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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Agemegos" data-source="post: 1567381" data-attributes="member: 18377">Well, others have pointed out upthread that in some settings and under some circumstances a paladin is empowered, sometimes even obliged, to act as judge, jury, and executioner. Someone will be along soon to quote sourcebooks and expansions. My reply to this has been that Vindicator's paladin acted as executiner right enough, but that he did not discharge the roles of judge or jury, and that in omitting to do so he failed in his duty and treated his own authority with disrespect. That is, he may have had the authority of a judge, but he treated the duties with contempt, ditto for the duties of the jury.In treating authority with disrespect, in dispensing justice in a summary, personal, private fashion, the paladin has acted out of accord with a lawful alignment, and (in the lawful point of view) to the harm of society. But it is just a single act. I think that the paladin is due a stern caution for Chaotic behaviour, but that o strip him of paladinhood or it powers in not warranted underthe rules unless a continual tendence to Chaos is manifest in his acts in general.I think that part of the reason that we are seeing so much controversy is that people think that 'Lawful Good' means 'extra-specially righteous', even though their own personal standards of righteousness tend more to the individualistic case-by-case Chaotic Good than the institutional due-process Lawful Good. They judge that according to their own standards the paladin has done the right thing, and fail to take into account the gap between their own standards and the ones by which the paladin is correctly judged. Me, I am apparently Neutral Good, but I recognise that a paladin has to be judged by lawful Good standards, not my own.</blockquote>

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