Internal Conflict
What’s this? Paladin’s moral compass might align with Antipaladin’s? The horror!
Just to make sure we’ve got our precedents in order before we dive in, it was back in Mean Girls, Part 1/3 when we last talked about playing your alignment. We also had a rollicking debate on the topic of paladins falling from grace in Tolerance. Coming out of those conversations, I’m beginning to think we focus too often on the GM’s role in this equation. I mean, just consider what’s going on in today’s comic between the man in shining armor and his counterpart in black. There’s no overbearing GM in sight. These are guys playing out their internal conflict, and agonizing over their choices.
Now let me say first and foremost that this is BY NO MEANS the only correct way to play a paladin. Nothing says you’re required to moralize and agonize. But speaking as a GM, I can tell you that my “must enforce alignment” instincts relax considerably when my paladin players remember to bring up these issues themselves.
When you’ve got a code of honor, strict alignment restrictions on your class, or some other kind of your-behavior-matters mechanic built into your dude, I think it pays to treat it as something more than a nuisance. It’s an opportunity for character exploration and world-building. What goes through your head when you’re faced with a moral quandary? How does your particular religion/philosophy/whatever see the world? I actually think that kind of exploration is the purpose of the alignment system, and it’s all I really want to see out of my players when they write “paladin” on their sheet.
Speaking as a GM, I can tell you that I wouldn’t penalize either Paladin or Antipaladin for choosing to rescue Necromancer. Knowing that my PCs are thinking about the consequences to their actions is enough for me. They’re already bringing their codes of behavior into the picture, and so I don’t feel like I’ve got to remind them of it myself. Besides, that sort of thing really ought to be the player’s choice to make. It’s called “internal conflict” after all, and that doesn’t seem like the province of the dude behind the screen!
So what do you think, guys? Do you treat your paladin codes as annoying baggage, or do you like to bring them up in-game? Let’s hear all about your favorite moral quandaries and philosophical dilemmas down in the comments!
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Now that you mention it, I actually think this could be a good rule of thumb as far a the question of Falling After Screwup is concerned. “Was there a dilemma? Did the PC actually tried to figure out the right thing to do?” If the answer is yes, then outside of the most egregious examples (“Should I, or should I not set this orphanage on fire for no good reason whatsoever? Oh the conundrum!”) falling should be right off the table. The reason being that A) the answer clearly wasn’t obvious to the player and B) there was an honest effort to decide what the right thing to do was. One would assume that the vast majority of deities of Law and Good would realize that Paladins are still people and thus fallible, so they probably wouldn’t just give up on them after one misstep (repeat offense is another matter). CE Gods are probably less understanding, but also less likely to discard a useful tool on principle.
I think it’s important to remember that D&D gods aren’t all-powerful or infallible. They might have strong opinions, but it’s tough to argue that they’ve got all the answers for unsolvable ethics conundrums. That’s doubly true since they’re being portrayed by your local dork-with-a-superiority-complex.
To quote myself:
“The Paladin Gods are strict in demanding that their followers be paragons of goodness – but they also recognize that making a hard decision that you believe is right is often braver and nobler than refusing to make a decision (and allowing what you believe to be the greater evil to occur) in an attempt to avoid responsibility. Paladins are tasked with always trying to do the right thing, because that is a difficult enough task as it is.”
I always found the idea that a CE character having to follow a code or dogma a bit silly. Or more specifically, a character having to embody the concept of chaos itself or lose their powers. Doesn’t that go against the whole idea of being chaotic?
I’m not saying chaotic characters can’t follow ideals or dogma. After all, there are CE clerics of CE deities.
Then again, I’m usually more amenable to alignment based characters following a specific belief system (like the 5e paladin oaths or PF deity specific paladin codes) than nebulous alignment restrictions. Especially since nobody can seem to agree on what any of them mean, just read the boards 😛
Exactly. That’s why my go-to solution is “just remember to RP your internal conflict from time to time.” I think it’s when moral quandaries are ignored entirely, and paladins become unscrupulous fighters with neat bonus powers, that GMs start itching to shout, “Oath breaker!” at people.
