Is it heresy to take Viconia in your party as a paladin?
OrlonKronsteen
Member Posts: 905
I'm curious as to what people think about this. I'm interested in the FR lore implications, but also general morality. I'm contemplating a run with a paladin - somewhat darker than the goodie-goodie LG paladin cliche (wrestling with the Bhaal taint, etc.), but still with a strong moral compass and desire to do good. Is there any way to rationalize having Viconia in the party from a role playing standpoint? Her outspoken loyalty to Shar seems to make this problematic.
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- You just saved a life. Now you are responsible for that life, whether you like it or not.
- You take her along because when she is close you can watch her and prevent her from scheming and "spreading evil".
- Your secret goal may be to convert her, as a paladin this would be logical even without meta-gaming!
- You are just less racist and fanatic than others of your profession and thus give everyone a chance to prove themselves.
- You are driven not only by chivalry, loyalty to your superiors and other LGy things, but also by deep compassion. You just can't leave this girl rats, you feel that you just MUST help her.
It goes without saying that in this case it would be problematic to pursue a romance with her though...
Otherwise... why not?
Paladins have feelings, too.
What would stop him from, while he is following his path, to fall in love with that girl he saved/just took in to watch/just wanted to convert???
You may be driven by compassion and such but any church or deity would consider foolish amd even dangerous to walk alongside someone who clearly does not want to be redeemed and aids the party with the blessings of Shar.
Still, I can picture a bard or knight-ish fighter pursuing such a goal.
The way Viconia approaches romance would likely not be LG deity approved. Even if you manage to 'redeem' her, she only switches to TN and won't abandon Shar...
So even putting aside D&D or FR lore, I've always felt there was solid justification for a Good character to accommodate having an evil NPC or two in the party.
Considering lore, I think a paladin of Ilmater, who values mercy and redemption above "smite evil" and would judge someone by their actions, might justify taking her along, with the moral explications mentioned above.
In the point if a church or good god, nobody wants a dark elf in your party, nobody think the goodness in them. In the time of adnd 2e, dark elves were evil monsters, not metaphysicially evils or not understood pity creatures but trully evil ones, not a sane paladin would try to travel with one.
The real problem comes with reputation because when it gets too high Viconia will leave and I have yet to come up with a plausible reason for my paladin to intentionally lose reputation.
Very true. Mental gymnastics to justify decisions are always possible (like: my paladin wasn't looking when Imoen stole from a chest and got caught, or: my paladin didn't think Nalia would forget that a fireball against enemies in a public place might accidentally kill an innocent bystander, or even: that nameless commoner or nobleman pinged red on Detect Evil, so obviously he was no innocent and I had to smite him), but since I'm assuming @OrlonKronsteen was interested in serious roleplaying justifications, this is the biggest issue.
Frankly, if you really want to roleplay a paladin that's not just carrying the name of the class, I can come up with a lot of reasons to take Viconia along, but no reason at all to intentionally lower reputation to keep her, or even avoid increasing reputation by avoiding some quests on purpose.
The only thing that might help you there would be the optional SCS component that slows down the reputation increase. And even that is mental gymnastics IMO (which you're perfectly allowed to do, of course), because judging by her actions and taking her to give her a chance and keep an eye on her is one thing, but there's really no explanation why you would adjust your behavior and roleplaying decision to keep a person from leaving who apparently hates that you do good. That basically means she would have a bad influence on your paladin instead of him having a good influence on her.
Which of course is also a valid roleplaying interpretation if you choose to behave accordingly. I think it all comes down to the fact if you want to pick a roleplaying concept, stick to it and justify a few things, but accept certain limitations in this playthrough, or if you just want to do the same thing you might do in other runs, just with a paladin kit.
My totally personal opinion would be that in this particular case, I'd say recruiting Viconia but accepting that she leaves when your reputation gets too high would be the most likely behavior of a paladin who wouldn't outright refuse her company.
And since alignment discussions often tended to get out of hand in the past, please let me add again that I'm just offering my very personal and subjective opinion, not passing judgement on the way other people choose to play their game.
@Balrog99, I'm not interested in romance in games, but this point is interesting. Why would romance be inappropriate, if saving her and bringing her in your party is ok? Do you mean, romance as a motivation for saving her in the first place is morally questionable?
