The Paladin Falls

because the PC is the player's character so it's the player that should have the most agency on how he plays it. Forcing a player's PC down a path the player doesn't want is the equivalent of your players blatantly derailing your game for shits and giggles. If the player is being an evil asshole despite supposing to be Lawful good, fall him, but if you want to make an arc about it you should at least make sure the player is ok with that development.

This.

This.

A thousand fucking times, this.

Give the player a hard choice. Make the action that would cause a fall easier and more profitable than the one that wouldn't. And be clear that it'll cause a fall.

But make it the player's choice.

Because it is a clear NO FUN ALLOWED move from the DM. The party's paladin might be interested in it but the rest of the party will only see that their adventure has been brought to a screeching halt and it is the the paladin's "fault." Forcefully inciting party infighting is never a good idea and any DM that does it needs a slap in on the hand.

We just had this thread yesterday.

It's still up, too.

Objective moral superiority shouldn't come easy.

I can't see how you can give a Goblin Slayer-type paladin a truly hard choice.

He's just a fighter. Maybe a ranger with a favored enemy.

Then how come good-aligned clerics get it all the time without the strings?

If paladins are to be laser-guided evil-killing goblin-baby-smashing berserkers, I don't really see how they're supposed to be morally superior at all.

They just smite evil. That's it. Leave the actual moralizations to priests.

Because you're doing it to be an asshole, not because the Paladin's player is interested in a fall arc.

I don't play DnD much and I've never played paladin.

When a paladin falls they lose their holy powers, do they gain new abilities to compensate or are they purely mechanically punished?

>antagonists are Neutral aligned
What now, Paladins?

The latter.

>the Wizard is never in danger of losing his spell book or being INT drained
>the Warlock never has his patron ask for things that would violate his code of honor
>the Rogue is never arrested
Its like you don't want challenges.

>do they gain new abilities to compensate
If they become an anti-paladin then yes, but you kind of have to go full Sauron for that. Like you have to be straight up evil.

If you just fall then you just lose your powers. It's a relic of when the paladin was actually a high level fighter plus some stuff. When they fell they became a fighter again but newer editions have them as separate classes entirely. When they fall now they just become dudes with martial weapon proficiency.

So long as you are fighting for Good, it doesn't matter if you aren't fighting against Evil.

ranger/fighter multiclass for sure.

In later editions Paladins that fall can become Oathbreakers/Blackguards and gain new abilities.

Paladins can't fall anymore. There's no reason this discussion should even exist.

That's just wrong. The biggest challenges to the paladin's beliefs come up organically, unintentionally, whenever the DM isn't writing the adventure specifically to be a black-and-white slugfest against fiends or mindless undead. Fighting orcs or other humanoid bandits? Who's to say that they're really evil and not just starving? Even in an edition with Detect Evil where you can prove someone's evil, an evil alignment doesn't forfeit a creature's right to life. Since a paladin is a lone murderhobo and not an actual law enforcer, enemies should be taken alive and brought to civilization to face justice. If that's impossible for the party to do, or if the local laws in the area aren't perfectly in line with the paladin's code, then there's really nothing a paladin can do, being unable to dispense justice personally or to defer to an outside justice system.

>Goblin Slayer
>paladin

Right, but who plays 5e?

>because it's usually VERY BADLY DONE
This.

I have seen exactly one well-done redemption arc for a PC paladin.

The rest are infantile tantrums by bitter manchildren who have a grade-schooler's understanding of morality, who have Ayn Rand's books on their shelves, and who grossly misunderstand and willfully misinterpret Nietzsche's work, and who say "moralfag" without a hint of irony.

If ever you have a GM who wants to "teach the players a lesson," then run. Run as far away as fast as you can, because that game is going to be garbage. The entire thing will be bad things happening to everyone through no fault of their own while the idiot GM makes every NPC betray you and every plan you make backfire horribly.

>mfw the GM has The Fountainhead prominently displayed on his shelf

That's false. Paladins can still fall and/or break their oath.

