What if... Miko never killed Shojo?

[Resileaf]

Extremely unlikely. The core elements of their defeat were:

1. The breach in the wall.

2. The giant soldiers getting killed, leaving nobody holding the breach. Note that this happened near-instantly.

3. Redcloak deciding to rush the breach all at once.

4. The gate exploding, although honestly by that point Azure City was already in trouble.

I would add the Mechane destroying some of the wall defenses would also be a factor, although one that happened before the battle itself started.

[Mightymosy]

The ironic thing is that he could push, "It's a plot hole that a pantheon, provably including at least one evil member and probably including members of all alignments, was presented as presiding over a paladin's fall" and I'd probably agree with him (thought I might consider "plot hole" strong phrasing for a single panel). But he seems really invested in the idea that paladins are variant clerics and any divine entities they invoke in their oaths must be Lawful Good.

Personally, I think that one not as bad, per se.

Example setup:
The 12 are good, neutral and evil characters.
To HAVE Paladins, the good gods must persuade the neutral ones (who are neutral) and the evil ones (who maybe would prefer NOT having so many soldiers of lawful good).
So I can imagine the good gods having to fight quite some discussions, or might have to make concession whenever they want to grant magical superpowers to someone who swears to smite evil whenever possible.


But stripping a paladin of his/her powers?
That's something the good gods might have an easy time convincing the evil gods to (one less magically charged soldier for lawful good. hurray!)


For me, it is far more troubling (IF one wants to take all of this seriously and in such detailed analysis, which I have said doesn't really fit the "parody character" of the earlier strips) is this:
Why would soldiers for lawful good, who swear to fight evil wherever they see it, WORSHIP evil gods.

That, for me, is a much tougher sell.
How does Miko or O'Chul view rat?
Do they see him as necessary evil?
How does that mesh up with their "not associate with evil" philosophy?
Maybe that all is theoretically somehow possible, but not explained in the setting well - but then again I don't think the story is meant to make us ASK those questions in the first place.

[Squire Doodad]

I would add the Mechane destroying some of the wall defenses would also be a factor, although one that happened before the battle itself started.

Good point and bad at the same time: there was time enough for them to repair the defenses, but that also means that they weren't spending time repairing other cracks that might be there.

[Resileaf]

Good point and bad at the same time: there was time enough for them to repair the defenses, but that also means that they weren't spending time repairing other cracks that might be there.

Julio theorizes that it would take a week tops, and although that does mean it would take less than a week, I doubt it would be done in a timely enough manner since Xykon's army arrives two days later.

[factotum]

Julio theorizes that it would take a week tops, and although that does mean it would take less than a week, I doubt it would be done in a timely enough manner since Xykon's army arrives two days later.

I'm pretty sure Julio's statement in the very next panel is a lampshade on the fact the *won't* have the defences rebuilt: "It's not like they're gonna get invaded before they can repair it, you know".

Having said that, we know they did have some functioning catapaults during the attack:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0451.html

I suppose it's possible the delay to firing the catapaults Redcloak is talking about there is because they were having to do a fast repair job on them and only just finished?

[Resileaf]

I'm pretty sure Julio's statement in the very next panel is a lampshade on the fact the *won't* have the defences rebuilt: "It's not like they're gonna get invaded before they can repair it, you know".

Having said that, we know they did have some functioning catapaults during the attack:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0451.html

I suppose it's possible the delay to firing the catapaults Redcloak is talking about there is because they were having to do a fast repair job on them and only just finished?

You can see that Julio's pirates destroyed two catapults on the way in, and there were at least three firing at his ship. If the third surviving catapult was the only one left, it means that Azure City's static defenses were reduced to a third of their normal capabilities. Why that last catapult did not fire sooner is anyone's guess. Maybe the crew was trying to get a better aim on Redcloak.

[Lacuna Caster]

No it isn't. You are the one making the claim that there is a plot-hole ther, you need to make your case. We have been shown the gods being oblivious to something multiple times and we've seen Thor having issues juggling mutltiple duties at once...
...Actively monitoring threats to Azure City is taking care of their problems (specifically surveillance duty) for them.

