Psychopath Paladins and WotC

[Wehrkind]

STill that's no reason to be proud of it. He was sad when he had to kill. And he did adopt those quaggoth cubs. *shrug*

I've played less idealistic characters, too. So?

People these days seem to watch too much "24". So eager to have the torture option, they don't care for anything else.

See, that's your error. The class specifically states the Grey Guard has to atone, and does not do it more than they have to. He doesn't have to like using unpleasant means to recognize them as necessary. Most people don't like killing, but recognize it is sometimes needed. My dentist isn't going to be proud, watching me winch and tear up as he performs surgery on my gums, but he knows he has to do it. You seem to assume the Grey Guard wants to inflict torture as much as possible, that they enjoy it for it's own sake. The point of the class is it is a paladin who recognizes, with his god's agreement, that sometimes being nice doesn't get the job done. He doesn't like doing it, and has to atone even, but if that is what stopping evil and protecting the innocent requires, so be it.

It has nothing to do with 24. This idea didn't suddenly become popular because of the show. I has everything to do with the moral question of "When do you go too far in defending the innocent, and when have you not gone far enough?" You seem unwilling to actually answer that question, or even propose alternative solutions to the situations I posed.


And yes, greenskins. I am rather fond of Warhammer 40k, in large part because it is in many ways a universe based largely on altruistic morality taken to it's logical conclusion. (Not 100%, but you see it in the logic of the Imperium.) Lots of the fluff is an interesting thought experiment.
You might even look at the inquisitors from that as Grey Guards. Some are more questionable than others, and sometimes their methods go over the edge and they need to be stopped, but when you get down to it they are doing their utmost to protect humanity (which is defined as the good, of course.) If they wipe out a world of 5 billion, it is to save untold billions in the grand scheme. Is that always good? Depends on many things, but it is fertile ground for a huge amount of philosophic thought. Hence the appeal.

[Sardia]

Do you think the cleric was anything but evil? If he had done this "for a good cause" would it have been anything less evil?

I'd suppose the dividing line is this-- could he have done anything else and gotten the information, and was that the minimum amount of torture to get the job done. And possibly what care was given after the information was gotten.
And of course once you've fed him a few fingers, you might guess he's not going to answer, so continuing to do it might be an issue as well.
Which brings up the classic but also morally questionable tactic of just killing him as painlessly as possible and casting Speak with Dead. For the very well-funded and softhearted, you can use Raise Dead afterward. (Send the bill whoever was going to be killed by the ticking bomb).
Does costing someone a level count as torture?

[Wehrkind]

The point was being made that a Gray Guard might as well mutilate someone during interrogation "in the line of duty" and later use healing spells and this would all be nice as if nothing bad had happened at all and be lawful and good because the GG had an higher noble goal in mind all the time. And I say some things are always beyond the pale no matter what lofty goals you are bullsh*tting yourself about having.

Not to mention that it's been proven time and again that intel derived from torture isn't accurate but anyway.

Where not getting anywhere here gnight.............

So, please, tell me what is the correct way to interrogate a prisoner? Where is the line? You keep feeding negatives "That's wrong, that could never happen, it's always wrong." So tell us what is right in this case?

And don't say magical compulsion. Is temporary pain better than the psychic shock of having someone else controlling your body and actions against your will? What spell cures psychological damage?

Detect Lie is great for telling whether the suspect is lying under torture. That, and would you be so kind as to point me towards what studies or evidence you have that information gained under duress is any more or less useful than a confession interrogated out of someone merely scared? People keep stating that as though it were obvious, but never have I been directed to any evidence as such. Considering people whose job it is to gather information seem to think it has its uses, I am inclined to think it is fairly useful.

[Wehrkind]

And can anyone tell me why it is immoral to kill someone if you KNOW they will simply be gathered up by their god and have a wonderfully appropriate afterlife?
I still don't understand why a god would need to care about the worldly affairs of their followers if preventing some of them getting killed was not worth hurting or killing someone who was evil, and against everything they stood for.

