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Irene seems intent on assisting in this fight. Perhaps roll a diplomacy check if you truly wish to convince her to flee from the field of battle. However, in a mindflayer citadel with enemies moving in from all sides, and an invading army not far behind, you are not really sure where she could go to be safe.

The above verbiage, how does the -2 for marking it fit in? Again, only if targeting allies, or when attacking any non-paladin-player target?

"Effect: You Mark the Target... "



The -2 penalty is tied to being marked.

Feel free to make it lethal if you so please. You're not going nonlethal on the thralls, right? You made a claim to treat Revenge as such. What kind of Paladin would bow to bullying? I didn't back down from my stated intent, so Ruin shouldn't either.

But to answer your question, it's how Kowsauni wrote me into a corner. Revenge's background (which he's fully aware of, as it integrated it into his plot) is that before becoming a paladin, he was a merchant who was newly married. He and his new bride went to a vacation village for a honeymoon, but he was called away on super urgent business. Even though he made it as quick as possible, the village was razed and his wife was missing, presumed dead.

The basis of his paladin oath is to protect people so their loved ones never feel the grief of loss. Again, common knowledge up to this point.

So when we agreed to protect Irene, via contract (which I referenced early on), it satisfied both the former-merchant-contract-honoring part of Revenge's brain, and the protect-people-for-the-sake-of-those-who-care-about-them part of his brain. That's like, 94% of his brain.

So, fast forward to earlier in the battle. Irene is mucking about with the pen. The Mind Flayer orders his(?) thralls to stop her. Ruin encourages her to keep going anyways (hence the insult of calling Ruin 'an idiot', which Revenge did in the heat of the moment because he wasn't near enough to use his protective powers and Ruin had encouraged her to continue putting herself in danger (unrelated: his feelings, not mine; I understand the tactical reason for advising her to do so)). Despite my best efforts to get there, she just got hurt.

So, keep in mind, that up to now she has presented herself as an ordinary girl. Well... mostly ordinary. Somewhat ordinary. Shut up, you know what I mean.

She presented herself as a noncombatant. But yes, she did reveal that she has some extraordinary abilities (which Revenge is assuming is compliments Aria, but hasn't tried to delve). He understands that now, with abilities revealed, she does have some combat prowess. But, it doesn't override the contractual-and-paladin-oath-based promise to keep her from harm. Both IC and OOC, I have no idea how durable Irene is. The only information I have is, "her wound didn't heal when I gave her some healing energy" so she's more vulnerable than any one of us since she can't be healed.

There's two situations that presented itself to Revenge: Either she kept herself from combat and there was minimal risk of her coming to further harm, or she be allowed to fight on the front lines with us and the risk of her coming to harm is maximized. Now, let's compare that to the situation at hand: Kuori's people about to be sacrificed. He's weighing the Irene issue, vs the Goliath issue: 1.) If Irene was kept from combat and they succeeded, best possible outcome. 2.) If Irene was kept from combat and they failed, there'd be regret for sure of "maybe if we had let her help". 3.) If Irene joined combat and they succeeded and she was unhurt, awesome, Revenge would buy everyone a drink (which would probably mean selling equipment, as he has not been given a chance IC to come into any coin outside of looting corpses which he finds distasteful). 4.) If Irene joined, they won, but she died, he'd have to face her family that the party had promised to protect her, and failed. 5.) Irene joined, they lost, it wouldn't have mattered either way since we'd all be dead.

5 outcomes. Revenge banked on outcome #1 (Irene no fighty, party wins) as the more likely "ideal" to win. Outcome #3 and outcome #4 were unclear which would be more likely of those 2, and he had not enough information on Irene to know her capabilities of surviving to make 3 happen instead of 4.

That's..... kind of the problem when a character keeps secrets and reveals their trump card at the most inopportune moment.

So, Revenge is trying to keep her from combat because he doesn't want her to die, which he promised to keep her from. HOWEVER, Irene has verbally indicated that she's going to do what she wants and f**k Revenge's feelings, AND she keeps leaving the range of thralls he marks + the range of his "protect his allies" powers. She's acting like a petulant child who's wandering a minefield, as far as Revenge is concerned. If you were watching/babysitting a child in real life who was doing something super dangerous and they didn't listen when you told them to stop, would you just shrug and say "I tried 4 times, oh well, whatever happens happens?" No, you would physically remove the child from the situation where they'd end up hurt, or worse.

