Not another gotcha paladin situation

[Darg]

Restore Class: A paladin who has lost her class features due to unwillingly or unwittingly committing an evil act may have her paladinhood restored to her by this spell. Note: A paladin who willingly and deliberately commits an evil act can never regain her paladinhood.

Restore Class

A paladin who has lost her class features due to committing an evil act may have her paladinhood restored to her by this spell.

They got rid of the unwilling part and the permanent loss of paladinhood upon willful commitment of an evil act. It makes no sense when reading the paladin description which also has the only falls when willfully committing an evil act clause, or grossly violates their CoC. Which description has more priority? Paladin description obviously. At which point the atonement spell contradicts the paladin description by saying they can't seek Atonement after willfully committing an evil act which is the only way an evil act can make a paladin fall.

Honestly, I think the scenario in the heads of WotC when they worded it was similar to the Ajantis goblin scenario in Baldur's Gate 2. An illusion was cast on both parties making them both think that the other was a group of evil creatures. Makes me wish they would have implemented a dispel/overwriting mechanic similar to the charmed knight in the de'arnise keep. Would have been awesome.

As for the fiend of corruption, I don't see anything that says that a paladin would fall from using any of the abilities. I could see it slowly tempt the paladin to evil and use temptation to alter the paladin's alignment, but that still requires the paladin to be willing to be evil in the first place.

[D+1]

But the idea that because "doing what's right ALL THE TIME" is the point of playing paladin, paladin players should get specific nudges (warnings, explanations etc.) from the DM when they are about to do wrong... nah. Paladins don't get "detect WHATEVER IS RIGHT" class ability.

Yet other classes don't NEED to have detect rightness radar because their faithfulness to their class and alignment is NEVER tested. When was the last time a moral landmine was placed in front of a LG cleric to intentionally try to trip them up and get them in trouble with their deities? Rangers? Druids? Or go the other way and lay down a morality trap for an assassin who instead doing EVIL chose to do something good: "It doesn't matter if you were just being polite, you're supposed to be deliberately EVIL, so you blundered your way into an alignment change. Of course you can get an atonement spell but you should have known better than to do good things, and of course it's not MY job as DM to even suggest to you that you're being too nice..."

Plot armour against falling from the grace is still plot armour. Arguing that playing without plot armour is badwrongfun, is bad, wrong, and unfun.

Who's talking about plot armor? I'm talking about giving paladin players the same break a DM gives ALL OTHER PC's, but for paladins they are singled out for particular persecution.

There is plenty of situations in which paladin can willingly blunder into violating CoC. Not all of those even require special setup by a DM, and I defy the idea that all moral decisions should be either obvious or require special handholding by DM.

Paladins were not inserted into the game to give the DM a special opportunity to trip them up that they don't get with every other PC, but that is how they are used. YOU BET they should get special handling by the DM - because (IME in games and on forums) it's the DM's alone who are responsible for the fact that the ONLY characters that ever need atonement spells are paladins.

If that's how you group rolls, godspeed to you, but please do not say that either rules or... I don't know what, community standards? - say that paladins only fall when their players want them to fall.

If they only fell when their players wanted them too then they'd be getting handled like other PC's. But they also fall when DM's want them too, and in way too many instances the DM's put particular traps for paladins ALONE. Again and again people go to online forums not to ask advice about how to deal with a DM who has made their LG magic-user become evil - but about how the DM made their LG paladin become evil. By ACCIDENT.

I'm not saying that paladins should AT ALL be "immune" from falling unless the player is willing for that to happen. What I'm saying is that paladins should have no significantly greater danger of it than any other PC, and especially that the DM should not be targeting paladins in particular in attempts to LURE them into misdeeds simply because they pay a more readily identified or higher price for it if they DO transgress. Paladins are vulnerable to being overly abused by DM's - therefore paladins ARE overly abused by DM's because it's easier to abuse them than other classes. Hell, it's practically expected and I've seen DM's say in all seriousness that they consider it THEIR JOB to make every paladin PC fall.

P.S. Has there been any discussion about general rule for RAW when one part of one book contradicts the other, like PHB CoC and Atonement? Neither specific vs general nor primary source seems to help (though if I were DMing I'd probably go on the side of "CoC is stronger\more directly related").