@Permidion_Stark @Arvia Reputation is an issue. But since it is a flawed system, I don't have a problem finding ways around it - including mental gymnastics - so long as my pc doesn't act out of character. It so happens I use the SCS slow rep component in BG1, which should solve any BG1 issues, and in BG2, rep advancement is slow enough that I can easily make it until I get the slayer form, which, from a mental gymnastics standpoint, is easier to justify than committing a crime.
The biggest question to me of late has been the worship of Shar. I have never paid much attention to lore in these games, but I randomly came across a thread about the church of Shar somewhere in which it was pointed out that the mission of Shar is to undermine and corrupt individuals. That begs me to wonder whether I could ever consider the behaviour of one of it's practitioners as genuine.
On the flipside, Viconia never really acts upon any of this. Possibly a particularly insightful paladin would pick up on this. Or maybe because she hasn't actually done any evil acts when first encountered, a paladin just sees a minority being persecuted and takes her on for her own protection. There's a number of ways to justify taking her or not depending on the kind of paladin you want to be,
While traveling with Charname she grows in power, getting magic items and gaining cleric levels, indicating that she actually grows in favor with Shar. So whatever she is doing, Shar seems to like it.
A LG paladin might easily be able to justify protecting her & try to convince her to abandon her faith in Shar - but that is not really what is happening. Instead, CHARNAME is helping Shar build a much more powerful champion. And without the romance Viconia does not give any indication that she is wavering in her faith or questioning her beliefs.
But if you aren't too worried about tabletop and just want to play the game, I'd think you would at least have to believe her experience at the stake has shaken her and she is genuinely open to hearing what you have to say. You would also have to think a lot of her harsh words are bluster rather than reflecting her true thoughts and feelings. Otherwise you'd simply be enabling a highly effective servant of Shar, which as @Ammar points out probably isn't going to be helpful to the causes a paladin would believe in.
Her romance reveals that this is pretty much the case. Its a defense mechanism of a very broken individual.
However, this party also balked at Branwen, which is how they ended up with Jaheira - who I also patched to be neutral good (using the tweaks), as she behaves more like a good character than a true neutral character.
The rest of us: "GF your paladin, Kevin!"
We spent a bunch of weekends going to big tabletop conventions so our whole group often signed up with a DM we didn't know so ours could have some player fun too. The one we kept meeting with the most had a rather sadistic way of punishing "Kevin" every time he pulled his lawful-stupid interpretation of the Paladin code.
So, with that in mind, I can definitely see a Paladin sparing Viconia and then choosing to bring her along so he can "keep an eye on her". As long as she doesn't do anything overtly evil or malicious while in his company, her presence can be tolerated. In the long-term, perhaps he seeks to send Viconia back to the Underdark where she belongs, or if she does not wish to return there, then he can seek to reform her through example.
Likewise, I don't really see an issue between a Paladin developing a romance with Viconia, although naturally HOW this arises may or may not be problematic. If the Paladin spared and recruited Viconia "because look at her, she's smoking hot!" then obviously he's keeping her around out of selfish desires and not out of a genuine wish to help her. It's interesting to note that, in order to genuinely succeed at the romance as it is written, it actually segues in very nicely with a Good-style romance where the PC is genuinely trying to empathize with Viconia, as opposed to simply sating mutual physical desires.
More of that "evil is good and good is evil" crap I see so much in contemporary fiction. I'm just finishing up watching the "Supernatural" series for the first time, starting the final season, and at the end of the next to the last season, they went full on "everything you think is good is actually evil, and everything you think is evil is actually good" business. I was very disappointed with the writers. I think the whole phenomenon is a poison in our culture.
It demonstrates my point from before. Devs probably saw evil deity with darkness in her portfolio and just went with it. The epilogue just namedrops Shar, but again, there's no mention of any actual Sharran goals or creeds. Nothing deeper than "Shar evil, Viconia serve." Nothing about ending all life or even of subverting good. You could sub in literally any other evil deity without changing Viconia's story or character a single bit. She's a really bad Sharran. Especially since, instead of subverting a good charname, a good charname can subvert her.
I'm not sure that the phenomenon is quite as you see it. I see it more as good people do evil things sometimes, evil people do good things sometimes, you may have to do something evil to achieve something good, and/or good things may result from evil actions (and vice-versa). The old days of the white hats vs. black hats are gone. Personally I think it's more realistic, and much less of a 'fiction is a morality play' trope myself. I don't know anybody who is totally good or totally evil, especially when put in the unusual situations depicted in most movies/stories...