Lets say a paladin character was trapped in a special dungeon by a lich...

You are either a dumb troll or an autistic asshat.

You are so full of shit it's not even funny. That's not how a paladin's code of conduct works in any edition. In fact, in 3.5 at least, there is actually no specific mention of deities in the description of their code. At all.

Better question is, why the hell do you want to ruin someone's fun and make their chosen class fall and lose all the benefits of the class?

Do you just hate the guy? Are you an edgelord that despise people taking up the concepts of truth, justice, and mercy in an attempt to make the world a better place in a world of fantasy? Did he swoon over that one cute girl you wanted so much?

I remember you from before. You constantly baited people with situations aimed specifically for a Paladin to fall with a very specific beliefs and interpretations of rules. I know you. You are the Incarnation of No Fun Allowed, the Doldrum of Creativity of True Challenge, Fedora-lord of the Equestrian Plains.

Begone, foul creature, and never taint this board with your trolling AGAIN.

Oh really? So, you'd rather have a baby mode villain to compete against? You'd rather have the big bad villain be so generic and predictable? Is that it? "Bwahaha! I will gather all the dark mana in the land and become an undead god! Just try and stop me! Bwahahahaha!"

I can see where a villain who not only strikes at your family, but at the very core of your ethos, and who places so little value in your abilities that he lets himself be "slain" just for the sheer entertainment value of it, would be overwhelming to you. Enjoy your leash and warm milkies.

Oh look, it's THIS thread again.
Except this time instead of asking for advice, the premise is even MORE poorly executed, because apparently there is no possible outcome to the 'trolley problem' in which it is not completely, 100% your fault that people died, because God, (by which I mean the DM) is a raging cunt who was dead-set on pointing the finger at you from the very beginning, no matter what you did.

What's that you say? It's actually the lich's fault for setting up this murder machine in the first place? LOL nope, still your fault for not being strong enough.

Guess paladins can't exist since non-omnipotent beings are incapable of being good. Oh well.

>HOWEVER. The occupants from the cage NOT selected will immediately be besieged by void barghests who will leisurely consume them in front of the paladin, completely and utterly destroying the innocent's bodies and souls. Not even a wish spell can restore them.

Easy, hold out for as long as possible while the party makes their way to you. And even still, it wouldn't be the Paladin who caused those people to die, it would be the barghests and the Lich who put them in that position.

Yes it's bait but goddamn it's not even good bait

>he thinks there's anything new about having shitty choices to make
Every damn STEP a paladin takes is someone they won't be in time to save. They take their steps anyways, because if they don't then everyone and their grandpa gets fucked, and a paladin knows that inaction is still a choice which they are responsible for making.
Any paladin with a heart bigger than their eyes will grit their teeth and make a choice, because if someone puts a shotgun to a third party's head and forces you to pull the trigger, it's still THAT asshole who's the murderer. And when the lich realizes all his phylacteries have been destroyed and there's an angry and awfully familiar smiting machine in his face, they will remind him of that fact.
That, or the paladin has a wizard friend who he trusts and can just wait for the dungeon to develop new exits.

The paladin frees the town and then protects the cage with his family fighting the void barghests until the life drains from his body. He will not attempt to free his family for that is impossible as stated, but he will die with them after saving the town.

>Then I get up, punch the DM in the face, and set his source book on fire, since he seems to use it so little.

That's a good point. What's to stop the paladin from just murdering the Barghests and then calling up his wizard pal to teleport the folks out of the cage?

Guys, stop replying to him. Its an old troll, he even uses the same OPic every time, and it is always a troll thread. Relax, and walk away: he's only pretending to be retarded, you can't teach him anything.

Well fuck me, I'll be a god-less, no magical-powers knight fightning for what he thinks is right rather than a submissive faggot obeying abstract principles personnified by some Zeus-like arseholeish figure.
I don't know, I stopped DnD at 3.5, in which you didn't need to follow a god to be a paladin. Actually, in the PHB there was only one god paladins could follow and they said most paladins didn't woship any god.

Anyway, you're saying he knowingly "kills" innocents. But he doesn't WILLINGLY kills innocents. Plus you yourself use quotation marks when you say he "kills" them, therefore we can assume you perfectly knows he isn't responsible for their death.
We can even add that any good-aligned god would totally understand the situation and forgive the paladin. At most they would give him a minor sanction, like having to pray a little more than often, or wearing silly underwear or something. Some may even consider the burden of guilt enough of a punishment.

You're totally right, but I've spend too much time pulling this out of my sleepy, overworked brain to simply erase it.

Who said the paladin was following a shitty god like the ones you are describing

Why is the Lich going to this much effort to make this one Paladin fall? Is the Paladin someone extremely powerful and/or wealthy? In which case what's to stop them from avenging those who die, killing the Barghests and working to have as many decent folk resurrected?

