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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 3680716" data-attributes="member: 2067">Absolutely right. However, a paladin is required to fight even illegitimate authority with honor. Hiding out in the forest and taking people's worldly possessions are not honorable, however noble they may be. Such behavior is dark and seedy and malicious, even if it is entirely just, and a paladin cannot do such actions, nor can he tolerate the company of those who do them.While definitely Good, I really don't think it's honorable. Let's do a little dictionary-digging...Honor implies a good public esteem, a high social standing, a purity, an integrity, an honesty.Honor doesn't tell you what to do, it tells you how to do it: with a proud face, and an unwillingness to compromise.An honorable person can fight, but only as a last resort, and then only to protect, as a preventative measure. To attack willfully is rather dishonorable, because it's not operating with purity and integrity, but rather with hostility. This is especially true if a threat of violence is not an honest threat, but an attempt to get something else out of them, or if the threat of violence is motivated by gain.Robin Hood had a Good agenda, but it wasn't honorable -- they used terrorism and guerrilla tactics to force evil to come to terms with them. They stole for vengeance, for retribution, and their violent threats were often simply to get such vengeance.While entirely Good, none of this seems honorable. It's below the belt, below the board, it doesn't display integrity, it makes you an outcast, and it means your words are not always worth what you say they are (a serious blow to any bastion of honesty and forthrightness like a paladin).Admittedly, "honor" is probably open to individual DM interpretation. But it seems to me that the implication is that a paladin is NOT a good fit for a Robin Hood or Batman type figure, because the methods that these guys use to restore order, while Lawful Good, aren't honorable and forthright. Vigilantism, terrorism, and exploitive tactics are, I think, very much against the paladin's code.In my reading, a Paladin is forbidden to "wheedle" anyone into attacking them, or of challenging them on false pretexts, or of pretending to take insult where no insult was really taken. This is the core of honorable behavior: dealing with honesty and integrity in everything. You have no ulterior motives. You state your intent plainly and clearly. That is your courage: you don't fear the reactions of others.A Paladin would have a lot of trouble maintaining their status, IMC, convincing someone to get in a fight for the intent of defeating them and making off with their loot. This is greed of the highest caliber, and abuse of power to boot. The forces of Good don't need you to steal for them. The forces of Good need you to directly STOP EVIL, not just create mischief for it. In fact, you are forbidden from simple mischief-making: you are allowed only the direct approach, and you are beholden to it. Possibly, but then it's not really a Thieves' Guild, it's now a tax collection agency, and it operates entirely above the board, so it's not really relevant to the OP's request.</blockquote>

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