Neonchameleon
Legend
No, it really isn't. Because it wasn't just the Kingpriest. The Kingpriest and thousands of clerics and paladins under his command were in the process of committing genocide all over Ansalon. The Kingpriest and his clerics were about to begin using thought police (literally) to root out evil, where anyone who committed an evil thought was going to be killed.
It was never about just the Kingpriest.
And we come back once again to the other core problem - The Kingpriest not being in any sense of the word good - but Dragonlance canon would tell us that he was good and we have the literal Word of God (in this case Fizban/Palatine, the leader of the Gods of Good) that the time of the Kingpriest was when good held sway. As for mechanical stats then as far as I know the Kingpriest has only been statted once - in the d20 Legend of the Twins on page 56. And guess what? In the Kingpriest's statblock he's Lawful Good.
The Kingpriest of Istar is treated both in-setting and out as Good by the extremely screwed up definitions Dragonlance has of good. This is a Problem.
As for "free will" mass murder pretty obviously takes away free will. So it should be off the table if that's the issue. And if "anyone who had an evil thought was going to be killed" then that gets pretty paradoxical and they should start off by killing whoever came up with that evil idea. So clearly they weren't going to kill anyone who had an evil thought by any normal definition of the word evil.
And one final screwed up piece of the Dragonlance cataclysm puzzle - the Cataclysm was not sent because the Kingpriest was a "Lawful Good" psychopath. Or for the attempted massacres. It was sent explicitly because of the Kingpriest's personal hubris because he tried to personally command the gods. It absolutely was about the Kingpriest and because of the Kingpriest's actions the gods committed a widescale massacre.
On a tangent pre-4e D&D Paladins have always been morally toxic - and it's always worth linking UrsulaV's paladin rant
Have you? Because you seem to be claiming things in this thread (not least of which being Takhsis being a god of chaos not one of evil) that are in opposition to fundamentals of the setting.That's an exceptionally reductionist take. And, again, it's not supported by the text. Again, I really have to ask if you've ever actually read the books or the modules.