My own reasoning stems from the 2004 3.5 PH errata document that gave the formal rules regarding rule precedence, summed up as:

• unless errata'd the earlier/primary source is correct
• text takes precedence over a table entry
• the short descriptions in the beginning of the spells chapter are superseded by individual spell descriptions
• PH gives the rules for playing the game, playing PC races, and base class descriptions and if something on those topics from the DMG or MM that disagrees, the PH takes precedence
• DMG is the primary source for topics such as magic item descriptions, special material construction rules, and so on
• MM is the primary source for monster descriptions, templates, and supernatural, extraordinary, and spell-like abilities.

From that I infer that the description of how a class works including what makes a paladin fall, should take precedence over the description of a spell like Atonement which suggests something different.

[Cygnia]

There's the Gray Guard PrC for LG pallies.

[Saint-Just]

Yet other classes don't NEED to have detect rightness radar because their faithfulness to their class and alignment is NEVER tested. When was the last time a moral landmine was placed in front of a LG cleric to intentionally try to trip them up and get them in trouble with their deities? Rangers? Druids? Or go the other way and lay down a morality trap for an assassin who instead doing EVIL chose to do something good: "It doesn't matter if you were just being polite, you're supposed to be deliberately EVIL, so you blundered your way into an alignment change. Of course you can get an atonement spell but you should have known better than to do good things, and of course it's not MY job as DM to even suggest to you that you're being too nice..."

1. There are other classes with code of conduct: Knight, Kensai, Samurai, I bet there is probably at least one more. They are only rarely seen because they are not too powerful AND because they are not in the Core.
2. Paladins have a unique (among the Core classes) feature - Code of Conduct. It is supposed to be limiting their actions more significantly than other classes' restrictions (many of them have a section on ex-X, and in fact consequence of becoming ex-Monk is significantly less than ex-Druid so it's not like there is a single standard). Most pertinent part is "paladin falls for a single evil act" while other classes need at least enough evil to shift their alignment one step. Paladin may fall while remaining LG.
3.Parsing your arguments in a charitable way you and I seem to have a disagreement not about limits of CoC , but about how those limits should be enforced. To make a parallel with chess - some rulesets punish illegal moves with time penalty and the player must make another move with the same piece, others simply restore position before the illegal move. D&D is not a competitive game (normally) and punishing players is not a good idea, but character suffering consequences for their actions is widely (but not universally) accepted, even if that makes a player unhappy. It is not that different from another active thread - whether or not it is acceptable to break or steal PC's stuff, and the answer is the same - "It depends"

You are also using emotional but imprecise parallels: other classes may become ex-X if they do enough evil (or chaos or good or whatever) if they change alignment, paladins are supposed to fall for a single evil act. And I do not think you can produce rules that say or even imply that being polite is a good act.

Spoiler: More of the same

Show

Who's talking about plot armor? I'm talking about giving paladin players the same break a DM gives ALL OTHER PC's, but for paladins they are singled out for particular persecution.

YOU BET they should get special handling by the DM - because (IME in games and on forums) it's the DM's alone who are responsible for the fact that the ONLY characters that ever need atonement spells are paladins.

If they only fell when their players wanted them too then they'd be getting handled like other PC's. But they also fall when DM's want them too, and in way too many instances the DM's put particular traps for paladins ALONE. Again and again people go to online forums not to ask advice about how to deal with a DM who has made their LG magic-user become evil - but about how the DM made their LG paladin become evil. By ACCIDENT.

What I'm saying is that paladins should have no significantly greater danger of it than any other PC, and especially that the DM should not be targeting paladins in particular in attempts to LURE them into misdeeds simply because they pay a more readily identified or higher price for it if they DO transgress.

I agree that going out of your way to screw the player is not a good idea, but again - why it should be as hard for a paladin to make a single evil act as for other characters to do enough evil to shift alignment? You are just saying the same thing again and again without explaining why.

Obviously because CoC a moral prohibition it's going to generate much more disagreement than more objective prohibitions but there are examples of game mechanics which require you to abstain from activity which you can do accidentally (Wu jen's taboo: Cannot touch a dead body, Vow of Purity feat). Oh, and exalted Vows feats? You lose the benefit of them if you are mind controlled into breaking the prohibition (but can receive atonement, while if you break them intentionally they are lost forever, like in 3.0 text of atonement for paladins), so it's not even the strictest of all such mechanics. You can argue that CoC is a bad design decision, but it is a design decision. Paladins are supposed to fall for breaking CoC. And as I said above CoC is a stricter requirement than other classes' restrictions, but if you want official position about how much info DM should give about possible alignment change? Read p. 134 of DMG. So the same amount of info would be provided to players of any class, but there are a lot more actions for which paladin is supposed to fall than even the cleric of the same god.

