.
are the cat and mouse sentient if so then yes. if one is not then no, if both are not then no.repeat for step 2My cat kills mice that he finds indoors. Is he evil?
I kill mosquitoes and other bugs that bite me. Am I evil?
Care to define sentient?
Is a chimpanzee or a dolphin sentient? How about a dog? This also implies it is not evil to kill animals. So is pulling the wings off a moth evil?
Also please explain why a new born child would be considered sentient.
Morality is determined as much by circumstance as it is by the action. Any action can be an evil, or good action in the right circumstances.
Even if the lynchee had been lawful neutral, as a cleric of Asmodeus he still would've pinged as evil. Aura is fun like that.
But yeah, just because someone's evil doesn't mean that they've done something they deserve to die for.
The paladin definitely did the right thing, and might even be able to start reforming the Asmodean - after all, his own people probably would've simply stood by and watched his lynching.