Posted by: Murdane
« on: December 16, 2004, 08:34:29 PM »
The situation is oversimplified as stated. But there are certainly cases where any decent tactician could figure out that a frontal assault is more *likely* to hurt innocents than a cloak-and-dagger routine. If that weren't true, what would be the point of tactics?
Right, but usually when scenarios like this are presented, either to prove one class better than another or to prove what would be right for a character to do, the circumstances are very specific, so specific that it is unlikely that any character would have access to all the information given (ie. surreptitiously killing the cult leader WOULD WITHOUT A DOUBT save everyone and destroy the cult for good).
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As for a cop-out...I'm not sure. A heroic figure torn between doing what's right and another undeniable virtue (love, honor, friendship, etc) strikes me as the classic makings of fantasy. And neither choice should be an easy one; if it is, the situation is gutted.
It's a cop-out because it's a situation where the player has no real recourse. And I have, in fact, read posts by people who think it's a good thing if a DM sets up a situation for the paladin to fall no matter what he does just to drive home the point that life is tragic and there is nothing you can do about it...the fact that it is a game notwithstanding.
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Because "codes of honor" don't work that way. If a paladin's code of honor looks down on infiltration as a tactic (and that's independent of whether infiltration as a tactic is inherantly evil--one of the disadvantages of being *lawful* good is that you may have customs which, whether or not they have obvious intrinsic moral values, must be obeyed), it's a *huge* cop-out for the paladin to use a cat's paw and think that absolves him/her of guilt.
I'd be inclined to think that getting someone else to do this work is *exactly* as bad as the paladin doing it him/herself (which is compatible with it being the best option), and pretending it isn't is an *additional* wrong.
I once (badly, admittedly) ran a campaign where I routinely let the paladin's player get away with the party's paladin being "out of the room" every time the party had captured an enemy and needed some information. This was a mistake on my part.
I don't know if infiltration is looked down upon as a bad or evil thing, per se. It's just something that paladins themselves aren't supposed to do, because of their nature. It goes back to the simple fact that paladins don't expect everyone else to act in the same way that they do. Also, part of my point is the simple fact that the paladin class simply just isn't designed for sneaking around, disguising themselves, etc.
I remember in IWD2, your party could infiltrate a yuan-ti complex by doning the robes of priests of Sseth. However, a paladin could not done the robe, period, and thus the group had no choice but to take the yuan-ti head-on.