Paladin meeting good succubus.

[Frosty]

Speaking of punishment for past crimes, is a paladin allowed to just go around killing people who have committed grave crimes? Are they Judge jury and executioner assuming they are not in an uncivilized area of the world?

[Troacctid]

Speaking of punishment for past crimes, is a paladin allowed to just go around killing people who have committed grave crimes? Are they Judge jury and executioner assuming they are not in an uncivilized area of the world?

What? No! Of course not. Why would you do that?

[Frosty]

What? No! Of course not. Why would you do that?

Because other posters have used that as justification on why a succubus can be murdered even if reformed. They said that her past crimes is justification enough.

[hamishspence]

She may not even remember many of them - if we're using the "some demons were mortals who became demons after death" model.

[Frosty]

In pathfinder, most demons were once mortals, and they usually can't remember much about their mortal loves. However, they would've had many crimes done as a demon anyways.

[Necroticplague]

Speaking of punishment for past crimes, is a paladin allowed to just go around killing people who have committed grave crimes? Are they Judge jury and executioner assuming they are not in an uncivilized area of the world?

No. Acting like that shows a blatant disrespect for life not in keeping with Good, and a blatant disrespect for authority and traditions in keeping with Lawful.

As BoED points out, mercy and compassion, even for those who have wronged you, is part of good. Vengeance is not.So the most good thing is to capture them, so that they can be redeemed.

Not to mention, killing people who commit grave crimes is exactly how you get some nasty forms of undead, just to provide more pragmatic reasons to save violence until every other option is exhausted.

[Coidzor]

Thing is, statistically speaking, there are balors that are.

The much simpler alternative is that unique cases are just that. Unique.

[Spellbreaker26]

It won't make you fall though. It might not be the best possible action but killing people for committing grave crimes when there isn't a law to punish them can't be an evil act, there's no way, neutral at worst.

But the reason I put it as a point is that in a good realm it is very likely that killing fiends is not only not against the law but also that harboring them is.

I mean, honestly if you want to make a good succubus you can. (If you want to make it nearly impossible for paladins not to fall, you can do that too.) But this needs to be communicated to the players somehow because otherwise they're going to turn up with the traditional (read: sensible) view of demons and kill whatever brainwashed this village without a second thought because they weren't willing to risk their character over the minuscule possibility that a being literally made of evil from the pits of the abyss with powers specifically relating to deception has good intentions.

[Frosty]

Which is why the fiend shouldn't hide and should come clean with a good authority?

[Spellbreaker26]

Which is why the fiend shouldn't hide and should come clean with a good authority?

As an outsider the fiend should go to an angel rather than hang around a village; which as I have stated previously is hugely selfish and moronic for numerous reasons
A] It puts the villagers in danger of her
B] It potentially puts the villagers at odds with each other
C] It very likely puts the villagers in the sights of the kingdom and the church, neither of whom are going to risk anything based on the slim chance that she's good
D] It's far from the most efficient way to atone and she could be doing a lot more good on the front lines
E] It's avoiding punishment

To be honest, if someone told me about this and didn't specify that she was good I would have assumed Neutral. She isn't doing any more evil but she isn't really helping either.

[Kelb_Panthera]

BoVD is 3.0

This is non-argument. 3.0 and 3.5 are the same game. If something hasn't been updated, it still applies in its 3.0 form. I don't know why people think this is a valid argument.

I don't consider it vengeance, it's a matter of pragmatism. What are the chances this demon is actually Good? What are the consequences of letting it be? Minuscule and tremendous, respectively.

Pragmatism doesn't necessarily make an action jive with the intended alignment of the action. In the case of slaying fiends, the probability of them actually being innocent is approaching 0 to such a degree that you can get away with it but if Pally -is- wrong, he still falls just like willfully killing any other innocent. For Succy to actually be innocent stretches credibility to the point that I'd call it a GM trap but it's not stictly impossible.

Just asking, if Succubi can atone you do realize that opens the door for a balor to just wander into a random village and go "Fear not, stout yeomen, I no longer wish to oppress the souls of the innocent and now intend to become a mere citizen farmer tilling a small plot of land."

Yep. That'd be hilarious. Of course, he's still smite-fodder since he's almost certainly earned it a thousand times over but it is a thing that could happen, abusrd as it is.

Speaking of punishment for past crimes, is a paladin allowed to just go around killing people who have committed grave crimes? Are they Judge jury and executioner assuming they are not in an uncivilized area of the world?

