Beyond
Good and Lawful
November 8th, 2010
Hello everyone. Welcome back to Dark Designs, and let me be the first to welcome you to Paladin Week, the theme week devoted to truth, justice, and…uh…the chivalric way…or something. Arthurian, maybe? Anyway, the point is, this week is all about the superheroes of high fantasy, those righteous bastions of good and virtue, the paladins. To some, they’re heroes, saviors, and saints. To others, they’re meddlesome do-gooders who can’t mind their own business and always have to ride in on their high horses to impose their personal views on others. But no matter how you stack it, paladins are a divisive bunch, which people tend to either love or hate.
Amongst third edition players (and possibly second edition players as well, I don’t hear from them as much), “the paladin falls” has become something of a bad joke. For those of you who don’t play much D&D (or play in the realms of fourth edition, where alignment matters about as much as your character’s eye or hair color), paladins are required to be of lawful good alignment at all times, and if they ever stray from that alignment, they immediately “fall,” losing many (basically all, in fact) of their class features. According to popular wisdom, many DMs see it as their duty (or privilege) to go out of their way to try to force a paladin to fall by putting him or her into impossible moral situations, then cackling with glee as the paladin eventually “makes a misstep” (though, at this point, it really seems more like urban legend. I’ve certainly never seen anything like that happen).
Personally, I think that these sorts of horror stories arise more from misunderstandings and poor communication than they do from any kind of malice on the part of the DM (although, in fairness, if your DM strips you of all your class features, he’s probably feeling a certain amount of ill-will towards you. Perhaps “sadism” would be a better word than “malice”). You see, it turns out that things like alignment, right and wrong, the definition of “evil,” and what a paragon of virtue should and shouldn’t be doing are the sorts of topics which tend to cause a lot of controversy, as everyone has their own take, and they tend to feel pretty strongly about it (most people are decidedly passionate about their moral compass, as it’s a very important part of their worldview).
A smart designer would probably stay away from such topics, knowing that even though he happens to have a large podium from which to share his views (both on all of the above divisive issues and on dealing with them in regards to alignments in your game), it’s probably best not to stir up controversy by poking angry bears. On the other hand, I happen to be a disciple of the Mark Rosewater school of game design (and column writing), and I’m fairly confident that he hasn’t been the author of Making Magic all these years because he shied away from unpleasant topics.
So, let’s talk about alignments, shall we? Specifically, about how they apply to paladins. According to the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook, “A paladin must be of lawful good alignment and loses all class features except proficiencies if she ever willingly commits an evil act.” It goes on to say, “Additionally, a paladin’s code requires that she respect legitimate authority, act with honor (not lying, not cheating, not using poisons, and so forth), help those in need (provided they do not use the help for evil or chaotic ends), and punish those who harm or threaten innocents.” It does not specify whether or not a single violation of any of the add-on requirements (acting with honor, respecting legitimate authority, etc.) will cause a paladin to “fall,” but at the very least it seems to be a safe assumption that a paladin who does these things with any kind of frequency is doomed to wish she had chosen to be a fighter instead.
In deconstructing what, in fact, causes a paladin to “fall,” one thing sticks out to me like a sore thumb: it is apparently more important that a paladin be good than that she be lawful. She has to be both, of course, but the rules do not specify that willingly committing a chaotic act will cause a paladin to lose her class features, only an evil one. To that end, it seems fair to conclude that a paladin can “get away” with a handful of chaotic acts, as long as these acts are not enough to move the paladin from her lawful good alignment.
Depending on how one interprets the section of “additional” rules, specifically whether or not a single violation will cause the paladin to lose her class features, this could just be because the paladin only cares about certain chaotic actions (ie, those listed, all of which, besides helping those in need, are far more about the law/chaos axis than the good/evil axis), and the lawful element is equally important, with a single chaotic action from the list (such as one lie, or allowing one offender to walk away stopped but unpunished) being enough to cause the paladin to “fall.”
There is obviously room for lots of different interpretations here (and we’ll be talking about subjective morality a little later on), but in general it seems to me that the intention is for good to be the stronger component of the lawful good alignment. My basis for this, beyond the evidence listed above, is that the paladin is restricted from traveling with evil companions, not chaotic ones. So, while it is important for a paladin to be lawful, upholding the law and doing things in an honorable and righteous manner, it is more important that the paladin be good, helping people and making the world a better place. For this reason, I think that, under the right circumstances, a paladin might be able to break some of his “additional” restrictions without any real risk of falling.
