Lawful Good assassins?

[HalfElfSorcerer]

In my opinion, the PHB describes alignments to their extremes. For example, all the evil alignments describe people who are pretty much all evil, all the time. But a commoner who is evil is probably not going to go around looting and pillaging all the time. He is going to slander his neighbors, whack kids coming into his yard with a stick, and leave the tavern without paying. He might even have a soft spot, towards, for example, beggars. He would let a poor man into his store and give him a loaf of bread even if he would fail to give the prince the time of day.

Likewise, not all lawful good creatures are always the apotheosis of Heironeus. They could be a bit greedy, be rude to drunkards, or spank their kids. So these "Pal-Assassins" are quite possibly lawful good. A manic devotion to their cause has made them forget one - only one - of their original tenents, namely not killing innocents. They would of course, try and scare people away. But if a hardier-than-normal farmer showed up, and got too far into said warded area, they would have to kill him - all in the name of what is lawful and good.

 

[Brother Laszlo]

I see your point, but I think that when a person or organization puts their cause over human life, they become lawful neutral. Every country's military will shoot their own citizens on sight if they wander into a military compound. That's because militaries are Lawful Neutral. They place their responcibility to the protect the country above a single innocent life. That's Lawful Neutral.

Now, if you say "Well, just because someone is Lawful Good doesn't mean they're a saint," I would say that's true, but actions like killing innocents to achieve objectives are not Lawful Good acts, and would eventually cause an alignment shift. I don't want to get all psychological, but with the example of "one flaw" Lawful Good folks, you might as well say Ted Bundy was Lawful Good. He was a good father, husband, and neighbor, with the one flaw that every now and again he just had to kill someone.

Back to the main subject, I think it would be interesting to create a Paladin order that was founded with a noble (Lawful Good) goal, but over the years found that it had to stoop to its enemy's tactics to achieve their goal. Eventually, the order was only giving lip service to the "goodness" of their goal, and now uses vicious tactics such as assassination to achieve its "Righteous Cause". Thus, while the paladins might still be genuinely working for the cause of good, they do so at the expense of their own purity.

 

[rln]

I like Brother Laszlo's idea and even have a continuation... It might not suit the original request, though; it's more of a subtle-demon-corrupting-people plot.

The organisation starts out as a lawful good and secret organisation, dedicated to protecting the artifact from the Antagonist. The Antagonist learns of the artifact and tries to capture it, but fails.

Then he has an idea. By tricking people into exploring the place (for example, by telling adventurers that Great Treasures Await), the organisation will be forced to take care of these people as they come and investigate. At first, these people are the antagonists minion, and thus are executed. Later, they will be mercenaries, just hired to do a job, and they are executed as well (as they DID attack a forbidden site, and was warned away beforehand). In the end, they might be good people, who think they are doing this for a good cause; however the organisation has by then drifted from the teachings of their deity so much that their own code of protection is more important than the code of their deity; they will become lawful neutral.

One of the adventurers killed might be a cleric of another lawful good faith. The church will hear of this (through the Antagonist, who portrays the secret organisation as an evil cult) and sets out on crusade... The organisation might try to strike down the leaders of the church, thus completing their journey to the dark side (to paraphrase a well-known movie).

Or perhaps the deity whose artifact is protected knows the fate of the organisation and no longer deems them worthy of that honor and sends the adventurers off to move the artifact before the organisation turns to evil measures.