Agreed. It evokes a whole story. Either the Paladin is so overcommitted to their work to such a degree that they are willing to go on dangerous adventures or the society is so legalistic it’s the Paladin’s duty to accompany their cases wherever they go without exceptions. Alternatively, maybe the Paladin wanted to be an adventurer anyway to escape their boring life as a parole officer and found just such a situation that they can fufill their desires and duties at the same time.

Alternatively, the Rogue is a corrupt parole officer and the Paladin just ran afoul of the law that they didn’t understand because they ain’t from around here.

The entire party is parole officers for one guy assigned from different cities and countries.

Thanks to him, they’ve all become involuntary murderhobos and can never go home.

At least they have a reason to work together, but would require the proper player pair to neither fall in PvP nor ignore that backstory detail

We actually did that with a Paladin player being assigned to watch my rogue who started the game in prison during the mission from the monarchy that would earn him his freedom. He was also a fantastic coward and incredibly greedy and the Paladin often found himself having to be in between the rogue and an angry mob and having to do some ridiculous mental gymnastics to figure out how saving me wouldn’t break his oath.

I like it. Could be a real fun one shot or mini arc.

It’s “48 Hours” D&D edition

Wait what?

My old group actually just did this a few times, or something close to it in non DnD ttrpgs.

… People have not thought of this before?

It seems so obvious, it … gives you at least a framework for part of the backstory for two characters, helps make the initial ‘how does the party all meet’ phase maybe make more sense.

Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal

Your safety is my concern

The Moist books were all really good!

They were pretty damp

Oh I wasn’t trying to make fun of anyone, I was expressing genuine shock that this concept was not more commonly used, and explaining why.

Roy from Order of the Stick