If a Paladin is in a settlement that he does not believe to be corrupted by evil, the code calls on him to respect the local laws. If, however, obeying the law conflicts with the code or if the law-giving body is corrupted by evil then the paladin is bound by the same code to do what is right in spite of the law. His duty as a paladin supercedes any temporal authority where that authority fails to meet the standards of the cosmic forces of good and law, in that order.

In a nutshell, if the authorities fail to execute justice then the paladin becomes judge, jury, and executioner.


If a succubus is living openly in the community, any reasonable person (nevermind paladin) would conclude that the community has been corrupted by evil unless shown some -substantial- evidence to the contrary.

[Zanos]

Pragmatism doesn't necessarily make an action jive with the intended alignment of the action. In the case of slaying fiends, the probability of them actually being innocent is approaching 0 to such a degree that you can get away with it but if Pally -is- wrong, he still falls just like willfully killing any other innocent. For Succy to actually be innocent stretches credibility to the point that I'd call it a GM trap but it's not stictly impossible.

It doesn't, in fact being pragmatic to the exclusion of all else is usually Neutral to Evil. But that was part of a response to a hypothetical regarding whether or not I though it was morally correct from a real world standpoint to kill a succubus in the presented scenario.

Back to objective magic cosmic alignment, the books are pretty explicit that destroying fiends is a Good act, so I don't think the Paladin can fall for that, unless the act is both Good and Evil at the same time, which I admitted earlier in the thread was possible, but also stated making a Paladin fall for it rank of a trap.

[Frosty]

It rfeels wrong that the objective force of a good in the world would rather have a dead fiend than a good fiend.

[Zanos]

It rfeels wrong that the objective force of a good in the world would rather have a dead fiend than a good fiend.

Good...fiend? Are you confused imperial citizen? That sounds an awful lot like heresy.

[Deophaun]

In point of fact, this is not true. Even creatures whose alignment is "always <X>" are able to be swayed to other alignments, although it is vanishingly rare for this to happen (MM 305). No exemption is made to this rule for fiends and, in fact, the entry specifically mentions creatures native to planes that might predispose them to a given alignment. Between this and the half-dozen or so official examples of celestials or fiends whose alignment is contrary to, or even opposite from, their subtype; it seems patently obvious that what you've positted here is incorrect.

By RAW, yes. But... RAW is stupid.

Really, these are creatures formed of Good and Evil. When they change alignments--sincerely change alignments--it's such an impossible event that they should cease being what they are and become something new. The Demon becomes a Celestial and the Celestial becomes a Demon. The given scenario shouldn't be possible.

So yeah, my opinion on this matter is to say "screw RAW," if the Paladin comes across a good succubus, he kills the good succubus, because the good part is always an act, no matter how many i's are dotted and t's crossed in your century-long investigation. Heck, a succubus that is legitimately acting good without backstabbing others is committing evil by misleading those around her into thinking that succubae aren't necessarily evil monsters by default and they can be trusted. If that weren't true, she wouldn't be a succubus; such is the nature of their evil.

Not useful for a rules discussion, but there you go.

[Kelb_Panthera]

It rfeels wrong that the objective force of a good in the world would rather have a dead fiend than a good fiend.

Gotta stretch your mind a bit. Evil is more than just bad behavior in D&D. It is as much a physical phenomenon as gravity but it is -also- anathema to everything that is positive in mortal minds; love, mercy, respect for life, fairness and everything else of that ilk.

The physical evil that fiends are made of damage the energies that flow into and from mortal minds when they interact with these ideas. If a world is dog-piled by enough real, physical evil then the whole thing can be dragged physically into one of the lower planes where all of its inhabitants will be tormented and consumed by the natives, body and soul.

The same goes for the other three, for that matter. Each is anathema to its opposite number and too much condemns the world to oblivion on the outer planes. Some of those oblivions are more pleasant than others but it is what it is. They must be kept in balance for the sake of all mortals.

[Kelb_Panthera]

By RAW, yes. But... RAW is stupid.

Really, these are creatures formed of Good and Evil. When they change alignments--sincerely change alignments--it's such an impossible event that they should cease being what they are and become something new. The Demon becomes a Celestial and the Celestial becomes a Demon. The given scenario shouldn't be possible.

