I reworked Detect Evil a long time ago (and don't use alignment). Detect Evil only works on the greatest of evil, meaning undead, demons, devils, evil dragons, evil clerics. Things with an aura.
Yes I agree with you that it messes with balance a bit, but I never liked the alignment mechanics to begin with.
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I started this thread with a question about the changes to Detect Evil. I also stated I wanted to hear thoughts on the subject before making a decision about an admitted house rule, for my own game. I didn't ask to be lectured about the "proper" way to use alignment in our game. If you want to argue alignment there are many other threads that cover this ad nasuem. I realize that by dissecting the Detect Evil spell, one cannot help but discuss alignment to a degree, but that is not my intent nor desire.I don't penalize the paladins in my game, but the changes to Detect Evil seem to have a detrimental mechanical effect upon the paladins ability to smite foes, in my opinion. That is the issue I was seeking input on, and solutions to. Not an explanation about how I am doing it wrong.
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I can't remember at whom I directed my post, but it was just in order to make my point. If you don't want people to make points about what you post, don't post. Otherwise, it's gonna happen.
Asking for critique about your plan to change detect evil in accordance with your house rules can either be answered by others saying, at least: "Yes, that sounds good." "No, I disagree." Or "Here is an alternative to your need for the house rule." I chose option 3. The need for a house rule in your case stems from a weakness in your basic premise. I can't help it if I think your handling of paladins in your game is less fun than mine; that's just what I think. Don't take it personally. A lot of people play it your way. It's not "wrong."
I don't think you penalize paladins. I think you restrict what I would consider to be legitimate choices for players. If you just ease up on the restrictions and make creatures that are evil really be evil (that is, more than a greedy slum lord) and be the murderers that Evil should encompass, then you would not feel the need to change the detect evil spell. In my game, detect evil doesn't work much in towns because a lot of neutral people are pretty greedy. So unless you are trying to track down a serial killer, the perp might be neutral. A good person could even commit murder if he thought that the victim was evil.
Also, just because a paladin is justified in striking down a murderous b@st@rd for past or future deeds (which is what the Evil alignment signifies), doesn't mean she will. If the paladin would be arrested and put in prison, that isn't as useful as the paladin being able to fight evil outside of prison. Paladins in Cheliax have to be smart in the way they go about taking out the trash, since trash is everywhere and might strike back. The detect-smite paladin is a low INT option for a player who wants to play it that way. More sophisticated paladins are possible. The way to prevent detect evil from getting out of hand is to make sure the players understand that detect-smite would not be acceptable under certain circumstances. That doesn't mean a paladin should fall for doing it.
With brief reference, which is more than it really deserves, to the Godwin about Auschwitz from whoever it was who thinks killing murderers is the same thing as rounding up innocent people. I disagree. In my culture, murderers are actually sometimes put to death for their crimes and nobody cries Nazi.
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Also, just because a paladin is justified in striking down a murderous b@st@rd for past or future deeds
Wow. You think that a paladin is justified in killing someone for what they MIGHT do? Your concepts of morality are absolutely horrible and frightening. I hope you restrict this kind of thinking to fantasy worlds.
I don't think you penalize paladins. I think you restrict what I would consider to be legitimate choices for players. If you just ease up on the restrictions and make creatures that are evil really be evil (that is, more than a greedy slum lord) and be the murderers that Evil should encompass, then you would not feel the need to change the detect evil spell.
Except a lot of people ENJOY having shades of grey. Hell, I personally think the alignment system as a whole should be scrapped, and I hope they do so in Pathfinder 2.0. It sounds like you're the polar opposite, with everyone in your world either being 100% purely Good or 100% purely Evil. You may like that, but I can't really see it appealing to many people.
And about "penalizing" the paladin...the paladin gets a LOT of really nice class features. And a large part of the balancing act is in the roleplaying of the paladin's code. So freeing up the paladin to be a murderous bastard with no regard for life that doesn't fit his limited concept of "good" destroys the balance of that class.
