pawsplay
Hero
You are not even being consistent. You said being able to tell 6HD was a new and bad thing. And yet when I point out that you could already tell 11HD you sidestep that this is exactly the same problem.
I wasn't trying to be evasive. I just thought it was obvious that if being able to detect HD thresholds was not the main point of detect evil, then the less obvious breakpoints there were, the better.
I did not question whether 11HD should warrant "an arua" , I questioned why it is terrible for a 6HD evil person to have a notable different aura than a 5HD person (as you complained about) and yet you seem to accept with no qualms whatsoever that an 11HD person has a notably different aura than a 10 HD person.
My objection was that the aura of a 4 HD person would be imperceptible, not that it would simply be weaker.
Here is your quote:"now they do" is false. The only thing that has changed is the threshold has moved from 11 to 6.
Why under 3.5 does an 11HD rogue who is life long petty thief warrant a stronger aura than a 4 HD guy who eats beans out of Aunt Janie's skull?
By 11th level, there's no telling what a character has done. Even if a character has been a squeaky clean paladin up to that 11th evil, if he suddently turns evil, it's probably significant. Obviously, no system is perfect. There really is not a good way to measure, ounce by ounce, how much evil someone has done. Simply being a petty thief does not lead inexorably to an evil alignment. He must have some capacity for Evil.
If the 11th level evil thief and the 4th level serial killer both generate an aura, at least, that's a better result than the thief being observably evil and the serial killer not.
Imgine prefacing the alignment descriptions with this: "In D&D, killing and eating humans is not considered especially evil, metaphysically, although it can certainly contribute to a person's alignment. Evil is more of a measure of personal power, filtered through an alignment. Hence, an 11th level thief who ruthlessly kills might have an aura that shows up as evil, as might a ruthless 11th level tyrant, but a barber who kills people and cooks them into meat pies, selling them to unsuspecting customers, doesn't have a strong aura of evil, despite having an evil alignment."
Again, you are forcing additional elements into the mechanic that are not there. Under 3.5 Detect Evil did nothing but look at is it evil [yes/no] and how many HD does it have.
Describe how I am forcing additional elements into the mechanic. What does that mean, exactly? I am fairly comfortable with Detect Evil detetcing evil (yes/no) and how many HD it has.
Perhaps you are saying that under the 3X alignment system that anyone evil would eat beans out of Aunt Janie's skull and if you won't do that you don't qualify as evil. If you are imposing this interpretation on the system then I'd say you are out of step with the common interpretation. Which is fine, but it is going to fall to you to deal with adjustments to the system that reflect your other changes.
Perhaps I am claiming that that a bowl is a spoon. Perhaps you are claiming that all halflings are actually cultists of Demogorgon. No, I am not claiming that.
But detect evil has *never* detected "how evil are you", it has always detected "how powerful are you". Show me the SRD or 3X quote that describes how eating beans out of Aunt Janie's skull would change the result of detect evil.
You would be detectable. As evil.
It is the same black and white for more powerful opponents. For weaker opponents it adds more shades of gray. Last time I checked, more shades of gray was more shades of gray.
All it really says is that really bad evil has lots of hit dice. Lesser evil is... not that evil. Doesn't sound very gray to me. Demons = bad, shopkeepers = who knows. Certainly, making the alignment system more confusing and less intuitive does remove some level of moral clarity. Adding under Lawful Good that LG characters endorse slavery and regularly engage in its practice would also have this result, while sharing the same problem of making it unclear what Good or Evil actually means.
But that does not mean more shades of gray.
Knowing that a shopkeeper is definitely Evil, but not knowing if he has done anything wrong or criminal, is very gray, and any gains you make from making the shopkeeper undetectable must be balanced against the shades of gray you lose. Making EVERYONE who detects as evil some kind of villain, antihero, or monster is not shades of gray, that's melodrama.
He said "It's for finding hidden outsiders, detecting the presence of nightmarish monsters, or rooting out sinister cultists imbued with the power of Evil." Note that last part "imbued with the power of Evil.". If your whole "cult" is made up of rogues and sorcerers less than 5HD, then it is fair to say that they are not "imbued with the power of Evil."
According to you, being 11th level and evil will imbue you with the power of evil. What's the difference?
As to the 1st level paladin, quite simply: Why not? It still finds evil undead, and evil clerics. But the paladin must learn how to deal with some of the more challenging questions of morality before his god start giving him answers for free when it comes to rogues and wizards.
Bottom line is, if you want to say you are house-ruling because in your campaign things like whether or not you eat beans out of aunt Janie's brain are part of the detect evil equation, then fine. I see no reason for anyone to argue. But if you are going to present a case that this is at odds with prior views you will need to present a case that relies on nothing more than [yes/no] evil and HD, because that is what 3.5 had.
No, I don't. The 3.5 version functions well, and hence I do not need to rely on anything more than it relied on. I like the "actively evil intent" clause, though. In my view the Pathfinder version is not as well-designed a spell as the 3.5 version.
3.5 is superior in another way; "dim" auras. Lingering auras had this strength, which was detectable. Maybe you don't like lingering auras. In that case, why not level a low-HD creature have a dim, detectable aura?
Clearly, 3.5 allowed detect evil to detect very faint auras. If the Pathfinder version is based on the same basic alignment premises, and the only difference is that low HD creatures have auras weaker than Faint, then I would like to know why the Pathfinder version is not able to detect dim auras.
If you remove lingering auras and add the active intent to cause evil clause, the spells function in basically the same way. Except the Pathfinder version says weaker evil creatures have no auras. Not even fiendish dire rats.