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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 1550695" data-attributes="member: 5171">Hey, Thornir,First off, apologies.  Wrote my post poorly -- I didn't mean to imply that you particularly were doing the "I am changing the rules and them complaining about them."  In Tackyland, that was supposed to be a vague and impersonal "You".  Some people here are, in my opinion, deviating from the rules and then complaining that paladins don't work in their variant rule systems.  You don't seem to be doing so, and I apologize for implying that you were.I think the bit where I said "the three evil ones are for villains and monsters" is what we get.This perhaps gets us into another problematic D&D ii that I was taking for granted but which by no means needs to be taken for granted -- the fact that, in a standard D&D society, corporal punishment or death is the only generally plausible means of dealing with anyone beyond peasant-strength.  You're right in that the paladin is supposed to "punish" evildoers, and it says "punish" and not "kill" -- but if you're dealing with D&D levels of power, what other kinds of punishment are actually viable for anyone beyond peasant-power?  Building a jail that can hold your average wizard is next to impossible except in the largest cities.  Curses, geases, and polymorphs aren't viable in most cases because, by the time you're powerful enough to cast them, they're powerful enough to remove them or have a friend do so -- unless we're talking about someone of much lower power.Fines are decently possible, I suppose.  I hadn't thought of fines.I see it as a shades-of-gray issue.  In a black-and-white campaign, which is what D&D is geared for (in my opinion, and I could be wrong), you shouldn't meet an evil person, generally, unless he's on the way to do something evil, at least indirectly.  In a shades-of-gray issue, sure, you can meet an evil guy who has a plan to do some horrifically evil stuff but isn't doing so at the moment, and you have to weigh the options -- attack him now with "he was evil" as your only justification or risk having a ten-year-old girl stare up at you a month from now and say "You knew! You knew he was evil, and that he was going to do something to someone, someday, and you didn't bother to stop him, and now my parents are dead!"In D&D, I believe that you don't get the "Evil" alignment, according to the rules, unless you are an evildoer.  I don't see a slippery slope, because I don't see the D&D universe as being "Minority Report" (movie, not story), where they might have a tendency toward doing something evil but are by no means guaranteed to do something evil.  I see it, according to the rules, as "If they're evil, they're gonna do something evil unless you stop 'em."  I'm open to being proven wrong on that one."Stop 'em" can in some circumstances be something other than "smite them", but I don't see most of those penalties as viable except when you're a lot more powerful than your opponent.  In "I'm much more powerful" cases, I'm fine with non-smiting -- a prison, an involuntary incarceration in a temple where Good priests can attempt to rehabilitate you, enforced public service under a geas, and so forth.I take your points about different punishment well, and that's what I'm describing above.  To the personal comment at the end, I'll note that I prefaced all of this with "I don't use this in my system, because I'm interested in more shades of gray," or words to that effect.  I'm interested in definitions of good and evil that apply more directly to the real world -- and I in no way think that these definitions apply to the real world. In real life, it's a lot easier to punish somebody in a non-smiting fashion.So, by your reading, then, a paladin is free to let an evil cleric kill some villagers, because "protect the innocent" isn't in his charter, but once they're dead, he should then punish the cleric?C'mon.  "Help those in need" plus "Punish those who harm or threaten the innocent" equals "Protect the innocent".  Agree.Hey, Elder Basilisk:Sorry, posting from work.  Don't have it with me, and it's not in the SRD.  If you don't mind, is there a "general alignment of average person you meet" table with randomness assigned?  I'd be interested in seeing what their charts are like.I think your examples of the Shawshank Redemption people are good, and I think that if somebody like that shows up in a D&D world being played by the standard rules, the paladin should act against them.  Or at least, I think I think that.  Maybe those folks aren't evil, but Chaotic Neutral, and in their minds, they're pursuing justice, because the people in prison aren't innocent.  Except that one of them was innocent.  Yeah, then Evil, and the paladin should act against them.  In D&D-land, you only get "Evil" if you're an evildoer, not an evil-consider-er, so a paladin knows that his actions are either a punishment for past evil or a pre-emptive strike against future evil.If such a warden were protected by law, then the paladin shouldn't break the law, of course. He should, however, get his buddy the rogue to do some reconnaissance and figure out what the warden's dirty little secret is, and then bring it to light so that the warden can be tried in public and then punished appropriately as per the laws of the area.  This is a far cry from "You encounter an evil person in the wilderness."As for your very interesting notes about morality as being different in different areas, I think it's a great point, and I agree with it, but it directly contradicts official D&D rules.  It is, I will note, closer to what I actually use, but D&D doesn't believe in subjective reality.  D&D believes in objective reality and objective morality, such that the same people will "detect as evil" no matter what religion you're from or culture you're in.But, again, what you suggest, with the implicit subjective morality, is closer to what I actually use.</blockquote>

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