To Revenge, Irene is just wanting to showboat and "play the hero" without regard to her own safety. That's anti-paladin-brain, since he is honor-bound to even give his life to get her back in one piece to her loved ones. He was on the verge of doing a diplomacy check, when Ruin did the urgent "Drop what you're doing and come protect Valac!" comment. It created the urgency in him to give up trying to play nice and try diplomacy, to resort to intimidate and promised nonlethal attacks instead. Ruin's assessment of the Mind Flayer part of the battle and indication of the immediate need of Revenge's need to come be a Defender right now, vs the girl who's actively putting herself in harm's way when we're trying to keep her from harm, is what drove him to that moral & mental breaking point.

Now, the other half of the situation: The merchant part of his brain. We are contractually obligated to protect her as well. A contract is binding, whether it's convenient or inconvenient. Just because she finds it inconvenient right now, doesn't mean it's okay to just dismiss it. If contracts could easily be disregarded whenever a single party didn't care anymore, then they would have no weight or merit whatsoever. It would have to be mutually agreed upon and resolved in writing if both parties wanted to null it. The problem is, we're in the middle of combat, so both emotions are heated and we don't have time to address a contract in battle. So whether she likes it or not, she's bound to it as much as we are.

So, that all said... "just ignoring her" goes against everything he trained for in his first life as well as the very basis of why he became a paladin in his second life. It's a hill that he's willing to die on.

Now, how could this have been avoided, without Irene just sitting on her hands as things explode around her? I came up with a couple different ways it could have.
1.) Irene shared information about herself pre-combat and we determined the best way to utilize her capabilities.
2.) Irene agreed to remove herself from battle, wait until Revenge was mobbed up, then rejoin battle after he's too surrounded to do anything about it.
3.) Irene engage in a type of guerilla warfare of hit-and-run tactics against wounded thralls, finishing them off so there would be nothing to strike her back.
4.) Irene insist on keeping by Revenge's side because it's more dangerous out there, so he could have done his best to keep her from harm. Once the immediate range of thralls were cleared, they likely would have worked their way towards the mind flayer and could have worked as a team.
5.) Irene had gone "Sorry I hid this from you; I still want to help, please tell me how I can help, as you can see I'm not helpless" which would probably have lead to Revenge opting for options 3 or 4 above.

However, she's been jumping right at the enemies without regard to her own safety. She's a loose cannon, and Revenge is being forced to take drastic measures to reign her in. He doesn't want to. He doesn't like any of this situation. As a player, being written into the corner by the DM has multiplied my RL stress levels.

I would be failing to play my character as they were intended to be played if I didn't take the actions I did. I would never do my character that level of dishonor of going "Oh well, whatever happens happens lololol" and just turned a blind eye to everything. I had a fair number of doors opened to me, but all of them except two got slammed in my face: Either Revenge make an enemy of everyone doing what was promised, or he betrays everything that made him a paladin. If you're still upset at this after the explanation, please feel free to address this with the DM who wrote the scene and forced me into this unwanted choice.

ADDENDUM: Also, because of the type of player that I am that dedicates to keeping in-character and not influencing what my character would do with metagame knowledge, keep in mind that this also stems from both being a paladin, and being a character with the specific tragic backstory that he has. If I was just a fighter, I would have given her my polearm and gone "try to stay out of their reach, have fun". A different character would have spurred a different reaction from me. It's just unfortunate that it's the way it is with the specific character I'm playing right now.

Kuori is just sad that her closest friend is putting all of his energy into stopping an obviosly capable ally instead of helping down the true enemy. He left her there for it and has been absorbed in it since, and if they don't win this fight she loses a lot more than just her own life.

And with Aria nearby, and likely her sister too, she isn't keen on having too throw additional resources at the fight while revenge plays tag.

Ooc I get what is happening, but it is frustrating both IC and ooc

And now that they've all been freed from their control, the "danger" to Irene is gone like that. Even as a player, I didn't realize the thrall control would end with the mindflayer's death, I assumed it was like... they were lobotomized and now forever loyal to the mind flayer and its cause. Guess who learned something new today!

I was just rolling with the lore check.

Go figure that me and my tentacle obsession means Mindflayers are my favorite monsters. So mind control and conditioning. Especially with the fact that the tiny thralls were duegar. Duegar were basically bred to be easy to control after the mind flayers got their mitts on their ancestors.

Lobotomized things (other than undead) can't function.

And if they had been infected, they'd only have a few days of incubation, so likely a few would be deformed.