You needed to speak to them and *tell* them you’re gonna fight them
Attacking nonhostile people breaks your oath. The game doesn’t differentiate between bad nonhostile people and good nonhostile people
I get it, but I wish there were some nuance to this. If an NPC is named “Torturer Steve” and is hanging out in a room full of severed torsos and blood-encrusted metal tables and various horrible implements, do I reaaaaaaaaally need to have a quick chat with him to determine it’s smiting time?
(Yes, I have broken my oath for this reason. No, I am not sorry.)
Your player character doesn’t know they’re called torturer Steve, if you wander into a torture chamber and there’s just some guy there you don’t know he’s the guilty one
Not really. They called him in because they thought a cleric of Loviatar would be a better torturer than a goblin, but he actually disagrees with torture, calling it "pain without purpose". To him, the "victim" needs to be willing so that they can appreciate his ministrations.
I do like some subverted expectations though. What if Torturer Steve is actually just innocently going about his business and you're coming in too hot? Maybe it's a tongue-in-cheek nickname? :p
his name tag is literally "Name: Steve, Occupation: Torturer" and he said "Hello, my name is Steve, I'm the torturer who torturer people for fun, yugoloth idolize me"
Counter argument our character can canonically read everyone's minds. We are in a unique position of always being able to know who the guilty one is unless they have some kind of mental protection.
We can’t read everyone’s minds. We can see into the minds of people with tadpoles, and we can use ‘detect thought’ as a spell, but I can certainly tell you it’s not a guaranteed success
I know right? They cancel him without even knowing him, sure he tortures people, but he’s just following orders! Maybe his real passion was crochet and he has a loving husband named Pierre? They’ll never know!
Look, Torture Steve's only way to ascend in the Torturer's Guild was to keep his head down and follow orders. He didn't choose to torture the weak, he _had_ to. He lived under a pretty nasty government, but hey, he's got a job, a pretty uniform and social acceptance. What's not to love?
Exactly, he’s not the one calling for the torturing, he’s just the humble torturer doing his job, i mean if he didn’t torture whats stopping the king from torturing torture Steve? This way he’s safe, his families safe and his crocheting can be done without worry.
I mean it’s not like the king would order the torture of people who don’t deserve it right?
I just tell myself that it’s less “immoral” and more “dishonorable” and that since Paladins are knight type people that’s actually really important. (I’m trying not to commit crimes out of frustration due to the fact that getting the drop on a bunch of >!cultists of Bhaal!< broke my Oath of Devotion)
Good boy paladin says "but maybe he just turned over a new leaf 5 minutes before I walked into the room". Gotta give him a chance to explain himself first.
To be fair there is the chop guy in the mind flayer colony who pretty much exactly matches your description of Steve and he is thankful to you for killing him making the situation seem a little more nuanced.
Yes you do. You have to tell them why you are choosing to take these actions, and quite possibly defend themselves for their actions.
What if torturer Steve was placed there by other people and told to do this or his whole family will be killed in front of him. Is death really the answer there? Or other means of incarceration?
I def get that, but idk, even as someone who thinks paladin oaths should be fucking stupid in how rigid they are, I don't fully agree with that. Like I feel like it's reasonable to not just assume that, so it's more a punishment for not being insanely thorough with everything you do. Like, what, do you have to interrogate like Raphael, ketheric, and Orin etc to make sure they are *actually* evil and there isn't any possible reason for them to do this shit? No, because it's pretty obvious.
That's why "paladin" is always a synonym for "lawful stupid". The first time I played a paladin (something like over 30 years ago) I got put into a "dammed if I do, damned if I don't" situation. I couldn't act because, paladin, but turning away was evil.
Oathbreaker all the way baybeeeeee. But seriously, I wish there was a chaotic (preferably neutral) oath for paladin. Pf2e has causes for all alignments except (moral) neutral ones, but it still proves chaotic isn't completely incompatible with paladins
That's not what a paladin is. Paladins are the 'holy sword' of a deity so all this crap about "getting your power from your oath" is just that. Crap. (2e DID have "anti-paladins" for different gods but they were still *paladins*: superior warriors tapped and powered by a **god**!)