The best explanation I ever saw for the Antipaladin is that, like Chaotic Evils should be, Antipaladins are selfish. They do not follow rules out of respect for rules, but they (usually) don’t break rules unless it benefits them. If you say “follow these rules” they’ll break them once they cause the slightest inconvenience, but say “follow these rules and you’ll be rewarded with enough power to do anything you want” and they’ll comply. Though I can also see a true embodiment of Chaotic Evil trying to find ways to break the Antipaladin Oath just on principle, which when described that way makes them sound more like loophole-seeking Lawful Evils, because D&D morality is just a giant mobius strip.
I did once have a lot of fun playing the GMPC Antipaladin Dethbladé Soulstyyl (real name Carl), a guy ludicrously devoted to Rovagug. Unfortunately (or fortunately), Dethbladé/Carl is also an idiot, and his understanding of Rovagug is that Rov is the god of smashing pottery and weather. Carl runs around in his giant black spike armor shouting “The tools of destruction will be destroyed last!” and other quotes from the Rovagug Antipaladin Code without much of an idea of what they mean. This is part of the way he ended up on the government-controlled Suicide Squad – he wants to do evil, but his understanding of it is so simplistic that when told “Hurt those people and protect these people, because these people are tools of destruction (and so should be destroyed last) and those people are not”, he does it.
Ever read the Malazan Book of the Fallen series? I imagine Karsa Orlong as a good model of antipaladin protagonist: an instrument of destruction for its own sake. The manipulative gods that hold his chains rely on his nature to bring about chaos.
Personally I the angsty type of paladin full of internal conflict over doing the right thing doesn’t really interest me all that much, in part because of how often I have seen those various moral dillemas before.
I’m much more interested in the Galahad/Superman/Optimus Prime style of inspiring knight in shining armor whose story purpose is more showing that we can do the right thing rather than wallowing in the difficulty of seeing what that is.
I don’t really agree with the implication that the latter are ignoring their codes of conduct either.
A character who believes that it is wrong to lie, cheat and that it is their duty to help the innocent, who simply never hesitates before doing the latter or consider doing the former is just as much shaped by their code as someone that hesitates and is tempted to break it all the time, if not more.
No implication intended. This is simply the most overt way to portray “I have codes of behavior.” If that’s baked into the character’s personality then more power to you.
The issue is when paladins ignore that aspect of the class entirely, and GMs try to insert it back in. That way lies arguments and fraught forum posts.
Paladin codes can absolutely be baggage, but that doesn’t mean they can’t also be played that way. I recall a paladin I saw a while back, clearly influenced by Trevor Belmont in the new Castlevania series. He was a drunk, a bit of a dick, a womanizer, had never had a family, effectively an orphan that was unwanted his whole life. But his heart was in the right place and he couldn’t tolerate seeing people taken advantage of or abused by those in positions of power, and that was why Iomedae… tolerated… him. He absolutely played his code and his oaths as things he had sworn in character – and built a reputation on doing very little unless he was absolutely required to by them. They were an annoying baggage he carried IC, and it was a fun character to see play out.
It’s my favorite thing when character emotions align with player emotions. If the player thinks that all these divine restrictions are irritating, it would be a blast to reflect that in the RP. I dig it!
I love this comic. I think this is where a lot of the best adventures come from: not a group of supposedly like-minded people fighting capital-E Evil but a group who have one objective that overlaps and working together is logical for the greater good (“the greater good!”).
Cold War spies preventing a third party getting the nuclear plans, Athenians and Spartans facing Persian invasion, patrician and plebian defending their way of life from the barbarians…
I think this is also why Heath Ledger’s Joker remains so fascinating. “I don’t want to kill you, you complete me!” as well as being the chaotic mirror to Batman who shows us a new dimension of that character with the phone spy net.