Oh, and you have managed to ignore my point that if we think about D&D settings as worlds then we have examples of paladins falling when they intended to do good but did evil. If PCs are exempted from I am not sure how you can argue this is not a plot armour.

And it would be also nice if you addressed my example "what if Miko was a paladin played by a headstrong player".

My own reasoning stems from the 2004 3.5 PH errata document that gave the formal rules regarding rule precedence, summed up as:

• unless errata'd the earlier/primary source is correct
• text takes precedence over a table entry
• the short descriptions in the beginning of the spells chapter are superseded by individual spell descriptions
• PH gives the rules for playing the game, playing PC races, and base class descriptions and if something on those topics from the DMG or MM that disagrees, the PH takes precedence
• DMG is the primary source for topics such as magic item descriptions, special material construction rules, and so on
• MM is the primary source for monster descriptions, templates, and supernatural, extraordinary, and spell-like abilities.

From that I infer that the description of how a class works including what makes a paladin fall, should take precedence over the description of a spell like Atonement which suggests something different.

I do not think that inferences can be RAW. RAI-wise I do think that CoC is more important and mind-controlled paladins should not fall. But unlike in 3.0 there is no "unwittingly" language, so paladin who willingly but unwittingly commits an evil act = paladin who willingly commits an evil act.

[Darg]

I do not think that inferences can be RAW. RAI-wise I do think that CoC is more important and mind-controlled paladins should not fall. But unlike in 3.0 there is no "unwittingly" language, so paladin who willingly but unwittingly commits an evil act = paladin who willingly commits an evil act.

The BoVD disagrees with this. Intent and context are important as defined on page 6. In fact, it makes it pretty difficult for a paladin to just fall accidently. I don't think I've seen a situation online that actually traps a paladin in a fall or fall situation.

A paladin only falls for willfully committing an evil act so the atonement text doesn't change anything. The 3.0 version made it impossible to atone except for gross violations of the CoC. These gross violations require the paladin to wittingly violate them in some outstanding way. Just because settings condone outcomes that don't make sense with the rules doesn't mean that settings should be the guide we should be following. Hell, they have paladin kings in settings. If anyone logically thinks about it, it would be impossible for that paladin king to remain a paladin if a strict interpretation of the CoC and Ex-Paladin rules was used.

[Saint-Just]

The BoVD disagrees with this. Intent and context are important as defined on page 6. In fact, it makes it pretty difficult for a paladin to just fall accidently. I don't think I've seen a situation online that actually traps a paladin in a fall or fall situation.

I have argued (in my second post in this thread) that fall or fall should be impossible, there is no disagreement here.

There is a disagreement (surely between me and D+1 and a few others have outlined views similar both to mine and to their view) about what can qualify as what BoVD calls "recklessness or negligence". And there is also an additional complication to D+1's position, namely "it should be not easier for a paladin to fall than for other characters to fall", which taken literally contradicts CoC, and taken non-literally may mean a lot of different things (Should DM provide metagame knowledge of action's morality to paladin player? Should antagonists (played by DM) never arrange an opportunity for a paladin to fall, even if they are, say, devils? Etc. etc.).

[Darg]

As the BoVD points out, recklessness and negligence aren't evil themselves. It's about intent and context. In the example in the book, the paladin knew that his reckless act could cause a landslide that would possibly kill someone. When the paladin didn't know, he wouldn't fall for it.

A druid who ceases to revere nature, changes to a prohibited alignment, or teaches the Druidic language to a nondruid loses all spells and druid abilities (including her animal companion, but not including weapon, armor, and shield proficiencies). She cannot thereafter gain levels as a druid until she atones (see the atonement spell description).

With how many people play druids, it is extremely easy to say they stopped revering nature as the players themselves tend to take nature within the world for granted. Not many people go out of their way to make them fall compared to paladins even though it is much easier.

Many people also forget that clerics also have to abide by a CoC based on their deity. These are generally strict to adherence similar to a paladin and gross violations are just as easy.

[Morty]

I think those discussions are a pretty good illustration of why both 4E and 5E did well to chuck the code of conduct into the bin. It's never been actually necessary to play a noble hero, regardless of their class.