>an evil alignment doesn't forfeit a creature's right to life. Since a paladin is a lone murderhobo and not an actual law enforcer, enemies should be taken alive and brought to civilization to face justice
lol what

Do you mean that Paladins are incapable of any internal dynamic, or that no matter what they do, they are in the right JUST BECAUSE?

>an evil alignment doesn't forfeit a creature's right to life
Guess who just pinged evil!

Did I stutter? You can't just break into someone's house without a warrant and kill them because you personally decided they're evil. Well, you could, but it would be an extremely chaotic act.

This has to be bait, they can but they become an oath breaker. They no longer have to worship a god, they still can if they want, but they can definitely loose their power if they don't follow their oaths.

I think their powers are fueled by raw belief now. Kind of like the Light in Warcraft? Only there are more stringent rules in 5e than Warcraft light magic.

It's kind of weird.

Yep, and so long as you play under a reasonable DM, you bringing them in to face justice or even starting their redemption arc should bring better results than just smashing their skulls in.

More effort, better outcome, more exp, zero chance of paladins falling. Simple, no?

But then you get the occasional faggot that insists the guy breaks out of jail or the goblin babies kill everyone and therefore paladins fall. Don't play with these people.

Paladin's can still fall in 5e, it's just almost impossible for it to happen, unless the player is completely incapable of justifying their actions as being to the benefit of their Oath.

>right to life
>bring to civilization to face justice

Since when do these exist in D&D

If the setting has a Detect Evil spell, you aren't the one deciding they're evil. It means they ping as evil from a objective moral standpoint.
It like the baby orc problem, if Orcs are born evil then its okay to kill the babies. Its just pest removal at that point. You wouldn't let the young of a wasp nest survive would you?

If it's just
>they are just very confident, but it's not magic!
it's not weird, it's retarded

>if Orcs are born evil

They're not, though.

Didn't we just have this talk yesterday? It's like we just keep throwing our arguments at one another but nothing ever sticks.

I'd give the wasps to the druids for kudos and a favour.

I dont get how you have trouble making the goblin slayer fall. Just give him a hostage situation. Kill innocents and get goblins, or let the goblins go and save innocents.

If any paladin is doing hat they are in the wrong, without proof that someone is guilty they have no reason to. Also any paladin worth anything would find an actual just solution "oh this man stole from the baker, you will work off your debt to him as payment I will inform those around you to keep you honest in this."

The only time there isn't really a need to weigh out the issue is when something this Evil, as in demons, devil's, lichs etc. Any paladin blindly killing because they say "he's evil" should fall because they aren't playing a paladin.

Rand wasn't a moral nihilist, though. She was part of that misguided school who thought you could deduce a whole system of morality from the most basic axioms of logic and jump from "is" statements straight to "ought" statements without justification.

depends on the setting
Old school orcs were always evil 100% of the time. WoW ruined that.
You can still insert any other evil fodder race like Gnolls.

Bring the goblins to a priest or an orphanage to be raised and any reasonable DM will award you with bonus experience points. Maybe they'll do a plot hook about it later but nothing terrible.

I don't see how that's so difficult.

Also a gigantic hypocrite, just like all her idiot followers.

They stopped being always evil 100% of the time as soon as they became player character options. That'd be in Dragon Magazine #141 or the Orcs of Thar, I believe - both still in the eighties.

The first comes from the definitions of the good alignments in the PHB. The second comes from the fact that D&D settings have societies with laws and specific people given the authority by the government to enforce those laws.

>They're not, though.
Depends on the setting, GM, and campaign.

I wouldn't make them evil, myself, but if the GM I'm paladin-ing under does so I'll smite the fuck out of 'em.

He isn't directly killing the hostages so your scenario is bullshit. This is what people talk about with bad DMs making "moral dilemmas" in an objective setting unless he himself kills those people the blood is not on his hands. Therefore he faces no fall, should he attempt to come up with a solution that gives him the best of both yes that is what a paladin is supposed to do, not play this black and white bullshit and come up with different solutions.