Yeah, but we've also seen the colossal celestial bureaucracy which manages to monitor essentialy everything that petitioners do or experience for the span of their entire lives (as they must in order to compute some verdict as to their alignment.) What do you imagine happens when dead azurites who were killed by Xykon and his 30,000 goblin minions show up at the pearly gates? You don't think any of this information is ferried up the chain of command?

Or, how about Lord Rooster giving Sangwaan the ability to foresee that Belkar would save Hinjo's life on two occasions? Does Lord Rooster have less foresight about the entire context of those events, or just a lack of inclination to look earthwards from time to time? Why are they hovering anxiously overhead at the precise moment of Miko killing Shojo if they don't care what happens to Azure City?

Now please don't give me bald assertions about the Twelves' imagined competing priorities with absolutely no evidence.

I think this leans too heavily on a specific interpretation of what "god-given orders" refers to. It could just as easily mean the paladin code in general, given the context of whether or not various paladins should fall.

"God-given orders" to do what? To seek out the Bearer of the Crimson Mantle? Or to battle evil wherever it is found?

What does 'battling evil wherever it is found' have to do with hacking down unarmed goblin toddlers? Invoking the paladin code as a mitigating factor during blatant violations of the paladin code just makes gibberish of the comparison.

Azure City is not the whole of the Continent. That the High priest of the church lived there does not mean all nine alignements of clerics were equally represented within its borders. It's entirely possible that Evil clerics avoid Azure City because of how many paladins there are there. They would pobably prefer the Realm of the Dragon who seemed quite Evil-Empire-y in HotPGhS. Also, being evil isn't a crime...

No, but all the things that evil people have to do in order to be evil pretty much are crimes. In any case, these other countries either worship the Twelve collectively- in which case they have all the same problems as Azure City- or they don't worship the Twelve collectively, in which case they're clearly providing some alternative religious framework that azurite paladins could latch onto instead.

I don't think any part of what you've described sounds much like a paladin, and I think the effort to rationalise it is after-the-fact tap-dancing around the spirit of the code.

Spoiler: Good Deeds Gone Unpunished

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Option C: They simply weren't paying the necessary attention to notice a secret society of paladins stirring war (but ultimately stopping before war actually broke out). Option D: They didn't need to stop Gin-Jun from massacring a village, because O-Chul had it well in hand. Option E: They don't fell paladins preemptively.

Then the Gate goes back to being a Rift, which is where things were before Azure City existed, under which circumstances the Twelve may or may not have voted to destroy the world. For all they know, the gates don't actually do anything at all. They're just seeing how far this "let the mortals solve things on their own" thing goes before they pull the plug.

Spoiler: Good Deeds Gone Unpunished

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Azure City was still the site of a Gate during the war with the Realm of the Dragon. If they should have warned Azure City during the events of OOTS, then they should have done so during OOTS. The reason they didn't on either occasion is that they just don't take this world seriously. Their fingers are on the button.

Spoiler

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On Gin-Jun: There's nothing 'pre-emptive' about this. Everything Gin-Jun did before meeting O-Chul was effectively evil, and per RAW, evil acts make a paladin fall (which, by the way, kind of implies that patron deities have to monitor their paladins' behaviour 24/7, which rules out the 'not paying attention' argument.) And if the Twelve are unwilling to pay attention to what a small army of their paladins are doing, what on earth makes you think they noticed and could rely on O-Chul?

On the Gate: You weren't arguing "the Gods don't care what happens to the rifts", you were arguing "the invasion of azure city would not threaten the rifts", which I think I have demonstrated to be clearly untrue. In any case, this idea that the Twelve were indifferent to azure city's fate is untenable, because we know a number were upset by it's fall, to the point where they're unwilling to do business with the Dark One even after the milk has been spilt.

