I've always enjoyed the idea of a holy crusader following their oath to the bitter end, trying their best not to break it and I've always found it interesting what sort of things the Dungeon Master will come up with to really challenge your Oath.
I was running a homebrew Paladin that was focused around Moradin and protecting dwarves. One of the Tenets stated that I had to protect all dwarves and all dwarven craft. So naturally, one dungeon later our party was following a Stone Golem who had been attacking and killing different merchant caravans travelling from town to town. As we were following it, the golem jumped over a zombie horde and continued going farther into the cave. While I would've just shrugged it off and tackled into the horde, the Dungeon Master pointed out that it wasn't only undead humanoids, but there were noticeably smaller and more stocky undead. When I rolled an Perception check to look at them closer I saw that they were in fact dwarves from the worn down leather and metal armor they were wearing. As my tenet stated, I couldn't harm dwarves and to my character that meant every kind of dwarf. So instead I decided to take a few actions to tie a rope around the undead dwarves (there were only 3 or 4 out of the zombie horde) and using my homebrew magic item, tunnel into the ground and leave the rope in the ground, effectively stopping the dwarven zombies from being able to move anywhere and isolating them from the other zombies so I wouldn't hurt them.
So my question is what kind of problems did you face playing a Paladin and how did you resolve them?
I believe any kind of moral dilemma represent an issue for the paladin....or for any good alignment character. Just to note, the paladin is not obliged to be lawful good in 5ed.
The paladin has the tenents to observe. A devotion paladin, if is roleplayed well, should have issues with a rogue. Stealing, cheating and stabbing in the back are against the tenents of devotion.
My Vengeance Paladin recently had to face one of his sworn enemies, which is the whole meaning of the vengeance oath. But instead of attacking her as soon as he saw her, he choose to interrogate her, because he need information from her.
This is kiiiiinda against his oath, and afterwards he had to face the fact that his decision kinda caused his team mate to become feebleminded.
But part of the oath is also that in the face of greater evil, the vengeance paladin will choose the greater evil over the minor one. This is more or less how he reasoned his decision afterwards, because the team needed the information to take down a much bigger antagonist.
My Paladin of Vengeance got to defeat his mortal enemy, just before he bested his foe my Paladin was told that there was a traitor in his party. Now without a foe to declare vengeance against he was driven into an unruly anger against those he called friends and focused his oath against the traitor and thus the whole party. It took divine intervention of Bahumut in order to quell the maelstrom of hate and focus it before a Dragonborn plague swept the town the party was in.
He was a prince of a country and his political views were different from the king. Discussions turned into arguments, voices raised and it went all the way to accusing one another traitors. As customs of that country, a duel had to be done ("Let the Gods decide who's right and wrong" style). Paladin was young and powerful, the king was overconfident and reckless. When the final blow struck, the Paladin become both the king and the kingslayer.
You see, going after what is right and just and fighting for it, and obeying the customs of your people were very important for a paladin. But so does "Do not kill what is not evil." tenet. He was striped of all his abilities, his experience vanished and as a level 1 fighter; he joined our party (yep, that was his background).
After that, he travelled far east (kind of exiled), joined our group, proved himself a worthy and good man (even he wasn't a paladin, he still was a nice human being) and actively take role in a great war between evil forces and the peoples of good. Only after that, his God forgave him and re-grant all his paladin levels and skills and such. Went back as a hero, remembered not as the kingslayer, but as a good king.
My Vengeance Paladin was part of a very morally ambiguous party working for an adventurers guild. During one mission, our Chaotic Evil sorcerer murdered a pair of Treants. We had wandered into their home in a portal to the Feywilds and a fight broke out before the Unicorn in the area called them off (not that any of us knew that, nobody could speak the Unicorn's languages). The Sorcerer used Twinned Blight to kill them both. Now, at this point, I was pretty sure my oath would require me to either smite said Sorcerer, or wait until later, take night watch, and then do a coup de grace in his sleep*, but thankfully, I blew my Insight check and thought he was doing it out of uncharacteristic rage and then blew my Nature check and didn't realize those Treants were thinking feeling beings.
*Lying to someone to gain their trust only to kill them in their sleep might not seem very honorable, but as far as Rhogar was concerned, his enemies were entitled to a relatively painless death and nothing more. He didn't feel compelled to make things easy for an opponent who could easily Dimension Door away if things weren't looking good.
