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Palanan
2021-10-08, 04:03 PM
In this situation, a foreign army has invaded, besieged and captured a small city, and the extended siege has left the army extremely low on provisions.

They are now marching cross-country with the intention of reaching another city, and along the way they are taking whatever food they can find from farmsteads and small towns. At this point they are perilously close to starvation. They have few clerics and cannot feed their numbers with magic. The countryside is already hunted out and there is no game.

The army’s scouts have located a granary which the surrounding countryside relies on as a fallback, and which will be vital for local folk to survive the coming winter—especially given the army’s depredations. To make things worse, the army of the defending realm is burning fields ahead of the invaders to deny them the current harvest.

The paladin knows that most of the invading force is made up of archers and men-at-arms who are simply following their lords’ commands, and apart from taking food they have conducted themselves with restraint.

The paladin owes no allegiance to any of the principals in the conflict, only his own conscience. In this situation, would he destroy the granary, knowing it would mean the starvation and slaughter of thousands of men who are honorably obeying their oaths? Or would he allow them to take it, knowing it might doom many of the local peasantry to starvation in the coming winter? Or would he feel compelled to find some other approach—and if so, what might that be?

Bacon Elemental
2021-10-08, 04:14 PM
The paladin owes no allegiance to any of the principals in the conflict, only his own conscience. In this situation, would he destroy the granary, knowing it would mean the starvation and slaughter of thousands of men who are honorably obeying their oaths? Or would he allow them to take it, knowing it might doom many of the local peasantry to starvation in the coming winter? Or would he feel compelled to find some other approach—and if so, what might that be?

I feel the situation is kind of set up confusingly. Surely if the Paladin destroys the granary the peasants will starve anyway?

Psyren
2021-10-08, 04:16 PM
He should ask his Phylactery of Faithfulness :smalltongue:

Kidding aside, am I missing something? If letting them take the granary would doom the civilians to starvation, surely destroying it would do the same thing? That would make destruction even worse as now he is condemning two groups to starve instead of one.

Seems to me there's a third option here - facilitate negotiations between the army and the citizens to share some of their stockpiled food, and defend it from being confiscated or raided. That would save as many lives as possible on both sides. And while doing so, subtly influence the army (or more aptly, its officers) toward moral rectitude.


I feel the situation is kind of set up confusingly. Surely if the Paladin destroys the granary the peasants will starve anyway?

^Ninja'd

OldTrees1
2021-10-08, 04:23 PM
Different Paladins will have different answers.


For example one Paladin might nonlethally prevent the locals from getting in harms way defending the granary. If the locals are willing to stay out of danger, then the Paladin's second object would be negotiating with the army to leave some food for the locals. Then, after the immediate danger is gone, the Paladin would take it upon themselves to help replenish the local food supply.

However another Paladin would take the impossible task of fighting to defend the granary and dissuade the army. They will die, but they believe in the impossible dream and thus would "be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause".

Both types of Paladin are needed at different times. The second will try the impossible because the possible is not good enough. The first will try to make the best of the situation at hand. Together, in great enough numbers, they can make the impossible dream possible.

Lord Raziere
2021-10-08, 04:31 PM
This is a grey area thing that could depend on a lot things:

1. which edition? this could determine a lot, because 5e Paladins can be much more flexible with their morality than 3.5

2. the paladin sounds like they value an invading parties lives a lot to be concerned for them even while they are being the aggressor. commendable, but that doesn't mean that the peasants deserve to be raided and starve, now don't they? all things considered if this conflict has no cosmic stuff involved, those invaders kind of deserve to starve and die. if you really want to save the invaders lives, you got to convince them to give up the fight. while holding to an oath is fine, the lord they are obeying has a responsibility to their army in turn and if that lord insists on keeping up the fight, despite the cost in lives which doesn't seem to be worth it, given that its a small city? thats irresponsible. one should at least convince them to go find a town they can take quickly and with less bloodshed rather than insist on the long siege that will prove costly to both sides. sometimes a smaller less costly victory is better than a costly big one, for everyone involved. the small city clearly has a tactical advantage and outplayed the invaders, having scorched earth their way here, so....the counter move is not to siege it, those invaders should go different way to begin with, don't strike where your enemy is strong and all that. I'm sorry but that lord is strategically/logistically incompetent. you can inform the lord of their mistake and recommend they try to fall back or go somewhere else for more supplies but if they don't listen, thats the commanding lords fault, not the paladins, and I would not ping the paladin's alignment for failing to convince that lord then riding away.

Anymage
2021-10-08, 04:41 PM
Using paladin falls as if they're somehow an absolute answer to tricky moral dilemmas is presupposing that there is one right answer to trolley style problems. Is it right to cause a significant portion of an invading army as well as your own citizens to starve to death, to save the population of a large city from facing the full privations of war and siege? That's a sticky moral wicket even without putting someone's class features on the line if they misjudge the DM's way of thinking.

As an in-game question, it ultimately depends on the nature of cosmological goodness that empowers paladins. (Never minding that paladins haven't been chained to being LG for two editions now.) As Psyren said, ask the Phylactery of Faithfulness if one exists, since again the question presupposes that there is a right answer and that someone who understands that universe's natural laws can understand how the moral laws of said universe works as well. Alternately, if the paladin absolutely must, it's easier to try skating by on the fact that other people's behavior as the result of your inaction should not render you personally culpable, and lawyer out doing nothing on the grounds that inaction is by definition not taking an action, and is therefore not an evil action.

If the universe is like ours and runs off of shades of gray instead of clear-cut moral answers, introspection and trying to weigh the consequences of said action is likely to count a lot more for the paladin keeping their good guy status than blindly sticking to a presupposed set of rules.

tyckspoon
2021-10-08, 04:42 PM
The army’s scouts have located a granary which the surrounding countryside relies on as a fallback, and which will be vital for local folk to survive the coming winter—especially given the army’s depredations. To make things worse, the army of the defending realm is burning fields ahead of the invaders to deny them the current harvest.

...
The paladin owes no allegiance to any of the principals in the conflict, only his own conscience. In this situation, would he destroy the granary, knowing it would mean the starvation and slaughter of thousands of men who are honorably obeying their oaths? Or would he allow them to take it, knowing it might doom many of the local peasantry to starvation in the coming winter? Or would he feel compelled to find some other approach—and if so, what might that be?

Gather whatever local labor force hasn't already fled the approaching army, empty out the granary, and lead the locals in retreat to the next defensible position. The defending population keeps their food and is ready to wait it out if the invaders are dumb enough to try to siege again. (The defending army/the local leaders of whatever population uses this granary for food storage should have already done this, really, as part of the 'scorch the fields and leave the invaders nothing to scavenge' plan.) The invaders, having already exhausted themselves, should realize they do not have the supplies to continue this campaign and give up and go home. Depending on how dumb/stubborn/evil their commanders are a good portion of the invading army may die because of this, but the Paladin is not responsible for their actions. If they don't want to starve to death while marching back home, they can surrender and place themselves at the mercy of their enemies to supply them as prisoners or try to negotiate for enough supplies to leave safely.

.. I want to emphasize this, because I think it's a misunderstanding at the heart of a lot of these 'What would a Paladin do' dilemmas: The Paladin is not responsible for anybody else's actions. He may seek to do whatever he reasonably believes will result in the most good, or failing that cause the least harm, but he is not responsible for the results of somebody else's decisions - the closest he will come is advocating for whatever he believes the best choice is.

The Paladin, in this case, does not bear responsibility for the invading army. They chose to invade. They chose to engage in a siege without having proper supply lines or carrying sufficient supplies with them. And, having exhausted their supplies in a poorly planned siege, they chose to try to continue their campaign. They are now experiencing the natural and inevitable result of this series of bad decisions, and it will probably result in the death of a number of their troops. This is regrettable, and it would be quite natural for a Paladin to feel guilt over not being able to do anything about it.. but the Paladin has no obligation to rescue the invading army from their own poor decisions, especially not coming at the cost of people who aren't an invading army.

jayem
2021-10-08, 05:01 PM
In this situation, a foreign army has invaded, besieged and captured a small city, and the extended siege has left the army extremely low on provisions.

They are now marching cross-country with the intention of reaching another city, and along the way they are taking whatever food they can find from farmsteads and small towns. At this point they are perilously close to starvation. They have few clerics and cannot feed their numbers with magic. The countryside is already hunted out and there is no game.

The army’s scouts have located a granary which the surrounding countryside relies on as a fallback, and which will be vital for local folk to survive the coming winter—especially given the army’s depredations. To make things worse, the army of the defending realm is burning fields ahead of the invaders to deny them the current harvest.

The paladin knows that most of the invading force is made up of archers and men-at-arms who are simply following their lordsÂ’ commands, and apart from taking food they have conducted themselves with restraint.

The paladin owes no allegiance to any of the principals in the conflict, only his own conscience. In this situation, would he destroy the granary, knowing it would mean the starvation and slaughter of thousands of men who are honorably obeying their oaths? Or would he allow them to take it, knowing it might doom many of the local peasantry to starvation in the coming winter? Or would he feel compelled to find some other approach—and if so, what might that be?

Obviously it depends on the game, players and GM. I think you could argue lots of things, and if they are sincere...

However...
The way it's set up, it looks like destroying the granary is also dooming the peasantry to starvation. Which is also I think objectively bad, especially if the Paladin has no allegience.
You could argue it's better that the local peasantry die, if it means the wider war stops, but at the least finding some way to preserve the food for the locals seems better than that, if possible.
If that's the thinking staying out the way, might be a legitimate option, or alternatively deciding that the invader is 'wrong' and should suffer at your hands directly.

I do recall a story that might suggest a target for an over the top do-gooder (the original example is alongside more problematic moments, but if you take it in isolation, it's ridiculously pious):
Capture the army, then when the defenders plan to extract revenge while they are vulnerable tell them that's wrong and make them feed the surrendered enemies before returning them home.

From my point of view this "everyone lives" is the more interesting approach than "justice is done", so carrying on with variants of that...

Could you leave a cookie trail back to the invaders homeland (always just enough food to get to the next waypoint but not enough to turn round)? Ideally also finding some way to feed the peasantry.
Could you find some way to scare the invaders into realising they can't win (and so going home is the best option)
Could you claim the granary for yourself, and then find some way to force terms?
Could you have a 7 Samurai moment with the local peasantry (it's their food, not either kings to destroy)

[A whole army of Ninja's]

Faily
2021-10-08, 07:13 PM
The Paladin should focus on the noncombatants/peasants first, imo, and see to that they have the food from the granaries and storages.

Apart from that though, I agree with Psyren that a good third option is to facilitate negotiations between the groups, to avoid starvation through the winter for as many as possible. As you said, the Paladin has no ties to either side in the conflict (in any way whatsoever I guess?), so they can take the side of reason and peace.




Seems to me there's a third option here - facilitate negotiations between the army and the citizens to share some of their stockpiled food, and defend it from being confiscated or raided. That would save as many lives as possible on both sides. And while doing so, subtly influence the army (or more aptly, its officers) toward moral rectitude.



Depending on their faith and culture, the answer might differ, but without knowing that I'd default to the Paladin being a champion of good and potentially a good mediator (due to having decent Charisma and Diplomacy).

SpoonR
2021-10-08, 08:01 PM
A good paladin makes the army go somewhere else. Make enough of a threat that soldiers desert en masse or something.

A great paladin says “sorry, our granary is empty”, then when the army goes by gets the grain back out of his bags of holding.

Be Midshipman(?) Kirk and force a third option.

Pauly
2021-10-08, 08:30 PM
What is the conduct of the invading army? It sounds like their conduct is deliberately designed to maximize civilian death. Are they also slaughtering innocents, stealing everything that isn’t nailed down and raping the womenfolk?

Is re-supplying the army allowing them to inflict more pain, misery and death on a greater group of civilians? Not just the ones who will face starvation if the granary is burnt down, but the ones in the next province.

Can the Paladin do a top level beheading of the command structure and allow the rank and file to return home?

False God
2021-10-09, 09:29 AM
Could the paladin simply choose to "do nothing"?

Unless he can single-handedly fight off the army, that won't do him or anyone else much good. He'll cut down a few mooks before being pin-cushioned to death and then the Army will take the grain anyway. Rallying peasants to his side won't make much difference.

Some elaborate trick might work, but the Army is likely to investigate why the once-full silo is now empty, even with only a small scouting force, which could be killed but now there's the issue that the scouting force is missing. Considering the army is in dire need of food, this may be suspicious enough to just send in the troops anyway.
---He'd need to come up with some kind of convincing lie, a disease, a monster, something to get the army to not risk sending anyone in the direction of the Silo.
****Depending on your edition and your DM, such a lie may be a violation of being a paladin. Don't play with DM's who put paladins in these kinds of situations.

He could attempt diplomacy, reason with the army, but considering their current tactics, I think chances of success are slim, depends on the character and the DM really.

Attempting to feed the army in an effort to get them to pass by the silo is certainly an option, but may violate his code depending on the DM. But that paladin needs some deep pockets considering the army already has magical food supplies and it isn't enough. This would likely have to be paired with some diplomacy, to get the army to ignore the silo in exchange for the paladin's supplies.

OldTrees1
2021-10-09, 10:42 AM
Could the paladin simply choose to "do nothing"?

Could the Paladin simply choose to "do nothing"? Including not helping the peasants replenish their food supply?

Yes, some Paladins feel the world is too dystopian and thus they have to ration their finite assistance. They might feel the time spent hunting food for these peasants might jeopardize hypothetical others they could be helping. They might conclude that helping in this case is too time intensive to risk it being less efficient than some need they discover tomorrow a day's journey away from the village.

I want to say that doing absolutely nothing is very rare behavior for a Paladin. However I don't know how common this particular type of Paladin PC is.

Satinavian
2021-10-09, 11:06 AM
Could the Paladin simply choose to "do nothing"? Including not helping the peasants replenish their food supply?

Yes, some Paladins feel the world is too dystopian and thus they have to ration their finite assistance. They might feel the time spent hunting food for these peasants might jeopardize hypothetical others they could be helping. They might conclude that helping in this case is too time intensive to risk it being less efficient than some need they discover tomorrow a day's journey away from the village.

I want to say that doing absolutely nothing is very rare behavior for a Paladin. However I don't know how common this particular type of Paladin PC is.
Considering that "being paladin" does nothing to make him more able to provide food than any of those already starving peasants whose job literally is "making food", he is likely no help. If he stays, he and possibly his horse might even need more to eat than he himself can contribute.

What he could do is defending the granary. Which is also only an option for some ridicolously strong paladin or one that has enough political clout to give protection that way.

The other thing that people could try is hiding the grain. But... paladins are not particulerly good at that either and the peasents know the area and all possible hiding places. And NPCs should be smart enough to get this idea themself.


So yes, doing nothing and move on might be the best idea. Not because those peasants don't deserve help, but because his skillset is not useful for the problem and he would be more hindrance than help. He could give away his personal supplies before he moves on though.


But maybe in your group a character who likely has neither track nor survival can hunt enough in some completely overhunted area (as it is civilized and likely regularly used already and the invading army also hunts as much as they can and without thoughts about sustainability to make any kind of difference.

Silly Name
2021-10-09, 11:09 AM
I fail to see why "destroying the granary" is an option considered in the OP. It benefits absolutely no one.