So yeah, my opinion on this matter is to say "screw RAW," if the Paladin comes across a good succubus, he kills the good succubus, because the good part is always an act, no matter how many i's are dotted and t's crossed in your century-long investigation. Heck, a succubus that is legitimately acting good without backstabbing others is committing evil by misleading those around her into thinking that succubae aren't necessarily evil monsters by default and they can be trusted. If that weren't true, she wouldn't be a succubus; such is the nature of their evil.

Not useful for a rules discussion, but there you go.

The problem with this is that, absent any indication to the contrary in the OP, we have no reason to assume the game functions any differently from how the rules say it does.

If the OP or his DM took your houserule here to be true in his game, then there would be nothing to discuss. It makes the very premise of the OP not work. You can't meet a good succubus if there's no such thing.

The rules being what they are, and being taken as such by the OP, is part of the premise of the hypothetical. If you don't like it, you don't have to participate and you certainly don't have to adopt it for your own table but saying "It doesn't work like that" when it clearly does adds nothing to the discussion.

Now, presuming that RAW -is- being run as-is in this scenario, do you have any thoughts on what a paladin would or should do when meeting a succubus that is genuinely good in-spite of her inherently evil nature?

[Eisfalken]

This is non-argument. 3.0 and 3.5 are the same game. If something hasn't been updated, it still applies in its 3.0 form. I don't know why people think this is a valid argument.

Yeah, I never got this either. The rules for updating to 3.5 even specifically stated that unless the 3.0 rules are directly contradicted or altered, they stand as-is. For you to try and dismiss something due to version number, without a clear argument to say why it was abolished or altered in 3.5, means you are in fact contradicting RAW.

Pragmatism doesn't necessarily make an action jive with the intended alignment of the action. In the case of slaying fiends, the probability of them actually being innocent is approaching 0 to such a degree that you can get away with it but if Pally -is- wrong, he still falls just like willfully killing any other innocent. For Succy to actually be innocent stretches credibility to the point that I'd call it a GM trap but it's not stictly impossible.

Total agreement here. I think the main issue here is that people think a paladin can't fail if he "means" well. Totally false. A paladin's views do not alter his divine connection, otherwise he wouldn't be held to the Lawful Good standard of behavior; he could just do whatever he wanted to, and as long as the ends justify the means, his alignment wouldn't matter.

This doesn't mean he's 100% screwed forever. Guess what? There's this little spell called atonement that allows him to get back on the straight an narrow. The downside here for you rules lawyers is that the DM has a lot of input on what he views as "fallen" behavior, and what corrects it. So arguing about this here on the forum is almost an exercise in futility: you are best served talking it out with the DM to see where their head is at on slaying a Good-aligned fiend without checking them first.

My take on this from past experience is that the paladin does still fall, but since his mistake was born out of ignorance rather than malice, the atonement isn't going to be arbitrarily difficult to deal with. For me, I'd make the paladin have to rescue some kind of "evil" offspring from a fallen celestial trying to buy his way back into grace with violence, or some other similar morality play. It should mainly be a great RP opportunity, one which can be done while moving the game adventure along (though I'd always be delighted the more a player wants to delve into the whole thing; it's how you get stories like the rather unique and interesting "lamia paladin" I read about on 1d4chan).

If a Paladin is in a settlement that he does not believe to be corrupted by evil, the code calls on him to respect the local laws. If, however, obeying the law conflicts with the code or if the law-giving body is corrupted by evil then the paladin is bound by the same code to do what is right in spite of the law. His duty as a paladin supercedes any temporal authority where that authority fails to meet the standards of the cosmic forces of good and law, in that order.

In a nutshell, if the authorities fail to execute justice then the paladin becomes judge, jury, and executioner.

On the other hand, if there is a fiend in the community and the community clearly isn't being subverted, spiritually or otherwise, then the paladin would be wise to consider the possibility that this fiend may actually be seeking some kind of redemption.

When you say this thing is a GM trap, that's not entirely accurate. First off, even since 2nd edition, there have been given examples of fiends who, through some truly unique and/or cataclysmic event, suddenly decided to seek themselves a new way of life. I recall there was even a 3rd edition succubus who did precisely that after an honest conversion through the efforts of a paladin (as in, none of this cheap sanctify the wicked crap). Is it a one-in-a-billion occurrence? Sure is. What's one-billionth of an infinite multiverse, though? This doesn't mean a paladin is damned utterly for not realizing the chance of a reformed fiend isn't mathematically 0, just means he loses his powers until he realizes that Good can overcome almost anything... including being a fiend.

