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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 1555363" data-attributes="member: 5171">Good points.  And yes, if one accepts that you can be evil without being smite-worthy, then the paladin can't just smite away on a faint-evil-aura person he meets in the woods.  I'm still not sure I accept that, because, by the book, it still seems pretty cut and dried to me.  But since I run a game that (in my mind) alters the rules to provide more shades of gray, I'm on relatively shakey ground arguing with you about it.Very true.  This raises a slightly different question than was originally asked: When a paladin knows that somebody merits punishment, but is restricted by his circumstances to either a punishment that is too severe or a punishment that is too weak (or no punishment at all), which way should the paladin go?  In this case, I aim for "Too weak, or none at all if required".  I don't believe that a paladin should kill unless it is merited, and if it's a case of "I can't give him fifty lashes out here in the woods and then arrest him and bring him twenty miles back to town.  I have to either let him go or kill him," then the paladin should let him go -- unless the paladin has been given leave to execute justice by his church or the government.Where we differ, I suspect, is not in that approach, but in the approach of who gets pinged with the evil aura. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I don't, either.  But I think Iago merits a good smiting, despite the fact that most of his action is mental rather than physical (um, maybe all of it -- been awhile since I saw it, and hunting through the whole play to check whether Iago knifes anyone or just convinces people to knife each other is beyond my abilities at the moment).  I don't think "Only causing mental harm" should make one not-liable-for-smiting.Odd.  The insurance-plot sounds like a classic villain thing to me.  He's not trying to destroy the kingdom, no, but it'd be a good d20 Modern adventure.I guess I'm approaching it from the opposite end.  If the smite works on somebody, it's because the paladin's deity wants it to work on somebody.  Thus, in my mind, anybody who can be smoted should be someone who is evil enough to be worthy of being smoted. Maybe this is just Tacky's personal faithfulness getting in the way, but the idea that Heironeous would let his smite work against someone who, in Big-H's mind, didn't deserve it, seems off.  He doesn't let it work on non-evil people.  Why would he let it work on a person who shouldn't get smitten?  (Okay, at some point I'll decide whether to use smoted or smitten -- but smitten sounds so lovey-dovey.)I really see evil as the exception, rather than the rule -- the ordinary person shouldn't be have enough evil to be evil.  That, in my mind, weakens the nature of evil in D&D.  Now, it's more or less what I do, because I like shades of gray.  But it wasn't my original reading.Because in my mind, you don't get the evil alignment unless, in the eyes of the gods, you are a truly evil person -- not a neutral person with nasty tendencies.  I assume that the gods are intimately involved in such judgments, since pretty much all alignment-based magic comes from the divine end of things.  That's my thought, anyway.  What, in your mind, causes somebody to radiate an evil aura?  Why does a person of sufficient selfishness radiate the same aura as a weak undead or minor demon?  Wow. Musta been playing by a house rule.  I could've sworn that it was "evil intent" -- you only detect evil if they're a demon/devil, or if they're in the process of planning or doing something evil.  Must've remembered that wrong.Point -- but he can continue to move forward while still detecting, right?  Unless I'm remembering the requirements wrong, he's gonna see these people from a ways away, and if he just does single-moves forward and spends a standard action to maintain concentration, he's not losing that much time.You and me both. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Ah, see, in my mind, the important thing was the aura.  I was imagining two people in armor, two knights, so there's no strength-weakness thing, which would ordinarily get the paladin on the side of the weaker party.  If they're both wearing plain armor, and one of them detects as evil and the other one doesn't, should the paladin assist the one who does not detect as evil?  And then they both shout "Aid me, this other guy is a wanted criminal!"  Or one guy stops and the other guy takes a cheap shot -- and maybe it's not the evil guy.  If an LE Knight is fighting a CG knight, the LE knight might stop -- and then get surprised by a blindside attack that finishes him off.In real life, I don't believe that this stuff usually works.  Once two people are fighting, they don't usually break it off just because somebody calls over to them to do so.  And riding into the middle of it is a good way to get attacked.It could work, sure, but it is most likely not going to provide "Sense Motive not a class skill" paladins with a ton more information.All my paladins have saps or improved unarmed strike for this reason -- but for the ones who don't, I don't know that taking -4 just to make sure that the evil is really evil is absolutely necessary.  Again, depends on your definition of evil, of course.Ah -- so moderate evil energy is enough to use as a basis for judgment?  Given that a 1HD evil outsider or undead throws off faint, my thought was that faint was enough.Agreed, methinks.</blockquote>

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