A Paladin would try, assuming no ill will towards the invading army, to negotiate a solution that leaves nobody starving. If that's impossible, she would likely choose to prioritise the peasants, such as by trying to make the army retreat by parleying with its leaders.

a_flemish_guy
2021-10-09, 11:09 AM
there's also the option of having the army pay for their needed provisions, that way the peasants can import grain and fill up the granary again

Mastikator
2021-10-09, 12:27 PM
Unless he can stop the army the locals who depend on the granary will die. If he destroys it that will kill the locals but their fate is sealed either way, but it may also kill the army which threatens many others. However if he does destroy the granary he may be seen as culpable for the deaths of the locals and so condemned for it. So the way the situation is set up: is a paladin willing to risk divine condemnation to save a civilization? Ideally? Yes. Practically? No.

Chauncymancer
2021-10-09, 01:22 PM
all things considered if this conflict has no cosmic stuff involved, those invaders kind of deserve to starve and die.
I want to point out that, given that the soldiers in this army are either levied draftees or professional soldiers, for them to not invade this country on the command of the kingdom's generals would be, at the very least a Chaotic act, but possibly an Evil one. If a mercenary eats your provisions and then refuses to fight, that's theft.


Alternately, if the paladin absolutely must, it's easier to try skating by on the fact that other people's behavior as the result of your inaction should not render you personally culpable, and lawyer out doing nothing on the grounds that inaction is by definition not taking an action, and is therefore not an evil action.
Choosing to not take action is nevertheless a choice, and so ethically that doesn't get us anywhere.


there's also the option of having the army pay for their needed provisions, that way the peasants can import grain and fill up the granary again
I don't think this is a feasible solution in this situation. Importing seven hundred thousand pounds of grain into a war zone is pretty much a non-starter for a non-magical medieval society. The logistics involved would require one of the two armies to take over the project themselves, not just give the locals some inedible coins.

Satinavian
2021-10-09, 01:23 PM
What is the conduct of the invading army? It sounds like their conduct is deliberately designed to maximize civilian death. Are they also slaughtering innocents, stealing everything that isn’t nailed down and raping the womenfolk?Nope


The paladin knows that most of the invading force is made up of archers and men-at-arms who are simply following their lords’ commands, and apart from taking food they have conducted themselves with restraint.

Just soldiers foraging because they would starve otherwise. As per OP it was not even the original plan for the war, only something that happened when it dragged on longer than planned and longer than the supplies lasted. Even the commanders would have preferred to use their own stuff instead.

False God
2021-10-09, 01:27 PM
Could the Paladin simply choose to "do nothing"? Including not helping the peasants replenish their food supply?

Yes, some Paladins feel the world is too dystopian and thus they have to ration their finite assistance. They might feel the time spent hunting food for these peasants might jeopardize hypothetical others they could be helping. They might conclude that helping in this case is too time intensive to risk it being less efficient than some need they discover tomorrow a day's journey away from the village.

I want to say that doing absolutely nothing is very rare behavior for a Paladin. However I don't know how common this particular type of Paladin PC is.

A paladin cannot rationally be obligated to help every person in need. No more than you or I could. And not because of a code of ethics, but simply because it is impractical. There are too many people and too few paladins. A paladin doesn't train to be a farmer, or a home-builder, or a ditch-digger, he might know how, and his sure strength could let him be helpful, but he is still one man. He's no more in a position to harvest grain than the peasants are in a position to fight off the army.

Which was more to the point of my original question and must of my response. Most of his options in this situation are beyond the ken of one man. He may want to help, but have no real avenues for doing so. Diplomacy would probably be his best option, but he's stuck between "Aggressive hungry people." and "weak hungry people". A good argument only goes so far against the power of an empty stomach. Of course this is D&D (or whatever) so it may really be possible for him to convince the army to just go away.

I dunno, it depends a lot on the DM.

OldTrees1
2021-10-09, 01:41 PM
A paladin cannot rationally be obligated to help every person in need.

Agreed. Although I have not met a Paladin that cared about what they were obligated to do. I have only met Paladins that had opinions on how they should proceed with the morally supererogatory. Basically the Paladin chooses to demand more of themselves than they were obligated to do. That chosen additional demand of their selves varies from Paladin to Paladin.

There is plenty of distinction there between the most pessimistic (Do nothing, not even hand over rations and horsemeat) and the most optimistic(Fight the army even if they must do so alone).


On the resupply food front, I suspect the most practical answer is to ride to a nearby town with food and buy a lot. Then ride back to the first town. Handover the food, and the paladin's rations, and their horse for horsemeat (unless it is intelligent). Then either hunt (using martial training) if they can make a net improvement, or leave.

However my main point was "Yes, there are many responses different Paladins would have to this situation. The do absolutely nothing case is one of those responses."

You are right that it also depends on the DM. I recommend the DM and Paladin communicate if they are at risk of miscommunicating. Since Paladins can vary so dramatically, I also recommend the DM expect Paladins might vary.

tyckspoon
2021-10-09, 01:58 PM
On the resupply food front, I suspect the most practical answer is to ride to a nearby town with food and buy a lot. Then ride back to the first town. Handover the food, and the paladin's rations, and their horse for horsemeat (unless it is intelligent). Then either hunt (using martial training) if they can make a net improvement, or leave.


In this case the granary is the 'town with food' - the defensive forces have opted to try to starve the attacking ones, and in doing so have eliminated most of the current food supply and caused both the attacking forces and the locals (who for some reason have not evacuated with their food in the face of an approaching enemy..) to overburden the natural resources of the area. The reserve food is now under threat. The smart thing to do would have been to evacuate that food plus the local populace when it became clear the enemy army was approaching, or possibly disburse it to the defending army if you must leave the locals to fend for themselves.. but Paladin Fall Dilemmas aren't created by people doing smart things, so instead we have a vital strategic resource apparently left both unused and unguarded.

I would throw in one more argument for the case of 'do nothing': The hypothetical Paladin doesn't actually have the authority to make this decision. He is not bound to either side; he is not a legal authority nor a military commander for either army. He does not have any right to determine what to do with their food supply beyond "I'm a Paladin and I say so." So a possible approach would be to locate whoever is actually in charge of the granary and/or the military operations in the area, make sure they are fully informed about the situation, and assist in executing whatever decision they make if it is compatible with the Paladin's morals.

OldTrees1
2021-10-09, 02:21 PM
In this case the granary is the 'town with food' - the defensive forces have opted to try to starve the attacking ones, and in doing so have eliminated most of the current food supply and caused both the attacking forces and the locals (who for some reason have not evacuated with their food in the face of an approaching enemy..) to overburden the natural resources of the area. The reserve food is now under threat. The smart thing to do would have been to evacuate that food plus the local populace when it became clear the enemy army was approaching, or possibly disburse it to the defending army if you must leave the locals to fend for themselves.. but Paladin Fall Dilemmas aren't created by people doing smart things, so instead we have a vital strategic resource apparently left both unused and unguarded.

Context Disclaimer to avoid Miscommunication: Doing nothing is one of the valid responses I expect some Paladins to do.


I believe you are assuming more than the opening post specified. That is fine but if I have different assumptions I will reach different conclusions.

It is established the army is marching from city A to city B. The Paladin has no obligation to limit themselves to the army's path nor limit themselves to the army's deadlines. The Paladin could travel perpendicular to the armies path and find a town that is infeasible for the army to reach but is feasible for a single Paladin to reach.

Imagine there is a town where the detour costs the army 50 food but they can only take 30 food, but the detour only costs the Paladin 2 food and they can purchase/request 10 food. The Paladin could net 8 food for the town but the army would lose 20 food to deny the resource. If the situation is something like this then the Paladin could help some of the peasants survive.

The granary is the town's food. It is not the only town with food. A single rider can travel further on fewer rations than an army can march.

Pauly
2021-10-09, 02:39 PM
I fail to see why "destroying the granary" is an option considered in the OP. It benefits absolutely no one.
.

It benefits those citizens of the invaded country who haven’t been attacked by the invaders. The OP clearly states the invading army is heading to besiege a small city, which has considerably more people than the local peasants who need the food.

The local peasants are doomed without some kind of intervention. The invading army takes all the grain and the peasants starve. The invading army is already stealing all the food along its line of march and condemning the local peasantry to starvation.

The option of burning the granary doesn’t undoom the local peasants, but it will undoom the small city the army is marching to.

Psyren
2021-10-09, 03:41 PM
It benefits those citizens of the invaded country who haven’t been attacked by the invaders. The OP clearly states the invading army is heading to besiege a small city, which has considerably more people than the local peasants who need the food.

The local peasants are doomed without some kind of intervention. The invading army takes all the grain and the peasants starve. The invading army is already stealing all the food along its line of march and condemning the local peasantry to starvation.

The option of burning the granary doesn’t undoom the local peasants, but it will undoom the small city the army is marching to.

Definitely dooming a bunch of coerced soldiers and a bunch of definitely-innocent civilians in order to hypothetically protect a future set of civilians does not seem like the best course of action in this situation.

incrediblefrown
2021-10-09, 03:43 PM
If I were playing a character whose motivation is "I have to save as many lives as possible", and I felt compelled to intervene here somehow, then the play is to get the attacking army to give up on what has very obviously turned out to be a death march. The ideal solution is to convince the attacking leadership to negotiate terms of surrender that allows their troops to return home. (Which they'll probably need food for, since they're out and they've been travelling *further* away.)

This is probably a pretty hard sell for multiple reasons, though; this situation wouldn't exist if someone at the top wasn't letting pride or desperation cloud their better judgment, and since they're in no position to start a second siege even if they made it to their destination they're not in a good position to negotiate; but they might be able to swing it, since it's in the defenders' interest for the attackers to turn around and leave, rather than collapse on the spot and become a gigantic bandit problem.

If the attackers aren't receptive to the idea, you could try talking to the middle management among the rank and file and see about inciting a mutiny, which is a funny sentence to say about a hypothetical paladin, but if they're united enough in refusal to die pointlessly they could probably take the existing leadership captive, rather than coming to blows and killing them, and the possibility of avoiding blood spilled seems worth entertaining some unorthodox methods. That's the whole point of this exercise, after all.

If there's, somehow, not enough unrest to sway the attackers from their course, or if the defenders refuse to play ball, then...well, the situation just kind of sucks all around. If the viewpoint character feels completely neutral as to which side is better than the other, then the fact is that a lot of people are about to have a bad time and there's not a whole lot you can do about it. I personally would lean towards helping the locals evacuate or hide their resources, because even if they're "just doing their job" the attackers are still soldiers invading and trying to prop themselves up with plunder taken from civilians, but at the end of the day that's just pushing suffering numbers around on the page, not actually fixing anything.

Pauly
2021-10-09, 03:57 PM
Definitely dooming a bunch of coerced soldiers and a bunch of definitely-innocent civilians in order to hypothetically protect a future set of civilians does not seem like the best course of action in this situation.

Nothing hypothetical about the future civilians. The army is on the march to attack them. There is nothing in the scenario to suggest the defenders can or will do anything to prevent the army getting there. The only information offered in the scenario is that the army need the food to get to the city.

As for the co-erced soldiers, the fact remains they are burning, killing and starving civilians. The scenario as written depicts the soldiers as behaving in proper historical medieval like manner and unless explicitly stated otherwise I feel that is the valid working assumption.

Thrudd
2021-10-09, 04:02 PM
Why are we always constructing utterly contrived trolley problems, and why should it only be a paladins response we are worried about? Is a paladin, or any "lawful good" character for that matter, supposed to be some sort of perfect moral agent?

Realistically, one granary won't make that much difference to the army. It won't feed them through another entire siege, which they are on their way towards. It's likely meant to feed a small nearby community. A Lawful person won't destroy the granary because it is not lawfully their property and they've not been given a lawful order to do so. A good person who has no reason to want harm to come to any of the parties involved will probably simply not get involved, as they individually can't stop the wheels of war, and realistically can't save either the peasantry or the army from starvation. If the army wants the granary, one person or a small party can't stop them. If they destroy the granary, everyone starves anyway.
It's a sad situation, those who ordered and planned this attack are the culprits, botching the logistics like this, leading to thousands starving. Someone seeking to remedy this situation would need to convince the leaders of the army to give up their plans, at least for this season, and retreat or hunker down somewhere else. If they literally don't have enough food to go anywhere else without starvation, then I'd think they need to negotiate a way to ration the contents of the granary so both the locals and the army eat for at least a while, and in the meantime try to find another way to feed everyone, and hopefully negotiate an end to the war.
If these goals are out of reach, and starvation for some or all is inevitable, someone interested in the pursuit of "justice" would likely seek to identify those responsible for the war and hold them accountable in some way.

Psyren
2021-10-09, 04:08 PM
Nothing hypothetical about the future civilians. The army is on the march to attack them.

No, there are ton of hypotheticals here. Can warning be delivered to the future civilians? Can they be evacuated, or fortify? Could the army or its officers be negotiated with at any point between here and there? Could aid be mustered for their next target? Etc.

The primary concern should be the civilians (and potentially redeemable soldiers) at risk here and now.

Satinavian
2021-10-09, 04:14 PM
As for the co-erced soldiers, the fact remains they are burning, killing and starving civilians. The scenario as written depicts the soldiers as behaving in proper historical medieval like manner and unless explicitly stated otherwise I feel that is the valid working assumption.

As i already wrote, you have that wrong.

The defenders are the ones doing the burning, not the attackers. The defenders want to deny the attackers the option to use the harvest for supplies and so they burn everything on retreat. Yes, that means that the defending army does more harm to its citicens than the attacking one.

Also no one is killing people for no reason.


Just read the OP again.

Telwar
2021-10-09, 04:32 PM
In this situation, a foreign army has invaded, besieged and captured a small city, and the extended siege has left the army extremely low on provisions.

They are now marching cross-country with the intention of reaching another city, and along the way they are taking whatever food they can find from farmsteads and small towns. At this point they are perilously close to starvation. They have few clerics and cannot feed their numbers with magic. The countryside is already hunted out and there is no game.

The army’s scouts have located a granary which the surrounding countryside relies on as a fallback, and which will be vital for local folk to survive the coming winter—especially given the army’s depredations. To make things worse, the army of the defending realm is burning fields ahead of the invaders to deny them the current harvest.

The paladin knows that most of the invading force is made up of archers and men-at-arms who are simply following their lords’ commands, and apart from taking food they have conducted themselves with restraint.

The paladin owes no allegiance to any of the principals in the conflict, only his own conscience. In this situation, would he destroy the granary, knowing it would mean the starvation and slaughter of thousands of men who are honorably obeying their oaths? Or would he allow them to take it, knowing it might doom many of the local peasantry to starvation in the coming winter? Or would he feel compelled to find some other approach—and if so, what might that be?

If I were the paladin in this scenario, since I'm not beholden to any of the parties, I'd consider leaving. And this does reek of a trolley problem ethical issue, since the question specifically mentions a paladin and not literally any other class, if this also didn't happen to remind me of Napoleon's invasion of Russia.

Since I can't leave, and since I have no real bone in this fight with either attacker or defender, I'm not going to judge the attackers' leadership failure of pressing an under-supplied offensive, nor the defenders' legitimate use of a scorched-earth strategy (which is, admittedly, hard on the peasantry). Okay, I'm judging them a little.

My thought, organize the local peasantry to take the granary and then evacuate outside the invaders' foraging party range. This preserves as many of the peasants as possible, while denying supplies to the invaders, which should mean the defenders will be less likely to object.

