Tolerance
It finally happened. The paladins in my game got into alignment trouble. It happened pretty much as pictured.
Here’s how it all went down. Somewhere deep down in the dungeon, the party cracked open a door to discover the standard darkened chamber full of ominous webbing. They stepped inside, held aloft their torches, and were summarily attacked by phase spiders. I made sure to point out how these things spoke to each other in a creepy, alien language. I even had them retreat to the ethereal plane after they’d been beaten. The paladins in question simply didn’t notice or care. They were fighting creepy spider monsters as the good gods intended. Never mind that these particular monsters failed to detect as evil.
Anywho, my players hadn’t committed any transgressions at this point. Sure they’d entered the home of neutrally aligned intelligent creatures with swords drawn, but they’re adventurers. That’s their job. The trouble came when it was time to loot the room.
There were all manner of interesting magical whatsits strung up in the webbing. Coins, wands, weapons, and gemstones were all there for the taking, and the PCs took ’em. However, there were also pulsating egg sacks in the webbing. Whenever the PCs came too close to these, one of the beaten phase spiders would partially emerge from the ethereal plane like a fish breaking the surface of still water. Again, my players failed to put one and one together. The party wizard, however, was getting ideas of his own.
“You know,” he said, “I bet those eggs would go for 50 gold apiece if we could find the right buyer.”
It was true. It said so right in the module. It also said that the spiders would fight to the death to defend their young, and that’s exactly what they did. The phase spiders were already pretty beat up from the first fight, and the goodly paladins made short work of the ethereal arachnids. They proceeded to cut down the egg sacks, throw them onto the treasure pile, and head for home.
So now that you know what happened, what say we put this sequence of events into perspective? A pair of paladins entered the home of neutrally aligned, intelligent creatures. They fought off a young wedded couple, took their stuff, and then noticed that there were babies in the room. Realizing that they could sell these babies for a fair price (as magical reagents, no less) they proceeded to kidnap them. When the beaten and bloody parents tried to defend their young, the paladins cut them down.
Now I’m not the kind of GM that tries to set up these situations. I may be evil, but saying “gotcha!” to the paladin always struck me as a dick move. Let the players decide what their characters will and will not do, you know? If the paladin is making an honest effort, I’d prefer not to tell a player what qualifies as good and evil. However, this bit of monster description was fresh in my mind, and I couldn’t let it slide: “Were phase spiders less horrifying and alien in appearance, they might find the allies they need to defeat the sinister xill among other races, but their monstrous forms and often overwhelming hunger make diplomacy difficult.” At some point, you’ve got to ask your paladin to adhere to a higher standard, you know?
Don’t worry. I didn’t make them fall for an honest mistake. I home-brewed a few deity specific penalties to let them know that their gods were displeased. I’ll ask for an atonement spell, figure out some kind of minor side quest, and move on with the adventure. However, I can’t shake the sense that I may have been unfair to my well-meaning paladins. They thought they were fighting giant spiders, you know?
Question of the day then: Have you ever seen a paladin fall? How did it happen? And more generally, how do you define good and evil acts at your table? Let’s hear it in the comments!
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I’ve never been too into paladins so I haven’t played many of them and the games they’re made for never seem to last long. I have seen one paladin (not mine) fall, but they wanted to fall and honestly the character was such a nasty brute that I’m pretty sure they only “fell” because their player wanted to do that in game, not because the character basically wasn’t already as black hearted and vicious as they could be.
As for the story, you might have been able to drive the point home more during the events in question if you’d had the spiders in question spend actions just moving the eggs away from the PCs without attacking. Surely it would have made the fight easier, but it would then be much easier for the paladins’ players to have noticed that maybe these weren’t your average monsters and that they weren’t really behaving with valor (because it’s hard to be valorous while attacking a foe that’s too busy trying to run it’s babies away from you to fight back).
Also, I imagine there is an alternate comic here which is the same comic except the words the spider is saying is also “Die, monster!” to Fighter. =P
And thus the “let’s play as the monsters” campaign was born! Even when the monsters are legit evil, I’ve always loved the premise. They get beat up by adventurers so often, it only makes sense for them to form anti-parties of their own.
