The Problem with Paladin Villains (spoilers for SoD/GDGU)

[Shadowknight12]

We're dealing with a world where you can objectively determine if an act or being is good or evil.
Producing paladins requires producing people who are authentically lawful good, not who just think they are lawful good.

Personally, I find this idea to be fundamentally incompatible with any possible interpretations I can have of the rules, because it creates the idea that evil actions are fundamentally, universally, cosmologically incompatible with good people (either the action the Good person made was not Evil because we can excuse it, or we strip the person of their Good status if we cannot excuse their actions, so that the rest of us Good folk can feel safer knowing they are not like us and therefore our actions cannot be Evil), and therefore this becomes wholly divorced from reality for me.

No, I just think that being wrong about how to produce a Paladin leaves you unable to produce one. They could certainly produce a knight, and maybe even a Lawful Good knight. But he wouldn't be a Paladin because part of his quest is a genocide on creatures with free will.

I return to the wizard analogy. If you can't write and won't ever learn, you can't become a wizard. A sorcerer? Sure. A bard? Go for it. But not a wizard, because you fail to meet the requirements to be a wizard.

But the forces of Good declare that the genocide of fiends (and very commonly also undead) is not only Good, because they are irredeemably Evil, but also a desire of the forces of Good so that Good may triumph. Fiends and undead have free will even if they are fundamentally different, biologically speaking, from goblins or other monsters.

The wizard analogy doesn't work because being unable to write is an observable limitation that you can immediately be aware of. You can be deceived your entire life about whether certain monsters are irredeemably evil like certain other monsters and the only way you'd know is if a higher power went out of its way to let you know. So your argument is that, even though it's not stated anywhere, these higher powers know when mortals are wrong and therefore can prevent the creation of paladins that would hold false beliefs.

[Keltest]

Fiends and (most) undead don't have free will actually. They are compelled to do evil and be evil. Thus the conflict.

[pearl jam]

Personally, I find this idea to be fundamentally incompatible with any possible interpretations I can have of the rules, because it creates the idea that evil actions are fundamentally, universally, cosmologically incompatible with good people (either the action the Good person made was not Evil because we can excuse it, or we strip the person of their Good status if we cannot excuse their actions, so that the rest of us Good folk can feel safer knowing they are not like us and therefore our actions cannot be Evil), and therefore this becomes wholly divorced from reality for me.



But the forces of Good declare that the genocide of fiends (and very commonly also undead) is not only Good, because they are irredeemably Evil, but also a desire of the forces of Good so that Good may triumph. Fiends and undead have free will even if they are fundamentally different, biologically speaking, from goblins or other monsters.

The wizard analogy doesn't work because being unable to write is an observable limitation that you can immediately be aware of. You can be deceived your entire life about whether certain monsters are irredeemably evil like certain other monsters and the only way you'd know is if a higher power went out of its way to let you know. So your argument is that, even though it's not stated anywhere, these higher powers know when mortals are wrong and therefore can prevent the creation of paladins that would hold false beliefs.

The forces of gravity compel you to fall even if you've been told since birth that you will fly.

[Shadowknight12]

Fiends and (most) undead don't have free will actually. They are compelled to do evil and be evil. Thus the conflict.

I have went and checked the Monster Manual, Book of Vile Darkness and Book of Exalted Deeds, to check if it mentioned this. I could find no actual statement of fiends lacking free will or being compelled to do evil. I've seen statements that fiends are made of pure evil, certainly, but that has no bearing on their free will. After all, celestials can fall.

The forces of gravity compel you to fall even if you've been told since birth that you will fly.

That is again an observable phenomenon that you have been exposed to since birth.

[Jason]

Personally, I find this idea to be fundamentally incompatible with any possible interpretations I can have of the rules, because it creates the idea that evil actions are fundamentally, universally, cosmologically incompatible with good people...

Which is the case. In D&D good people cannot perform evil actions and remain good. The two are fundamentally, universally, cosmologically incompatible.

