If a paladin detects evil at everything and then kills all those that come across as evil, is he playing paladin right...

If a paladin detects evil at everything and then kills all those that come across as evil, is he playing paladin right? Would you make him fall?

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No and no.

>2018
>Using alignments
>Detect Evil still being a spell
>DnD'isms

Please, just quit the hobby and never come back, Triple-A videogames are obviously more your speed.

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even an oath of vengeance paladin knows better than to charge leeroy Jenkins at every fey and fiend in the area
such reckless behaviour is contrary to the teachings of most good aligned gods, and may rob you of potential allies and bring unwanted destruction that could have been avoided
paladins temper their fury with judgement

although, hot blooded zealot sounds like a good starting character
as you slowly learn to apply wisdom and nuance to every situation and learn from your behaviour to become a better man

It takes dedication to be anything other than neutral. Evil isn't just what you happen to be - you gotta work for it. If the paladin sees evil in you, then you work hard to be evil, and he's allowed to smite you.

I mean I guess it wouldn't be very nice. But who says paladins have to be nice?

>autist got triggered

You need to get off this site and stay off this site, it's not good for your condition.

Alignments are so bad even DnD itself basically stopped using them for anything mechanically. It's not an uncommon opinion to not use them.

So this was actually an issue I ran into with my party playing through a cop drama. My character learned see alignment which I said would be useful because it should make finding suspects easier. Except, in settings that have alignments, they rarely respond so directly to actions. A good person can be a cunt, a chaotic good person could commit murder, while a lawful evil person could just want to.

In other words, it's not illegal to be a cunt, and punishing those who haven't committed a crime? THAT'S EVIL

>a chaotic good person could commit murder
If we're talking DnD, that's not how alignments work. This isn't Fallout where you can erase murders by giving water to beggars. Killing sentient humanoid creatures for any reason other self defense or in accordance with the laws of the land makes you EVIL.

> it's not illegal to be a cunt
Being a cunt is not the same as being a MURDERER.

Alignments are garbage and should not exist, but if you're going to use them at least use them right. It doesn't matter what you want the definitions to be, they're spelled out pretty clearly whether you like them or not.

OP basically made the equivalent of "Orc Babies, wat do?" and you're calling out the guy who said DnD-style alignments are trash and not, you know, OP for deliberately making a bait thread about alignments?

The guy you're asking probably IS the OP, and he's probably assmad that the answer to every alignment problem is "stop using alignments and play real characters".

It was a bad mechanic back when 1st edition released, it's still a bad mechanic now. There's a reason "Detect Alignment" doesn't exist in 5th edition and none of the classes are locked behind arbitrary easily-misinterpreted morality requirements.

Okay, so my examples weren't great, but the point I'm trying to make is that it isn't necessarily a single action that can change your alignment, otherwise alignments become meaningless and most people are going to ping TN any time they aren't actively committing a crime, or going out of their way to help someone. If you listen to the designers talk about it, alignment is less an individual thing and more of a choice in where you stand in the cosmic war.

Forgot to add: the exception to this, however, is choosing to regularly commit an action outside of your alignment. E.g. a paladin killing people who haven't committed any crimes simply because they pray to Tiamat

Unless you're playing a epic level 20+ campaign where you're taking part in the "cosmic war", it doesn't matter, and even if it did, alignments represent non-sensical behavior that doesn't actually exist in interesting and compelling characters.

Make a character, not an alignment. Remove "Detect Evil" as a spell and actually think about how your character would determine what's right or wrong. Do some actual roleplaying. Questions of morality are things people and entire cultures spend their entire lives trying to figure out... being able to just look at a stat block because it's DnD and everything has an alignment stat-block is fucking lame.

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>Make a character, not an alignment.
alignment is meant to be a guide to the player, it certainly doesnt preclude acting like a person, its just your handy dandy guide on how to act

>Remove "Detect Evil" as a spell and actually think about how your character would determine what's right or wrong
Detect evil doesnt detect evil intent, it just detects fiends and fey

No. While killing everything that detects as evil is a good start, paladins should also be very wary of chaotic aligned creatures of all kinds. Neutral creatures, especially the crazier ones like outsiders or druids, should also be kept on a short leash.

>If a paladin detects evil at everything and then kills all those that come across as evil...

OP is playing an edition of DnD where Paladins have a magic morality radar because playing a mindless smitebot is what the developers thought was """fun""" at some point I guess.

