Spoilers: HtPGhS: What's needed for "blue bolt of disapproval" from the Twelve Gods"?

[The_Weirdo]

And, to a more broader point, T_W's argument is akin to saying "if Gods probably existed and afterlives were well-known, then people wouldnt be evil." He doesn't seem to grasp that people can make poor choices even knowing the consequences. Which, hell, is even plentiful enough in the real world.

Most such poor choices are made on the belief that said consequences can be evaded, no?

"It'll be different this time.", "The boss won't find out", "My grandma smoked 78 cigarettes a day and died peacefully in her sleep at the ripe old age of 913", etc?

I don't see how that addresses my point at all. The idea that the paladins must have no idea that killing a child is an evil act is a massive stretch. It is far more likely that they didn't care that they didn't know.

So... The vetting process at the SG is very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very bad?

[Fyraltari]

So... The vetting process at the SG is very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very bad?

Before O-Chul came along it seems to have been "Are you a Noble? Can you kick asses?", which makes the Commander asking Yu wether Lien knows right from wrong more significant.

[Keltest]

Most such poor choices are made on the belief that said consequences can be evaded, no?

"It'll be different this time.", "The boss won't find out", "My grandma smoked 78 cigarettes a day and died peacefully in her sleep at the ripe old age of 913", etc?



So... The vetting process at the SG is very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very bad?

Most people don't wake up and think "rawr, ima kill some babies today, oh yeah!" Nor, realistically, is that something they can vet for, short of putting on an elaborate production of attacking a goblin village every time they recruit a member. Everybody has a breaking point where their better judgment is thrown out the window. I can only imagine that the therapy bill for paladins who have to go after threats to reality is quite high.

[The_Weirdo]

Most people don't wake up and think "rawr, ima kill some babies today, oh yeah!" Nor, realistically, is that something they can vet for, short of putting on an elaborate production of attacking a goblin village every time they recruit a member. Everybody has a breaking point where their better judgment is thrown out the window. I can only imagine that the therapy bill for paladins who have to go after threats to reality is quite high.

There are spells to restore sanity in some supplements.

All of them are lower-level and cheaper than Raise Dead.

[woweedd]

OK, just so we're clear, what the SG did was wrong, even if it had good motives behind it. Those who killed innocents presumably did lose their powers, not that declared would know, or, indeed, care if you told him. I imagine his repsone would be, in the most bitterly sarcastic tone "so the punishment for murdering my family in front of me was...getting your horsey taken away? Well, NOW I feel vindicated. Clearly no further vengeance is needed." That's just not how he works. His response is disproportionate, and hurts his own people far more then it helps them, but his grievance is legitimate. As far as he's concerned, Falling won't bring back his dead family*. That said, it should be noted: The Gods do not control when Paladins falls, though they are worshiped by them. The Forces of Law And Good control The Paladins, and, no, they aren't controlled by The Gods either. After all, The Gods have Evil alignments, even as, in most D&D settings, they consider themselves the good guys. There's ab bit of a wrinkle here due to OOTS's self-awareness compared to most D&D settings, but the short version is that even The Gods are subject to Good and Evil, and must pick sides accrodingly

*Not least of all since he killed one family member himself when they tried to stop him from wrecking vengeance.

[Fyraltari]

There are spells to restore sanity in some supplements.

All of them are lower-level and cheaper than Raise Dead.

I'm pretty sure these don't exist in-universe. Can you imagine how unsatisfying it would be if somebody just cast that on Belkar, Miko or Tarquin?

[Peelee]

Most such poor choices are made on the belief that said consequences can be evaded, no?

....no? I'd say the vast majority simply don't think about the consequences, despite knowing them.

[hamishspence]

Before O-Chul came along it seems to have been "Are you a Noble? Can you kick asses?", which makes the Commander asking Yu wether Lien knows right from wrong more significant.

Pretty much. Soon had a bunch of samurai (which implies he's a daimyo - same kind of noble as Kubota) and he inducted them.

[Fish]

I think the thread is overthinking that quote from The Giant, and forgetting one key piece of reality: when he wrote that explanation, we didn't know then all that we know now about the plot. Of course Rich isn't going to say, "The reason the Twelve Gods show up when Miko fell is because Shojo is the leader of the protect-the-Gates squad in Azure City, and yeah, he did swear to some stupid oath, which the Twelve Gods are not totally on board with — I mean, who swears an oath not to help save the world?, jeez — but he's still our guy, and the Twelve Gods really want to show their displeasure at Miko's role in this whole mess." And he's not going to say, "Well, the Twelve Gods don't show up in this story about O-Chul and this other guy, because this isn't a story about the continued repeating destruction of every world the gods have built, so they don't personally take an interest in this." We didn't know that the world has been destroyed and rebuilt millions of times, or that the pantheons had different quiddities, or any of this new stuff. We knew there was a Snarl and ... and maybe there was a world inside, but ... well, that's about it.

