Aligned spells and weapon crafting

[Cevah]

I have a good cleric crafter who wants to make a weapon have the Heartseeker ability.
Heartseeker is a +1 bonus with Death Knell as the prerequisite.
Death Knell is an [evil] spell.

Per the SRD:

Cleric: Spells wrote:

Chaotic, Evil, Good, and Lawful Spells A cleric can’t cast spells of an alignment opposed to her own or her deity’s (if she has one).

So it is clear I cannot cast Death Knell.

Per the SRD:

Creating Magic Weapons wrote:

The act of working on the weapon triggers the prepared spells, making them unavailable for casting during each day of the weapon’s creation.

This tells me I am not casting it, however.

So can I prepare the spell for crafting?

/cevah

[avr]

I'm not sure, but even taking the +5 for not having death knell only makes for DC 17 spellcraft to make it. And they should be able to take 10. Is their skill really that low?

[Jakkedin]

Cevah wrote:

So can I prepare the spell for crafting?

Nope. You can attempt to craft without the spell at an increased difficulty of +5 as avr mentioned. Or you could get another spell caster to provide the spell for you. Or you could use a scroll (or wand or stave) of Death Knell though you might need to use UMD.

[Pizza Lord]

I would also say that isn't permissible. While the wording about casting opposed spells does say 'casting', I think that word is used because it was directly in their spell-casting descriptor block. Thankfully this is in Advice, not Rules, so we don't have to get into a RAW/RAI argument, and I think it would clearly be unintended that a good cleric could just craft wands or scrolls that cast evil spells with the excuse "I'm not actually casting it." You would have to increase the crafting DC as the others have mentioned for your heartseeker.

[Cevah]

avr wrote:

I'm not sure, but even taking the +5 for not having death knell only makes for DC 17 spellcraft to make it. And they should be able to take 10. Is their skill really that low?

It is not a crafting DC issue. We are using house rules, and neither the Take-10 nor the +5 DC options are available.

@Pizza Lord: I agree that transferring the uncast spell to another castable form is probably not OK; however, the weapon effect is not tagged as evil. As I wanted opinions, like yours, I chose the Advice section.

@All: I would welcome suggested cleric spells that could be a reasonable replacement for the weapon's effect.

/cevah

[avr]

The effect is to sense (a part of) a creature and so ignore a miss chance. Locate creature might work.

[*Thelith]

I'd say you're not actually casting the spell and you can craft it just fine.

The spell is tagged as evil because you're doing something evil by using it, you're not actually using the spell so no evil is being done.

If you were making a scroll to use or have someone else use then I would say no because the spell could still be used for evil.

As a homebrew I would think there would be no problem... especially with the crafting DC's already being changed limiting your crafting ability.

[Cevah]

As stated before, the DC is not the issue. I have it covered. The question is about the [evil] tag.

/cevah

[blahpers]

Ask your deity if it's okay to do this based on a technicality. Maybe you worship the LN god of bureaucracy?

"...You are technically correct. THE BEST KIND OF CORRECT!"

[Cevah]

Good news. The deity [GM] indicated the use is allowed. :-)

/cevah