Come to think of it, should paladins even be allowed to kill anyone? If they can't kill an evil doer and cast speak with dead, should they be going all DC and simply capturing villains and sentient monsters and handing them over to the police?
Might be kind of funny to see the PCs come back from the Temple of Elemental evil with ~2500 various evil humanoids and sentient beings in shackles in a line behind them.
"So yea, which way to the jail? Ohh, watch the one with all the eyes... he can get ya...And how long do you think we will need to be here in Homlett to testify at 2500 trials?"

[Sardia]

And I say some things are always beyond the pale no matter what lofty goals you are bullsh*tting yourself about having.

Okay, there's a distinction here that might be interesting to narrow down-- presumably if the Paladin is defending the innocent out on the field of battle, chopping up the opponent is allowed as a harsh necessity. Doing so outside of combat brings up (at the least) a gray area. Where exactly does the difference lie?
This being D&D and not real life, Detect Lie does enable the distinction of accurate from inaccurate information given during an interrogation so lack of accuracy isn't an issue.

[Thomas]

And don't say magical compulsion. Is temporary pain better than the psychic shock of having someone else controlling your body and actions against your will? What spell cures psychological damage?

Heal, I think (since it cures insanity and other mental effects). And though I agree with most of your arguments, whatever damage magical compulsion may inflict on a person, the psychological effects of torture are undeniable and potentially crippling.

[Wehrkind]

Actually getting back to the topic of a Grey Guard, it might make a really interesting story to have a paladin that becomes more and more frustrated and hard, becoming a Grey Guard, and then deciding that he took the wrong path and going back to being a standard paladin. Perhaps after tracing the root of some foul corruption in the church back to his mentor or something, perhaps a Grey Guard whose fine line starts to veer towards evil.

Granted, I would hope he discovers somewhere along the line the perfectly humane and proper way to extract necessary information that Tobrian refuses to tell us. Still, that might make for a great yarn. Redemption stories are always great.

[Beleriphon]

Detect Lie is great for telling whether the suspect is lying under torture. That, and would you be so kind as to point me towards what studies or evidence you have that information gained under duress is any more or less useful than a confession interrogated out of someone merely scared? People keep stating that as though it were obvious, but never have I been directed to any evidence as such. Considering people whose job it is to gather information seem to think it has its uses, I am inclined to think it is fairly useful.

There is a school of thought, I've seen this a few times in psych text books I've read, that supports the claim that some people will admit to anything to stop torture from continuing. It was one of the hallmarks of the Inquisition in our own history, people were tortured into admitting something, anything. Most would admit to whatever the Inquisition had implied just to make the pain stop. Physical torture is a surprisingly poor choice for extracting information, psychological torture is better, but it has the same pitfalls in that there are people that will admit to whatever it is you're asking them just to get out of the situation.

Wikipedia has an interesting article on torture from an academic standpoint. It goes as far as quoting from the CIA Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_of_torture

Another article of interest would be The Dark Art of Interrogation. Be warned, its not pleasant. This one suggests that physical pain is a poor motivator, fear of physical pain is much better, but you eventually have to deliver and its either not as bad as the person thought or so much worse they'll say anything to make it stop.

[Sardia]

Heal, I think (since it cures insanity and other mental effects). And though I agree with most of your arguments, whatever damage magical compulsion may inflict on a person, the psychological effects of torture are undeniable and potentially crippling.

The psychology of any D&D creature or (especially) PC is a thing of pure lunacy, though. Someone who voluntarily takes a job where they slaughter dozens or more people/beings on perhaps a weekly basis is either insane to begin with or is going to rapidly become so.
Consider Gimli and Legolas' orc killing competition for a good example.
"Drat, I chipped my axe when I lopped that last head off. That was my favorite axe, too."

Either the characters consider the other species to be people, in which case they should be accumulating some psychological issues pretty briskly, or they consider them outright animals, in which case I doubt they'll have a problem sawing bits off the kobold or whatever.
Whether enough practice on kobolds makes it simpler on people, well...

[Wehrkind]

Heal, I think (since it cures insanity and other mental effects). And though I agree with most of your arguments, whatever damage magical compulsion may inflict on a person, the psychological effects of torture are undeniable and potentially crippling.

