A -very- interesting thread. I have to say that in most cases I'm actually most sympathetic to SixOfSpade's view - in fact, I'll surpass him and argue that killing Gethras shouldn't incur a virtue hit -at all-. I'll explain in several phases (this is going to be a long one):
1) Some here seem to feel that the "Lawful", for a paladin, requires strict adherence to civil laws. I entirely disagree. While it is true that "lawful" does generally require that one sees a general benefit to organized, civilized society, a paladin would most certainly have an overriding principle according to their oath, that being, the laws of his deity (through his or her Church). Otherwise, in your guy's view, a paladin whose nation's government was infiltrated and taken over by a Nazi like dictatorship, which among other things started to shut down Churches (including the Paladin's own), would then still have to start carrying out this dictatorship's orders and enforcing it's laws (such as rounding up a segment of the population based on nationality/religion for genocide, including the Paladin's own) or else fall from paladinhood. That's ridiculous. Paladins would most certainly be expected to help topple an evil, albeit "lawful" government. The highest law to a paladin is not civil law - it's ethical and religious law, and it just happens that -most- civil laws and civilized societies tend to reflect the tenets of religious laws (at least in good societies), so civil law is generally respected as a useful construct, but by no means should that law be considered sacrosanct if they conflict with the paladin's deity's notions of good and/or "the rules".
In particular, I don't think that a paladin would be in even the most minimal way required to support or tolerate the obviously evil Cowled Wizards because they are supported by the civil government - in fact, I'd think that a Paladin of Mystra (Goddess of Magic) would feel especially duty bound to mow down the Cowled Wizards for what would almost certainly be against Mystra's "law" - attempting to usurp Mystra's blessings only to themselves. I think for most paladins the "law" would be "justice" (Helm) or "honor" (Torm). The cleric stronghold quests are a good indicator of how "law" (Hellm) and "good" (Lathander) approach things differently. The paladin has to walk a tightrope juggling the demands of justice, honor, and mercy - and of course when confronted with conflicting demands the paladin must make rational decisions about the "greater good", rather than abdicating all thought and acting only when there's a pure-white option available, as some here seem to suggest.
2) Another notion being bandied about is: it's morally reprehensible to kill evil creatures unless you've caught them in the act - as in, they all deserve their day in court. Maybe in our world that's a good notion, but that's for one reason only - we lack something called a "Detect Evil" spell, and therefore we can't know if someone is empirically evil or good. And suffice it to say - if you don't believe in an empirical good and evil, you shouldn't even be interested in this mod. I stipulate that YES, in fact, no paladin should -ever- fall, under any circumstances, for killing a creature if his divinely inspired ability to "detect evil" does in fact register someone as evil. That doesn't mean that a paladin MUST kill every single evil person he meets (for example, if letting them live does, in fact, serve the "greater good" in some fashion), but no paladin's God should look at a Paladin and say "You swore an oath to root out and destroy evil, and then you dared to kill someone that I myself reported to you as significantly evil without hard evidence?!?! How DARE you NOT doubt MY judgment?!? Alright, you, out of the pool!"
I mean, think about it - the entire PURPOSE of the Virtue mod requires the presupposition that good and evil are both universally applicable and quantifiable, and it's entire purpose is in fact to do that quantifying. Universally applicable in the sense that an act is considered intrinsically good or evil regardless of the viewpoint, culture, alignment, class or religion of the main character - no moral relativism here, sorry. The only facts that matter in determining good/evil are the intent of the character given the knowledge of the circumstances available to him at the time he makes his decision, and the general social mores of Western Civilization, NOT "my parents didn't pay enough attention to me so don't blame me, blame society" or "hey, in some cultures, slavery/cannibalism/whatever is perfectly acceptable and we shouldn't be so arrogant as to judge by our standards, who's to say who's right?!". Well, from the character's perspective, the God that gave the Paladin the ability to detect evil is. In reality, it's the folks writing the Oversight and Virtue mod setting the standards, and when it boils down to it, playing God and precisely judging the various decisions the player makes in game, applying what are generally the social and ethical mores of Judeo-Christian Western Civilization, which despite being agnostic I still personally subscribe to and am not ashamed of, nor am I suggesting anyone should be. The point is, from the character's perspective, the result of "Detect Evil" is the verdict of his God, even if it's really the authors of Oversight and Virtue making the decisions (with our combined input).
