What should a good character do in this situation?

[Jon_Dahl]

NB! This is not one of those tricks where the paladin is put randomly into a difficult moral situation and ends up falling.

The character in question is neutral good, although feel free to speculate with CG and LG alignments. The character finds out that "an army of chaos and evil" (i.e. demons or undead, the character is not sure which or both) will attack the kingdom. There is a (highly reliable!) prophecy of a Chosen One that will destroy the invading army. The Chosen One will be a fallen paladin, an epitome of Law and Evil. At the moment, the Chosen One is a normal paladin (fairly weak one) and unaware of his future (?) as the Chosen One. The reason why he must become evil is that it will be necessary in order to infiltrate the army. The Chaotic Evil army will be susceptible to infiltration due to a number of reason, but other than that it will have no exploitable weakness. Thus, the Chosen One will infiltrate the army and kill its leader, but also unwittingly cause the army to lose its "glue" and subsequently come to a halt, scatter and rout without the irreplaceable leader. The Chosen One will die in the process.

The character is the only one who knows the entire prophecy.

What to do?

And, as I said, there is no trick here to annoy the neutral good character and its player...

[J-H]

Ignore it. Prophecies can always be interpreted several different ways. Trying to put your stamp on fulfilling a prophecy is likely to muck things up worse than if you left them alone.

Investing in anti-chaos and anti-evil weapons production might be a good idea, though.

[WesleyVos]

Ignore it. Prophecies can always be interpreted several different ways. Trying to put your stamp on fulfilling a prophecy is likely to muck things up worse than if you left them alone.

Investing in anti-chaos and anti-evil weapons production might be a good idea, though.

Agreed. Prophecy rarely turns out the way one expects, and the best thing to do is just watch and see what happens. Prepare for a CE invasion and (as a good character) do what is right. The prophecy will work itself out if true.

[Karl Aegis]

Conveniently be absent throughout the entire ordeal only to return after the end to set up an orphanage. We do what we can to live together, not what we must to destroy each other.

[OldTrees1]

Well they are a character 1st and an alignment 4th, so we can expect lots of different reactions from different people in this circumstance.


The main points I got out of that (and I might have missed some that other characters would notice) are:
This character has been the only one to hear a highly reliable prophesy.

How reliable does the character consider the prophesy?

The source could be lying/mistaken. How much does the character trust the veracity of the prophesy?
Which parts of the prophesy does the character interpret as "As it is foretold, so will it be" vs "If it is done this way, this will happen" vs "This is a possible outcome"?
How sure are they that the "defeat the army chosen one" and this "chosen one they found" are part of the same prophesy?
Does the prophesy really have only 1 chosen one or does it have multiple?

How badly will things turn out without fulfilling the prophesy (assuming it is the 2nd or 3rd types)? How much does the character care?
How badly will things turn out if they fulfill the prophesy? It sounds like the fallout is the intentional damnation of 1 innocent and the fallout from the scattered CE army. How much does the character care?
How much influence does the character believe they have over making the non predetermined parts of the prophesy take place?



Small list
Char 1: An army approaches the Kingdom. It will be a tough battle but we can survive this.
Char 2: An unbeatable army approaches the Kingdom. Evacuate the kingdom and spread word of this threat.
Char 3: We plan a final stand(possibly with evacuation) while I tell the chosen one of the prophesy. They make their own decisions.
Char 4: The Chosen One would succeed. However there is more than one way to kill the leader. We will send in 3 squads with different strategies. Success is not guaranteed but sometimes that is life.
Char 5: I tell my allies about the prophesy and we all discuss ideas.
Char 6: I arrange for 2 rehabilitation cells and a raise dead. I don't want my family to die but I will not trust who I will become. I then go about creating the foretold event. Following the event the chosen one and I are locked away for rehabilitation.
Char 7: Yikes! This is dangerous. I gather my friends and family to emigrate. At the first chance that does not slow me down, I send a message detail the prophesy to the authorities.

[flappeercraft]

A smart good character would get a helm of opposite alignment to restore the chosen one quickly and prepare to evacuate the city.

[Karl Aegis]

Wait, are kingdoms just a single city now? I feel like that would be pretty problematic if someone decided to, say, drop a mountain on you.

[Gildedragon]

Wait, are kingdoms just a single city now? I feel like that would be pretty problematic if someone decided to, say, drop a mountain on you.
Sure. Why not. City state ruled by a monarchy is a kingdom

As to how to deal with things:
Ignore the prophecy and work to defeat things without the prophetic aid: if the prophecy is immutable then things will play out as they are foretold, and if it is mutable then taking things into your own hands is v useful.

Possible ways to thwart things: give Paladin an amulet that fakes his alignment.

Give Paladin a trinket that lets party scry/affect Paladin at a distance. After Paladin goes evil just force them back to their righteous alignment.