Secondly, let's not forget that it is well-known that celestials go in the opposite directly themselves, falling to Evil. Saying one can occur but the other can't doesn't really make much sense, strictly speaking. Why are creatures infused with ultimate Good even able to choose something else? Because in that infinite multiverse we just spoke of, anything can and at some point will happen. In fact, this is cannon, given FC2. It doesn't mean that redeemed fiends are more common, and there could probably be something said of the fact that it seems easier for celestials to fall than it is for fiends to rise up.

If a succubus is living openly in the community, any reasonable person (nevermind paladin) would conclude that the community has been corrupted by evil unless shown some -substantial- evidence to the contrary.

Uh, yeah, it's called turn on detect evil, see if the community at large is evil, specifically the local clerics. If the local cleric of Pelor is talking to a succubus in the open, and that cleric neither scans as Evil nor has lost his powers, then chances are close to 100% you're dealing with a redeemed fiend there.

I think it really all boils down to being Lawful Good vs. Lawful Stupid. If your paladin proceeds wisely and slow, he won't make the mistake of mowing down a good creature whose only crime is being an exceptional individual. It really doesn't take a genius to figure it out. Just someone who asks the right questions before rolling initiative.

[Zanos]

Uh, yeah, it's called turn on detect evil, see if the community at large is evil, specifically the local clerics. If the local cleric of Pelor is talking to a succubus in the open, and that cleric neither scans as Evil nor has lost his powers, then chances are close to 100% you're dealing with a redeemed fiend there..

RAW, association with fiends is Evil, so (throwing out any weird fan theories about Pelor), the Cleric would actually lose his powers.

[Frosty]

Except that associating with evil to redeem them is clearly allowed. It's one of the two general exceptions.

[Deophaun]

The problem with this is that, absent any indication to the contrary in the OP, we have no reason to assume the game functions any differently from how the rules say it does.

Which is why I said it's not useful for a rules discussion. It's a normative argument of how the game should be, not how it is.

Now, presuming that RAW -is- being run as-is in this scenario, do you have any thoughts on what a paladin would or should do when meeting a succubus that is genuinely good in-spite of her inherently evil nature?

Obviously, the succubus exists to present a scenario where the paladin will fall. Thus, the succubus is committing an evil act. It is therefore permissible for the paladin to slay her. The paladin does not fall.

Maybe not completely blue text...

[Necroticplague]

RAW, association with fiends is Evil, so (throwing out any weird fan theories about Pelor), the Cleric would actually lose his powers.

The Cleric code isn't nearly as restrictive as the Paladin code. Simply an Evil act or two won't stop a cleric, as long as they remain within one step of their god. Even if associating with w fiend is an even act, it isn't a gross violation.

[Zanos]

Except that associating with evil to redeem them is clearly allowed. It's one of the two general exceptions.

Redemption specifically calls out that Outsiders with the Evil subtype can't be redeemed with the old fashioned "have a chat with them" method.

The Cleric code isn't nearly as restrictive as the Paladin code. Simply an Evil act or two won't stop a cleric, as long as they remain within one step of their god. Even if associating with w fiend is an even act, it isn't a gross violation.

Long term, knowing association is probably going to upset your deity, and may eventually be enough to shift your alignment to Evil. If the cleric wasn't NG to begin with, a single step down would break his divine connection as well.

[GilesTheCleric]

I don't think anyone has yet linked Jowgen's Redeemery, an excellent resource for some of the paladin's options in this scenario.

[Zanos]

I don't think anyone has yet linked Jowgen's Redeemery, an excellent resource for some of the paladin's options in this scenario.

One of my favorite examples of how Good is not good, actually.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Total agreement here. I think the main issue here is that people think a paladin can't fail if he "means" well. Totally false. A paladin's views do not alter his divine connection, otherwise he wouldn't be held to the Lawful Good standard of behavior; he could just do whatever he wanted to, and as long as the ends justify the means, his alignment wouldn't matter.

BoED does make it clear that intent matters when determining how an action affects a character's alignment. In this case, the intent to punish a fiend for the sins that its kind revel in the same way a pig revels in mud and to protect the townspeople it has obviously deceived when he goes in for the smite is definitely relevant. If she is, in fact, guilty of those sins that basically all demons are then being punished for that is acceptable.