(either the action the Good person made was not Evil because we can excuse it, or we strip the person of their Good status if we cannot excuse their actions, so that the rest of us Good folk can feel safer knowing they are not like us and therefore our actions cannot be Evil), and therefore this becomes wholly divorced from reality for me.

No, there is no "we" acting here. In D&D the universe's natural laws determine when a person has done enough evil to detect as evil. In the context of the game there is no conscious choice being made - any more than "gravity" decides whether a person physically falls or not when they step off of a cliff.

You can say this is too divorced from reality, but this is a game featuring elves and wizards and dragons and all sorts of even more unlikely things that don't have much connection with reality.

But the forces of Good declare that the genocide of fiends (and very commonly also undead) is not only Good, because they are irredeemably Evil, but also a desire of the forces of Good so that Good may triumph. Fiends and undead have free will even if they are fundamentally different, biologically speaking, from goblins or other monsters.

Do they have free will though?
When the Monster Manual says "always chaotic evil" it's not an anti-fiend racist trying to gin up adventurers to go kill fiends who wrote the entry - it's an accurate description of the D&D universe unless the DM says otherwise.

"Always" in the case of alignment means "The creature is born with the indicated alignment. The creature may have a hereditary predisposition to the alignment or come from a plane that predetermines it. It is possible for individuals to change alignment, but such individuals are either unique or rare exceptions." There is room for some free will there, but it's clear that it's exceptionally rare for such beings to change alignment.

The wizard analogy doesn't work because being unable to write is an observable limitation that you can immediately be aware of. You can be deceived your entire life about whether certain monsters are irredeemably evil like certain other monsters and the only way you'd know is if a higher power went out of its way to let you know.

No. No higher power at all need be involved. Basic magic spells like detect evil will let you know if a creature is evil. And they aren't dependent on higher powers (you don't have to follow a particular religion to be a cleric, paladin, or ranger in 3rd edition).

So your argument is that, even though it's not stated anywhere, these higher powers know when mortals are wrong and therefore can prevent the creation of paladins that would hold false beliefs.

No. Paladins must obey basic natural laws in order to become paladins. In the context of the game there is no "higher power" that "knows" when mortals are wrong. The mortals are simply not performing the actions that will actually produce paladins. Just like you can't produce a fire without oxygen, fuel, and a source of ignition, you can't have paladins without having genuinely lawful good people who genuinely follow the paladin code.

Now, outside the context of the game yes there is someone who knows and makes the decision when a paladin can be produced: the Dungeon Master, but usually he or she doesn't have any in-game presence or existence. It's simply the way the universe works.

[Shadowknight12]

Which is the case. In D&D good people cannot perform evil actions and remain good. The two are fundamentally, universally, cosmologically incompatible.

How do you enforce this in an actual game? Do you stop a player to tell them "by the natural laws of this world, your alignment has just shifted" with no explanation? Since their alignment is wholly external and independent from their own intent, their knowledge and their beliefs? Does this happen to NPCs too? Since this is a natural law, does this mean the rules governing Good, Evil, Law and Chaos have been deduced via empirical evidence and codified, like we've done with the rest of the universe's laws?

You can say this is too divorced from reality, but this is a game featuring elves and wizards and dragons and all sorts of even more unlikely things that don't have much connection with reality.

Personally, I can understand elves and dragons and magic just fine. The way you are positing things work is simply incompatible with the way I know people behave like. The branching consequences of treating Good/Evil/Law/Chaos as inflexible, omniscient forces that can be easily measured and deduced (and leave zero room for miscommunication, deception or vagueness) is something that would drastically and irrevocably affect the way people behave, to a point where their societies and behaviors would be completely unrecognizable to us.

There is room for some free will there, but it's clear that it's exceptionally rare for such beings to change alignment.

But is there free will or is there not? We're talking about fundamental forces of the universe, after all. If there is free will, that means Good does command the genocide of (some) intelligent, free-willed creatures and considers their non-existence a victory.

No. No higher power at all need be involved. Basic magic spells like detect evil will let you know if a creature is evil. And they aren't dependent on higher powers (you don't have to follow a particular religion to be a cleric, paladin, or ranger in 3rd edition).

