I'm a level 4 Devotion Paladin, and I'd been looking for a logical way to "Break the Oath" to gradually fall into darkness.
I was also interested in the potential of a paladin who fell for reasons that seemed good to them.
Because I’d seen the Oathbreaker on the Panel from Hell, I decided to create my first paladin with the Oath of Devotion and while, without intending to break his oath, some character traits that I thought might result in that. He was a tiefling, and I decided that he’d faced prejudice for his infernal blood from within the church and seen it against his fellow tieflings, and as a result was coming to the suspicion that standing up for law and order was actually propping up the status quo and keeping the weak, who he was sworn to protect (and tieflings in particular), oppressed and powerless. And with his own faith shaken, he was open to new sources of certainty and less suspicious of seeking “forbidden” sources of power that were possibly only being kept out of the hands of the downtrodden to prevent them seizing their due. He remained as committed as ever to protecting the weak and punishing those who threatened them, but could easily go too far.
And I agree, based on my experience of playing this character, there aren’t many options at the moment to logically break an oath fo reasons other than selfishness or greed. Being branded an oathbreaker for killing a goblin raider or unrepentant slaver (for whom being judge, jury and executioner is a paladin’s job) let alone another random “yellow dot” just doesn’t cut it for me as a compelling story.
Things I tried in line with my character concept but didn’t result in breaking my oath:
- Killing Kagha (for threatening the tieflings) without seeking to discredit her first, along with various other druids and indirectly causing the deaths of various other druids at the hands of tieflings and vice versa.
- Reading the Necromancy of Thay.
- Seeking “understanding” with the help of Abdirak.
- Finding Shadowheart’s explanation of the Sharran faith compelling.
- Finding Priestess Gut’s preaching about the Absolute moving and accepting the Absolute’s brand (actually accepting the brand was a stretch I admit)
- EDIT Also used tadpole powers and was open to the influence of the dream presence, and said to SH that he wanted the death and destruction shown
- (He might have found Minthara’s spiel compelling too but there was no way he was going to let the goblins threaten the tieflings, so she never got a chance to give it.)
- (He also wasn’t open to the idea of dealing with Raphael so I can’t comment on whether that would have broken his oath, but in retrospect it would have fitted his character and I wish I’d tried it. But I don’t think you can sign on the dotted line with Raphael in EA even if you’re tempted anyway?)
But none of the above broke his oath. Though admittedly I’m not 100% sure about killing Kagha as this was before I realised that sometimes the oath only breaks if the paladin themself strikes a killing blow, and only then if they do it with their weapon attack rather than Divine Strike or some other magic or elemental damage.
I do really hope that Larian give more thought to what would break oaths and implements this in the game, as well as stopping things that shouldn’t break oaths from doing so. And I also hope that more of the plot lines in the full game include genuine sources of conflict for paladins of whatever oaths they choose to include, so that they can either become “principled” oathbreakers (like the Oathbreaker Knight himself) or can feel all smug and self-righteous for keeping to their oaths against all temptation.
