Detect evil

[ZubMessiah]

Having recently created a paladin I've found detect evil to be troublesome, first of all I would like to have it made silent so that people won't go "Hey, stop trying to detect if I'm evil, can't you trust me?" when it's done.
Secondly, I'd like it to come in two forms, one targeted for focused detecting and one area of effect, that way you could just look at a crowd and use it once instead of casting it a gazillion times to figure out if there's at least one bad guy in the area.

That's my two cents for this time.

[Scourn]

Having recently created a paladin I've found detect evil to be troublesome, first of all I would like to have it made silent so that people won't go "Hey, stop trying to detect if I'm evil, can't you trust me?" when it's done.


Secondly, I'd like it to come in two forms, one targeted for focused detecting and one area of effect, that way you could just look at a crowd and use it once instead of casting it a gazillion times to figure out if there's at least one bad guy in the area.

That's my two cents for this time.

The second part a paladin should never be doing. You should have a damn good reason to be useing it in the first place. Not scan a area and go "evil" hunting.

[Krya Flacongrace]

Detect Evil is a spell, and therefore subjected to a spellcraft check... Those without spellcraft should not pick it up... but then again...

Detect Evil should not realy be used in such a maner, your a pally and first need a good reason to detect evil...

then you need to support that with proof..

Just because someone is evil does not give a person lisence to kill/attack or harm the person... You need a justification, act within the law and be dam right possitive in your action

Your only detecting a fient trace of corruption within a subjects heart after all and that in its self opens a whole new can of worms.

Now a Blackgruard can cast detect good, at whim.. but rearly do for obvious reasons

[Dune]

I think that the ability detect evil should be more an abilitie rather then a spell - therefore, when they detect evil nobody knows you have just done it.
In other words, I thought the abilitie shouldn't be noticed when done?

[ZubMessiah]

If you crazy kids wouldn't be so quick to judge, there are more reasons than attacking to detect evil.
Red Wizards are known to not be good, I detect them to check whether they can (potentionally) be relied on.
I also detect drows, tieflings, half-orcs, rogues, people who act strange, etc etc.

I don't go around doing this to see who to smite, I go around doing this to see who to RP with, and how.

Back to the point, whether or not it counts as spell, and whether or not it has verbal/somatic or even focus components (items, not a person to click on) it should still be area of effect so that you don't have to cast it 5 times to sense one guy being a 20th level cleric of beshaba, which would be enough evil that even an 8 wisdom 8 int barbarian would recognize it.

Changing it as I suggest may or may not be consistent with pen and paper D&D, but in pen and paper D&D you usually have the metagame of knowing who the evil guy is already, and even then the DM usually won't make the guy attack you for casting a spell, or saying a chant while holding up that Waukeen coin and waving your hand in front of yourself. Unless they're REALLY cruel. >:[

[Scourn]

If you crazy kids wouldn't be so quick to judge, there are more reasons than attacking to detect evil.
Red Wizards are known to not be good, I detect them to check whether they can (potentionally) be relied on.
I also detect drows, tieflings, half-orcs, rogues, people who act strange, etc etc.

I don't go around doing this to see who to smite, I go around doing this to see who to RP with, and how.

And again, you shouldnt be doing this. Yes, Red Wizard are not known for cuddling teddy bears and saveing the rain forest, but just because they are in a group doesent give it a good enough reason to use the ability, and that goes for races. A human or elf could be a hundred times more evil then a rogue or half orc.

[Vekin]

Paladins should need a good reason for using detect evil...just checking people out is not good enough reason IMHO.

[Raksha]

This is a bit of a contentious point, I think, just because there's so much OOC hostility towards Detect Evil in the first place. The cleric version is definitely a spell, subject to spellcraft, etc., et. al. However, the paladin's entry just says "able to use Detect Evil as the spell at will". So what does that mean? The verb "cast" is nowhere involved, so it's usually interpreted as being a passive ability that's more or less always active -- hence, no Spellcraft possible.

The thing is that the current incarnation of Detect Evil declares openly what it is, and everyone knows it even if they're completely untrained in Spellcraft. Most people play along the lines that if it shows up in the dialogue box, they know what it is -- and let the snarliness ensue.

I feel that the current incarnation is good, because the public notification does discourage Detect Evil spam, and apparently the PW community as a whole has decided that that's A Bad Thing, though the original version of paladin oaths almost makes it mandatory (dumb, dumb, dumb). It would be nice if people displayed just a trace less instant ability to detect it, but... well, that's a minor gripe, and there's an argument that they should be able to.

[Dark presence]

Detect evil is a spell like ability, and going by the book, it has no verbal somatic, or material components, yet using a spell like ability also provokes attacks of opportunity, and it can be interrupted. So... that ultimately leaves it to interpretation.

