I do like your way of handling the spell by the way.
Thanks!
I agree, but, if you don't have Evil in your world, then killing on sight Goblins, Orcs, etc can't be called moral.
So the way I handle things in my Majestic Wilderlands/Majestic Fantasy Realms is that Demons are EVIL. They are corrupted beings who have spiritually damaged their souls and are now incapable of good.
If it not supernatural and is sentient it has free will.
But there is a big but. In my mythology the myriad races other than Human and Elves were all created by the Demons by twisting humans into various forms (Dwarves, Orcs) and hybrids (Centaurs, Lizardmen). They all free will but many of these races have physiological issues that make living with other races problematic. Introduced by the Demons in their quest for the perfect servitor race when they briefly ruled creation at the beginning of time.
OrcsThe issue with Orcs is that their aggression range has been shifted radically over the the aggression end of the scale. In addition they between tweaked to respond to strong leaders. Establish dominance over an orc then their aggression will subside. This aspect of orc psychology has cause the race to live apart from other cultures.
GoblinsThe goblins were altered by the demon to be more focused. Once a goblin adopts a task or idea it become their obsession for years or decades. Unlike Orcs there are goblins part of various other culture and some goblins civilizations as well. Many tribal goblins become fixated on survival above all else. Those goblins are hard to reason with and often it just not possible and hence conflict arises.
The GodsMy campaign is set during a time where there competing religions espousing different philosophies of life. Some can co-exist, others are viewed as unpleasant by most cultures. The gods view themselves as teachers first and foremost operating through faith and religion. For priests and other keeping their faith, the gods permit themselves to lend supernatural aid. God all oppose the demons but some their teachings conflict. A well known example is Mitra (honor and justice) and Set (order and war). Other gods were impacted by the conflict with the demons and have adopted extreme philosophies that they now teach.
MoralityOverall morality works like it does in life. Everyone sentient being has the capacity to choose good and evil. However nobody is an island and grow affected by their physiology, their culture, their religion, and their philosophies. From this like in our history conflict arise both good and evil acts are done.
But demons and everything they touch is EVIL. They will lie and deceive to delude others that they are just misunderstood. But in end a demon is spiritually damaged to the point where everything they do ultimately for their own selfish ends even if the payoff is years or decades down the road.
And if you do have Evil then anyone that's Evil is a threat, either right now or in the future.
So you have God or gods and Demons, Evil beings worship Demons.
So what happen was that I was the guy who let people "trash" his setting back in the day. Want to be king, "OK". But you had to work for whatever it is you wanted to do as your player. I wasn't going to hand it over on a nicely wrapped box. To make this interesting I learned how to paint a picture of regions with various nuances in folk's motivations and goals. Being well-read helped as well as played a lot of historical wargames.
Within a few years of starting this (I ran my first campaign this in 1980), I jettisoned alignment. Too simplistic for what I was doing. But I still wanted something that was clearly EVIL. So the triad of Devil, Daemons, and Demons became it when I still used AD&D 1e. Later when I switched to Fantasy Hero and then GURPS. I pared down the huge rogues gallery of D&D into a more managable number of groups. That when demons became the EVIL.
Yet GURPS and other RPGs I played still had stuff similar to Detect Evil. So through various campaigns I settled on hostile intent with the demons the embodiment of true evil. So when I returned to using OD&D in the form of Swords & Wizardry. I was pleasantly surprised to see that how Detect Evil was originally used. And I still don't use alignments.
Overall there are elements of my campaign and character creation that are considered to be "good" by my players and some that are not. The main difference is a quality I called "pleasantness" Players rather deal with or be a cleric of Dannu the goddess of healing than deal with or be a cleric of Set. The same with different regions of my campaign world. Players gravitate to the ones they consider more "pleasant".
But this is only a board trend and it varied from group to group.
Wrapping it upI have a cosmology and mythology that works nice for me. Doesn't mean it the only way to approach this. In general my recommendations are
- Define a source of true supernatural evil.
- Give a plausible reason why a race or culture can't co-exist.
- For everything else if it hostile then it a problem and magic can and should reveal that hostility. I say should because that one of the things players expect out of a magic system.
Hope this helps.