confusion about paladin and oathbreaking?

[Clevos]

Is a paladin not allowed to defend themselves? i came to the part where the tieflings have Lae'zel. i failed to convince them to leave. so i was going to leave her to her fate. instead the tieflings shot open her cage to kill her and attacked me. i had not threatened them. i chose the persuasion option not the intimidate. i did not use any type of charm to affect my roll other than the usual guidance from Shadowheart. when it failed i was like buh bye lae. but when the conversation ended they immediately shot down the cage and they started combat. they had initiative and their attacks were on me and i was red. there was no conversation to make a choice with who to support. i figured i got attacked without provocation i'd go ahead and kill them. immediately after the battle i got a cutscene for oathbreaker which made no sense to me. i'd have considered running if i'd known it would screw me over to defend myself. even then i'd have to abandon some party members as they opened with hamstrung on my characters and the tieflings move hella fast.

[AokiYakumo]

Nonlethal damage would've stopped that.

[guard65]

Your only choice in that situation I think is to fee combat. If you kill them you break your oath.

[アンジェル]

Originally posted by Clevos:

confusion about paladin and oathbreaking?
Is a paladin not allowed to defend themselves? i came to the part where the tieflings have Lae'zel. i failed to convince them to leave. so i was going to leave her to her fate. instead the tieflings shot open her cage to kill her and attacked me. i had not threatened them. i chose the persuasion option not the intimidate. i did not use any type of charm to affect my roll other than the usual guidance from Shadowheart. when it failed i was like buh bye lae. but when the conversation ended they immediately shot down the cage and they started combat. they had initiative and their attacks were on me and i was red. there was no conversation to make a choice with who to support. i figured i got attacked without provocation i'd go ahead and kill them. immediately after the battle i got a cutscene for oathbreaker which made no sense to me. i'd have considered running if i'd known it would screw me over to defend myself. even then i'd have to abandon some party members as they opened with hamstrung on my characters and the tieflings move hella fast.

It depends on your oath. Devotion e.g. does not allow you to kill innocents. You sure are allowed to defend yourself, but with non-lethal attacks / making sure you do not kill anybody over a harmless misunderstanding.

At the time of that specific event there is also the tutorial popup which tells you that.

[Dr.Abscondus]

Always choose Oath of Vengeance. You can pretty much do anything that furthers your mission to destroy the Absolute, which includes killing anyone who attacks you. It's the ultimate 'the end justifies the means' oath. Respec with Withers.

[Pat Fenis]

Vengeance breaks if those tieflings die too. You need to convince them to walk away and let you handle it before releasing laezel. You can just remain oathbreaker for a bit anyway, cuz if you want to take the hag hair later that will break it again. Just save some gold and buy back your oath after getting hag hair.

[Clevos]

I'm pretty sure i chose vengeance. maybe chose something different while i was adjusting things in character creation and didn't notice. I'll restart my game and make sure it's vengeance this time. hopefully ill just get the roll without issues. but if i fail i'll try the knocking out as you suggested. thanks

[Brian_the_Brute]

What's sad is you can just agree to kill Lae'zel for the tieflings with no repercussions. Being a paladin in BG3 doesn't mean much, you just have to be good at cheesing and knowing how you can get away with evil deeds when it benefits. It has no bearing on doing good deeds like older versions of D&D paladins. It's more like knowing how to adhere to the fine points of a devil's contract vs. a good and holy one.

[Clevos]

Originally posted by Pat Fenis:

Vengeance breaks if those tieflings die too. You need to convince them to walk away and let you handle it before releasing laezel. You can just remain oathbreaker for a bit anyway, cuz if you want to take the hag hair later that will break it again. Just save some gold and buy back your oath after getting hag hair.

oh. so oath won't make a difference. how do you buy back your oath? sorry i've been playing through trying out different classes and had not tried this one yet so didn't realize. was thinking i'd just move on to druid, ranger, or monk as those are the other classes i hadn't played yet

[Pat Fenis]

Oathbreaker knight lets you buy back your oath. 1k gold the first time but the cost keeps going up each time.

[Clevos]

ouch. ill try again then haha. hopefully it won't happen much on my playthrough cause that sounds like it will get expensive fast and i won't be able to afford

[Chroniver]

That and the hag are basically the only few times you will have trouble with Oath of Vengeance.

You need to defeat the greater evil and Lae'zel at that point is threatening them with doom and death. So basically you need to succeed to persuade them.