I don't understand how it really works.
My friend told me that his paladin could know the level of his foes. Is it true?
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1st Round: Presence or absence of evil.
2nd Round: Number of evil auras (creatures, objects, or spells) in the area and the power of the most potent evil aura present.
If you are of good alignment, and the strongest evil aura's power is overwhelming (see below), and the HD or level of the aura's source is at least twice your character level, you are stunned for 1 round and the spell ends.
3rd Round: The power and location of each aura. If an aura is outside your line of sight, then you discern its direction but not its exact location.
Aura Power: An evil aura's power depends on the type of evil creature or object that you're detecting and its HD, caster level, or (in the case of a cleric) class level; see the table below. If an aura falls into more than one strength category, the spell indicates the stronger of the two.
Well that's the aura power thing that I don't understand.
May the paladin say "Okay, this guy over there is level 8, and if he is wearing loosy clothes, I can say that he is a rogue and he is intending to ambush me." ?
While you can't tell exactly what level they are at, detect evil will give you some idea of how strong the foe is. Read the spell for yourself.
Edit: the most detect evil will tell you is the strength of the foe's evil aura. You can use that to guess at the level of the foe, if you wish. (E.g. a moderately evil aura means that that evil cleric is somewhere between 2nd and 4th level. Things get complicated when you can't tell what it is you are detecting evil on: the strong evil aura you can sense through that door might be 5 to 10 hit dice demon, or a 9 to 20 hit dice undead...)
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Upshot: you get an aura strength, which gives you an educated guess.
For example: your DM might say that you detect a strong aura. You know from the spell description that a strong aura may be:-
• an evil outsider or an evil cleric or a neutral cleric of an evil deity of 5-10 HD
• an evil undead of between 9-20 HD
• or an evil aligned creature (that doesn't fall into one of the above categories) of between 26-50 HD
Given this, plus other clues such as does it look a bit undead-y, are we 3rd level or 20th level, etc. then this is where the 'educated' part of 'educated guess' comes from.
If your player expects you to say, 'Yeah, he's evil and he's a 7th level cleric of Asmodeus!' then he's out of luck!
Thank you Malachi. Now it's cristal clear ;)
While you can't tell exactly what level they are at, detect evil will give you some idea of how strong the foe is. Read the spell for yourself.
Edit: the most detect evil will tell you is the strength of the foe's evil aura. You can use that to guess at the level of the foe, if you wish. (E.g. a moderately evil aura means that that evil cleric is somewhere between 2nd and 4th level. Things get complicated when you can't tell what it is you are detecting evil on: the strong evil aura you can sense through that door might be 5 to 10 hit dice demon, or a 9 to 20 hit dice undead...)
Just to be clear for the OP, the paladin Detect Evil is a little different from the spell.
1. The paladin focuses on one target creature or object at a time. So the paladin will know if that creature is evil and its aura strength.
2. The paladin doesn't have to wait and study the target for 3 rounds to get the full effect of Detect Evil. As a move action, the paladin receives all the information as if he studied it for 3 rounds.