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View Full Version : Space is a long way to Fall (Paladin Question)



Mr.Sandman
2014-07-10, 02:46 PM
Greetings Playground. In a Space Fantasy d&d setting I have a bit of a problem for the Paladin captain of a starship. While guarding a research ship doing a survey of a (believed) uninhabited planet he is forced to shoot down a Xill (MM) Hiveship, which crash lands on the planet. It turns out that the planet is inhabited, and the last survey a few hundred years ago missed it because it is inhabited by subterranean Dwarves, which are a previously unknown species. The Xill have previously shown the capacity to decimate entire planets with their breeding methods, but the Gods themselves past down a Prime Directive style law because of unpleasantness that happened the last time a space faring society reveled themselves to a primitive one, the Orcs. I can't see a way the Paladin can avoid falling, as he will either disobey a Law from the Gods, or be directly responsible for the downfall of a civilization and the death of millions. Can You?

Esprit15
2014-07-10, 02:57 PM
That's a nasty situation indeed. My suggestion is to go against the gods' laws. Doing what you know is right should hold a lot more weight than following a law that would leave him technically responsible for said xenocide. If the gods want him to atone for breaking a law, let them, but better to atone for breaking a law and saving said civilisation than following it and being responsible for the loss of a civilisation.

Kalmageddon
2014-07-10, 03:00 PM
When a paladin is torn between his Lawful side and his Good side, his Good side always takes precedence. It's official.
So go ahead and tear those Xill a new one.

Broken Crown
2014-07-10, 03:11 PM
Given that the Xill presumably intend to "reveal" themselves to the Dwarf inhabitants of the planet (by killing them), it seems as though the best way for the paladin to avoid any breaking of the Prime Directive while also preventing millions of deaths is to land as discreetly as possible, and capture or destroy any Xill survivors before the Dwarves find them.

Since the stated purpose of the law from the Gods is to prevent unpleasant effects resulting from a more advanced civilization interfering with a less advanced one, then the paladin would be required (by the spirit of the law, if not the letter) to deal with the Xill, since a Xill invasion is exactly the sort of thing the law is meant to prevent.

Likewise, preventing the Xill from murdering millions of Dwarves is also a Good act, while standing by and letting it happen when the paladin had the power to prevent it would be decidedly Evil. The paladin's choice is clear.

If the paladin should be discovered by the Dwarves during this mission, he still shouldn't fall, as he is acting both to uphold the law and to prevent evil. You don't fall for failing; you fall for not trying.

Sartharina
2014-07-10, 03:12 PM
I can hardly imagine the unpleasantness of the last time a spacefaring civilization revealing itself to another one is worse than a more primitive civilization being completely wiped out by a species that doesn't give a rat's ass about any prime directives.

Send that piece of garbage back to the drawing board and save the day. The "Prime Directive" was violated as soon as the Xill ship was shot down. This is taking responsibility and cleanup. A ruder awakening to the species than it would have liked, but life isn't fair, and it's better that a Paladin is the first to make contact, and ensure the species doesn't suffer needlessly from the shock of the revelation.

(That said, there really do need to be "Alien hospitality laws" adopted by sci-fi that recognize the rights of both invaders and indigeneous populations - no, indigenous people do NOT have absolute, inviolable right over the lands and lives of their world. Arguing such results in invaders giving up on diplomacy and resorting to blasters immediately.)

Arbane
2014-07-10, 03:27 PM
The Paladin falls. No matter what they do

Why, you ask? Well, <sarcasm>what would be the purpose of the Falling rules if there weren't MEANT to be used at every possible opportunity?</sarcasm>

Less sarcastically, go kill the Xill. If the gods disagree, then find some better gods.

Tengu_temp
2014-07-10, 05:40 PM
A paladin doesn't fall from commiting an unlawful act, but when he stops being lawful. And it takes more than one chaotic act to stop being lawful, unless it was an extremely chaotic act.
Comparatively, a single evil act is enough to fall.

Kish
2014-07-10, 07:09 PM
In addition to what everyone else has said, paladins aren't god-dependent. A paladin's code says nothing about "serve the gods," or even "honor the gods" except insofar as deliberately acting in a manner designed to cheese off the God of (say) Justice is likely to involve doing evil things. If all the gods, Good, Neutral, and Evil, agreed on a law which requires a paladin to do something evil--too bad for them; what the paladin should do is not ambiguous.

(The paladin, like any mortal who went against all the gods, may get flambeed for it. But if he dies, even if the gods kill him personally, he'll still die an unFallen paladin.)

