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Author Topic: Detect Evil  (Read 6133 times)

SHARK

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Re: Detect Evil
« Reply #120 on: April 12, 2021, 08:33:17 PM »
If they both get smites again each other, how can could you tell?

The existence of supernatural powers doesn't automatically answer all metaphysical questions. In fact, it probably raises more than it dispels.

In Fantasy Wargaming the various gods were real. But were mana junkies and needed followers. It also had this disconnect where God sends Jews to Hell. The writers were too busy being condescending to actually write a coherent RPG.

In D&D at least if theres various pantheons present in a setting then usually everyones on the same page. Similar to how Marvel used to write Thor. The various gods were more or less welcoming to like minded or like portfoloio'd gods and incresingly less cordial with those furthest from their general demeanors. They were more than capable of working together in a crisis too. Least some were. They also liked to spar when meeting up to. Especially Thor and Hercules.

So at least in D&D theres some congruency. Of course some settings toss all that out the window and either the different pantheons are really the same gods with different names in different regions. Or its every god for themselves and they each might as well be an individual religion rather than a pantheon.

So setting can have some effect on these spells depending on if the spell is targeting something specific or something vague even.
One of the more bizarre aspects of D&D is the way it treats good and evil as universal. That there is good, and there is evil, and it applies whether you're Vishnu or Set or Marduk or Hades, and that somehow all the gods from all these different religions all agree on what defines good and evil.

That only works if you erase the substantive spiritual differences between those different religions, and pretend they're all just Western humanists with different numbers of arms, who wear clothes of different styles, and have different fantastic creatures pulling their chariots. Which erases a lot of the point of having different cultures in the first place.

I think the astral realm version works a lot better, where each religion can have a different definition of good and evil, and the spells granted by their gods or from the religion as a whole give that definition objective (super)reality. A priest of Lugh and Amaterasu can cast the same spell, and get different answers.

Considering the game was written by western humanists, for gamers in the 20th/21st century, I'm pretty OK with that. If a DM wants to go more in depth about a different morality and spirituality for their campaign's gods, more power to 'em. I think for day to day gaming, most players just want their divine spells granted and a god's name to write down on the religon field of their character sheet.

Greetings!

Excellent point, Ratman!

In my games, I occasionally have a player or two that likes to learn about different campaign religions and cultures--and sometimes they enjoy getting into deep, philosophical discussions with other players about this kind of stuff.

Most of the time though--with most players--it amounts to, asking "Are they considered enemies of my kingdom or my religion?"

*Wizard or Cleric prepares Fireball or Flamestrike*

"Yes, they are considered to be filthy Pagans and enemies of the realm!"

*Whoom!* Fireball explodes, leaving the enemy laying about, burning and moaning.

Wizard or Cleric says, "Ok, the enemy has suffered a taste of judgement. Make sure none of them survives. Kill them all. Let's loot them good, and move on, brothers!"

The group then loots all the bodies carefully, while then providing a quick death to any struggling survivors, before proceeding deeper into the dungeon, where savage monsters lurk.

That's about as deep into "Morality" as a lot of players get. ;D

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK
"It is the Marine Corps that will strip away the façade so easily confused with self. It is the Corps that will offer the pain needed to buy the truth. And at last, each will own the privilege of looking inside himself  to discover what truly resides there. Comfort is an illusion. A false security b

Pat
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Re: Detect Evil
« Reply #121 on: April 12, 2021, 09:11:35 PM »
If they both get smites again each other, how can could you tell?

The existence of supernatural powers doesn't automatically answer all metaphysical questions. In fact, it probably raises more than it dispels.

In Fantasy Wargaming the various gods were real. But were mana junkies and needed followers. It also had this disconnect where God sends Jews to Hell. The writers were too busy being condescending to actually write a coherent RPG.

In D&D at least if theres various pantheons present in a setting then usually everyones on the same page. Similar to how Marvel used to write Thor. The various gods were more or less welcoming to like minded or like portfoloio'd gods and incresingly less cordial with those furthest from their general demeanors. They were more than capable of working together in a crisis too. Least some were. They also liked to spar when meeting up to. Especially Thor and Hercules.

