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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack Simth" data-source="post: 3699836" data-attributes="member: 29252">Kidnappers sometimes do similar things.  "Get in the car or die.  Your choice."In both cases, there is a choice: do as told, or die.In both cases, the one offering the "choice" has arranged the fatal consequences that necessitate moving from a non-fatal preexisting situation.I'm not sure what definition of force you use, but that qualifies in my book.Here's an exercise in futility for you to try:1) Find in the 3.5 core rulebooks (Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, or Monster Manual) where it says casting an [Evil] spell is an evil act.  Likewise, how evil.2) Find in the 3.5 core rulebooks where it defines what level of pattern of actions is required for a person to be considered "good" or "evil".  Is animating a skeleton once every 10 years going to sway a farmer who gives away a bushel of wheat, no strings attached, twice a week when someone mentions they can't cover the bill for it, from Neutral to Evil?They're not specified, so they're DM interpretation in both cases.  Annoying DM interpretations is one of the things I listed as required to force a Paladin to fall.Crime implies a violation of law.  If this is occurring on societal level for farming, it is most likely legally sanctioned to some degree.Try picturing a member of a religious order where breaking the soil is a horrible crime (the ground is sacred) watching a farmer drag a plow behind a horse in medieval europe.  Is it a good or lawful for the order member to break the farmer's plow and say he'll show "a better way" for the farmer to feed his family (it just requires they leave house and home, travel some unspecified distance, and completely trust the member of the order with their lives.... someone they've never seen before, who just broke something very valuable of theirs without their permission)?How's the Paladin in a different situation than the order member?Gets back to what constitutes an evil action - see above.  I've actually seen people argue - with a straight face, mind - that skeletons and zombies shouldn't be evil-aligned (as they are incapable of moral thought, being mindless creatures), and that Animate Dead shouldn't have the [Evil] descriptor at all (hard to injure someone who's already dead - plus, there's a few supplements that include religious orders for which it doesn't).  Likewise, choice of DM interpretation.haakon1 - who I quoted before making the statement you're referring to, mind; I did not include a quote of your text between haakon1's statement and the line of mine you just quoted - said "If they try to stop the destruction of their undead, destroy the infidels too -- fewer mouths to feed in that case"It's pretty clear he's talking about killing them when they attempt to halt the destruction of their livelyhood.So he claims.  How's a farmer supposed to react when an extreme ecological activist blows up all his chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and petroleum-driven equipment and then tells the farmer "I'm going to show you a better way; I'm trying to help you!  You were killing Mother Earth!"How's the Paladin who destroys the farming undead and says "I'll show you to better lands, where you need not dishonor the dead to live" different?As I said - requires annoying DM interpretations, but can be done.Right, because, you know, the Paladin is of course the perfect judge of what is right and wrong, and individual Paladins are universally recognized as perfect moral authorities.  And all of them are totally trusted.Consider a blackguard who starts out doing something similar (undead are evil, you shouldn't use them, yadda yadda).  Then, after getting them to agree to relocate, leads them out to the middle of a large desert, laughs at their foolishness, and teleports away by way of Helm of Teleportation with all the remaining supplies, condemning them to death by dehydration, sunstroke, and so on.How are these farmers to know which you are in advance?  An intelligent creature can be of any alignment.  Kobolds, for example, are listed as "usually Lawful Evil".  A group of neutral kobolds will very likely be persecuted - to death, mind - in any area where there are standard evil kobolds running around causing death and destruction.  Simple example.  The ethnicity as a whole may very well deserve it.  This particular township?  Not so much.  The only crime everyone else is guilty of is not being overly discriminating.Because, of course, all Paladins have a high Int, the Paladin will of course have access to the exact terms of the treaty, and so on.  It requires a sulfur content in the soil sufficient to severely stunts the growth of other plants.  Catch being that nobody really knows enough about it to reproduce the required conditions in an isolated manner with any reliability.  That particular volcano over their does the job in an uncontrolled manner over hundreds of miles. Try the exercise in futility.  It is not per definition evil - that's merely a very common assumption.Or perhaps they're geographically isolated - a volcanically heated valley in what's otherwise a uninhabitable frozen wasteland for hundreds of miles.  They've bred a bit more than they ought, to the point where the only way they can feed everyone is to cut calories to the point where actually working fields will lead to starvation due to the calorie cost of the activity.  Fortunately, the dead don't eat, and can work tirelessly anyway.The why doesn't matter, provided it's an effectively unsolvable why.No contest. It is an obvious set-up.  That is not the point.  The point is that the DM can, while yet being strictly within the rules.</blockquote>

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