Sith_Happens
2014-07-10, 07:32 PM
When a paladin is torn between his Lawful side and his Good side, his Good side always takes precedence. It's official.
So go ahead and tear those Xill a new one.

He should also start writing his epic "the Prime Directive will always be secondary to the moral judgment of a captain acting in good conscience" speech for when he gets chewed out.:smallcool:


The "Prime Directive" was violated as soon as the Xill ship was shot down. This is taking responsibility and cleanup.

Or, you know, he can spin it as preventing a Prime Directive breach by the Xill. I like my plan better though.:smalltongue:

Mr.Sandman
2014-07-10, 08:15 PM
Thank you all for your advice, it has helped immensely.

AttilaTheGeek
2014-07-10, 09:07 PM
First, there has to be some way for the Paladin not to fall. Imagine if you're playing a character in a campaign and the GM tells you "You took the entirely reasonable action of attacking an Evil ship, so you're going to lose all your powers and class features." That's absurd. They didn't do anything wrong! It's the kind of statement that can completely destroy a player's trust in their GM. So there has to be at least one way out.

Second, I'd argue that we shouldn't even be looking for a "way out". Nowhere did the Paladin do anything a Lawful or Good character wouldn't be expected to do. They acted on their best knowledge, and in that situation, they made the right call. They didn't know at the time the planet was inhabited, so they shouldn't lose all their abilities just because they didn't search an uninhabited planet hard enough.

Here's my advice. The paladin has never made a choice that wasn't in the best interests of Law or Good. Why should they fall for that?

veti
2014-07-10, 09:18 PM
You imply that the Xill were the aggressors in this story (he was "forced" to shoot them down, while defending a research ship). Is that a full, accurate and fairminded description? You haven't left out any teensy weensy unimportant details (like "the research ship had no right to be there in the first place, this is Xill or neutral space as agreed by treaty", or "the research ship was harbouring individuals wanted for crimes on Xill planets")?

Because if that's the case, then the Xill are aggressors, and the captain's mistake was allowing them to survive the landing. Kill them all. Like Sarathina says, at this point it's just cleaning up his own mess.

A less genocidal alternative would be to offer to help them repair their ship sufficiently to get safely back home. But that makes a lot of assumptions about their culture, your capabilities and relationship to them.

I would try to respect the spirit of the law by keeping contact with the dwarves to an absolute minimum. Don't give them anything, don't show them anything, don't even talk to them unless you absolutely have to. If you can do the whole massacre cleanup without so much as setting foot on the surface, that would be ideal.

IAmTehDave
2014-07-11, 01:06 PM
I'm going to throw my vote in for the "It's your Duty as a Paladin™ to mop up the what-can-only-be-construed-as-evil (unless we're missing a piece of the puzzle here) Xill, before they commit xenocide.

Side note: A paladin starship captain? Can he use Smite Evil with the ship's weapon systems? (Please say yes here.)



If the gods disagree, then find some better gods.

This is too good to not be going in my sig.

Mr.Sandman
2014-07-11, 06:40 PM
Luckily this is for a story so I didn't put some poor PC in this situation. Yes, the Xill were most definitely the aggressors. They were in Alliance claimed territory, but the Xill do not acknowledged Alliance territory, which has led to a war between the two groups. The captain makes sure to inform them that they have entered Alliance space, but they ignore him and attack the research ship. Xill are Lawful Evil outsiders so the Paladin might not be too keen on helping them repair their ship. And no, sadly he can not. To use Smite with the weapons he would have to man the Weapons Station.

Sith_Happens
2014-07-12, 03:50 AM
And no, sadly he can not. To use Smite with the weapons he would have to man the Weapons Station.

So theoretically that's a yes.:smallwink:

HockeyPokeyBard
2014-07-12, 04:20 AM
Firstly, this is an awesome idea for a campaign. I've never heard of it before but I love it. Is it your idea or someone else's? And if it's yours, can I use it at some point? It's pretty epic.

Secondly. The Paladin acted as he should have in every way, with the knowledge he had at the time. Even the gods should recognise that fact. If he'd known the dwarves were down there when he blasted the Xill, it'd be a slightly different story. But as is, he's a good dude. Would have as crew/10

Mr.Sandman
2014-07-12, 08:59 PM
It is indeed my idea, and feel free to use it. It is part of the story and setting I am writing to go with a Pathfinder supplement I am designing, a class and level system for vehicles. Still very much a WIP alpha, but I can send you some of the information if you would like. Still too bare bones for me to even consider posting to the Homebrew forum yet.