That's my point. If there are spells to cure physical damage, then you have to weigh the mental trauma of physical torture against the mental trauma of magical compulsion. If there are spells to fix mental trauma, well... at that point, is there really any argument against it?

Now, I would also point out that there is a great deal of difference in trauma inflicted between torturing someone until they give you information, and long term torture. Being smacked around and hurt only until you give the information someone is looking for, and being tortured repeatedly for a length of time just because someone enjoys it are very different things in terms of damage. I would suspect it is mostly a matter of feeling control, in so far as you know you can tell the interrogator what they want to know and they will stop (assuming you actually have the information), and the despair of being completely helpless. This does assume the interrogator is going after information you actually know.

[Thomas]

I would suspect it is mostly a matter of feeling control, in so far as you know you can tell the interrogator what they want to know and they will stop (assuming you actually have the information), and the despair of being completely helpless.

This would seem likely, since the key element in most psyche-shattering trauma is helplessness (shell-shock, etc.).

And I do agree that there's a big difference between smacking someone until they tell you where X is, and torturing someone until they admit to Y.

[Wehrkind]

There is a school of thought, I've seen this a few times in psych text books I've read, that supports the claim that some people will admit to anything to stop torture from continuing. It was one of the hallmarks of the Inquisition in our own history, people were tortured into admitting something, anything. Most would admit to whatever the Inquisition had implied just to make the pain stop. Physical torture is a surprisingly poor choice for extracting information, psychological torture is better, but it has the same pitfalls in that there are people that will admit to whatever it is you're asking them just to get out of the situation.

Wikipedia has an interesting article on torture from an academic standpoint. It goes as far as quoting from the CIA Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_of_torture

Another article of interest would be The Dark Art of Interrogation. Be warned, its not pleasant. This one suggests that physical pain is a poor motivator, fear of physical pain is much better, but you eventually have to deliver and its either not as bad as the person thought or so much worse they'll say anything to make it stop.

That's an interesting article (Wikipedia's) Beleriphon, though I think it focuses more on long term effects from long term toture, not short term, and definitely not the "roughing up" one might do to a suspect. I say that because it does not go into the duration, and how long such things take to occure, as well as any stages.

The second is very interesting, but also a but too dense for me to take in afte being up for 15 hours of work. So I will read over it tonight and comment.

Good stuff though :)

[Beleriphon]

That's an interesting article (Wikipedia's) Beleriphon, though I think it focuses more on long term effects from long term toture, not short term, and definitely not the "roughing up" one might do to a suspect. I say that because it does not go into the duration, and how long such things take to occure, as well as any stages.

The second is very interesting, but also a but too dense for me to take in afte being up for 15 hours of work. So I will read over it tonight and comment.

Good stuff though :)

Both do deal with long term effects, the second is ultimately about modern use of torture and the difference between that and interrogation.

At any rate the Gray Guard seems to fall into the gray area that isn't torture, but isn't Andy Sipowicz style beatings either.

[Dausuul]

Yes, I think the distaste about this class is somewhat idealistic, in the sense that children are idealistic. It is the same logic that says "Execution is bad, because killing is bad!" that says a god might not want you torturing for fun, but if it will save a kidnapped congregation, then it is ok.

Paladins are idealistic. That's the whole point of the class. They're the guys who don't take the easy way out, who walk the straight and narrow, who try right up to the end to find a way to reconcile the greater good with the demands of honor and compassion. Sometimes that puts them in a bad place. That's the whole idea. Playing a paladin is a challenge that way. If you don't want that challenge, don't play a frickin' paladin.

The whole point of the class is that it mirrors how reality actually works. Sometimes the good guys do some fairly bad things, and sometimes really bad things, because they only look bad on the face of it...

Sometimes the good guys do. Paladins don't. The ends do not justify the means.

Here's the thing about using bad means to achieve good ends: It requires that you do indeed achieve your ends. If you fail to do so, then you've done evil to no purpose. Torturing the guy to find out where the mass sacrifice of the congregation is... well, that's all well and good until you discover that the guy you were torturing doesn't know after all. He's actually an innocent man who was left as bait for you by the villains, with a spell cast on him to fool your paladin Evil Radar. You were too certain of yourself to admit the possibility that you'd made a mistake and got the wrong man, and so you committed evil.