I also remind you we have no way of telling what the Twelve did during the war with the Realm of the Dragon- but the azurites were certainly aware of the looming prospect of war with the Realm, which was more than could be said of the hobgoblins, and perhaps the limit of the direct help that the Twelve could provide. (The realm also had direct ethnic and political ties to the azurites, which made an existential war of annihilation less likely, but that's another topic.)

[hamishspence]

Spoiler

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Everything Gin-Jun did before meeting O-Chul was effectively evil, and per RAW, evil acts make a paladin fall (which, by the way, kind of implies that patron deities have to monitor their paladins' behaviour 24/7, which rules out the 'not paying attention' argument.)

In your eyes, maybe. But that doesn't mean his acts automatically qualify as Evil by the rules.

The standard paladin gets their powers "from the cosmic forces of Law and Good" - which are basically mindless - they might define the cosmos, but they don't have any agency in their own right.

Paladins don't need deities "monitoring their behaviour" to Fall. The evil acts simply break their connection to the Cosmic Forces of Law and Good - without any actual judgement or assessment being made by intelligent beings.

[Lacuna Caster]

In your eyes, maybe. But that doesn't mean his acts automatically qualify as Evil by the rules.

The standard paladin gets their powers "from the cosmic forces of Law and Good" - which are basically mindless - they might define the cosmos, but they don't have any agency in their own right.

Not in a universe where paladins explicitly get their powers from the Gods, not just abstract forces of Law and Good.

weird how Lacuna never, ever responds to this, right?

I respond to this continuously, over and over, and Kish keeps skipping back to some previous version of the argument that I didn't make. The problem lies in the general requirement that paladins do not associate with evil, overlaid on a theology that makes association with evil more-or-less inevitable.

As to whether "The Twelve Gods" frowned on Gin-Jun-ish behaviour, War & XPs commentary hints that they didn't:

Most damning, though, is a decades-long history of paladins exterminating entire villages of goblins and other humanoids at the behest of their gods (a point that is seen directly in the pages of Start of Darkness). That the city's undoing should be orchestrated by Redcloak, a villain that they themselves accidentally created, is only fitting. The Twelve Gods might have sanctioned their massacres, but even the gods can't stop Karma from kicking them in their divine asses once in a while.

Ah, thank you for the quote- that clears things up nicely.

But yes, that's rather my point. Not only are the Twelve explicitly sanctioning the indescriminate extermination of entire villages, which is very much Evil behaviour, but there is a clear implication that the Twelve have some channel of express communication with their followers for this purpose. So, given all this... why, exactly, can't they warn their own base of operations when the same species they were trying to exterminate sends a massive army back their way?



On a tangential note, there is an excerpt from Races of War that I think might be of interest here (spoilered for brevity.)

Spoiler

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The Ledgers of the Dwarves measure in exact terms the location of all the cool things that the Dwarven people have found, they give tips for dealing with problems that Dwarves have overcome in the past, and they record in excruciating detail every bad thing that anyone has ever done to the Dwarven race. Remember that when you consider the implications of the fact that every group has at one time or another been at war with any other race you care to name. So the fact that sometimes goblins commit atrocities against Dwarf settlements means that each and every Dwarf child grows up reared on vivid and gory stories of generations of conflicts with goblins – and goblins really don't. From the goblin perspective... nothing is happening at all. Goblins don't live nearly as long as Dwarves do, and that means that they don't have a war with Dwarves even every generation.

This discontinuity leads to Dwarves being much better at the eternal war they are fighting with the Orcs, the Giants, and the Goblins than their opponents. That's because noone else really has the perspective to see that it is an ongoing conflict. The other races see it as a series of separate conflicts that are all individually about something, and mostly their poor record keeping techniques leave them often unable to even recollect the previous conflict. So really, the Dwarves keep winning because they are the only ones playing.