Alternately, you could try to persuade the invaders to call off their invasion, so they won't lose the force to starvation and ambush. Or get defenders' buy-in and have them help evacuate the granary. However, either of those could get you pulled in more directly, which we'd rather not do.

False God
2021-10-09, 04:34 PM
As i already wrote, you have that wrong.

The defenders are the ones doing the burning, not the attackers. The defenders want to deny the attackers the option to use the harvest for supplies and so they burn everything on retreat. Yes, that means that the defending army does more harm to its citicens than the attacking one.

Also no one is killing people for no reason.


Just read the OP again.

I mean...in a relative sense that the invading army has to prioritize feeding itself rather than attacking. If the crops were left alone the attacking army would (presumably) be fed and fully able to prioritize attacking over feeding themselves.

If the defenders destroy the food, the civilians go hungry AND the invading army goes hungry.
If the invaders take the food, the civilians go hungry and the invading army is fed.

In either case, the civilians don't get food.

As as is true in all war, the civilians are always the ones who get the short end of the stick.

Mastikator
2021-10-09, 05:57 PM
As i already wrote, you have that wrong.

The defenders are the ones doing the burning, not the attackers. The defenders want to deny the attackers the option to use the harvest for supplies and so they burn everything on retreat. Yes, that means that the defending army does more harm to its citicens than the attacking one.

Also no one is killing people for no reason.


Just read the OP again.

The attackers take the food, the defenders starve.

The defenders destroy the food and starve. The attackers also starve.

Both options the defenders starve, unless there's third option that isn't based on pure speculation the defenders are doomed no matter what. The only choice they have is whether they want die by their own hands and also prevent the attackers to progress into the next area or get killed by the defenders.

This is not a matter of strategy or morals.

GeoffWatson
2021-10-09, 07:17 PM
The Paladin should try to convince the invading army to retreat. If they are starving, they won't have supplies for a siege, even with looting.

Rereading the OP - they've captured a city. Why haven't they taken food from there?
Why are they marching out to starve, rather than staying and securing the city?

Grim Portent
2021-10-09, 07:43 PM
Under the circumstances there isn't a lot the paladin could do except try to alleviate the suffering of the peasant's, unless they have a military obligation to the defending side in which case they should* destroy the granary to deny the enemy food, and then try to help the peasant's survive.

They can't stop an army by themselves, they probably can't persuade the army to stop pursuing their military goals, and if the invaders have a proper casus belli and a decent shot at winning the war it would be foolish to try.


The defending army is using a legitimate strategy by taking all the food they can and destroying the rest as they retreat, they're just also being callous towards the peasantry they are nominally supposed to protect by leaving them to fend for themselves or starve. A paladin would have good cause to consider this cowardly and cruel and try to prevent it, but they'd be unlikely to achieve anything and so are better off trying to help the peasants by helping them travel elsewhere or by bringing food to them.

The invaders are presumably trying to press an advantage and strike deeper into the defending realm, so holding back for the possible years it will take for the land to recover enough for them to advance without making the famine the defender's have caused worse is unreasonable. A medieval army generally had to resupply as they travelled, which meant taking or buying food from local communities, hunting, fishing and foraging. The defender's have left them with only the option to take food by force, and under the circumstances even if the leaders of the army don't approve of such actions it's going to happen anyway as groups of soldiers take provisions from peasant communities on their own initiative. The only ethical course of action the invaders actually have is to try and fortify and hold the land they've already conquered rather than press on through famine, but that's not necessarily a practical course of action so I can't really blame them for pressing on.


*From a military perspective.

Pauly
2021-10-09, 08:36 PM
Rereading the OP - they've captured a city. Why haven't they taken food from there?
Why are they marching out to starve, rather than staying and securing the city?

It took them longer to capture the city than expected. They burned through their own supplies in the siege and the city was eating its own supplies. In gaming terms they thought they would go through 100 units of supply and captured 200 for a net +100 supply points. Instead they went through 200 and captured 100 for a net -100 supply points.

Berenger
2021-10-09, 09:34 PM
Ask the invading commander to make an oath to abandon the invasion (at least for the remainder of this year, more might be unreasonable and too much in conflict with his other duties) and take his troops home, in exchange for enough supplies to survive the march back across the border. Threaten to take away the supplies or, if unable to do so, put them to the torch if the invaders get in reach to capture them. If the commander declines, leak the offer to the enemy rank and file so they have a fair chance to mutiny and replace the commander. This runs the risks that the enemy army splits into several independent bands of deserters or marauders, which would be good from a military standpoint but bad for the peasants on which such bands would have to prey, so it is a less desirable fallback option. If the invading force chooses to reject the offer, follow though on your threat. Tell the local populace to take with them whatever they can carry on their way to the next fortified city or hiding place and burn the rest.

Pauly
2021-10-10, 04:23 AM
As i already wrote, you have that wrong.

The defenders are the ones doing the burning, not the attackers. The defenders want to deny the attackers the option to use the harvest for supplies and so they burn everything on retreat. Yes, that means that the defending army does more harm to its citicens than the attacking one.

Also no one is killing people for no reason.


Just read the OP again.

The OP states that the attacking army besieged a city then took it after a linger than expected siege. In any pre-modern warfare setting that pretty well guarantees the city was sacked and burned. Maybe not burned to the ground, but there would have been plenty of recreational arson by the attackers, especially if they had to storm the city.
As for foraging for supplies in a hostile country, the standard operating practice in pre-modern warfare is for the farms be burned after looting. This becomes stronger if the attacking army is not expecting to hold that territory.
Unless explicitly stated otherwise I think that it is perfectly valid to assume that the attacker behaves in a manner consistent with how armies have behaved historically.

The assumption that no one is killing people for no reason is a pretty big one. There are plenty of reasons for the attackers to be killing civilians. Reasons can include, but are not limited to
- The attackers are evil.
- the attackers are committing what they perceive to be acts of revenge
- the local populace is unwilling to hand over their valuables and need to be forcefully persuaded.
- as a strategy of deliberate genocide.
- to make the area less viable for production for the defenders once the attackers leave.
- by committing atrocities they hope to make the rest of the population compliant through fear.

Satinavian
2021-10-10, 04:48 AM
Unless explicitly stated otherwise I think that it is perfectly valid to assume that the attacker behaves in a manner consistent with how armies have behaved historically.The OP indeed explicitely stated that the soldiers behaved aside from the foraging. I even quoted the part.
If you can't believe that a regular army does not commit atrocities everywhere all the time, then you have to assume that the invading army is mostly good aligned. I personally think there are many other plausible reasons considering the fact that we don't know anything about this war, the casus belli, the history of the participants or what the various sides want to achieve.

Either way, the scenario does not include unnecessary burning and murdering by the invaders and the paladin is said to have no real opinion about the conflict, inferring that the attackers winning is not a discernably worse outcome than them losing on the gand scale of good and evil. So he can't really be motivated to defend the town the invaders are headed to.

Thrudd
2021-10-10, 06:42 AM
If the paladin has no reason to support or oppose either army's cause, and assuming they are also a knight (read:elite class) familiar with how war and siege is conducted and participate in similar operations from time to time, then the paladin would probably not get involved. One army starving out the other until someone retreats or surrenders is a normal thing, and a single knight wouldn't expect to be able to prevent this. They would also be used to seeing peasants suffer and starve under these situations and likely would consider this unfortunate but necessary collateral damage that occurs in the conduct of a warrior's duty. Of course, if we're at the point that the defenders are ready to burn whatever can't be carried or harvested, most of the peasants have probably already been brought into the keep/city, taking as many supplies with them as they could carry. You don't want to lose too many farmers, after all, or next year will be even worse.

So, it really depends on the setting. Since this one sounds like it's leaning closer to realistic ancient warfare, I'd say that yes, a paladin would participate in denying food to an army, if they were participants in the war. It would be their duty as knights sworn to the realm. Therefore, as a neutral party they likely would not find the practice unjust and not try to stop either side from performing their own duty. To intervene in any way would necessarily be declaring for one side or the other, in which case the right thing to do is to help your declared side succeed, which often involves starving the other guys more than they can starve you, until they give up.

Death is cheap in the ancient/medieval world. People dying of starvation and disease by droves is common. If we aren't assuming extremely common divine magic being able to feed large numbers of people and to cure diseases, making the conduct of sieges basically impossible, then we must assume professional warrior orders like paladins are accustomed to the price of war and don't consider it evil or unlawful to perform the duties of their profession.

They might find it dishonorable to engage in a one-on-one duel with someone that is weakened by starvation or to let an individual enemy starve rather than facing them. But the paladin could not reasonably expect others to abide by their own code of honor, being aware of the realities of world outside their own order. They help neither invader nor defender and go about whatever quest or duty they are already sworn to.

GeoffWatson
2021-10-10, 07:45 AM
Even if they aren't directly killing people by violence, stealing all the food will indirectly kill them, so I don't get why the OP is trying to portray the invaders as "not that bad".

I guess everyone in the city they sieged is dead? Or about to die from starvation?

Palanan
2021-10-10, 01:51 PM
Thanks to those who engaged with the premise and offered thoughtful replies. Based on some of the comments, I can see that I should have clarified a couple of points in the OP.

First, the siege of the first city ended in a surrender and the expulsion, but not slaughter, of the original defenders. The army left a small garrison to hold the city before marching on.

They are heading towards the second city not to besiege it, but to depart for home. The second city is in fact already held by the invaders, so all they need to do is make it to the gates.

As far as the paladin’s involvement, this isn’t designed with any specific outcome in mind where the paladin’s personal state is concerned. The question grew naturally out of a particular situation and I’m interested in the range of possible responses.




Originally Posted by incrediblefrown
…this situation wouldn't exist if someone at the top wasn't letting pride or desperation cloud their better judgment.…

Exactly the case here.


Originally Posted by Pauly
As for the co-erced soldiers, the fact remains they are burning, killing and starving civilians.


Originally Posted by Satinavian
The OP indeed explicitely stated that the soldiers behaved aside from the foraging.

Satinavian is correct here. The invaders aren’t burning and killing anyone.


Originally Posted by Pauly
In any pre-modern warfare setting that pretty well guarantees the city was sacked and burned.

Not always, and not in this case.

Lord Raziere
2021-10-10, 03:12 PM
Thanks to those who engaged with the premise and offered thoughtful replies. Based on some of the comments, I can see that I should have clarified a couple of points in the OP.

First, the siege of the first city ended in a surrender and the expulsion, but not slaughter, of the original defenders. The army left a small garrison to hold the city before marching on.

They are heading towards the second city not to besiege it, but to depart for home. The second city is in fact already held by the invaders, so all they need to do is make it to the gates.

As far as the paladin’s involvement, this isn’t designed with any specific outcome in mind where the paladin’s personal state is concerned. The question grew naturally out of a particular situation and I’m interested in the range of possible responses.


Then I don't see why they need to act at all. War is war, and a paladin no matter how good and righteous can't shoulder the burdens of all the world. If the invaders made the mistake of leaving enough of the defenders alive to burn the fields to starve them out in retaliation, that's their problem. If they can't get home in time because they were busy ruining other peoples lives by invading them no matter how "honorably", that is their problem. Their discipline is commendable but they are still invaders, and they still left themselves open to this. If I were the paladin I'd shrug and go find a demon or undead to slay- there are more important things to worry about than the plight of attackers occupying someone's elses land having to deal with irregular warfare tactics proven to be effective at resisting against them.

incrediblefrown
2021-10-10, 08:49 PM
So the invaders pushed their luck with an attack, and it "worked", but now the counterattack is threatening to rout them? Hm.

Well, if the captured city is still held by a force, even if it's a token one, that actually makes the "tell them to surrender" plan a little more feasable; they have something to offer now. Ceding the captured city without a fuss in exchange for enough rations to finish retreating without making even more of a mess is much less of a longshot. Unfortunately, if it's not as obvious to the invaders left at the front that they're trapped, it does make it a harder sell to *them*. Am I right in assuming the heart of the problem on this front is that there's a percentage of the invaders who think they're winning, unaware that they're now trapped?


Then I don't see why they need to act at all.

With the extra context, I think the problem is less "what to do about war as an institution" and more "is there something a single paladin could do to keep this village from being a casualty as this force rolls through?".

KineticDiplomat
2021-10-10, 09:56 PM
The paladin isn't forced into a decision about the means until he has a stake in the ends. Which is fine, since both the chevauachee and scorched earth are tools of the age. Admittedly the defenders here are probably mechanically more "evil" - scorching your own earth in agricultural age really does mean sabotaging the wealth and power of your elites in that area (pretty evil) and consigning the local people to famine ( pretty much not evil by real world standards - they're peasants and therefore don't weigh that heavily ethically in the medieval milieu, but D&D 21st century mores transported back in time might differ), but the means in themselves are hardly worth noting.

The ethics of the war itself though, that's going to be the defining feature. If the attackers have a more legitimate claim to the land than the defenders, then the good/just/lawful action for the Paladin is to make sure that the attackers successfully seize the granary. Unfortunate that the peasants starve and die, but they are the cost of an illegitimate regime burning its own land. Can't be responsible for the actions of the Evil defenders who obviously picked the wrong successor or are holding the land contrary to the express intent of oath and law. Flip it around for the other side. And of course since the legitimacy of a claim of this type is mostly going to be in the eye of the beholder....the paladin cab kill or starve whoever he wants and not be evil provided it was done for martial purposes. Which it was, of course.

Reversefigure4
2021-10-10, 11:24 PM
A Paladin of indeterminate level, caught up in the middle of a war where they have no commitment or involvement with either side? In a war whether neither army has an unjust motivation? They probably do the same thing any other Good-ish party does. They probably take a suitable sized wagon train of civilians who want to leave, take enough food for them, and exit the area. If they are particularly silver-tongued or politically connected, maybe they try to reach a peace between the two irate lords, depending on the reasons for the war.

Without any more details, the question is pretty broad.

Very few people would argue the Paladin can't fight an invading army and kill the soldiers with force, so there's not really an issue with killing them with starvation - it's not torture (which would be problematic for a Paladin) if they can simply leave again. But a Paladin by themselves is unlikely to be able to cut off an army's food source entirely any more than they can personally kill them all.

False God
2021-10-10, 11:25 PM
Has the paladin considered fomenting a revolution among the peasantry, encouraging them to ally with the invaders against their home nation?

The invading army would meet less resistance, would be more readily supplied, and be able to pick up some generally useful people along the way, if not reinforcements, then at least some general logistical support, allowing the peasants to forage for supplies while the army focuses on the invasion.

ahyangyi
2021-10-11, 07:42 AM
My solution:
* bring most of the foods, but also offer the local peasantry the opportunity to march along with the army and get a ration. Sure, this brings lots if trouble, but it's at least worth considering.
* leave enough food to sustain until the planned return date of the army. If there's no planned return, then make this clear to the people ("we are leaving here and we don't plan retaking it in the near future").
* if there are more food than the army can reasonably carry and the "enough food to sustain remaining people" combined, then burn the surplus to deny them to the invading army.

There's no reason to make extra consideration for the invading army. They already have the easy and reasonable option of not invading. They not taking that easy and reasonable option is not your problem.

Unless, of course, the invading army is much better than the current kingdom, so that it is somehow morally wrong to continue defending...