You have a power source, but you swear an oath like a bindimg contract.

I.e. a Devotion paladin must show compassion, but doesn't need to spare everyone. Just avoid killing prisoners just because, but if they are lying to you or are waiting to stab you feel free to decapitate.
And an Ancients paladin protects happiness instead of good and other stuff, they can lose their power if they lose hope and see the world as dark and bleak.

Tl;dr: just don't breach contact.

Because so many DM's force the paladin to fall because they hate paladins for some stupid reason
>Oh you kill the surrendering enemies? You fall
>You spare the surrendering enemies? They take up arms later in life and kill others. You fall
>You take the surrendering enemies in to a city for justice? They break out and kill people escaping. You fall

Same with the Orc babies thing
>Kill the babies and you fall
>Leave the babies and they'll die so you fall
>Take the babies into town and they grow up to kill people because they're evil, you fall

And chances are your players don't want to interrupt the main plot line that you've set up to focus entirely on the paladin. Very few DM's in my experience can handle a paladin redemption arc because so many of them force the paladin into situations where they must fall, and as someone who likes paladins it's infuriating to have my character gutted to uselessness because the DM is a fedora tipping cunt who hates anyone that considers religion to be a good thing

He gets the hostages killed by insisting to kill goblins, where he could've done otherwise to save them.

Even if he's not directly smashing their faces in, there's a dilemma there. Which one would you do?

There's nothing wrong with setting up situations to make the Paladin question their code or dedication, or where the Paladin might fall. The part lots of(bad) GM's seem to miss is that if the Paladin does fall, it should be because they made a deliberate choice to act against their code when another way is available, not because the GM set up a no-win situation.

Orcs aren't player character options. Half-orcs are.

So long as the paladin tries his very best to do the right thing, contemplates for what the right call is, and never stops doubting himself and wondering if he could've done even better, he won't fall, and any DM making him fall for that is a retard.

Once he starts to justify the shit to himself, though - like a lot of anons in this thread and all the threads such as this one lately - he's probably about to take the dive.

>Who's to say that they're really evil and not just starving?
Well, Detect Evil for starters.

The sources I posted, as well as the Complete Book of Humanoids a little later, and probably a bunch of other ones I'm forgetting, made orcs a player character race as well.

Or if we're just talking about core stuff, then half-orcs stopped being a character race in the 2nd edition.

The paladin class has a fluffy "Oath" in the setting that his character concept is supposed to incorporate. If the player decides his character has become evil the GM has the option of changing his class feature to the Oathbreaker.
Ultimately it's the same as if the player agreed with the GM to change any class into another for plot reasons. The only special thing about the paladin is the supporting DMG evil class version.

Detect Evil only works on creatures of 5 HD or above, or clerics worshipping evil gods, or of course undead and demons.

What if the paladin believes that truly heinous and evil acts like mass murder can only be redeemed/atoned for in death?
What if you are a paladin of vengeance? Who's anger deserves more attention? Who's lust for revenge is worth more?

False.

I'd need more information on the situation, personally I'd devise a plan to free the hostages, wether it be stealth, subterfuge or ambush. Then slaughters every last goblin.

Also in an objective setting it doesn't matter, he himself did not kill those people even if his insistence on killing the goblins did. It's why objective setting are difficult to play and cause shitty situations for paladins, the rule of thumb is "did he kill those innocents with his own hand and weapon? No then he did not do evil."

The only dilemma is that he isn't the best paladin, but his actions do not fullfil the criteria for a fall in an objective setting.

D
Pends
------------
The setting

This thread reminds me of an idea I had.
A type of mobile church/prison with the "Awaken" enchantment.
Basically it's a huge mobile fortress used for ANYTHING EVIL.
Interrogation chambers, dungeons, orphanages for abandoned children, cleric/paladin training grounds. The lot.

