I always thought that the 'Detect Evil' spell was something that often spoiled the plot and eliminated any gray areas the story could have. It could serve as an excuse for PCs to cut ties with that certain character or even provoke combat. A secret villain could be ferreted out, an evil character who actually shares the same interest could be misunderstood. How is that spell handled in your games?
Also, does anyone have good examples (like from movies, shows, books) of each alignment? I've been trying my best to convey chaotic, neutral and lawful of each type.
If there were meant to be grey areas, have the villians be neutral.
There's always this comic to explain alignment ...
You can use spells like misdirection and non-detection to fake out the players. Have the villain frame a dupe to detect as evil to the party by casting misdriection on the dupe to detect as an evil object hidden in a led lined container nearby, and let things run their course (you'd have to do things like role the will save secretly and whatnot to prevent them getting a metagame tipoff). If you can convince the players the villian is OK by using their own divination abilities against them, it'll be very effective when the big reveal hits.
Also note this bit in the Environment section of the core book
...most cities' laws recognize monsters as a threat to the stability the city relies on, and prohibitions about murder rarely apply to monsters such as aberrations or evil outsiders. Most evil humanoids, however, are typically protected by the same laws that protect all the citizens of the city. Having an evil alignment is not a crime (except in some severely theocratic cities, perhaps, with the magical power to back up the law); only evil deeds are against the law. Even when adventurers encounter an evildoer in the act of perpetrating some heinous evil upon the populace of the city, the law tends to frown on the sort of vigilante justice that leaves the evildoer dead or otherwise unable to testify at a trial.
Being evil isn't a crime, only doing crimes is a crime.
If the PC detect evil on the baker and find out he's evil and kill him on that basis alone, the *PCs* are the murderers. Even if they find out the evil baker is selling sawdust filled loaves that killed the child of the poor widow, their duty is to bring their evidence to the magistrate. If they just go and kill the baker, they might well still be murderers (albeit with a defense of judtifyable homicide which might allow the magistrate to show mercy at their own trial).
So, another way to go is have a bunch of evil people involved - let them all be suspects, and hide your real villain in among them like a tree in the forest. Or better yet, do both this *and* use misdirection to make the kindly widow actually the evil cultist who killed her own child and made it look like the baker did it!
Presumption is law enforcement in town is effective to deter PCs hacking up the joint. Otherwise, yea, I agree, if the PCs are so personally powerful they can simply kill anyone who objects, why shouldn't they just pull a coupt de etat and take over if they don't like how the government's run?
It's important to have encounters with law enforcers *not* be balanced like standard combat encoutners. They have to be at least CR +5 over APL or more (as though the players were the monsters and the law enforcers were the party - which in this context, they are!), plus incidental negative consequences for making themselves an enemy of the community, like they can no longer buy and sell items or stay in Inns or even provoke the mob of villagers the torches and pitchforks. *And* the PCs have to know all that will result before they act.
I think it's been a policy of mine to enforce all towns and services with CR5+APL guards ever since my PCs killed someone because they didn't want to pay them in one game...
I suppose that does enforce PCs if they found themselves in say, Galt or worse.
I would never use apl+5 guards, i'd use standard guards the if the PCs went crazy on the guards i'd hunt them down with hellknights AND paladins AND gypsies AND werewolves AND a crimelord.
Theres always someone bigger than you...
I always thought that the 'Detect Evil' spell was something that often spoiled the plot and eliminated any gray areas the story could have. It could serve as an excuse for PCs to cut ties with that certain character or even provoke combat. A secret villain could be ferreted out, an evil character who actually shares the same interest could be misunderstood. How is that spell handled in your games?
Also, does anyone have good examples (like from movies, shows, books) of each alignment? I've been trying my best to convey chaotic, neutral and lawful of each type.
Any character within civilized lands that thinks detecting an evil aura on a person gives them carte blanche to cut them down without reason is asking to be made an outlaw. Sure, they may be able to cut down the guards that come to arrest them, but that just makes the case that they are a dangerous criminal. Then the powers that be may hire other adventurers to hunt them down. Trying to circumvent the system by magical means isn't usually the best option.
