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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 1552528" data-attributes="member: 5171">Heh. Ditto.1) Cool.  Always good to get another perspective.2) Aha.  Difference in description.  Based on what the player said, I was imagining an ambush by the ninjae. I'm not sure how this happened, though.  Did the caravan see that they were going to be attacked and then set up defenses, or did they try to lure these guys in and then ambush them?  In any case, this is a lot more gray than "our caravan got ambushed", which is how I read the earlier post. 3) Aha again.  Sneaking in for food is definitely different.  I was imagining arrows and such.  If an evil creature is part of a unit that is attacking you, I think that the paladin is fine.  This, again, muddies the waters.  Definitely different. 4) Establishing code with player == Excellent.  5) Non-permanent ability loss == Excellent.  I'd imagined the "Now you're a fighter, best of luck to you" approach.  This is, again, very different.6) One part I will quote:See, in my mind, that's a difference that you're free to put in, but you should make it clear that such a difference is, well, different.  I agree that, by the core rules, the fact that a low-level cleric of an evil deity (say, the god of death, and the cleric tries to help lead souls to the afterlife and is against both undead and resurrection, and also against going to great lengths to subdue rather than kill -- True Neutral, maybe) and a mid-level evil fighter (who is a murderer, a thief, a devil-worshipper, and so forth, and who would kick a puppy if it got in his way) both detect as "Minor Evil".  I would prefer that Detect Evil have two facets -- one for "degree of evilness" and one for "amount of evil magical energy present", so that the neutral cleric of the evil god would have a ton of evil magical energy around him, but not the "Aha, this guy kicks puppies" aura of person evilness himself.Unfortunately, by the game rules, the paladin's character had no way of knowing that this guy wasn't a murdering baby-killer.  However, the new information about the situation puts it in a different light, so the evil guy is, while attempting to steal, not doing his evil right there on the spot, and wasn't attacking.  That's certainly a case where investigation, rather than smiting, might be in order.If he's stealing food in order to have more for himself, because food is running low I'd classify it as borderline, personally.  But if he's also cruel in addition to his pettiness (ie, he doesn't feel guilty about stealing the food -- he's thinking, "Stupid idiots -- I deserve this, because they're too dumb to catch me!"), then I'd bump him into evil.  That's a judgment call, though. Well, in 3E, it's listed variously as being based on history, intent, and personality in some combination.  Thus, a person who did evil things in the past and has a personality that predisposes him to do evil things might detect as evil even if he isn't actively looking to do something evil.  It kind of sets up two kinds of evil people -- the people who I think of as assassins, and the people who I think of as time bombs.  Assassins (or evil clerics, or wizards who want to be liches) are going to go out and do some evil because they want to.  They plan it, they're happy about it, they're up and ready for some evil, baby.  The Time Bombs, though, are people with anger management issues.  They don't really plan, they don't think of themselves as evil, they just go crazy when something gets in their way.  Your usual psychotic barbarian or antisocial rogue.  They detect as evil despite not having the intent to do evil, because they have a history of doing evil and a willingness to do evil.If that ninja-dude had history and willingness but not intent, maybe that should have pinged something different with the paladin by your house rules?  Maybe you want to differentiate between time bombs and assassins?Dunno.  Tricky all around.</blockquote>

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