[illyahr]

I have only ever set up a "gotcha" situation once, and that was an inverse example. The paladin fell because he did nothing when any action would've preserved his status.

Spoiler: A paladin falls for doing nothing

Show

The paladin was promiscuous and bedded women in every town, making sure that the woman knew that it couldn't be anything long-term and was only a moment of comfort for the night. As he made sure there were no false expectations, I allowed it. It started getting a bit disruptive, so I made a plot twist out of it: the paladin has unknowingly bedded a disguised succubus. I only had his powers start to "glitch" a bit: after, there was a 1/20 chance that whatever power he used simply didn't work.

The group kept wondering what was going on. He hadn't fallen as his powers still generally worked but they looked into what was going on. They found out about the succubus and tracked her down. In doing so, they learned that she had become pregnant and given birth to a demonic child. The succubus declared that the child was his problem now and teleported away.

If the paladin destroyed the monstrous abomination and, thus, prevented a great evil from terrorizing the world, his powers would have been fixed. If he had taken pity on the innocent child and raised it/given it to someone who could take care of it, his powers would have been fixed. He walked away, dooming the child to death by exposure. All the other players caught on to what was going on but the paladin player basically threw a tantrum that I was targeting his character and rage-quit.

[Conradine]

To leave a newborn... or even a wounded adult to die of thirst and exposure is an horrible action. I seriously wonder what the player thought.

[Darg]

He probably thought he didn't want to take care of a child and that murdering one in cold blood was just as heartless. It's not like there haven't been good tieflings before.

[Saint-Just]

I was going to say how that tale illustrates how clueless (or at least how unwilling to constrain their actions in any way) some players can be, but it almost goes too far. It's not merely "a single evil act" but an act which would be enough to switch any character of Good alignment at least to Neutral, so there is no difference between a paladin and any other "must be of Good alignment" class.

[Bartmanhomer]

*I'm eating popcorn while everyone is discussing the paladin situation.*

Reading the whole thread about paladin is entertaining.

[Conradine]

Unless there was an extenuating circumstance - like enemies around, too little food and water, deep into enemy territory or the like - it's a capital Evil action. If the father don't want to keep the baby, he has only to trasport him to the nearest Good aligned temple ( Pelor, probably ) and leave him here.


Death by exposure... bah.
Even a murderous rapist deserves the mercy of a quick death ( although I would understand if his victims choose to deny him mercy ).
But a newborn???!!??

[noob]

There is usually ways to offload child care to npcs because usually when a plot is introduced there is also a solution that is introduced in the case the players are not creative this time.
But the player did not necessarily realise that if he carried the kid some time then they would have probably found quickly a npc that had a glowing arrow pointing at it with written "will take care of the children if asked to"

[137beth]

So if a paladin posts in a "does the paladin fall" thread, does the paladin fall?

[noob]

So if a paladin posts in a "does the paladin fall" thread, does the paladin fall?

Yes from their chair laughing.

[icefractal]

Another reason to alert Paladins to potentially fall-worth acts in advance is that the player and GM can legitimately disagree on what "good" is. If the disjunction is revealed in advance, it's usually possible to find a solution that works for both, or at least to discuss it more objectively because nothing is yet on the line.

Although TBH, the "DM as arbiter of good and evil" thing is pretty questionable anyway. No offense, but I'm not going to consider someone a RL moral authority just because they're running a game (and neither would I expect players to consider me one when I'm running). Given some of the interesting statements I've seen here and on other boards about the best response to various moral dilemmas, I think there's quite a range of opinions.

So personally speaking, I ditch alignment when I run, and I don't play alignment-dependent classes when I play. And if it was a factor in a campaign, I'd go with the assumption that we may or may not sync up and should be prepared for discussion.

[illyahr]

I was going to say how that tale illustrates how clueless (or at least how unwilling to constrain their actions in any way) some players can be, but it almost goes too far. It's not merely "a single evil act" but an act which would be enough to switch any character of Good alignment at least to Neutral, so there is no difference between a paladin and any other "must be of Good alignment" class.

Yeah, it wasn't a character action but a player action. The player himself decided the whole situation was bull**** (yay consequences) and left for the day, so the paladin essentially left the child there.

[Bartmanhomer]

Yes from their chair laughing.

Best comment ever in 2020.

[BlueWitch]

In response to the first post on the first page;

I wouldn't make the Paladin fall for any of those.

