Detect Evil

[CyberSpyder]

Heh. I have a mental image of a redemptionist paladin finally "getting through" to the serial killer, and making him realise that his past deeds do not make him irredeemable, and that he can turn his life around. The redemptionist paladin settles back with a smile as the serial killer leaves the building, knowing that he's set one more soul on the road to atoning for his sins, and eventually bringing his aura into balance, and even to goodness.

... and then a passing paladinbot hacks the poor fool into a fine mince.

-Hyp.

Indeed. I think it's the most reasonable way of handling alignment, from both a moral ambiguity standpoint and also 'realism,' whatever that should mean in this context. The karma of your past actions remains with you, and is what the 'detect' spells see, but does not truly define who you are. It seems more compatible with rendering beings with free will, that are capable of choosing good or evil at any point.

However, the rules only partially support this interpretation.

 

[Hypersmurf]

If the spell shows a propensity for engaging in evil acts, the only reasonable thing to do would be to take the person out of society until they no longer have that propensity. I.e., jail them for being evil, and rehabilitate them until they no longer detect as evil.

Heh.

Someone recently was proposing an amusing variation on the paladinbot.

We have either a Ragnarok-type cosmology, where any evil creature who dies joins the Armies of Darkness in the Great War at the End of the Universe, and and good creature who dies joins the Forces of Light; or an Eternal Reward/Damnation Heaven-and-Hell setup.

The paladinbot is either out to increase the Forces of Light, or to save people's eternal souls.

So if he meets someone good-aligned, he kills them, so they have no opportunity to become evil before they die; and if he meets someone evil, he attempts to redeem them. And if he succeeds, and they turn to good... then he kills them.

-Hyp.

 

[CyberSpyder]

So if he meets someone good-aligned, he kills them, so they have no opportunity to become evil before they die; and if he meets someone evil, he attempts to redeem them. And if he succeeds, and they turn to good... then he kills them.

-Hyp.

Heck, you could get the same thinking with real-world religions, in all honesty. It's a natural consequence of variable morality only existing on one particular plane. A realistic cosmology would be one in which people can become evil or good even after they've joined the forces of Light or Darkness - I bet a lot of people would be pretty upset at the Forces of Light in general for cutting them down in their prime just because they were Good.

'course, that opens up a whole other kettle of fish - the reversibility of alignment. With the way things are often run, you could easily swap out good for evil and vice versa - the primary characterization of each is that Good opposes and tries to wipe out Evil, and Evil opposes and tries to wipe out Good. You can have your alignment changed 'appropriately,' in fact, on the basis of this dichotomy. Thus, we can suppose that if two good kingdoms went to war, one of them would become evil - only one, because although both of them would trend towards evil as they killed good, once one flipped over, the proper 'balance' of good fighting against evil would be re-established, and the other good kingdom would start ascending morally again while the newly-evil kingdom would continue to sink.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Whatever. I changed my detect evil to work only on [evil] creatures to specifically avoid the absurdities that come with the alignment system. Others have pointed out the weirdness that comes into play if you allow it to detect people with evil alignments.

Uh huh. I've heard that one before. It's the "Make the world safe for paladinbots" houserule. It creates more problems than it solves as far as paladinbots go. Now people know that if it registers, it deserves to die, not thought required.

It also handily avoids the problem of having to decide that people "like us" can be evil and all of the thought provoking possibilities that that holds. If you don't want moral complexity in your game, that's one way to reduce it, but don't kid yourself that you're doing something else.

Apply detect evil to real life. If I, Curtis Bennett, had the detect evil spell, and I could use it every day, don't you think I'd work for the FBI sitting on street corners somewhere, or in busy malls, or in subway stations, or airports, casting it randomly. "Ok, officers, that guy over there, in the white shirt. He's evil - arrest him." Clerics with any amount of free time at all would be able to round up every evil person in the world in a short amount of time.