So at least in D&D theres some congruency. Of course some settings toss all that out the window and either the different pantheons are really the same gods with different names in different regions. Or its every god for themselves and they each might as well be an individual religion rather than a pantheon.

So setting can have some effect on these spells depending on if the spell is targeting something specific or something vague even.
One of the more bizarre aspects of D&D is the way it treats good and evil as universal. That there is good, and there is evil, and it applies whether you're Vishnu or Set or Marduk or Hades, and that somehow all the gods from all these different religions all agree on what defines good and evil.

That only works if you erase the substantive spiritual differences between those different religions, and pretend they're all just Western humanists with different numbers of arms, who wear clothes of different styles, and have different fantastic creatures pulling their chariots. Which erases a lot of the point of having different cultures in the first place.

I think the astral realm version works a lot better, where each religion can have a different definition of good and evil, and the spells granted by their gods or from the religion as a whole give that definition objective (super)reality. A priest of Lugh and Amaterasu can cast the same spell, and get different answers.

Considering the game was written by western humanists, for gamers in the 20th/21st century, I'm pretty OK with that. If a DM wants to go more in depth about a different morality and spirituality for their campaign's gods, more power to 'em. I think for day to day gaming, most players just want their divine spells granted and a god's name to write down on the religon field of their character sheet.
In which case, you might as well stick to a single pantheon. I'd go with Crom, Thor, Loki, Hercules, Mithras, Ishtar, Kali, Tiamat, Boccob, and Thomas Paine.

But if you want Asgard, Olympus, and Mechanus, it helps to allow religions from different cultures to espouse different beliefs.

jhkim

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Re: Detect Evil
« Reply #122 on: April 12, 2021, 09:16:45 PM »
In my games, I occasionally have a player or two that likes to learn about different campaign religions and cultures--and sometimes they enjoy getting into deep, philosophical discussions with other players about this kind of stuff.

Most of the time though--with most players--it amounts to, asking "Are they considered enemies of my kingdom or my religion?"

*Wizard or Cleric prepares Fireball or Flamestrike*

"Yes, they are considered to be filthy Pagans and enemies of the realm!"

*Whoom!* Fireball explodes, leaving the enemy laying about, burning and moaning.

Wizard or Cleric says, "Ok, the enemy has suffered a taste of judgement. Make sure none of them survives. Kill them all. Let's loot them good, and move on, brothers!"

The group then loots all the bodies carefully, while then providing a quick death to any struggling survivors, before proceeding deeper into the dungeon, where savage monsters lurk.

That's about as deep into "Morality" as a lot of players get. ;D

If this is the depth of morality, though, then a codified alignment system is unnecessary. I've run plenty of pulp action, superhero, and fantasy games without having an alignment system. If the players don't care - why have a bunch of rules over it? You can just say "they're bad guys" instead of "they're of evil alignment".

As others have said before, it seems like alignment (and especially AD&D alignment) creates more questions than it answers.

estar

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Re: Detect Evil
« Reply #123 on: April 12, 2021, 10:09:56 PM »
However that may be, the description of the spell in OD&D makes it relative to the caster. In later editions people did not focus on that which makes Detect Evil and elaborate "danger sense" for a couple of minutes. Instead they focused on the name of the spells and took it way too literally.

See my notes above on each iterations idea of this spell.
Of them only a few actually detect evil/good.
O is intent.
BX is intent
AD&D is alignment not the casters.
2e is intent
3e is alignment with chance of being shocked by hither level creatures.
nothing for 4e
5e is the most misnamed spell ever as this "detect" instead detects non prime material creatures. Alignment has nothing to do with it or even intent.

