Paladin and Detect Evil

[Thanee]

I recently thought about the following...

How about replacing the paladin's detect evil ability with detect good?

It would change the focus of the ability to detecting allies instead of enemies.
It would allow to trust someone better, since he is good (and not only non-evil).
It would disallow the easy way of marking evil, certainly something, that many players and DMs have a problem with, when it comes to paladins.

You could still detect if something is non-good, but you couldn't use it as an excuse to slaughter everything, that is evil.

Note, that I have personally no problem with the power, just had this idea and wanted to hear some opinions on it.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Trainz]

That is an interesting proposition, and certainly has some role-playing values.

IMC, we house ruled the Paladin's detect evil; we buffed it, and diminished it at the same time:

- It can be used as a free action,
- It can only be used on creatures the Paladin actually sees (not through walls).

This way, the Paladin can know for sure without wasting an action if he's going to be wasting a smite evil or not, but mostly, it prevents a Paladin from creating an evil critter map of the dungeon by triangulation.

How our Paladins did this is by exploring very opposed opposed areas of the dungeon, and using Detect Evil ad nauseam. 60 feet is a big area in a dungeon. After exploring about 25% of the dungeon, the players had the location of about 90% of the evil critters in it.

While quite an ingenious use of the ability, it gave too much of a modern day tactical battlefield feel for the PC's, and was lowering the medieval tomb raider ambience of the game. It also pissed the DM from time to time, especially when knowing where the baddies were reduced the lethality level of the adventure.

 

[italianranma]

So you have this holy knight right, and (s)he's charged with protecting the innocent and righting wrongs and all that. Then you give them the knowledge and training to be a warrior, and the skills of a noble, a faithful companion, and even a few spells and you send them on their merry way to do good and vanquish evil. But then you don't let them know what's evil and what isn't?
I personally think paladins are a well balanced class with their ups and downs, and a huge up is the detect evil. It bothers me that the DM in our group consistantly ignores our paladin when she says she is actively using. See, it's like evil radar, and as soon as one of those blips gets on it, the paladin can start to get ready to fight it. Just the other night we got ambushed by this hellhound, we were walking through a recently abandoned city and the pouch was hiding in an alley, it waited for us to pass and used it's fire breath and the sorcerer (me) could've been toast had it not been for the false life I had on. The DM ruled that it didn't appear on the spell because our paladin was concentrating just in front of her (its a stupid ruling and we talked after the game about it)
Detect good would be cool and all but detect evil is a huge in or outside of combat advantage. It makes up for a lack of spot/listen/search class skills and directly ties in with many of the other paladin spells and abilities (which only function on evil thingies). If it's that much of a problem, replace it with protection from evil instead (at will, standard action to activate, duration as cleric of paladin class level) I know it seems a bit overpowered to have that as an innate spell, but considering this: Our group has gotten an early warning about some pretty nasty things via detect evil and had the extra round to set up defences. So far we weren't surprised by:
Undead
Shades
Imps
Worgs
and evil pidgeons (j/k)
It totally pissed off our DM that we didn't walk right into his carefully laid traps.
Anyway I hope I've convinced you that detect good wouldn't be a good trade off at all.

 

[Thanee]

Hmm... yeah, it's certainly a weaker ability, but that in itself (the class balance) is not important for now (that could easily be compensated in some other way, like more smites).

It's just the idea of how this would change the common 'abuse' (some might see it as the use, not the abuse, tho ) of the ability.

I tend to think, that detect evil does make the life of the paladin a bit too 'easy'.

Maybe it's just the way I see this class (from a roleplaying position).

Bye
Thanee

 

[Queen_Dopplepopolis]

I play a paladin that makes very good use of her detect evil abilities... The Qunitessential Paladin has some other uses for it, too... if you're willing to give up experience... because you pay pretty big for it.
(ie, you can detect evil during your sleep to prevent ambush)

My DM makes sure to follow the round-by-round rules... it's not instant and, every time you enter a new area, your "dar" has to reset itself.

In abandoned areas, it's quite the give away... but, in cities, evil alignment detected by a palain is really, no give-away at all. Realistically, there are probably just as many "evil" people are there are "lawful"-- it's simple balance. And, as such, acting too brashly on a Palain's detection can lead to really bad stuff... (learned this the hard way when I first started playing this character... DM says, "Yes, that guy is evil"... I smite him... lost my paladin abilities instantly...)

Evil is not something that automatically mandates death... nor is it always a give away of a big bad guy.

I think the best way to balance out the Paladin's abilities is just to make sure you play it by the rules.
It's very limited by the round-by-round updates so long as the DM gives the updates.

However, the ability to detect good is a really neat idea... in fact, I may run it by my DM...

Those are my ramblings... I'm sure they were random... enjoy!

 

[Trainz]

Hmm... yeah, it's certainly a weaker ability, but that in itself (the class balance) is not important for now (that could easily be compensated in some other way, like more smites).

It's just the idea of how this would change the common 'abuse' (some might see it as the use, not the abuse, tho ) of the ability.

You should read again what I posted above. This as cut out on a lot of abuse of the Detect Evil in our campaign. It's a free action, but the player must still actively use it. If the player doesn't ask the DM "do I sense evil in that guy there that I'm looking at" then he won't sense it.

 

[Thanee]

The xray vision aspect isn't the only thing I had in mind, when I said 'abuse'.

We use it like detect magic, that it is stopped by thicker walls and such, anyways.

Also that many players (since this topic comes up often on various boards) simply take their ability as some kind of justification to attack. Or that it makes intrigue based adventures extremely difficult, unless you go into silly proportions with the number of nystul's magic aura-protected rings of mind-shielding, etc. It just seems to be one of those class abilities, that cause a lot of trouble.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Pyrex]

I just got struck by a sudden burst of inspiriation.

Why not rule that a paladin's D.E. can only detect [Moderate] or stronger auras of evil?

That way kinda-evil beaurocrats/nobles no longer set off your radar, but you can still handily sense demons, undead, etc.

 

[Thanee]

I just got struck by a sudden burst of inspiriation.

Are you ok? I hope that didn't hurt!

That's certainly a good idea, if you want to tone the ability down, basically how we are were doing it in one campaign also, that you can only detect moderately powerful or supernatural evil, not everything with an E in its alignment. Worked fairly well.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Ibram]

IMC I completly removed the ability, but thats due to my views on the alignment system (its a roleplaying aid for characters and can be used as a guide for DMs). That doesnt imply that Evil is not a tangible force IMC just that a wave of the hand cannot reveal your enemies to you.