Paladin and Antipaladin working together would be a fun game where you can really explore what makes each character tick. And as Paladin is a known case of Lawful Stupid while Antipaladin clearly isn’t in it for the evils, I think this might be the best chance to see each one’s hidden depths.
I would love to do a two-player buddy cop game with this premise. Their respective deities are working together to stop some apocalyptic threat, and their servants have to do the same. It could be great fun to watch both sides try to act strictly neutral for the sake of cooperation.
It would feature the best but also weirdest good cop/bad cop scenes ever made!
“I don’t pretend to understand or control my associate by any stretch of the imagination, but he has been quite emphatic during our time working together about how obstinate witnesses provoke his craving for fresh bone-marrow….”
“Look, I have a reputation to uphold, but also no great desire for bloodspatter all over this fur collar, so tell me what I want to know, and we’ll just both pretend I pried it out of you with knife-torture. Otherwise, I’ll have to admit my failure to Whiskers von Smackhammer over there, and then he’ll come in here and pull the stick out of his ass to beat you with…”
Oracle: “The forces of Hell are about to conquer the world and install eternal tyranny!”
Paladin: “Not on my watch!”
Antipaladin: “Not on my watch!”
Just realized what I’m describing: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZSXlNRRoGU
Yes, that’s exactly it.
When I play a Paladin, I don’t agonize over following the Oath, most of the Oaths (With the exception of the cartoonish ones like Vengeance (Oath of Warcrimes, will burn the orphanage you’re hiding in) and redemption (Oath of insufferable “Too pure for this wicked world” Mary-Sues, will let fantasy Hitler analogue free if they promise not to do genocides) are pretty easy. Devotion (Paladin classic, my favorite) boils down to being a good person and a responsible adult.) I do however get to use it as an excuse to talk them down from the bad things when That Guy in the group gets war-crimey.
Do you ever want your GM to thrust moral quandaries at you when you play paladin? Or would you rather that stuff just came out of your own RP?
“Moral quandaries” always feel forced. There’s usually a blatantly good option if you apply your brain.
You didn’t mention the other continuity callback; the wanted poster in the background here: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/by-the-book
Honestly, to me there’s no moral quandary for Devotion Paladin, he’s just thinking with his hammer. Necromancer Wizard is a threat to people, and she needs to be made to not be a threat. Just cause you like a gal doesn’t mean she’s above the law.
+2,560 XP to Gabriel! Good spot!
I think Paladin is thinking that Necromancer can be redeemed, but knows that’s wishful thinking, unless maybe it isn’t, because she seemed nice when they first met, but he pushed her away, so really it’s his fault, and he’s got to make things right, but he’s risking innocents to soothe his own consciences, but etc etc etc
I use milestones, what’s the point of all this XP?
He’s Devotion. (Paladin classic) His tenets are pretty clear on this: “Compassion: Aid others, protect the weak, and punish those who threaten them. Show mercy to your foes, but temper it with wisdom.” Letting Necromancer Wizard be captured alive so she is rendered incapable of harming others, and can possibly be rehabilitated by the system is every part of that.
I actually think the Oath of Devotion is one of the best written oaths in terms of tenets. It very squarely pushes you into LG, but it’s broad enough that the only behavior that isn’t default LG is that you can’t lie. I actually see this as a benefit. If people know you can’t lie, then they should trust everything you say.
Certain orphanage fire related event leads me to believe that’s not how Inquisitor rolls.
You don’t tie someone up unless you’re attempting to take them alive. (Granted Quiz is a Drow, and Drow are made out of the sexual hangups of baby boomer fantasy writers, so the rope might be for other purposes.)
I gather you’ve seen the Handbook of Erotic Fantasy pages then. 😉
I have not, I just have a potent genre sense.
I like the idea of classes with a built-in moral code.
What I don’t like is when the class has to deal with stringent restrictions, while also being weaker than other classes.
This was the case for D&D 3.5 Paladin, which is the edition I’ve started with, where the Paladin was a weak class that became REALLY weak if they were to fall.