Detect evil IS supposed to be a wide area spell, however. But it is supposed to detect a hell of a lot more than just people. Magic and most of all, residual auras are also supposed to be detectable! How confusing that must be if some paladin is standing in a place where a duke of hell just was ten minutes go, or perhaps more likely, a very powerful evil cleric. He'd see evil everywhere around him because of how strong those evil auras would be!

However the ultimate problem with detect evil is this: Detect evil does not tell you a damn thing about the person. It doesn't tell you whether they limit their evil acts to goblins and gnolls or to humans and elves. It doesn't tell you if they are a murderer, a rapist, a torturer, a Banite, or anything else about why they are evil. It doesn't tell you when their last evil act was. It doesn't tell you if they are trying to repent! It doesn't tell you if they are cursed to give off an evil aura, say by some evil magic or having their alignment changed by magic. It definitely does not tell you whether they are trustworthy or not. Evil people can be every bit as trustworthy as good/neutral people! Even moreso (LE vs. CG/N?).

[Rafanshki]

I think that detect evil is such an annoying ability, in my opinion the world isn't just black and white like that, you shouldn't be able to just look at somebody and see their motives (or at least a general portrayal of them)

[Machiavelli]

I know the solution! Make Paladins application only

Back on topic; Forgetting about proper p&p usage... the way the ability's currently implemented isn't too bad. This is a PW, not a sit-down session; if people go around spamming AoE detect evils then there may be paladins randomly unmasking evildoers all over the place. Imagine someone who has an evil character, and has worked hard, possibly for some time, to conceal this and move toward their objectives while managing to deceive people along the way; this is a work of art, and getting revealed by someone randomly detecting evil is like a tagger spraying over the top of it. People should really be using this ability with a great deal of restraint IMO, but that's more a comment on the nature of PWs rather than on the ability or Paladins.

[Dune]

Good point, but I'm still with Raksha.
I think the paladin ability should be passive and that one he used 'Detect Evil' then he and himself only knows he has used it.

[ZubMessiah]

Have you people never roleplayed a paladin? Are you always the ones being spammed with DE?

Ps to Mac: I got my paladin through application! Woo!
Ds.
Ps2 to Mac: Just becuase I know someone is evil doesn't mean I can go around attacking them like anything, it's my duty as a paladin to protect people and follow the teachings of my patron deity. No paladins are allowed to detect and smite unless there is something else going on, that is something DMs deck Lawfulness and sometimes even Goodness for.

[Machiavelli]

Ps2 to Mac: Just becuase I know someone is evil doesn't mean I can go around attacking them like anything, it's my duty as a paladin to protect people and follow the teachings of my patron deity. No paladins are allowed to detect and smite unless there is something else going on, that is something DMs deck Lawfulness and sometimes even Goodness for.

I didn't say 'attack', I said 'reveal'. That alone can be enough to ruin alot of RP work put into a character by someone, possibly over a period of months. An evil character that becomes known as evil has their options severely limited, and might lose all sorts of things they've been working toward (I'm not in this category, just to make it clear this isn't some personal concern). All I'm saying is that the fact that somone is playing a rogue, or maybe looks a bit shifty, or is cock-eyed, or something, might be a good enough reason to detect evil on them in a tabletop game, but if people do this in a PW then it will become virtually impossible for evil characters to go undetected (and thus more boring for the rest of us). It's only a thought, but I reckon it'd be nice if people only used the ability if they already had some actual evidence of wrongdoing.

[Dark presence]

I think Machiavelli is getting at the big point here. Evil is often viewed in very screwy terms on PWs. Really I've heard all sorts of things in the past about evil characters. People like to defame evil characters because its easy, but it can get just absurd.

I've seen characters who have never betrayed anyone, yet people 'warn' others not to trust that person, just because they are evil, or even for no reason at all. I've even seen people lie about evil characters, telling everyone how they murdered some unknown person (literally no body, evidence, or name even because it never actually happened), and people just believe it because the person is evil.

And of course the opposite is true as well. If a paladin actually did murder someone and someone starts talking about it, pointing to evidence and such, people will refuse to believe it, especially if the whistleblower happens to be evil. Or they will just assume it was completely justified and shrug it off. And the way people just react when they hear someone is 'good' or that a paladin says they aren't 'evil', and just all of the sudden, that person is perfectly okay to hang with.

Honestly, its absurd when its not supposed to be a black and white thing. Good and evil aren't supposed to tell you anything about a person's personality or motives. They definitely tell you nothing about a person's capability to do good or evil, because everyone has exactly the same capability to do both or neither.