Share your BS fallen Paladin stories

[Anachronity]

As the title says, the most absurd and unfair ways you or another PC you know of has fallen from grace as a Paladin (or similarly restrictive class; Knights, Samurai, Antipaladin, etc.).

To start us off, a Paladin/Oracle of mine was dying due to a Shield Other spell she had cast on the party Rogue who was currently drowning (the DM ruled that drowning would hurt me the same as it hurt him without helping him in any way, which was the first warning sign). Since I could not personally help this person (other members of the party ended up saving him) I said that I dismiss the spell. The DM told me that if I did so, I would fall.

After a long argument, I ended up dismissing the spell anyways, walking off into the sunset, and rolling up a new Chaotic Good Fighter/Rogue instead.

[Yogibear41]

People in General should learn to relax about the paladin code, your playing a human (or reasonably similar race), your an imperfect creature you make mistakes. As a LG paladin you should strive for perfection but know that you will never reach it. As long as an individual strives to stay on the path, even if they wander off it a bit from time to time they should not fall.

All that being said, even if you were playing by the strictest code of the letter of the law, your character still shouldn't of fallen. From what you posted your shield other spell was not helping save him anyway, no point in having two people die instead of just one.


Only briefly played a paladin once, but I have played several anti-paladins and variations there of, generally they are always of the LE sort. I have actively done good deeds with them and gone days without doing evil acts, DM never blinked an eyelash, because everything I was doing was in accordance with my deities will. Was playing in a campaign where the local people (who happened to worship evil deities) were partially conquered by another invading empire(who also happened to be evil, but who also had some good aligned 3rd party guys sort of on their side). Anyway I did good by helping the natives(my people). Which was A-okay with my deity. Also doing good for money is a thing too.

[Kelvarius]

I don't remember the exact details, but I once fell for doing absolutely nothing.

I was playing a Paladin many years ago back in second edition when the party came across a recurring NPC that was vaguely friendly. He never did anything overly terrible to the party, but he was definitely not one to be trusted. And beyond that, his personality was just incredibly annoying. He was like the Jar Jar Binks of the campaign, minus the ridiculous accent.

Anyways, we meet the NPC, and I as the player make an aside comment along the lines of "This guy again? Man, it would feel good to just kill him."

DM looked at me and told me I lost my powers.

I argued about how that was an OOC comment and not one my character said.

He argued that as an OOC comment, it became an IC thought whether voiced or not.

The argument went on, but in the end, we just remade my character as a fighter instead.

[BWR]

No bad stories to tell as a player. Even when playing a Knight of Solamnia under a GM who generally dislikes anything noble and honorable ("you have to smart/realistic/sensible about this situation.", by which he means stealth, subterfuge, realpolitik and generally being an ******** while not actually evil). He's done other bull**** stuff but nothing like causing my knight to lose his powers.

As a GM a couple of paladins have temporarily lost their powers. In one case a holy relic belonging to the faith was stolen and in the process of being activated, which would be very bad. The paladin failed to stop the activation in part due to misreading the situation, so destruction and death abounded as the holy phoenix was summoned and set fire to the city, then she had to kill her Immortal's holy bird to stop it from rampaging even more. She lost her powers once the fight was over (because Mealiden isn't an ******** and this is more along the lines of a stern reprimand rather than being fired), and she was set on the path to Immortality in her quest of contrition.

Another paladin lost his powers for deciding that the quickest way to solve the problem of a fellow PC being Dominated was to fill her full of arrows. Had the circumstances been different this might have been acceptable but since there were only the other PCs around and collateral damage wouldn't be a problem, his patron wanted him to think about how trying something else first would have been a good idea. Since the party was rich as anything and death from HP loss is speed bump, the punishment was less severe than it would have been if the PC had caused perma-death.

Guess we're all just sensible people.

[Krazzman]

Involuntary Alignment shifts... man I hate those.

We played the Tsar Saga or whatever that adventure path is called. So we first ventured there and if you sleep there you get corrupted. Pass a willsave (quite high) or shift one step towards evil.
When we found out... well our Paladin wasn't that happy since it seemed to be permanently at first. Also our Barbarian was next to killing us all... and with good reason.

Generally I find spells/effects that force a character to change their alignment are all BS since the only defense a Paladin has against most of them are his high saves.

I also find myself starting to hate my "paladin" due to the fluff that comes with him since we have the wonderful chance of getting insane... which means a no-save possibility of psychosis leading to a CE Paladin... fun.