I know it’s gotten better in PF and other D&D editions, but I’m still a little stuck in the “man, those restrictions are so annoying” mentality. I’m trying to get over it though, because like you I think they’re good roleplaying opportunities.
The other things I don’t like about built-in moral codes, which thankfully I didn’t have to deal with personally, are Lawful Stupid guys “I’m a Paladin! I refuse to sneak around the heavily guarded Den of Evil, I will go forth and announce our presence!” and the DMs who get off of putting “moral quandaries” in the Paladin’s way that are basically “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” just because they WANT to make you fall.
Yeah. It’s definitely possible to do it poorly. And 3.5 definitely suffers from power imbalance. As far as making it work though, it’s always possible to dial in power level via playstyle and optimizing relative to the rest of the party (assuming your local CODzilla is willing to wear the lead weights).
If you want to shake the mindset though? Think of it as a built-in part of the character rather than restrictions on them. What kind of person would want to behave that way, you know?
Alignment isn’t a Chekhov’s gun it’s a Chekhov’s window. It is there so you can see what is in the other side, to open it, close it or shatter it. The problem with internal conflict is that both forces at hand are internal. I once think of a very funny method to drive nuts a Legal-good PC. This guy, Lucius Guy Fighter or LG Fighter for short, is a Legal-Good fighter. He goes to war and meets another guy, Luke Esteban Noble, LE Noble for short. LE Noble looks like a good guy, he says that is in that war, even when he is from another country, because some of his subjects have family in that region and he use to trade with them. He is then to protect people and orden in the region so it doesn’t turn into a war torn lawless place. LE Noble and LG Fighter become good friends, LE Noble is not like the other nobles he know so when the war ends LG Fighter sworn his sword to him. They come home of LE Noble and find that while he was away some other noble try to usurp his position. Now in this country the laws say that the usurping noble and his family must be execute, even his new born child who was born after the crime. LE Noble pass sentence and it is time for the execution, LG Fighter will prove his word truth when he carries the will of law. So now LG FIghter has a big problem. the lawful part of him says that the whole family must be punish according to the laws and customs of the country where the crime takes place, but the good part of him say: “WTF, you can’t kill a child dude. Not cool that, not cool”. Now he has a nice internal conflict about the lawful and good parts of his conscience, how nice of him.
That is relevant because one of the only few time i have played a paladin and i enjoy it was because of all the moral questions that the DM and me make throw upon him. My paladin was a kind sort of guy who made a paladin so he could help people and defend them. Sadly that was in that sort of campaign that makes Berserk looks light and heartwarming. “You either die a villain or live long enough to see yourself become the hero” was one of the arc words. And moral choices are good because sometimes people, even paladins are evil without knowing. Many times in our games we have got paladins who are doing evil things because they think they are good, that the things they do are for the greater good, then since they don’t see themselves as evil they are not oath breakers, and in some cases the gods accept whatever evil the do as long as that benefice the god and don’t break their code. Gods are that level of jerkass sometimes.
I want to draw attention to the “my DM and me” part of that statement. You guys both enjoyed tormenting this character. That’s key. You don’t want to be “punished for the way you’re playing your character,” but to be fully caught up in the struggle. Good gaming right there!
Thanks. In this case as i noted above the conflict is internal. A DM can suggest “Shouldn’t you paladin have some moral conundrum about that idea of buying 50 slaves of pleasure to distract the guards?”. Now the player can get the idea that maybe there can be a problem, or he can ignored it and be punished by the gods for his cuestionable behavior. While the DM can judge he cannot impose, but when the player and DM work together in this it can be quite the fun. Always that my DM and i we band together to make my pc as miserable as possible is a good show 🙂
I’ve touched on this before, but a huge problem with D&D alignment is that it doesn’t have an established basis, out of necessity. Are we interpreting “good” through the lens of utilitarianism? Natural law? Virtue? And even if such a system is agreed to, different people can have perfectly reasonable but radically different interpretations of what that looks like.
