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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rounser" data-source="post: 324308" data-attributes="member: 1106">It's the general principle of "Don't nerf character abilities just because they make your job as a DM harder."  Like the idea of "No playing style is necessarily better than any other", it's a good rule of thumb to keep in mind to moderate yourself and stay liberal-minded, egalitarian and fair. <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=":)" />  But taken to it's logical conclusion, it begins to look flakey.  Spells like detect-o-lie/alignment sculpt the nature of your setting, and the nature of your game, and not necessarily in the way you might wish.  For example, it's difficult to do a high level Agatha Christie style mystery with such spells around when the party can just call Pelor and ask "whodunnit?"...If you do nerf detect-o-lies/alignment, or scrying, contact other plane, or teleporting, I say make sure you do so from the start of the campaign, make sure all the players are cool with it, and if it impacts any classes (e.g. paladin, diviners etc.) make it up to them somehow.  The "Don't nerf character abilities just because they make your job harder" rule goes mostly for DMs who get pissed off with teleport mid-campaign because the PCs flexed their muscles in a way the DM didn't like...so they put up anti-teleport fields everywhere, enchant dungeon walls to stop passwall, dimension door etc. just because a fairly earnt character ability annoys them.  That's bad gamemastery, in a lot of people's opinions...Piratecat's rather sagely advice is to let the PCs find out whodunnit (in fact, expect it), but also let there be no easy answer to the problem.  Likewise, if scrying and teleporting are annoying and challenging for the DM, they can be just as annoying and challenging for the PCs when the campaign villains begin doing it to them...</blockquote>

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