[Anachronity]

Posting this partially as a bump (I really love these "share your story" threads :smallbiggrin:; I would appreciate it if anyone has a link to some sort of central hub thread for them.) since it's not quite a fallen paladin story, but I'd also once had a case where a player was insisting that his Paladin fall so he could become a Blackguard (this being shortly after 3.0 was released, before all of the similarly-themed base classes existed).

Said player did not inform anyone that this was basically the entire reason why he was playing a Paladin until well after the campaign started, so the DM (my brother) was getting quite impatient with him while he played the most dickish sort of Paladin: constantly doing the wrong thing with some flimsy justification, but also being the Heavy-Handed Moral Police when anyone else in the party tried to do something slightly evil (basically a full Miko-out-of-ten). In hindsight it was actually fairly well pulled off, but his error was in not informing the DM of his intentions (the rest of the party was pretty well on the morally malleable side, so there wouldn't have been any problems there).

The Paladin eventually began explicitly saying OOC that he wanted to be a Blackguard, and soon after we encountered a Lich NPC who we were forced to do business with (on account of not being nearly high-level enough to take said Lich on). The Paladin figured that this Lich was the DM-approved fast ticket to Blackguard-town, and gladly performed every little request the Lich made, half-dragging the rest of us with him. Eventually when he threw an in-character fit about having served the Lich well and demanding a reward, the Lich made an offer: "Indeed, you may serve eternally at my side"*

The Lich casts a spell, and at this point the DM told the Paladin to make a will save "as an evil force tugs at your soul"
The Paladin voluntarily fails his save... against the Lich's Trap the Soul

The Paladin player was pissed, but the rest of us laughed and didn't really care, since his character had been so standoffish. Looking back, that was fairly mean on my brother's part; after all, it's not like that player had any other choice in how he became a Blackguard and the rest of us actually enjoyed the missions that the evil Lich gave us quite a bit, which would presumably have been similar to whatever hijinks a Blackguard would engage in.

*: or some other appropriate doublespeak

[BowStreetRunner]

We were in a party that ended up having to deal with a demon. The Paladin was confronted with the demon and ended up making the wrong choices and experienced his fall from grace. Nothing spectacular at this point, just the demon threatened to harm innocents if the Paladin didn't do what the demon wanted and the Paladin just caved and went and committed an evil act on behalf of the demon.

Where this story gets interesting is a little later when the demon confronts the CN rogue. Pretty much the same deal - do what I ask or innocents (in this case the rogue's family) will be harmed. The rogue responds that whether the demon harms his family or not is on the demon. The rogue isn't responsible for the demon's choices, even if the demon tries to make it seem that he is. What the rogue will do is commit his life to opposing the demon in every way within his power if the demon harms one hair on the head of any of his family. (And for this campaign the rogue was pretty high level so this was no idle threat either.) So after a bit more back and forth between the two the demon eventually backed down and went away. And this was the point at which the DM turned to the player with the paladin and said "Now THAT is how a paladin is supposed to handle a demon!!!"

The whole thing felt a bit like Gambit picking up Thor's hammer.

[TheCrowing1432]

While not a paladin falling story per say, I had a DM who had it out for Paladins, for...who knows why. Yet he was perfectly fine with Clerics.


One of the things that I noticed with this DM, is that every enemy would be inexplicably Chaotic Neurtal. Like, Bandits that have been murdering and plundering for days? CN because they all have some stupid tragic backstory that made them this way and they arent TRULY evil.

So because of this, Smite Evil, Detect Evil and anything else to do with evil, never worked.

Its really bizarre walking into a bandit hideout and having your Detect Evil ping nothing at all, even though the Mayor of the nearby town told you they murdered people constantly.


Another DM, who thankfully doesnt hate Paladins, gave me the classic "Save people from a burning building" objective. Which in all honestly made me feel like a hero, which is what Paladins are supposed to feel like. Despite it being rather cliche.

[iceman10058]

Once, i played a Human Paladin and we ended up confronting and killing an evil lich, but count figure out where his phylactery was. after a ton of searching and failing, we give up. while searching through the loot, i find a magical sword, after identifying it, we find out its a holy avenger! naturally my character was stocked so i went to go meditate and make a connection to it, to find out that it is cursed and is also the lich's phylactery, so i fell and was possesed by the lich...

[Gallowglass]

You know, I've seen a lot of these "Fallen Paladin" threads and rants about DMs making your paladin fall.