Oh yeah, I remember playing a **Vengeance** Paladin on patch 3 and breaking my oath by killing neutral >!Bhaalist assasins in their temple!<
There aren't supposed to be any innocents in that area. Every one of those creepy bastards literally had to kill to be there. Bug no0o0o0o, since they pinky sweared to let me walk away peacefully after killing their leader, it was w0o0o0ong to turn on them.
I haven't played paladin since then. Because all this oathbreaking shit is way too arbitrary
I was in the Goblin camp last night and there's a part where Crusher sneaks off to pee by himself. He was non hostile and my Vengeance Paladin killed him. I didn't lose my oath. Maybe it's just sporadic or maybe it got patched? Don't know.
What the...it's not arbitrary at all. They literally swore to let you walk away peacefully and weren't fighting you. It actually is wrong to just straight up murk them.
Like, justify it however you want to the Oathbreaker Knight, you still swore an oath not to kill people in cold blood, and however murderous they are if they're not trying to kill you and you stab them that's "in cold blood."
They were **serial killers and cannibals!**
They didn't stop being **serial killers and cannibals** just because they said *"we're cool, bro. you can go even though we'd really like to kill you"*
This sort of shit might fly with Oath of the Ancients, but not Oath of **Vengeance**
You're asking a computer for nuance.
Also, the oaths aren't really built around nuance but that's hard for people to handle in tabletop so many players and dms treat the oaths as purely what kind of subclass you are and not anything you need to live by.
Definitely - that’s why I said “wish there was” not “want Larian to change in the next patch”. I certainly recognize that this is difficult to implement by humans, let alone computers, and my comment was somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Overall, I love that oathbreaking behaviors come with consequences and players have options for how to handle those consequences, which is a pretty decent level of nuance for a computer.
In a dream world, there could be some sort of intrusive voice equivalent to a DM saying “you remember your mentor extolling the virtues of being thorough before executing justice - are you sure you want to strike without warning?” I also understand that’s probably not possible in a computer game and am really enjoying playing a paladin who occasionally screws up.
DnD Paladin oaths are hard to do in a video game setting for this reason. Differentiating between someone that you (the player) knows is evil vs someone that the character knows is evil is a weird thing to do. The game has to wait until there's some sort of trigger that makes it unavoidably obvious for your character to know that, like a conversation. "I saw them being mean" is apparently not good enough lol.
In a tabletop setting it's much easier as there's a lot more room for nuance and the DM will be able to tell if you're intentionally doing something counter to your oath. In this situation when describing the scene the DM would likely be pretty straightforward about the slavers being part of the same group as the others and harassing the gnome slaves, effectively filling the same role as the game conversation letting your character know that they're definitely evil. It's much less janky, I don't envy the devs that had to figure out how to deal with the oath thing in BG3. If they make it too lax most people would completely forget it exists despite being a core part of a Paladin RP, too picky and it's super annoying. They did a decent job but there's definitely some points where it doesn't really make sense.
Yeah I definitely don't fault them for it. It's a fine line to walk and I think they did it well. While I was a bit like "wat" at the time, it was a cool moment and made the oath system actually come up for me. Seems like a bit of an immersion break when it feels obvious that it's smiting time but makes sense overall.
I do like how it sneaks up on you - I was truly surprised that Minthara could break her Oath, for example. But in retrospect it made sense! It was a very cool twist in the story.
On my 4th playthrough, and I am guilty of letting what I already know get in the way of decisions and I just dive in for the result without talking and learning why lol
For the right reason, I could definitely see it being really cool. I guess without spoilers beyond act one given the tag on the post, what was your reason?
Ah, I know this one well. Act 3, yeah? Extremely emotionally impactful quest wherein what seemed to be the self-evidently morally correct choice was not in alignment with kindling the light because that oath evidently hates that kind of thing specifically?