That's the point of the paladin in my book. It's not just about demonstrating one's ability to behave with discipline. It's about the humility of realizing that you are not wise enough to judge infallibly when doing evil will serve the greater good, and therefore refusing to use evil means even when it seems necessary.

I'd be much more okay with the Grey Guard if it were a Lawful Neutral class with benefits for fallen paladins--like the blackguard but not evil.

By the way, I am curious what your adventurers do, if you find this grey paladin so distasteful. Do you still slaughter villages of demihumans because they have green skin, and civilized society calls them evil? Still delve into anchient tombs to steal treasure from those who still claim it? Reality =! D&D, and moral parallels are going to be rough to keep consistent as a result.

No, actually, my adventurers quest to save their country and their world from the rampaging hordes of Evil. The green-skinned guys attack them, they fight back, but they don't go into the wilderness looking for green-skinned guys to kill. D&D characters do not have to be glorified mercenaries. If a paladin in a game I was running started behaving in the way you describe, that paladin would fall.

[Attilargh]

I agree with Dausuul on this. I can't see a paladin doing the stuff described on the first page, just because I can't see a god (or the paladin herself, if said paladin does not worship a god) go "Well okay, you can break the Code now, but don't make it a habit."

In faux drama terms, Paladins are Special because of the strict Code. If you loosen it up a bit to let the Paladin get away with some stuff, it's not as cool.

I'd be much more okay with the Grey Guard if it were a Lawful Neutral class with benefits for fallen paladins--like the blackguard but not evil.

Actually, I can see a Lawful Good person doing it too. At least in certain circumstances.

[Khantalas]

OK, here's something that's been bugging me since the beginning of the thread. Gray Guard is a 10-level prestige class. It mostly defines what you are. It's not about like Uncanny Trickster, for example, which simply improves one aspect of your abilities without halting most of the rest.

Think about the Gray Guards. They do not improve your mount's abilities, they don't give you extra uses of remove disease, they slow down your spellcasting. This is not a a paladin. This is a Gray Guard. You may need to have been a paladin once to become a Gray Guard, but now you're a Gray Guard. Saying that one should not be about having to commit evil acts to preserve the greater good and just be a goody two shoes paladin is like saying that someone with levels of assassin should not be about killing people and just be a cheerful adventurer rogue that goes on dungeon crawls.

No, Gray Guards are not paladins. They aren't meant to be. A warblade with levels of Order of the Bow Initiate isn't meant to be a melee combatant like a warblade (though this will also be a particularly poor choice).

Makes no sense? Just to stupid to be considered seriously? Join the club, I have no idea what I want to say either.

[Roderick_BR]

I would like to see a variant Paladin with the half elf bard's soothing voice and atonement in it's spell list. Talking the bad guys into becoming good.

That would work great as a multiclass option, if the DM allows you to multiclass your paladin levels with bard, like Forgotten Realms where some deities lets you multiclass with some specific classes.
A PrC with those abilities could be called "mediator" or something.
As for variation, you could exchange your smite evil abilities for it. Something to think about.

[Fawsto]

I understand what you said Khantalas... This is the old point: a Lvl 10 Fighter/ lvl 10 Lasher obviously would name himself a lasher. A Blackguard may had once been a Paladin, but now he is a BlackGuard. The same happens to the grey guard, for instance he isn't a paladin anymore, now he is a grey guard. Just that.

And this is the point of it. Paladins and Grey guards are diferent classes, with very diferent distinctions of how deep should you go in the evil territory to be able to fight evil...

[Attilargh]

But my beef is that he never stops being a Paladin. He might be Grey Guard, but he's also a Paladin. He still has his abilities, including Lay on Hands and Bump Uglies and even some parts of his old code, but now he can do more stuff with them all.

"Here, let me lay my hands on you before I go and righteously kick that other guy's teeth in because his Chaotic ways brought suffering to you all."
"But doesn't your Code prevent that?"
"Yeah, but sometimes you've got to do what you've got to do, you know?"

