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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JDowling" data-source="post: 1691414" data-attributes="member: 12596">Best advice i can give - talk with your GM and fellow players about your code before play.In a recient game I played a paladin of a *vengeful* god, so I was very much smite evil, smite it now and hard.Another player in the campaign questioned if I was playing within the alignment of Lawful Good.  So, I wrote a rather long essay examining the moral and ethical codes of D&D as well as taking a look at the values my diety espoused.I decided that my diety would not be a total and complete idiot.for example: I may have a part to my code to say, always combat evil.  But the diety realises that if I try to combat the evil of a greaty wyrm black dragon at level 5 that I will be combating a whole lot less evil over my life than if I put off that battle until later.Similarly -"Never lie""always protect the innocient"What if, knowing this, the evil guys knock you out in a brawl, and have a hostage they say:"If you don't tell us where the rest of the villagers are hiding, we'll kill this boy... if you tell us we'll let him go free"So, you have several options here:1 - you can tell them where the villagers are hiding... sentancing them to death but protecting the boy.  Here - you fail your oaths.2 - say "I'll never tell you vile xxx's where the villagers are hiding!"... saving the villagers and sentancing the boy to his death.  Here - you fail your oaths.3 - act emotionally distrought, give up a false location, hope they free the boy before they realise you have pulled the wool over their eyes... and in the mean time maybe the boy will send help to free you.  Here - you hopefully save all the innocients, but you had to lie to do so.... so... you fail your oaths.A god has wisdom that you, or I, or your DM cannot imagine.  Saying to your holy warriors: "I will give you a set of rules that you must follow, and if you don't follow them you are unworthy of my grace" knowing *full well* that there is *no way* that the code can always be filled perfectly is by no means Lawful Good (IMO) or wise... it's rather malicious.Thus - my god was more "ends justifies the means" (but not too much mind you, just enough so i could functionally fill the spirit of his wishes).  He could care less if I lied to save innocient lives, killed the bad guy to save others (he's vengeful, after all).In the end - the DM supported the way I played my character but the other player was left with a bad taste in his mouth, I think.D&D is very good at glossing over difficult moral and ethical situations with universal laws that just don't make sense.So, to reiterate - find out what your DM and the other players expect *before* you get into play, have them help you work out your code of conduct so you all agree before any problems arise.and about the situation above - if *you* were a moderately intelligent "evil guy" NPC, and knew that a paladin had to fill his oaths exactly as they are written like that or fall from grace, wouldn't you take advantage of him/her in that way?  I know I would.EDIT: and Wizofice says it all before I posted :x  I agree with him/her wholeheartedly.  cheers to the I, Robot referance (i haven't seen the movie, because I don't remember the part in the stories with the army of robots trying to kill humanity <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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