How to make the paladin fall?

Sup Veeky Forums. I've been DMing for about five years (mostly 3.5/PF, but recently I made the jump to 5e). Despite switching to 5e, we kept the rule that paladins have to be lawful good, and I cannot stress this enough, the players said it was fine to keep that rule, including the player who decided to play as a paladin, and who seemed really excited about it.

Now we're a few months into this campaign and I'm getting a little bored. It occurred to me that the paladin should fall. It would be really dramatic and a good opportunity to really roleplay the character at his lowest moment. So far he's been the best roleplayer in the group, and he was really excited about the chance to play a paladin, so this should be a great roleplaying moment.

I know the difference between railroading and having a story in mind is whether the players notice, and whether I can trick them into thinking they have a choice. So how do I trick my paladin player into falling? I don't want it to be as obvious as presenting a situation with two options, and then retroactively deciding whatever he did was the wrong one, because I think he'd see through that.

I also don't want to pepper him with lots of chances to fall where the "evil" or "unlawful" choice is really tempting, because I think that would be too obvious.

How do you recommend I pull this off?

tl;dr I'm a DM, want to make a player's paladin fall in the most dramatic way possible, without players realizing I made it happen. How do I do it?

Tripwire

Making the paladin chase you down some stairs really fast.

Gravity makes all things fall. Push him off a tower or something; he'll fall for certain.

OP here. I laughed, but I meant (taken from the d20 SRD because like I said, this rule was borrowed):

>A paladin who ceases to be lawful good, who willfully commits an evil act, or who grossly violates the code of conduct loses all paladin spells and abilities (including the service of the paladin’s mount, but not weapon, armor, and shield proficiencies). She may not progress any farther in levels as a paladin. She regains her abilities and advancement potential if she atones for her violations (see the atonement spell description), as appropriate.

How do I make the paladin willfully commit an evil act, without the player realizing he was tricked into it?

How familiar are you with The Trolley Problem?

user you do realize that the point of the willfully clause is precisely so they can't be tricked into falling, right?

>How do you recommend I pull this off?
I recommend that you don't.

Don't just throw him into stupid situations, make him question his beliefs. Make him doubt the path he's chosen, himself, and his god. It's a slow burn, as you whittle away at his faith. Give him legitimately difficult decisions that will weigh on him. Then after he's questioning everything, have there be one big event designed to break his faith and will. Two things could happen. Either he falls and gets to go through that, or he steels himself and decides that this is the path he has chosen and must see it through. Either way, good roleplay opportunities.

I know the basic idea.
The CHARACTER can't be tricked into it. Presumably, the PLAYER can be tricked into making the character do it.

Paladins can't be tricked into falling. If a paladin's player is about to perform an act you would consider evil, you should as the DM warn them so they have a chance not to fall.

You don't. If your guys falls it should be purely due to his own actions, not due to being tricked or manipulated.

By loading a revolver fully, and paying Russian Rosette with yourself, you stupid sack of shit.

No one is going to enjoy your game if you try to pull faggoty shit like that.

The Trolley problem doesn't cause an Evil act because no matter the outcome, the Paladin is saving someone and thus doing a good act.

In this instance, have a major political influence be the one, and a large group of citizens be the five. The switch is related to the BBEG pulling strings that leads to this situation somehow. The political figure is well known and beloved by many through the realm, and the citizens are innocent in this matter and are simply living their lives as happily as they can. Either provides a situation in which the paladin is forced to be something they're not

It depends on the importance of the victims involved

Not at all "The needs of the many outweight the needs of the few" is not in itself the most good option.

If the paladin chooses to save the many, Good, he saved people.

If the Paladin chooses to save the few, Good, he saved one person.

You cannot quantify Goodness, it is an alignment. You don't lose "Goodness points" and then change alignment.

Even if the paladin picks out of personal choice, he is choosing to save someone a good act.

You can't, it has to be intentional on his part. Anything else is bullshit "gotcha!" DMing.

Make the player want his character to fall so he has a redemption arc

Make his character out to be a bad guy by a general populace despite the support of his party. Make him be an outcast of his own free will in order to conform to the perspective of a "greater good". Make him fail his people & his god in order to be truly good. Then bring him back to his feet stronger than before.

Unfortunately for you, Paladins are great with save throws.
Not only that, they're proficient in charisma (possession) and wisdom (magical influences).

If the character has no flaws (which is probably kind of bad roleplaying to be honest) there's unlikely to be any way to make them fall, and they'll be very hard to use magic to force them to do anything because of their bullshit. Unless you knock them unconscious and THEN try to make them do things, but that's still not going to cause any falling.

Your best bet is to make them question their faith, somehow.
Their god seemingly doing things against what the Paladin would hope.
You will have to ruin a god to get this Paladin to move.

...

To do that, OP could put a rakshasha or whatever they're called and make them pretend to be the paladin and attack people on the street and eat their hearts out or something batshit insane to completely ruin the Paladin's intention.

However, when the DM starts railroading it so that the Paladin's many ways of fixing the problem without doing what the DM wants doesn't work they might start to smell the smell of bullshit.

Don't "MAKE" him fall. Give him a nemesis.

someone whose methods are absolutely contrary to the paladins.
someone who's reasons for doing what they do almost exactly mirror the paladins.
make this nemesis understandable to the paladin. someone he can relate to.
then put the paladin into a situation where he either sticks to his values (but everything is destroyed including himself) or he joins his nemesis and commits a truly evil act.

in the words of the joker "all it takes is one bad day."

I'm surprise there's been no "this is bait" images yet.

That's dumb, I mean something like throwing the party into the support of a town leader who is corrupt, but torturing spies in order to keep his people safe. Making it in the best interest of the party to slaughter innocent packs of demi-humans in order to save villagers they are more akin to. Finding out a trusted colleague is diddling children and being asked to protect them from villagers.

If you're trying to 'make' your paladin fall, you're a shitty DM.

The problem here is the party might well decide they could just up and leave the village and go elsewhere.
And the more petty the reason, the more easily a party with a charismatic paladin should be able to maintain face.

Just remember to keep options open.
If he refuses to redeem, he might become an Oathbreaker.

Or, you know, take a different oath.
By the way you're laughably shit for imposing alignment restrictions in 5e when the way Oaths are presented in the book encourage that behavior while also allowing for edge cases

By love, since love conquers everything.

This. There are only two ways a paladin falls: the player decides to have the character knowingly commit an at that will result in falling, and DM fiat.

If you think it would be an interesting roleplay piece, then speak to the player one-on-one and ask him if he agrees. If he does, tell him you're going to start throwing situations at him where he can potentially fall. Allow him to make the choice when it feels dramatically appropriate for him.

If he disagrees, then leave it the fuck alone. Don't ruin a good player's time because you think your vision of what the character should be is more important than his.

Have you considered privately asking the paladin's player if he wants a falling arc? Since he's such a good roleplayer, surely he has a valid reason for wanting to have or not have one, and if you go down that path he can separate meta knowledge enough to have things go swimmingly.

Go back to 3.PF, 5e doesn't deserve your kind of shit DMing.

Out of curiosity since making paladins fall seems to be a common trope, has anyone ever bothered morally testing non-paladins? I feel like every time I think of a paladin character for a game I get the feeling that I and I alone will undergo some sort of moral test or epiphany even if every other character in the party is good.

>You cannot quantify Goodness, it is an alignment. You don't lose "Goodness points" and then change alignment.
Actually, going by the games, that's exactly how it happens.

The orphanage and then the church provided me with food. fuck off.

>roll for common sense