Paladin Ethics, Infidels and Stuff

[Wids]

Oh, that?  It's just a page that I scanned out of my copy of Garth Ennis' Thor: Vikings paperback about four years ago.  

But Sir Magnus there got me thinking: About how preachy, mean and ornery can a paladin be in the name of his god before he starts drifting into Not-Good territory?  Would that largely depend on the god in question (ie. Vindictive, judgemental Helm would cut his crusading paladins a little more slack than warm, compassionate Chauntea would)?

[DM Disaster]

First, on the cartoon. The character shown would have been soundly rebuked by Jesus. This is an issue he is shown in the Gospels as having faced directly and personally. His disciples asked him in one of the Gospels if he wanted them to call fire from heaven to consume a village that would not accept their message. He told them off in no uncertain terms and told them to never act like that again.

As for FR deities and paladins, my personal answer goes something like this, and this is meant more to provoke thought than to provide a direct answer. A paladin is filled with a spirit that is so good that just touching someone can clear their body of illness and not just make a person feel better, but actually lead their body to mend itself of physical injuries. In some editions, being near them leads others to be able to resist supernatural fear and find inspiration to stand against evil, because just their presence is that uplifting. So I would ask you this. For the character you have in mind, do you see others being filled with peace to the point of physical self-mending at their touch, feeling coldly disregarded, or recoiling? Do you see others finding inspiration to stand and fight at their side, or worrying about coming under their blade for no good reason? Do you see them actually knowing accurately, with an insight that defies natural understanding, who is and is not evil, or boorishly judging people for imagined slights?

Like I said, this is meant to spur thought, in light of a paladin’s common knowledge class abilities. What ever you are seeing as a character, do these abilities flow naturally from their personality, or seem out of place to how they operate?

[Wids]

(Lamentably, the past two millenia of world history are riddled with examples of Christians being complete bastards to non-Christians, just because the Christians thought that God was backing them up no matter what. It's funny how many Christians take one look at a "heretic," immediately toss Jesus and the New Testament out the window and reach for the smite-happy Old Testament.  Why is the Old Testament still part of the Bible?  I thought that Jesus was supposed to invalidate all that hateful old rot!  Anyway, if Jesus had come down hard on the Christians who took such liberties, maybe the past 2,000 years would have been different. Burn a woman alive because a few bratty little kids called her a witch?   Jesus strips you of your Paladin spells...for starters. Time to take on some atonement! )

I guess that much of what a paladin will and will not do stems from the paladin's personality, but the deity and his or her teachings have a say as well.  And the two probably mesh well to some degree or another; in my experience, if someone's heart and personality don't agree with what someone's church or religion teaches (ie. a gentle heart amid a harsh religion, or a harsh heart amid a gentle religion), then that person will usually go apostate and leave to find a more agreeable religion or church elsewhere.  So that's probably why we don't see too many fire-and-brimstone Paladins following the kinder, gentler deities like Ilmater or Chauntea, nor do we see so many nurturing and protective Paladins following such evil-smiting deities as Tyr, Torm and Moradin.

[DM Disaster]

Instead of telling you what to do with a paladin, I’ll give some examples of what I’ve done elsewhere to show some examples of what a paladin can be. This isn’t meant to be, “This is how it must be done.” This is just some of what one person out of many has done.

On another server, I played paladins of Tyr as PC’s. One was a Merciful Sword. She was faced at one point with a person who confessed to having killed people in a break in robbery gone wrong and expected execution for her crime, yet turned herself over to my paladin anyways. My paladin asked her to give her life as payment, but not by dying, but by seeking out others in the impoverished state that led her to break in and help them get out of poverty legitimately, so that other lives would not be lost in the same way. In this way, her experience could benefit others, and her wrong would be paid for, life for life, in life and not death. The character found atonement for her crime, and purpose for her life.

Another Merciful Sword I played converted to Tyr after being saved from death by an Ilmateri priest who braved the battlefield of a gang battle she was in as a rogue in training. He stabilized her as she was bleeding out, took her in, and taught her new ways. She never forgot where she came from and the mercy the gods of good showed her, and therefore paid that kindness forward to others who were likewise doing wrong. She was highly intelligent, curious, artistically expressive, and committed to Tyr’s vision of all good beings living as one big happy family. So, she researched other faiths, learned their ways, blessed them with service and gifts that honored their gods, if they were non-evil, in the hope they may one day do likewise for Tyr. (“Do unto others ...” in the honoring of one’s god.). And she also sought to defend accused persons to make sure they got a fair trial, and what punishment was given fit the crime.

I played a paladin of the Morning Lord on a Ravenloft server. She joined the town guard in Vallaki of Barovia to bring light into such a dark place, for other guards and prisoners alike. There was an evil caster who turned herself in to the Vallaki guards for having murdered someone, expecting execution, like with my first paladin. This one, seeing this woman’s repentance, talked the guard captain down to ten lashes as punishment, and then cleaned and dressed the wounds. The woman was speechless and heartbroken at the kindness. She bucked the trend of treating outlanders, Gundarakites, and calliban like subhumans, trained new recruits to act fairly, and at one point took action to smuggle innocent persons slated for execution out of the Vallaki dungeon, an episode that ended in her quitting the guards. She acted with such love and kindness towards everyone that when another guard took vengeance on her for “deserting” the guards, she had people of every race, class, gender, faith, nationality, and faction asking her permission to kill the guy who did it, from lawful good paladins, to militia, to calliban, Gundarakites, Barovians ... you name it, people even of all nine alignments. Let me say that again. Characters of all nine alignments wanted to avenge the paladin who showed everyone kindness, from lawful good paladins to chaotic evil necromancers.