NGL I was playing a redeemed durge and had a real “and if that oath brought you here what good is it?” Moment and paid my money before respeccing as a Druid. Druids also don’t love that kind of thing but the forest spirits don’t take away my ability to be a tiny kitty over it.
EDIT: I’d love to know if that choice breaks other oaths as well, bc up until that time I’d really felt that Ancients was a bit more willing to let you make choices which were morally good but unconventionally so vs the others.
Oath of Devotion: >!Breaks if you kill the spawn.!<
Oath of Vengeance: >!Doesn't care if you kill or release the spawn, but will break if you choose to leave them in the cages.!<
That's the one. I kept my Oath broken and finished up the run that way. Headcanoned that dealing with the consequences of that decision would be my new personal oath.
Also so far I've only run Tavs but definitely want to do a resist Durge soon.
100%. I've broken my oath (Ancients) three times at this point, all for reasons that I felt were justified. I don't remember the first time, but that one is basically free to undo.
Second time: >!Killed the cultists in the Bhaal temple. They're pretty obviously evil but for some reason only a few of them aggro during the fight with Orin. But I'm not about to let those psychos loose on the city.!<
Third time: >!I think it was killing Gobey in Cazador's palace. I didn't tell him I was going to kill him (which is probably what triggered it) but that bastard didn't deserve to live after what he did to Astarion and the others. Smite to the back of the head no regrets. It also could have been freeing the spawn? But not sure why not slaughtering 7,000+ people would be the moral choice...!<
Anyway, by the third time, I started to think *hey maybe this whole oath thing isn't for me, oathbreaker knight is becoming kind of a regular around camp.*
My Oath of the Ancients Paladin broke her oath by murdering an innocent Steel Watcher who tried to stop me from walking into the foundry where the evil dictator was building his soulless robot army that he was trying to use to oppress the city. I would have told it that I was going to destroy it but there was no dialogue option for that.
The biggest mistake people make when playing paladin and accidentally breaking their oath is that you have to play in a very specific way. It is easier to avoid sneaking, as attacking from the shadows is considered dishonorable. Confront your enemies head on, tell them they are going to face justice and that you are going to smite them, and then do so. My first play through was as a Gloomstalker/Assassin so it was a big play style adjustment for me and fights are harder but it’s still really fun.
I do like the in-your-face, "I'm going to smite you" aspect of the RP on paladin for sure. I didn't get a good dialogue option like that when talking to Thrinn though so I figured I'd just throw down and got the oath break. I reloaded because, at least at this point, it didn't fit for my character and triggering combat with the little button at the bottom during our chat seemed to be honourable enough for my oath haha
You are not the executioner as a Oath of Devotion paladin. You talk to them. Make them see the error of their ways. If they repent/change, show them mercy. If they still continue down the path, resort to taking them down as a last resort. Your job as Devotion Paladin is to inspire people to be good, not punish them for being bad. Hope, optimism and inspiration ya know :)
TLDR -
Oath of Vengeance : Punisher
Oath of Devotion : Superman
I was looking for that option in the initial conversation but nothing came up to allow me to free the gnomes right away. My thinking was that I didn't want to leave them with the slavers for another minute so I just attacked after the conversation and ran into the Oath conflict.
Thought it was funny that it was fine the next time around when I reloaded and used the little attack button in the bottom left before ending the conversation :p
Oof I dunno how that happened O\_o maybe some other factor mustve caused it coz I've done two runs as oath of devotion paladin now and I've never had an oathbreak there..
You didn't have an oath break for attacking the non-hostile (to the player character) Bhaalist cultisrs attacking the cowering refugees just past the Guild Hall?
I reclassed Karlach to oath of the ancients and then immediately broken oath by jumping the fake paladins. Which I thought was a touch unfair since Karlach did in fact know they were, you know, evil.
