it's worth remembering that gygax had an *ahem* pragmatic view on good and evil and to use alignment properly you have to judge it objectively not subjectively
As I have pointed out at times, a Paladin might well execute a group of captives after they have converted from their former (Evil) alignment to Lawful Good, for that act saves their sould, prevents them from slipping back into error.
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is by no means anything but Lawful and Good. Prisoners guilty of murder or similar capital crimes can be executed without violating any precept of the alignment. Hanging is likely the usual method of such execution, although it might be beheading, strangulation, etc. A paladin is likely a figure that would be considered a fair judge of criminal conduct.
The Anglo-Saxon punishment for rape and/or murder of a woman was as follows: tearing off of the scalp, cutting off of the ears and nose, blinding, chopping off of the feet and hands, and leaving the criminal beside the road for all bypassers to see. I don't know if they cauterized the limb stumps or not before doing that. It was said that a woman and child could walk the length and breadth of England without fear of molestation then...
Chivington might have been quoted as saying "nits make lice," but he is certainly not the first one to make such an observation as it is an observable fact. If you have read the account of wooden Leg, a warrior of the Cheyenne tribe that fought against Custer et al., he dispassionately noted killing an enemy squaw for the reason in question.
Cheers,
Gary
Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos are all terms of art.
Lawful Good is foremost Lawful. Though I don't think that means they will visit needlessly cruel laws upon people, unless that is the law of the land. And even then, there are limits.
Speaking to Bruce's argument, if changing someone's alignment by force using a magic item were the law of the land (as it is on Babylon 5 for murderers btw), I would expect a paladin to carry out that sentence. However, if the paladin were to come up with that on their own, I'm not sure it'd be justifiable as "good".
And the saves their soul thing speaks to the law. It's actions and consequences, and preventing evil for the greater good. A murder who converts in prison that still gets executed, for example.
You make some good points but Vampires can be any alignment with evil, are you saying Jon was evil before?
A person slain by a vampire in 1e becomes a vampire. 1e vampires are CE.
1e Monster Manual:
Any human or humanoid drained of all life energy by a vampire becomes an appropriately strengthed vampire under control of its slayer. This transformation takes place 1 day after the creature is buried, but if and only if the creature is buried. Thus it is possible to have a vampiric thief, cleric (chaotic evil in vampire form, of course), etc. If the vampire which slew the creature is itself killed, the vampires created by it become freewilled monsters.
I'm saying that his alignment became CE after becoming a vampire. Forcing it to change to LG isn't necessarily reversing the change, since you don't know if he was LG or not. You only know that he was CE as a vampire and became LG.
For all you know, he could have been NE before his undeath. Probably not, but still. If he were originally LG, then I would agree that reversing his alignment change through magic would be acceptable in this case, since his alignment was changed without his will the first time.
