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<blockquote data-quote="Three_Haligonians" data-source="post: 2767374" data-attributes="member: 19546">Not so long ago, when my 3rd Ed. DM's Hat was relatively new, one of my players whose character had a detect evil ability (not a paladin I should say), did the exact same thing on board a ship because he was worried about spies for the BBEG. I decided, out of a crew of 30 or so, that one of them just happened to be neutral evil (I felt the chances were pretty good for that) and after a bit of searching, the player found this commoner NPC - and proceded to follow him around the whole trip. It was a total waste of time since the NPC was just a deckhand (who, according to his crewmates if asked, was a complete and utter jerk).My point is, whenever the player started to scrutinize everyone in sight, all the time, I started to throw random evil NPC's around to play the role of &quot;ghosts on the radar.&quot; I am very fortunate that the player is a fantastic gamer, caught on quickly, and toned down the detecting - only using it when it was very important to his character.Of course, your player is a Paladin and so all those obligitory warning sirens go off:&nbsp; &quot;Oh, the Paladin can't take passage on this ship because the cabinboy is evil!&quot;&nbsp; &quot;A Paladin can't just smite and slay every evil person he sees because that's vigilantism and totally unlawful!&quot;&nbsp; &quot;A Paladin can't even walk around detecting evil all the time since that is an unlawful invasion of people's privacy&quot;&nbsp; &quot;A Paladin is not a reactionary force against evil, he is a proactive force that has to take it head on!&quot;And all the other usual suspects that inevitably pop up.So my advice, humble as it may be, is just make sure you and your player talk about what it means to constantly use detect evil, where you draw the line on &quot;associating with evil creatures&quot; and what leeway the paladin has when he finally finds someone who &quot;pings.&quot;Also, there is an article in Dragon Magazine #323 that details a great number of variants for the Paladin's detect evil ability - including: obvious markers for when it is active (brightly glowing eyes for example), and even changing the ability so that it doesn't detect evil so much as it detects guilt, attitude, hersey, and violence.Hope this helps more than it hinders the &quot;Paladin issue&quot;J from Three Haligonians</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Three_Haligonians, post: 2767374, member: 19546"] Not so long ago, when my 3rd Ed. DM's Hat was relatively new, one of my players whose character had a [i]detect evil[/i] ability (not a paladin I should say), did the exact same thing on board a ship because he was worried about spies for the BBEG. I decided, out of a crew of 30 or so, that one of them just happened to be neutral evil (I felt the chances were pretty good for that) and after a bit of searching, the player found this commoner NPC - and proceded to follow him around the whole trip. It was a total waste of time since the NPC was just a deckhand (who, according to his crewmates if asked, was a complete and utter jerk). My point is, whenever the player started to scrutinize everyone in sight, all the time, I started to throw random evil NPC's around to play the role of "ghosts on the radar." I am very fortunate that the player is a fantastic gamer, caught on quickly, and toned down the detecting - only using it when it was very important to his character. Of course, your player is a Paladin and so all those obligitory warning sirens go off: "Oh, the Paladin can't take passage on this ship because the cabinboy is evil!" "A Paladin can't just smite and slay every evil person he sees because that's vigilantism and totally unlawful!" "A Paladin can't even walk around detecting evil all the time since that is an unlawful invasion of people's privacy" "A Paladin is not a reactionary force against evil, he is a proactive force that has to take it head on!" And all the other usual suspects that inevitably pop up. So my advice, humble as it may be, is just make sure you and your player [b][i]talk[/i][/b] about what it means to constantly use [i]detect evil[/i], where you draw the line on "associating with evil creatures" and what leeway the paladin has when he finally finds someone who "pings." Also, there is an article in Dragon Magazine #323 that details a great number of variants for the Paladin's [i]detect evil[/i] ability - including: obvious markers for when it is active (brightly glowing eyes for example), and even changing the ability so that it doesn't detect evil so much as it detects guilt, attitude, hersey, and violence. Hope this helps more than it hinders the "Paladin issue" J from Three Haligonians [/QUOTE]

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