I see no sense in clinging to the wording of a quotation that may or may not have been slightly ... well, shaded to keep us from knowing more than was appropriate about the deeper plot behind the scenes. There's only so much parsing and hair-splitting you can do. We only knew some of that stuff when Rich explained things. If Rich explained them all now, it might be a slightly different story.

The Twelve Gods show up in this story because they fit into this story. It doesn't have to be deeper than that.

[Kish]

I think the thread is overthinking that quote from The Giant, and forgetting one key piece of reality: when he wrote that explanation, we didn't know then all that we know now about the plot. Of course Rich isn't going to say, "The reason the Twelve Gods show up when Miko fell is because Shojo is the leader of the protect-the-Gates squad in Azure City, and yeah, he did swear to some stupid oath, which the Twelve Gods are not totally on board with — I mean, who swears an oath not to help save the world?, jeez — but he's still our guy, and the Twelve Gods really want to show their displeasure at Miko's role in this whole mess."

Again, if that's how all Twelve Gods feel about Azure City and the Sapphire Guard, why does Tsukiko never lose her clerical spellcasting?

[Joerg]

Again, if that's how all Twelve Gods feel about Azure City and the Sapphire Guard, why does Tsukiko never lose her clerical spellcasting?

I don't think that's how they feel, but if they do, the reason could be that Tsukiko worked against Redcloak. Her actions could have led to the other gates being safe from Xykon.

[Aquillion]

Again, if that's how all Twelve Gods feel about Azure City and the Sapphire Guard, why does Tsukiko never lose her clerical spellcasting?

Do we know where she was getting it from? She could have been a cleric of an ideal or of some other evil god. She's not exactly a fan of Azure City culture, so (unless there's something in a side-comic I don't know about) there's no reason to think she'd have worshiped any of their gods.

Alternatively, in D&D, it is a lot more rare for a Cleric to lose their spellcasting than a Paladin; it could just be that in the OOTS-verse, this is represented by agreements among the gods to only do it under specific circumstances. Or they could be reluctant to do it because a god who removes Cleric casting abilities lightly may find it hard to recruit clerics in the future.

A third possibility is that the evil Azure City gods actually hoped she would be able to master both sides of the ritual and seize the gates for them, and that getting her into a position to do so was worth the risk to Azure City itself.

A fourth possibility was that they knew they needed a way to talk to Redcloak in order to get the Dark One on their side, and as imperfect as Tsukiko was she could potentially serve that purpose.

[woweedd]

Do we know where she was getting it from? She could have been a cleric of an ideal or of some other evil god. She's not exactly a fan of Azure City culture, so (unless there's something in a side-comic I don't know about) there's no reason to think she'd have worshiped any of their gods.

Alternatively, in D&D, it is a lot more rare for a Cleric to lose their spellcasting than a Paladin; it could just be that in the OOTS-verse, this is represented by agreements among the gods to only do it under specific circumstances. Or they could be reluctant to do it because a god who removes Cleric casting abilities lightly may find it hard to recruit clerics in the future.

A third possibility is that the evil Azure City gods actually hoped she would be able to master both sides of the ritual and seize the gates for them, and that getting her into a position to do so was worth the risk to Azure City itself.

A fourth possibility was that they knew they needed a way to talk to Redcloak in order to get the Dark One on their side, and as imperfect as Tsukiko was she could potentially serve that purpose.

She swears by them, just as every one else in Azure City does.

[Fish]

Again, if that's how all Twelve Gods feel about Azure City and the Sapphire Guard, why does Tsukiko never lose her clerical spellcasting?

Who cares?

The question being asked is, "Why did Miko get a big lightshow?" not "Why don't we have evidence of other characters being punished by the gods?" Those things didn't happen because Rich didn't write the story that way. If you want answers, ask him.

Even if that latter query were the question at hand, it's got an absurdly simple answer: this is not a game of Dungeons and Dragons. It never was. Rich has no obligation to make anyone "fall" for any reason because the rules say so.

Okay, you say, it's still a story and there should still be consistent application of principles. But that doesn't make your point for you either. Miko gets the lightshow because Miko killed Shojo. That is the action proximal to her punishment. Why hasn't anybody else been punished? Because as far as I can tell, nobody else killed Shojo. We don't have an apples-to-apples comparison that we can make.

I can see you trying to stretch the definition ("if that's how the Twelve Gods feel about Azure City...") but obviously, if they did feel that way about Azure City, they'd have stepped in; and they didn't, so, since nothing happened, reductio ad absurdum, they don't feel that way about Azure City. Proof by contradiction. If the hypothesis holds, Miko was punished for her actions against Shojo, not for actions against any group Shojo was aligned with or in service of. It would be like saying "you oppose George HW Bush, therefore you oppose all people who went to Yale, therefore it is offenses against Yale that we must examine." It is an assertion not supported by the evidence.