HockeyPokeyBard
2014-07-13, 08:11 AM
Thanks, I appreciate the offer, but I was just after permission to use the idea. I've already started work to make the conversion from 3.5 as painless as possible. Adjusting weapon values and such. Like, a lot of the weapons in the PHB have two variants for example, the lance. MG-Lance (Mobile Ground-Lance, A normal lance) and MS-Lance (Mobile Space-Lance, a laser with different damage values but with a similar charge ability), and a new skill Pilot, which functions exactly like Ride but with space craft and the like.

I find the less changes you make to a system that players are familiar with, the easier they find it to adapt. But it's your game, and it's an awesome idea.

Autolykos
2014-07-13, 11:08 AM
If at all possible, he should nuke the Xill from orbit. And make really sure no piece of the ship is recognizable.
Remember: There's no such thing as overkill. There's only "ready to fire" and "need to reload".
The Dwarves shouldn't even be able to tell that there were aliens involved, it could just as well be a meteor impact. Especially if they're subterranean.
Second best would be to do the cleanup by hand and hope the Dwarves don't show up. And afterwards make sure to destroy the evidence, so there are no Xill artifacts to be found. And then break out the antimatter bombs and blast the ship to pieces.
That way, he does what's right and follows the spirit of the law. You could even argue that he follows the letter of the law to the extent his situation permits. If the gods decide to be total Richards about it, he might still have to atone for shooting the ship down over an inhabited planet, but there's nothing he can do about that now.

SiuiS
2014-07-14, 01:59 AM
The paladin is not committing any evil because cool are having sex on a planet. Otherwise he would have already fallen. Accidentally setting them up because he tried to kill them is not likely to make him fall from grace.

Millennium
2014-07-15, 10:56 AM
I'm not actually sure I see much of a dilemma here, to be honest.

Alignment is a nonissue. Breaking a single law, a single time, simply is not enough to change a person's alignment, especially if (as in this case) it is easy to defend within the strictures of the remainder of the law. Breaking a divine decree is a more serious matter, to be sure, but when the initial breach is accidental -more on this later- then attempting to rectify the mistake is certainly a Lawful thing to do. The gods might punish him for this breach, but his alignment should not change.

Let us next consider the paladin's code: the requirement to do no evil. By RAW, at least, this one's a no-brainer. He hasn't done anything evil yet, but leaving the situation be when he knows that this will result in planetary genocide certainly would be. Leaving is simply not an option. And as long as we assume the default paladin's code, that's all there really is.

However, let's assume that this particular paladin code includes an additional clause: the paladin has sworn as part of his code to uphold unto death a specific set of divine decrees, including this one. I would argue that this still does not conflict with the code, however, because the paladin has already broken the decree (albeit accidentally) by shooting down the hive ship: when it crashed into the planet, that constituted greater interference than dealing with the fallout possibly could. Going after the xill is not going to break the law any worse: indeed, he could argue that the prime directive demands that he attempt to correct the error.

My advice to the paladin would be as follows. Send a message as quickly as possible to whatever authority he serves under, to report that he has accidentally breached the prime directive. Explain that he is attempting to correct it, but because a Xill hiveship is involved, he requests reinforcements. Meanwhile, he will keep the authorities apprised of his whereabouts so that, once they arrive, they can find him easily. Once they arrive, he will submit to an inquest about the event.

This course of action prevents him from doing Evil while keeping himself as close as possible to being in line with the authorities. It lets him go down and kick some abdomen, while giving you an out in case things go wrong or drag out for too long: when the investigators/reinforcements arrive, they can handle the rest. Then you can cut to the paladin's trial.

In the meantime, I wouldn't say that he falls. The accidental initial breach cannot fairly be held against him, and as long as he attempts to correct the error and doesn't otherwise breach his code, I wouldn't say that this can either. On the other hand, if he tries to run away (by failing to correct the error or by failing to report his mistake), those could certainly be worthy of a fall.

IAmTehDave
2014-07-15, 11:46 AM
As long as he's keeping with the Good aspect of his alignment, the Law is less important. It's actually written in the rules this way:

Remember, you need to GROSSLY violate your code of conduct (Lawful) to have your powers taken away.
Alternatively, a single evil act will strip you of your powers.

Even if you don't take the RAW for paladin code, that right there proves that the G is more important than the L in LG.

Here? It'd be more in keeping with the Law to prevent the Xill from breaking the Prime Directive.

In fact, he doesn't (IMO) need to say that he accidentally broke the PD: He just needs to inform a superior that he shot down a Xill ship, and that further review of the planet showed indigenous life, so he's going down to prevent Xenocide, and he will avoid contact if at all possible.