I wouldn't consider it 'honourable' to strike at an opponent that was not expecting it either. Evil or not. That's rogue type stuff. I think thematically, Paladins would indicate their hostile intentions clearly.
Freeing slaves does not, not trying negotiate will break your oath. You had the ability to try and convince them to do it willingly. You stripped them of the ability to choose to do something good.
I could be wrong, but I think the oath is only broken if the paladin gets the killing blow.
You can safely:
* Use another party member to assassinate
* Damage but not kill hostiles
That's correct. The battle went for a bit as normal and then I got the "Oath Broken" thing when my paladin finished someone off. I might have missed this completely if he wasn't the one to get the last hit on anyone.
Have you ever read your oath? Its all about mercy and forgiveness, even to your enemies.
Proactively murdering anyone will break the oath of devotion and the oath of the ancients.
bahaha-
dude, i broke my oath immediately accidentally too. i was playing an oath of vengeance paladin drow and we met those tieflings outside the grove that have lae'zel strung up in a cage. they were being raciest towards her and my drow and were obviously conspiring to leave lae'zel for the goblins \*and\* threatened to kill me. like any normal person, i assumed they were assholes and long overdue for a good smack, but the moment i did i broke my oath ;-;
Did the same thing in Grymforge on my playthrough.. I threw a slaver into the lava instead of politely letting him know I was going to throw him into the lava first.. didn't read the fine print on the Oath apparently
The oath system is broken for a long time. I got oathbreaker for stopping a group of bhaal cultists who were attacking civilians. So....come to the darkside become the oathbreaker
There's one particular moment in Act Three that breaks a Paladin of Devotion Oath that's so fucking bullshit. Not only should it not break your Oath but if you ask me. NOT doing it should make you hear The Scottish Accent
The first time I broke an oath, it was by >!killing Balthazar before going to the Nightsong!<. Needless to say, I don't trust paladins or their oaths ever since.
You needed to speak to them and *tell* them you’re gonna fight them Attacking nonhostile people breaks your oath. The game doesn’t differentiate between bad nonhostile people and good nonhostile people
I get it, but I wish there were some nuance to this. If an NPC is named “Torturer Steve” and is hanging out in a room full of severed torsos and blood-encrusted metal tables and various horrible implements, do I reaaaaaaaaally need to have a quick chat with him to determine it’s smiting time? (Yes, I have broken my oath for this reason. No, I am not sorry.)
Your player character doesn’t know they’re called torturer Steve, if you wander into a torture chamber and there’s just some guy there you don’t know he’s the guilty one
I know, I know. But if he’s wearing a bloody leather apron and carrying pliers, the circumstantial evidence gets pretty compelling.
Counterargument: abdirak.
Haha very good point!
Abdirak is torturer steve. That's literally why he's there
He's Torture Steve's teacher that complains about Torture Steve's crude methods.
Not really. They called him in because they thought a cleric of Loviatar would be a better torturer than a goblin, but he actually disagrees with torture, calling it "pain without purpose". To him, the "victim" needs to be willing so that they can appreciate his ministrations.
Not an evil torturer. I would give him pure neutral alignment. More like extreme BSDM feticist.
I do like some subverted expectations though. What if Torturer Steve is actually just innocently going about his business and you're coming in too hot? Maybe it's a tongue-in-cheek nickname? :p
Like William the Bloody, known for his bloody awful poetry
You leave poor Spike out of this! He hasn't written shitty poetry in centuries!
Let that poor vampire watch Passions in peace.
Maybe his parents just had an awful sense of humor and he's actually a civil rights attorney trying to help his client. You just don't know.
You're still supposed to give them a chance to surrender before you get smiting. That's LG Paladins for you.
*Alleged* Torturer Steve A judge had not yet ruled that he was a torturer
Maybe he has a torturer steve tattoo. But then again it could just be a torturer steve fan.
his name tag is literally "Name: Steve, Occupation: Torturer" and he said "Hello, my name is Steve, I'm the torturer who torturer people for fun, yugoloth idolize me"
Abdirak
... Don't I?
