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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Trickstergod" data-source="post: 1187313" data-attributes="member: 10825">Actually, those are the ridiculous dilemmas that don't occur. Leastaways, not in a Lawful Evil society. Your examples seem to show a ruler who leads by whim and impulse, as opposed to cruel practicality, which doesn't sound particularly Lawful in my book. As such, of course the paladin is going to ignore them. They serve no point. A more apt example would be:Evil Guardsman: "Are you a member of the military or clergy of the Evil Bob God?"Paladin: "No."Evil Guardsman: "Then I'm going to have to confiscate your weapon."Paladin: "What? But, but..."Evil Guardsman: "Sorry. Dem's da rules. Can't have people raising arms against the state. Hand them over."At which point the paladin either starts straying towards Neutral Good and keeps his weapons, or maintains the Lawful aspect of being a paladin, and hands over the weapons. A Lawful individual will work, as much as possible, within the confines of the law to achieve their goals. Also notice that you said Wizards said paladins are hamstrung - not outright rendered ineffectual - within a Lawful Evil society. There's a difference. The moment a character begins to disregard laws is the moment a character slips towards Neutrality and Chaos.I would say a paladin who performs Chaotic acts (not handing over his weapons to legitimate, if evil, authorities) will not suffer a loss of paladinhood for it, at least not until the paladin ceases to be Lawful Good, and becomes Neutral Good, but it still remains that the blatant disregard for the rules and hierarchy of the land (all tools with which the paladin can potentially work with) are not the acts of a particularly law-minded individual. One aspect of your alignment does not exempt you from the other half.EDIT: Even better way for the example to work. True Neutral, or even Lawful Neutral, Guardsman of the Evil Empire. That way, what's the paladin going to do when he resists arrests? Kill the poor guard just for doing his job? Beat him unconscious? That's still not much better. Run? That's likely to get him caught. Oh, I know - lie! Say he's a member of the military or clergy. All the options are fairly non-lawful in their nature. WotC isn't spouting rubbish when they say when you share an alignment with someone or something, yet the other part is diametrically opposed, that there's going to be some amount of friction between which aspect of the alignment to act upon or ignore.</blockquote>

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