I haven't DMed a lot of paladins (its hard enough to get my player base to play (any) good, let along (lawful) good), but I don't remember making any of them fall. But the one I think liked his story arc the most involved a paladin falling and having to quest to redeem himself.

So now, when I think about it, I wonder if some DMs assume (rightly or wrongly) that if a player is making a paladin or other class with a build in sub-story like that, that the player would WANT to play out that sub-story over the course of a long campaign. "Oh, they are making a paladin, so I guess I better plan out a fall and redeem arc for them in the storyline."

Because its kind of an obvious and natural story arc for a paladin. Even the "falls unfairly through no true fault of his own, only through deception or betrayal" is a viable and obvious story arc.

Now, obviously, the DM should ask the player if that's what they want, but I don't think such an assumption by itself makes a DM a bad DM.

Maybe the player should tell the DM "I'm playing a paladin NOT because of the implied story arc, but because I want to smite things, ride a bad ass horse, and ****, I'm not looking to have a fall and redeem arc." when they start. Lol.

[iceman10058]

You know, I've seen a lot of these "Fallen Paladin" threads and rants about DMs making your paladin fall.

I haven't DMed a lot of paladins (its hard enough to get my player base to play (any) good, let along (lawful) good), but I don't remember making any of them fall. But the one I think liked his story arc the most involved a paladin falling and having to quest to redeem himself.

So now, when I think about it, I wonder if some DMs assume (rightly or wrongly) that if a player is making a paladin or other class with a build in sub-story like that, that the player would WANT to play out that sub-story over the course of a long campaign. "Oh, they are making a paladin, so I guess I better plan out a fall and redeem arc for them in the storyline."

Because its kind of an obvious and natural story arc for a paladin. Even the "falls unfairly through no true fault of his own, only through deception or betrayal" is a viable and obvious story arc.

Now, obviously, the DM should ask the player if that's what they want, but I don't think such an assumption by itself makes a DM a bad DM.

Maybe the player should tell the DM "I'm playing a paladin NOT because of the implied story arc, but because I want to smite things, ride a bad ass horse, and ****, I'm not looking to have a fall and redeem arc." when they start. Lol.

Thats kinda what my DM assumed, but did not like it too much when i ended up becoming a powerful blackguard deathknight and conquering the world cause he had issues stopping me after that.

[crayzz]

Involuntary Alignment shifts... man I hate those.

We played the Tsar Saga or whatever that adventure path is called. So we first ventured there and if you sleep there you get corrupted. Pass a willsave (quite high) or shift one step towards evil.
When we found out... well our Paladin wasn't that happy since it seemed to be permanently at first. Also our Barbarian was next to killing us all... and with good reason.

Generally I find spells/effects that force a character to change their alignment are all BS since the only defense a Paladin has against most of them are his high saves.

I also find myself starting to hate my "paladin" due to the fluff that comes with him since we have the wonderful chance of getting insane... which means a no-save possibility of psychosis leading to a CE Paladin... fun.

Hmm.

This has me thinking about being paladin for a particularly mercantile god: one that doesn't really care whether you worship her so long as you further her work in her name. A Palidin receives power from her to do her work, and one way or another turns evil (maybe forcibly changed alignments, maybe they were never really cut out for to be a Palidin and slowly turned evil).

They live in a war torn land. They need that power to protect the few people they still care about, and for that matter to survive themselves. So they find themselves regularly doing good acts, acts they view with contempt for a god they now hate, to cling to the only way they know how to protect themselves and the few they care about.

[Drelua]

I played a Paladin in a chase scene once and ended up falling off a building, does that count? That character was fun, he ended up being a Paladin 3/Bard 2/Dragon Disciple 1 or something, I played the DD less as worshipping dragons and more as a 'what the hell's happening to me?!' kind of thing. Then he fell out a window and got surrounded and chopped to pieces by a bunch of grey maidens (basically devil-worshipping knights) that were really good at rolling 19s with their longswords. So I guess he fell twice, and the second one stuck.

More seriously though, I had never played a Paladin until a year or two ago, and had never seen one outside of PFS, so I've never had a bad time with one. I played that character based on a quote from an 80s cartoon movie about dragons. "Blade with whom I have lived, Blade with whom I now die, serve right and justice one last time, seek one last heart of evil, still one last life of pain, cut well old friend, and then farewell." That line is now ingrained in my mind.

[Big Fau]

I got tripped by a stock-Riding Dog.

I was level 8...