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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DragonLancer" data-source="post: 1354357" data-attributes="member: 11868">As much as I am loath to contradict the great maker, the above statement is an evil act if ever I heard one. Its not lawful and it certainly is not good.Can a paladin lie? Yes, under the right circumstances. He cannot lie to his high priests or whoever his legitimate superiors are, but when faced with the evil city & gate guard proposal then yes. To do otherwise leads him to his death and he has failed his cause. Again we're back to lawful-stupid.To martyr himself is also a waste of the gift he was given. To leave hundreds of innocents in a castle or city to die at the hands of the evil hordes because the paladin rode out of the gates to face them singlehanded in a show of bravery is not a good act. Those innocents are now going to be slaughtered and who knows what else will be done to them.A paladin needs a good head on his shoulders. If riding out to his doom buys the innocents a couple more minutes, they are still going to die. If he can defend them from within the castle walls and perhaps hold the enemy off until help arrives, then that is what he should do.As for the concept, I do prefer the idea of the paladin being a holy knight, choosen by his deity. I also believe that the path of the paladin is a very narrow one and many fall from that path. Maybe not becoming evil, but they do fail to uphold the moral and ethical needs of the class.In the last campaign I DM'ed we had a paladin PC, who was tricked by members of an evil faith into desecrating a tomb in search of a holy relic that the party needed. Now despite the fact that this relic could save the lives of hundreds of innocents dying of a plague, he desecrated the tomb of a high priest of another good aligned deity. He was stripped of his powers until he atoned. In the end (and as part of a decent story twist) he refused. He swore at his god (not physically) and addressed the very issue that whatever he did he did with a good goal in mind. But the path should be that difficult to walk. The players problem was that he didn't think his actions through. He could have found another means to find the relic or even another way of defeating the cult and removing the plague.</blockquote>

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