This doesn't mean he's 100% screwed forever. Guess what? There's this little spell called atonement that allows him to get back on the straight an narrow. The downside here for you rules lawyers is that the DM has a lot of input on what he views as "fallen" behavior, and what corrects it. So arguing about this here on the forum is almost an exercise in futility: you are best served talking it out with the DM to see where their head is at on slaying a Good-aligned fiend without checking them first.

This is true and part of why I strongly advise any player that wishes to be a paladin to sit down with their DM before hand and hash out what idiosyncracies he has as far as such things go.

That said, there -is- a set of guidelines presented in BoVD and BoED that lay out a fairly clear picture that only gets wonky on these odd little corner cases.

My take on this from past experience is that the paladin does still fall, but since his mistake was born out of ignorance rather than malice, the atonement isn't going to be arbitrarily difficult to deal with. For me, I'd make the paladin have to rescue some kind of "evil" offspring from a fallen celestial trying to buy his way back into grace with violence, or some other similar morality play. It should mainly be a great RP opportunity, one which can be done while moving the game adventure along (though I'd always be delighted the more a player wants to delve into the whole thing; it's how you get stories like the rather unique and interesting "lamia paladin" I read about on 1d4chan).

I'd be more than a tad miffed about my paladin falling over having slain a succubus. For her to be -genuinely- innocent of the kind of actions that would warrant her head being separated from her shoulders stretches credibility -way- beyond the breaking point for me. Just being a good succubus in the first place warrants the most thorough of investigations to verify and it is a thing that -will- change unless she's a unique creature that the chaos spat out differently from all of her kind.

It -is- possible but so incredibly improbable that I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the DM to be a bit heavy-handed with the clue-by-four if he wants having her ganked to be unacceptable.

On the other hand, if there is a fiend in the community and the community clearly isn't being subverted, spiritually or otherwise, then the paladin would be wise to consider the possibility that this fiend may actually be seeking some kind of redemption.

Isn't it? Fiends are crafty buggers. Open ingratiation may simply be the first step before trying to establish a cult of Grazz't. The nature of the creature in question makes giving it the benefit of the doubt incredibly dangerous almost to the point of madness.

When you say this thing is a GM trap, that's not entirely accurate. First off, even since 2nd edition, there have been given examples of fiends who, through some truly unique and/or cataclysmic event, suddenly decided to seek themselves a new way of life. I recall there was even a 3rd edition succubus who did precisely that after an honest conversion through the efforts of a paladin (as in, none of this cheap sanctify the wicked crap). Is it a one-in-a-billion occurrence? Sure is. What's one-billionth of an infinite multiverse, though? This doesn't mean a paladin is damned utterly for not realizing the chance of a reformed fiend isn't mathematically 0, just means he loses his powers until he realizes that Good can overcome almost anything... including being a fiend.

That's not what I said. I said it -becomes- a DM trap if the paladin falls and couldn't have reasonably expected to fall even by metagame logic. We're still talking about a game here and by the rules, the creature in question would have to have subverted its very nature from the moment of its creation which is more likely by far to have happened untold eons ago than a week ago tuesday.

If the intel that informed Pally of the succubus presence didn't include something pretty serious about the situation being odd, or the townsfolk don't intervene, or the DM doesn't do some -serious- RP, or something along that line and he just lets me get to her and bring her down, only to strip my powers for the trouble. The DM and I would probably have words.

This can be done well and be a very intriguing scenario but if it's done half-cocked it's going to be unmemorable at best and cause a problem at worst. That's all I'm trying to get at.

Secondly, let's not forget that it is well-known that celestials go in the opposite directly themselves, falling to Evil. Saying one can occur but the other can't doesn't really make much sense, strictly speaking. Why are creatures infused with ultimate Good even able to choose something else? Because in that infinite multiverse we just spoke of, anything can and at some point will happen. In fact, this is cannon, given FC2. It doesn't mean that redeemed fiends are more common, and there could probably be something said of the fact that it seems easier for celestials to fall than it is for fiends to rise up.

First, I doubt it's that well known in-world. Even then, it's so rare as to be the stuff of legends even amongst the celestials themselves. I've never said that either can't happen; just that it's so vanishingly rare as to be incredible for the purpose of giving it much weight when making a decision, absent any other mitigating factors.