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I've always enjoyed the idea of a holy crusader following their oath to the bitter end, trying their best not to break it and I've always found it interesting what sort of things the Dungeon Master will come up with to really challenge your Oath.
I was running a homebrew Paladin that was focused around Moradin and protecting dwarves. One of the Tenets stated that I had to protect all dwarves and all dwarven craft. So naturally, one dungeon later our party was following a Stone Golem who had been attacking and killing different merchant caravans travelling from town to town. As we were following it, the golem jumped over a zombie horde and continued going farther into the cave. While I would've just shrugged it off and tackled into the horde, the Dungeon Master pointed out that it wasn't only undead humanoids, but there were noticeably smaller and more stocky undead. When I rolled an Perception check to look at them closer I saw that they were in fact dwarves from the worn down leather and metal armor they were wearing. As my tenet stated, I couldn't harm dwarves and to my character that meant every kind of dwarf. So instead I decided to take a few actions to tie a rope around the undead dwarves (there were only 3 or 4 out of the zombie horde) and using my homebrew magic item, tunnel into the ground and leave the rope in the ground, effectively stopping the dwarven zombies from being able to move anywhere and isolating them from the other zombies so I wouldn't hurt them.
So my question is what kind of problems did you face playing a Paladin and how did you resolve them?
I believe any kind of moral dilemma represent an issue for the paladin....or for any good alignment character. Just to note, the paladin is not obliged to be lawful good in 5ed.
The paladin has the tenents to observe. A devotion paladin, if is roleplayed well, should have issues with a rogue. Stealing, cheating and stabbing in the back are against the tenents of devotion.
My Vengeance Paladin recently had to face one of his sworn enemies, which is the whole meaning of the vengeance oath. But instead of attacking her as soon as he saw her, he choose to interrogate her, because he need information from her.
This is kiiiiinda against his oath, and afterwards he had to face the fact that his decision kinda caused his team mate to become feebleminded.
But part of the oath is also that in the face of greater evil, the vengeance paladin will choose the greater evil over the minor one. This is more or less how he reasoned his decision afterwards, because the team needed the information to take down a much bigger antagonist.
My Paladin of Vengeance got to defeat his mortal enemy, just before he bested his foe my Paladin was told that there was a traitor in his party. Now without a foe to declare vengeance against he was driven into an unruly anger against those he called friends and focused his oath against the traitor and thus the whole party.
It took divine intervention of Bahumut in order to quell the maelstrom of hate and focus it before a Dragonborn plague swept the town the party was in.
Our Paladin (not mine) killed his father.
Hard choices, eh?
He was a prince of a country and his political views were different from the king. Discussions turned into arguments, voices raised and it went all the way to accusing one another traitors. As customs of that country, a duel had to be done ("Let the Gods decide who's right and wrong" style). Paladin was young and powerful, the king was overconfident and reckless. When the final blow struck, the Paladin become both the king and the kingslayer.
You see, going after what is right and just and fighting for it, and obeying the customs of your people were very important for a paladin. But so does "Do not kill what is not evil." tenet. He was striped of all his abilities, his experience vanished and as a level 1 fighter; he joined our party (yep, that was his background).
After that, he travelled far east (kind of exiled), joined our group, proved himself a worthy and good man (even he wasn't a paladin, he still was a nice human being) and actively take role in a great war between evil forces and the peoples of good. Only after that, his God forgave him and re-grant all his paladin levels and skills and such. Went back as a hero, remembered not as the kingslayer, but as a good king.
My Vengeance Paladin was part of a very morally ambiguous party working for an adventurers guild. During one mission, our Chaotic Evil sorcerer murdered a pair of Treants. We had wandered into their home in a portal to the Feywilds and a fight broke out before the Unicorn in the area called them off (not that any of us knew that, nobody could speak the Unicorn's languages). The Sorcerer used Twinned Blight to kill them both. Now, at this point, I was pretty sure my oath would require me to either smite said Sorcerer, or wait until later, take night watch, and then do a coup de grace in his sleep*, but thankfully, I blew my Insight check and thought he was doing it out of uncharacteristic rage and then blew my Nature check and didn't realize those Treants were thinking feeling beings.
*Lying to someone to gain their trust only to kill them in their sleep might not seem very honorable, but as far as Rhogar was concerned, his enemies were entitled to a relatively painless death and nothing more. He didn't feel compelled to make things easy for an opponent who could easily Dimension Door away if things weren't looking good.