You may be tempted to ask "If these wars kill thousands, and the only reason they're being kept alive is because of the Dwarf Ledger, doesn't that make the Dwarves the bad guys?" And honestly, that's a pretty good question. The Dwarves are Lawful Good and are the only race involved that understands the epic scale of the over-conflict. But that doesn't mean that they bear sole responsibility. Indeed, while the average Goblin on the street doesn't even know that there's an ancient rivalry between his people and the Dwarves, the list of usual suspects for evil overlords is a laundry list of people who actually also know the whole deal. Liches, Fiend Lords, and of course Maglubiet and Hruggek all know that Dwarves spend large amounts of time training and preparing for battle with the goblin people, and they don't tell the goblins. The thought is that by not telling the goblins that the Dwarves are totally ready for them and have been for thousands of years, that goblins will fight more bravely – they literally don't know how very unlikely each individual goblin is to make it out alive from any conflict.

So life is pretty weird for a Dwarf. As a Dwarf you know that you are in an eternal struggle with the Goblin people. You also know that several times in your life, goblinoids are going to behave towards the Dwarven people as if nothing was wrong and have flourishing trade relations instead. But you also know that once every couple of goblin generations (which is to say several times in your life if you happen to be a Dwarf) some warlord is going to arise and send hordes of goblins to destroy your family. So if Dwarves come off as being intolerant jerks, that's why.

Human lifespans aren't quite as long as Dwarves', but substitute 'Azurite' for 'Dwarf' and 'Dark One' for 'Maglubiet and Hruggek' and the underlying principles are pretty similar.

[Resileaf]

So D&Dwarves have their own version of the Great Book of Grudges.

[Peelee]

Yeah, but we've also seen the colossal celestial bureaucracy which manages to monitor essentialy everything that petitioners do or experience for the span of their entire lives (as they must in order to compute some verdict as to their alignment.) What do you imagine happens when dead azurites who were killed by Xykon and his 30,000 goblin minions show up at the pearly gates? You don't think any of this information is ferried up the chain of command?

Or, how about Lord Rooster giving Sangwaan the ability to foresee that Belkar would save Hinjo's life on two occasions? Does Lord Rooster have less foresight about the entire context of those events, or just a lack of inclination to look earthwards from time to time? Why are they hovering anxiously overhead at the precise moment of Miko killing Shojo if they don't care what happens to Azure City?

Maybe the Twelve Gods don't die on every hill. Maybe the hill you think is of utmost importance is not as big to them. Maybe Rooster knows things you don't, and this is the best way for things to play out (or how they will play out regardless; if Rooster foresaw the city falling and the Gate blowing, then Rooster would also presumably know that the Odeipal Avoidance doesn't help).

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Yeah, but we've also seen the colossal celestial bureaucracy which manages to monitor essentialy everything that petitioners do or experience for the span of their entire lives (as they must in order to compute some verdict as to their alignment.) What do you imagine happens when dead azurites who were killed by Xykon and his 30,000 goblin minions show up at the pearly gates? You don't think any of this information is ferried up the chain of command?

The Devas in the Celestial Bureaucracy of the LG admittance process follow the rules of a book. The gods are not in their chain of command.

Grey Wolf

[Mightymosy]

The angels in valhalla (cg?) seem to work for Thor, though.

[Keltest]

The angels in valhalla (cg?) seem to work for Thor, though.

There are a lot of various celestials. Not all of them are involved with any specific operation of a given upper plane or afterlife.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

The angels in valhalla (cg?) seem to work for Thor, though.

Not every Deva works in the Celestial Bureaucracy of the LG admittance process, anymore than every human works in a government's passport office.

Grey Wolf

[Resileaf]

Not every Deva works in the Celestial Bureaucracy of the LG admittance process, anymore than every human works in a government's passport office.

Grey Wolf

Wait, we don't all work in a government passport office?

[hamishspence]

On a tangential note, there is an excerpt from Races of War that I think might be of interest here (spoilered for brevity.)

So D&Dwarves have their own version of the Great Book of Grudges.

Races of War is very much fanon, like other "sourcebooks" on that wiki - it's not WOTC material.

The problem lies in the general requirement that paladins do not associate with evil, overlaid on a theology that makes association with evil more-or-less inevitable.

And the solution is to define "associate" very, very narrowly. Also, to define "worship of evil gods" as only an Evil act in the context of the god being the character's patron deity.