Berenger
2021-10-11, 09:39 AM
There's no reason to make extra consideration for the invading army. They already have the easy and reasonable option of not invading. They not taking that easy and reasonable option is not your problem.

Any given individual man-at-arms in the invading army has certainly no easy and reasonable option of not invading because that would make him an oath breaker and a mutineer or deserter, a crime typically punishable by death even in non-evil armies (and quite possibly leading to repercussions against his kin, which may be required to pay a hefty fine or send another man to war in the deserters stead). Their commander may have the option of not invading, depending on whether he is acting mostly on his own initiative or on strict orders from the king.

Telwar
2021-10-11, 11:52 AM
Any given individual man-at-arms in the invading army has certainly no easy and reasonable option of not invading because that would make him an oath breaker and a mutineer or deserter, a crime typically punishable by death even in non-evil armies (and quite possibly leading to repercussions against his kin, which may be required to pay a hefty fine or send another man to war in the deserters stead). Their commander may have the option of not invading, depending on whether he is acting mostly on his own initiative or on strict orders from the king.

They still knew the consequences of their oaths/terms of enlistment, though. And it's not like they didn't have the option of not showing up...the consequences might be severe, but they had a choice*. Those are really not going to be of concern to a paladin who had no ties to either side.

* - Heh, talking about choice for notional NPCs.


...Hrm. Since it's been clarified that City # 2 is the point of invasion, I have another question. Whose land is the granary on?

Slipjig
2021-10-11, 12:39 PM
I'm going to say that it depends on what deity or ethos the paladin is sworn to. Paladins are Holy WARRIORS, and killing people is usually part of their job description.
Destroying strategic assets to deny them to the enemy is part of warfare. Also, I'm not clear why the paladin would even be getting involved. The setup seems to be going out of it's way to make this most polite invading army in history, to create a situation where anybody dying is unacceptable.

If the DM is playing, "Guess which action will make you fall", then don't play a paladin in that DM's game. Moral quandries are fine, but if there isn't a clearly Good option available, paladins shouldn't be penalized for picking the least-bad option. Or if picking the least-bad option results in a fall anyway, tear up your character sheet at the table and say, "Okay, my character commits suicide because he realizes the diety he dedicated his life to is a complete azzhat. My new character will be Rumbleguts McStabbyface, a Chaotic Evil Dwarven barbarian who thinks that there is no problem that cannot be solved with a sufficient quantity of 'killin' fools'."

Berenger
2021-10-11, 02:46 PM
They still knew the consequences of their oaths/terms of enlistment, though. And it's not like they didn't have the option of not showing up...the consequences might be severe, but they had a choice*. Those are really not going to be of concern to a paladin who had no ties to either side.

That's just not how medieval armies work.

Telwar
2021-10-11, 03:10 PM
That's just not how medieval armies work.

That it wasn't an easy or reasonable choice is still a choice to show up. And I cannot believe that, in all of history, feudal lords calling on their vassals never had significantly fewer vassals answer their call than expected.

But to expand on my point, that the (retreating) army is made of up men who are fulfilling oaths had no real bearing on the PC's response, since that's to be generally expected of a feudal system. A band of orcs, trolls, hobgoblins, or gnomes burninating, pillaging, etc through the countryside could also be following their oaths to *their* feudal lord. Should we respect them for that? No, it's behavior we should look to.

At most, the (retreating) invaders seek to be behaving themselves, which means they aren't going to antagonize the PC paladin into deciding to intervene against them. Were they actively hunting peasants and committing war crimes more serious than the usual "take the peasants' food," then the PC paladin may well ve right in deciding to deal with them as enemies.

icefractal
2021-10-11, 05:23 PM
I'm assuming the Paladin can't single-handedly stop the invading army. In that case, offer to evacuate as many peasants with you as you can (probably not many), and/or get food elsewhere and bring it back (no guarantee how much is available / transportable). Not great options, but they seem like the best available.

If the peasants want to burn the grain to deny it to the army, they're capable of doing so themselves; it's not a decision for the Paladin to make. If they instead want to hide some of it, they're going to be better at that than the Paladin is.

There's one route where it'd make sense to stick around - if the peasants want to hide some of the food and pretend the rest is all there is, then the Paladin's presence might make the army leadership more likely to accept that and less likely to interrogate people. This does mean lying (or at least supporting a lie) for the greater good, so it depends on how important that is to the particular Paladin's code (and how convincing they are).

False God
2021-10-11, 07:22 PM
That it wasn't an easy or reasonable choice is still a choice to show up. And I cannot believe that, in all of history, feudal lords calling on their vassals never had significantly fewer vassals answer their call than expected.

But to expand on my point, that the (retreating) army is made of up men who are fulfilling oaths had no real bearing on the PC's response, since that's to be generally expected of a feudal system. A band of orcs, trolls, hobgoblins, or gnomes burninating, pillaging, etc through the countryside could also be following their oaths to *their* feudal lord. Should we respect them for that? No, it's behavior we should look to.

At most, the (retreating) invaders seek to be behaving themselves, which means they aren't going to antagonize the PC paladin into deciding to intervene against them. Were they actively hunting peasants and committing war crimes more serious than the usual "take the peasants' food," then the PC paladin may well ve right in deciding to deal with them as enemies.

Typically speaking "Do X or die." is the definition of a false choice logical fallacy.

To be a choice there has to be a real, viable alternative.

If your Lord says "Do X or die." you were not given a choice. You were given a threat.

Witty Username
2021-10-11, 09:01 PM
This sounds like a prime directive situation.

ahyangyi
2021-10-12, 06:38 AM
Any given individual man-at-arms in the invading army has certainly no easy and reasonable option of not invading because that would make him an oath breaker and a mutineer or deserter, a crime typically punishable by death even in non-evil armies (and quite possibly leading to repercussions against his kin, which may be required to pay a hefty fine or send another man to war in the deserters stead). Their commander may have the option of not invading, depending on whether he is acting mostly on his own initiative or on strict orders from the king.

They are pointing their swords at you (or your army). Not killing them means they get to kill more troops in your army, so there is no net benefit. And considering that they probably have an evil overlord somewhere in the command chain, and you don't, letting them overrun you is probably a very bad idea.

Further, consider these situations:

You are a Paladin but you are now wrongly accused. Now you either fight the lawful good people who come to arrest you or you die.
You are a Paladin but an unaligned Tiger pounds at you.
You are a Paladin, and you are captured and thrown in an arena. You have to kill the innocent gladiator to survive.


I would argue that "fighting" is not an evil act in all situations above, though a very devout Paladin might want to consider (or pray for) other options.

Berenger
2021-10-12, 07:06 AM
They are pointing their swords at you (or your army). Not killing them means they get to kill more troops in your army, so there is no net benefit. And considering that they probably have an evil overlord somewhere in the command chain, and you don't, letting them overrun you is probably a very bad idea.

That's neither the scenario described by Palanan nor the solution described by me, so... I don't get your point?

ahyangyi
2021-10-12, 07:11 AM
I see where I misunderstood it, oops.

Vahnavoi
2021-10-12, 07:22 AM
I see two possible courses of actions that sound better than merely allowing the invaders take it or letting the granary be destroyed. However, neither can be said to be high percentage strategy, so destroying the granary remains the worst-case backup plan.

First plan: stage destruction of the granary (f.ex. put up a fire which makes lots of smoke to make it look like the place has been set on fire), making the invading army give up on pursuing it. Evacuate granary supplies and distribute them amongst local populace.

Second plan: use the granary as leverage to compel retreat on part of the invaders. Basically, if they agree to the Paladin's terms, they get to take the granary, if not, the place goes up in flames. This sounds like it might work, since the invaders sound ready to retreat already.

The chief issue here is that the Paladin would have to take command of the defenders' operation, which might be infeasible if they have no existing ties with the defending military.

As a wildcard, if the nations at war are both lead by Lawful Good rulers, there's non-zero chance the Paladin would do his best by helping the invading army take the granary.

KineticDiplomat
2021-10-12, 06:54 PM
Just to reiterate, many people are inherently assuming that the invader is wrong by default. That simply isn't true even in the modern world, and in the age before nation states "war" blurs a lot of lines - crime, dispute resolution, contract enforcement, legal recompense, really anything that might involve violence between people or organizations of note. If the defender decided not pay back a large debt, the attacker doesn't have a way to get it short of war. If the defender promised estates as part of a dowry but then doesn't deliver...well, only one way to get it. The King of the defenders had thr attackers brother posoined...war. A coterie of defenders usurped the throne from your brother because it's better to be on the throne than beneath it...war.. You get the idea. In a world of disparate and powerful leaders where everyone can hold up for months or years behind their own walls, war is often going to be the only form of justice, and the aggrieved will be the one forced onto the offense.

Of course, it can also be sheer bloody minded conquest and pillage. And the strategic defender might conduct offensive campaigns and vice versa. So...saying a foreign invader carries virtually no moral weight. Especially when someone from the next county is lookin pretty foreign to a peasant and a noble may have estates under multiple crowns

Lord Raziere
2021-10-12, 07:25 PM
Just to reiterate, many people are inherently assuming that the invader is wrong by default. That simply isn't true even in the modern world, and in the age before nation states "war" blurs a lot of lines - crime, dispute resolution, contract enforcement, legal recompense, really anything that might involve violence between people or organizations of note. If the defender decided not pay back a large debt, the attacker doesn't have a way to get it short of war. If the defender promised estates as part of a dowry but then doesn't deliver...well, only one way to get it. The King of the defenders had thr attackers brother posoined...war. A coterie of defenders usurped the throne from your brother because it's better to be on the throne than beneath it...war.. You get the idea. In a world of disparate and powerful leaders where everyone can hold up for months or years behind their own walls, war is often going to be the only form of justice, and the aggrieved will be the one forced onto the offense.

Of course, it can also be sheer bloody minded conquest and pillage. And the strategic defender might conduct offensive campaigns and vice versa. So...saying a foreign invader carries virtually no moral weight. Especially when someone from the next county is lookin pretty foreign to a peasant and a noble may have estates under multiple crowns

Does comments like these actually help this discussion at all though?

All your doing is trying to sow doubt and uncertainty when a judgment call needs to be made. Blurring the lines of morality is great for pontificating philosophical discussion where you gaze at navels, but actual decision-making needs to prioritize what you value and what you don't, not further making the decision overly complex and becoming lost in all the possibilities. We have not been detailed as to the wider state of these two kingdoms. I doubt most GMs or people are as interested in perfectly simulating the possibilities you have detailed. In all probability it really is that simple because the GM doesn't have time to make it much more complex than it already is.

All you've really convinced me is that the system you detailed is horrible even more because it encourages war and that it shouldn't be done. And that the paladin just shouldn't get involved in something so petty when they have more important matters to attend to. While all the people going with the defenders have the right idea: after all, the peasants don't have anything to do with what some dumb lords and nobles think is right to get into a war over, no matter what a government is doing, the peasants don't really deserve that, and those peasants are the ones on the land. while the invaders....its their fight to lose. they can't hold a nation they're invading, that is their fault regardless of their rightness of their cause.

KineticDiplomat
2021-10-12, 10:26 PM
Well, since asking a forum "what is good" is clearly a thought experiment even within the confines of fictional games, let alone that how 10 cents of real world money is spent has infinitely more moral weight than any answer here (we could get meta with that, eh?) Navel gazing is kind of the name of the thing.

With that in mind, yes, who is right is utterly important.

D&D has very few jus in Bello restrictions. Gas em, burn em, stab em, throwem into a pocket dimension that would qualify as hell after you give them the plague...doesn't matter. So starvation as a weapon hardly registers. Especially for someone whose profession is committing sanctioned murder on behalf of their ideology and personal relationship with a deity, and is empowered to murder better if they are more adherent.

Jus ad bellum is a different matter. (Yes, I know, post dated theory to the medieval period, whatever). If someone here is gonna die in the name of Good, it should presumably be the Bad Guys TM. And if we established that invading doesn't make you the Bad Guys, then you see the problem.

Now, the 21st century semi-marxist cop out is to save the Poor Peasants. The peasants are in a social contract with the lords and nobs. They basically agree that in return for protection and order they'll provide the nobility with taxes, support, and possibly a fyrd. If they don't they are going to die to brigands, other warlords, wandering members of the warrior caste, and in D&F umpteen other dangers. If they somehow manage to remain independent, the laws of biology and minimal excess productivity quickly reform a small warrior caste that you need to support in return for protection...and they're going to have to resort to war for justice.

You could argue "but they have no real choice", but since they have about as much real choice as the attackers and since people seem eager to condemn them, the peasants don't get a by. They could, after all, have just done the Right Thing...whatever that means.

And of course, unless the paladin is going to stay with them as their permanent guardian (and end up fighting wars for the same reasons as anyone else), he has personally made sure they're going to be in a tight spot when whoever the new master of the place has a bone to pick with what they did...

So yeah, jud ad bellum matters.

Lord Raziere
2021-10-12, 10:36 PM
Well, since asking a forum "what is good" is clearly a thought experiment even within the confines of fictional games, let alone that how 10 cents of real world money is spent has infinitely more moral weight than any answer here (we could get meta with that, eh?) Navel gazing is kind of the name of the thing.

With that in mind, yes, who is right is utterly important.

D&D has very few jus in Bello restrictions. Gas em, burn em, stab em, throwem into a pocket dimension that would qualify as hell after you give them the plague...doesn't matter. So starvation as a weapon hardly registers. Especially for someone whose profession is committing sanctioned murder on behalf of their ideology and personal relationship with a deity, and is empowered to murder better if they are more adherent.

Jus ad bellum is a different matter. (Yes, I know, post dated theory to the medieval period, whatever). If someone here is gonna die in the name of Good, it should presumably be the Bad Guys TM. And if we established that invading doesn't make you the Bad Guys, then you see the problem.

Now, the 21st century semi-marxist cop out is to save the Poor Peasants. The peasants are in a social contract with the lords and nobs. They basically agree that in return for protection and order they'll provide the nobility with taxes, support, and possibly a fyrd. If they don't they are going to die to brigands, other warlords, wandering members of the warrior caste, and in D&F umpteen other dangers. If they somehow manage to remain independent, the laws of biology and minimal excess productivity quickly reform a small warrior caste that you need to support in return for protection...and they're going to have to resort to war for justice.

You could argue "but they have no real choice", but since they have about as much real choice as the attackers and since people seem eager to condemn them, the peasants don't get a by. They could, after all, have just done the Right Thing...whatever that means.

And of course, unless the paladin is going to stay with them as their permanent guardian (and end up fighting wars for the same reasons as anyone else), he has personally made sure they're going to be in a tight spot when whoever the new master of the place has a bone to pick with what they did...

So yeah, jud ad bellum matters.

Ah yes, "just war" a contradiction in terms. all your trying to do is make this uncertain for no reason.

therefore in a uncertain world, we can't assume anyone is right. the rulers are probably doing nothing more than fighting over who gets to be powerful and using whatever "just reason" they can conjure up to excuse their actions. if all is a matter of opinion and what people perceive as correct, the only constant becomes power, what your willing to do it and what you can enforce with it. There is no reason to support what is essentially petty power struggles of people more concerned about birthright and glory than taking care of their people properly. who is right isn't important at all, because there is no way to tell, and its safer to assume that they just want power.