By higher power I meant the fundamental forces of Good, Evil, etc.

No. Paladins must obey basic natural laws in order to become paladins. In the context of the game there is no "higher power" that "knows" when mortals are wrong.

Except the fundamental forces of Law and Good seem to know when a mortal holds false beliefs and therefore withhold paladin powers from them.

[Jason]

How do you enforce this in an actual game? Do you stop a player to tell them "by the natural laws of this world, your alignment has just shifted" with no explanation?

No need to invoke "the natural laws of this world," I just tell them "your alignment has now changed to x." Usually I give warnings to players before their alignment changes that what they are contemplating doing may shift their alignment. This allows for the possibility that I may have not fully described a situation to a player before they decided on taking an alignment-shifting action.
I also usually give an explanation after an alignment change of what caused it and what my reasoning was for why it happened, often with a suggestion for how they can change their behavior in game to change their character's alignment back if they wish.
Alignment changes are big deals. They don't happen often and should always be significant events.

Since their alignment is wholly external and independent from their own intent, their knowledge and their beliefs?

It's not entirely independent of their control. Their actions shape their alignment. Their intent, knowledge, and beliefs shape their actions, so ultimately their intent, knowledge, and beliefs do control their alignment.

Does this happen to NPCs too?

Yes, sometimes. Not nearly as often, since the focus of the game is the PCs, not the NPCS.

Since this is a natural law, does this mean the rules governing Good, Evil, Law and Chaos have been deduced via empirical evidence and codified, like we've done with the rest of the universe's laws?

Yes. Or at least it means that they may be deduced and codified. No one may have actually done it yet, any more than we understand all of the universe's natural laws now.

Personally, I can understand elves and dragons and magic just fine. The way you are positing things work is simply incompatible with the way I know people behave like. The branching consequences of treating Good/Evil/Law/Chaos as inflexible, omniscient forces that can be easily measured and deduced (and leave zero room for miscommunication, deception or vagueness) is something that would drastically and irrevocably affect the way people behave, to a point where their societies and behaviors would be completely unrecognizable to us.

Maybe, maybe not. We don't have easy "evil tests" like they do in D&D, but most people I've encountered in real life believe some variation of "some things are absolutely good or evil." Not just religious people, either.

But is there free will or is there not? We're talking about fundamental forces of the universe, after all.

Yes, of course there is free will. It would not be just to reward good-aligned actions or punish evil-aligned actions if nobody really had any choice in whether they performed good or evil actions.

If there is free will, that means Good does command the genocide of (some) intelligent, free-willed creatures and considers their non-existence a victory.

"Good" doesn't command anything. There is no anthropomorphic Good that issues commands to anyone or who will declare victory when certain conditions are met. Destruction of evil simply does not cause a good person to shift towards evil.

By higher power I meant the fundamental forces of Good, Evil, etc.

But they aren't "higher powers" any more than gravity or electromagnetism are "powers". "Higher powers" in the context of D&D usually means the deities of the setting, not the impersonal forces of Good or Evil.

Except the fundamental forces of Law and Good seem to know when a mortal holds false beliefs and therefore withhold paladin powers from them.

No. Gravity doesn't "know" when you're hanging unsupported over the ground.
It would be more accurate to say that someone who holds evil beliefs and acts and performs evil actions cannot gain paladin powers or will lose them if they just became evil and/or performed evil actions.

[Shadowknight12]

"Good" doesn't command anything. There is no anthropomorphic Good that issues commands to anyone or who will declare victory when certain conditions are met. Destruction of evil simply does not cause a good person to shift towards evil.

But they aren't "higher powers" any more than gravity or electromagnetism are "powers". "Higher powers" in the context of D&D usually means the deities of the setting, not the impersonal forces of Good or Evil.

No. Gravity doesn't "know" when you're hanging unsupported over the ground.
It would be more accurate to say that someone who holds evil beliefs and acts and performs evil actions cannot gain paladin powers or will lose them if they just became evil and/or performed evil actions.

