Detect Evil Question?

[Caliber]

I have two questions.

1) Would Detect Evil pick up a person of Evil Alignment? I had thought no, but I can no longer locate the passage saying so. I thought Detect Evil would only pick up the more ... "concentrated" ... Evil of say, Demons, Devils, or high level Evil Clerics.

2) A Vrock, for example, always registers as Overwhelming Evil if my understanding of Detect Evil is correct. This means that at high levels, Detect Evil simply becomes a question of is there Evil, yes or no? Anything faced at high levels would be Overwhleming after all.

Has anyone ever thought of adding in a scalability element into the Detect line, so that it took your level into account? Details?

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

1. Yes. It detects even NE commoner 1s.
In 2e, Detect Evil only worked on Really EVIL DUDES (TM) or people who immediately intended evil action--and it just detected presence or absence of evil not it's strength. In 3e, Detect Evil detects anything with an evil alignment or subtype and registers strengths from lingering to overwhelming.

2. Not so. A 20th level Evil Wizard only has an evil strength of HD/5 and is consequently detected as "Moderate Evil." The same is true of a 20 HD evil Red Dragon. So, even at higher levels, the PCs will regularly be facing things that radiate weak, moderate, strong, and overwhelming evil.

This also means that detect evil is not the smite-o-meter that some people seem to think it is. A couple of years ago, there was a Paladins of the board thread that I played in in the In Character forum. My character was 12th level IIRC, and parleyed with a group of evil soldiers. When he noticed that the young standardbearer radiated moderate evil, he paused for a moment because he knew that moderate evil would be unusual in a young common soldier--it was one of his first clues that the standardbearer was not who he seemed to be. (As it happened, he turned out to be a very powerful evil wizard).

Detect Evil has plenty of scalability under the rules. You just need to use all of them.

 

[Dr. Zoom]

1) Would Detect Evil pick up a person of Evil Alignment? I had thought no, but I can no longer locate the passage saying so. I thought Detect Evil would only pick up the more ... "concentrated" ... Evil of say, Demons, Devils, or high level Evil Clerics.

A person of evil alignment is evil. Detect Evil would detect that person as evil. Most would have only a faint or moderate aura, though.

2) A Vrock, for example, always registers as Overwhelming Evil if my understanding of Detect Evil is correct.

A vrock is an evil outsider with 8 HD, so it would have a strong aura of evil, not overwhelming.

Has anyone ever thought of adding in a scalability element into the Detect line, so that it took your level into account? Details?

Your level comes into play if you are good and detect an overwhelming aura. If the source of that aura has twice your HD, you are stunned for 1 round.