Paladin of the party is sticking his nose in every sad hooker...

Then turn Helm's dissatisfaction with the Paladin's softhearted nature into a plot point. Give him an arc to play around with. Don't just use Helm as your mouthpiece to talk down to the player and insist he focuses on the parts of the game he's less invested in.

>puts the Law before the Good
No, user.
If there is not anything immediately in front of them that they can actively change, why are you holding them responsible for every evil act out there?
Promoting good and being the example of good to follow is just as important as stopping evil far from the sight of others.

Helm is a hard LN god and is best known for killing a NG goddess because she broke the rules.

That god does not grant the paladin his grace.
What you are speaking of is a caveat in FR where if you don't have a patron god, you are fucked, and applies to nothing else, in no other setting.
4e was the only edition where paladins were directly empowered by deities AND beholden to their whims.

I dunno, send him a dream that uses symbolism. Don't explain what it means. If he figures it out, good. If not, well he's still technically following the code of chivalry.

Anyway, I would describe the dream thusly:
>Your sitting on a beach next to a featureless, grey ocean.
>As waves gently lap the shore you begin picking up each grain of sand, gently arranging them in to rows.
>But everywhere you look, you see more sand, more grains you need to sort out.
>The dreary sky begin to darken and the waves grow more restless as you swear you can make out a large form heading to the shore from deep in the ocean.
>Still, you keep trying to sort out the sand at the beach.
>As the large form draws near, you sudden realize for the first time that you've been sorting out the sand by placing it on your body
>In fact, your covered in the stuff, unable to move
>While you struggle in vain, you finally see the other being step into the shore with its burning, cloven hoof
>You look up and see a large demonic being, glowing red with horns that scrape the very clouds in the sky
>You can do nothing beneath the sand as the oceans boil away and the beach begins to burn into slag
>You wake up in a cold sweat, the howling laughter of the demon still echoing in your head.

Just do something like that. He'll get the message, and it won't look like your railroading him.

This

DM if you know he's going to stop to help every little old lady cross the street, why do you keep putting them in front of him?

Who wants to play a game without kittens?

You've got a fucking fantastic plot hook here. Maybe the Paladin could be abandoned by Helm and approached by a god with a better-matching, NG/LG portfolio?

Not op, but I really like this concept. The problem that I see is a high likelihood of a paladin ragequit because it could look like "lol I'm dm and the paladin falls"

This, mostly. But even that isn't to say that your paladin shouldn't be helping the needy/helpless. You might be taking this game too seriously.

I'd suggest introducing the new god first. An agent of Newgod (medium/high-ranking church official or even low-ranking celestial) recognizes the goodness in the Paladin's heart and urges him to join their ranks. The Agent gives the Paladin a holy symbol of Newgod, or a "memento" style item that's associated with the agent but not Newgod.

Eventually a messenger of Helm shows up and gives the Paladin an ultimatum -- either he must focus on upholding the Law, or he will lose his powers -- in the form of a test that will come very soon.

After Helm's messenger has departed, the Newgod-related symbol/memento reminds the Paladin of its existence and glows softly.

The test may take the form of a choice between good or law (will he punish fantasy Jean Valjean or let him go?) or between humanitarianism and action (will he travel to the plane of chaos to stop the evil demon Wha'tev'er, if it means letting the sick, poor kid die?).

If the Paladin succeeds at his test, the Newgod symbol/memento simply vanishes during the night, and he finds his current holy symbol shining and humming with power.

If the Paladin fails, his current holy symbol shatters and he loses his powers, but the Newgod memento makes its presence known again. What was failure to Helm is success to Newgod, and the Paladin gains new, different powers centered around helping the innocent rather than smiting troublemakers.

That's how I would handle it anyway.

Don't dream him
Show him

His obsession with the smaller problems isn't bad per se, but have a strict timeline in regard to some tasks or adventures.

Plan for players meeting the deadline or failing it.

Let's just consider a simple plot as an example.
Party receive a request for aid.
A warden of a small nearby village reports that last night a Orc raiding group attacked and took alive three young townsfolk. They no doubt intend an evil end for them, sacrifice to a dark god perhaps.
The messenger begs for aid...
But.
The paladin has noticed a poor street whore who has been caring for her leper father by leaving food for him at the edge of town.
This morning?
He is waiting and she is not present.
What could have happened?

If he notices the importance of the adventure and prioritises, good on him.
Adventure continues as planned
If he rallies helping a pitiful lepers daughter escape her pimp who is disappointed with her work ethic?
They head down the second branch where bad things happen
for example, the warden they were supposed to meet was killed due to a lack of back up by a mob of bandits looking to take advantage of the chaos.