So they get their powers just from the primordial powers of "Devotion" or "Ancients" whatever the fuck is that even supposed to mean in the context of an oath?
This seems like an awfully liberal way of distributing supposedly "divine" powers.

Why is having doubt about your faith a good thing?
You forget this might be a high-fantasy where these is no room for doubt when you have divine power filling your soul, or any other of a thousand interpretations.
What actually matters is that the player chose to create a Paladin class PC. Seems like you are projecting some kind of literally analysis to a character that the player deserves to have his character class options respected.

And that's what I'm saying. A lot of common D&D adventures consist of fighting evil with a lowercase e instead of Evil with a capital E. Adventurers often fight creatures who aren't fiends, undead, or constructs, creatures with some moral complexity to them. Creatures you maybe shouldn't smite even if they do have an evil alignment. And often you can't take them to court or get a warrant or whatever document would allow you to lawfuly kill them, especially since you're just some random guys and not law enforcers.

Do you have a source to point otherwise? In every system I've played, what I said applies.

>The Paladin Falls
>challenging the Paladin's faith/code
Thing is, these two aren't actually the same thing. Most of the time, a DM will have a paladin fall after a single transgression. That isn't testing faith, that's rules-lawyering, and it's truthfully more often directed at the player than at the character. Telling a player that they can't kill the villain or else they fall isn't putting tension on the paladin's faith, it's putting tension on the players' patience.

Testing a paladin's faith should be a process. A series of circumstances in which the faith or code are not only inconvenient, but maybe even flawed. A paladin who has sworn an oath against unnecessary violence shouldn't just be presented with a case in which pacifism allows an entire village to die; instead, she should slowly have her boundaries tested on what is necessary versus unnecessary. If she falls, she falls not because she raised a sword once, but because she has forgotten that violence isn't always necessary.

A paladin falling shouldn't be a "gotcha" moment, and it should never occur because of information that the paladin lacked. It should be the destination at the end of a road paved with doubt. When a paladin falls, he should be able to look back and see how he got there. He should realize that he had been slipping for a while, and that he had been negligent of his faith and himself. Had he simply gone to confessional regularly, his descent could have been arrested. Had he but...

tl;dr Loss of faith isn't like slipping on a banana peel on the way to church, it's like finding yourself in a whorehouse because you kept changing course to avoid the banana peels on the path.

>Who's to say that they're really evil and not just starving?
being starving doesn't mean you get to rape and pillage across the lands, taking the lives and goods of people who work hard every day to earn their keep

>Why is having doubt about your faith a good thing?

Because doubting is good. Looking for other options is good. Thinking of what you're doing is good. Wondering if you're in the right is good. If you're pressed for time, then thinking whether you did the right call afterwards is good.

You can be good without doing any of these things, but it helps a lot. Just marching on and doing things and justifying it to yourself as you being the "HIGHEST MORAL AUTHORITY" will not hold water for long.

Why is finding yourself in a whorehouse an evil act?

>a mobile crusader hub/kingdom of the righteous

It's not necessarily evil, but it's definitely not the church that was your intended destination.

Not all versions of paladin specify an evil act, just an action against the code or faith.

That's merely your own feelings on the matter, it's not objective fact.

Someone also mentioned that fallen Paladins become Oathbreakers. That would make sense if they switched from a Good god to an Evil god. But since their power source is now just their sense of self-righteousness, how do they get their Evil Paladin powers once they lose it? They automatically become self-righteous in the opposite direction?

>Vengeance paladins

That oath was a mistake because every murderhobo flocks to it thinking it gives them free reign. They are still bound by their oaths

>Fight the Greater Evil. Faced with a choice of fighting my sworn foes or combating a lesser evil. I choose the greater evil.

Pretty self explanatory, if it's between a lesser demon and a powerful lich you fight the lich and suffer no chance of breaking your oath.

>No Mercy for the Wicked. Ordinary foes might win my mercy, but my sworn enemies do not.