Or is this just a completely impossible scenario that only exists because the GM is incapable of basic social interaction?

I pray to my god for divine intervention. If he cares so much about the well being of these villagers that he would make me fall for failing to save everybody in this impossible scenario, he can damned well throw me a bone and give me a hand saving these people.

What is it with shit DMs having an almost fetishistic desire for making Paladins fall? Seriously, there's some fa/tg/uys out there who are more turned on by a Paladin falling then /d/eviants are turned on by dickgirls.

As a Wizard myself, my first thought was "I can't move the cages...but I can move the ROCK beneath the cages, fucker!" And then that gives me an image of the party sailing away on a giant rock levitated by my awesome power and sailing off into the sunset.

Shit, may have replied to the wrong post. Wanted to talk to , sorry.

...

Oh look, it's this autist again.

Why don't Paladins just be Wizards? Won't they save several magnitudes more lives?

You have willfully misinterpreted My teachings as an excuse to commit evil. This shall not stand. I, your Lord, hereby strip you of My blessings.
You Fall.

You gotta remember:
Wizards have no sense or right or wrong.

Either one he chooses is the right choice so long as he believes it was the right thing to do. Good is Good, saving villagers or saving your family, neither of those are evil acts. And if it is truly impossible for him to save both, then making the decision is an act of goodness in of itself.

The lich is evil for killing the other choice, the paladin is good for saving one, no amount of fine print or semantic argument will turn a paladin evil, not while he believes in what is right.

There's only like one or two gods in DnD who would make their paladin fall due to something that stupid and even then, it's a bit of a funny thing for a GM to deal with.

A paladin sees a halfling across the street litter, but by the time he walks all the way to the nearest crosswalk, waits for the traffic to stop, crosses the street, and returns to the spot where he saw the halfling litter, the litterer will have long since turned the corner and disappeared from sight. Does the Paladin jaywalk in order to chastise the littering halfling, or does he potentially let him get away with it in order to avoid violating pedestrian traffic laws?

He alerts the local guard as that's their jurisdiction and he wouldn't want to step on the local enforcement's toes.

Wrong. The paladin acted to save half of them, doing the best that he/she could. There is no guilt, in fact, had the paladin not acted, all of the hostages would have died, so his duty was performed to the best that he was able.

The first half of his duty anyway. The second half is carrying out justice.

Why can't they? Wizardry seems like a perfectly reasonable career choice for someone who wants to make a positive change in the world.

Because shitty DMs think they are the one making the story and want to control and not just one piece of the puzzle helping to construct something together.

Because being good takes time, time that could be spent studying magic.

Possibility 3: Paladin doesn't really give a shit as he is too busy getting on his way to investigating reported demonic activity further downtown to bother.

If he's a paladin of Primus he'll do exactly as you described to a tee. If not, he can expect a squad of inevitables to pay him a visit on top of losing his powers.

Nope. Failure to save does not equal murder or knowingly committing an evil act, and as long as the paladins actions followed his codex and did good he's fine. His actions, being that he saved one of the groups.
You're autistic and people don't like you.

I have never read the Book of Vile Darkness, which has an example of what constitutes a paladins "fall from grace"
If anything this guy is right.
The paladin does not fall unless he "willfully performed an evil act." And a dick hole villIan doing it just makes him more smite-able

Wizards clearly have the time to make use of their magic, else you wouldn't have painstakingly crafted magic items laying around and necromancers ordering around armies of the undead and whatnot. And there ain't nothin' saying a wizard can't use their magic for heroic or otherwise benevolent purposes.

Who would make all those magic items if Wizards were busy saving peasants?

The paladin wouldn't be concerned with it. Paladins are weapons forged by gods to bring their divine wrath down upon the evils infesting the world. Their concern would be the cultists lurking in the sewers trying to summon demons under the city, not some fool dropping an apple core on the curb.

I'm not claiming all wizards have to be heroes, obviously different wizards will do different things with their time.

>And there ain't nothin' saying a wizard can't use their magic for heroic or otherwise benevolent purposes.

i cast compel duel

If there is can you explain it to me?

Or he could use the key to smite the skeleton and save everyone or die trying.

Fucking Red Tower wizards!

Because some people can't stand the idea of a true hero. They have to be anti-hero, grizzled asshole whose been dragged through the mud.

Also it makes the DM jizz in his little pantaloons when he things he has enough power over his players that he can snatch away their greatest strengths at a moments notice.

He can chose on or another and have to suffer the consequences, but if he doesn't have an actual choice in the matter of innocents, he's not going to fall. He'd have to deliberately stand there and do nothing to invoke that.

