The Beatdown Radar

[molonel]

Ever since 1st Edition AD&D, the paladin's Detect Evil ability has provided endless fun and begun many a combat. I call it the Beatdown Radar.

In my future campaigns, I'm removing alignment detecting spells in general, and replacing the paladin's Detect Evil ability with an ability called Penetrating Insight, which will give a +5 Divine bonus to Sense Motive checks that increases by +5 at 6th, 9th, 12th, 15th and 18th level to a maximum of +30.

How do you handle this in your games? Have you ever encountered it? Do you encourage or discourage it?

 

[lukelightning]

There are a lot of houserules about this. Me, I just remove alignment entirely.

 

[Jedi_Solo]

I have never run into this in the games I have played in. With my current DM I am sure it would turn into something like this:

Town Guard: Why did you kill Bob?
Paladin: Because he detected as Evil.
Town Guard: Not Bob! There is no way he could have detected as Evil. He helps orphans and helped rebuilt the town after last years flood.
Paladin: But he detected as Evil!
Town Guard: Kind of hard to prove now that he is dead. Please come with me.
Paladin: But he detected as Evil!!
Town Guard: Are you going to come quietly or are you going to lose you Paladin abilities by slaughting a large number of Lawful Neutral Town Guards?

It might be a cool hook that the Paladin detects Evil in Random Townsperson #4, but in all of the games I have played in the Paladin would quickly cause the party to be run out of town if he just "randomly" killed people.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

The worst trouble I've seen someone get in from that is finding out that neutral clerics of evil gods radiate really strong evil auras... never good.

One GM I had played up the Paladins ability use being very obvious - as much so as casting a spell. People generally get upset if you cast spells at or near them? It was also inadmissable in any kind of legal sense.

I really like your sense motive idea - that's cool.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Being evil isn't a capital crime. Certain evil acts might be.

A paladin in any of my campaigns who uses "he detected as evil!" as an excuse to kill wantonly is going to find himself in a whole mess of trouble.

The above applies to those campaigns where I don't house rule alignments and detection. I frequently revert to the old edition standard whereby creatures of innate evil always detect, and maybe high-level priests of evil gods, but for most mortals, they only detect as evil if they are currently committing (or at least planning) an evil act.

 

[Endur]

Ever since 1st Edition AD&D, the paladin's Detect Evil ability has provided endless fun and begun many a combat. I call it the Beatdown Radar.

In my future campaigns, I'm removing alignment detecting spells in general, and replacing the paladin's Detect Evil ability with an ability called Penetrating Insight, which will give a +5 Divine bonus to Sense Motive checks that increases by +5 at 6th, 9th, 12th, 15th and 18th level to a maximum of +30.

How do you handle this in your games? Have you ever encountered it? Do you encourage or discourage it?

As a player who likes Paladins, I'd be thrilled with a bonus to sense motive instead of detect evil.

 

[MerricB]

I love Detect Evil, and I happily allow my players to use it.

Cheers!

 

[Solarious]

The easy way is to make the 3 of the average peons in 10 evil. Genociding that number of people is evil, no matter how you slice it. Not everyone has the morals or backbone to be good or even neutral: after all, some people only comply with the laws of the land because they are afraid of being caught. It's an unfortunate truth of the world, but it is the way it is. Black and White certainly exists in DnD without a doubt, but most of the mortal races are shades of grey except in the most extreme of cases.

 

[VirgilCaine]

Being evil isn't a capital crime. Certain evil acts might be.

A paladin in any of my campaigns who uses "he detected as evil!" as an excuse to kill wantonly is going to find himself in a whole mess of trouble.

The above applies to those campaigns where I don't house rule alignments and detection. I frequently revert to the old edition standard whereby creatures of innate evil always detect, and maybe high-level priests of evil gods, but for most mortals, they only detect as evil if they are currently committing (or at least planning) an evil act.

If you'll note the hit dice to strength ratios in Detect Evil, clerics, undead, and elementals that are evil are going to be much stronger than evil non-Clr/undead/elementals.


Personally, I find detect magic to be pretty annoying. Detect magic! Where's the loot, where's the magic traps. Maybe I run too many adventures with magic traps.

 

[Kurotowa]

Detect Evil works as a beatdown radar if only villains are Evil. This has, of course, often been the case in D&D products. The simplest solution is to do like the Eberron model where a significant portion of the population is Evil just by virtue of being greedy or dishonest. It makes Detect Evil good as a sign to watch someone carefully, and a way to pick out undead and fiends and the like, but not a beatdown radar.