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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeff Wilder" data-source="post: 3106146" data-attributes="member: 5122">Yes.  It provides the power of an evil aura.  It says so right on the table.  The table says absolutely nothing about giving results pertaining to the presence of evil, which is what detect evil pings on.  And that's fine, because the table doesn't need to provide that information ... there are already rules in D&D for what is evil or not.The mistake you -- and many, many other people, including Wizards -- are making is that you're taking a table that is specifically designed to output the strength of an evil aura, and you're expanding its scope -- without any textual justification -- to include, additionally, whether or not something is evil in the first place.And again, there are already rules for determining whether something is evil.In other words, the table is designed for a DM to input a preexisting determination -- "this whirligig is evil" -- and get meaningful output -- "your evil whirligig is, in fact, exactly this evil."You -- and many, many other people -- are mistakenly reading that table to not only provide "aura power," which is clearly is designed to do, but also to provide "aura presence," which nowhere -- absolutely nowhere -- does the table purport to provide.And I'll say again, because it bears repeating: there's no reason to read the table that way, because D&D already has other rules for determining the presence of evil, and because reading the table that way creates an entirely new subcategory of evil that doesn't fit in with any of the other rules of the game that deal with the interaction with evil.  Reading the table that way creates a tautology: "Evil is what detect evil detects."  Worse, it's a tautology with a huge exception: " ... but ignore this determination of what's evil for every other spell and effect in the rules."  You don't get how absurd that is?(God, I have no willpower when it comes to argument.)First of all, let me state yet again that I now abide by the "official" ruling on the spell, which is to say I now interpret the spell exactly as you do.  (Primarily because I'm going through a bit of an "anti-house-rules" phase.)But the actual wording of the spell is that non-Evil undead and non-Evil clerics-of-Evil-gods don't register as "evil" (because, well, they're not).  Not in the first round, not in the second round, not in the third round.  They are, by every (other) rule in D&D, simply "not evil."  Since they are, by every rule in D&D, "not evil," there is no reason to determine how strong an "evil aura" they (don't) have.  You don't have "evil - yes" to plug into the table to receive an "evil - this much" answer.  (EDIT: Note that this is actually no longer true, as a rule has been added directly to clerics and other holy or unholy classes that states whether or not detect evil will ping on them.)That's because you're adding meaning to the table that it simply doesn't textually have, doesn't purport to have, and, IMO, wasn't intended to have.  If you add rules where they're not written, you're not going to understand the results achieved under the rules as written.</blockquote>

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