It's like a situation where, through the buttefly effect, a Paladin does something seemingly inane that causes the fall of an entire country: since he did it unknowingly and it would be impossible to trace it back to him even with modern technology, it's a non-issue.

Also, if you try and make a paladin fall for this, then you fall as DM. No exceptions.

Lawful Good, not Lawful Neutral (unless you're one of those weirdo 4/5e pallies), and even Primus, the posterboy for LN, isn't as autistic as you're describing. He would never allow circular reasoning logic like that to pass.

You're full of bull.

except for Wizards or Clerics, you can't take stuff away from them.
remember Martial can't have nice things.
>inb4 3.pf aren't the entirety of D&D
Yes, but I have never seen players/DM's be so anal of whether a paladin should fall than in these 2 games.

Paladin Sól of the Order of Dying Light follows a trinity of goddess who represent the aspects of birth, life and death.
The teachings do specify that Sól must protect life as much as possible but to also understand the natural way of the world.
People will die, that is unavoidable, to that would not bring about a fall.
To allow the real murderer to avoid judgement in this regard is the real crime.

Besides, she has her gods on speed-dial. Simply asking for guidance and she'd probably spot a flaw in their cages that she can exploit to rend open or the key itself won't break.

If you have such a feeble imagination your only resort is to cry out the rules won't allow anything else is a sign of your own weakness.

That's not how Paladins work. A paladin's strength is based on his conviction to uphold the values of his deity/righteousness. You as DM do not get to decide when or where he loses this conviction any more than you as DM get to decide what attack he will use in combat.

This, unless the god has a specific community or family aspect in his portfolio, eg. Erastil from PF, if paladin in example doesn't save his family, he falls.

I've always ran that Erastil, in the case of family/community domains, will not cause the paladin to fall if he does is ABSOLUTE BEST to help the community and family. (leaves room for if the dice didn't go the way the player wanted.)
but again, I have never had the intention to make a paladin fall because I have a vendetta against players having fun in my story.

i hug the lich and ask him to tell me about the paladin that hurt him when he was a wee boy

you still fall, even you were trying to be nice about it.

Well, if i'm a paladin with a god on his side, I'll just pray to him and he teleports all people out of their cages.
This "god" thing works two ways. Now prepare your bony behind, it's smitin' time.

You don't fall from not being able to do the impossible. You fall from doing less than you are able. If your deity's blessing and your wits grant you the ability to defeat the lich at his game, that's awesome. If not, there's no wrong answer. You save the people that you can and avenge the ones you can't.

>All paladins instantly fall the moment they become paladins because someone, somewhere just got murdered and the paladin wasn't able to teleport to the other side of the world and stop it from happening

>God gives his Paladins powers to be everywhere at the same time, righting wrongs from the 4th dimension
>Quantum paladins
>Angels are just very high-level quantum paladins

>a villain who shakes the ethos of your character
>make a situation in which the paladin falls whatever he does

Oh man such a deep and interesting twist

Not even that, its a villain who somehow wasted all these resources, with indestructible cages and one of a kind keys that unlock an impenetrable dungeon door and summoning barghests at the spur of a moment, and all the resources it would take to hunt down these people and capture them, all of this, for the possibility of making the paladin fall.

When all it would do is make the paladin REALLY angry.

OP, if you want to make your paladin player fall so badly, just open a trap door underneath him.

Make sure you pull the right lever, or you will fall instead.

Oh I spring a trap on the paladin, if you know what I mean.

Because it is more gratifying smiting people in the face and having the body of a greek god, bathed in holy radiance that all the wenches lust over for not being able to have him than being a spindly little worm toiling away in a library half of his life with the endurance of a wet piece of tissue and the social graces of a maggot infested cockroach. Sure, they can magic those things into existence, but deep down they will always know that it is just an illusion.

Of course, there are the brozards, the wizards that serve as the brethren of the paladin, despite practicing magic, but it is not the way of a paladin. It is the way of a mage.

Throw away the key, dooming all of them, and deliberately fall. Team up with Lich, become Blackguard. Betray and destroy Lich. Find a way to get some permanent negative levels to remove your Blackguard levels, then Atone.

>the paladin will fall from grace and lose his or her powers.
Since when did the absence of power stopped anyone from striving towards what he feels is right?
You don't need to have paladin powers to be a paladin. All you need to do is good.

...

Shout at him from across the street, obviously. A little public shaming by an authority figure is a sufficient penalty for simple littering, I think. When they turn to look around and see who's yelling, that'll give me the opportunity to remember their face and apply the proper penalty later, if appropriate, such as if I were to see him littering again while I'm on his side of the road.