For example, in the Forgotten Realms, everybody, good and evil alike, make offerings to the CE sea deity Umberlee when they go on a sea journey. And these offerings don't cause paladin mariners to Fall - only actually taking Umberlee as their patron deity for primary worship, would do that.

[Keltest]

Races of War is very much fanon, like other "sourcebooks" on that wiki - it's not WOTC material.


And the solution is to define "associate" very, very narrowly. Also, to define "worship of evil gods" as only an Evil act in the context of the god being the character's patron deity.

For example, in the Forgotten Realms, everybody, good and evil alike, make offerings to the CE sea deity Umberlee when they go on a sea journey. And these offerings don't cause paladin mariners to Fall - only actually taking Umberlee as their patron deity for primary worship, would do that.

Exactly. There is a difference between acknowledging divinity, where you simply recognize that they do things, and actively venerating them and the things they do as an individual.

[Kish]

I respond to this continuously, over and over, and Kish keeps skipping back to some previous version of the argument that I didn't make.

Really? Didn't make? I wonder if you actually believe that now.

In any event, if your objection now is to Rat, why do you keep saying Tsukiko?

[Aveline]

Yeah, but we've also seen the colossal celestial bureaucracy which manages to monitor essentialy everything that petitioners do or experience for the span of their entire lives (as they must in order to compute some verdict as to their alignment.) What do you imagine happens when dead azurites who were killed by Xykon and his 30,000 goblin minions show up at the pearly gates? You don't think any of this information is ferried up the chain of command?

Or, how about Lord Rooster giving Sangwaan the ability to foresee that Belkar would save Hinjo's life on two occasions? Does Lord Rooster have less foresight about the entire context of those events, or just a lack of inclination to look earthwards from time to time? Why are they hovering anxiously overhead at the precise moment of Miko killing Shojo if they don't care what happens to Azure City?

Now please don't give me bald assertions about the Twelves' imagined competing priorities with absolutely no evidence.

Are contradictory priorities not the premise of your complaint? That they cared about Azure City but not enough to do anything relevant? Also, Thor states outright that the Twelve are split about working with the Dark One, for example. So the competing priorities are not imagined.

What does 'battling evil wherever it is found' have to do with hacking down unarmed goblin toddlers? Invoking the paladin code as a mitigating factor during blatant violations of the paladin code just makes gibberish of the comparison.

A paladin of the Sapphire Guard is duty-bound to fulfill orders from the commander unless those orders are in violation of the paladin code. Not trekking to what the commander says is an encampment of evil combatants would be desertion. Not casting Detect Evil for each individual goblin is a failure of each individual paladin at the time they kill a goblin - but not before that moment.

No, but all the things that evil people have to do in order to be evil pretty much are crimes. In any case, these other countries either worship the Twelve collectively- in which case they have all the same problems as Azure City- or they don't worship the Twelve collectively, in which case they're clearly providing some alternative religious framework that azurite paladins could latch onto instead.

Quick question. Are there rules in D&D 3.5 about worshipping a pantheon of gods as a single entity? Because if there aren't, I don't see a RAW argument for preventing alignment-oriented worship of a pantheon. (But maybe such rules exist. I don't know.)

I don't think any part of what you've described sounds much like a paladin, and I think the effort to rationalise it is after-the-fact tap-dancing around the spirit of the code.

That's a pathfinder discussion board. It's hardly authoritative or even relevant.

Spoiler

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On Gin-Jun: There's nothing 'pre-emptive' about this. Everything Gin-Jun did before meeting O-Chul was effectively evil, and per RAW, evil acts make a paladin fall (which, by the way, kind of implies that patron deities have to monitor their paladins' behaviour 24/7, which rules out the 'not paying attention' argument.) And if the Twelve are unwilling to pay attention to what a small army of their paladins are doing, what on earth makes you think they noticed and could rely on O-Chul?