Berenger
2021-10-13, 04:55 AM
Ah yes, "just war" a contradiction in terms. all your trying to do is make this uncertain for no reason.

therefore in a uncertain world, we can't assume anyone is right. the rulers are probably doing nothing more than fighting over who gets to be powerful and using whatever "just reason" they can conjure up to excuse their actions. if all is a matter of opinion and what people perceive as correct, the only constant becomes power, what your willing to do it and what you can enforce with it. There is no reason to support what is essentially petty power struggles of people more concerned about birthright and glory than taking care of their people properly. who is right isn't important at all, because there is no way to tell, and its safer to assume that they just want power.

KineticDiplomatic does this for a very good reason. Any answer that neglects to examine the context of the game world and chooses not to care about inherent ambivalence will inevitably be sloppy, handwavy and without much value for anything but a "nothing matters, just have some action" beer and pretzels game. An aversion to uncertainty and a general unwillingness to even consider the perspective of all actors isn't very helpful for drawing fair conclusions concerning a complex situation.

Morgaln
2021-10-13, 05:11 AM
Every paladin is different, so there isn't one blanket fits all answer. Here's how a paladin played by me would likely go about it:

There isn't enough food to feed both armies and the peasants, so a decision needs to be made what happens with the food. Legally, the food belongs to the peasants, so they have a legitimate claim. The peasants are also the ones least to blame for the food shortage situation and likely can't stand up to either army, so they qualify as both innocent and helpless. If you want to express this as D&D alignment, it's both lawful and good to let the peasants keep their food.
Neither army is likely to agree with that, though. You can't really blame them either, they are getting desperate after all. So my paladin would likely try to get the peasants to take as much of the food as they can, leave the village and hide somewhere until the armies have passed. He'd certainly help and protect them during that time.

Lord Raziere
2021-10-13, 06:44 AM
KineticDiplomatic does this for a very good reason. Any answer that neglects to examine the context of the game world and chooses not to care about inherent ambivalence will inevitably be sloppy, handwavy and without much value for anything but a "nothing matters, just have some action" beer and pretzels game. An aversion to uncertainty and a general unwillingness to even consider the perspective of all actors isn't very helpful for drawing fair conclusions concerning a complex situation.

I am, and was, recommending the easy way out for a paladin's morality: don't get too involved, because the paladins mission is higher than any one nation or war- they are are warriors against evil itself fighting for the universal good, not the arbiter of all peoples problems. A dispute between nations over who wronged who first probably perpetuated by both its nobles just to get more power is petty in comparison. Until one or both of them inevitably summons demons or starts raising zombies to fight, they are not a concern-especially when its nations they hold no allegiance to. That is the advice I stand by, because I doubt any self-respecting paladin would listen to the advice of "go slay the gods, they caused all in this first place". Why consider the perspectives when you don't need to? a Paladin doesn't operate in the grey areas, they operate in the black and white extremes. Leave the grey conundrum behind or let a more morally flexible party member handle it. Sometimes the best solution isn't something the most moral person can do.

That and any judgment the paladin could make is inherently flawed and arbitrary and probably not fully considering the situation in its entirety, no matter how good of a paladin they are. and if people arbitrarily decide the peasants and defenders are the ones in the right- its no different than any other moral judgment then is it? Because trying to consider the full situation is impossible, and there are only so many viable solutions the wider politics really have nothing to do with if we don't get further information. And no amount of further consideration will change it to be a better moral judgment, because there is no better moral judgment by subjective logic.

Unless of course the paladin can just ask the angels/their god for advice, because in that situation morality is objective, angels know what to do, listen to them, no need to consider multiple perspectives, the shiny white halos and pretty golden lights will tell you. Last refuge of the Paladin: kick the problem upstairs and wait for a reply.

Saint-Just
2021-10-13, 09:19 AM
In the most generic possible setting I'd say paladin does nothing - not because it is just or good that the invading army gets the grain (and local people still starve - there is no obvious way to ensure their survival), but because it's not paladin's duty to stop that.

Let me elaborate. To get pseudo-medieval politics I by default assume that some wars are seen as just, and not every military aggression is a ground for immediate pile-on by every polity willing to do so. To get pseudo-medieval warfare I assume that denial of supplies to the enemy is acceptable even if it results in your own population starving. It is possible to imagine the world where either one or both of the above are seen as being against the law of nations or disallowed by a powerful international church to which the paladin belongs, in which case paladin has cause to punish the transgressor and possibly help their enemy, but it is not a default assumption. but in absence of that specific information it's not the paladin's job to stop the war, especially if there is no way to do it without obviously favoring one side or the other. If wars demanded from every paladin to intervene there would be either no wars or no paladins - and that is not a default assumption.

Slightly harder for me is to answer whether a paladin who is already affiliated with the defender can destroy the granary without falling.

Berenger
2021-10-13, 09:50 AM
I agree that fighting ungodly threats like undead and demons should be a top priority to paladins. If there was a necromancer busy digging up the war graves and creating a third, undead, army or a portal to hell slowly cracking open in a nearby cave, the paladin should totally take care of that first. But those are absent from the described scenario and I disagree with the idea that a paladin shouldn't help to deal with 'mere mortal' problems when there is an opportunity to do so and no more pressing need prevents it. If paladins were only meant to be slayers of devils and ghouls that can not or should not be reasoned with, they wouldn't be trained in Diplomacy, Sense Motive or Knowledge (nobility and royalty).

Anyway. If the talk about ambivalence and perspective is too esoteric for your tastes, the point I was trying to make was the following: I take exception to the view of several posters that basically boils down to "being a member of an army that happens to go on the offensive makes you such a horrible bad guy, an epitome of Good should literally not even think about saving your unworthy life from death by starvation even if it would do no actual harm to anybody else".

Saint-Just
2021-10-13, 11:26 AM
I disagree with the idea that a paladin shouldn't help to deal with 'mere mortal' problems when there is an opportunity to do so and no more pressing need prevents it. If paladins were only meant to be slayers of devils and ghouls that can not or should not be reasoned with, they wouldn't be trained in Diplomacy, Sense Motive or Knowledge (nobility and royalty).

I would expect paladins (at least those who are unaffiliated with a state) being either impartial peacekeepers, or enforcers of international/religious norms. Destroying the granary is not the first and we don't know who if any has violated the norms.

KorvinStarmast
2021-10-13, 02:56 PM
In this situation, would he destroy the granary, knowing it would mean the starvation and slaughter of thousands of men who are honorably obeying their oaths? Or would he allow them to take it, knowing it might doom many of the local peasantry to starvation in the coming winter? Or would he feel compelled to find some other approach—and if so, what might that be? These kinds of weak thought experiments are what give philosophy a bad name.

A paladin does not exist in a vacuum.
What connection does this paladin have to the people for whom that grain means getting through the winter? That is where the answer to your question begins. I'd guess that most paladins would not destroy the food since that dooms Both sets of people to hunger/famine/starvation.

It is also utterly irrelevant that the army is 'just following orders' and trying to get where their commander needs them to be (and they need grub to have the energy to get there - marching to war burns a lot of calories).
The Onus Is On The Commander Of The Army to feed his Men.

That is the answer to your question. In other words, your question, as posed, is wrongly framed.

An invading army that is picking the country side clean is a threat to those people for whom that grain is intended. If the relationship betwene the Paladin and that population is that of allies, I'd guess that most RPG paladins would first negotiate with the army's commander (or try to) to get them to leave the grain alone, and failing that would fight them, or make them 'go around' by whatever means he could - guerilla warfare being one such expedient that may or may not conform to that paladin's oath.

Since you did not offer specifics for that paladins' oath, not enough information to answer beyond that.

(And FWIW, the scenario you offer is a not wholly inaccurate reflection of how the scourge of war brought strife and starvation to communities all over the world for centuries untold before the railroad and reliable maritime transport allowed armies to be supplied from the strategic rear).

tyckspoon
2021-10-13, 03:29 PM
The Onus Is On The Commander Of The Army to feed his Men.
An invading army that is picking the country side clean is a threat to those people for whom that grain is intended. If the relationship betwene the Paladin and that population is that of allies, I'd guess that most RPG paladins would first negotiate with the army's commander (or try to) to get them to leave the grain alone, and failing that would fight them, or make them 'go around' by whatever means he could - guerilla warfare being one such expedient that may or may not conform to that paladin's oath.


While I agree the hypothetical Paladin in this situation does not need to be responsible for the well being of the invading army (and should probably be mostly concerned about the well being of the local populace, as those are the people who are being most negatively affected by something they have no agency in...) I'm actually kind of leaning toward 'help the army take the grain' as the best solution out of a set of bad solutions.

The difference is being told that this isn't an invading army any more - it is a retreating army trying to go to their extraction point. The best thing for the local population is for there to not be a war happening over their land any more - there will be a food shortage, but that can be addressed as a separate problem, and will be much easier to handle if there is not an active conflict in the area. And the fastest way to achieve that situation - for there to not be a war happening - would appear to be helping that retreating army to maintain good order and good speed in getting themselves out of the way. For which they need food. If they don't get it, odds are the soldiers in it get increasingly desperate, more likely to break discipline, and stop being well behaved. Worst case, the army stops existing as an army and becomes dozens of separate gangs led by wannabe warlords, which is going to be a much longer-term problem than the current disciplined army and cause much larger issues in trying to bring relief supplies into the area.

Satinavian
2021-10-13, 03:32 PM
I'd guess that most RPG paladins would first negotiate with the army's commander (or try to) to get them to leave the grain aloneNot sure how that could work.

The invading army is already on the fastest way back to their home and need that grain to actually get there. The invasion itself was done with supplies they brought with them but took longer than expected and now it is not enough for the wqay back. Not taking the grain from the peasants means those soldiers die instead. What could the paladin or anyone else offer to the commander of the invading army to agree to having his own soldiers starve so that the enemy peasants can live ?

Besides, it was stated that the paladin is not allied to either side.

KorvinStarmast
2021-10-13, 03:41 PM
Not sure how that could work.
Every role play a negotiation? That's how it would work (or fail). :smallwink: You don't know what you can achieve until you try it. So, the Paladin would try. Level of success would be informed by a variety of things, how 'ability checks' are handled, did he know the knight/noble running the army, are they related, who's on first?, and so on.
Play And Find Out. :smallcool:

Besides, it was stated that the paladin is not allied to either side. Most RPG Paladins would default to "defend the weak."
If the paladin is not allied to either side, then as compared to an army the local peasants who stored that grain are "the weak" and thus the ones to be defended. As noted, details on the oath were not provided in the problem statement.
Note: to a village of peasants, it matters not that an army is advancing or retreating. That army, if it is hungry and pillaging/foraging in their area is as a plague of locusts in the scenario presented.

:yuk:

The paladin, given the "not allied premise" can also easily decide "not my problem, there's a demon that needs slaying" which makes the entire question moot.

Berenger
2021-10-13, 07:22 PM
Two points to consider: First, if the available supplies at the granary would enable the invading army to conduct further sieges or to overwinter, a small fraction of those supplies would be enough to facilitate a retreat, so most of the supplies remain for the peasants if a diplomatic solution is found. Second, if the invading army is left to starve while in the area, the whole affair will turn much worse for everyone involved, because soldiers starving to death will most likely not just keel over and die but instead drop the civilized conduct and turn to banditry, arbitrary torture to reveal any hidden stores, or outright cannibalism out of sheer despair.



The invading army is already on the fastest way back to their home and need that grain to actually get there.
Is it? Because that would render part of my argument moot. But as I understood the scenario in the first post, they are currently not retreating but advancing deeper into the defenders territory to lay siege to another city (presumably to sack it and secure the supplies), perhaps Palanan can clarify.

Satinavian
2021-10-14, 01:44 AM
Every role play a negotiation? All the time. I like political plots, my players do as well and it happens actually more often than combat.
But for a negotiation to work, every side has to get something out of it. If the invading army starves if they don't take the grain, they will take the grain unless you can provide them with another way to not starve. Which you can't.
What you propose is not negotiating, it is begging. Begging that the other side throws away their lifes to save the peasants. That will always get a resounding "no".

And if your idea of proper paladin proper behavior is that he defends the granary against the army, mows down a couple desperate hungry soldiers who literally fight for their life with no way out, only for the army to take the grain afterwards anyway after they killed the palsdin and have eaten his horse, well, more power to you.

@ Berenger

There was a second post adding that detail. They already hold that other city and it has the port intended to ship them home (and presumably supplies and fish). They really only need the grain desperately for the retreat.

Saint-Just
2021-10-14, 03:04 AM
It may be useful to get more information, but my current understanding is that the invaders' campaign so far has been a success; They have successfully captured at least one city (do they hold it? or have they just looted it?) and hold another city - the one with the granary - as a supply base (again, situation is not clear, but for me it reads like it did not belong to them at the start of the campaign). In that case it's patently weird to view this situation as purely humanitarian, for such norm would encourage creating and pressing local military advantage, then, having profited from it, to rely on humanitarian concerns to avoid the inevitable counter-move. The proposed situation may be unique and have no bearing on general norms, but this is not a default assumption.

Satinavian
2021-10-14, 03:55 AM
They have captured a city and hold it with a small garrison, they have not plundered it. The bulk of the army is on the way back now which leads through another city that is also in their hands (unclear whether from the beginning or from an earlier stage of the war). But because the siege of the first city took to long, they don't have enough supplies to get there. The granary is somewhere on the way and somehow escaped the defenders action of burning everything the enemy could use for supplies. It is not in a city. As there is nothing else to eat around, the army intends to take it.

KorvinStarmast
2021-10-14, 09:02 AM
And if your idea of proper paladin proper behavior is that he defends the granary against the army, mows down a couple desperate hungry soldiers who literally fight for their life with no way out, only for the army to take the grain afterwards anyway after they killed the palsdin and have eaten his horse, well, more power to you. Given that I said none of that, no power to you. :smallmad: You seem to have left out a core point: the feeding of the army is the responsibility the commander of that army.

Satinavian
2021-10-14, 09:09 AM
You seem to have left out a core point: the feeding of the army is the responsibility the commander of that army.And the commander is just doing that. As his supplies have run out, he turns to the only food source available : the granary. As a responsible commander would do.

And if you don't see the paladin trying to defend the granary in some futile way, how do you imagine he defends the peasants ? The army is not even attacking the peasants if they don't get between it and the granary.

Wintermoot
2021-10-14, 09:15 AM
The paladin owes no allegiance to any of the principals in the conflict, only his own conscience.

There's the line that invalidates your premises. It's not possible for this paladin to be in this situation without having a stake in one side of the conflict or the other. Even if he's a complete stranger to both of these peoples, how did he get past the battlelines to get here? Makes no sense.

If the paladin is loyal to the invading army and their goals then he is abiding by the long-tested and approved articles of war they are following in their invasion. Burning fields and destroying infrastructure is par for the course.

if the paladin is loyal to the country being invaded, he's entered resistance mode and anything he can do to belay or stop the army is (for the most part) fair game.

In the extremely unlikely case that he randomly teleports in, is told the situation by some narrative voice, then its time for him to CHOOSE A SIDE based on the precepts of his faith and conscience.

Let's assume for one minute that we are talking about an actual game with the Paladin the PC and the God (DM) tossing him in this "hee hee you gonna fall" situation.