Plus, a decent number of people would pick up the trash and throw it away properly if they're called out by a cop, if for no other reason than to avoid antagonizing somebody who could make their day shitty.

>This, unless the god has a specific community or family aspect in his portfolio, eg. Erastil from PF, if paladin in example doesn't save his family, he falls.

Paladins aren't empowered by Gods, that;s Clerics. Paladins are empowered by their Devotion to Lawful Good.

Like any noble paladin, I ask myself "what would batman do?"
Then I remember Riddler pulled this exact stunt in one movie, so the answer is to trash the villain's shit, then pull off a staggeringly unlikely stunt to catch the release mechanism of either cage before it plunges into the pit of aci- I mean undead.

The paladin will make his choice, the other people will die. He will then proceed to smite the shit out of that lich. Then he'll smite the shit out of you for being a faggot DM.

He'll just jaywalk as long as it's safe to cross at the moment because lawful good doesn't mean you're a robot programmed to memorize every law and agree with it and never make situational exceptions like the actual law does in real life. And at worst he'll go to trial if it was that big a deal and they'll decide if he broke the law or not.

> Crushed by the inability to protect the innocents regardless of choice, the paladin will fall from grace and lose his or her powers.

WRONG!

Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.

Regardless of choice, every paladin is right now unable to protect some innocents dying 500 miles away. And yet, unfallen paladins exist. See how this works? Paladins don't fall for lack of omnipresence.

So the way this actually goes down is that the paladin saves whichever cage he likes, doesn't fall either way, then the LICH - not the paladin - gets the stain of evil for having the other cage be consumed by void barghests.

Replace "god" with "tenets of their oath" then. If the Paladin had sworn something with a strong family bent or otherwise holds to beliefs that put a lot of emphasis on aiding your kin, never abandon your blood, etc, then it would be reasonable for them to save their family first.

Personally my paladin would probably save their family not just because they're related, but because he has more relatives than most villages have people. He's got five aunts and uncles on either side, all of whom have four+ kids, and six siblings besides, four of whom have started families of their own. And that's not even getting into the great cousins, oh boy. Great grandpappy was a horndog, let me tell you.

Come to think of it, there's another dozen paladins and clerics in the family cage, they might not even need help. The fuck was this Lich thinking.

>Family of paladins going on adventures and smiting evil together

I want this so much.

Come to think of it, it might be a nice moment of roleplaying, as he would have to explain his choice. Then you reward him by letting him punch the dickass lich.

Plus it would make clear that lich is evil as fuck, so a good paladin should feel compelled to go after it when it obviously will get away and swear revenge.
That might be a good start or turning point for a campaign, actually. If your pally is okay with it.

Sword of the Arcane Order. Paladin of Mystra. I cast Shape Metal and get them out. If that's impossible, I cast Banish at the Barghests, or summon some good-aligned outsider to help my family and the villagers, maybe protecting them with a Wall of Force. If he keeps up with the bullshit, I'll just Greater Dispel Magic his stuff.

Two can play at the game of "ahah, I'm doing wizardy stuff and you can't counter me".

These guys gave left loNG ago, user.
>I don't understand alignments.
Figures for a 3aboo.

You know, there was a thread the other night that got me thinking

>A druid who ceases to revere nature, changes to a prohibited alignment, or teaches the Druidic language to a nondruid loses all spells and druid abilities (including her animal companion, but not including weapon, armor, and shield proficiencies). She cannot thereafter gain levels as a druid until she atones (see the atonement spell description).

Why do you never hear stories of DMs construing convoluted scenarios to make druids fail to respect nature? They're just as valid candidates for "lol you fall" bullshit as paladins are

HEY FUCK YOU BUDDY I'M CALLING MY BOSS RIGHT NOW. NO YOU STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE THIS IS GETTING WORKED OUT!

And then it gets nasty.

The true paladin would sacrifice his family for the needs of others, weep at their loss then use his grief to temper his steel.
On this day, the lich made a most terrible of enemies; one who will never stop, one who has lost all but his cause and who knows without a doubt that his vengeance is the right thing to do.

Because it's a caster.
I may sound like a crazy conspiracy theorists here, but like I have said in this thread, I have never seen this shit be am issue, UNLESS it's 3.5/Pathfinder.
I'm assuming because it's popular, it has all these shitty people coming in and not getting what a paladin is and does.

Well since choosing either way that is chosen will cause the paladin to fall as dictated by your situation because the one you don't save will be destroyed, then the right choice is not to choose.

Throw the key away and both of the victims will live, you will be trapped in the dungeon till you starve but your self sacrifice will allow others to survive.

Nice Trolley meme :^)

Honestly, if ever there was a time for divine intervention, it would be there.