If you can’t pick up treasures and equipment someone left behind, how can you adventure?
FWIW, if I thought the act ran against his alignment, I’d say something like this: “You’re pretty sure it’s against the law for you to walk out of here with the dagger without paying for it.” Let the player decide what to do with that information.
I think the sticker is that the PC doesn’t know why the village is empty. It’s not like finding the dagger in a dungeon or on the body of a bad guy.
Well, you have to assume that a PC knows the tenets of their religion and the wording of their oath. This requires the player and the GM to cooperate to keep the Paladin’s actions in line with where the GM sees his duty, since the player can’t read his mind. Going straight for consequences is the gotcha. Instead, tell him/her what is on your mind regarding the Oath. Cooperative story telling.
His stated reason is stupid, and I would push back on it. But he should take the dagger unless he has very low intelligence.
An intelligent character knows that if the silver dagger is there, he will need it to complete his quest, and a lawful good character tries to complete his quests. When a lawful good character finds the legitimate owner of the dagger, or that person’s heir, he will try to give it back, of course. But until then, he will keep it safe, and keep an eye out for werewolves.
I can’t imagine why the DM would even put a dagger there unless it was supposed to be used.
If this is a paladin thing, I wouldn’t consider it an issue about alignment so much as an issue about the Oath. That is what you should try to discuss.
Lawful Good does not tie you to any specific law on its own.
I agree with the Chekov’s Dagger remarks but using that as the character’s motivation is obviously metagaming. If the player thinks an item is significant, he needs to come up with a plausible reason why the character would take it within his own framework.
Because it was there.
As many a great Englishman would say.
the characters know that the gods control their fate.
To a character, there’s an entire pantheon of gods (or heck, multiple pantheons) and their attitude towards them ranges from ambivalence to reverence to open defiance. A paladin isn’t going to just say “Welp, the gods control our fates!” without knowing if that god is the “Lady of Pure Justice” or the “Lord of the Thousand Lashes”.
Unless you run a very unorthodox campaign, the character does not assume all the deities are actually one DM and that the world revolves around them.
No, but a cleric, paladin, or similar faith-based class typically has a symbiotic relationship with their god. The character spreads the word of the god, prays to them, performs duties for them, etc. The god in turn gives powers to the character and may intervene directly or indirectly from time to time (depending on the setting and/or the DM that may be more or less likely). Such a character should expect divine intervention to be their own god most of the time rather than assume some other god is screwing with them. That’s a function of their faith. Other kinds of characters (your fighters, mages, thieves, etc.) are less likely to trust the source of miracles or coincidences but it’s very appropriate for a faith-based PC to.
Of course a cruel DM will exploit such a player and have a different god actually screw with them…
We’re talking a dagger in a smithy’s shop here though. You don’t need divine intervention for that to happen. I’d hope that a paladin would have a better reason for taking a dagger in a smithy shop (or a loaf of bread from a bakery or a cloak from a tailor) than “Hey, musta been my god looking out for me…”
True, a dagger is pretty mundane and having it be in a smithy makes it even less of an example of providence.
On the other hand, let’s say a silver dagger is rare (because it’s usually not the most efficient or economical metal for a functional weapon), the players have seen evidence of lycanthropic danger in the area, and the character just happens to find one. That might be enough of a coincidence to suggest a divine hand in play. I think it depends on context. But yes, the player shouldn’t be using it as an excuse to skirt around alignment questions.
This, right here. I remember an old D&D item, the phylactery of faithfulness, that clerics and paladins could wear to know when they were about to violate a precept of their deity. It drove me crazy, the equivalent of requiring a druid to buy a magic item to know which plants were poisonous, or requiring a fighter to buy a magic item to know whether they should parry or thrust.
Different players have different ethical takes on the world, and that’s fine. They transfer over to the game, and that’s fine too. The DM gets the final say on the alignment system’s meaning, and that’s fine too. What’s not fine is for the DM to make that final say without talking with the players and making it clear to them.
One thing I’ve always said is that anyone playing a paladin should sit down with the DM before the game to hash out the exact details of that paladin’s oath, and just what does and does not violate it, so that it’s not an issue in-game (unless the paladin’s player wants it to be, of course).
Is there a conclusion to the companion Strong, and his search for “the Milk of Human Kindness”, or whatever he was looking for?
On its own, I would assume that finding a magic cloak in a tailor’s shop means that the tailor manufactured magic cloaks and not necessarily that my deity wants me to wear it. As a DM, if I wanted to imply some sort of divine tweaking, I’d mention a compulsion to check the closet or describe how a shaft of light is landing across it or something. Maybe not a choir of angels but something more than “There’s some fancy boots at the cobbler; must be my god wanting me to have new boots.”
I think you got lost somewhere.
I played so many LG characters that some of my friends thought I couldn’t think along any other lines (were they in for a surprise…). We treated profession and alignments as different things, using DnD-style alignments in all sorts of other world settings. And when we played DnD there could be people who were LG without being paladins and paladins of gods that you wouldn’t want to have breakfast with.
Taking stuff that’s abandoned as far as you can tell? Unless and until an owner happens to come forth, nothing wrong with that. It’s about as wrong as eating blackberries from a wild bush. What you do with it later matters: do you make a good faith effort of looking for an owner? Do you use any profits obtained from the items on yourself, or to help others? Etc.
And yes, he should have gotten his ears whacked for the excuse, unless he happens to have Int below 9 
This is obviously still a GOOD act, as long as the character is going to use the dagger to hopefully rescue/avenge the ENTIRE MISSING TOWN.
It would be a more lawful action if they’d left payment behind, though honestly, I don’t think we have enough information here. The silver dagger is lying on a table? Does the smith have other silver weapons? Does the smith even have equipment or materials for MAKING silver weapons? Why is that dagger there? Is leaving expensive silver weaponry lying around on tables standard smithing procedure? I sortof doubt it. Heck, why would the average town smith even have or be able to afford a silver dagger? Something more complicated is going on here.
So again, Chekhov’s Dagger.
Chekhov’s gun is a dramatic principle that states that every element in a story must be necessary, and irrelevant elements should be removed; elements should not appear to make “false promises” by never coming into play. The statement is recorded in letters by Anton Chekhov several times, with some variation:
“Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”