I think I found the part that stumps me about this viewpoint.

To pass judgment on a human's actions (especially one that takes into account the human's intent and free will, as well as the complex web of consequences that result from that action), you need an intelligence.

The literal and direct comparison to gravity simply does not hold for Good/Evil/Law/Chaos, because gravity does not pass judgment on human actions. It simply exerts a physical acceleration on masses, which does not require cognition or thought.

I can conceive of forces of Good, Evil, Law and Chaos that exist independently of the deities and other outsiders, and act in their own inscrutable ways, but I cannot conceive them to be devoid of intelligence. Otherwise, they would be unable to judge if an action is Good or Evil or Lawful or Chaotic.

[pearl jam]

Think of it like the periodic table.

Good, Evil, Law, Chaos and Neutral are elements, like Oxygen, Nitrogen, etc.

Outsiders may be pure embodiments of the various elements as sentient beings.

A Good action is itself, for example, "Oxygen" in some way and an Evil action is "Nitrogen."

Humans are not pure embodiments of any specific element and must use their judgment to decide what actions are Good or Evil, etc, however, misjudging an Evil action as Good doesn't make that Evil act become "Oxygen." It remains "Nitrogen."

A paladin unknowingly committing an Evil act is subject to falling, but through introspection may learn that they'd misjudged "Nitrogen" for "Oxygen" and through penance be restored.

Should they commit such an act knowingly then restoration, even after penance, may be impossible.

[Shadowknight12]

Again, I cannot conceive of an element of the periodic table judging a human's actions without the required intelligence to do so.

[Empiar93]

Again, I cannot conceive of an element of the periodic table judging a human's actions without the required intelligence to do so.

The forces aren’t exactly judging, that’s the thing. Just as gravity can’t consciously choose to pull you back down to the planet, it just does it.
Good can’t decide to drag a paladin down to fighterhood; it’s simply a cause and effect of performing an evil action or failing the paladin’s code (which doesn’t even involve Good by itself, necessarily, demonstrating that paladins are governed by some sort of other supernatural force of which good is only a factor).

Consider the myth wherein your soul’s weight is measured against a feather. It’s as though doing evil adds weight to your soul, bringing it down; in this context this would be rather literal, as it causes the paladin to fall.

This is what it means for good and evil to be objective, elemental, and scannable forces. It’s also why alignment is a mess (the second axis was a mistake, it should have stayed Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic).

[Shadowknight12]

The forces aren’t exactly judging, that’s the thing. Just as gravity can’t consciously choose to pull you back down to the planet, it just does it.
Good can’t decide to drag a paladin down to fighterhood; it’s simply a cause and effect of performing an evil action or failing the paladin’s code (which doesn’t even involve Good by itself, necessarily, demonstrating that paladins are governed by some sort of other supernatural force of which good is only a factor).

Determining whether an action is good, evil, lawful or chaotic is a judgment. I am not contesting that the Fall isn't an automatic effect, I know it is. What I am contesting is that these forces are examining every single action all sentient things take, taking in all the intents and all the consequences and then slapping an Evil/Lawful/Good/Chaotic label on that act. This process requires an intelligence.

[pearl jam]

It's not a matter of judgment. It's like chemistry. If you mix two reagents together the reaction doesn't require any intelligent choice on their part, it simply occurs due to the nature of the reagents.

A Good action produces a Good reaction. An Evil action produces an Evil reaction. Each has certain potential consequence, such as alignment change for anyone or falling for a paladin.

[Dion]

Keep in mind that we learned that good and evil are NOT absolutes in stickverse.

There’s a great big book with rules, but there’s still an outsider who has to sort through your life and make some judgement calls. It’s absolutely *not* something determined by the universe.

Instead, it’s like being “honorable”. Thor and Loki and Hel all sort-of kind-of know what it means to be honorable, but when it comes to specific cases there are still judgement calls to make.

And, as we saw in comic, sometimes what is judged “honorable” literally just comes down to “which god had more time to deal with it at the moment.”