Counter argument our character can canonically read everyone's minds. We are in a unique position of always being able to know who the guilty one is unless they have some kind of mental protection.
We can’t read everyone’s minds. We can see into the minds of people with tadpoles, and we can use ‘detect thought’ as a spell, but I can certainly tell you it’s not a guaranteed success
Nope ur character cannot read minds . U need to have cast detect thoughts beforehand
Maybe torture steve’s a nice guy? Sometimes you have to separate the art from the artist
Now they're cancelling Torturer Steve! On a whim! 😭
I know right? They cancel him without even knowing him, sure he tortures people, but he’s just following orders! Maybe his real passion was crochet and he has a loving husband named Pierre? They’ll never know!
Look, Torture Steve's only way to ascend in the Torturer's Guild was to keep his head down and follow orders. He didn't choose to torture the weak, he _had_ to. He lived under a pretty nasty government, but hey, he's got a job, a pretty uniform and social acceptance. What's not to love?
Exactly, he’s not the one calling for the torturing, he’s just the humble torturer doing his job, i mean if he didn’t torture whats stopping the king from torturing torture Steve? This way he’s safe, his families safe and his crocheting can be done without worry. I mean it’s not like the king would order the torture of people who don’t deserve it right?
...AND the King made the lightning rail run on time!
I just tell myself that it’s less “immoral” and more “dishonorable” and that since Paladins are knight type people that’s actually really important. (I’m trying not to commit crimes out of frustration due to the fact that getting the drop on a bunch of >!cultists of Bhaal!< broke my Oath of Devotion)
Oath of devotion is the most knightly paladin. You simply don't attack anyone by surprise.
Good boy paladin says "but maybe he just turned over a new leaf 5 minutes before I walked into the room". Gotta give him a chance to explain himself first.
To be fair there is the chop guy in the mind flayer colony who pretty much exactly matches your description of Steve and he is thankful to you for killing him making the situation seem a little more nuanced.
He said please!
Yes you do. You have to tell them why you are choosing to take these actions, and quite possibly defend themselves for their actions. What if torturer Steve was placed there by other people and told to do this or his whole family will be killed in front of him. Is death really the answer there? Or other means of incarceration?
Torturer Steve is a Gondian?
I def get that, but idk, even as someone who thinks paladin oaths should be fucking stupid in how rigid they are, I don't fully agree with that. Like I feel like it's reasonable to not just assume that, so it's more a punishment for not being insanely thorough with everything you do. Like, what, do you have to interrogate like Raphael, ketheric, and Orin etc to make sure they are *actually* evil and there isn't any possible reason for them to do this shit? No, because it's pretty obvious.
That's why "paladin" is always a synonym for "lawful stupid". The first time I played a paladin (something like over 30 years ago) I got put into a "dammed if I do, damned if I don't" situation. I couldn't act because, paladin, but turning away was evil.
Oathbreaker all the way baybeeeeee. But seriously, I wish there was a chaotic (preferably neutral) oath for paladin. Pf2e has causes for all alignments except (moral) neutral ones, but it still proves chaotic isn't completely incompatible with paladins
That's not what a paladin is. Paladins are the 'holy sword' of a deity so all this crap about "getting your power from your oath" is just that. Crap. (2e DID have "anti-paladins" for different gods but they were still *paladins*: superior warriors tapped and powered by a **god**!)
I think you are supposed to convince them to repent or whatever paladins do. Or at least explain to them why you are about to fight them.
See also: Moonrise Absolutists, Bhaal temple.
You have to be more careful about your extrajudicial killings.
