RAI : Redeemer paladin's Merciful Smite vs non-evil targets

[Mikaze]

Ran into this situation way earlier than expected and we were wondering what the RAI for this was.

The Redeemer paladin archetype wrote:

Merciful Smite (Su): At 1st level, when a redeemer chooses to smite a creature, she can have all of her attacks against the target deal nonlethal damage. She does not take the normal –4 attack roll penalty for using a lethal weapon to deal nonlethal damage. She cannot use this ability to deal nonlethal damage to outsiders with the evil subtype, evil-aligned dragons, or undead creatures (these creatures take lethal damage from her smite). This otherwise works like and replaces the standard paladin's smite evil.

So when Merciful Smite is used in its merciful form against a non-evil target(whether under the mistaken assumption that the target is evil or not), does it:

A. Do lethal damage and not function with the smite bonuses

B. Do non-lethal damage and not function with the smite bonuses

C. Other

If A, it leads to the odd situation of the divine gifts Redeemer paladins get actually making them worse at subduing non-evil beings than evil ones(which didn't make much sense to our group, hence the ruling for B).

It should be further noted that Redeemer paladins also give up the Detect Evil class feature, so it makes the use of Merciful Smite even more of a gamble with the lives of others in some situations if it's intended to work like A. Which again seems at odds with what paladins(and especially redeemers) are about.

Still, I can see a possible issue with it devaluing the Merciful weapon quality to a point, even if I'm still intending to get it(which in turn could be seen as devaluing Merciful Smites, but at least it can still work with any weapon).

[yumad]

The redeemer text does seem to imply that the class is designed to combat (and "redeem") creatures typically seen as monstrous by the civilized races that may not necessarily be evil. The wording of merciful smite though in and of itself does not state that it allows smiting of non-evil creatures, and since it "otherwise works like and replaces the standard paladin's smite evil" any smites against non-evil is wasted to no effect.

I don't know how I'd handle this personally to be honest, but I don't see anything in the text that gives a very clear picture to intent so in your situation I would do whatever makes the most sense to your group really. Allowing any paladin to smite non-evil creatures does make the paladin quite a bit stronger in theory but in practice most of the baddies in campaigns are evil anyway so even allowing the smite bonuses to apply to these non-evil creatures might not be terrible.

Edit: Maybe require that the enemy in question is considered a monstrous race for smite to apply in the case of a non-evil enemy, then apply full bonuses and allow for the lethal/non-lethal swapping. Sometimes you require a lethal beatdown even in situations where you don't want to kill because things can be resistant to non-lethal damage like the invulnerable rager DR.