I imagine good and evil work the same way.

[Jason]

I think I found the part that stumps me about this viewpoint.

To pass judgment on a human's actions (especially one that takes into account the human's intent and free will, as well as the complex web of consequences that result from that action), you need an intelligence.

The literal and direct comparison to gravity simply does not hold for Good/Evil/Law/Chaos, because gravity does not pass judgment on human actions. It simply exerts a physical acceleration on masses, which does not require cognition or thought.

I can conceive of forces of Good, Evil, Law and Chaos that exist independently of the deities and other outsiders, and act in their own inscrutable ways, but I cannot conceive them to be devoid of intelligence. Otherwise, they would be unable to judge if an action is Good or Evil or Lawful or Chaotic.

Well, again, in a metagame sense there is an intelligence passing judgements, but that's out of game. That same intelligence also created everything and guides the actions of all but the PCs.

In-game, it's not that unseeable, non-sentient forces are judging everyone. It's more like actions have a moral value that is similar to all matter having mass. Different types of matter have different density and physical properties. Different actions have different moral "charges". Things that are alive also have a moral "charge", even if it's just "neutral."
Actions taken by the living being affect its moral charge along two axis, lawful/chaotic and good/evil. Good actions push your charge towards good, etc. Your intent makes the effect stronger or weaker. Good intent makes good actions push your alignment further towards good. Sort of like the observer effect in quantum physics can have real effects on the physical world.
There's no "impersonal force" judging anyone's actions. It's just that the cumulative effect of all the moral charges of your actions on one's alignment can be measured by magic spells, giving a reading that falls along a spectrum of law/chaos and good/evil.

[Shadowknight12]

It's not a matter of judgment. It's like chemistry. If you mix two reagents together the reaction doesn't require any intelligent choice on their part, it simply occurs due to the nature of the reagents.

A Good action produces a Good reaction. An Evil action produces an Evil reaction. Each has certain potential consequence, such as alignment change for anyone or falling for a paladin.

The only actions that have inherent qualities are casting spells that have the [Evil], [Good], [Lawful] and [Chaotic] descriptors. Other actions are applied those labels after the fact, they don't have an inherent goodness/evilness/lawfulness/chaoticness, because we know for a fact that circumstances can change whether an action is good or evil or neither.

Spoiler: From Book of Vile Darkness

Show

Consider the paladin Zophas. When climbing to the top of a hill of loose rocks to get away from some owlbears, he triggers a rockslide that buries the owlbears and continues down the hill, crushing a hut full of commoners. Is Zophas an evil murderer who must suddenly lose his lawful good alignment? No, although Zophas might still feel guilt and responsibility. He might attempt to right the inadvertent wrong as best he can.
But what if Zophas’s friend Shurrin said, “Don’t climb up there, Zophas! You might start a rockslide that will crush the hut!” Zophas goes anyway. Now is it evil? Probably. Zophas was either carelessly endangering the commoners or so overconfident of his climbing prowess that he acted out of hubris. At this point, Zophas isn’t exactly a murderer, but he should probably lose his paladin abilities until he receives an atonement spell or otherwise makes amends.

In both cases, the action performed was the same, but one caused a paladin Fall and the other one didn't. This means that the action cannot be inherently evil (or have any moral quality at all) because its evilness changed based on the circumstances surrounding it. The action became evil at a certain point (probably at the exact moment Zophas Fell).

[pearl jam]

So Evil intent injects some "Nitrogen" into the action and Good intent injects some "Oxygen" which can impact the essence of the action to a certain extent, but by the nature of the elements it's easier for "Nitrogen" to corrupt an action than it is for "Oxygen" to purify one, and may be impossible in some cases.

I mean, I'm just making up a possible explanation on the fly here that shows a way it could work without in-universe judgment being required on the cosmic scale. Obviously at the gaming table or the storytelling session there would be judgments being made about the actions the characters take.

[Shadowknight12]

So Evil intent injects some "Nitrogen" into the action and Good intent injects some "Oxygen" which can impact the essence of the action to a certain extent, but by the nature of the elements it's easier for "Nitrogen" to corrupt an action than it is for "Oxygen" to purify one, and may be impossible in some cases.