The mod also works under the presumption that good and evil are quantifiable, and that it's literally not possible for someone to be both "innocent" and "evil". You're basically born neutral - one can only become "evil" due to acts of evil intent, and only then does your alignment change to detectable evil (or at least, I assume the mod works that way - I haven't tried the mod yet precisely because I thought it's rules for paladins were too strict, same as Six). They -had- to have done a lot of evil things that left a detectable "stain on their soul".
In the real world, we can't throw someone in jail unless we catch them in the act, but in the context of the AD&D world, if someone detects as "evil", that's better than a court of law. A judge and jury could screw up, but the paladin's deity certainly isn't going to. If a "detect evil" isn't supposed to be good enough for the paladin, if he also needs (as Six put it) forms filled out in triplicate and a judge and jury to declare the individual guilty and deserving of the application of righteous justice, why does he even have the power to detect that stain?
So yes, it would seem to me that unless the Virtue mod is going to effectively stand in ethical doubt of it's very purpose and/or the evaluations of the Oversight mod that it explicitly depends on (either of which would seem to me quite silly), then if the paladin's deity's power detects so many stains on a person's soul that it overrides the good he's done and dubs them "evil", that should be more than good enough for the paladin to make his judgment - certainly better than any flawed legal structure created by a human civil government could be.
Actually, if you think about it, in a world such as Faerun, there shouldn't really be any such thing as courts of law in a good society. Do a "detect evil" - did he glow? Throw him in jail. What did he do to deserve it? We don't know, but then, we don't really need to, do we? The criminal's soul shows that this person regularly acts with malicious destructive intent, and we do all acknowledge that -intent-, not outcome, is the real issue, otherwise we wouldn't rightly be saying that metagaming knowledge shouldn't be considered in our quantification. Thus, being a person of regular and intentionally malevolent intent, the person is clearly a threat to both the common good and society in general (there's "lawful" again, if you still insist on thinking about "law" as civil society). The stain is detectable, and the only valid defense should frankly be that his "aura" was somehow magically tampered with - otherwise, we KNOW you're guilty, we KNOW you're predisposed towards evil intent -and- acting on it, and thus we know you're a very real threat to society and the common good. But requiring a court of law to decide someone's guilt when a detect evil is available is actually to hold "reputation" as a deeper construct than "virtue", and that seems a silly assumption to make in this mod.
3) In the argument that a paladin should fall for killing Gethras, it was explicitly argued that a paladin (paraphrased) "cannot commit an evil act even if he believes it to be for the greater good", supported primarily by a shallow interpretation of a cliche about the "road to hell is paved with good intentions". So what if the "good intention" is to ignore the "greater good" for the sake of personal virtue? Why is that good intention exempted from the possibility of leading to hell? Is it simply not possible that being so sanctimonius that one permits a tremendous evil to flourish when it could have been prevented by something like a calculated deception is the real "road to hell"?
The hard fact that performing the Mae'var quest requires "deception, theft and murder", it is argued, is why a Paladin's God would kick him out of the pool for doing it. Well, here's the funny thing. One day, my character actually walked into the very heart of Paladinhood in Athlatka, the Order of the Radiant Heart, and was asked to A) infiltrate an organization using deception. Upon doing so, and B) successfully lying to Reynalt, someone who is certainly a good man (especially in light of the Quest Pack), you must then agree to C) steal something from that very same Radiant Order. Note that the only successful way to complete this quest and rid Athlatka of the Anarg's evil is to agree to "steal" the Chalice for Anarg - before knowing whether or not the Order will in fact give it to you - and in fact in the conversation with the Order it's clearly a close call, they almost don't. And when you return to Anarg with the cup in unmodded BG2, he catches you, Reynalt (a good man) realizes you've betrayed him, and you have to kill him, which under the circumstances (you certainly provoked him to attack you) could be argued as murder. Well, at least Anarg's evil had been ended, and his future victims saved.
When Anarg asked my paladin to get the cup, I said to myself, "Okay, I'll agree to this for now, and I'll go back and ask the Order for the Cup. If they don't give it to me, well, I'm -not- going to actually steal it, that would be unjust, so I guess I won't get to meet Anarg and I'll just have to tell the Order that without the Cup I can't complete their mission of ending Anarg's evil". Similarly, when Mae'var ordered me to work for Edwin, and Edwin assigned me to kill Gethras, my paladin's first thought was "Okay, I'll agree to this for now, and I'll find this Gethras guy and see if he detects as evil. If he isn't, well, I'm not going to actually kill him, that would be unjust, so I guess I'll just have to go back to Renal and tell him I can't complete his quest of ending Mae'var's evil.