>Unless you're playing a epic level 20+ campaign where you're taking part in the "cosmic war"
Back in early editions all games were like that. Even a level 1 character can be, and should be, guided by and fucked over by forces he can't comprehend.

In my settings, it's what tends to happen to paladins.

Paladins are usually idealistic young knight who haven't seen much of the world yet; them falling is NORMAL, a natural result of traveling and seeing how the world works. Most churches have retraining programs.

The paladins who don't fall either end up in a detect-evil-smite-evil loop and are generally used by the various churches as essentially living WMDs, or (very rarely) end up being able to transcend the rampancy so to speak, and become the legendary warrior saints that people look up to (Which inspires the next generation of would-be paladins).

> Evil isn't just what you happen to be - you gotta work for it.
Actually it can. There are spells, curses, and items that make you detect as evil even if you're good. It is also possible to have the Evil subtype(i.e be made of elemental evil) but have a Good alignment.

>OP basically made the equivalent of "Orc Babies,
Orc babies wouldn't detect as evil. Fucking Orcs wouldn't detect as evil unless they were like level 8 even if they were in fact actually evil.

I'll never understand this. Why exactly do people think it's fun to be a pawn in some huge existential war they can't understand?

Then again I could never get into Star Wars for the same reason, and am one of those faggots who thought Kreia had some good points, despite the soapboxy writing.

They wouldn't detect as anything because there is no easily low-level alignment-detecting spell in 5e.

Most fantasy worlds have gods. Most gods have ideals and goals. Mortals amount to pawns at best.

And being pushed around on the board always makes for a good plot hook.

Yeah, but the "Cosmic War" in DnD is usually even bigger than the gods, as the gods are also beholden to the alignment system in the editions that have it.

Besides, at what points are you following the gods out of faith versus doing it for the "light side perks" or "dark side powers"?

Usually when you start to get those perks, rather than being burdened and obligated and possibly punished.

The best I ever give is favors they can call in later, rather than any tangible powers. Even those are rare and work only once.

First and foremost, there is no "right" way to play anything. If the player is having fun and isn't making the other players uncomfortable or otherwise spoiling everyone else's fun, then he's playing the game properly.

And second, no, I wouldn't make him/her fall, but just because a god judges someone evil and authorizes him to smite evil on sight it doesn't mean that the guards/court/judicial system is going to agree with that behavior. He would probably get in trouble really quickly, but that also opens up fun opportunities for roleplaying, and the whole "Faith vs. Law" theme sounds very interesting for me as a DM and as an attorney.
>But what if it's a god of law
I wouldn't have a god of law to grant "smite evil". Rather, I would have it grant "smite chaos". And this is a whole other can of worms to open, also because the god of law would expect the due process of law to be respected before applying punishment - and in fact, sometimes evildoers would go scot free (especially in lawful evil societies).
So yes, smiting chaos on sight would probably make him fall IF he didn't surrender himself to the guards for a proper trial and investigation after he killed something - and accept the appropriate punishment if he happened to kill someone who was chaotic but hadn't done anything that would get him a death sentence.

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I mean its not like due process is a thing in all cultures?

It sure isn't, but it will ultimately depend on how the god of law operates in the setting. Perhaps a better way to phrase it would be that the god expects the paladin to respect the laws of the place he's at.
That, or maybe the church of law has a written codex of laws and procedures that the paladin is expected to respect, which would somewhat allow him to just ignore local custom and authority that wasn't sanctioned by the church.

No and yes.

You mean an edition that doesn't exist? Detect Alignment effects could never tell what alignment something was; just what kind of aligned aura they had. Most things don't have auras at all and those that do have a better than average chance of having ways to fake it.

Depends on his oath and/or deity. If he's killing beings he could possibly redeem while claiming to follow an oath/deity of redemption, then he's going to fall pretty quickly.

>is he playing paladin right?
What is "right?"
>make him fall?
No. But I WOULD make the rest of the world react appropriately to the man running around murdering people saying, "I CAN SEE THEIR SINS! MY MAGIC EYES SHOW ME WHO IS EVIL!"

>First and foremost, there is no "right" way to play anything. If the player is having fun and isn't making the other players uncomfortable or otherwise spoiling everyone else's fun, then he's playing the game properly.
t. Chaotic Neutral