Nonsense. There wouldn't be enough prisons in the world to hold all of the evil people. If you could detect evil, all you would get is a more realistic view of the human condition.

And, since evil people aren't a fixed commodity, you couldn't lock them all up anyway. People are constantly moving towards good or towards evil; the guy who's chaotic neutral today may take the step that makes him chaotic evil tomorrow and the guy who's chaotic evil today may be lawful good a year from now. Locking up everyone who was evil at any given point in time is not the same as making sure every evil person is behind bars.

Anyway, all this talk about detecting evil as if it were some outlandish fantasy notion ignores the fact that it's pretty easy for people who actually believe in evil to figure out what's what. I know what I think is evil. Muslims know what they think is evil. Hindus know what they think is evil. Puritans knew the people they thought to be evil, etc etc. Obviously, there were sometimes mistakes made--in this case, I'm not talking about the "there's nothing wrong with that" mistakes but rather the "he seemed like such a nice man/I'd always assumed that he was like..." kinds of mistakes--but, by and large, I suspect that such knowledge is about as accurate as Detect Evil is in a world full of cursed items, misdirection, Undetectable Alignment, Nondetection, Mind Blank, etc spells.

Historically, what societies have done is attempt to structure their systems so that evil is kept within certain acceptable limits that minimize its destructive influence on society; sometimes societies have gone a step further and attempted to ensure that they are structured such that evil people have proper motivation to act for the benefit of society. That, for instance, is precisely the philosophy behind the division of powers in the US government: the greed, ambition, and pride of various officeholders will lead them to strenuously oppose the encroachment of other branches upon the powers and privileges of their own. And, this supposedly will keep any one branch of government from gathering enough power to rule tyranically. Although (IMO) overly optimistic, Immanuel Kant's claim that, if one could structure the social contract properly, one could build a perfect society populated entirely by devils is a perfect example of this priority.

The idea that any human society could or would outlaw evil is ludicrous. A society that could magically detect evil would do exactly what societies that can see the mundane effects of evil (and make the obvious inferences about its perpetrators) do: make laws to keep evil within acceptable limits and attempt to structure itself so that evil motivations led to the same just and ordered end as good motivations.

 

[shilsen]

Uh huh. I've heard that one before. It's the "Make the world safe for paladinbots" houserule. It creates more problems than it solves as far as paladinbots go. Now people know that if it registers, it deserves to die, not thought required.

It also handily avoids the problem of having to decide that people "like us" can be evil and all of the thought provoking possibilities that that holds. If you don't want moral complexity in your game, that's one way to reduce it, but don't kid yourself that you're doing something else..

Exactly. Using Detect Evil as written, with no changes at all, add a very healthy dose of moral ambiguity to the game. LG undead? Detects as evil. 2nd lvl LN priestess of a LE deity? Detects as evil, and as more evil than that sadistic Ftr9 serial killer. House-ruling the ability as discussed removes all of the questions that such situations raise.

Nonsense. There wouldn't be enough prisons in the world to hold all of the evil people. If you could detect evil, all you would get is a more realistic view of the human condition.

Not to mention a view that you cannot prove to anyone else in a tangible manner that someone without your special ability can understand. Paladin to magistrate: "The defendant is evil." Magistrate to paladin: "Prove it."

The idea that any human society could or would outlaw evil is ludicrous. A society that could magically detect evil would do exactly what societies that can see the mundane effects of evil (and make the obvious inferences about its perpetrators) do: make laws to keep evil within acceptable limits and attempt to structure itself so that evil motivations led to the same just and ordered end as good motivations.

What he said.

 

[DarkMaster]

Indeed. I think it's the most reasonable way of handling alignment, from both a moral ambiguity standpoint and also 'realism,' whatever that should mean in this context. The karma of your past actions remains with you, and is what the 'detect' spells see, but does not truly define who you are. It seems more compatible with rendering beings with free will, that are capable of choosing good or evil at any point.

However, the rules only partially support this interpretation.