It's annoying when you have a GM who tries to make your Paladin fall just to bully the player. I've had GM's like that in the past and they were always very narrow minded.

But back to what I was saying; If I was GMing that situation, I wouldn't make the Paladin fall for that.

The Paladin may have been used but the Intention was the Mindcontroller's. Therefore any sin is their's not the Paladin's.

[Conradine]

Despite my hatred for paladins, I would never make one fall for an action done under Domination or similar effects.

But I fear RAW says exactly that. So, I would not do that, but it would be homebrew.

[JNAProductions]

Despite my hatred for paladins, I would never make one fall for an action done under Domination or similar effects.

But I fear RAW says exactly that. So, I would not do that, but it would be homebrew.

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

How do you get Paladins falling from being forced into evil from that? It pretty clearly states that you have to do so WILLINGLY, not be dominated or physically forced into doing so.

[hippo]

And it would be also nice if you addressed my example "what if Miko was a paladin played by a headstrong player".

Miko is a narrow-minded, ignorant fanatic that has "lawful stupid" printed all over her. Bringing such a character to the table is an act of trolling. If a PC like this would show up in my game, I'd have a talk with the problem player and offer them a simple choice: Stop lawful stupid or find another DM. If a player refuses to behave like a reasonable adult, which includes not harming everyones game and citing his characters alignment as an excuse, then I'm not playing with them anymore, simple as that. D&D (and other RPGs) are just not fun anymore when played with human trolls.
A Character such as Miko is the result of a problem player, game mechanics like falling can not solve it. A player that is not able or willing to play a LG character in a reasonable way should not play a LG character at all. So if Miko would happen at my table I would try to fix the human problem and not mess around with falling. RAW is just not the right way to deal with this.

[Saint-Just]

Miko is a narrow-minded, ignorant fanatic that has "lawful stupid" printed all over her. Bringing such a character to the table is an act of trolling. If a PC like this would show up in my game, I'd have a talk with the problem player and offer them a simple choice: Stop lawful stupid or find another DM. If a player refuses to behave like a reasonable adult, which includes not harming everyones game and citing his characters alignment as an excuse, then I'm not playing with them anymore, simple as that. D&D (and other RPGs) are just not fun anymore when played with human trolls.
A Character such as Miko is the result of a problem player, game mechanics like falling can not solve it. A player that is not able or willing to play a LG character in a reasonable way should not play a LG character at all. So if Miko would happen at my table I would try to fix the human problem and not mess around with falling. RAW is just not the right way to deal with this.

Please don't ignore the context. My disagreement with D+1 was about Paladin players doing things that they think are ok but which are wrong or evil. I do not think that such characters can only be created to deliberately troll the people. Look above for the "death by exposure paladin". Or look for the "Party Foul" in the Roleplaying Forum. And these are only the recent threads, on these forums only, older examples are innumerable.

Even if Miko and examples above are too obvious for your tastes (they were not so obvious to the players, it seems), will you say that no good player has ever committed an evil act without knowing full well it is evil? I think the answer is no, so here is the question: should a DM stop a game to ask the player "Do you want to commit an evil act, y/n" or should he proceed with the game and let the consequences be whatever they should be? Would you also do so for significant chaotic and lawful acts?

[Darg]

Please don't ignore the context. My disagreement with D+1 was about Paladin players doing things that they think are ok but which are wrong or evil. I do not think that such characters can only be created to deliberately troll the people. Look above for the "death by exposure paladin". Or look for the "Party Foul" in the Roleplaying Forum. And these are only the recent threads, on these forums only, older examples are innumerable.

Even if Miko and examples above are too obvious for your tastes (they were not so obvious to the players, it seems), will you say that no good player has ever committed an evil act without knowing full well it is evil? I think the answer is no, so here is the question: should a DM stop a game to ask the player "Do you want to commit an evil act, y/n" or should he proceed with the game and let the consequences be whatever they should be? Would you also do so for significant chaotic and lawful acts?

I couldn't find the exposure one, but the party foul post didn't have enough context. It appears that the paladin had the intention to leave the rogue behind prior to performing a reckless action. Would it lead to her death, torture? If the paladin had the intent to betray her prior to exposing her to the bbeg, then it was an evil act. If however the paladin decided to give up on her after her retaliatory action it would be a neutral action. The rogue would have sought revenge over the most likely chance of survival and therefore became hostile to the paladin. In this case the rogue committed the first evil act by attempting murder.