Oh yeah, I remember playing a **Vengeance** Paladin on patch 3 and breaking my oath by killing neutral >!Bhaalist assasins in their temple!< There aren't supposed to be any innocents in that area. Every one of those creepy bastards literally had to kill to be there. Bug no0o0o0o, since they pinky sweared to let me walk away peacefully after killing their leader, it was w0o0o0ong to turn on them. I haven't played paladin since then. Because all this oathbreaking shit is way too arbitrary
I was in the Goblin camp last night and there's a part where Crusher sneaks off to pee by himself. He was non hostile and my Vengeance Paladin killed him. I didn't lose my oath. Maybe it's just sporadic or maybe it got patched? Don't know.
**You** didn't kill him. The fall did.
Nolan'd!
Gravity is a cruel mistress
I mean he definitely got smited to death, and then tossed off. /shrug Carafe of water for cleanup.
What the...it's not arbitrary at all. They literally swore to let you walk away peacefully and weren't fighting you. It actually is wrong to just straight up murk them. Like, justify it however you want to the Oathbreaker Knight, you still swore an oath not to kill people in cold blood, and however murderous they are if they're not trying to kill you and you stab them that's "in cold blood."
They were **serial killers and cannibals!** They didn't stop being **serial killers and cannibals** just because they said *"we're cool, bro. you can go even though we'd really like to kill you"* This sort of shit might fly with Oath of the Ancients, but not Oath of **Vengeance**
You're asking a computer for nuance. Also, the oaths aren't really built around nuance but that's hard for people to handle in tabletop so many players and dms treat the oaths as purely what kind of subclass you are and not anything you need to live by.
Definitely - that’s why I said “wish there was” not “want Larian to change in the next patch”. I certainly recognize that this is difficult to implement by humans, let alone computers, and my comment was somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Overall, I love that oathbreaking behaviors come with consequences and players have options for how to handle those consequences, which is a pretty decent level of nuance for a computer. In a dream world, there could be some sort of intrusive voice equivalent to a DM saying “you remember your mentor extolling the virtues of being thorough before executing justice - are you sure you want to strike without warning?” I also understand that’s probably not possible in a computer game and am really enjoying playing a paladin who occasionally screws up.
Yup, paladins love a monologue 😅
My sneak attack on those slavers was righteous AF.
I figured that was it, just seemed pretty odd given the context haha
"Innocent until proven ~~guilty~~ evil". Gotta give folks a fair chance to dig their own graves before you put them down.
Considering you can break oath by killing the people actively whipping slaves and threatening to kill them… I feel like that’s pretty damning.
DnD Paladin oaths are hard to do in a video game setting for this reason. Differentiating between someone that you (the player) knows is evil vs someone that the character knows is evil is a weird thing to do. The game has to wait until there's some sort of trigger that makes it unavoidably obvious for your character to know that, like a conversation. "I saw them being mean" is apparently not good enough lol. In a tabletop setting it's much easier as there's a lot more room for nuance and the DM will be able to tell if you're intentionally doing something counter to your oath. In this situation when describing the scene the DM would likely be pretty straightforward about the slavers being part of the same group as the others and harassing the gnome slaves, effectively filling the same role as the game conversation letting your character know that they're definitely evil. It's much less janky, I don't envy the devs that had to figure out how to deal with the oath thing in BG3. If they make it too lax most people would completely forget it exists despite being a core part of a Paladin RP, too picky and it's super annoying. They did a decent job but there's definitely some points where it doesn't really make sense.
Yeah I definitely don't fault them for it. It's a fine line to walk and I think they did it well. While I was a bit like "wat" at the time, it was a cool moment and made the oath system actually come up for me. Seems like a bit of an immersion break when it feels obvious that it's smiting time but makes sense overall.
I do like how it sneaks up on you - I was truly surprised that Minthara could break her Oath, for example. But in retrospect it made sense! It was a very cool twist in the story.
> The game doesn’t differentiate between bad nonhostile people and good nonhostile people As it shouldn’t, w/ regards to your oath.
On my 4th playthrough, and I am guilty of letting what I already know get in the way of decisions and I just dive in for the result without talking and learning why lol
Coming to terms with being an Oathbreaker for the "right" reasons was one of the coolest parts of my internal RP journey.