The other thing is that until a person hits level 5 or higher (unless they're undead, an outsider, or a cleric) they won't even register as evil. That 10th level LE wizard is going to radiate a faint aura.
The previous posters have already mentioned using non-evil antagonists and magical means to hide alignment. How about a BBEG that uses non-evil flunkies? They may be doing what they're told because they believe they're doing right...or because they're being blackmailed or threatened.
As for alignment charts, a lot of them are inaccurate, many just plain wrong. I think this one comes close.
I would never use apl+5 guards, i'd use standard guards the if the PCs went crazy on the guards i'd hunt them down with hellknights AND paladins AND gypsies AND werewolves AND a crimelord.
Theres always someone bigger than you...
Exactly. The cop on the beat is a low level warrior, however the NPC party of adventurers/retainers/knights they send after the PC's party who kills that cop should be scaled as though the PCs are the monsters in an encounter balanced in favor of *them*. If the PCs want to act like monsters, let them be treated like monsters!
Remember that villages that can routinely provide CR > APL+ 5 encounters with guards don't really have much need to have PCs around.
Explanation is they can't send their own people because they have other commitments. Like, if the boss guards in town are NOT in town because they're off on the frontier in some dungeon somewhere, then the troublemakers (like those PCs) run amok in town.
Kings do have armies and such, only way this stuff makes sense is if the PC are operating in the context of a lot of other stuff going on that's tying up the everyone else's ability to deal with it themselves.
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Because the hyped up response force are bounty hunters who are paid to travel a long way to deal with the adventurers turned murderers, or relations of the guard they killed who just happen to not hang around town since their well known werewolves, or a powerful wizard who owed they mayor a favour after he let him hide out here 50 years ago who only checks in once every few months and heard about the pc's misdeeds a few weeks after then spent a year planning how to deal with it.
None of these people would be available to deal with any adventures the pc's are doing but will be happy to deal with upstart pc's who go crazy in town.
While a village not be able to muster more than a few low level volunteers, the landed lord that taxes the villages in his or her fief certainly wouldn't want his income hurt by brigands and bandits who attack the very people he collects taxes from and in most cases could doubltlessly muster ten-to-twenty well armed men in a regiment to put the menace down.
But I just realized that has nothing to do with the original post. Alignment isn't a warrant to kill in most average campaign settings. Depending on your own personal setting, however, this might not be so.
If a player uses detect ___ on my NPCs, I'll tell them the truth of their alignments (provided they actually register and aren't either too low a level or somehow misdirecting divinations). But in the same breath I'll remind them that most societies are governed by law and order and in most cases being evil isn't illegal. Its -doing- evil that is.
During a war with another kingdom a merchant sells grain at a 1000% profit to the starving and the poor in the city, this results in hundreds if not thousands dying as many cannot afford to eat. The king/lord is powerless to stop him due to no anti profiteering laws (this came up in kingmaker).
He's evil but what ya gonna do about it? Btw you don't need detect evil, you can tell cause he has a lawyer.
The Sovereign makes the laws. King, parlement, congress, whatever. Unless it's already a law that you can't enact retroactive laws (like if the country is organized under a constitution that has that in it), the King can simply make it Illegal for the merchant to have done that, and have him arrested. This used to happen all the time, and still happens in dicatorships.
Thing is, the Party ususally aren't the King. They're just people, so they need permission of the King (or the law) to go deal with the merchant.
In kingmaker, I think you could handle it by saying it's upping the promotion level (that essentially means making the central government stronger, considering how it buffs). Or make it cause unrest, as the merchants overall object to their precieved rights getting violated. Sounds like it would have been a very popular move, though.
However, actually changing the law in a lawful good country is a lot more complicated that the paladin changing the law at a whim.
Obviously they can make a law against it but until that law is made what he is doing is not illegal, changing the law and then arresting him for breaking a law before it was a law is basicly evil, or at least chaotic.
In a dictatorship i doubt the dictator is as bothered about good and evil as they are about being the dictator, the example was to show how an evil person can exist in a fantasy society with every paladin and his dog archon knowing he's evil and being able to do exactly nothing about it.