This is what I think is the biggest difference between paladins (and to a lesser extent Clerics and warlocks) and other classes that have a personal code or creed they adhere to: the former’s creed is being interpreted and enforced by a 3rd party, the GM as the patron. If a paladin on a bridge sees a wagon barreling towards five commoners who can’t get out of the way, and there is a fat commoner is on top of the bridge that could be pushed off and stop the wagon, what would be the good thing to do? Classic moral problem, but the problem is if the DM disagrees they can say that the gods/goodness/the patron itself disagrees as well.
Hopefully a good DM will think the moral dilemma itself is its own reward and the gods are lenient. However, if the DM is more strict, thinks there is an obviously good solution you didn’t do, or a fundamental philosophical disagreement such as [insert charged political topic here], the DM literally can say what the universe says is “right” and, unlike characters with self-imposed codes, can put a mechanical penelty on the character that is literally the universe saying “you’re interpretation is wrong.”
They can, but I’m suggesting that they shouldn’t. Leniency is the key word, and making sure that the paladin is aware of moral quandaries before they step in them (ie avoiding “gotcha moments”) is a big damn deal.
I typically view Paladins (& Clerics, etc.) as being sort of professional spokespeople for their deities. “Falling” is essentially the same as getting fired from their position for violating company policy.
Generally, deities do not want their followers to fall. It takes a lot of time and effort to raise a powerful/prestigious follower, and each deity only has so many of them with which they can influence the mortal plane. That said, a follower which harms their brand and/or no longer is in line with their goals/methods has to be removed from the organization.
As a result, I typically treat Paladin Codes like company rules. Violating them may be grounds for falling, but most deity’s would prefer some sort of lesser punishment and/or required atonement to bring the Paladin in line rather than defaulting to the most extreme solution. Of course, if the Paladin flagrantly abuses this or shows that they don’t care about the restrictions, then the deity will have no problem making them fall. But at the end of the day, the decision of falling or not is made by the Paladin’s deity, not by the exact letter of the code.
This is a really good perspective, one that I haven’t really considered before. Very interesting!
I love the idea of a deity acting like an HR person.
“How can we work together to get you back on track? We both want you to succeed!”
spending some extra gold for a Phylactery of Faithfulness might be a good call for these two.
That or Antipaladin there starts worshiping Hei Feng, whose antipaladins may give “sincerely altruistic aid, so long as that aid takes the form of violence visited upon others”
I’m used to that item being called “the common sense feat.” Of course, the trouble with it is that you’ve got to stop and double check with your conscience, which generally requires common sense in the first place.
Well as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, I don’t like alignments. So I’m double in agreement that the GM should not be punishing players for “playing their character wrong”.
As far as paladin codes go, on the few occasions I play them I try and get the GM to let me write my own code as usually there’s one or two things I’m not really interested in for a character and would rather replace with something else. And I see no reason why a GM would ever object to that. Writing the code up yourself rather than picking out a pre-made one off the list is much more likely to result in the player being invested in it.
Did I ever link you to this thing?
https://forgotten-memories-slumbering-thoughts.obsidianportal.com/wikis/paladin-code
I love that thing. Of course, it puts a hefty onus on the GM to actually bring the more esoteric bits of a code into play.
This is -why- you play a paladin! You start with an idea, and you demonstrate the methods by which you uphold that idea. People try to poke holes in your idea, but you internalize until you can justify your idea. By them having done so, you create a firm foundation for your idea.
Then you become a hero for everyone who shares that idea with you. You’re the one they point to when they say ‘This is what it means to be part of this idea.’ It’s pretty great.
The trouble comes in between here:
and here:
Other people (namely the GM) have to buy into your idea. Therefore you must be persuasive. And the best way to do that is to make sure and communicate what you’re going for. The agonized internal monologue is one way, speechifying is another, and out-of-game explanations are a third. All of these and more can work, but you’ve got to remember to actually do one!
