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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Saeviomagy" data-source="post: 5675642" data-attributes="member: 5890">First up, in 4e that's not the case. Almost every paladin power has no interaction with alignment.Second up - people don't go around with their class branded on their forehead. From second edition onwards, the paladin of hieroneous could just as easily be a cleric of hieroneous who picked up "weapon proficiency, big sword". And that's IF you succeed on your knowledge:religion check to recognise his holy symbols.Next - in every edition prior to 4e, 'evil' covers a very wide range of behaviour. If I had a PC who was a paladin, I wouldn't let him get away with "detect evil - smite" and be known as a fine, upstanding individual. I'm not going to let NPCs do it either. And that means people are not going to be ok with the justification "X is a paladin, therefore Y must have been evil, so who cares how he's treated?"I think that's the key to this whole thing: if you had a PC who pulled the stuff this paladin pulled, would you expect the town to get involved?I'm not necessarily saying the swordsage is innocent and should get off scott-free. I'm saying that this isn't a clear-cut case of murder. The result is largely going to come down to pre-existing relationships between the town and the two adventuring groups. If the paladin party came to town and built and orphanage, while the PC party came to town and strongarmed people, then I'd expect team PC will get run out on a rail. If both groups are much of a muchness, I would expect an investigation of the matter by the local town authority that decides it's self-defense, some monetary reparations and a general wariness of the townsfolk towards the PCs. If the paladin's behaviour in this situation was indicative of his general demeanour (ie - a pushy jerkwad who jumps to conclusions and turns to violence as his first response) I would expect that the local authority would ask his compatriots to clean up the blood.</blockquote>

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