I mean, I'm just making up a possible explanation on the fly here that shows a way it could work without in-universe judgment being required on the cosmic scale. Obviously at the gaming table or the storytelling session there would be judgments being made about the actions the characters take.

The only way this possibly makes sense to me is if before the world was made, some intelligence created a literally infinite list of all possible actions in all possible circumstances and then assigned them a Good/Evil/Lawful/Chaotic judgment beforehand. That means every possible action that could ever be done has been conceived and judged accordingly, and instead of it happening in real time, it simply happened aeons ago and the forces of Good/Evil/etc. are simply cross-checking each action with the infinite list.

But that still required an intelligence to have, at some point, judged the action with its circumstances and passed a verdict on its moral status.

[pearl jam]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I mean, at some point it's a matter of suspension of disbelief. I'm giving you an explanation for how it could work in-universe without requiring a judging intelligence. It's just the rules the universe runs on, like gravity.

From a meta perspective, of course there is judgment going on and people can choose to agree or disagree with the judgments being made.

[Shadowknight12]

Honestly it just stuns me completely because nobody I have ever played with in 15+ years has ever seen it that way. The way I originally understood it when I read it and the way it has always been played at every table I've ever been was that it was a judgment made by some sort of external intelligence. The PHB's section on Alignment doesn't even cover the morality of actions, it covers the morality of creatures. The introduction on alignment to the average player is not an explanation that actions have an inherent, pre-programmed morality, but instead a talk about people, creatures and animals.

[arimareiji]

The only way this possibly makes sense to me is if before the world was made, some intelligence created a literally infinite list of all possible actions in all possible circumstances and then assigned them a Good/Evil/Lawful/Chaotic judgment beforehand. That means every possible action that could ever be done has been conceived and judged accordingly, and instead of it happening in real time, it simply happened aeons ago and the forces of Good/Evil/etc. are simply cross-checking each action with the infinite list.

But that still required an intelligence to have, at some point, judged the action with its circumstances and passed a verdict on its moral status.

🎶 You were wrong, I was right
You said goodbye, I said good night

[Rrmcklin]

I read that strip as V's fear of damned, which is why V had the reaction in the last panel.
That is why I am annoyed at many of these threads: everyone is demanding that unnamed paladins in a supplemental book are punished, but they think V is somehow absolved. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but that doesn't sit right with me.

If I'm being frankly, that strikes me as a very obtuse reading of what was said there. Even if Vaarsuvius was just concerned about being damned, that inherently implies they think the action of slaughtering all of those dragons qualify them as such. That is an admission and acceptance of wrong doing.

But even if they didn't accept it, where has anyone absolved Vaarsuvius of wrong doing? The point of a reemption arc is that it's an arc of which admittance and acceptance of wrong doing is only the first part.

Many stories admittedly fail to realize that and act like it's the end and beginning, but I've often been frustrated when people apply this attitude even to stories that aren't doing that. And this is not a story in which "Vaarsuvius is totally forgiven and absolved" is the message.

[brian 333]

Were all of the Sapphire Guards characters with paladin class levels? Or were many of them paladins in the way that Miko was a samurai? If some number of the paladins were, by class, cleric/fighters, for example, they would not have fallen, and might not have done enough evil to get an alignment shift..

It seems to me that The Giant has already explained this situation in commentary: he didn't show the paladins falling, but that doesn't mean they didn't fall.

For narrative and artistic reasons he chose to accent Miko's fall, but avoided showing the ones who fell because of their acts in RCs village.

We know that a palladin can fall for evil done unknowingly because that's how Miko fell. She was utterly convinced of the correctness of her actions right up to her fall. Therefore 'unknowingly' is not a factor in whether or not a paladin falls.

[hamishspence]

Were all of the Sapphire Guards characters with paladin class levels? Or were many of them paladins in the way that Miko was a samurai? If some number of the paladins were, by class, cleric/fighters, for example, they would not have fallen, and might not have done enough evil to get an alignment shift.