This, obviously, is a dangerous and slippery slope, and before you start flooding me with flaming mail, let me say that I am not proposing that paladins can get away with poisoning evil monarchs or cheating at dice. In fact, I, myself, am a firm believer that the paladin must always take the harder path, even it means that he might fail in his goal, because that’s just what paladins do: they take it upon themselves to do the impossible because it’s the only right thing to do, and then, despite the odds, they go out and they do it. That said, I’m not foolish enough to believe that I’ve cornered the market on morality. Some would argue (myself included, in the past, though usually while roleplaying a devil or other outsider attempting to seduce a PC over to the dark side) that such an attitude is, in itself, the mortal sin of pride, and that in doing so the paladin is gambling with the lives of whatever people he’s protecting or defending while making things unnecessarily hard on himself.
For example, suppose an evil dragon swoops into town and demands that all the maidens be rounded up so he can carry them off, and it’s up to the paladin to save them. He can charge in against this dragon, knowing he will likely lose and the maidens will be left to his cruel whims, but resolute to try anyway; or, he can, for example, poison the dragon. The latter is immoral, dishonorable, and goes against the paladin’s code. But the former has a much higher likelihood of leaving dozens of innocents in the hands of an evil and rapacious tyrant. What’s the “right” choice? I made my case, above, that it is to ride in on a white horse, do your best, and have faith that everything works out right. But am I willing to get into a four-hour shouting match about it at 3 AM? Well…yes, probably, but I love a rousing debate. The point is that I understand and respect that other people have different opinions, that the issue is complex, and that I’m not infallible (though certain members of our staff here may argue that I don’t, in fact, know that last part).
It is this key revelation that I believe is most important in good DM-paladin relations. Typically speaking, as a DM, I try to avoid using my infinite power over the nature of the cosmos to push my own personal belief and value system, at least if I know that there are players who disagree with me on a certain issue. For example, if, somehow, the topic of abortion or gay marriage came up in one of my games (thank the Nine that it never has!), I wouldn’t want to have deities, archons, or any other manifestations of alignment, who would carry a lot more moral and ethical authority on the matter than I really deserve, to weigh in on the subject, because that tells any players who may disagree with me that, at least as far as the game is concerned, only my worldview matters, and they can sit on it for all I care.
The same thing applies to paladins and falling. By saying that a paladin has fallen, you’re making a statement about the very nature of goodness, law, and evil in your campaign setting. You are saying, without a shadow of a doubt, that the paladin has done something evil. This isn’t a moral interpretation or a viewpoint. Not in the gameworld, anyway. In the gameworld, it is an undeniable, irrefutable, irrevocable fact. And if your player happens to disagree with your moral compass on this issue, he’s entitled to be at least a little pissed off (well…probably, anyway. Again, I really doubt that many of the horror stories about paladins falling happen because the player was doing something he knew he shouldn’t).
Ultimately, morality is rarely about what you do so much as why you do it. I’d talk about the philosophy behind that for half a dozen paragraphs, too, but I’m already probably going to go long. Feel free to flood me with hate mail if you disagree, and maybe I’ll find a way to set aside some space to talk about it in the future. Anyway, morality has a lot more to do with what the character is thinking than what the character is doing. So, if you think that your paladin is doing something that might violate his code, call him on it, and ask for an explanation. If you like, you could even do it in-character, as time stops briefly for the paladin mid-action and he finds himself forced to account for his actions to the disembodied voice of his deity, or his patron angel, or something similar. Either way, let the paladin’s player explain his actions. If he or she can provide a reasonable and moral argument for his or her case, you should probably accept it: after all, what makes your moral compass better than the player’s?
This isn’t perfect, of course. Some people are very good at twisting these sorts of things to justify anything (I should know, I’m almost certainly one of them). If the paladin’s code of ethics becomes a regular issue, pull your player aside and talk to them about it, explaining that the two of you seem to have very different viewpoints on morality, that you feel it’s a problem, and that maybe the player should consider switching to another class or re-leveling as a fighter or something else. You should probably have a similar talk to the player before you “lower the boom” regarding the loss of class features, as losing all your class features just isn’t that fun.
If you have strong feelings about what a paladin should and shouldn’t be doing, sit down and talk with players of paladin characters before the game even begins, to try and establish some basic guidelines for what is and isn’t acceptable paladin behavior (and be sure to listen during this talk as well: bear in mind that the players deserve at least some input as to what is and isn’t moral in the games they play).
So, hopefully this has been entertaining, edifying, or at least helpful to somebody. If you’ll excuse me, I need to go fireproof my inbox. I’ll see you next week, and, in the meantime, don’t make any missteps on the path of moral virtue.