He's a Paladin with the freedom of action near that of a Fighter. That's what bothers me.

[Dark]

Hmm.

Do the rules for the Gray Guard ever say that he keeps his paladin abilities even after breaking the paladin's code? I only have Tobrian's excerpts to go on, but it sounds like the "Sacrament of True Faith" ability only protects the Gray Guard class abilities, not necessarily the Paladin class abilities (which, after all, come from a different class).

In fact, the Gray Guard prerequisites say "must adhere to a code of conduct that prevents the character from performing evil acts", but the Gray Guard is "held to the same code of conduct as a paladin". So the base class doesn't need to be Paladin, and might have a different code of conduct. So why would the Gray Guard's exceptions apply to the base class?

This could lead to odd combinations, though, and half-fallen characters :)

[Wehrkind]

See, again, Dausuul missed the point, Attilargh misses the point, Khantalas sort of gets it.

The Grey Guard doesn't start out as some one who knows who is evil and who isn't, and is free to judge as he sees fit. He starts out as a PALADIN, someone who DOES know who is evil and who is not, but is not free to do with evil as he sees fit. He then takes the prestige class to become someone who, under circumstances defined by his god/over arching force of good, can do what is necessary to acheive a greater good. He merely is allowed to judge and act on the judgement, though if he is wrong he still faces the exact same loss of powers. He is still defending good and the innocent, only instead of being unwilling to go after evil if they refuse to be stand up and face him, he, at very discrete and specific forks in the road, is allowed to bend the rules.

You have to remember, this isn't the real world. These people have magical powers that TELL THEM whether someone is good or evil. You don't get things like, "oh, well he was innocent. It was the one armed man." You can look into their soul and see "he is not an annocent." If, however, through some really elaborate plot by the villains to plant a stooge, the Grey Guard can still fall and lose their abilities.

This is why D&D alignment is awkward. If good and evil are going to be absolutes (I don't think they are consistent in treating them as such, by the way), and you can detect those absolutes, why shouldn't you be able to kill anyone who pings as evil? You don't get to be evil by generally being a prick, or being a decent guy who cheats on his wife. That's "neutral." You can't be "evil" without doing some serious evil. Thus you are guilty of something very serious. You probably have aided or abbetted murder, maybe extensive theft, rapine, who knows. You are DEFINITELY out of that grey area of "well, not really evil, just misguided." After all, Good and Evil are absolute. If you ping as one, you are it. If you can kill them, why not torture them for info first?

Further, no one has explained why gods care about their congregations being killed, since they can just whisk them away to a promised land after. Or why they don't whisk them away right off the bat.

I probably should have known better than to use the word childish when speaking of idealism. Allow me to rephrase.
The idealism people attribute to paladins is similar to the idealism that children hold, ie. extremely simplistic and limited in experiences it can deal with. For instance, a child is told "killing is bad." They then ask "Well, why is it ok to kill cows?" and "Why can police and soldiers kill people?" It is an idealism that does not consider the ends, the means, or the context of any event, simply that something happened, that something is defined as being "bad", and so therefore is unacceptable.
No offense, but that is what happens when you have an irrational code of morals that must be taught and driven into you, not one that is rational and consistent, and thus can be reasoned.
People treat paladins the same way. They say "hurting people is bad." Well, one, a paladin kills evil all the time. It's his job. Why is he allowed to do so? Because the evil was going to destroy good, and the good is the most important. If you find that statement of a paladin's purpose for existing and why he can hurt and kill things acceptable, please demonstrate another. If you accept it, however, you have to ask yourself why the paladin is only allowed to protect the good by killing in face to face combat, as opposed to injuring the enemy to acheive his end, thus leaving the enemy the chance to redeem himself. Why must a paladin limit himself to brute force or words, when something in between protects the good just as well?
"Sorry Mr Orc, I am not allowed to smack you around, so since you won't tell me where your slave camp is, I just have to kill you. Can't have you running around after all."