In the case of the reedemed serial killer, The moment he reedemed his alignement would have switch to neutral. Your alignement represent your current state of mind not the one you had in the past. Obviously I don't allow people changing their alignement without a good reason.
Oh here is the paladin, I am thinking of giving a donation, can my alignement switch to neutral.

It requires something big to change it. It can be a long process :
Every night before sleeping during a three months trip the rogue talks with the paladin about their vision of the world and he realised that his current way of life is not really the right one (can apply to both here).
Or a very shocking moment, the paladin wife get killed by the son of the king he respect, and in a raging moment he killed him in revenge switching his alignement to chaotic.
But it doesn't matter, when the change of philosophy occurs the alignement switch right away.
So in my view the serial killer would not have been detect by the paladinbot. because his alignement was already neutral or good.

Another error that people frequently do is associate good and evil deeds with a particular religion. Religion only distorts the truth, in the real and fantasy world. In my view there are absolut good deeds and absolut evil deeds unrelated to any religion. I will not go into which religion is the closest to the thruth, because I don't know.

The example of Hypersmurf about the norse mythos is funny but in my campaign this paladin would loses his paladinhood on the spot. Yes you need to convert the souls to increase the celestial army but by killing the people you become evil yourself and will increase the opponents army. I strongly beleive that the gods will prefer to have the soul of a very high level character than 1000s of 1 or 2 level commoner, so stating that this paladin is a martyr ( I sacrifice my soul to increase my gods power) for the cause goes nowhere, because you will increase your opponent strenght by doing so.

 

[DarkMaster]

The idea that any human society could or would outlaw evil is ludicrous. A society that could magically detect evil would do exactly what societies that can see the mundane effects of evil (and make the obvious inferences about its perpetrators) do: make laws to keep evil within acceptable limits and attempt to structure itself so that evil motivations led to the same just and ordered end as good motivations.

In my campaign the Chaotic good character has a much harder time to live in society than the lawful evil character. The CG character will disturb the peace much more than the LE one.

 

[Stalker0]

What if the baker has evil thoughts, none of which he has performed yet, only because of the fear of getting caught. Would that make him Evil?

I go by the old moniker that actions dictate alignment, alignment does not dictate actions.

Just as good characters go out of there way to help people, evil ones go out of there way to harm them. A guy whose too lazy or just doesn't care enough to do either is neutral.

 

[Stalker0]

Heck, you could get the same thinking with real-world religions, in all honesty. It's a natural consequence of variable morality only existing on one particular plane. A realistic cosmology would be one in which people can become evil or good even after they've joined the forces of Light or Darkness - I bet a lot of people would be pretty upset at the Forces of Light in general for cutting them down in their prime just because they were Good.

'course, that opens up a whole other kettle of fish - the reversibility of alignment. With the way things are often run, you could easily swap out good for evil and vice versa - the primary characterization of each is that Good opposes and tries to wipe out Evil, and Evil opposes and tries to wipe out Good. You can have your alignment changed 'appropriately,' in fact, on the basis of this dichotomy. Thus, we can suppose that if two good kingdoms went to war, one of them would become evil - only one, because although both of them would trend towards evil as they killed good, once one flipped over, the proper 'balance' of good fighting against evil would be re-established, and the other good kingdom would start ascending morally again while the newly-evil kingdom would continue to sink.

Sounds like you've been reading spawn

 

[DarkMaster]

I go by the old moniker that actions dictate alignment, alignment does not dictate actions.

Just as good characters go out of there way to help people, evil ones go out of there way to harm them. A guy whose too lazy or just doesn't care enough to do either is neutral.

I actually do the opposite, everything is in the mind, actions are just a reflection of your mind. I can pretend to do help people to get the good grace of a king, but my plan is that once he names me baron, my people will suffer so much, and I will become so rich on their back. If you look at my action only now I am a good character, but if you look at my mind it is clear that I am evil.