On the Gate: You weren't arguing "the Gods don't care what happens to the rifts", you were arguing "the invasion of azure city would not threaten the rifts", which I think I have demonstrated to be clearly untrue. In any case, this idea that the Twelve were indifferent to azure city's fate is untenable, because we know a number were upset by it's fall, to the point where they're unwilling to do business with the Dark One even after the milk has been spilt.

I also remind you we have no way of telling what the Twelve did during the war with the Realm of the Dragon- but the azurites were certainly aware of the looming prospect of war with the Realm, which was more than could be said of the hobgoblins, and perhaps the limit of the direct help that the Twelve could provide. (The realm also had direct ethnic and political ties to the azurites, which made an existential war of annihilation less likely, but that's another topic.)

Spoiler: Scar

Show

The thought that they could notice O-Chul is derived from the premise that they could notice Gin-Jun and make him fall before he did something really really bad (which he might well have actually fallen for).

Spoiler: Start of Darkness

Show

Also, what evil deeds is Gin-Jun known to have committed before attacking O-Chul? Looking at the actual events, he was in the rear guard and didn't even really participate in the attack. If you're talking about leading paladins to a goblin city, well, that's not evil in and of itself.

On the Gate: I'm arguing that an invasion of Azure City is not a threat to the Rifts from the perspective of the Twelve. The rift is way open and at their Godsmoot they still voted not to destroy the world. That, to me, says the open rift is just as actionable to them as it was before Azure City existed: not actionable enough.

Ah, thank you for the quote- that clears things up nicely.

But yes, that's rather my point. Not only are the Twelve explicitly sanctioning the indescriminate extermination of entire villages, which is very much Evil behaviour, but there is a clear implication that the Twelve have some channel of express communication with their followers for this purpose. So, given all this... why, exactly, can't they warn their own base of operations when the same species they were trying to exterminate sends a massive army back their way?

The implication of express communication is not so clear to me. I accept that "behest" attributes some level of involvement to the Twelve, but that does not prove a capacity for clear communication. Again, any knowledge that might have been dispensed by the Twelve is incomplete anyway. (Also, the Crimson Mantle was an existential threat to the gods. There are good gods who want to kill every living soul in the course of containing the Snarl.)


As a side point, if (I emphasize if) it is gods who cause paladins to fall, I don't think it's because they want to. I think it's because they have to, because of unspoken world maintenance concerns, of which there are probably several.

[Jasdoif]

Quick question. Are there rules in D&D 3.5 about worshipping a pantheon of gods as a single entity? Because if there aren't, I don't see a RAW argument for preventing alignment-oriented worship of a pantheon. (But maybe such rules exist. I don't know.)

To some extent.

Spoiler: I have been told I don't know when to shut up

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Well, sheesh, hamish, by that standard why doesn't every cleric just worship every deity under the sun? You could be any alignment you like and basically do whatever with no tradeoffs or penalties.

Since you ask....

If the deities of a loose pantheon are the multitudinous centers of many distinct religions, a tight pantheon, by contrast, is the focus of a single religion. Practitioners of that religion may revere all the deities, a select number of them, or even just one, but whichever deity or deities they worship, they share a certain body of myths, rituals, and ethics.
...
Some individuals, more often clerics than laity, devote themselves to individual gods of a tight pantheon....Most people, including many clerics, are devoted to the entire pantheon. As with a loose pantheon, a follower of the Olympian pantheon makes offerings to Demeter to ensure a good harvest, to Poseidon before traveling by boat, to Aphrodite when seeking assistance in romance, and to Apollo for healing. The sacrifices each god expects are part of the shared doctrine of the pantheon, and sometimes the gods even share temples.

Basically, it's that shared set of myths/etc. that allows a pantheon to be tight. They're more like a family than a committee: They're together because they've always been together, more than because there's a specific rationale for them to unite; and they have so much history and so many values in common it doesn't seem at all weird for them to be a group without a specific reason for it...even if they're wildly different otherwise.

