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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pielorinho" data-source="post: 2145662" data-attributes="member: 259">Not to be smart-aleck, but on your advice, I went to dictionary.com and looked up the definition:  Note the word "unlawful." In many fantasy settings, the laws surrounding the killing of outlaws are, to put it mildly, relaxed.  In lieu of a well-trained standing police force, there's a sort of Wild-West mentality, in which a person who commits a crime removes themselves from the protection of the law.  Furthermore, it's often real easy to become deputized as the enforcement branch of the law:  if the local mayor asks you to deal with a problem, you gain an informal license to use lethal force. If either of these conditions hold true in the fantasy setting in question (criminals remove themselves from the law's protection, or the PCs have an informal license to use force), then, by definition, they didn't commit murder. That doesn't mean what they did wasn't wrong.  And in some cases, committing by-definition-murder will be perfectly acceptable for a lawful-good character, such as times when a paladin participates in a raid to kill an evil wizard in her own kingdom (she almost certainly has passed laws making it illegal to kill her). But if a paladin is operating in a world in which banditry or slaving is punishable by death, and in which the paladin is either specifically or generally empowered to carry out this sentence, then I think it's entirely in keeping with alignment rules for the paladin to carry out the sentence on captured bandits and slavers, as long as he follows the rules required by his country. Daniel</blockquote>

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