Uh, yeah, it's called turn on detect evil, see if the community at large is evil, specifically the local clerics. If the local cleric of Pelor is talking to a succubus in the open, and that cleric neither scans as Evil nor has lost his powers, then chances are close to 100% you're dealing with a redeemed fiend there.

Useful idiots are useful and idiotic. Smart fiends shift people towards their ethical part of the alignment spectrum before trying to move them to evil.

People that are lost to hedonism and apathy to others' well-being, even if they would normally never hurt anyone, is like a powder keg waiting for a spark. One trigger event could bring the whole thing crashing into anarchy and blood-shed.

People that are unflinchingly obedient to any idea, even one spun as being for the greater good, can be swayed to do truly monstrous things with relative ease.

I think it really all boils down to being Lawful Good vs. Lawful Stupid. If your paladin proceeds wisely and slow, he won't make the mistake of mowing down a good creature whose only crime is being an exceptional individual. It really doesn't take a genius to figure it out. Just someone who asks the right questions before rolling initiative.

I don't disagree but at the same time there's nothing stupid about killing a fiend 99.9999999999999% of the time. That's honestly not nearly enough 9's but there's a character limit. To be punished for something that is so obviously sensible without some significant mitigating factor is just bad DM'ing.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Which is why I said it's not useful for a rules discussion. It's a normative argument of how the game should be, not how it is.

The underlined is your subjective opinion. I strongly disagree. The rules as they are create an interesting framework from which to tell exactly the kind of stories those two books were created to facilitate and these odd little corner cases make for some very interesting exploration of the objective morality posed by the game.

That said, there are very few aspects of the game on which there is nigh-unanimous consensus on what the rules -should- be and so arguing from a position of what should be doesn't hold much weight unless you're talking about something like drown-healing or monks being proficient with unarmed strikes.

The reason we stick to RAW is because it's a baseline we don't have to agree on. It's what's written, like it or not, and it's what -everyone- has available to start from. If you want to make specific exceptions, say so in the OP of a thread. If you want to say something is not to your taste and you think it ought to be different, say that rather than making a spurious claim about what actually is.

EDIT:

How do I keep hitting these lulls in the flow of the conversation. I'm not -trying- to double post.

[Frosty]

Kelb, I agree that this needs to be a carefully crafted RP encounter with multiple opportunities for the paladin to think, "Hmm...this situation seems different than the others. Fiends don't generally act in this manner."

And perhaps, if the paladin gave it thorough thought but still made the wrong decision, perhaps even then it's not a Fall, but some agent of the good deity comes down and lectures the paladin and then gives the paladin a quest to restore the succubus? Instant plot hook!

[Seto]

Has anyone mentioned the Tales of Wyre?

It would be very relevant to this topic.

My thought exactly.
OP, you're basically describing the premise of the Tales of Wyre. A Paladin meets a Succubus who claims to repent. He refers to his superiors, which sparks a schism in his Church, and this one event actually ripples into the entire multiverse turning on its head.
What starts out as your dilemma quickly turns into a fantasy book, or even series of books. The world-building is spectacularly complex (with a monotheistic society and a lot of attention paid to extraplanar intrigues, it varies quite a lot from your standard D&D world). The story has a clear theological and philosophical bent, though, and goes into mysticism in much detail. I happen to enjoy it and think it's a fascinating read, but it's not everyone's thing.

The answer to the OP, in a nutshell, being: if he's a true Paladin, he'll recognize the Goodness of whatever Good creature he meets and respect it.

[VoxRationis]

Isn't it? Fiends are crafty buggers. Open ingratiation may simply be the first step before trying to establish a cult of Grazz't. The nature of the creature in question makes giving it the benefit of the doubt incredibly dangerous almost to the point of madness.

This is very true. Where does everyone think these demon-worshipping apocalypse cults come from, anyway? They don't start with the elevator pitch "Have you ever felt like you could use more hellfire in your life?" Succubi are glamorous, and the idea of them being good is so attractive (mostly because they are attractive—we see similar things with other lovely monsters like vampires and drow) that a whole sort of subgenre regarding the concept has appeared, and they're not even real. Such is their power of seduction. In D&D, detection-fooling magic and demon lords smart enough to understand the concept of a "sleeper agent" are both more common than redeemed fiends. A paladin really questioning whether the succubus is evil or not should suggest exile to some plane where it can't get up to any mischief, but allowing it to continue to exist in a village with minimal oversight is astoundingly stupid.