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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 764789" data-attributes="member: 3146">For that matter, I don't think that morality has any authority if stripped of its religious sanction myself. I'm not convinced that your example demonstrates what you want it to demonstrate. If Tertullian, a religious man has standards of good and evil and Diogenes, who is not religious, acts only according to what logic dictates, it doesn't make logic evil if Diogenes acts wickedly.Part of the problem of the example is that logic doesn't really dictate anything without premises. Diogenes doesn't know whether it's logical to act like a good Roman and worship the emperor or whether it's logical to risk death by refusing to do so unless he first decides a few things:1. Is this life all there is?2. How valuable is this life?3. Is there anything wrong with worshipping the emperor?So, Diogenes may act according to the dictates of logic by worshipping the emperor. Tertullian may think it evil but that doesn't mean he devalues logic. It means that Tertullian and Diogenes may disagree on premise 1, 2 or 3. (Probably 1 and 3).And suppose Diogenes agrees with Tertullian that there is something wrong with worshipping the emperor but thinks it's logical to do so anyway because he thinks that this life is valuable enough to justify it. That doesn't mean he's valuing something that Tertullian thinks is evil. It means that, if Tertullian is right, he is exaggerating the value of this present life.I suppose that there could be someone who thought logic to be evil but I don't think you could build any kind of coherent ethic that classified logic as evil. And I can't think of anything objectively evil that could be valued for itself. (Although I suppose if you created a Gnostic fantasy world where matter and physical pleasure were really objectively evil it would be possible).I could imagine this as well. But I don't think such a character would be the opposite of a paladin. He desires power or revenge rather than evil.I suppose that's where it comes down to the question of whether morality really is subjective or whether it's possible to be wrong on moral questions. If I'm running the game, the Nazi paladin is just plain wrong. He may think he's a paladin but he isn't. (Maybe he's a blackguard). Even so, he's not an antipaladin. At the risk of making light of a serious subject, the evil Nazi who think he's a paladin wouldn't have inflict with touch or smite good abilities. He'd have smite Jew/Gypsie/Slav/Cripple/Orphan and Heal Aryan abilities.A fairly common scenario really since most fantasy games assign moral status to groups.Well, I'll grant you that you bring up a common caricature of fantasy games and one that's probably true in some cases. In most cases (judging by my experience and the story hours I've read), however, adventurers are invading the caves and dens of aggressive genocidal creatures intent on destroying or enslaving civilization. In Piratecat's story hour, for instance, they are invading the lair of a ghoul kingdom bent on exterminating all life. Contact's "heros" and Cappellan's Company of the Random Encounter are much closer to your description. However, I don't think the Company of the Random Encounter has attacked any non-aggressors yet. And while one Contact describes Prisantha unthinkingly teleporting an assassin for the Lord of Stoink, she's not a paladin and that's very atypical for her. Contacts characters are pretty morally ambiguous (despite the supposed Holy nature of many of them) but I don't think that what you're describing would be a fair description of them either.In games I've played, characters have invaded goblin caves--however there was at least the fig leaf of reclaiming invaded mines in that case. It's very rare that characters act without that fig leaf. (Although that same character did once kill a trio of goblins that a farmer had begged him to do something about--only to realize a day later that it was rather odd that they hadn't been killing or pillaging and that they might have been good goblins trying to find a place that they could be good).Well, really polytheism does seem to mess with the foundations of morality--particularly D&D style Polytheism where you generally have equal numbers of good and evil gods. In such a world, you certainly can't base morality off the dictates of God (do you mean Nerull or Pelor? And why prefer one to the other?) Nor can one even use their edicts as evidence for the rightness of acts or principles. Maybe if there were a single god who were the judge of all the dead, his/her judgement would be sufficient. (But that's not most D&D pantheons).You'd need a Kantian or Utilitarian ethic for such a world (although Aristotelian/Thomistic would do if you could come up with a reasonable argument for a good telos) and then you'd still lack an answer to the "OK, so that's right and this is wrong; why should I care? What's going to happen to me if I choose wrong?" rejoinder.On the other hand, I think that far from providing a basis for evil paladins, such a world would vitiate the basis for even Lawful Good paladins. After all, if you don't have an ideal Good to pursue, you can't pursue it. And that's the essence of what a D&D paladin is about.I suspect that says more about beer and pretzels gaming (I shouldn't knock it, it's fun sometimes) and DMs who encourage it than it does about the possibility of good or evil paladins though. (Come to think of it, I think that's the essence of the difficulty with MMORPGs as Role Playing Games--the inability to insert moral significance into the actions of characters; then again maybe I haven't played enough to know).I don't think you even need to divorce paladins from specific notions of good and law for paladins to fight each other. A moral code that requires loyalty to anything other than self (nation, people, cause, what have you) will inevitably have paladins face each other on the battlefield. A tragic universe would do that too. The nature of tragedy is that moral claims sometimes conflict and that may not negate either of the claims. Antigone ought to bury her brother. But she ought to obey the law and allow a traitor to lie unburied. Creon needs to enforce the penalties of rebellion. But he should bury his relatives too. Both can even be perfect (but one has a stronger duty to family and the other has a stronger duty to the state) and still the play occurs as Sophocles wrote it. (Which raises some interesting but completely irrelevant (to this discussion) questions: is forgiveness an essential part or a moral universe? And is it possible to be morally perfect, given one moral flaw anywhere?)</blockquote>

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