But according to some, apparently, the greater purpose of killing Anarg, which involves killing a good man (even if unintentionally), is ultimately all moral (I've certainly never seen anyone suggest that completing it should get a virtue hit), but the greater purpose of bringing down Mae'var is not sufficient to render killing Gethras, an evil man, a moral act. Apparently, it's not the good or evil of the person you're killing that makes the killing just, it's who you're doing it for and why - whose cause you're advancing.
But hey, if the good/evil of a killiing is determined not by the criminality or guilt of the person being killed, but rather who asked you to kill him, doesn't that effectively put "the greater purpose" as the priority in determining if an act is good and evil? If so, how can one then say that the "greater good" is irrelevant? It's basically just leaving the determination of whether or not an act is good and evil to the questgiver - which I think is silly. It's the paladin's intent that should count. The good or evil of the act should have two bearings - one, is there an injustice in the act in and of itself? IMO, since Gethras is deity-certified as evil, no. And then there's the greater purpose. The greater purpose a paladin would have in this quest is not to advance Edwin, but to get evidence on Mae'var so that Mae'var can be disposed of without risking alienating the entire Shadow Thief guild, which at best could cut off access to Imoen and at worst could bring certain STDEATH.
So. Does killing Gethras violate "justice"? No, he's evil, my deity says he is. Does killing Gethras violate "honor"? Again, not in any way I can see, unless my "honor" is dependent on only good people making me aware of evil people's existence. Does it violate the Ultima 7 precepts for a paladin - "truth" or "courage"? Nope. But I'm supposed to risk losing Imoen or leaving Mae'var to continue terrorizing the docks or risking commiting suicide by taking him out, all because I can't consider ending those evils to justify killing a guy who my own God assures me is an evil scumbag?
The notion in the argument that "the paladin cannot commit a questionable act even for the greater good" makes it seem to me that a paladin isn't allowed to think. He can consider no context to his actions, he has to ignore the report of his own deity-given power to detect evil, and he is not permitted to commit a lesser evil like deception or killing a deity-certified-evil Cowled Wizard even if inaction would enable a much greater evil to flourish.
If that's what a paladin's forced to do, I won't be calling any paladins to help save my town anytime soon. I don't want to be saved by someone who's literally incapable of eliminating the greatest of evils unless it's replaced with 100% pure goodness. If my hero is going to act on the notion that acting to replace a great evil with a much lesser evil is an evil act itself, and beyond the pale at that... well, I can't think of a faster way to pave "the road to hell" than to insist on being pure as driven snow in the microscopic sense and wilfully ignorant of the greater consequences of one's actions and inaction.
That's the secular argument. Here's my theological one (note that I myself am agnostic):
The Roman Catholic Church itself, the religion that spurred our very foundation for our concepts of Paladinhood, says that in a moral quandary, a Catholic's moral obligation is to act in the way that they evaluate "does least harm", and the Catholic -does- have to consider the harm that will occur in the instance of inaction. Yes, in the Catholic faith, one is not only allowed but obligated to act in accordance with what they believe is "the greater good" and "least harm" as they perceive it and as informed by the tenets of the Catholic faith. Yes, each individual -is- entrusted and charged with the duty to evaluate the moral quandaries they encounter and seek to do the greatest good/least harm, they are NOT expected to be automatons that are required to follow a strict legalistic code that is supposed to apply in absolutely all situations and regardless of mitigating circumstances. A "Catholic Paladin" would likely be -more- entrusted and duty-bound to make such decisions for the greater good wisely and correctly, not -less-. I'd give examples of how this RCC obligation to work towards "least harm" applies in practice, but the ones coming to mind are politically rather charged (namely, surrounding whether one can vote if they have to choose between two pro-abortion candidates) so I'll just leave it out unless someone wants to specifically argue that they think the Catholic Church would in fact NOT permit a Catholic Paladin to encourage a lesser evil if it would successfully prevent a greater evil from taking place. And if they're willing to cede the point, then I ask why their perception of a Paladin is not willing to accomodate an application that would be consistent with the notions of good and evil that gave us the concept of Paladins in the first place.
Qwinn