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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mark Chance" data-source="post: 956304" data-attributes="member: 2795">He did have a good write-up. But there is a catch that applies equally to all paladins (including yours): It depends on the DM.In SHARK's game, his take on paladins is true. In your game, Corinth, your take is true. But in my game, both are false. Not even Hypersmurf's semantic quibble (paraphrase: "If you have to change it to get it to work, it's not a core paladin anymore") can trump this catch (at least outside of his game).IOW, the key is context. In a context (such as yours, Corinth) where a paladin's modus vivendi is passing on retributive justice to the wicked then that is what a paladin must do to be a paladin. Fine and dandy.But is that the only possible context? IOW, is your context "universally applicable"?Obviously not.Rather than pseudo-Calvinist, my take on paladins is pseudo-Thomistic. A paladin is indeed a soldier in the army of the Good. He is charged to wage war against evil. But, in a pseudo-Thomistic context, war does not fall under the moral jurisdiction of the virtue of justice. Instead, it falls under the moral jurisdiction of the virtue of charity. IOW, a just war is an act of love.This considerably changes the context by adding a entirely different framework by which a paladin has to make decisions about how and when to act in the war against evil.Rather than expound at length (which would end up violating board rules since my "philosophy of paladins" is based heavily on real-world religion), I provide a link to one of the better articles I've read about Thomas Aquinas's treatment of the question about the justifiability of violence. We're all intelligent enough to see the applicability of the ideas discussed to a paladin's context. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><a href="http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0110/articles/cole.html" target="_blank">Good Wars</a>This article, in between the pro-war chest-thumping, competently discusses the Thomistic requirements for a war to be just:<a href="http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0301/articles/weigel.html" target="_blank">Moral Clarity in a Time of War</a></blockquote>

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