YardMeat wrote:algesan wrote:I never got so far as 3.0/3.5, but as you note, the stuff on alignment hasn't changed much...except maybe this "divine spirit of good" stuff.
I'm pretty sure good was an objective force in its own right even in previous editions, but I could be wrong. I don't know whether this force was the source of paladin powers or not back then.
Ugh, I'd have to dig out my books from a box somewhere. I know only humans were allowed to be paladins at first, not sure when that changed officially, but still saw very few nonhuman paladins as PCs. NPCs, another story, but paladins as "holy warriors" drew their powers from the same source as the clerics and a "Paladin of Odin" had to deal with Odin's issues...like using a spear and one for Thor, a hammer. Which introduced not only the trivial CE antipaladin (who should really be LE, but forget that), but various paladins of different alignments. I only went for the Lawful variants becaue what "paladin" stands for requires a structured society IMO.
Deity driven paladins put a different twist on the subject of good & evil, or even how lawful is lawful.
(Another rabbit trail...I always found it annoying there was no "I do what I do when I do it because I feel like it" alignment that doesn't have to worry about alignment issues.
I hadn't played 4th ed yet, but I'm glad to hear there is an "unaligned" option now.
We used to simply call it Amoral Neutral and just ignored the negative connotations with "amoral". I've gotten older and I don't think I'd allow an "unaligned" option now because consistent worldview is critical to sanity. I just wouldn't apply the alignment change penalties for "normal" PCs unless they kept crossing the line in a big way.
Occasionally I might get in a D&D game, but usually we use Hero System with the heroic rules in place.
The example wasn't intended to be of a paladin purposefully slaughtering goblin babes, but simply having the babes die as collateral damage as part of the raid to suppress the goblins,
I was referring to this, which sounded like willful and deliberate slaughter (my emphasis).:
Yeah, it did.
Combining them means there is no "sin" for a paladin to slaughter goblin babies that had not yet harmed anyone because for the greater good, you have to kill the nits to keep the number of lice down later.
It sounded like you were talking about slaughtering goblin babies for the greater good, but maybe you were talking about them being accidental collateral damage in the paladin's pursuit of the greater good against the adult goblins.
In a normal situation, the collateral damage issue really doesn't come up except anachronistically. Medieval level societies and even relatively modern ones simply didn't care about collateral damage as long as it wasn't gratuitous. So, no lining up babies and butchering them, but if the enemy is holed up strongly and the choices are nuking the place or wasting your troops, you nuke it. Doesn't matter if it is high explosives or fireballs. FWIW, that is what is provided for in the various Geneva conventions, since combatants that hide among "innocents" are the ones legally responsible for the deaths of such innocents in any combat action. Moral is another issue, but again, the worry about collateral damage really is a postmodern concern.
which, as a human paladin, may be regrettable, but not "evil" from the LG PoV.
Knowingly and willingly killing an innocent (regardless of race) based on the fallible prediction that they might become non-innocent in the future is most definitely "'evil' from the LG PoV." Even if it were not part of the rules--which it is--we know that it is part of Thunt's world. Characters within the setting have told us so. We've heard it from YAB, Thaco and Big Ears.
See above. if it isn't deliberate and off hand, it is just luck, fate, choices of Deity, etc.
The issue between the paladin & fighter characters was they were both following the same standards of behavior, but applying a different temporal viewpoint to the same situations. Which produced wildly diverse behavioral patterns and were based on purely subjective decisions on applying the time factor in their decisions.
The moment that the paladin knowingly and willingly took innocent life, his paladinhood should have been stripped from him. If he were unrepentant about it, his LG alignment should have been taken away as well. Of course, the GM is free to come up with his own house rules where paladins are free to take innocent life, even when it is avoidable. Personally, I don't even see the point of having paladins or alignments if a GM is going to run the game that way.
It is evil to harm the prisoner without means to resist. Psychological trauma can be as damaging as physical trauma. So even the threat of torture and violence was "evil". True, the existential viewpoint was (and is) anachronistic as I noted above, but it was fun to do at the time, most probably because it was contrasting a more postmodern view with older ones.
Kore would be stuck in the "very, very long term" mode
He's not only working in the very, very long term, he's working in "maybe" term by killing people who
could potentially become evil, and he is working in the "completely insane" term by planning to kill an entire clan of dwarves based solely on the fact that one of them was orphaned and discovered by monsters and the other had the audacity to fight back after being shot. And let's not forget that he has tried to kill a fellow paladin.
Yep, because since everyone has the potential to fall... Although, that wouldn't be a problem in a game with deity (or alignment) driven paladins. A dwarf paladin could slaughter all the goblin paladins he wanted to (and vice versa) because they were racial enemies, which generally means their deities are enemies, so it would be a "holy" slaughter of high significance since it takes down a high status "player" on the other side.
..and if we add in some curse, then yes, he could probably retain his paladinhood.
If the curse has somehow blinded him so that, when he kills innocents, he is not doing so willingly or knowingly, then I agree.
Oh...the penance I'd make him do though...
"The good news, since you were under a curse, is that I have for you these potions of long life."
"The bad news, since you did a lot of real bad things under that curse, you will be pretty much permanently under a divine geas working the stuff off."
(GM holds out hand for newly retired character's sheet.)