I don't think a good person would keep keldorn and maria apart.
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even disregarding the dangers of chasing irenicus, keldorn is so old that he can't have more than a few years of healthy living in him. Seems like a no-win situation to me.
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In D&D, Good does not necessarily mean kindly or benevolent, it may also mean following one's moral code regardless of circumstances, especially if paired with Lawful.
I was playing over the weekend. I had restarted the game, and when I got to Kel's house, I chose the right answers. We went to see the other dude (can't recall his name at the moment), then Keldorn went back home and made up with his wife. That was the outcome I was looking for!
I let him leave my party and went and picked up Korgan instead!
I say hang 'm both.
Anyways, I don't like keeping Keldorn apart from his family once they make up but it is worth to do it occasionally so you can see his epilogue. It's a mix of awesome and heartwarming.
What's wrong with that? Is it good to kill a man for a stupid reason, and put a woman in jail for having an affair? If Keldorn truly loved his wife, he would want her to be happy, even if it was in the arms of another man.
Keldorn is NOT lawful good. More like lawful neutral. He upholds the law, but the laws of that city are not "good" if they hang a man for having an affair.
Maybe I'm too liberal, but can you imagine this country if these laws were implemented? Think about that. There'd be a lot of dead people who died just because they couldn't keep it in their pants.
For Keldorn in this situation to stay LG but also to jail his wife and execute her lover you have 2 considerations the lawful and the good.
If the law calls for such things, your hands are essentially tied - with the exception that Keldorn can investigate the matter further and find that, for the most part, all 3 parties are at fault and no affair really occurred. At that point, as say a DM determining whether or not it's a violation of the LG alignment, you'd have to determine whether acting or not acting on the ability to investigate further constitutes an acceptable LG act or not. The lawful part of the alignment carries out the law - the good part makes *sure* (that's the hard part - what constitutes sufficient sureness) that the law is being applied correctly.
To outright oppose capital punishment for adultery in Athkatla is a Chaotic position.
Edit: Also D&D alignment aren't that static. Even if refusing to apply the law in this case would be Chaotic Good, this wouldn't be enough to shift Keldorn's alignment. Ofc he's a Paladin and their code is stricter than simple LG, but Keldorn is a Paladin of Torm, god of justice, who is a tad more willing to pick Good over Law unlike, say, Helm.
Not that it matters, really.
And on the original topic I usually keep Keldorn. For me, him being part of the crew and sacrificing his personal life for the greater good is in line with his character. It's obvious that's what he has been doing most of his life, why would he suddenly change? For me it's not about choosing his wife or his job, it's about choosing duty uber alles. So a good charname can just as well keep him in the party in my playthroughs.
If every paladin had to violate the code in order to be good - then the code itself is not good.
Thus the Code must trump good or the code is not good.
For an order paladin the code determines what is good or evil. For a freelancer paladin it would be different - since they would be motivated by their own sense of good.
For a LN character - they're different from LG because the LG is motivated to uphold the law by a desire to do good, whereas the LN character is motivated by the law alone and would view circumventing that law in the name of good or evil as an excess.
That's why this quest in particular is so interesting, because what you actually can force Keldorn into is to executing a man for having an emotional affair with his wife (because he is impotent), which falls outside of most definitions of adultery (unless you're for thought crimes - but those are hard to prove the existence of). He even tries to give Keldorn some advice on what is going wrong in his marriage. So you *do* force Keldorn into committing an evil act and veiling himself with the law because you kill a man, and jail a woman, without an actual crime being committed. That's the kind of thing a LE person would do
As far as his staying or going. It depends on the PC's motivations. If your aims are ultimately good then Keldorn helping you provides a much larger service to "good" in general than sitting at home from a utilitarian point of view lol. If you ultimately end up doing lots of evil then well, no, it's definitely not best to stay with you lol. Plus you can take him back to visit his family fairly regularly throughout the game so - if anything that'll help him get adjusted to retirement instead of heading in cold turkey.
I don't think a good person would let a megalomaniacal mage steal the soul of the offspring of an evil God to save his marriage.
A law that imposes death for adultery is not a "good" law, in my opinion. Any law that decries that someone should die is not "good". Even for murderers and rapists and other horrible criminals. I know that the definition of good and evil can be different for some people. But to me, I kind of go by the Ten Commandments and Do Unto Others, and things in the Bible. So that is where my morality comes from. From my point of view, any human killing another human being is evil, no matter the circumstances. I just can't justify a paladin causing the death of a fellow human who really didn't do anything that terrible. And jailing his wife not only causes the wife to suffer, but the two kids as well. What will become of the children?
I suppose you could argue that a "good" character wouldn't kill, even his enemies. Why is it considered a good deed to slay your "enemies"? What is the definition of an "enemy"? It's still murder, no matter the reasoning behind it.
But I suppose then the game would suffer because you'd have paladins who were sworn to never kill.
I just never liked Keldorn after that first run through. Like I posted above, I was horrified at his actions and booted him out of the group. If he was Lawful Neutral or any alignment that is not good, I wouldn't have been so shocked at his actions. A Lawful Neutral person will uphold the law above all else, whether those laws are just and fair, or tyrannical. They have that "just doing my job" mentality. The law is the law and there is no deviation from it, period. That sounds more like Keldorn to me. He is not a good person. Even Korgan doesn't stoop to such actions.
I am so sick of seeing paladins portrayed as these pompous, arrogant jerks. They are portrayed like some "false" Christians, the type of people who are bible thumpers and always telling people that they're going to Hell in a confrontational manner. Or those "Christian" people who hate gays. A TRUE Christian is all about love and forgiveness, even to your enemies. A true Christian hates no one. Jesus didn't say "love your neighbor as you love yourself...except for gays, hookers, pedophiles...and anyone else you feel like throwing on this list".
If you want to read how a paladin should truly act, read "The Deed of Paksenarrion" by Elizabeth Moon.
If a Paladin is supposed to act like a pompous ass, then why do they need such a high Charisma score? Because they're supposed to be so loving and caring and awesome, that people want to be around them. Not because they are preaching fire and brimstone, or acting like an arrogant "holier than thou" douchebag.
Keldorn isn't a victim of the character's choices, however. As you say: he is entitled to leave whenever he wants if he is unhappy. Therefore to say that the character has done an injustice against Keldorn only applies if you believe Keldorn is not complicit in the protagonist's perception of what constitutes the good deed.
If Keldorn perceived the protagonist's decision to keep him and Maria apart as not being good, then perhaps he would not come along. In any event, I daresay Keldorn would disagree with the OP.