Yeah, it’s trivial to write, but on some level, you have to actually believe in the idea yourself or you’re not going to be able to express yourself correctly. “It’s what my character would do” is always a worse argument than “I’m sure this was the right way to do it.”
As a well known example, I think that Arthas was right to wipe out that city while he was still a paladin. He had information the other paladins didn’t, and a concern for the big picture. His act could have kept a big problem from becoming cataclysmic.
He betrayed nothing until the other paladins betrayed him by not giving him the respect of listening to him.
But when the other players and the GM -don’t- buy into your idea and you continue to express it, isn’t that an opportunity for character growth? Maybe the GM thinks that you’ve fallen and you can’t correctly express the points that prove that you were right all along. If he’s being a dick about it, we go to the phrase ‘No D&D is better than bad D&D,’ but if we’re all adults at the table, Antipaladins are just as represented in your comic. They say the same thing because they believe just as hard in their belief as the other, and it’s just the local cultural divide that separates them.
Then you get a ballin’ sword with a ballin’ name and you’re grimly happy with how things turned out, once you’ve been proved right.
Unrelated, if Antipaladin somehow got his hands on Mr. Stabby for a week or two…
Getting on the same page as your GM is best, but agreeing to disagree and accepting an alternate POV can indeed work. It takes a lot of maturity on the part of the fallen paladin’s player though!
I may have to delve more deeply into Mr. Stabby’s backstory one of these days. It remains pretty up in the air.
I personally want to say any time you as the GM can make the Paladin and the Anti-Paladin agonize over the same decision, you have won D&D. In arguments of Paladin Falling, I typically listen to the player’s argument. If he can moralize it without stepping on one of the “Thou Shalt Nots” in his code, and he hasn’t made a habit of it, I generally err on the side of letting him keep his abilities. I also tend to ignore Sins of Omission.
The most common Moral Quandry my players end up in comes from my tendency to try and portray a living world. There aren’t only male goblin warriors with daggers in the goblin warren. There are also x goblin non-combatants, at least y of which will be children and given the fecund nature of goblins, z number will be pregnant females. Deciding what to do with the women and children that are cowering in fear after you’ve killed all the warriors is generally a big debate the first time it happens with a new group.
For Paladins, there is secretly no wrong answer to me. I can completely see both sides of the issue. Slaughtering surrendering enemies could be seen as an evil act by it’s very nature. Leaving them alive to continue to be a threat can also be seen as a Sin of Omission. Yet, goblins are “tend to be evil” races rather than “Always evil” like demons. So, its more of a character development point than a “trick the paladin” moment.
I have an idea of making a quest about a goblin who is on revenge after a paladin that killed all his family 12 years ago. It can work from the both sides.
I’ve only played a paladin once, and he was an Oath of Vengeance type in 5e. We had interacted several times with an obnoxious dwarf who was the leader of this fort we were using as a base for our excursions, and after coming back to the fort we discovered it had been attacked and he has been stabbed with a cursed dagger. To save him we would need to go out and find the assassin who had stabbed him and get our hands on the dagger so we could reverse the curse.
Now, mind you I hated the guy and would have gladly seen him die. But my oath said that if in my adventuring my enemies do evil upon the small folk then I am sworn to help them. Paraphrasing. So I was torn between telling him to suck it up while we went after the original goal of our quest, or going out after the assassin to help him. The rest of the group was looking at me to make the choice, and eventually I broke and we went after the assassin. But I rather enjoyed the moral dilemma of doing the right thing over seeing an uptight prick get his.
I’ll give you the other side of moral dilemma. There is a grave crime committed. The guards found a party of adventurers on the site of the crime and arrested them as prime suspects. But one of the adventurers is a paladin. Should the guards let them go on the ground that the paladin can’t commit such grave crime without breaking the oath and losing the paladinhood, or no?
Depends on the guards. https://media.popculture.com/2017/05/pirates-of-the-caribbean-5-returning-characters-mullroy-and-murt-20002362.jpg