I’m just gonna leave this here:
http://rustyandco.com/comic/level-1-title/
It is 1:16 AM and I am only now realizing that the dates on the strips I’m up to are 2011. I’m not sleeping tonight, am I?
Playing a Warpriest in a new campaign, I suppose I have my own set of toes I need to avoid stepping on, else I befall the same fate. I’ve never played a religious character before, so this will be a bit of a new experience for me. Maybe I ought to put a few points into Linguistics to learn a few spells, or invest in some form of “speak all languages…” The Evangelist prestige class is looking rather tempting.
I always thought the Holy Vindicator looked cool:
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/138226/Veranthea-Codex-Spoony-Jawz-Top-Pilot-of-Trectoyri–FREE-PDF
Such a weird and fun flavor.
If you’re interested in developing your own personal code, Laurel actually found a cool resource for her recent paladin. Could be a good place for a warpriest to get some inspiration:
https://forgotten-memories-slumbering-thoughts.obsidianportal.com/wikis/paladin-code
A general “be good and just” is all well and good, but having a few specific moral quirks can make for some interesting RP.
My party had a similar exchange to Fighter’s, but with a magic lizard who turned out to be pretty peacful. It only dealt one blow to the knight, who was the first to charge it.
As we talked to our quest-giver NPC, the knight just sat there, taking strength damage from the poision.
Druid: “I could heal that for you, ya know.”
Knight: “It’s ok. I deserve it…”
I hope you got bonus RP XP. That’s good stuff. 🙂
The two paladins in question served the Pathfinder deity Cayden Cailean (“the Drunken Hero”) and a homebrew god of mercy and charity. Their respective punishments were an inability to get inebriated and an unreasoning terror at seeing any spider harmed. It’s been fun so far.
Wait, paladins of cayden cailean? I’m surprised they were allowed to do that, being a chaotic god. What did you make the paladin code?
I just checked in with Laurel. She says it boils down to “help your bros.” She plays him like a fraternity member.
I’ve never seen a paladin fall, but I’ve always been of the belief that it should be more of a character moment resulting from a collaboration between the DM and the player, not a punishment. The path to the dark side can be interesting and compelling, and made with good intentions. (Hell, I’ve been in star wars games where my Jedi falls to the dark side. Does that count?)
Situations like this are one of the reasons I love playing my alchemist. She speaks Alko, Undercommon, and Protean, and is perfectly at home speaking with unusual creatures. She herself has dozens of various organs transplanted and grafted onto her body. Heck, if it wasn’t for PFS’ strict “no PVP” rules, I could understand a few jittery fighters taking a swing at her before she has a chance to explain herself.
It goes to a fundamental question at the heart of this hobby: Who is in charge of character decisions? Whose vision of the world should matter?
I looked at the situation as an interesting RP opportunity. At least one of the players looked at it as an opportunity to make me sleep on the couch. 😛
As long as neither the player or the DM take advantage of the “collaboration” and everyone is having fun. I have had a few too many people try to talk their way out of their paladin’s torture of innocents to be… trusting.
When I run, I explain what things will cause the paladin to fall. If the pally does those things… they fall, whether the player is on-board or not. I’ll admit that it’s a bit Kafka-esque, but in-setting, these powers are granted contingent on the keeping of oaths sworn to the gods… which means that the gods judge whether they have been upheld or not.
Honestly? At our table, that paladin would have fallen for that. We’re taking “don’t judge a monster by its looks” pretty serious.
But then, every group is different…
At your table, do you think the paladin would have been cool with that decision, or would it have triggered some kind of alignment debate?
How justified you are to make it a Fall also depends on what type of games you’ve been playing before that. If it was nothing but dungeon crawling and monster slaying, it would be unfair to the player to wreck his character for going by established convention.
On the other hand, if the party have been negotiating with fringe races a lot, it’s less excusable.
Note that I’m specifically talking about out-of-game fairness. In game, evil acts because of ignorance are still evil acts. The class description is a bit unclear (does “willingly” imply “knowingly”?), but the Atonement spell mentions losing your paladin power for unwittingly committed evil acts.
