Quote Originally Posted by Emanick View Post
Kidnapping, robbing and raiding takes away that "innocence" status. Think of a hostage situation. There's a pretty solid argument for not calling a police officer who uses lethal force to subdue gangster kidnappers Evil. Miko even gave the kidnappers a chance to surrender.

You could say that this is a grey area, and I could accept that. But kidnappers and raiders are not on the same moral level as people who have done nothing to significantly harm anyone. I think that can be stated pretty fairly.

Paladin or not, killing someone on orders without evidence that they are far from innocent is generally Evil, IMO. If your superiors are trustworthy and have done their homework, that can be considered compelling evidence. If not, you're probably risking a Good, or even a Neutral (depending on circumstances) alignment.
Sounds about right. One of the things I liked about BoED, is that it went out of its way to state, at least once, that an Evil alignment is not, on its own, good enough reason for waging war on, for example, orcs- they have to be doing something to justify it on top of their alignment itself.