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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gizmo33" data-source="post: 3201767" data-attributes="member: 30001">The important thing to note here is that you've removed free-will from the criminal.  The paladin is not associating with his captives in the same sense that a paladin associates with a free, and active Lawful Evil cleric.  Similarly, a paladin and LE-cleric sitting in a featureless room doing nothing is not informative when discussing "association".  Consider examples of two free-willed, active, discerning adherents to their respective alignments.People say this in theory but this is not what I observe in practice, and it's not really what the alignment rules say.  And the history of knightly order shows that their own "codes and leadership" could be called "worshipping Baphomet" by a resentful clergy.  How does a group of paladins fail to defend itself against he charge of worshipping a CE demon?  Some of the things that went on in the Middle Ages are very hard to imagine in DnD with player characters allowed to use the tools at their disposal.The paladin's tacit approval of the spymaster's role in the kingdom is associating with evil IMO.  In fact, I would say that an analagous situation exists with the king, spymaster, paladin, and realm being replaced with "party leader", "evil PC", "paladin PC", and "party of PCs".  I think the paladin would be expected to leave the party, and by extension would be expected to leave the realm.  I think it's *only* because realms, kings, and politics tend to be abstracted, background elements in the game and not direct concerns of the adventuring paladin that such situations are conceivable.  A paladin and spymaster who were involved and as active in their kingdoms as they would be in an adventuring party would not exist in the same organization/realm.  The paladin in your example is condoning evil methods to protect the realm.Why is it silly? (wrong is not the same as silly BTW)  Is 3E the one true version?  I think the designers were trying to introduce an interesting idea (variation of alignment across a particular "religion") into an existing game with other elements, not of their design, that were (a) sacred cows and (b) incompatible with their idea.  And how do the rules you note "address the incompatibility"?  I just see them ignoring the incompatibility.  As I said, AFAICT most people's paladins just stay in the dungeon and don't travel with evil characters.  The DM handwaves most of the interaction occuring between the NPCs, and since he determines everything that goes on in the world he simply does as you have done in your examples above - engineers these interactions to avoid alignment conflicts.</blockquote>

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