[Wehrkind]

No, actually, my adventurers quest to save their country and their world from the rampaging hordes of Evil. The green-skinned guys attack them, they fight back, but they don't go into the wilderness looking for green-skinned guys to kill. D&D characters do not have to be glorified mercenaries. If a paladin in a game I was running started behaving in the way you describe, that paladin would fall.

I didn't address this properly.
So, how do your adventures save their country and world from EEEEEVIL? Is it by killing evil? Do they seek it out, or just sit on their butts waiting for the evil to kill a few innocents before doing anything about it? Do they pursue it back into the wilderness to make sure it doesn't come back to kill again, or just stop at the city gates. "Ahh well, I am sure he won't be back for a few hours at least. Let's go have a beer." After those green skinned bad guys back off, your heroes just hang around, waiting for them to to come back. If the greenskins are in fact EEEEEVIL, doesn't it make sense to track them down and make certain they never come back? Wouldn't that involve going out and finding the eeeeeeeevil to kill?

It has nothing to do with being mercenaries. A mercenary is just someone who fights for pay, as opposed to defending their country/homes/faith or whatever (ie. pro bono killing.)

So, what will your players do when the enemies are not the orcs you let come and rampage periodically, but rather internal corruption? Do you go up to the corrupt official and demand he stop doing whatever it is he does that is eeeeevil, or else face you in single combat? When good and neutral people don't know enough about what is going on to root the guy out, your paladin is done. He can't associate with anyone in the underworld of the city (eeeeevil) to find out who knows what. Even if he does get a tip along the lines of "Jimmy the Shovel over there on Gutter Street, he seems to be coming across a whole slew of new bodies to bury" he can't go and find out just what Jimmy does that makes him detect as so eeeevil.
"You will tell me what you have done, and by admittance hope to purge your vile soul!" "
"Uhm... I totally lie to my wife about my affair with her sister. And mom. And dad..."
"Aww, come on, seriously. Are you kidding? Detect lie says you aren't, but it has to be more than that, right? How about if I buy you some coffee?"

[darkzucchini]

Paladins are idealistic. That's the whole point of the class. They're the guys who don't take the easy way out, who walk the straight and narrow, who try right up to the end to find a way to reconcile the greater good with the demands of honor and compassion. Sometimes that puts them in a bad place. That's the whole idea. Playing a paladin is a challenge that way. If you don't want that challenge, don't play a frickin' paladin.

The problem that I have with this is that it limits options for characters. If thats what you want in your campaign thats fine, but I like to give my players as many options as possible, as long as its not out of place or broken. I'd probably let a paladin in one of my campaign act like a Grey Guard without take the prestige class as long as they have stated in their history that they see the ends as justifying the means. of course, this may bring them into conflict with other paladins or members of their church, which in turn could lead to more role playing. I don't want to see every paladin as an idealistic Galahad clone. Its still a challenge to straddle that line between upholding the greater good and falling from grace.

[Telonius]

Honestly, I didn't see a problem with this PrC. In fact, I'd even say that it's a good one. It gives a mechanic for achieving something (associating with non-good characters) that was impossible for a standard Paladin to do. It's not a license to go ahead and torture and maim; reading the PrC, I didn't get that sense.

This is what I did get: Paladins are held to a very rigorous standard in order to perfect themselves, and grow in their faith. In relaxing the vows, the church hierarchy is, in effect, saying that they're worthy of trust beyond the normal scope. Standard Paladins aren't forbidden to associate with non-good people (and all the rest of the requirements) because non-good people aren't worthy. It's not about the others, it's about keeping the Paladin on the straight and narrow. Paladins take the vows, because Paladins need them most. Grey Guards have grown enough that they don't need the training wheels of the vows. To use a Star Wars analogy, it's kind of like Qui-gon Jin fixing the dice when he freed Anakin. (Not exactly the same, I know, but I think the analogy works).

[PaladinBoy]

See, again, Dausuul missed the point, Attilargh misses the point, Khantalas sort of gets it.