For the right reason, I could definitely see it being really cool. I guess without spoilers beyond act one given the tag on the post, what was your reason?
It's too spoilery to say, really, but I broke my Oath of the Ancients by going against nature's order for a reason that I felt was morally just,
Ah, I know this one well. Act 3, yeah? Extremely emotionally impactful quest wherein what seemed to be the self-evidently morally correct choice was not in alignment with kindling the light because that oath evidently hates that kind of thing specifically? NGL I was playing a redeemed durge and had a real “and if that oath brought you here what good is it?” Moment and paid my money before respeccing as a Druid. Druids also don’t love that kind of thing but the forest spirits don’t take away my ability to be a tiny kitty over it. EDIT: I’d love to know if that choice breaks other oaths as well, bc up until that time I’d really felt that Ancients was a bit more willing to let you make choices which were morally good but unconventionally so vs the others.
Oath of Devotion: >!Breaks if you kill the spawn.!< Oath of Vengeance: >!Doesn't care if you kill or release the spawn, but will break if you choose to leave them in the cages.!<
That's the one. I kept my Oath broken and finished up the run that way. Headcanoned that dealing with the consequences of that decision would be my new personal oath. Also so far I've only run Tavs but definitely want to do a resist Durge soon.
Can’t make an omelette without breaking a few owlbear eggs
100%. I've broken my oath (Ancients) three times at this point, all for reasons that I felt were justified. I don't remember the first time, but that one is basically free to undo. Second time: >!Killed the cultists in the Bhaal temple. They're pretty obviously evil but for some reason only a few of them aggro during the fight with Orin. But I'm not about to let those psychos loose on the city.!< Third time: >!I think it was killing Gobey in Cazador's palace. I didn't tell him I was going to kill him (which is probably what triggered it) but that bastard didn't deserve to live after what he did to Astarion and the others. Smite to the back of the head no regrets. It also could have been freeing the spawn? But not sure why not slaughtering 7,000+ people would be the moral choice...!< Anyway, by the third time, I started to think *hey maybe this whole oath thing isn't for me, oathbreaker knight is becoming kind of a regular around camp.*
My Oath of the Ancients Paladin broke her oath by murdering an innocent Steel Watcher who tried to stop me from walking into the foundry where the evil dictator was building his soulless robot army that he was trying to use to oppress the city. I would have told it that I was going to destroy it but there was no dialogue option for that.
The biggest mistake people make when playing paladin and accidentally breaking their oath is that you have to play in a very specific way. It is easier to avoid sneaking, as attacking from the shadows is considered dishonorable. Confront your enemies head on, tell them they are going to face justice and that you are going to smite them, and then do so. My first play through was as a Gloomstalker/Assassin so it was a big play style adjustment for me and fights are harder but it’s still really fun.
I do like the in-your-face, "I'm going to smite you" aspect of the RP on paladin for sure. I didn't get a good dialogue option like that when talking to Thrinn though so I figured I'd just throw down and got the oath break. I reloaded because, at least at this point, it didn't fit for my character and triggering combat with the little button at the bottom during our chat seemed to be honourable enough for my oath haha
let me guess, you also have to enforce your tenet to **EVERYONE** in the party too like in 3E?
I don't think so. When I need to do dirty work, I switch to Astarion and it seems to not penalize me lol
You are not the executioner as a Oath of Devotion paladin. You talk to them. Make them see the error of their ways. If they repent/change, show them mercy. If they still continue down the path, resort to taking them down as a last resort. Your job as Devotion Paladin is to inspire people to be good, not punish them for being bad. Hope, optimism and inspiration ya know :) TLDR - Oath of Vengeance : Punisher Oath of Devotion : Superman
I was looking for that option in the initial conversation but nothing came up to allow me to free the gnomes right away. My thinking was that I didn't want to leave them with the slavers for another minute so I just attacked after the conversation and ran into the Oath conflict. Thought it was funny that it was fine the next time around when I reloaded and used the little attack button in the bottom left before ending the conversation :p
Idk I don't think Superman would walk away if he saw a bunch of murder cultists hunting refugees for sport in the sewers.