And she told them no. She wanted him redeemed, not harmed.

This is all meant as examples of what can be done. Any good deity can have paladins that are kind, full of mercy, and purely good.

[Wids]

You are totally talking about the Prisoners of the Mist server!  Nice-looking server, but their DMs are such a pack of jerks and so are half the players.  Except for Mephisto.  Mephisto was cool.

I never claimed any absolutes, though.  I had (and probably still have) a Paladin of Berronar Truesilver on the Cormyr server.  Just like Berronar's Valkyries and other followers tend to be, she's more about keeping the tavern hearth blazing, making sure that everyone who comes her way is stuffed with food and ale, and tending the wounded.  Smiting evil takes a back seat.  And she would probably behave the same way if she were a Paladin of Moradin instead, just with a few changes in tenets (a la "forget the meat and ale; gather 'round the anvil with hammer and tongs instead").

The gods, churches and tenets still matter to some degree or other (at least as I see it), as they have a bearing on which virtues to encourage, nurture or enforce among their faithful.  That's why you're not going to find very many pacifists among Tempus' flock.  Is it possible to be a Tempuran peacenik who prefers words over blades and chooses battle only as a last resort?  Yes.  But, like an unswervingly honest Leiran, it's not very likely.  

[Wids]

And Sir Magnus up there got me thinking again: Is it possible for a Chaotic Evil Blackguard of Cyric and/or Leira to be so self-deluded and self-deceiving that he actually considers himself to be a Paladin (or something like it) serving a Good or Good-inclined Neutral deity?   Sure, there's the whole Lawful/Chaotic schism to deal with...yeah, Leirans and Cyricists probably don't have enough sense of honor to consider themselves holy knights of any sort.  Or can self-deception go that far too?

"I stabbed him in the back because stabbing him in the face would have been an insult to his honor.  So you see, by respecting the honor of my enemies, I remain peerlessly honorable in my own deeds!  And I have never stolen from anyone who didn't need the exercise in humility.  No, that orphanage doesn't count!  Bloody juvenile heathens...."

Hmm...toughie.  

[DM Disaster]

Given the self-delusion that people are capable of in the real world, I'd say in a world with magical effects and actual evil gods like Cyric that can and do use supernatural power to mess with people, anything is possible. The only thing I'd really feel inclined to make much comment on as a DM is what goes on the character sheet. Self-delusion for the character is IC. Mechanically creating the character as a paladin and then acting even LN or NG is an OOC mismatch as a player. If you create the character as a non-paladin and then play him or her to claim to be one IC, in the full OOC knowledge and intent that this character isn't actually what they claim to be IC, as reflected by the choice of another class to put in the "class" slot, then we're all on the same page OOC that they're incorrect in their self-description. As long as the mistake is IC and not OOC, any issue you'd have would come from someone else and not me. It would be just like if you made a rogue who claimed to be a Mystran wizard and used "use magic device" to cast from scrolls and use wands to look like a wizard. I've known a sorcerer on another server who claimed to be a wizard so he could be a "red wizard" without the actual wizards killing him for posing. Characters can claim what the player wants them to IC. As long as we're straight on the OOC side, as far as I'm concerned, we're good.

[Wids]

That was kind of what I was getting at there, a Blackguard who plays off his Blackguard powers as Paladin powers — or perhaps believes them to be so himself — yet isn't actually a Paladin. The biggest thorn in that idea would probably be the requisite agreeable interaction with an Evil Outsider or deity. "And who were you just talking with, Baltek?" "Oh, that was Zaburael, my angelic patron." "Your 'angelic patron' had a big snake tail and six arms." "So?" "Zaburael's a frickin' marilith, Baltek!" "No, she's not. Angels take many forms!"  

[Wids]

(Come to think of it, this all reminds me of the Habbalah from In Nomine.  They're demons, but most if not all of them are utterly self-convinced that they're deep undercover, on Heaven's side, doing God's work, and they're just playing along with Lucifer and the Princes of Hell on God's behalf.   "Of course I'm from Hell, the pit from which all evil springs. That's where God needs angels most of all!"  In practice, Habbalah are somewhat kinda-sorta right; they're nicknamed "Punishers" because their Celestial power involves manipulating other people's emotions, and like the erinyes of Greek legend, they enjoy tormenting evil people, sinners and other less-than-ideal mortals. But the problem is that they don't know where to quit, they often enjoy their work a little too much, and they tend to have some VERY broad standards on who deserves to be punished. Murderer? Make his life a living Hell. Pickpocket? Make his life a living Hell. Young woman who became a stripper so she could put herself through college?  Make her life a living Hell.   Yuppie who cuts the Habbalite off in traffic?   Make his life a living Hell.  Old woman at church who puts a dollar into the collection plate when she has $5 to spare?  Make her life a living Hell.  Little girl who forgets to say "Thank you" after the Habbalite gives her her kickball back?  Make her life a living Hell.  Cherub who comes down from Heaven, gets in the Habbalite's face and tells her to stop torturing people horribly over petty offenses? Make his (everlasting) life a living Hell, at least so long as he's on Earth.

Even the Habbalah who are bona fide "Hellspawn" (meaning that they were created in Hell and never were angels even once in their existences) usually think this way; it's just part of their make-up. Of course, Lucifer and the Princes usually couldn't care less about what their Habbalah think or how they rationalize their deeds, so long as the Habbalah keep doing their jobs. So I reckon that some sentient creatures can rationalize anything or fool themselves about anything; it just takes the right mindset, motivation and/or lack of critical thinking.)