There are grey/neutral actions that aren't necessarily evil. There is a difference between performing a reckless act and knowing the outcome or not. The landslide example in the BoVD showcases the how it works without the intent to do harm. The poisoned well example shows how it works when there is an intent to do harm. Collateral damage is only evil if you know there is a possibility of a bad outcome or if you intentionally perform a harmful action and innocents accidentally get caught up in it.

[Saint-Just]

Death by exposure was in this thread. Should have left the link in the post. This.

I have only ever set up a "gotcha" situation once, and that was an inverse example. The paladin fell because he did nothing when any action would've preserved his status.

The "foul" example significantly depends on how you interpret the paladin's words "take her" (before the rogue attacked) and also whether "the boss was already talked to me telepathically, and as best judgement, I decided to agree with her demands" happened before or after the words "take her".

And my question was general. Even if I making the bad job illustrating my point with examples (though I do not think the only way someone could take Miko-like actions is to deliberately troll the group). Do you think that situation where player is taking an action which DM to the best of their ability classifies as evil and the player honestly thinks is ok never happens? I think it happens, and if it happens I do not think that DM should inform the player about it's morality.

[hippo]

Please don't ignore the context. My disagreement with D+1 was about Paladin players doing things that they think are ok but which are wrong or evil. I do not think that such characters can only be created to deliberately troll the people. Look above for the "death by exposure paladin".

I'd not let this paladin fall. Why should I? Refusing to clean up after another persons evil act is not evil itself. If it would be an evil act to refuse to do a good act, then there would simply be no more paladins left. Since killing the child was an acceptable solution that would even fix the paladins powers, i can't see any reason to let him fall because of doing nothing.

Even if Miko and examples above are too obvious for your tastes (they were not so obvious to the players, it seems), will you say that no good player has ever committed an evil act without knowing full well it is evil? I think the answer is no, so here is the question: should a DM stop a game to ask the player "Do you want to commit an evil act, y/n" or should he proceed with the game and let the consequences be whatever they should be? Would you also do so for significant chaotic and lawful acts?

If a players manages to play all this "Holy Warrior fighting for the greater good" - Theme reasonably well then I'm not going to change his class against his will, even if there are some transgressions against his CoC or minor acts that I'd consider evil. If a player constantly does minor evil acts or some really bad stuff (like freeing the Snarl to stop both Xykon and the OotS) then I would just have a talk with this player about his character and if he wants to play something else (or if he wants to fall), since he is obviously not playing a paladin. Depending on the outcome I might maybe change his alignment and houserule some apropriate class for him to become. Like a Paladin for a CG or LE God with an apropriate CoC (all this "LG only" stuff never made sense to me anyway). I've seen so much drama and bad blood spill into the game for DMs sabotaging a PC that I just consider it not worth it.

[icefractal]

Do you think that situation where player is taking an action which DM to the best of their ability classifies as evil and the player honestly thinks is ok never happens? I think it happens, and if it happens I do not think that DM should inform the player about it's morality.

Why shouldn't they? If a GM describes a mountain pass, a player misunderstands the description and says "I continue walking north", but north is off a cliff, do you think the character should just mindlessly walk off a cliff? Mistakes caused by misunderstanding aren't challenge, they're disfunctionality, like the difference between "a difficult platformer game" and "an easy platformer game being played with a half-broken controller and a glitchy screen".

If the GM thinks something is blatantly evil and the player doesn't, that's a miscommunication. Not an IC choice. If it's more like "subtly evil if you really think about it" and it makes sense IC that they might not come to that conclusion, then it's not enough to fall for.

And for that matter: "to the best of their ability classifies as evil" -
Given that the DMG does not, in fact, include the complete formula for morality that philosophers throughout history have otherwise failed to find, wouldn't it be wiser to see whether the rest of the group agrees on that point, and discuss the reason if not, than to declare oneself a perfect moral arbiter? The advantage of mentioning it in advance is that this discussion occurs naturally when needed without any rewinding.

[vasilidor]

to be honest, if the paladin player could give me a course of action they wanted their character to take and a reasonable line of thought based on the information the paladin had for said action as to how they thought it was the best, morale, course of action, I would not make them fall.
provided said course of action was not something along the lines of murder everyone or some such.
I made another thread about absurd alignment situations that included a hypothetical gotcha in the first post, directly inspired by this thread. there are several ways the paladin could oppose the evil dictator without falling if they actually took the time to put some thought into it.