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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9361665" data-attributes="member: 6790260">First: The crap descriptions of what the oath is and means, and the extremely strong implication that DMs should put paladins in catch-22 scenarios.Second: Trivially no. It's just encouraged by the flavor text and, in at least some editions (especially 3.x), also encouraged by the rules themselves, so LS has a tendency to predominate.The broadening was one part of the process of taking Lawful Stupid interpretation out behind the woodshed, yes. Well, other than as an intentional "this is a Paladin who is going to fall" story, which I have flirted with once. (RP'd a Draenei Paladin in WoW, Altuurem, who was profoundly racist and very hopped up on vengeance juice due to, y'know, the genocide of his people by the orcs. He got lucky, and had a "Come to <s>Jesus</s> the Light" moment right at the time when he would have fallen, which f'd him up bigtime because he finally realized just how bad he had been and how easily he could have become everything he hated. This was my explanation for him going from Retribution aka DPS spec initially, to gaining Protection aka tank as his alternate spec at higher levels, and potentially swapping fully to tanking and Holy, aka healing, spec upon hitting level cap.)Mostly, by kicking what is said the actual books (prior to 4e, at least) in the teeth. Because what the actual (pre-4e) books say about alignment is some of the worst faux-losophy I've seen in written media. Sci-fi authors commenting on religion do a better job--you know, the whole "ah yes, those quaint, simple-minded superstitions, we have outgrown those" thing.One of the problems with D&D alignment (among many, many others) is that it puts two things on equal footing that are not on equal footing: goals vs methods. Law and Chaos are methods, ways to achieve some end. They do not discriminate based on what end you seek; they only guide the tools, techniques, practices, etc. that you use in order to seek them. Good and Evil, on the other hand, are goals. They do not discriminate based on what methods you use, only valuing what goal you aim toward, what end you wish to achieve (or, for a consequentialist take, what ends you actually do achieve, regardless of what you were trying to achieve.)LG without a hint of LS is easily achieved when we view this from that standpoint. The non-stupid LG says, "Good is the only truly worthy end, so Law may only be permitted to push toward Good, or at least not push toward Evil." Under these lights, a Lawful Good person is not only not obligated to follow evil laws, they are obligated to resist evil laws--but in a way that promotes new, better laws, not one that promotes the removal of law in general. Every law must be evaluated by three criteria:Does it support Good or at least avoid supporting Evil?Is its end actually a worthwhile one?Does it achieve its end effectively?If the answer to any of these questions is "no," then the no-stupid LG person is obligated to push for reform. In some cases, there is no need to even replace the law, because the law itself is actually evil and no law at all is the only correct one, e.g. laws permitting people to kill their slaves do not need to be replaced with other laws regarding the treatment of slaves, they just need to be eliminated, and new laws forbidding slavery in the first place need to be implemented.The non-stupid LG person is, in general, obliged to try to preserve the system, but with the caveat: if and only if the system is actually redeemable in the first place. Sometimes, the only effective path to producing a truly Good society that operates by Law is to replace the whole thing, because it is rotten down to its core. Hence, revolution is not inherently contradictory to being Lawful Good, but it must be undertaken only as a desperate measure when reform proves, practically or fully, impossible.I have thought about this topic quite a lot.</blockquote>

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