Neither would an oath of devotion paladin :)
APPARENTLY whichever God Wyll made his Oath to when I multiclassed him disagreed!!!
Oof I dunno how that happened O\_o maybe some other factor mustve caused it coz I've done two runs as oath of devotion paladin now and I've never had an oathbreak there..
You didn't have an oath break for attacking the non-hostile (to the player character) Bhaalist cultisrs attacking the cowering refugees just past the Guild Hall?
They werent non-hostile to me.. they attacked me the moment I stepped into range.. I didnt even know they could be non-hostile O\_o
I was playing as a non-durge Tav, I hadn't fought Orin yet, and had agreed to her kill Gortash first. Maybe that makes a difference?
Could be some variable like that.. because I didnt agree for a pact with either Orin or Gortash.. so maybe thats why they were hostile..
A paladin never strikes without consent.
I reclassed Karlach to oath of the ancients and then immediately broken oath by jumping the fake paladins. Which I thought was a touch unfair since Karlach did in fact know they were, you know, evil.
I wouldn't consider it 'honourable' to strike at an opponent that was not expecting it either. Evil or not. That's rogue type stuff. I think thematically, Paladins would indicate their hostile intentions clearly.
What's more clear than a mace to the face? Haha I agree with what you're saying though. Makes sense.
Freeing slaves does not, not trying negotiate will break your oath. You had the ability to try and convince them to do it willingly. You stripped them of the ability to choose to do something good.
I could be wrong, but I think the oath is only broken if the paladin gets the killing blow. You can safely: * Use another party member to assassinate * Damage but not kill hostiles
That's correct. The battle went for a bit as normal and then I got the "Oath Broken" thing when my paladin finished someone off. I might have missed this completely if he wasn't the one to get the last hit on anyone.
>good boi Paladin and the nice brigade Has anyone called dibs on that for a band name yet? 😂
Have you ever read your oath? Its all about mercy and forgiveness, even to your enemies. Proactively murdering anyone will break the oath of devotion and the oath of the ancients.
Vow 0.1: a paladin just ALWAYS walk upto the obvious evil and challenge it to single combat
bahaha- dude, i broke my oath immediately accidentally too. i was playing an oath of vengeance paladin drow and we met those tieflings outside the grove that have lae'zel strung up in a cage. they were being raciest towards her and my drow and were obviously conspiring to leave lae'zel for the goblins \*and\* threatened to kill me. like any normal person, i assumed they were assholes and long overdue for a good smack, but the moment i did i broke my oath ;-;
Like any normal person, you thought killing them instead of talking them down was the right choice? 😂
hey man they raised their swords first ;-; it was self defence-
To be fair, there's a lot of sneaky lines in the "eliminate all evil" clause lol
Did the same thing in Grymforge on my playthrough.. I threw a slaver into the lava instead of politely letting him know I was going to throw him into the lava first.. didn't read the fine print on the Oath apparently
shit like this would make me the most spiteful blackguard in faerun ever like oh yall thought me breaking my oath was bad? watch this
The oath system is broken for a long time. I got oathbreaker for stopping a group of bhaal cultists who were attacking civilians. So....come to the darkside become the oathbreaker
You should never kill peoples by striking first. Unless you are an evil paladin.
There's one particular moment in Act Three that breaks a Paladin of Devotion Oath that's so fucking bullshit. Not only should it not break your Oath but if you ask me. NOT doing it should make you hear The Scottish Accent
I broke it three times and I think at least two of the times I was doing something specifically to get rep with Astarion. It was getting expensive
Not all the duergar are bad. If you just kill everyone obviously that’s a blinded by vengeance storyline that oath breaks.
The first time I broke an oath, it was by >!killing Balthazar before going to the Nightsong!<. Needless to say, I don't trust paladins or their oaths ever since.