With brief reference, which is more than it really deserves, to the Godwin about Auschwitz from whoever it was who thinks killing murderers is the same thing as rounding up innocent people. I disagree. In my culture, murderers are actually sometimes put to death for their crimes and nobody cries Nazi.
Except you didn't say murderers. You said anyone with an alignment of evil. There's a massive difference.
Again, I'm going to call your paladin a serial killer, who is no better than any of the people he goes around killing, and far worse than most of them.
One last question for you...where does it end? Should this paladin expand his bloody crusade? Maybe people who are Neutral should be killed on-sight as well. And maybe after that he could expand to Good people who don't happen to worship the correct god. Or we could even expand it to killing everyone who doesn't worship HIS god in the correct manner (which seems to be going on a murderous rampage).
Basically, can this paladin be content before he's killed every sentient being in the multiverse other than himself and his god?
Also, just because a paladin is justified in striking down a murderous b@st@rd for past or future deedsWow. You think that a paladin is justified in killing someone for what they MIGHT do? Your concepts of morality are absolutely horrible and frightening. I hope you restrict this kind of thinking to fantasy worlds.
I don't think you penalize paladins. I think you restrict what I would consider to be legitimate choices for players. If you just ease up on the restrictions and make creatures that are evil really be evil (that is, more than a greedy slum lord) and be the murderers that Evil should encompass, then you would not feel the need to change the detect evil spell.Except a lot of people ENJOY having shades of grey. Hell, I personally think the alignment system as a whole should be scrapped, and I hope they do so in Pathfinder 2.0. It sounds like you're the polar opposite, with everyone in your world either being 100% purely Good or 100% purely Evil. You may like that, but I can't really see it appealing to many people.
And about "penalizing" the paladin...the paladin gets a LOT of really nice class features. And a large part of the balancing act is in the roleplaying of the paladin's code. So freeing up the paladin to be a murderous bastard with no regard for life that doesn't fit his limited concept of "good" destroys the balance of that class.
With brief reference, which is more than it really deserves, to the Godwin about Auschwitz from whoever it was who thinks killing murderers is the same thing as rounding up innocent people. I disagree. In my culture, murderers are actually sometimes put to death for their crimes and nobody cries Nazi.Except you didn't say murderers. You said anyone with an alignment of evil. There's a massive difference.
Again, I'm going to call your paladin a serial killer, who is no better than any of the people he goes around killing, and far worse than most of them.
One...
Of course I restrict my belief that a paladin can strike down an evil being for what he MIGHT do to the fantasy world. There are at least three obvious reasons for that: paladins are not real, detect evil is not real, evil as a mystical force is not real. Expand your mind a bit. In our world, you have to be reactive in response to crime. It is necessary because in times when leaders did not have to be reactive it resulted in oppressive societies. So even though we might be able to identify bad people and have laws that take them out before they do anything really bad, it doesn't work in practice. So innocent until proven guilty is essential to having a relatively free society. However, what if you could prove guilt in less than 6 seconds (as a standard action)? You could find all the guilty before they ever murdered their first victim. The real world does not enable you to do this, but a fantasy world most certainly does.
I am not at all surprised you want to scrap the alignment system. That is the typical response from someone who "gets it wrong" (IMO). I love shades of gray, too. I also like to give the players complete freedom to decide the intentions of their characters. You are only 100% Good or Evil if you choose to be. Even if you scrap alignment in your game, I would be able to peg the (non-existent) alignment of every creature in your game if I knew their intents. So your game would be no less "black and white" than mine. You just wouldn't be able to use the alignment-related spells.
I don't believe that the roleplaying restrictions are in place to balance the paladin mechanically.
Your defense of evil: "They aren't murderers. They're just evil." Makes no sense to me. We have completely different views on what it means to be evil, obviously. Yours is kind of like an astrological sign that doesn't have any effect if you don't believe.
"Oooh! You're chaotic evil? How SCARY! How did you get that alignment?"
