Detect Evil and You

[bipolar bear]

what if detect evil was a skill as opposed to a feat? the higher level paladin the better you are at finding the bad guy? other wise paladins wouldn't live long.

[Phantom Lamb]

Concentration is tiring. One thing you have to accept is that there are other people in the world that are simply not represented by PCs and NPCs placed in front of you. The trade roads have foot traffic - probably a lot. Cities and towns are highly populated. If you stared into the souls of everyone who passed by, you'd get tired pretty quickly.

Be neat to see like a "fatigue" bar introduced for things like this that require concentration.

[Dispater]

I think the RP argument made was nobody could handle the strain of concentration for an entire day. That seems a pretty solid argument to me.

[Laurk]

The "valid" reason would be because this isn't PnP. D&D was never ment for persistant worlds where no one dies, NPCs are largley a non-factor save for on a limited scale during DM events, and you dont have swarming crowds of commoners to confuse the Paladin, or give the baddy a chance to melt into the crowd.

You're dealing with the same PCs for great lengths of time. Its almost like survivor where the same 20 people are on an island together who all have to develop in close proximity with one another. If D&D were real, villians would come and go, live and die. Here, every villian is exposed to your Paladin "before" they have the means to mask their alignment. Unlike PnP where a villian you've never seen or heard of might arrive on the scene as a level 20 with persistant alignment masking gear. Because of this forced proximity (if we don't want to alienate our limited player base by making certain peeps hide out in the backwoods until they are high level), it is incumbant that we, as a server divert from certain PnP features, much in the way we have implimented PrC classes that don't exist in PnP, in order to make this platform more user friendly and thus spur a healthy populations of both heros and villians to mash against one another.

Detect Evil was designed for a group of 4-6 players in a table top game where it would primarily be used on NPCs. DMs would be able to impliment things to protect evil PCs if doing so served the narritive of their game. You don't get that kind of control in a PW.

If I had my way, Detect evil would be rolled into a Paladin's sense motive and if the check succeeded, would give the Paladin knowledge of a PC's evil algnment (baring a non-detection spell). Bluff would just be considered to include things that a person might use to mask alignment, such as planar motes. In DM events or when DMs allowed, the ability would function normally... for the sake of PW server mechanics, I believe non-detection should be far easier to establish, and being able to pump your bluff skill to accomplish this would be a great way to do it.

To me, doing this as a skill is not only more reasonable to our platform as a PW, its more interesting and immersing as well. I like the idea that "Detect Evil" represents a Paladin's super-natural intuition... however I also like the idea that some villians are so crafty, and so charismatic that they can actually fool even the keen intuitive senses of a Paladin. Imagine this would even open up a whole new "class" of Paladin inside of a church's heirarchy. The Inquisitor who trains his "sense motive" to be unfailing. A paladin who chooses to pump this skill as high as possible with feats, wisdom & items. Only the most crafty of villians have even a remote chance of masking the truth from him. Sure he trades some combat ability, but he becomes a particular nitch within the church. Variety is the spice of life.

[Kitsunestume]

What if the fatigue or uses per day was modified by Concentration modifier? Such as number of uses or duration

[Delexos]

Detect Evil requiring Concentration and it being useable at will are two separate arguments. Again. I still haven't seen a valid RP reason why a paladin couldn't stand around a campfire and detect evil. All I see is the argument "It makes life hard for my evil character." Which is the purpose of a paladin.

And, I've been asked if I had an RP reason to cast See the Unseen, before. My response: Because I want to see invisible people.

Yes. It should require Concentration and should be set up similar to how Tracking works.

That's because there really ISN'T a valid RP reason why Paladins can't stand around a campfire detecting Evil other than those pointed out above, such as the natural but unrepresented numbers of travellers/merchants/vagabonds/wanderes/citizens etc.

"JUST LIKE THERE ISN'T A VALID RP REASON WHY I CAN'T TYPE EVERYTHING MY CHARACTERS SAY IN CAPS, AFTER ALL IT'S JUST TEXT." ~He said in a quiet voice, almost sounding like a whisper~

O.k so that might not be the best example to try and draw on, however, even I instantly started to feel offended even whilst I was typing that, internet etiquette being what it is, all block capitals is repulsive to me and I have been trained by the online community to immediately see block caps as a shout and therefore inappropriate.

To put this into context then so as not to derail this thread to discuss the use of caps, in a relatively low population game a measure of ooc etiquette isn't too much to politely ask for is it? In the comparison between detect evil and see the unseen, I'm not sure exactly how many characters have potentially been ostracised from role play just because they were invisible.

Ignus, my own main warlock often uses ret invis to get around, often resulting in him still being invisible by the time he gets close to groups to throw his rpees at, sure enough it has often had other characters warning/complaining or simply remarking that it isn't cool to wander up invis, but Iggy usually calms the situation by harking on about how bloody dangerous it is on the roads and how, if they just chill for a minute, the incantation will wear off. (Thankfully it's a shortish timer) Ignus then takes some flak which he rides like the silver tongued git that he is and typically comes away no worse for the encounter, often the act of walking up invis (but noisy as all hell because he isn't trying to be quiet in the first place) creates something of a hook to start conversations rolling.

By comparison walking up and being detected as evil instantly hits the brakes, there is no talking your way out of that, just as one would expect. You have done bad bad things and it shows on your soul, Instantly rp grinds to a halt and takes on a more aggressive tone and good luck to the detected person if they ever plan to try and get rp flowing with anyone who is stood nearby again in the future because you just got busted.

So yes, Paladins should be allowed to detect evil, of course they should, its part and parcel of who they are. Just try and keep in mind that it is often hard even at the best of times to find decent sized groups to roleplay with, even harder still when everyone black lists you.

[wangxiuming]

Gotta agree with Laurk. Detect Evil is a really powerful ability in a persistent world setting, akin to a player taking a look at another person's character sheet and then being able to use that information in character. And that just shouldn't be something done willy nilly.

[Raksha]

Chuck realism, adherence to PnP, and everything else. Ask: what makes the server most fun to play on?

Or, another way, what facilitates the best telling of stories?

This is my only contribution to the thread.

[Shinshan]

Detect evil spam is the Bigsby's of RP.

[cmosier]

I don't think I clarified some things very well, regardless, I'm going to skip to agreeing to disagree. You guys are still great. See you in game. :-)

[thaelis]

I would much prefer that it was a limited ability which focused on 1 target. That way a Paladin would only really use it when his suspicions were arroused, or he had reason to make double sure.

That seems pretty reasonable. It could still be unlimited use so as to keep it true to Pnp.

It would also be cool if there was some kind of system message similar to fighting defensively gives like "<Paladin> stares piercingly at <Mr X> for some time."

Then their actions might have some negative consequences if they arbitrarily used the ability on Good/Neutral aligned characters, who would be like "Hey, stop detecting me for evil you ass!"

"What?! I totally wasn't!"

"Then why were you staring at me like that!" *cleavage bursting out of armour*

"I..." *loses Paladin status*

EDIT: I can't help but agree with cmosier though, Paladins are supposed to be walking evil detectors. I think what people are complaining about here is them being Metagaming evil detectors, which is completely unrelated to the Detect evil ability, and will happen no matter how much you nerf the ability. They would just go away, rest, come back, Detect, rest rinse repeat.