True.

The Sapphire Guard would have been a secret society, separate but overlapping with the general clergy and paladins of the Twelve Gods. All members of the Sapphire Guard are clerics or paladins of the Twelve Gods, but not all paladins of the Twelve Gods were members of the Sapphire Guard. Only those who could be trusted with the secret of the Gate would be inducted.

There might have been, say, a sorcerer/paladin or a fighter/cleric, but no solo sorcerers or fighters.

Given Soon's making a big deal about "the honor of a paladin" though

https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0277.html

I think those with cleric levels and no paladin levels will be the exception rather than the rule.

[Worldsong]

I agree with Shadowknight that if the PHB says that a paladin falls if they willingly commit an Evil act then it is a valid interpretation to say that the paladin must know the act is Evil. However, the interpretation that the paladin's awareness of the Evilness of the act is irrelevant is also valid.

At the same time, if you go by the former interpretation, you should probably include some clause that as a paragon of virtue a paladin has the responsibility to ascertain whether an act is Evil, especially when the act would under different circumstances definitely be wrong (killing/murder in general). If a paladin just starts chopping up goblins because they were told that they're all Evil and a threat to the world and they never bothered to question it then they haven't done their due diligence and deserve to fall.

Which I think is part of the reason why Miko fell. She genuinely believed that she was doing the right thing, yes, but she only believed it was the right thing because she ignored pretty much all the facts in favour of not having to face the possibility of having been wrong. The Twelve Gods made her fall because she hadn't put any effort into making sure she was doing the right thing, she just construed a reality in which she had been right all along and went with it.

[pearl jam]

Were all of the Sapphire Guards characters with paladin class levels? Or were many of them paladins in the way that Miko was a samurai? If some number of the paladins were, by class, cleric/fighters, for example, they would not have fallen, and might not have done enough evil to get an alignment shift..

It seems to me that The Giant has already explained this situation in commentary: he didn't show the paladins falling, but that doesn't mean they didn't fall.

For narrative and artistic reasons he chose to accent Miko's fall, but avoided showing the ones who fell because of their acts in RCs village.

We know that a palladin can fall for evil done unknowingly because that's how Miko fell. She was utterly convinced of the correctness of her actions right up to her fall. Therefore 'unknowingly' is not a factor in whether or not a paladin falls.

This seems like a pretty good point to me.

True.

Given Soon's making a big deal about "the honor of a paladin" though

I think those with cleric levels and no paladin levels will be the exception rather than the rule.

I have to say that reading the Giant's quote now, the part that sticks out to me is the implication that there might be paladins who can't be trusted with a secret. That's enough for me to think that Rich's conception of paladins doesn't appear to match my own. lol

[hamishspence]

I don't find it too hard to imagine a paladin who is a bit like Elan - prone to giving away information when they shouldn't.

Paladin orders vary greatly in official D&D material, depending on the gods the paladins follow.

[Keltest]

I don't find it too hard to imagine a paladin who is a bit like Elan - prone to giving away information when they shouldn't.

Paladin orders vary greatly in official D&D material, depending on the gods the paladins follow.

Indeed. "good sense" may be desirable in a paladin, but it isnt a requirement. And of course theres the possibility that a paladin would look at a secret military order under the direct control of the lord, which isnt answerable to anybody else and go "woah, this seems like a problem."

[hamishspence]

For that matter, given that the 12 Gods govern the whole Southern continent, and that there are many nations on that continent, some of which are downright antagonistic to Azure City (the Empire of the Dragon, for example) - it's plausible that paladins in the more antagonistic nations both follow the 12 gods, and are unsuitable for recruitment due to the fact that they would be unfriendly to the Sapphire Guard's leader, being unfriendly to Azure City in general.

[Gurgeh]

I don't find it too hard to imagine a paladin who is a bit like Elan - prone to giving away information when they shouldn't.

Indeed. For every Lien, who is "Good, not dumb", you may well have an corresponding member who is, in fact "Good, not smart".