If a paladin sells his soul to Hell to save his friends, and falls, but is repentant and wants to redeem himself, is it ever possible for him to become a paladin again through the sheer effort and good? Or is it over forever because he already sold his soul and that's a black mark on him that can never be washed away?
>>96787056do whatever the fuck you want, duded&d has had easily achievable atonement shit since paladin's inception
>>96787363yeah but i want to know whats actually supposed to happen, in forgotten realms and D&D lore, to use as a guideline
>>96787405What they said literally is what's "supposed to happen". Forgotten Realms is made up bullshit with absolutely no real rules or anything. It's the setting where "I dunno lol it sounded cool" is the point.That's part of why it's so widely derided as a shitty setting.The only real point in favor of settings like the Forgotten Realms and Golarion is that they were designed to facilitate whatever game you're gonna run. They have no rules and it's all bullshit specifically so that you can run your own game "there".In that sense, the Forgotten Realms is actually just an aesthetic. It's an illusion that you construct for the players. It allows you to say "so this thing happened because of some shit I just made the fuck up" and get away with it. It's a fragile, illusion, though, so you do have to go through the tedious process of doing that making shit up phase, but otherwise you literally just do what you want.So do whatever you want, there is only one rule: you have to preserve the illusion by persuading your players to believe in you.What's that look like in practice? Your players go on an adventure with their fallen paladin friend to retrieve his soul from Hell. How's that supposed to work? The Planes are physically real places where the rules of their reality are physically embodied there. Hell is a place you can literally go and everything there operates on Infernal Logic. Being able to retrieve your soul from there and escape with it is literally a negation of whatever contract put your soul there in the first place.There, I've done the hard work for you.
>>96787056>Guys, what if complex morality and classic prottie religious issues in an exaggerated world of a fantasy, where baddies are bad and goodies are good?
>>96787944Paladins falling and losing their class features is a core part of the class's mechanics in D&D. It's not a setting issue, it's a mechanics issue.And therefore the answer for the OP is also mechanical: use the Atonement spell. That's what it's for. There are already mechanics for how to get that spell cast for you, including the price for spellcasting services from NPCs and what size of settlement might have an NPC capable of casting such spells for a fee.The books also usually (depending on which edition of Doodoo & Dogshit you're playing) mention that priests capable of casting Atonement are likely to also issue you a quest or task to prove your worthiness... and this is literally depicted with more mechanics, called the Geas / Quest spells. "Geas" means "quest", by the way. And it was an iconic thing for clerics to do for decades.
>>96787056Depends.
>>96787056Look at TV for examples. How many times did Ichigo lose his fucking powers? It's always possible, even if he took out some innocents in the demon's name, he could still be redeemed.
>>96788397Atonement or Geas are good ideas, that I hadn't thought of. But those assume the paladin is otherwise able to be good again. Is it possible if they already sold their soul though? It's like they're permanently set to evil no matter what they do.
>>96787056stop creating classes that revolves around worshipping something
>>96791390Define "sold their soul". Are you implying that they can't buy it back? For example, by paying a lot of gold to a spellcaster who casts a spell to retrieve that soul? With a spell specifically designed for the purpose? Given that the purpose of such a spell is specifically to absolve such a moral debt, you might called it something appropriate. Like "forgiveness" or "absolution".... or "atonement"...Fucking numpty MORON.
>>96787363Nope redemption was impossible in the grayhawk supplement.
>>96787056>sacrifices his own purity to do an act of good>redeems himself so that he can regain his purity and the powers that make him better at doing good>goes to kick the shit out of whatever tried to corrupt himYes he can become a paladin again, yes it's peak fiction, no you shouldn't let the vague lore/shitty mechanics of some kitchen sink setting tell you otherwise.
>>96787056I assume that depends on the 'how' of selling your soul to save your friends.IIRC in D&D 3.5 there was a hell-focused splatbook that mentioned that selling your soul under duress (for example, to save you or your family/friends from torment) was malpractice and that you easily could get a lawyer devil in hell to fuck over the guy you sold your soul to.So if it's 'you gave your soul to some pit fiend so he'd stop putting hot pokers in the asses of your friends', that paladin could very much get out of trouble. If it's 'you gave your soul to some pit fiend so he'd lend you his help to get your friends out of trouble', it's probably going to require a bit more effort.
