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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Herobizkit" data-source="post: 3109968" data-attributes="member: 36150">*LOL* let me be the first to congratulate you on finding EnWorld's #1 can of worms... the ubiquitous Paladin thread.I can sum up what you're trying to understand about Paladins.There are two kinds of morality you're struggling with.  One is the 'real-world' morality where sentient beings deserve the right to a fair trial, presumed innocent until proven guilty, and (generally speaking) sentient races strive to be 'good' and are punished when they go against the laws of society.  The other kind is the 'fantasy-world' morality, the one that D&D is designed around with their wonky alignment system.  'E' in your alignment means 'Evil', a force that truly exists and motivates people to do Bad Things in order to further the cause of Evil (at least, from Evil's [and here you can use whatever you like; Demons, Devils, Evil God/desses] point of view).  "Monsters", ie Evil non-standard D&D core races, are irredeemable and must be put down so that Good may flourish in Evil's wake.  Chasing down an Orc because it's Evil is what Paladins do.  Your Paladin has no reason to let the Orc live; to the Paladin, all it will do is return to its kin and perpetuate more Evil.  If your party has a habit of releasing Evil prisoners, the Paladin must consider if this is in the best interest of Law and Good.  Personally, MY Paladin may have allowed the Orc to return home in order to track it to its lair and kill the rest of the tribe.In regards to the delivery of the evil cleric's corpse, good for you!  Your church sent youo there to remove the Evil cleric from power, and you wanted to return home to prove it was done.  Sometimes being a Paladin means taking the Law into your own hands.  To quote the movie Boondock Saints, "The laws of God are higher than the laws of Man".  So what if you piss off the Mayor; if the Mayor wants the Evil cleric to live, apparently the Mayor must either be in league with the Cleric, or unaware of the cleric's Evil influence.  'Course, the cleric's dead... and if the Mayor isn't willing to take the word of a Holy Crusader, well... too bad for him.And that goes for the Paladin's party, too.  If your Paladin is under the belief that, for whatever reason, the party is running counter to his goals, the Paladin is well within his right to abandon the party... but he should at least try and sway the party to his way of thinking before he decides that it's a wasted effort.  In regards to bigotry, yup, you can still be Lawful Good and be a racist, purist, and an ass, so long as you're furthering the Cause.Quick solution?  Ditch alignment altogether, with a few exceptions.  The really Good and the really Evil creatures and NPC's would still register as [Good] and [Evil] for the purposes of detects/protects/Holy and Unholy weapons, but without alignment the DM is free to waive the usual alignment crap and run a morally ambiguous game.Out of the box, though, "E" means Evil, and Evil must be stopped, no matter the cost.  At least, to a Paladin. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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