[Kish]

Who cares?

...anyone who cares about logical consistency? If that's not you why are you posting, accusing me of stretching definitions?

I can see you trying to stretch the definition ("if that's how the Twelve Gods feel about Azure City...") but obviously, if they did feel that way about Azure City, they'd have stepped in; and they didn't, so, since nothing happened, reductio ad absurdum, they don't feel that way about Azure City. Proof by contradiction.

Yes, exactly! So your "The reason the Twelve Gods show up when Miko fell is because Shojo is the leader of the protect-the-Gates squad in Azure City, and yeah, he did swear to some stupid oath, which the Twelve Gods are not totally on board with — I mean, who swears an oath not to help save the world?, jeez — but he's still our guy, and the Twelve Gods really want to show their displeasure at Miko's role in this whole mess" is...what now? Withdrawn?

To be clear, my position is that Miko fell because she committed an evil act or because she changed alignment. And that, as Haley said, it's established that "killing their defenseless liege lord" will make a paladin Fall. Nothing about the Twelve Gods unanimously caring about "the protect-the-Gates squad in Azure City"--that was something you said which I was arguing against, not vice versa.

Tsukiko didn't Fall because she did nothing extraordinary for a Neutral Evil cleric and the Twelve Gods are not actually unanimous defenders of Azure City, bastion of Lawful Good. with the corresponding requirement that they do not all care about Shojo. Not as Lord of Azure City, not as Commander of the Sapphire Guard, and not as a man with a very nice mustache.

[Jasdoif]

Do we know where she was getting it from? She could have been a cleric of an ideal or of some other evil god. She's not exactly a fan of Azure City culture, so (unless there's something in a side-comic I don't know about) there's no reason to think she'd have worshiped any of their gods.

While not a side-comic, this is pretty direct:

Southern Gods:
In certain campaign settings, you can be a cleric of a whole pantheon, and this doesn't necessarily influence your alignment. Obviously, unless the majority of the pantheon (or at least those holding the majority of the power) are of an opposite alignment from you, you may have some challenges advancing in the church hierarchy. Even in FR, am I remembering wrong, or is there at least one prestige class that worships the whole Morndinsamman?

Also, this. The Twelve Gods are worshipped as a pantheon, by everyone, including evil characters like Kubota and Tsukiko.

[martianmister]

Gin-Jun is expelled from the order because he broke the order's oath by using lethal force on an unarmed common citizen. There is nothing suggest in that scene that he fell.

[hamishspence]

His "If I cannot be a paladin, I will salvage my honor with revenge on the one who's done this to me" thing, strongly suggests that he's aware that his act is Fall-Worthy.

That is, it's either Evil, or a "gross breach of the paladin's code", or it changed his alignment from LG to some other alignment (maybe from LG to LN or TN).

Given that paladins are supposed to protect the innocent, (and punish those that harm the innocent) - all it would take for Gin-Jun's act to be extremely "anti-Code" would be for O-Chul to qualify as "the innocent".

[martianmister]

His "If I cannot be a paladin, I will salvage my honor with revenge on the one who's done this to me" thing, strongly suggests that he's aware that his act is Fall-Worthy.

Or, in his twisted mind, being a paladin and being a member of the Sapphire Guard is the same thing.

That is, it's either Evil, or a "gross breach of the paladin's code", or it changed his alignment from LG to some other alignment (maybe from LG to LN or TN).

She specified that he broke the oath, and it's not the same thing as the code.

Given that paladins are supposed to protect the innocent, (and punish those that harm the innocent) - all it would take for Gin-Jun's act to be extremely "anti-Code" would be for O-Chul to qualify as "the innocent".

O-Chul is definitely not an innocent considering he challenged him to a duel in the first place. And notice how she mentioned "citizen," innocent goblins didn't count.

[Peelee]

O-Chul is definitely not an innocent considering he challenged him to a duel in the first place.

That doesn't mean he's not an innocent. And especially since he never drew a weapon.

[Vendanna]

I don't see how that addresses my point at all. The idea that the paladins must have no idea that killing a child is an evil act is a massive stretch. It is far more likely that they didn't care that they didn't know.

well, they could have counted those as "mercy killing" them in order to avoid the child gobbos days of agony from dying from no sustent or by random monsters once all the adults on the village were killed.

not that I adscribe to "mercy killing" but its something you should consider when you leave "living" kids that cannot feed by themselves on really horrible placement (goblin lands are the suck) and you know they are going to die by that. (also there's a manga named "gobling slayer" that covers exactly this situation) [note is not safe for work and not for the weak of heart]

it also could cover the Screamapillar from the simpsons. (are you sure god didn't intended for this thing to go extinct?) as well. :)