A paladin aught to calmly walk up to them and be like "You follow the wrong path dark-one, is there any way I can sway you from your path to distruction?".<(i>

Do you prefer theater over life in fantasy world in your concept of RP? It just doesn't work like that in CF. The scenario of paladin calmly walking by and being like "You follow the wrong path dark-one, is there any way I can sway you from your path to distruction?" just doesn't work for everyone. It is a sort of enforced naivete if you are forced to have an opening chatter standing there and willingly sacrifice the element of surprise, which is an important factor in PK. Sure, doing so is optional, but you probably recognize the naivete in going to say "Bad man!" to someone who is inclined to respond by bashing your skull in. Sure, it would go to theatrics like that when there is some artificial restraint stopping them from attacking you.

If every good guy always attacks the bad guys and vise versa. It kinda destroys any potential for there -ever- being any RP between the two.

Has it ever occurred to you to use tell as roleplaying tool?

Whether it has or not, tell is the tool most people in CF use to roleplay with enemies(and often with allies as well) in CF. As for tell RP-wise, Therans simply have this ability to talk to each other's minds over distances. So, tell is a valid tool for in-character communication(you might have noticed that there are no OOC channels in the game beyond the newbie channel and that everyone is supposed to in character all the time). So, since your paladin can talk to people over distances this way, you can safely spout your propaganda to them and thus RP with the enemies.

Sure, tells don't bring the presence of being there within, but if you are an elf RP:ing with an orc, his presence and line of RP would mean bashing you down and eating your heart, so it might be more pleasant for you to interact with him via tells. If someone kills you and you fail to understand why, you can always ask them why they attacked you.


And as for the unsuccessful running away you mention, having an recall potion and teleport potion in your inventory can be a life saver. Just quaff one after you've fled to get away.