Then let the dominoes fall.

If the warden lived? He was still around a day later to marshal a defence of the town against a roving ogre while the party adventured onwards.
Injuries but no fatalities.
The party rescue the kidnapped victims.

If he was dead? The militia were disorganised and taken unawares.
Dead and injured aplenty.
Plus two of the victims have been given soul and body to the dark gods of the orcs.
Possessed shells now, home to grateful, vicious demons.

Of course this is just an asspull.
You'd make far better.

The thing is a dream is too heavy handed.
Gods are best working through others, detached and mysterious.
Let him wonder if this was a test from helm.
Truth is, to the faithful, every little thing is
Let him experience and endure the results of his misfocus.

You never know, it might make a good story.

Addendum.:

Do not use this as a way to make him fall.
That's not the intent.
It shouldn't be the intent in any way.

The focus should be him learning to consider priorities.

Or you can do something absolutely crazy and just talk to the player.

>How should I do it? Is this a bad idea? How should I make clear to the guy(IC) he was not given divine gifts to use to for resurrecting Little Timmys dead cat?

If it were me I wouldn't do anything so unfun, I'd try to appeal to him in an interesting and immersive way that doesn't contradict what he wants, but still lets him know he could be doing 'more'.

I'd send the local church after him.
Not THE church, not even the ordained priests, but the kids in training; the teenagers who -as part of their curriculum- have to basically run around the city: blessing the old and crippled, healing every infected prostitute they find, resuscitate any not-so-dead people they can save, and basically keep the place clean, happy, and pox free.
THEY WERE doing that, until YOUR paladin showed up and has been purging the town of every minor issue they were capable of solving, the older priests don't understand this and the truly unsympathetic ones think the children are just fucking lying.

Basically have a small mob of angry 14-17 year old clerics & priests in training come harass him.
Maybe if you'd like to add a small plot-hook or what have you- They could complain to him how the youngest/stupidest of their group went to exorcise a spooky skeleton or ghost from someones basement because they were desperate to complete their homework and avoid a theoretical beating.. but failed and came back running: crying, bruised, a little cut up, and now traumatized by the studies skeleton model.

Have a matronly priestess of the local NG god invite him for tea, and passive aggressively tear him a fucking new one. Play it straight up Alpha Bitch.

It's great that he's helping out their holy mission ("how unusual of Helm to take such an interest in the welfare of the poor!"), but he's not going to be around forever, and he's impacting the tithes they need to feed and equip the bored clerics they've got sitting around. So if he'd kindly fuck off and die in a tomb somewhere, that'd be great, sweetie.

This sounds like a good opportunity for a priestess to get smacked the fuck up for not knowing her place and talking back to a manly paladin.

>sticking his nose in every sad hooker
"The fuck are you *WEEP WEEP* doing?!"
"JUSTICE"

>punish fantasy Jean Valjean
But that's both Good and Lawful.

>sticking his nose in every sad hooker
Does he make them eat the whole bowl of eggs?

>Paladin
>Not a public servant

Make a distressed old lady be a demon in disguise that attacks him

I dunno, but are paladins immune to disease in this setting? Because the guy's fetish for... let's call it putting his nose in... crying prostitutes is gonna get him a disease eventually if not. I'm not one to judge a person's fetishes, but safer sex is important.

First, determine how the rest of the party feels about this. If they don't mind or actually like it, then don't change anything and let them have their fun. It's your job as the DM to make sure most of the people are having fun.

If the party doesn't like what's going on, then proceed to do the following.

Tell him that, while his character is a good character, he's currently not well suited to the current campaign and is slowing things down and making the game less fun for the other players. Tell him to make a new character, and that you'll not kill off his Paladin.

Now, after he makes the new character, take his Paladin and make him an NPC. Have him help around town, occasionally show up here and there doing good deeds, and also have him on a few times give aid or advice/rumors to the party. Basically, make him the local helper of the town and occasional quest giver or healer NPC.

Also, if the party ends up if deep.water you weren't expecting, have him come in at the last moment to quickly bail them out and help, before going back to saving cats from trees or whatever. I guarantee the player will appreciate it, and the party will find it cool.

>First, determine how the rest of the party feels about this. If they don't mind or actually like it, then don't change anything and let them have their fun. It's your job as the DM to make sure most of the people are having fun.

I hate this whole genre advice. Whether the GM likes it or not is important. You don't stop being a person when you sit behind a GM screen. If it's annoying the OP he has a right to weigh that into his decision on how (or whether) to handle this. Obviously the other people's (and the player in question's) opinions matter too, but the GM's enjoyment is important and shouldn't be discounted, and it's clearly impacting his enjoyment because he made this thread in the first place.