The Grey Guard doesn't start out as some one who knows who is evil and who isn't, and is free to judge as he sees fit. He starts out as a PALADIN, someone who DOES know who is evil and who is not, but is not free to do with evil as he sees fit. He then takes the prestige class to become someone who, under circumstances defined by his god/over arching force of good, can do what is necessary to acheive a greater good. He merely is allowed to judge and act on the judgement, though if he is wrong he still faces the exact same loss of powers. He is still defending good and the innocent, only instead of being unwilling to go after evil if they refuse to be stand up and face him, he, at very discrete and specific forks in the road, is allowed to bend the rules.

Frankly, I don't think this helps the Grey Guards any. Apology is nice...... never letting it happen again is better. It doesn't change the fact that he's still committed an evil act. His apology could be considered rather false, since he's still willing to do it again if necessary.

If you can kill them, why not torture them for info first?

See my point below.

I probably should have known better than to use the word childish when speaking of idealism. Allow me to rephrase.
The idealism people attribute to paladins is similar to the idealism that children hold, ie. extremely simplistic and limited in experiences it can deal with. For instance, a child is told "killing is bad." They then ask "Well, why is it ok to kill cows?" and "Why can police and soldiers kill people?" It is an idealism that does not consider the ends, the means, or the context of any event, simply that something happened, that something is defined as being "bad", and so therefore is unacceptable.
No offense, but that is what happens when you have an irrational code of morals that must be taught and driven into you, not one that is rational and consistent, and thus can be reasoned.
People treat paladins the same way. They say "hurting people is bad." Well, one, a paladin kills evil all the time. It's his job. Why is he allowed to do so? Because the evil was going to destroy good, and the good is the most important. If you find that statement of a paladin's purpose for existing and why he can hurt and kill things acceptable, please demonstrate another. If you accept it, however, you have to ask yourself why the paladin is only allowed to protect the good by killing in face to face combat, as opposed to injuring the enemy to acheive his end, thus leaving the enemy the chance to redeem himself. Why must a paladin limit himself to brute force or words, when something in between protects the good just as well?
"Sorry Mr Orc, I am not allowed to smack you around, so since you won't tell me where your slave camp is, I just have to kill you. Can't have you running around after all."

First off, a paladin follow very strict Good, is an idealist, and is not willing to compromise his ideals. The trick to making that work? A paladin's ideals follow the Good alignment. The Book of Exalted Deeds (it's really an excellent resource for this type of debate) defines several of the parameters as helping others, charity, healing, personal sacrifice, mercy, forgiveness, bringing hope, and redeeming evil. These are a paladin's ideals. If you point specific problems out to me, I'll do my best to answer your questions.

Also, the BoED provides info about tough moral questions. One of them is whether the ends justify the means. The simple answer is no, they do not. An evil act is an evil act no matter how many people it saves. Another question is whether violence is always evil. Again, no, it's not. However, it must have a good motive and accomplish a good purpose to be considered good.

As to why you can kill but you can't torture.......... torture is far worse than a quick death. Very few Good people like unnecessary pain and suffering, and I believe that torture is always unnecessary. Yes, always. If you can't see another way out, then keep looking until you find one. If people die because you took too long........ well, you didn't kill them. The people you were hunting for did that. Should you feel bad about it? Of course. Is it your fault? No, it's the murderers' fault.

This leads me to the problem with this class. They're not Good. They're LN at best. In my campaigns, while it might be possible for Evil people to be granted power by a Good deity (I really hate that aspect of Eberron), I would not make them remotely like paladins. Can I see people like this existing? Sure. Are they Good? Absolutely, unequivocally, no. Good intentions don't mean that you're Good........ if that were true never would have fallen.

[Rabiesbunny]

Are they Good? Absolutely, unequivocally, no. Good intentions don't mean that you're Good........ if that were true never would have fallen.

Tis true, but sometimes, even in WotC literature it's passed over if someone is Good. ;) Ever heard of the Dawn Cataclysm? The Good aligned Lathander decided that he wanted to be the ruler of the human pantheon, and ended up killing a goddess. Not to mention when he kidnapped Good Tymora and Evil Beshaba, and tried to fuse them back together in a process that could have destroyed the realms.