My answer as the paladin would be to rally as large a force of peasentry who depend on that grain as possible and lead them there. Then quickly set up some bulwarks to meet the ongoing army and dig in to defend. I would set the women, children and elderly to start using mules to transport bags of grain out in secret while I waited for the invading army. I would appreach them in my regalia, tell them who I was and who I represent and first ask them nicely to leave off. I would remind them that the peasentry behind me are the same as the wives, children and parents and family they left behind and would appeal to their humanity, using my 24 charisma to try and convince them to go away.

If that failed I would make an offer. They can take away half the grain for their army but must leave the other half unmolested for the common folk I represent.

If that failed, I would lead my peasant army in defending the grainary seven samarai style, while trying to bleed as much of the grain away in secret as possible. Only at the last, when all hope had failed, would I set fire to the grainery destroying what's left to deny the enemy the grain.

And if my "DM" makes me fall for that scenario then I know not to play a paladin for that DM ever again.

KorvinStarmast
2021-10-14, 09:18 AM
how do you imagine he defends the peasants? Play and find out. The assertion that there is some 'moral quandry' depends on the choices the paladin chooses to make, which includes "don't get involved" so the question in the OP fails on another basis, the excluded middle.

Satinavian
2021-10-14, 09:32 AM
Play and find out. That is not an option as this is not a scenario from my table.

As far as I can see, he can't really do anthing meaningful here that improves the situation. So he should not do anything about it.

I also don't think it is much of a moral quandary. Having bad things happen that you can't prevent is not some kind of quandary. And destroying a food source in a region that lacks food so much that people will starve no matter how it is distributed is certainly not a reasonable option.

hamishspence
2021-10-14, 09:35 AM
He can "help" the weak/innocent/needy. And "punish" those who are threatening them.


Code of Conduct
A paladin must be of lawful good alignment and loses all class abilities if she ever willingly commits an evil act.

Additionally, a paladin’s code requires that she respect legitimate authority, act with honor (not lying, not cheating, not using poison, 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.

Palanan
2021-10-14, 12:01 PM
Originally Posted by Telwar
Whose land is the granary on?

That depends who you ask. The king leading the invading army claims the entire realm as his by right, owing to the usual tangle of alliances and marriages giving him a plausible claim to the throne.

The king of the realm being invaded, understandably, does not accept this claim, and instead will insist that the land and everything in it are his.


Originally Posted by Berenger
Any answer that neglects to examine the context of the game world and chooses not to care about inherent ambivalence will inevitably be sloppy, handwavy and without much value for anything but a "nothing matters, just have some action" beer and pretzels game. An aversion to uncertainty and a general unwillingness to even consider the perspective of all actors isn't very helpful for drawing fair conclusions concerning a complex situation.

Fully agreed.


Originally Posted by Saint-Just
Slightly harder for me is to answer whether a paladin who is already affiliated with the defender can destroy the granary without falling.

For purposes of this discussion, falling is not a potential consequence. I’m not intending for any particular action or inaction to result in a fall, and certainly wouldn’t run this scenario with that as a goal.

A few people seem to be assuming that this situation is somehow contrived to “force” the paladin to fall. It is not. That is an incorrect assumption and does not apply here.


Originally Posted by Berenger
But as I understood the scenario in the first post, they are currently not retreating but advancing deeper into the defenders territory to lay siege to another city (presumably to sack it and secure the supplies), perhaps Palanan can clarify.


Originally Posted by Satinavian
There was a second post adding that detail. They already hold that other city and it has the port intended to ship them home (and presumably supplies and fish). They really only need the grain desperately for the retreat.

Indeed, and I should have clarified that in the OP. The second city is a preexisting foothold in the realm being invaded, and the invading army is doing their best to make it there before starvation and the defending army can wipe them out.


Originally Posted by Wintermoot
Even if he's a complete stranger to both of these peoples, how did he get past the battlelines to get here? Makes no sense.

There are no “battlelines.” The invading army is striking out cross-country and following local roads in a long column. They’re not building fortifications or blocking roads, and apart from occasionally pursuing or capturing the defenders’ scouts, the invaders aren’t interfering with anyone else’s movements across the landscape.

KorvinStarmast
2021-10-14, 12:57 PM
I also don't think it is much of a moral quandary.
I concur.

Having bad things happen that you can't prevent is not some kind of quandary. And destroying a food source in a region that lacks food so much that people will starve no matter how it is distributed is certainly not a reasonable option.
We have an accord. :smallsmile:

icefractal
2021-10-14, 04:20 PM
Yeah, I'm not sure why "burn the granary" is even an option to be considered in this situation.
Does it help the peasants? No.
Does it hurt the peasants worse than the grain being seized? Possibly yes - the army may become desperate enough to rip up their houses or interrogate them in search of hidden food.

The only thing it accomplishes is to hurt the invading army, at the cost of making the peasants possible collateral damage. But if the Paladin has no allegiance in this conflict, then presumably the invading army isn't some super-evil force of destruction which must be stopped at all costs. So I see no benefit to doing that.

Convincing the army to only take as much as absolutely needed ... might work. Depending on how convincing the Paladin is, and/or how much resistance they can credibly threaten. But the army's not going to agree to starve to death.

Kardwill
2021-10-18, 10:11 AM
Typically speaking "Do X or die." is the definition of a false choice logical fallacy.

To be a choice there has to be a real, viable alternative.

If your Lord says "Do X or die." you were not given a choice. You were given a threat.

And in this case, the paladin has absolutely no responsibility in the well-being of the invader. Whatever will happen to these soldiers is on whoever forced them into this deathmarch. Just like the paladin would have no responsibility in the well-being of a bunch of orc marauders that their warlord pushed out of the mountains for this year's raid.

The paladin (or anybody, really. Why is it always a paladin that get thrown into these situations? Why is it never "what would a ranger do?) may try to do something for these poor soldiers because she's nice, but she would have no ethical obligation.

Lord Raziere
2021-10-18, 10:29 AM
The paladin (or anybody, really. Why is it always a paladin that get thrown into these situations? Why is it never "what would a ranger do?) may try to do something for these poor soldiers because she's nice, but she would have no ethical obligation.

because some paladin code they're saddled with no one else does. the ranger's options aren't as much fuel for discussion because a ranger can be any alignment, therefore what they do doesn't necessarily HAVE to be completely moral. the ranger? they don't have to care about those soldiers lives or that they were just following their oaths/orders. A ranger can just shoot the commander of that an army with an arrow from a bush to kill him in one hit to the head then run away, watch the army fall apart from a distance, go hunt some deer and wait for the army to dissolve into infighting then pick them off in groups. you can argue whether its right or wrong to do that, but ultimately the ranger isn't held to the paladin's standard and doesn't have to be a paragon or example of anything. they can just be a dude who says "I don't like this commander or these people, and I don't really care for the moral/ethical intricacies of getting rid of them or having a philosophical discussion every time I want to do something, so I'm going to do it however I feel like, you got a problem with that, talk to my bow".

Kardwill
2021-10-18, 10:52 AM
because a ranger can be any alignment, therefore what they do doesn't necessarily HAVE to be completely moral.
I'll be honest, that was a rhetoric question ^^

(and nowadays, the paladin can be any alignment too. :p
They follow a code, but said code can be "My lord's word is law and I will bring doom on whoever happens to be their enemy", or a Witcher-like monsterhunter credo.)

I dislike the "what would a paladin do" because it implies they're left struggling to get on some golden pedestal that is, very frankly, bull****. Especially since it always leads to the GM and the player arguing about what is moral.

Even if you take the old "always LG" paladin, I don't think "what would a paladin do" is really a good question, since it implies some unified morals and absolute standards that undermines the interest of any kind of dillemma. Asking "what would your paladin do, and why?" is a question I find more appealing, especially if we accept that different answers can be "correct" in their own way.

Lord Raziere
2021-10-18, 10:55 AM
Nowadays, the paladin can be any alignment too. ^^
They follow a code, but said code can be "My lord's word is law and I will bring doom on whoever happens to be their enemy", or a Witcher-like monsterhunter credo.
I dislike the "what would a paladin do" because it implies they're left struggling to get on some golden pedestal that is, very frankly, bull****. Especially since it always leads to the GM and the player arguing about what is moral.

Even if you take the old "always LG" paladin, I don't think "what would a paladin do" is really a good question, since it implies some unified morals and absolute standards that undermines the interest of any kind of dillemma. Asking "what would your paladin do, and why?" is a question I find more appealing, especially if we accept that different answers can be "correct" in their own way.

Well yeah I agree with that. but its more force of tradition/social trend than anything. Sure DnD 5e has any code NOW, but the social forces of DnD fandom are slow to change. DnD 3.5 paladin established a standard, so thats what everyone subconsciously go with, especially on this forum.

Saint-Just
2021-10-18, 11:31 AM
They follow a code, but said code can be "My lord's word is law and I will bring doom on whoever happens to be their enemy", or a Witcher-like monsterhunter credo.

Fun fact: in the books the witcher's code is a lie. It's a pure bull**** Appeal to Nonexistent Authory conversation tactic - witchers are sufficiently secretive, mysterious, and few in number to get away with that.

BloodSquirrel
2021-10-18, 01:50 PM
Now, the 21st century semi-marxist cop out is to save the Poor Peasants. The peasants are in a social contract with the lords and nobs. They basically agree that in return for protection and order they'll provide the nobility with taxes, support, and possibly a fyrd. If they don't they are going to die to brigands, other warlords, wandering members of the warrior caste, and in D&F umpteen other dangers. If they somehow manage to remain independent, the laws of biology and minimal excess productivity quickly reform a small warrior caste that you need to support in return for protection...and they're going to have to resort to war for justice.


More realistically, the peasants never agreed to any "social contract", and they're paying taxes because if they don't they'll be murdered by their own lord. And even if they did agree to pay taxes in exchange for protection, all that means is that they're entitled to protection, not that they've somehow agreed to be even further victimized by being made morally valid targets in a war.

BloodSquirrel
2021-10-18, 02:06 PM
Typically speaking "Do X or die." is the definition of a false choice logical fallacy.

To be a choice there has to be a real, viable alternative.

If your Lord says "Do X or die." you were not given a choice. You were given a threat.

"Real, viable alternative" is endlessly subjective, and not a functional basis for determining whether something was a morally culpable choice. "Do X or die" is also pretty much the state of nature, when "Do X' is even an option. Work to obtain food or starve. Put on clothes or freeze to death.

When you are not guaranteed by the universe to have "Do nothing and live happily ever after" as an option, then "Disobey your lord or murder innocent people" is, in fact, a choice that you may have to make, and the innocent people are not obligated to die for you just because you got a bad lot to choose from.

You might feel more inclined to offer a conscripted soldier mercy or forgiveness, but he doesn't get to refuse any moral consequences for his actions.

BloodSquirrel
2021-10-18, 02:33 PM
Not sure how that could work.

The invading army is already on the fastest way back to their home and need that grain to actually get there. The invasion itself was done with supplies they brought with them but took longer than expected and now it is not enough for the wqay back. Not taking the grain from the peasants means those soldiers die instead. What could the paladin or anyone else offer to the commander of the invading army to agree to having his own soldiers starve so that the enemy peasants can live ?

Besides, it was stated that the paladin is not allied to either side.

The game theory answer is that the paladin should threaten to burn down the silo if the invaders attempt to take it.

The peasants have no reason not to. They either keep the grain or they starve to death, so spite costs them nothing.

The invading army, meanwhile, has to divert its course to get to the silo (even if only a little), and spend additional time/energy inflicting any sort of retribution on the peasants (who don't care, because they're already going to die). This gives the defending army more time to catch up to them, and makes it less likely that they'll be able to finish their retreat before starving, find another food source, or find some other means to survive. Spite is more costly for them, and they have less reason to act out of it, since it wasn't their grain in the first place.

Since the invading army, knowing it has no chance to take the silo intact, may decide to leave them alone, the peasants have every reason to pursue this strategy, and no reason not to follow through with their threat.

Berenger
2021-10-18, 02:40 PM
More realistically, the peasants never agreed to any "social contract", and they're paying taxes because if they don't they'll be murdered by their own lord. And even if they did agree to pay taxes in exchange for protection, all that means is that they're entitled to protection, not that they've somehow agreed to be even further victimized by being made morally valid targets in a war.

No individual person consciously agrees to the social contract. Not the peasant that has to pay taxes, not the young nobleman forced into being a page and squire, not the princess that has to marry some guy she never chose, not the child sent to a monastery to become a monk or nun and certainly not the king that is bound by laws, traditions and political necessities and will, most likely, cause his personal downfall and that of his dynasty if he fails to live up to the expectations of too many people.

Psyren
2021-10-18, 02:54 PM
For purposes of this discussion, falling is not a potential consequence. I’m not intending for any particular action or inaction to result in a fall, and certainly wouldn’t run this scenario with that as a goal.

A few people seem to be assuming that this situation is somehow contrived to “force” the paladin to fall. It is not. That is an incorrect assumption and does not apply here.


It's a consequence that gets invoked/invited when the moral actor is specifically a paladin rather than a "Lawful Good character." The possibility of a fall is implied to at least be on the table, since the bar is higher - a single willful evil act is all that it takes.

Bacon Elemental
2021-10-18, 03:27 PM
A lot of the answers in the thread do seem to be missing the fact that the invaders are not the sole reason for the plight of the peasants when considering the Paladin's actions - the only reason the retreating army is coming to sieze the granary in the first place is because all the food in the area other than the peasant's granary was deliberately burned by the defenders scouts in order to create a famine-stricken wasteland impossible to sieze food from. (Presumably they tried to do the same to this town granary but were fended off by locals with pitchforks). Which pushes back on the moral scales again. The army is trying to leave because they have no food. The defenders have siezed on this vulnerability and are collateral-damaging the entire region surrounding the path of the army and everyone in it.

This situation is pretty much tailor made to be unsolvable, because stripped to its bare minimum you have a moral agent (The paladin) dropped in between two factions who will, due to the actions of a third faction, each die if the other's side is taken. The conduct of Army 1 has been polished to offset "Well they get what they deserved", and the conduct of the peasants has been set up to make them helpless, unacting bystanders who did nothing to save themselves in order to enact the most moral impetus upon the situation. Army 2's conduct has helpfully cleared away all but the most optimistic of alternative negotiated solutions.

Given the deliberate locking of the easy-out moral doors, this immediately turns the question into "Does being marched to an aggressivewar by your lord make your life less valuable than a bystander?" which is a question that can only be answered by someone's opinion and isnt really a tabletop question.





Of course, this assumes the paladin is a superman who can meaningfully do something to stop several thousand hungry soldiers.

icefractal
2021-10-18, 03:39 PM
The peasants have no reason not to. They either keep the grain or they starve to death, so spite costs them nothing.

The invading army, meanwhile, has to divert its course to get to the silo (even if only a little), and spend additional time/energy inflicting any sort of retribution on the peasants (who don't care, because they're already going to die). Apparently the peasants don't agree with this assessment, else they would have burned the silo themselves. You just need a torch or two, this is not a job that requires a Paladin.

Satinavian
2021-10-18, 03:52 PM
The game theory answer is that the paladin should threaten to burn down the silo if the invaders attempt to take it.

The peasants have no reason not to. They either keep the grain or they starve to death, so spite costs them nothing.

