Archived from groups: rec.games.frp.dnd (
More info?)
"tussock" <scrub@clear.net.nz> wrote in message
news:42568b19@clear.net.nz...
> Even assuming you ease off for morally grey areas, that's all far
> more absolute than what the game requires, even for ADnD. Paladins must
> protect the innocent from Evil, but not everything "morally wrong" is
> Evil, and not everyone is innocent.
Well, I didn't really want to spell out the specifics, so "in a nutshell",
he's a good guy, more or less. I was more than willing to allow for a
little latitude when it came to actions taken and responses and so on, I
mean, he's a character, not an automaton, right? But I thought that
disregarding the CERTAINTY that people surrendering would be tortured and
killed sort of crossed the line as far as that went.
> > and tried to defeat evil whenever realistically possible.
>
> That's one of them meaningless terms, but I think I get the
> picture; stop the bad guys doing bad things.
That's the picture, more or less. No, I don't expect paladins to do STUPID
things, but I expect them to "do their best".
> > but I *DID* expect him to prevent the party from mercilessly
interrogating
> > (via torture) a prisoner,
>
> If you allow tortue to actually work (unlike IRL), then it depends
> on the prisoner, and what the information was in aid of. Convenience is
> bad, needed to save the day is fine.
Work or not, the party was willing to give it the old college try, and the
paladin basically ignored that it was GOING to happen, and it wasn't "save
the day" type information, either, it was simply "potentially useful
information"(they got attacked by a band of marauding orcs, and the party
wanted to know where their lair was, where they attacked from, who sent
them, and stuff like that).
> > I expected him to prevent the unnecessary slaughter of captured
prisoners
> > by party members,
>
> If they're innocents, the paladin must protect them; but otherwise
> it's down to what you veiw as necessary. Prisoners can make certain
> missions damn near impossible.
Yes, prisoners can make missions difficult, but their goals would not have
been compromised by simply tying them up and leaving them there. In our
campaign, in general, law and chaos aside, a good person does not kill
helpless prisoners. There would have to be extenuating circumstances to
justify the killing of a helpless person by a good character.
> Assuming these /were/ plainly Evil acts (killing for convenience
> rather than as necessity or the law requires, inflicting pain for
> sport), but against basically valid targets, the Paladin should have
> left the party at the first reasonable opportunity.
I agree with you 100%. I told the player in question that playing a paladin
in a party like ours would be "difficult" to say the least, for any of a
variety of factors. But he insisted... You can lead a horse to water, n all
that...
> But if the party's doing all this Evil stuff, why aren't they
> Evilly aligned, and why did you allow a Paladin into the group?
Well, they actually AREN'T evil aligned. The torture was information
extraction, and was performed by a CG fighter. The executions were "humane
justice dispensement", again performed by two CG fighters. I deemed that
the actions were within the realms of a CG character, mainly because while
they weren't necessarily lawful, they were for the common good. This wasn't
simply killing and torture for amusement, the point was to serve the greater
good, and therefore, I would not call it "inherently evil".
Our party is primarily CG (with I think one NG).
> It's still not a Paladins job to protect Evil from itself.
Well, we actually had a long conversation about something similar to that.
Is it evil to kill a helpless creature that is evil, never going to be
reformed, and attacked you to start it out? Not wanting to start another
alignment war or anything, so no need to comment on it, but suffice it to
say that our decision was that it was evil to do that, and the paladin
should have prevented it.
> > I expected him to never lie.
>
> Not normally, but it's the least element of the code to me. If a
> lie will save an innocent, or prevents wanton Evil, then it's obviously
OK.
Yes, but he lied at very strange times, when it just didn't matter that
much. The paladin, in my opinion, should be the very personification of
honor, nobility and trustworthyness.
> > These are not unreasonable expectations of a paladin.
>
> Some of them are, to me. The character has to be playable. It's
> certainly more than the rules require.
Perhaps, but then again, he knew what the expectations were, and claimed he
could actually live up to them.
> <Powers go bye bye>
> > Still think he had every right to be pissed?
>
> Sure, he got screwed for what the other PCs did.
No, he got screwed because he found it inconvenient to play the character he
had chosen.
It was highly
> impractical for him to play your style of paladin without causing some
> serious meta-game issues inside that party. Catch 22 ain't fun.
You don't think I saw it coming from like 100 miles away? You don't think I
told him that it was going to be "tense" to say the least? You don't think
I warned him that his character was going to necessarily be in almost direct
conflict with almost every action taken by the party? I told him ALL of
this, and he STILL wanted to play a paladin. Horse, water... yet no
drink...
--
Jeff Goslin - MCSD - www.goslin.info
It's not a god complex when you're always right
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