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Paladin/Ur-Priest/Bone Knight

You're assuming vengeance as a motivation. Equally as common is the old "fight fire with fire" trope where a hero uses evil methods/powers/etc. to fight evil. Just as a Malconvoker can summon fiends to kill fiends, a good ur-priest could vow to only steal power from evil gods and use it to fight evil.

I guess it seems that that is an unlikely situation, given things like the fact that the Paladin cannot allow any unjust act -even in the interest of good- happen in his presence without potentially needing to attone.

I think it boils down to this: Would you allow a Good character in your campaign raze a village of innocent people belonging to an Evil nation bacause they did the same to that character's nation? That seems to be using an evil method for a good cause, shutting down trade and economies of an Evil nation seems like a good thing to do, but the sacrifice of those people does not seem good (although one might argue that it may be Lawful).

To be honest, I don't think it would meet resistance if someone wanted to house-rule it to be neutral. There cannot be a version of each class for each situation in all of the books. It is akin to the suggestion that you can alter various classes that are dedicated to a single god by shifting to to annother god and changing a few features. It would be like expecting them to make the Shining Blade of Heironeous class reprinted once for each possible god in the complete divine, rather than a note on adaptations.

Plus, this game was meant to engender creativity and ingenuity. I would venture a guess that the rules were meant to be rather fluid; they are less like rules and mroe like suggestions.
 

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I guess it seems that that is an unlikely situation, given things like the fact that the Paladin cannot allow any unjust act -even in the interest of good- happen in his presence without potentially needing to attone.

I'm not seeing how stealing power from an evil god is an evil act; it may be granted by an evil god, but divine power is divine power is divine power. Obviously a paladin wouldn't actually be fighting evil with evil; I was talking about the source of the power, not the methods and motivations.
 

I'm not seeing how stealing power from an evil god is an evil act; it may be granted by an evil god, but divine power is divine power is divine power. Obviously a paladin wouldn't actually be fighting evil with evil; I was talking about the source of the power, not the methods and motivations.

Yes, but as per the alignment restrictions on the spells a cleric can cast, it may be assumed that an evil god is a source of spells with the evil descriptor. Plus, would a Paladin use torture equipment found in a captured enemy castle in order to interrogate suspects?
 

Yes, but as per the alignment restrictions on the spells a cleric can cast, it may be assumed that an evil god is a source of spells with the evil descriptor.

It is also a source of spells of the law and chaos descriptors, as you simply can't cast spells of an opposed alignment. The cleric list is the same for every cleric, so if you don't cast alignment-based spells, you're getting the same alignment-free divine power as a good cleric.

Plus, would a Paladin use torture equipment found in a captured enemy castle in order to interrogate suspects?

That's different; torture equipment has one use, whereas divine power in and of itself can be used for good or evil. A better analogy would be "Would a paladin use a +2 keen longsword formerly wielded by an evil creature to fight other evil creatures?"
 



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