1. How does anybody know anybody is a Paladin when they first meet them?
The wearing of the symbols and signs of the religion and the paladin's order, which would be blasphemy (not to mention spiritually dangerous) and illegal for others. Paladins probably take quite a dim view of others displaying their heraldry. While there would be those who would impersonate paladins, it's hardly something that's going to be happening on a daily, monthly, or even yearly basis. Nobody would start out assuming that an individual declaring themselves a paladin would be a liar.
Unless, somehow, a DM declared that in his/her milieu paladin impersonation happened so often that nobody believed it when someone declared they were one. Playing a paladin in that version of an Eberron (or any other) milieu would be a life sucktaculartity.
Rainofsteel, you miss the point. No matter whonclaims to be able to detect evil, there is no proof.
The testimony itself is proof. Paladins are known to be able to detect evil. They are known to lose their powers if they stray from their appointed task. Therefore, if a paladin says it, it is proof.
Are you thinking Eberron nations have USA court systems driven by our rules of evidence? They don't as far as I know. (Ok, I know, I just jinxed it for myself, someone will come along and quote something that says just that.)
It is just one divine casters word against another.
The example did not mention a second character, but paladin's at 1st level can detect evil and not be a spell caster, so what being a spell caster has to do with it is unknown.
It is the fact of the testimony being a paladin's that makes it certain evidence except... let me look back up-topic for the exceptions I listed, yes,
they are there... those listed exceptions.
if one paladin says "he is evil" and another says "he is not", who do you believe?
Explain how this could happen.
Is the DM lying to one of two players?
Is one or both an NPC and the DM is having them report different information based on what?
Which one is wrong? Both? Neither? Did both detect evil abilities malfunction?
There was nothing stated about the target being cloaked against alignment detection, but if the target was cloaked, both paladins should still have received the same information, whatever it was.
If two paladins are saying opposite things, you know one has fallen, isn't a paladin, or is afflicted with some malady, curse, or powers malfunction.
At
that point the "officials" hearing the conflicting testimony refer the matter to higher authorities. The religious leaders then haul out their more powerful detect spells, spells for contacting higher powers, etc. They study what happened and find out which one was wrong or lying and why.
If, in a particular DM's milieu, this wasn't possible, I would throw up my hands in disgust. Of course the leaders could figure it out unless the gods themselves were obscuring the matter. I cannot see some petty incident like this being the crux of a battle between the gods, but whatever people like.
The DM presenting this case has best have a fabulous explanation for what happened otherwise he or she will look stupendously silly.
If one cleric says "that cleric is evil" but five of that guys colleagues say "no he isn't"...
That is an entirely different case that has nothing to do with what I was talking about.
To accommodate, though, a superior comes along and starts casting:
Discern Lies :: d20srd.org
Since I think I may need to specifically emphasize it,
in my personal opinion, as I already noted further up-topic, religions will police their own using their powers on a regular basis. There will specialist ritual spells cast in multi-hour ceremonies with mandatory participation to get rid of any magical cloaking effects. Anyone not of the religion is going to be revealed. Again, only if the gods are interfering, or if artifacts are involved, will they get inconsistent or unreliable results.
There might be court appointed detect evil guys... But even they could be nobbled.
Any non-paladin trusted to cast detection spells in pursuit of legal matters would have to come from a religion with Lawful Good or Lawful Neutral alignment requirements, and that religion would have to be one that emphasized some or all of law, order, honesty, and justice as primary tenants. (Unless the nation was Evil or Chaotic, in which case justice isn't involved. Anything called justice under a nation like that would be a parody of the term. There are plenty of such cases on Earth through history.)
If any clerics were "nobbled", as clerics are certainly subject to, they would then be subject to divine retaliation in the form of powers loss, and be subject to alignment change, and an alignment change will be noticed eventually, one way, or another.
Any church/religion that was not set up to police its own in regard to such matters would, of course, be subject to easy infiltration and destruction.
Any church/religion that survived for long would, perforce, be policing its own.
In a world of detect evil there will be no less need to produce *the evidence*. Independently corroborated.
I didn't get all the books, I admit. The feeling of Eberron is a combination of Late Medieval and Victorian, at least to me, from what I have read.
Ok, ok, now I'll just come out and ask. Will you cite and quote a line or two stating that Eberron's courts function using USA rules of evidence? The feel I get is very 17th/18th Century, especially European, and that was an entirely different animal evidence rules-wise.
In a world with magic in it from the beginning, and everyone knows it, those matters will be directly integrated into court systems.
Magic isn't some mysterious thing in Eberron, it is one of the great drivers of industry. Man on the Streets of Sharn: "Magic, you say? Detect Evil, Detect Lies? Yes, I've heard of them in a hundred stories since I was a child. What of it?"
Who ensures that the paladins remain untainted?
I covered that above.
Not exactly. See, there is an evil force in the Silver Flame font, [...] It's not like Cardinal Krozen is lying when he says "god told him to do X", he's just wrong -- it's actually a demon.
This falls under the divine interference exception, which I already agreed could be successful*. It had better be one the demon princes, not some ordinary demon.
* At least until the deception was discovered by the players who found omens and prophecies referring to the matter and arrived just in the nick of time.
This level of corruption simply cannot be that commonplace and/or sucessful, or there would be no good religions left.
The powers of good should also be able to do the same to evil churches, too.