In one of my campaigns we had some shenanigans with a wish gone awry, where basically my character made a wish intended to give everyone a stat boost and it had…unintended consequences, in spite of my best efforts to phrase it safely. The fighter got turned into a werewolf, and the paladin got turned into a half fiend. The DM ruled that the paladin could draw on more demonic power for a short term boost, like a dice reroll, but doing so would slowly draw him away from his deity. Eventually we ended up facing (read:encountering and running away from) a beholder. It hit the paladin with a petrification ray and he failed the save. He used a fiend point to reroll, and somehow failed again. His last worda wrre that his god has abandoned him. The player had to roll up a new character, but of course the now fallen paladin was restored to normal and sought revenge on his old friends. Fun times
Nice when it happens organically like that. Much less chance for hurt feelings and alignment debates.
I usually tell my players ahead of time if monsters aren’t always “monsters.” So they know in the universe they are playing, just because it’s a minotaur…doesn’t mean it’s evil. This was helpful for when they came to the plains of one place and saw a bunch of minotaurs riding on dinosaurs and generally being peaceful tribal people. (They were totally not Tauren. Really.) I have found this also helps new players because the more experienced folks can’t as easily meta-game. It enhances the value of “knowledge” skills or other checks/player knowledge if they are meeting creatures for the first time. (Though sometimes if something is trying to eat you…it’s just trying to eat you.)
Of course…I also had an NPC who was a redeemed Succubus Paladin who was a contact for the party. It was a case of “Don’t judge a creature by it’s detect spell” She radiated overwhelming auras of Good and Law (Because she was a powerful paladin), but because she was still a demon…and magic is fickle…she still radiated auras that were overwhelming Evil and Chaos.
Finally, one of the major powers in my go-to world is the Order of the Ruby Sorceress. A church dedicated to Weejas–who is Lawful Neutral. As such, she had both Paladins (Figure if there can be Lawful Good Clerics of Weejas, there can be Paladins) and Blackguards who served. (Just in different sects) That one also highlighted that association of religion is not necessarily evil unto itself…it’s the actions you choose that really define who and what you are.
The idea of a god’s neutral followers choosing between channeling positive and negative energy always intrigued me. It’s interesting to imagine what a death god’s healer looks like, as well as the bad touch flavored follower of beauty and art.
I’ve played a Lawful Neutral follower of Weejas…and when people are like “But Necromancers follower her! She has the death domain and raising zombies!” My character (and me as a DM in some cases…I really thought Weejas had some of the biggest potential as a deity to be more than just RAAWRG SMASH or THE POWER OF PELOR COMPELS YOU!) would respond “Yeah…Heretics…She’s the god of Death…not Undeath. There is balance in the world…but everyone eventually dies.” So she would go after someone using necromancy to keep themselves or others “alive” via undeath…but also was none-too-keen on people trying to find “positive” ways to stay alive forever. Essentially looking at positive and negative energy as both possible conduits of power, and not inherently good or evil…again what you chose to do with them.
I actually created a “Mortality” domain for 3.5 that was similar to the “Death Domain” but replaced all the raising spells with Anti-Undead Spells. But I also house ruled that some spells (like Deathwatch) were not in fact evil. Death was simply the end of life.
This did lead to a very funny scene where the party was at a King’s side. And all the local clerics were praying for him to recover from a poison…and my character was busily giving him final rights/wishing his soul a safe journey wherever it was destined to go. She also had a habit of praying in Infernal or Abyssal…just to frighten people. (Figure it was like hearing sweet things said in German.) She also was dressed in a lot of black with red highlights…and carried a scythe…but was not evil. She got snapped at by another priest at the ceremony to “stop that” and she just kinda shrugged and went off to the side to read a book on magic.
I’m picturing the “stop that” priest as a mustachioed Monty Python type.
“Stop it this instant! That’s silly. And also unnerving.”
Her introduction to the party and her struggles with staying ‘not evil’, she was made to clear the campsite on the side of the road because she had a scythe. She was a Duskblade (eventually duskblade/hexblade with a shadowy cat companion…but NOT EVIL damnit!). She was upset and grumbling while she did her work, so the DM described it that the plants weren’t just getting cut down…they were wilting and shriveling up behind the blade of the scythe. It wound up kinda defining her character (Originally she was a quiet mysterious type…became sexy/brooding…because her glamored armor looked like a robe with a slit up to about mid thigh so she had plenty range of motion in combat. Much to some on-lookers delight.) She also “comforted” a harpy’s prisoner who was freaking out that the harpies would come back by tossing the head of the head harpie in the cage next to the prisoner. She essentially became a lot like the demon hunter in Diablo III.