So 3 go off intent. 2 off alignment in some way, and one hies off and detects other planars.
Appreciate the summary.

estar

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Re: Detect Evil
« Reply #124 on: April 12, 2021, 10:37:45 PM »
Or the reality is that both Christians and Muslims are indeed worshipping the same god but both garbled the message or is mistaking culture specifics for religious truth. That while the insight to smite is divinely inspired the power is an inherent part of the world like fire or electricity. Thus it use is subject to human free will the same as a rock or a club or in a later age a chemically propelled projectile. And the day both combatant arrived in front of the throne God will look at them both "You both missed the point of what I was teaching and thus the two of you sinned."

What matters is that is to start from first principles and work forward. If you want to dive deeper into why thing are what they are. Even then as far practical nuts and bolts of running a RPG campaign it only matters if it impact the roleplaying whether it of a PC or a NPC. I have a box full of notes filled with stuff I used and stuff I wrote for my own interest. When it came time to write the Majestic Wilderlands Supplement and my other books what I focused on are the think that impact behavior of character. That informed the reader of why folks act the way they do in my settings.

As folks saw earlier I have a specific mythology that surrounds the religious cultures of my setting. But I have created other that I haven't shared or published. One of them is eluded too in the first paragraph of this response. In a world of myriad religions what if instead of considering one true and the rest the work of a divine antagonist. Perhaps they are the result of a voice filtered through culture and time manifesting in different ways in different places. That the antagonist to God does most of its work not in creating competing religions out of whole cloth but rather attempts to distorts the word of God whenever and however it appears throughout the work. Thus producing the muddled mess that is religion throughout human history.

Or maybe the Gnostic got it right and the world is evil and we are just all pure souls trapped within the world and struggling to free ourselves in order to join the divine.

For the purpose of a RPG campaign we can engage in a variety of different thought experiments and create setting around them. While the implementations are different the process is similar. Figure out the premise, reason out the consequences, figure out how it impact how characters are roleplayed (NPC or PC).

Omega

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Re: Detect Evil
« Reply #125 on: April 13, 2021, 02:33:51 PM »
The real problem is the way the spell is named and how about every other edition wants to change what that means from detect any evil intent, to detect all or secondary alignment, to somesuch.

O B and 2e have the best whole 5e has hands down the worst.

At the end of the day though its your campaign and pantheon and handle it however you want. There is no right or wrong way as long as its consistent and is not open to abuse.

In one campaign for BX I hit on a novel counter to a sort of bounty hunter who was using the reverse of detect evil to try and ferret out the party at a large inn. From the cleric in the group we had an idea how the spell worked and knew we might flub trying to "fake it". So I used sleep spells from a wand we had found to put everyone asleep leaving just me to "think really bad thoughts"... ahem.

Shasarak

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Re: Detect Evil
« Reply #126 on: April 13, 2021, 04:48:31 PM »
The real problem is the way the spell is named

The real problem is the way that the spell Detect Evil does not allow you to Detect Evil.
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Pat
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Re: Detect Evil
« Reply #127 on: April 13, 2021, 06:02:46 PM »
The real problem is the way the spell is named

The real problem is the way that the spell Detect Evil does not allow you to Detect Evil.
Or maybe it does. Maybe that's the real, objective definition of evil and all this stuff about orc babies is just a smokescreen.

VisionStorm

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Re: Detect Evil
« Reply #128 on: April 13, 2021, 07:31:37 PM »
The real problem is the way the spell is named

The real problem is the way that the spell Detect Evil does not allow you to Detect Evil.
Or maybe it does. Maybe that's the real, objective definition of evil and all this stuff about orc babies is just a smokescreen.

What if the orc baby has evil intent, tho?  :o

Pat
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Re: Detect Evil
« Reply #129 on: April 13, 2021, 09:22:19 PM »
The real problem is the way the spell is named

The real problem is the way that the spell Detect Evil does not allow you to Detect Evil.
Or maybe it does. Maybe that's the real, objective definition of evil and all this stuff about orc babies is just a smokescreen.

What if the orc baby has evil intent, tho?  :o
Needing a diaper changed is a clear example of hostile intent...

GeekyBugle

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Re: Detect Evil
« Reply #130 on: April 13, 2021, 11:47:27 PM »
"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows ..."

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