The invading army, meanwhile, has to divert its course to get to the silo (even if only a little), and spend additional time/energy inflicting any sort of retribution on the peasants (who don't care, because they're already going to die). This gives the defending army more time to catch up to them, and makes it less likely that they'll be able to finish their retreat before starving, find another food source, or find some other means to survive. Spite is more costly for them, and they have less reason to act out of it, since it wasn't their grain in the first place.

Since the invading army, knowing it has no chance to take the silo intact, may decide to leave them alone, the peasants have every reason to pursue this strategy, and no reason not to follow through with their threat.But the scenario is that the army doesn't have food to move on without taking the granary. It is trying to take the granary for a chance to get it intact or starve. There is no chance to finish the retreat before starving without the granary.

Which means game theory will demand that the army always try to take the granary even more than it demands that the peasants burn it (because it is done only for spite) There is no other food source and no other means to survive. If such a thing existed, the peasants who know the region would be in a better position to secure it anyway. And looking for it/securing it would be better if the army took the grain and moved on than when the grain burned, the army disbanded as it can't reach the destination anymore and desperate soldiers took revenge.

BloodSquirrel
2021-10-18, 03:57 PM
No individual person consciously agrees to the social contract.

In other words, nobody agrees to the social contract at all, and the entire theory falls apart as soon as you do more than squint at it from 100 miles away.


Apparently the peasants don't agree with this assessment, else they would have burned the silo themselves. You just need a torch or two, this is not a job that requires a Paladin.

If you're going to take that route, then the paladin is entirely superfluous, because he has no authority to be making any of these choices on behalf of the peasants. The entire question more or less rests on the assumption that the peasants are not exercising their agency here.

BloodSquirrel
2021-10-18, 04:24 PM
But the scenario is that the army doesn't have food to move on without taking the granary. It is trying to take the granary for a chance to get it intact or starve. There is no chance to finish the retreat before starving without the granary.

If the army has no chance to survive without the granary, then once the granary is burned, then they have two options: Give up and wait to die, or continue their retreat in the hopes that some other opportunity will appear. Taking the granary is not an option, so from a game theory standpoint, there is no reason for them to behave as if it is an option at any point.

There is no chance to get it intact here. The peasants can burn it any time. As soon as the peasants make the ultimatum, the only thing that can justify the invaders attempting to take the granary is wishful thinking. And if they're going to engage in wishful thinking, "We might be able to keep going another few days... maybe we'll find some fields that haven't been burned" is more likely.



Which means game theory will demand that the army always try to take the granary even more than it demands that the peasants burn it (because it is done only for spite)

That's not how game theory works.

If strategy A never results in a more positive outcome than strategy B, then a player does not pursue strategy A. In this case, if the peasants declare that they will burn the granary if the invaders attempt to take it, and there is no reason for the peasants to not burn the granary if the invaders attempt to take it, then the only possible outcome of attempting to take the granary is that they don't get the grain and they expend more energy than if they had done nothing.

This kind of thinking- "We need that grain, so we should try to take the granary no matter what!" is exactly what game theory was created to try to avoid. This is why the answer to the prisoner's dilemma is not "Don't snitch and just hope the other guy doesn't snitch either".




There is no other food source and no other means to survive. If such a thing existed, the peasants who know the region would be in a better position to secure it anyway. And looking for it/securing it would be better if the army took the grain and moved on than when the grain burned, the army disbanded as it can't reach the destination anymore and desperate soldiers took revenge.

An army is significantly more equipped to secure food from the country side than a bunch of peasants.

Satinavian
2021-10-18, 04:41 PM
If strategy A never results in a more positive outcome than strategy B, then a player does not pursue strategy A.Not taking the granary does never result in a more positive outcome for the army as there simply is no other food source. The off chance that the peasants are bluffing or try to hide the grain instead of burning it or that some commando team can take it before they can make true on their threat however is something positive that is always better than marching on to die. Sure, the chance might be not great but is better than zero.

As for alternatives : To look for those, knowledge of the region is useful and, more importantly, you have to spread your people as wide as you can. An army on the march can't do that, the peasants can (if the army moves away). That is why, when the army doesn't get the granary, the best course of action is to dissolve it and let every soldier look for himself as the retreat is obviously impossible. A single person might find some berries here and there and maybe an animal or an outlying farm that was overlooked, an army can't rely on stuff like that because the density of such finds is not high enough.

I see no scenario in which the army would be better equipped to secure alternatives with the single exception of finding guarded stores pretty much like the village with the granary.


Furthermore, the only reason for the peasants to actually burn the granary would be spite. Some defiant "If we have to die anyway, we make sure, you die with us". If we would allow such a motivation to count as positive outcome, the same would hold true for the army, whose soldiers could also say "If we have to die anyway, we make sure, you die with us" for another reason to not let the peasants keep the grain. But if we don't allow such pettyness, the thread becomes pretty hollow.

Grim Portent
2021-10-18, 05:32 PM
There's also the factors that some of the army may decide to eat the peasants if they burn the grain, and that a famine won't kill all the peasants anyway, just a lot of them.

If the peasant's lose the granary only a handful will survive, scraping through the ensuing famine by the skin of their teeth with much suffering and death, but a handful will survive and be able to try and rebuild in later years.

If the peasant's choose to destroy the granary then the logical choice for a lot of the soldiers is to eat them, morality and punishments from their superiors be damned, and then proceed on the march home, because at that point most of the peasant's are dead anyway but the soldiers still have a chance to live. If their officers try to stop them chances are they'd be killed and eaten as well, because when people get desperate their loyalty, fear of consequences and anger can get very explosive.

From the peasant's perspective the best option is probably to grab what food they can carry without slowing themselves down and try to move to a region that hasn't been razed to the ground by their own countrymen. If they try to take all the food they'll be slow and the foreign army will be able to catch them with outriders or scouts and confiscate it all, but a smaller amount gives them a chance to flee successfully while the army is preoccupied with looting what remains in the granary.

OracleofWuffing
2021-10-18, 06:41 PM
As a party with no allegiance to the others, a Paladin is in a prime spot to lead negotiations between the peasants and the invading army. Peasants probably don't want to fight an army, a starving army doesn't want to fight any more than it has to, and either party doesn't want their food turned into ashes. Granted, a straight and simple negotiation is likely an "Everybody loses" situation- some peasants are going to starve and some soldiers are going to starve down the line- but primarily the negotiation is just to gather information and see if there exist additional underlying motivations between either group.

I would really like to see a situation where, given that the defending army is throwing the peasantry's life away to spite the invading army, an agreement is decided that the peasants and the army retreat together: Peasants get safe passage to a new home that belongs to someone who is less of an arsonist (At least until the new lord finds out he's responsible for more mouths to feed and refuses to help them, but we'll burn that bridge when we get there), Army gets provisions to last them through their trouble. Maybe even the peasants burn down the empty silo to make it look to the defending army that they fought for their lives and died trying to spite the army they just joined. But... Whether that outcome is particularly paladin-y is kiiinda a gray area.

Also a Paladin of Potatoes would point out that there exists a crop which is somewhat resistant to arson and doesn't need to be stored in granaries, even if we're well beyond the point where that information is helpful. :smallbiggrin:

OldTrees1
2021-10-18, 09:00 PM
Also a Paladin of Potatoes would point out that there exists a crop which is somewhat resistant to arson and doesn't need to be stored in granaries, even if we're well beyond the point where that information is helpful. :smallbiggrin:

The Paladin of Potatoes has been heard.

I wonder how hard it is to have the villagers hide half their potatoes.

Easy e
2021-10-19, 12:57 PM
You burn the town and slaughter the lot of them......

https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/59329944.jpg

That was the first thing I thought of.

However, this is the classic Trolley problem. The answer doesn't matter, only that you make a choice......

KineticDiplomat
2021-10-20, 11:38 PM
Re: social contracts.

Oh, you very much agree to a social contract. You do it by living it and complying with it. Or you go rob a liquor store, become a hermit, whatever, and generally end up deprived of life, liberty, property and/or status. But every day in every way, the peasant and the invader are both bound by it.

So if we judge the soldiers as morally wrong for following it, but then say the peasants get a pass...yep, we're subscribing to the altogether false notion that being poor makes you virtuous.

Which really brings us to the main point: by and large the only potential moral altering balance here is which side is right. The lives of one side or the other are not particularly more or less sacrosanct than the other of their own accord. This is particularly true in a medieval context where if the modern concept of "civilian" exists, it is at best marginally for their protection- its largely to define who can and cannot have weapons.

So we're back to jus ad bellum calling it. And if you're so wildly naive as believe there is no just war, then you literally cannot have a D&D paladin in thr Good and Lawful sense. If you fight a defensive war against the invading nine hells, well then clearly you were unjust, so fall away...

Lord Raziere
2021-10-21, 04:31 AM
Re: social contracts.

Oh, you very much agree to a social contract. You do it by living it and complying with it. Or you go rob a liquor store, become a hermit, whatever, and generally end up deprived of life, liberty, property and/or status. But every day in every way, the peasant and the invader are both bound by it.

So if we judge the soldiers as morally wrong for following it, but then say the peasants get a pass...yep, we're subscribing to the altogether false notion that being poor makes you virtuous.

Which really brings us to the main point: by and large the only potential moral altering balance here is which side is right. The lives of one side or the other are not particularly more or less sacrosanct than the other of their own accord. This is particularly true in a medieval context where if the modern concept of "civilian" exists, it is at best marginally for their protection- its largely to define who can and cannot have weapons.

So we're back to jus ad bellum calling it. And if you're so wildly naive as believe there is no just war, then you literally cannot have a D&D paladin in thr Good and Lawful sense. If you fight a defensive war against the invading nine hells, well then clearly you were unjust, so fall away...

Okay. Just to whom?

The nation that wants the war? they're biased, because they want it. other nations? they're biased, they could see opportunity to profit from it at the defending nations expense. "justice" if thats all thats needed, is apparently tyranny of the majority. If pressed the invaders will probably say some injustice by the defenders in the past makes this okay, and the defenders when pressed will say some injustice before that makes it not okay, and back and such and so on until we arrive at the dawn of history of and someone comes up with the first murder or whatever, but we can't blame the first murderer, they don't know what they've just done they just invented the concept in ignorance without knowing the consequences, so really we can only blame gods for putting that first murderer there with the capability.

Keep compassionately passing the buck far enough up wards through history, consider perspectives as far as possible and the only one who can be held responsible for anything is the gods, but we can't punish those.

Vahnavoi
2021-10-21, 06:50 AM
Or, you could ascribe to some minimally more developed model of culpability which doesn't allow for endless blameshifting games. :smalltongue:

Lord Raziere
2021-10-21, 07:14 AM
Or, you could ascribe to some minimally more developed model of culpability which doesn't allow for endless blameshifting games. :smalltongue:

Yes it would be great if other people did that, did they?

Berenger
2021-10-21, 09:06 AM
Yes it would be great if other people did that, did they?

Um... to be fair, "endless blameshifting games until you arrive at some prehistoric first murderer" is the reductio at absurdum strawman you constructed yourself, not a remotely accurate description of anyone elses standpoint.

Lord Raziere
2021-10-21, 10:20 AM
Um... to be fair, "endless blameshifting games until you arrive at some prehistoric first murderer" is the reductio at absurdum strawman you constructed yourself, not a remotely accurate description of anyone elses standpoint.

Okay then, lets take a different tack then.

Your constant insistence on this jud ad bellum won't get you any answers, because Palanan hasn't posted in the thread to elaborate on the situation any further. You'd think he'd do that by now. He hasn't. so all your doing is talking about things that are beyond the scope of the thread because we have no information.

So there is no real reason to keep this up, I don't know what answers your expecting. Like what am I supposed to care about a bunch of jerks with metal circles on their heads who probably got their position because they either didn't deserve it or killed someone to get it, and probably don't care about their people anyways? you seem to know the answer of whatever justification would be better than me, so all you have to do is get a list of all the possible justifications they could have it and shotgun all the possible scenarios from that and there your many answers by yourself. But no one else is obligated to be pulled into your (/version of the) thought experiment just because you insist it.

Berenger
2021-10-21, 12:06 PM
Okay then, lets take a different tack then.

Your constant insistence on this jud ad bellum won't get you any answers, because Palanan hasn't posted in the thread to elaborate on the situation any further. You'd think he'd do that by now. He hasn't. so all your doing is talking about things that are beyond the scope of the thread because we have no information.

So there is no real reason to keep this up, I don't know what answers your expecting. Like what am I supposed to care about a bunch of jerks with metal circles on their heads who probably got their position because they either didn't deserve it or killed someone to get it, and probably don't care about their people anyways? you seem to know the answer of whatever justification would be better than me, so all you have to do is get a list of all the possible justifications they could have it and shotgun all the possible scenarios from that and there your many answers by yourself. But no one else is obligated to be pulled into your (/version of the) thought experiment just because you insist it.

Of course, no one is obligated to get pulled into what you label my thought experiment. No one is obligated to participate in anything at all, this is a free public forum dedicated to a hobby activity. Anything posted here is at most an open invitation to discuss some topic or opinion. Take it or leave it, no hard feelings.

You might confuse me with KineticDiplomat or someone else; we are not the same person. I didn't even mention the topic of jus ad bellum as it has little bearing on my argument. That argument boils down to "no one in the described situation seems like a bad enough person to let them die horribly if it can be prevented". I think that "people don't deserve to die horribly" is a reasonable default assumption to make, barring extreme circumstances, which I don't see in this scenario. In my opinion, that's more or less self-evident and shouldn't require much in the way of fancy justifications.

Lord Raziere
2021-10-21, 12:23 PM
Darn it, sorry I confused you with kinetic.

KineticDiplomat
2021-10-21, 10:58 PM
Whereas I would say that, yep, assuming the Paladin doesn't just walk away, then being on the right side is far more morally valid than the means. And that the attacker is not by default the wrong side. Hence the jus ad bellum being more important than the jus in Bello.

Rather than recreat the entirety of just war theory here, which would be several thousand pages of musings with multiple schools and figures, let's look at the basics:

1) There are times when the use of force is just. There are a few real world philosophies that disagree, but pragmatically they only survive by existing within a larger society that is ok with using force in some circumstances. And a D&D paladin who is literally a divinely sanctioned killer in the name of ideologically pure justice, really, really can't disagree.

2) If the use of force can be just, then it follows that the organized use of force between parties - aka war - can be just.

The rest of it is thousands of pages of deciding where that line is. This wouldn't be a post for philosophical navel gazing if the Heavenly Host of Good Angels was invading Wrong Badland where the Blood Horde of Evil Demons was practicing elaborate soul vampirism of mortal playthings, and in order to prevent the Host from advancing further they were destroying the Holy Pylons everyone needed to live. It'd be a tactical planning session on how to save the pylons for angelic use, not a question on if destroying them to turn back the Good Angel Liberation Front was worth potentially killing some of the lowest caste non fighting demons.

That's the extreme and no doubt imperfect analogy, but clearly an attacking army can be in the moral right. After that it's refining if it's OK to attack for self preservation, to retrieve property, to right a wrong, to enact justice and or law, etc, etc. All of which might very reasonably say a Good and Lawful Paladin who got involved would be compelled to help the attackers in some circumstances.

Saint-Just
2021-10-22, 02:25 AM
It'd be a tactical planning session on how to save the pylons for angelic use, not a question on if destroying them to turn back the Good Angel Liberation Front was worth potentially killing some of the lowest caste non fighting demons.

