Always Save The Girl and Undying Loyalty: Are they the "good" choice.

So, I've been playing a lot of DnD lately, and since my character is a paladin, I've been trying to have him make good choices, even when it isn't the most pragmatic choice. In general, my paladin will only choose pragmatism if the benefit is direct and unambiguous.

My Dungeon Master came up with a decent conundrum. In the current storyarc, my character came across a notorious villain (like, baby-eating notorious) who claimed that his evil ways was because of being possessed by an evil spirit. He begged my paladin to help him find a way to stave off possession. My paladin has, at this point, faced an evil god that has been possessing people, so he had no reason to believe or disbelieve the guy's claim. However, because the "good" choice is to give him the benefit of the doubt, my paladin allows the guy to surrender and be placed under his custody so that they can find a way to stop the evil god. He swears to do everything in his power to prevent the guy from ever being possessed again.

At the end of the campaign, I was faced with a choice: we found a holy artifact that would stop the evil god from possessing anyone else on the continent if we spread the water into a river and let it purify the drinking water of every village. Or, I could keep my promise to the guy, and purify him directly. The problem was, I only got to use the artifact once, and drinking purified water only prevents possession if you aren't already corrupted.

So in essence, my choices are this: save the guy who I swore I'd help (but again, I'm not even sure if his story is legit) or break my promise and purify the entire continent so that no innocent can ever be possessed by this enemy again..

I won't tell you what choice I made, but I'd like to hear your answers

Hmm. From a purely pragmatic standpoint, putting the water in the river is the best choice(depending on how sincere the formerly evil dude is, even he might think so).

There may be another option to purify him as well.

This is a tough one though.

I'm definitely inclined to leaning towards purifying the entire continent. However, I'm not a paladin - depending on the specific flavor you're playing, that might influence my decision some.

River definitly, besides a good Paladin or Cleric should beable to Expel evil, the best choice is protect the continent then grind or find a cleric to get anyone still possessed Also on the Villian Mayo, Mustard or BBQ for the babies?

edited 4th Sep '12 9:56:28 PM by NekoLLX

I've played a paladin before, I went with the "greatest good for the greatest number" approach because I thought it would be interesting to roleplay (and because A Million Is a Statistic is a pet peeve trope of mine).

I think that's a key aspect of a paladin's character - do they take the long and wide view, do they value individual life more, or do they always place Honor Before Reason and attempt a Third Option regardless of how practical it is?

Going by your description, I would argue that in protecting the entire continent the benefit is VERY "direct and unambiguous." Sacrificing an easy resolution to one person's problem (and by extension my own promise) for the greater good is a much more exciting conflict to me, and more in character for the type of paladin I play, especially if you held to your promise and tried to find another way to help him even after the easy solution had gone.

This sounds like a DM with a case of old-school Fall Obsessive Disorder, which causes otherwise sane and not-asshole people to attempt to engineer situations which force a Paladin to Fall for the sake of so doing. This no longer applies in the current edition, if you play it, which is one of the few things I'm really enthusiastic about it for.

In the abstract, I'd say save everybody, but the specific codes and traditions of an order of paladins or the behavior of the character in question could modify that. Most of my characters from various Rifts games would go for the bigger bit, but only because they almost never get a chance to solve problems top-down.

We're playing 4e, so I don't think my DM is trying to engineer a fall. She does, however, have a preference for Earn Your Happy Ending.

Really, the whole campaign got started because my paladin started a suicidal fight with an evil demigod—AND WON. I happened to be in a town where the god was going on a Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum, and my paladin immediately decided to make a Heroic Sacrifice while everyone escaped. My DM gave my character several chances to escape, but he refused each time. However, thanks to divine help (from the Random Number God), my paladin wound up winning. This pissed off the other evil gods in the area, who have since decided to make my paladin their Cosmic Plaything. So really, it isn't so much my DM trying to screw me over as it is my character is simply Incorruptible Pure Pureness and has severely pissed the evil gods off.

The fun thing is, my character thrives on this, because the more the evil gods hate him, the more he knows he's doing the right thing.

edited 5th Sep '12 3:36:00 PM by KingZeal