[Cerek the Barbaric]

Originally posted by Zuvio: Paladins come in many forms, like in BG2 or in Fallout 1&2. They seem to have poor judgement, as it is mostly clouded or prejudiced. Being purely good is at times as bad as being purely evil. At some points in your life you'll be confronted with the fact that you cannot be ALWAYS completely true to your alignment. It seems that all creatures, except for paladins, that tend towards a good alignment can make a decision that defiles that alignment a little bit, for the sake of a good outcome. Paladins cannot. They SWORE their allegiance to the good side and cannot divert from that path. So to actually make a point here: Planescape: Torment's alignment system should have been incorporated in BG2.

Interesting discussion. While paladins have sworn to uphold the ideals of law and good, that does NOT mean they can't deviate from them for a greater good. Unfortunately, most games and DM's don't play them that way. Here is a good example I read concerning an unusual action by a paladin in my PnP days:

The party had completed thier quest to help save a forest from some evil beast. After the fight was over, a dryad comes out of the woods and starts trying to charm some of the party members and get them to go off with her. The whole group is battle-weary and a couple of them become entranced by the dryad. Before she can lead them away - though - the paladin steps in and punches the dryad in the nose. This breaks her concentration (and her nose too) and she ends up running off rather than face the wrath of the paladin.

The DM admitted that he deducted some experience points from the paladin - at first. Then he reconsidered. The paladin had stepped in and prevented two of his party members from being led off into heaven-knows-what. He had also driven the dryad off without doing any serious (or permanent) damage to her (a cure light wounds would fix her nose).

So...paladins don't have to be stuffy, goody-two shoes. A good DM will allow them some flexibility.

Oh - one other thing - stereotypes are NOT created by the majority of a group. They are created by the overly-vocal minority of any group.