Paladins breaking their oath

[Penitent Pilgrim]

Is a paladin given guidelines on things they should not do? Are oath-breaking dialogue choices flagged?

[zero]

you pick an oath and it tells you what to follow.

and no, you are not.

[Hobocop]

Paladins start with Scale Mail with their oath inscribed on it, along with a book in their inventory describing each oath's tenets.

[seeker1]

You will only know if an action you took broke your oath post facto.

A Dark Knight will appear at your camp. Pay up some gold, he can restore your Oath. If there are repeat violations, the cost will go up.

Basically, that's the system. Oath violations literally cost you to restore your Oath. Or you can choose to become an Oathbreaker, basically the Blackguard of 5E. An Oathbreaker can control undead, etc. but cannot be respecced.

[igor140]

It's actually very easy to break your oath. I've done it several times on accident. They're almost always situations that make sense when you think about it... "huh, maybe I shouldn't have murdered that child", etc.

The only one that's thrown me is that Oath of Ancients can break their oath by looting certain bodies. It only happens when the "loot" icon is red, but it doesn't always happen. I think this is because the game considers it stealing, but I don't really understand it.

So if you go Oath of Ancients (which is arguably the best healing class in the game; possibly second next to bard), get in the habit of looting with a different, more morally flexible character. Not sure if that happens with other oaths.

[Goblin King Jareth]

Originally posted by igor140:

It's actually very easy to break your oath. I've done it several times on accident. They're almost always situations that make sense when you think about it... "huh, maybe I shouldn't have murdered that child", etc.

The only one that's thrown me is that Oath of Ancients can break their oath by looting certain bodies. It only happens when the "loot" icon is red, but it doesn't always happen. I think this is because the game considers it stealing, but I don't really understand it.

So if you go Oath of Ancients (which is arguably the best healing class in the game; possibly second next to bard), get in the habit of looting with a different, more morally flexible character. Not sure if that happens with other oaths.

I sort of know what's going on here after seeing it over several combats.
There is some kind of threshold when storyline ally NPCs attack your targets that it can become "their" kill even if you hit it as well. It might be as simple as getting the last hit in. I just had it recently where I did a ton of damage to a big story boss and some ally flunky got in the last few. Couldn't loot him after with the whole town staring since it was marked a steal so I had to drop a fog cloud. You can see it happen a bunch with the first goblin gate fight if you ever want to test it. It may be too that it only counts as a steal for oath purposes if witness, just like a normal steal.