Whatever made you have a hate boner is the only thing you can fight without mercy. If a group of things begs for such and you kill them you've broken your oath.

>By Any Means Necessary. My qualms can’t get in the way of exterminating my foes.

Pretty straightforward, even if say hostages would die, your qualm of that cannot get in the way of killing your foes. Does that mean it should be your first option? No but it can be and you suffer no chance of breaking oath.

>Restitution. If my foes wreak ruin on the world, it is because I failed to stop them. I must help those harmed by their misdeeds.

Should your attempt to stop evil not stop them from hurting others you are obligated to help those in need.

At least vengeance paladin is a core option. It keeps the edgelords from asking to play oathbreakers, which are only in the game at the DM's discretion.

Most of them is Gods, but Ancients can be powered by the feywild. You swear your oath and a shard of divinity is rammed into you. An oathbreaker corrupts it and turns it into unholy power, Devotion are vanilla pally, Ancients must keep hope alive amongst mortals, Vengeance turns into a holy hunter of great evils. If you ever see a paladin fighting against a demon prince with the help of devils, that's Vengeance, the ones that go for the worst evils and don't care about the lesser. They also flip the bird at hostages.

Anyone more since they aren't directly under a god I see it as their oaths are merely tools focusing their will to use magic. It simply seems divine because they are pulling it directly form themselves and their own convictions.

Really? Because in every setting I've ever played, it doesn't work that way.

What you referred to are potent auras that blaze like stars to detection effects, and sometimes influence other things. Detect Evil and the detect spells work regardless of the target's level.

If a player in my game plays a paladin, I expect them to adhere to the code of their paladin, which I will discuss with the player beforehand. Just as a warlock will have to live up to their pact, a cleric will have to follow the dogma of their god and so on and so forth. For each of these characters, I will likely present one or two situations that challenge their code, their pact or their faith during the course of the campaign. They can either resolve the situation using the predefined method at the cost of their code, pact or faith, they can maintain their code, pact or faith at the cost of failing to resolve that situation or they can invent a third option that resolves the situation while preserving their code, pact or faith.

There's nothing wrong with challenging a part of a player's character in a game. The problem comes from trapping the character.

Without such a powerful aura, all you can tell is the presence of evil, not its source.

If you've got a bunch of 1HD monsters and you Detect Evil, you can tell there's evil present but not which ones of them are evil and which ones aren't.

This is good.

Kill them all and see if the evil presence goes away.

>talk it through with the player and the DM so that there won't be misunderstandings later in the game
>actual reason and common sense

No, user, this is Veeky Forums, that can't be allowed.

Hello pen 'n' paper Veeky Forums, user from the miniature wargaming side of the railtracks here. Something I've wondered for a while, trying to get paladins falling seems to be a really common thing in RPGs from the screencap stories I've read, but I don't think I've heard a story about GMs/DMs trying to make clerics fall or whatever. Why is that? Surely (with my admittedly limited knowledge of RPGs) clerics are still holy dudes with vows and stuff, but it only seems to be the paladins that have the falling problem.

...

There's a wide variety of possibilities that could come from that:

A) They were -all- evil and you've done the world a favor.
B) Some of them weren't evil and you just slaughtered them all indiscriminately. Paladin falls.
C) Only a few of them were evil, and spread up among the rest they made the whole pack look bad. Paladin falls.
D) None of them were evil and the presence was actually an evil object one of them was carrying, the dungeon room itself which had been used for profane acts for centuries, or a whole bunch of other possibilities. Paladin falls.

Your odds are 25%. Are you a gambling man?

It specifically says in the 3.PF spell description that as you concentrate, you can single out individual sources.

>Surely (with my admittedly limited knowledge of RPGs) clerics are still holy dudes with vows and stuff, but it only seems to be the paladins that have the falling problem.
Clerics are clock-watching goldbricker company-men while paladins are the real deal closers.

I'll just say that my guy doesn't fall.