To that end, I think a cleric follower of a tight pantheon as a whole would "fall" for failing to uphold the common set of ethics, rather than (necessarily) for ticking off some number of the deities represented within....Doing this sensically, of course, would need that set of ethics to be both broad enough that there are actually understood conditions where falling makes sense, and narrow enough that you're looking at a pantheon rather a set of cookie cutter gods that follow the same expansive philosophy.

The aberrant deities, I assume, have the same shared history but actively dispute or undermine the ethics, in whole or in part. They're like the rebellious cousins who are still part of the family...no matter how much they wish they weren't.


Anyway, why a cleric wouldn't "just worship every deity under the sun"....The most likely reasons include:

• The total of deities under the sun doesn't comprise a single tight pantheon.
• The cleric feels more of a connection to one particular deity than the others, probably due to some aspect that deity influences or represents (e.g. Nephthys having "grief" as part of her portfolio)
• The cleric's alignment isn't represented among the non-abberant deities of the pantheon (probably the oddest mechanical rule; the alignment of a cleric of the pantheon as a whole must match that of one of the pantheon's non-abberant deities; they'd have to pick a specific deity if they needed to use the one-step rule).
• The cleric wants a domain that isn't offered by the non-abberant deities of the pantheon (this one at least makes sense).
• Eclipses.

[hamishspence]

As a side point, if (I emphasize if) it is gods who cause paladins to fall, I don't think it's because they want to. I think it's because they have to, because of unspoken world maintenance concerns, of which there are probably several.

We also know from Word of Giant that dramatic Falls - of the "all the pantheon's gods appear in the sky at once" kind, are very much the exception rather than the rule.

The implication of express communication is not so clear to me. I accept that "behest" attributes some level of involvement to the Twelve, but that does not prove a capacity for clear communication. Again, any knowledge that might have been dispensed by the Twelve is incomplete anyway. (Also, the Crimson Mantle was an existential threat to the gods. There are good gods who want to kill every living soul in the course of containing the Snarl.)

I lean to the view that after the Order of the Scribble found out about the Rifts and created the Gates, Soon was given a divine mandate from the Twelve as a whole to "wipe out all who would threaten the Gates, no matter how far removed geographically" and since then, there hasn't been that kind of clear communication - Soon only getting it at the time because he was an epic divine caster who already knew of the Rifts.

Hence any Falls by the Sapphire Guard due to "overzealousness in destroying those who threaten gates" being subtle rather than blatant - they had "god-given orders" (that mandate given to Soon, who handed it down to them) but went too far in executing them.

[Mightymosy]

Are contradictory priorities not the premise of your complaint? That they cared about Azure City but not enough to do anything relevant? Also, Thor states outright that the Twelve are split about working with the Dark One, for example. So the competing priorities are not imagined.



A paladin of the Sapphire Guard is duty-bound to fulfill orders from the commander unless those orders are in violation of the paladin code. Not trekking to what the commander says is an encampment of evil combatants would be desertion. Not casting Detect Evil for each individual goblin is a failure of each individual paladin at the time they kill a goblin - but not before that moment.



Quick question. Are there rules in D&D 3.5 about worshipping a pantheon of gods as a single entity? Because if there aren't, I don't see a RAW argument for preventing alignment-oriented worship of a pantheon. (But maybe such rules exist. I don't know.)

That's a pathfinder discussion board. It's hardly authoritative or even relevant.

Spoiler: Scar

Show

The thought that they could notice O-Chul is derived from the premise that they could notice Gin-Jun and make him fall before he did something really really bad (which he might well have actually fallen for).

Spoiler: Start of Darkness

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Also, what evil deeds is Gin-Jun known to have committed before attacking O-Chul? Looking at the actual events, he was in the rear guard and didn't even really participate in the attack. If you're talking about leading paladins to a goblin city, well, that's not evil in and of itself.

On the Gate: I'm arguing that an invasion of Azure City is not a threat to the Rifts from the perspective of the Twelve. The rift is way open and at their Godsmoot they still voted not to destroy the world. That, to me, says the open rift is just as actionable to them as it was before Azure City existed: not actionable enough.