All because the Earth Goddess spurned him for a date, and he wanted his old girlfriend back.
It's a weird thing when it's permitted to happen, because according to the alignment system, it shouldn't!

[Winterking]

My only problem with this PrC is the LG alignment. My apologies if anyone's mentioned this before (didn't feel like reading through 5 pages of anti-paladin vs pro-paladin rants) but the Grey Guard reminds me quite a lot of the Operative from the movie Serenity. Someone dedicated to a cause, heart and soul, and willing to do anything and everything necessary to achieve it. The Operative is believable, however, because he fights for a pure, idealistic goal--a pure and good and safe human society--and acknowledges that his deeds make him ineligible for participating. So he's LN, if not LE. He works for a good goal, but he realizes that the things he does makes him a not-good person.
I would personally treat the Grey Guard class along those lines. Sure, the Paladin keeps getting his powers, and can do worse and worse stuff to serve his/her god. The god, after all, thinks that sometimes, darkness must be fought by darkness, or at least by greyness. However, the Paladin/GG has to accept that he/she is doing bad things, that they are forsaking their ideals, and that they are, by those standards, damned. Change their alignment to LN (or LE, depending on the acts they end up doing); emphasize to the players how each additional necessary evil act, while in the cause of their ideal, adds another stain to their soul, reminding them that they won't go to the happy paladin afterlife, but rather be dumped unceremoniously into a pit of torment.
(now, it doesn't really matter whether or not that _actually_ happens, or the god plucks them from damnation at the moment of their death because of the sacrifice they made throughout their life, giving their soul for their cause)

I think this could add interesting nuance to the GG.

[PaladinBoy]

Tis true, but sometimes, even in WotC literature it's passed over if someone is Lawful Good. ;) Ever heard of the Dawn Cataclysm? The Good aligned Lathander decided that he wanted to be the ruler of the human pantheon, and ended up killing a goddess. Not to mention when he kidnapped Good Tymora and Evil Beshaba, and tried to fuse them back together in a process that could have destroyed the realms. It's a weird thing when it's permitted to happen, because according to the alignment system, it shouldn't!

No, I've never heard of that. (Until now. ) I certainly don't like that, I would never write in something like that happening, and I would tell any of my players that told me that something like that happened in my campaign world, "I'm the DM, even though it's published literature I'm free to edit it for my campaigns, and it didn't happen."

That's an interesting take on it, Winterking (and nice example from Serenity). I might do it that way myself, as I just take umbrage at how this class is portrayed as LG and like a paladin.

[Winterking]

One other comment: Paladins, and the churches they belong to, have no real need of a Paladin-variant that can do naughty stuff. There's clerics who could multiclass into rogue, devout rogues, rogues that like being paid regularly by the church, fighters/rangers/etc who feel the same way...

Having Paladins, therefore, be unable to commit evil acts for the greater good really isn't a concern. They don't have to rough up the Orc to get information, they don't have to skulk about in the criminal underworld to find out who killed whom and why: that's what the church's support network is for. Paladins don't have to do anything beyond serve as a shining ideal, standing up as gleaming examples of Good. Oh, and bumping ugl----I mean, smiting evil, against obvious/already identified evil baddies. The grey guard is strictly necessary only for an order of paladins that is all-paladins, all the time, which, quite frankly, is kind of stupid.

[enderrocksonall]

I think the real problem people have when dealing with morality in D&D is that game world morality IS NOT THE SAME AS REAL WORLD MORALITY. In todays world we consider it barbarous to torture prisoners, we consider it morally reprehensible to steal from religious institutions. But D&D society is based on life in the Dark and Middle ages when both of these practices were commonplace.
A paladin's prohibitions against the use of poison or lying are not because those acts are inherently evil. It is because of the sense of chivalry and honor that paladins must uphold, lest they abuse their powers.

I know someone is going to say that lying IS inherently evil, but i disagree. A paladin, by his very nature, is a warrior and all war is based on deception in some way. Whether that deception be about the strength or weakness of an army, the location of that army, or even the identity of the people leading it.
In a world where assination is cheaper than war, lies become the most moral course of action when you can save the king's life.