Goldpact Knight RD a question.

[Torm51]

If he/she is not paid UPFRONT. Do they have any obligation to do exactly what their employer says? From what it says about their order "They are believers in the idea that payment/gold is a solemn bond that must be upheld at all costs"...meaning if they are paid to do a job they will not deviate from their employers instructions.

 

So when doing a quest if I am not paid a stipend at the start i can betray My employer if It benefits me or if I am paid by the contrasting party correct?

 

How do you guys interpret this?

[Torm51]

I meant RP..

[Aea]

There's no real word of canon on this ingame, but the way I've interpreted it, Goldpact Knights are basically very strict mercenaries. It takes money (likely lots of it) to get them to act, but once they accept payment for a task, they consider themselves duty-bound to complete it without double-crossing or changing terms.

 

So with regard to the situation you posited, if no payment was agreed upon then I'd imagine a Goldpact Knight would not consider themselves to be under any kind of obligation to see the task through, so yeah, if the other party presented themselves as a rational choice and there was no previous agreement to the contrary, there probably wouldn't be a conflict. However, it would seem rather unlikely for a Goldpact paladin to be in that position in the first place, since they would likely insist on a formal agreement of compensation (and of what the task entails, precisely) before they'd agree to pursue a quest on someone else's behalf in the first place. Passionate and Aggressive are both disfavored dispositions, which would indicate that acting on emotion and impulse is behavior that's very much frowned upon by the order. Add in that Rational is one of the favored dispositions, and that would seem to indicate that the basic expected behavior is to be careful and discerning about who you work for, with the understanding that once you agree to start the job you've effectively also agreed to see it through to the end.

 

Ultimately, though, individual paladins will still hold their own interpretations of the code and ideas of how strictly it should be applied, and Paladins draw their power from the strength of their own personal conviction, so roleplay-wise the more relevant factor would be how your character interprets the code of their order rather than what that code actually says.

Edited July 9, 2015 by Aea

[Luckmann]

Have you been informed of compensation? Because if you have, and you've agreed to do the job, I think that's pretty much it - if the other party does not pay up later, they're the breaker of the bond, not you.

That being said, I wish there were more options to really play up charcter angles like this. I could never play a goldpact knight, because there's seldom an option to be upfront about what you're about, such as demanding payment in advance without you acting like a greedy misanthrope, or taking a mercenary approach to things. Same goes for pretty much all the Orders and Deities. Wonkyness abound.