The implication of express communication is not so clear to me. I accept that "behest" attributes some level of involvement to the Twelve, but that does not prove a capacity for clear communication. Again, any knowledge that might have been dispensed by the Twelve is incomplete anyway. (Also, the Crimson Mantle was an existential threat to the gods. There are good gods who want to kill every living soul in the course of containing the Snarl.)


As a side point, if (I emphasize if) it is gods who cause paladins to fall, I don't think it's because they want to. I think it's because they have to, because of unspoken world maintenance concerns, of which there are probably several.

This "if" in the end I don't get.

When Miko falls, the twelve animals: are these NOT the gods taking her powers away?

[hamishspence]

Depends on if The Giant is following the "gods control whether a paladin falls or not" houserule.

If not - then it is possible for a paladin to Fall despite committing an act that their god approves of (the god might be LN and approve of certain Evil acts) - and vice versa (the paladin doesn't fall for an act that their god disapproves of that doesn't violate the Paladin's Code).

In which case, dramatic visual displays are less to do with "taking the power away" and more to do with "the gods expressing their opinion."

[Grey_Wolf_c]

This "if" in the end I don't get.

When Miko falls, the twelve animals: are these NOT the gods taking her powers away?

No. Her powers are taken away because of the Rules they baked into this world. In that sense, I suppose they are ultimately responsible, but only by having agreed centuries before she was even born, that that's what would happen if a Paladin broke their class rules. But they weren't immediately responsible. She would have lost her powers even if the gods had not showed up.

But what it does mean is that her behaviour was so egregious that they felt they should put on a show to let everyone in the vicinity just how much they felt she had broken the rules. Like the Giant said, there are various degrees on how you can get fired from a job. If someone makes a bad enough mistake, they will be fired. But there will be a difference in the response from management depending on the mistake: burnt down a few burgers? They'll be told not to come back. Set a building on fire? The CEO might show up with security. The ultimate consequence is the same (they can't do more than fire them, suing for restitution aside), but how egregious the way they got there might call for a much greater response.

Grey Wolf

[Mightymosy]

No. Her powers are taken away because of the Rules they baked into this world. In that sense, I suppose they are ultimately responsible, but only by having agreed centuries before she was even born, that that's what would happen if a Paladin broke their class rules. But they weren't immediately responsible. She would have lost her powers even if the gods had not showed up.

But what it does mean is that her behaviour was so egregious that they felt they should put on a show to let everyone in the vicinity just how much they felt she had broken the rules. Like the Giant said, there are various degrees on how you can get fired from a job. If someone makes a bad enough mistake, they will be fired. But there will be a difference in the response from management depending on the mistake: burnt down a few burgers? They'll be told not to come back. Set a building on fire? The CEO might show up with security. The ultimate consequence is the same (they can't do more than fire them, suing for restitution aside), but how egregious the way they got there might call for a much greater response.

Grey Wolf

Well, that's a weird way of painting it then......because in the strip, the twelve animal gods form a circle in the sky, and then from the sky comes a bolt towards Miko that turns her from blue to beige.

To ME, that certainly looks as if the these animal gods take Miko's paladin powers away.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Well, that's a weird way of painting it then......because in the strip, the twelve animal gods form a circle in the sky, and then from the sky comes a bolt towards Miko that turns her from blue to beige.

To ME, that certainly looks as if the these animal gods take Miko's paladin powers away.

Which is why we have a clarification from the author explaining the reason why there was a bolt from the blue in this case, whereas in most cases there isn't. Because most cases of Paladins falling don't involve them murdering their own boss.

Grey Wolf

[Mightymosy]

So did the bolt come from the gods or not?

[Keltest]

So did the bolt come from the gods or not?

I believe that Grey Wolf is saying that while the gods were involved, they were only lending their presence and authority to a process that would have occurred anyway, to make their displeasure clear. The bolt was a symbolic thing and not literally the way paladin powers are taken away.

[factotum]

We literally have Word of Giant that the Gods don't personally turn up to make every paladin Fall when they mess up, so I'm not sure why this is even still in dispute, to be honest.