Though she actually predates Diablo III by a couple years.
And halfway between non-monstrous monsters and actually monstrous monsters is the original legend of the Tarasque, in which the beast is killed by an ill-timed angry mob after having already surrendered to Saint Martha.
Hey, I met that guy! Check him out.
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra
Sokath, his eyes uncovered.
Heck, this is one of the plot points of one of the stories from the Netflix show LOVE, DEATH, AND ROBOTS. “Beyond the Aquila Rift.”
Only if the phase spider casts a shitload of illusion spells. 😛
I rather have the feeling that even if he could understand the spider, Fighter would still just kill it.
There’s precedent and stuff: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/alternative-treasure-acquisition
I’ll leave this link here for posterity:
Ursula Vernon’s Paladin Rant
Between my Dm, and other players, the Paladins in our campain all are “lawful awfull” subtype. The kinds of folks who will boot a widow out of her house in the middle of winter for being behind on her rent payments. And then run her in for vagrancy. After they allowed a changeling baby to be tortured, i finally had enough. “If you aren’t even going to pretend to hold to your required alignment, the next time you pull anything like this, I kill your character.” Every once in a while they need a reminder, but they’ve gotten better behaved. Lawful is important, but good is also a requirement.
Yo… That’s some exceptionally harsh paladin “justice.” Sounds to me like they ought to just play fighters and get it over with.
Did the paladins (or their players) know phase spiders are intelligent? If so, you should be fine
We actually had an opposite situation.
The NPC paladin in our group fell because we ran into a pirate captain who had been betrayed and turned into a ghoul. My character thought it was completely reasonable to form an alliance where we would bring the ghoul the dead bodies of people who had been trying to kill us in return for assistance against the Big Bad.
Apparently the paladin’s deity … disagreed.
The DM also required an alignment change from CG to CN for my character. Since my character stilldidn’t see what the big deal was after the paladin’s fall, that seemed reasonable. Irreconcilable ethical differences. He, however, still considers himself a good guy!
I think the important thing is to talk it out with the player. In these scenarios, I think that “who is right ethically” is relatively unimportant. As long as a player understands the consequences of an action and is given the chance to react accordingly, everything is cool. It’s when the player feels blindsided and “punished” that you begin to run into trouble.
You’d think the phase spiders would keep their eggs safely in the Ethereal Plane.
Are you nuts!? That’s how the xill get your babies. I saw it on Phase Spider 60 Minutes.
I recently had a funny scene which was basically the reverse of this.
In the campaign I’m playing, my paladin let the rest of the party talk him into breaking into the home of the local nobleman to look for more concrete evidence to corroborate the rumors of his doing horrible things to the locals. So we broke in… and got caught by a pair of bodyguards, which was the point where it came home to me (in and out of character), that what I was doing was a violation of the paladin code (not full-on fall-worthy, but lose-your-powers-until-you-make-atonement). So we have a fight, defeat the bodyguards, and one of the other party members asks me for healing. I have to explain that by breaking into someone’s house without sufficiently good reason I’ve violated my oaths and can’t use my spells until I make atonement.
Other Player: “But look, here in this book is evidence that he was involved in criminal enterprises. So you had the right to break into his house.”
Me: “Maybe, but I didn’t know that at the time. And I don’t think this sort of thing applies retroactively.”
GM: “As GM, I’m making an official ruling that it does. [Aeshdan], you feel a sensation like your god tapping you on the shoulder and telling you, ‘Here, stop angsting and have your powers back. The party needs you.'”
Me (OOC): “Okay… great, that works fine.”
Ouch.
“You are playing your character wrong and everyone agrees.”
“Gee, thanks.”
I hope you doubled down and told God he was wrong.
I actually considered doing that, but a) I didn’t have any IC grounds to do so (D&D religion is weird that way), and b) the whole situation wasn’t much fun for anybody, so I was fine with having an excuse to get out of it.