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| 5 people marked this as FAQ candidate. |
Once per day, a paladin can call out to the powers of good to aid her in her struggle against evil. As a swift action, the paladin chooses one target within sight to smite. If this target is evil, the paladin adds her Cha bonus (if any) to her attack rolls and adds her paladin level to all damage rolls made against the target of her smite. If the target of smite evil is an outsider with the evil subtype, an evil-aligned dragon, or an undead creature, the bonus to damage on the first successful attack increases to 2 points of damage per level the paladin possesses. Regardless of the target, smite evil attacks automatically bypass any DR the creature might possess.
Does a Paladin using Smite Evil ignore the DR of a smited target which is non-evil?
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I've kept the first post simple to match the desired formatting of FAQ posts.
There are two schools of thought to this. The first is to take the last sentence of the Smite Evil ability by itself, and apply the "Regardless of the target" qualifier to the whole ability, meaning that even a non-evil foe that is smited has its DR ignored by the paladin.
The second is to assume that the "Regardless of the target" qualifier refers instead to the "If the target of smite evil is an outsider with the evil subtype, an evil-aligned dragon, or an undead creature" clause in the previous sentence, and is intended to clarify that all evil creatures' DR is ignored, even if they aren't one of the special "extra damage" creature types that Smite really punishes.
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What's interesting is that Zealot Smite (from the Vigilante Playtest) has almost identical wording...except it *doesn't* have the line about being wasted without effect. So a clarification here would be helpful there as well (assuming the wording doesn't change in final, of course).
Anyway, I also agree that it's evil foes only, but I've repeatedly had players insist the exact opposite so I figured it was worth a thread.
The "regardless of target" text takes it back to "all evil foes", otherwise the "ignore DR" text would only apply to evil outsiders. So the progression is
Target = evil, {get smite bonus}
Target = evil outsider, add double damage
Target = evil (outsider or otherwise), ignore DR
Target = not evil, no effect
Oddly enough I haven't ever heard of this but I can see exactly what they are talking about. Regardless of the target to me means it disregards anything mentioning the targeted effects of the ability including the no effect.
I would actually give them the bypassing DR if someone wanted to use this.
If the target isn't evil, the smite has no effect... Not even bypassing DR, it does nothing.
