having a problem with aligment... Can anyone help??

[IcyCool]

Out of curiousity, if the paladin detects that Habib the Lawful Evil merchant is evil. How would the Paladin justify slaying him in the market square? Particularly if Habib was following the law and not doing anything overtly evil? That sounds like a fall from paladinhood to me.

But I've had similar thoughts (and experiences) with the Paladin's Detect Evil ability. I've considered changing it to thus:

Know thy Foe (Sp): A paladin may use Know thy Foe a number of times per day equal to his Charisma modifier. Whenever he uses this ability, he chooses and casts one of the following spells: Detect Chaos, Detect Evil, Detect Good, Detect Law or Discern Lies.

Then again, I've also thought about restricting Paladin to a prestige class only, or removing it entirely.

 

[kirinke]

Out of curiousity, if the paladin detects that Habib the Lawful Evil merchant is evil. How would the Paladin justify slaying him in the market square? Particularly if Habib was following the law and not doing anything overtly evil?

Nope Slayage is only justifable if the LE guy is actively doing something naughty and the Paladin catches him red-handed. Now, the paladin can follow the bad-guy around and let the bad-guy lead the paly to his uber secret hide out where his cable of evil followers meet on a nightly basis. After gathering enough evidence, present it to the local authorities and aid in the stompage of the bad guy and his buddies. That's plot and roleplaying fun.

I mean if you slay the bad-guy then and there, you get penalties. If you wait and follow the bad-guy, you get nifty experience points.

Basically if you play the Paladin as Lawful Smart (following the bad-guy, gathering evidence), instead of Lawful Stoopid (slay the bad-guy on the spot), you'll have fun and save the DM headaches.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

Out of curiousity, if the paladin detects that Habib the Lawful Evil merchant is evil. How would the Paladin justify slaying him in the market square? Particularly if Habib was following the law and not doing anything overtly evil? That sounds like a fall from paladinhood to me.

The fall from grace would be a secondary concern to the fall from the gallows after the paladin honestly confesses that he did indeed kill said merchant.

 

[kirinke]

Well back to the topic at hand. If you really want to mask the bad-guy, here are a few suggestions:

Ring of Mind shielding (mentioned before)
Non-detection
Undetectable Alignment

 

[Psimancer]

Kirinke, if the concept of ‘Opposition’ is giving you a migraine, dude, you is playing the wrong game! One of the few areas of the game that can afford to be more granular is Alignment…

The ploy of using a Ring of Mind Shielding is fine, but it (really) only works once. If every (evil) NPC the party comes across is wearing one, it starts to become a little suspect… The problem is systemic; address that and you remove the issue entirely.

IcyCool, ‘Know thy Foe’ really doesn’t fix the problem, in fact, it makes it worse. IMO the problem isn’t the ‘at will’ nature of Detect Evil, but rather the absoluteness of it.

 

[Psimancer]

Well back to the topic at hand. If you really want to mask the bad-guy, here are a few suggestions:

Ring of Mind shielding (mentioned before)
Non-detection
Undetectable Alignment

And if the evil NPC is a non-spellcaster?

 

[kirinke]

Ranks in use magic device will do the trick. Even at low levels and cross class as well, you can probably get enough ranks to use a ring or amulet. On the other hand, you can let the evil npc belong to an organization that will give him an amulet of undetectable alignment or ring of mind shielding or just have him find it before joing with the party. Everyone knows that npc's have better starting equipment than PC's anyway.

 

[Psimancer]

...Everyone knows that npc's have better starting equipment than PC's anyway.

Too true...

 

[kirinke]

Kirinke, if the concept of ‘Opposition’ is giving you a migraine, dude, you is playing the wrong game! One of the few areas of the game that can afford to be more granular is Alignment…

The ploy of using a Ring of Mind Shielding is fine, but it (really) only works once. If every (evil) NPC the party comes across is wearing one, it starts to become a little suspect… The problem is systemic; address that and you remove the issue entirely.

IcyCool, ‘Know thy Foe’ really doesn’t fix the problem, in fact, it makes it worse. IMO the problem isn’t the ‘at will’ nature of Detect Evil, but rather the absoluteness of it.

Lol. I was only being silly when I said that the opposition thing gave me migraines. On the other more serious hand, if you use different items with the same ability as a ring of mind shielding or a magical item with undetectable alignment permanently enchanted on it, then said item becomes more interesting. I mean, nothing says every magical item has to look the same.

You are right though, Detect Evil is a potiental problem that can be abused. How some DM's fix it is that the Detect Evil only works on those creatures who are completely evil, like those from the abyssal or infernal planes or those clerics who worship evil deities. Another way is that Detect evil only works on someone who has the taint of evil as described in Unearthed Arcana (taint rules if I'm not mistaken). Both are valid ways of making Detect Evil less absolute.

 

[Psimancer]

You are right though, Detect Evil is a potiental problem that can be abused. How some DM's fix it is that the Detect Evil only works on those creatures who are completely evil, like those from the abyssal or infernal planes or those clerics who worship evil deities. Another way is that Detect evil only works on someone who has the taint of evil as described in Unearthed Arcana (taint rules if I'm not mistaken). Both are valid ways of making Detect Evil less absolute.

And thats how I do it at the moment... but it brings up a lot of its own issues; what about a non-evil aligned character of an evil race??? I have a non-chaotic evil polymorphed Succubus running around in my game at the moment...