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Hi all,
I had a question about Holy Smite and the other alignment spells in the family (Unholy Blight, Chaos Hammer, Order's Wrath):
The text of Holy Smite is:
You draw down holy power to smite your enemies. Only evil and neutral creatures are harmed by the spell; good creatures are unaffected.
The spell deals 1d8 points of damage per two caster levels (maximum 5d8) to each evil creature in the area (or 1d6 points of damage per caster level, maximum 10d6, to an evil outsider) and causes it to become blinded for 1 round. A successful Will saving throw reduces damage to half and negates the blinded effect.
The others all have almost identical texts. I have questions about the part I bolded. Searching the forum, I found a number of old threads (circa 2010) that disagree about whether evil outsider means:
A) Outsider with the evil subtype (Ranger favored enemy seems to provide a precedent)
or B) Outsider with an evil alignment (Holy/Unholy weapon enhancement seems to provide precedent for this)
I expect this to become relevant for a game I'm running very soon, so I was wondering if a consensus had been reached. My initial reading was B, though I can see the argument for both.
I run it as B. There is no mention of subtype, and it follows from the first ability of the spell to only care about the overall alignment type as opposed to a creature type.