I broadly agree with your ideas, but this sentence undermines your analogy. The word "demon" in your example definitely evokes something "less" in the moral calculus than a normal person. And if you instead asked whether it was worthwhile yo kill some of the "mortal playthings" to ensure safety of the army and the presumed salvation of other victims in the end... you probably know that you'd gotten some answers "no, never".

What really surprises me in this thread is not even the fact that the people apply modern sensibilities to a non-modern world, but the fact that they focus so much only on a single aspect. Some see invading forces as obviously in the wrong, but more baffling for me is those who decry the defenders who burn the supplies while also saying nothing about attackers a) starting the war b) taking the selfsame supplies from local population. I can imagine legal/moral climate where military aggression is seen as unacceptable; I can imagine situation where purposefully depriving your population of food even during the war is unacceptable; I cannot see situation where first one is ok, but the second one isn't as anything less than contrived. And if both are wrong then non-intervention also seems saner than allying with one wrongdoer against another.

I also want to reiterate that more information could be useful, but for now I think that if invading army successfully retreats then it will not end the war. Motivation to wage war - the invading king's claim - is still there and so far things has been going in the invaders' favor; the normal reaction I think would be doing more of the same.

Mastikator
2021-10-22, 03:37 AM
As a party with no allegiance to the others, a Paladin is in a prime spot to lead negotiations between the peasants and the invading army. Peasants probably don't want to fight an army, a starving army doesn't want to fight any more than it has to, and either party doesn't want their food turned into ashes. Granted, a straight and simple negotiation is likely an "Everybody loses" situation- some peasants are going to starve and some soldiers are going to starve down the line- but primarily the negotiation is just to gather information and see if there exist additional underlying motivations between either group.

This bit is a contentious issue for me. Historically when an army fights against peasants they don't just kill them. They also use them as spoils of war. It's equally likely (or MORE likely) that not only do the invading army want to fight the peasants, fighting (and then *having their way with the survivors) may be the main motivation for joining the army in the first place. The peasants may not only die but die in the most painful, torturous and slow death possible.

*Yes I mean what you think I mean


However, this is the classic Trolley problem. The answer doesn't matter, only that you make a choice......

In the trolley problem you choose whether many people die, or you pull a lever and few people die.

In this situation you choose whether all the peasants die, or you pull a lever and all the peasants AND the invading army die.

Saint-Just
2021-10-22, 04:11 AM
This bit is a contentious issue for me. Historically when an army fights against peasants they don't just kill them. They also use them as spoils of war. It's equally likely (or MORE likely) that not only do the invading army want to fight the peasants, fighting (and then *having their way with the survivors) may be the main motivation for joining the army in the first place. The peasants may not only die but die in the most painful, torturous and slow death possible.

*Yes I mean what you think I mean


In the Palanan's posts we are presented with an army which is reasonably well-controlled by their leaders who definitely did not came to fight peasants, but instead acquire holdings. Unless it's something very new the army men know it and therefore would not have joined to have fun because they know that possibility of fun is limited.

I admit it's not exactly typical but you cannot say that such concerns as "don't f'n antagonize the local populace" were entirely absent from pre-modern warfare. Now, what would happen if there is no food and the leaders lose control as army disintegrates is anyone's guess.

Satinavian
2021-10-22, 04:24 AM
This bit is a contentious issue for me. Historically when an army fights against peasants they don't just kill them. Historically armies behaves in various different ways because history is reallly long and the world really big. There is also the fact that an army doing atrocities is more of a tellworthy story than an army just moving through a region without anything happening. Generally how an army most likely behaves is linked to many different influences and contraints, not least escalation logic.

If the OP states that the army behaves, then the army behaves and it is not implausible either.

Or maybe you missed the fact that the invaders are not actually fighting the peasants so far.

Mastikator
2021-10-22, 08:02 AM
It's stipulated that IF the army is allowed to take the food (and they will if they can) then the local populace will definitely die
"Or would he allow them to take it, knowing it might doom many of the local peasantry to starvation in the coming winter?"

We can explore the various outcomes

The locals willingly give away their food in exchange for not being taken as spoils, and then only most of them die to starvation in the winter.
The locals willingly give away their food in but their trust is betrayed and they're taken as spoils, all of them die to starvation or worse.
The locals have their food destroyed, most of them die to starvation, the army retreats.
The locals have their food destroyed, the army take the locals as spoils/revenge and retreat, all of the locals die or worse.
The locals have their food destroyed, most of them die to starvation, the army keeps going and die to starvation.



No matter how you slice it, the only way the locals aren't completely wiped out if if the army chooses to spare them. The choice the paladin has doesn't affect the outcome of the locals, it affects the outcome of the army: do they retreat or forge ahead.

You can come up with a plan c) "the paladin rolls a natural 20 on diplomacy to convince the leaders of the army to retreat and everyone is happy" but I think that's a complete cop-out of answering OPs question. You don't get to save the locals, you can avenge them or ignore them, that's it.

Satinavian
2021-10-22, 08:15 AM
You have missed the posts with the additional information that the army is already retreating back home after having (partly?) achieved their war goal (and run out of supplies).

Easy e
2021-10-22, 09:57 AM
In the trolley problem you choose whether many people die, or you pull a lever and few people die.

In this situation you choose whether all the peasants die, or you pull a lever and all the peasants AND the invading army die.

Sure, fewer people and more people.

The only reason a GM puts this in, is to force a decision. Therefore, all that matters is which decision is made. Personally, putting your players into Trolley problems often sounds like a bad idea to me. :)

Rogan
2021-10-22, 12:03 PM
How about that:
The Paladin as a Neutral party helps forging a deal. The peasants hand over most of their grain to the invaders, who continue their way peacefully. The Paladin rides ahead of the army to bring a message to the city the invaders are going to. They gather supplies / ship in more food and send this out in a small convoy, guarded by the Paladin. If the defending army tries to stop this convoy, the Paladin again acts as a Neutral party and swears on his honor that the food won't go to the invading army, but instead is a gift to the starving peasants in the burned landscape.

Sure, there are ways this plan can fail, but it would maximize the survival rate if it actually works.

OracleofWuffing
2021-10-23, 01:17 PM
This bit is a contentious issue for me. Historically when an army fights against peasants they don't just kill them. They also use them as spoils of war. It's equally likely (or MORE likely) that not only do the invading army want to fight the peasants, fighting (and then *having their way with the survivors) may be the main motivation for joining the army in the first place. The peasants may not only die but die in the most painful, torturous and slow death possible.
What I was thinking when I made that point was that- broadly speaking- fighting takes energy, and energy is replenished by food. A group of people without food and are trying to obtain food would, if thinking rationally, try to avoid expending energy. I grant that there's a likelihood starving people don't behave in this set of logic, but that's an assumption that's not included in the original premise. If negotiations reveal that the army has unchanging plans to force the peasants to watch the Twilight movies, to me that feels like a point in favor of doing negotiations and gives a clear answer of which side the Paladin would probably take up.

137beth
2021-10-23, 03:03 PM
Disclaimer: I've only read the first page of the thread in detail, and skimmed the rest.

The OP's question seems ill-formed to me. They start by asking "Would a paladin" do something. But "a paladin" is presumeably an individual, not just a class. So, what they would do depends on what they as an individual person would do. The only way the question makes sense for a generic paladin is if the OP believes all (or almost all) members of a particular class would respond in the same way.

Hence, I suspect what the OP is probably going for is "Would a paladin need to respond in a particular way to avoid falling?" And that brings us back to what Lord Raziere said on page 1:


This is a grey area thing that could depend on a lot things:

1. which edition? this could determine a lot, because 5e Paladins can be much more flexible with their morality than 3.5

There are some games with paladins in them but no "fall" mechanic. And even within D&D, there's a big variance between editions.

I scanned the entire thread for posts the OP made, and they have yet to clarify what rule system they are talking about.

Saint-Just
2021-10-23, 03:46 PM
Disclaimer: I've only read the first page of the thread in detail, and skimmed the rest.

The OP's question seems ill-formed to me. They start by asking "Would a paladin" do something. But "a paladin" is presumeably an individual, not just a class. So, what they would do depends on what they as an individual person would do. The only way the question makes sense for a generic paladin is if the OP believes all (or almost all) members of a particular class would respond in the same way.

Hence, I suspect what the OP is probably going for is "Would a paladin need to respond in a particular way to avoid falling?" And that brings us back to what Lord Raziere said on page 1:


There are some games with paladins in them but no "fall" mechanic. And even within D&D, there's a big variance between editions.

I scanned the entire thread for posts the OP made, and they have yet to clarify what rule system they are talking about.

OP specifically denied that falling is relevant here



For purposes of this discussion, falling is not a potential consequence. I’m not intending for any particular action or inaction to result in a fall, and certainly wouldn’t run this scenario with that as a goal.


On the other hand I still feel like the question was intended to represent Code of Conduct (if played in a less punishing way like it normally applies to clerics) and a generic pre-4e LG Paladin. So there are situations in which all Paladins would be expected (if not strictly required) to take a specific action. Almost everybody here agrees that burning the granary is not in the category of "expected actions" (which is not the same as saying that it is strictly disallowed). Then people have branching out into discussing what other actions a Paladin can be "expected" to do in such a situation, but that's beyond the OP's question.

Kardwill
2021-10-25, 02:55 AM
Sure, fewer people and more people.

Well, the usual trolley problem is "Let some people die or kill one". The OP's dilemma is "let some people die or kill ALL of them", which does not sounds much like a dilemma at all. It reminds me of Michael's solution to the trolley problem in The Good Place ^^
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DV9a4b3VMAEl7dQ.jpg

Of course, all of this is white-room-theorizing. In a real situation, the paladin would have their own reasons to act ("my code tells me to punish those who prey on the weak" / "This army is a threat to my homeland" / "My lord would be in danger if I antagnized this army" / "One of my friends is impacted" / "Those peasants offered me hospitality" / "My current mission takes priority" / ...), and would not be a completely neutral actor. And they would be able to come up with other solutions, like using their leadership, diplomatic and martial skill to escort those peasants to a place where they won't starve.

Yakk
2021-10-25, 10:17 AM
The Paladin is Lawful and Good.

I solve the stupidity of Lawful vs Chaos as being about loyalty to the System and Rules, vs loyalty to People and Rulers.

So Paladins are loyal to Systems and Rules, and are Good.

Good vs Evil has to do with how you prioritize the world. A Good person puts the world ahead of them; an evil person puts themselves ahead of the world.

If a Paladin is a paragon of Good and Law, they don't value themselves and they prioritize Systems and Rules.

So we then sit back and look at what Systems the Paladin is loyal to. Is it a particular country, religion, or civilization? I mean, maybe the civilization/religion agrees that armies are allowed to take food from the civilians over which they march, or maybe it states this is a crime.

If the rules the Paladin is loyal to say that Armies taking from Civilians is wrong, then the right action is that the Paladin stands against the army with the Grainry booby-trapped, and tells them if they take the food he'll destroy it before he falls to the army's attack. So they might as well let the peasants keep it.

If they attack, he might start the fire as a matter of keeping her word, even though it is hopeless to do this to save the peasants; the Rule (keep your word) is more important than helping the actual people (the peasants or soldiers).

If the rules are more ambiguous about if Armies can claim food from Peasants, she might negotiate with the army from a position of "I'll destroy the food if you don't agree" and share some of the food with the army. This also provides incentive for the army to not just kill thePaladin and risk the food destruction not working: LGood not LStupid.

The stakes here -- 1000s of people starving -- make the Paladin's own life not matter in this "Paragon of LG" case.

Easy e
2021-10-25, 10:20 AM
Well, the usual trolley problem is "Let some people die or kill one". The OP's dilemma is "let some people die or kill ALL of them", which does not sounds much like a dilemma at all. It reminds me of Michael's solution to the trolley problem in The Good Place ^^
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DV9a4b3VMAEl7dQ.jpg



Fair enough. I still hold by my position that all that matters is that a Player choice needs to be made. The rest is details.

Witty Username
2021-10-26, 08:32 PM
"The dilemma is clear, how do we kill all six people" -The Good Place

Overall, I am not sure what the goal of this scenario would be that the Paladin would try to accomplish.
I would say prime directive would be a fair response, as I have no context to the army or the townsfolk.
I could see a Paladin of mine taking a puritanical approach, attacking townsfolk as a category failure. And therefore choose to destroy the army. Absolute morality. I should clarify this is not destroy the grainery, more charge of the Light brigade.

But for context, what does "Honorably" mean?

tokek
2021-10-31, 05:50 AM
Why are we always constructing utterly contrived trolley problems, and why should it only be a paladins response we are worried about? Is a paladin, or any "lawful good" character for that matter, supposed to be some sort of perfect moral agent?

.

This. 100 times this.

Trolley problems are terrible because they simply have no solution and their main functions is to create a situation where whatever the person does you can disagree with it. In games it tends to be an inescapable gotcha.

As a RP thing if that was my paladin I'd probably talk the maximum number of peasants into toing to the grain store and carry away as much as they possibly can and try to get them to promise to share it. Possibly hold off scouts from the approaching army to let the common people have more time.

If that's not possible then no good action was possible. Curse the hells for their evil and get on with the game and ignore the moral trap of the trolley problem.

Witty Username
2021-11-01, 11:48 PM
I would add that it contributes to the murder hobo mindset. In this example, destroying/stealing the food. If there isn't a good option some players will choose torch the game. Allowing for outs like the right side, or the friendly NPC makes shot first, ask questions never have consequences (and prevent shoot first, now and always from being the good option).

Mercureality
2021-11-05, 02:06 AM
In this situation, a foreign army has invaded, besieged and captured a small city, and the extended siege has left the army extremely low on provisions.

They are now marching cross-country with the intention of reaching another city, and along the way they are taking whatever food they can find from farmsteads and small towns. At this point they are perilously close to starvation. They have few clerics and cannot feed their numbers with magic. The countryside is already hunted out and there is no game.

The army’s scouts have located a granary which the surrounding countryside relies on as a fallback, and which will be vital for local folk to survive the coming winter—especially given the army’s depredations. To make things worse, the army of the defending realm is burning fields ahead of the invaders to deny them the current harvest.

The paladin knows that most of the invading force is made up of archers and men-at-arms who are simply following their lords’ commands, and apart from taking food they have conducted themselves with restraint.

The paladin owes no allegiance to any of the principals in the conflict, only his own conscience. In this situation, would he destroy the granary, knowing it would mean the starvation and slaughter of thousands of men who are honorably obeying their oaths? Or would he allow them to take it, knowing it might doom many of the local peasantry to starvation in the coming winter? Or would he feel compelled to find some other approach—and if so, what might that be?

A smart Paladin leads the local citizenry to gather and hide the food, then parleys with the invading force, offering them provisions for their return trip home on the condition of ceasing hostilities, surrendering of all arms as well as capital officers into the custody of the invaded nation, and departing the country immediately.

Peasants don't like it? Too bad. Invading army was gonna eat the food anyway. You've got charisma, convince them that this is the only way to preserve at least some foodstuffs for the winter ahead, let alone the lives of their families and friends.

Army won't surrender? String 'em along. Keep dodging them and let them starve until they're more tractable. Keep dangling the promise of food in front of them with messages carved into barren fields. A good DM will recognize that truly starving people will begin grasping at any straw presented to them before long. Any army that was so comically inept as to not establish a sturdy supply line was doomed to lose from the very start anyway.