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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 3669808" data-attributes="member: 22424">The thing is, on one side you probably have the Church of Hextor: "Sire, we have been your greatest advocates. When you needed soldiers to defend against those invading Orcs, we were there. When your armies needed training, we were there. Our congregants have been law-abiding in every respect. Yet well you know that the cult of Heironeous has ever wished us ill, always falsely accusing us of wrong. How can such a wise ruler as yourself possibly consent to this pogrom by a jealous and corrupt church?"On the other hand, you have the revolutionaries and agents provocateur: "You all know someone who has been slain at the word of a 'paladin'. But what great evils have these people done, to deserve that wrath? The butcher, Simeon*, was known to you all, and was always a pleasant amiable chap. But that 'paladin' looked at him funny, and he was dragged off and executed! And for what? In fact, how can we even be sure these so-called 'paladins' are anything of the sort? Who has checked their credentials? Where does their authority come from?"No! I for one say enough of this! His majesty the king has obviously been duped by the very forces of evil he seeks to protect us from! Surely, we cannot be faulted for taking the necessary steps to protect ourselves, and the kingdom, from so perfidious an evil! Let us bring an end to this abomination of paladinic 'justice'!"The thing is, the policy is likely to come under stern assault, both from those with a great deal to lose (those who are actually Evil), and also from well-meaning but misguided folks who are concerned that the paladins are basically not accountable to anyone.* Simeon the butcher may well be a mass-murderer, and well-deserving of death. But it probably won't be the case that the paladins will be able to produce evidence to that effect for every single person who shows up as Evil. At which point, this attack becomes valid.Not necessarily. A rational Evil overlord may well instead engage in acts of great civic reconstruction (sanitation, irrigation, road-building, education, bringing peace...), such that he's actually a much-loved ruler, and so has little to fear from the vast majority of Good folk. Indeed, he may well have much more to fear from those Blackguards you cited.The thing is, I don't consider a society that uses Paladins in the manner you described particularly hard to accept. Where I had a problem was the assertion that this was the only way it would work.</blockquote>

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