"Oh, I pulled the wings off of a moth. And I make mean faces at my mom when she isn't looking. Plus, check this out, my mom is like neutral good or something lame like that, and she hates king george so I constantly talk about how he was a great king and obama sucks!" <Crazy Laugh>
<Under her breath> "Not as impressive as I was thinking." <Notices a name tag with Lawful Evil written under the name.> "Lawful Evil, huh? How sophisticated and dangerous! How did you get that alignment?"
"Oh, I sold my soul to Asmodeus."
"Really? What did you get in return?"
"Nothing. I just heard being Lawful Evil was good for picking up chicks. Am I right?"
"Oh yes!"
In my game evil means murderer-equivalent evil. Also, it isn't murder if the state executes a murderer. In D&D, the state just might be a god, and the paladin just might be the executioner. That's not murder unless the "paladin" lives in our world; then he's insane and probably incorrect about the evil in his victims.
In my game evil means murderer-equivalent evil. Also, it isn't murder if the state executes a murderer. In D&D, the state just might be a god, and the paladin just might be the executioner. That's not murder unless the "paladin" lives in our world; then he's insane and probably incorrect about the evil in his victims.
It is almost like you view evil as being worth of being sent to the hellish planes upon death. What a crazy concept.
Lets turn this around just a little bit...
just for a second (it won't hurt)
There is an NPC in the game going around killing all the good people, and is not being in the least bit chosey in his selections....
Based on the alignment system in RAW what alignment would we give this person?
Sounds CE to me,
Killing everyone evil by the same token would fall under chaotic good...
It is not the good that prevents a paladin from all this willy-nilly killing it is the Lawful part, implying the evil has to act in order to break a law.......
Paladin says
"Ok all the evil babies go into this fire and the others go home""You get no more chances you are an evil baby!"
That's a good point. The Law-Chaos axis is a lot harder to deal with than the good-evil. If it just means discipline, which I think is lame, but is clearly part of the RAW, then a lawful person should be more disciplined in his approach to eradicating evil. So he might tail the evil folk until he can catch them doing bad things; then wham.
I try to avoid discussions of law-chaos on these boards because I houserule the law-chaos descriptions with some frequency, which also makes it a weak point in my paladin concepts on these boards. While good and evil have stayed pretty much the same in my games for a couple of decades, law and chaos get a rewrite depending upon my cosmology or some other aspect on which I hope to focus the game.
My last game had the law-chaos based upon the philosophical rationalizations for punishing criminals (there are 5).
Lawful beings were interested in General Deterrence. The punishment of the criminal was an example for others to encourage adherence to the law. I liked it as lawful because the interest in punishment was social, rather than personal. LG would still want to avoid punishing the innocent and would want the punishment to fit the crime. LN didn't care so much about the punishment fitting the crime. LE would be fine with making examples in certain cases, regardless of guilt.
Chaotic beings were interested in Specific Deterrence. The punishment of the criminal was to teach the criminal that the crime was not worth the punishment. It didn't matter if the criminal served as an example because the punishment was personal. I rolled a third philosophical rationalization for punishment into this: incapacitation. If the criminal is dead, he isn't going to do the bad things anymore. CG wouldn't punish the innocent and would want the punishment to fit the crime. CN wouldn't punish the innocent, but the punishment could easily be greater than the criminal deserved (to make a point). CE would punish anyone, regardless of innocence.
Ethically neutral beings got rehabilitation as the philosophical justification. I liked it because it blends the social (the advantage of bringing a criminal back into society as a good citizen) with the personal (treating the criminal as an individual). True neutral was more about vengeance (the last philosophical justification), which is simply taking from a criminal what the criminal took from society. An eye-for-an-eye, while it has that biblical ring, seemed more neutral to me at the time than Lawful, since it is relatively selfish in its execution of punishment. Of course, a person who does punishment for general deterrence reasons may well feel that eye for an eye is a good reason, too, just not the main reason.
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While I kind of liked that setup, my current game uses a completely different rationale for law-chaos. Now Law comes from the gods. It's pretty campaign-specific so I won't go into it here.