Detect Evil and Good: This Spell is a Lie
Spell Level: 1
School: Divination
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Self
Duration: Concentration, up to 10 minutes
Components: V, S
For the duration, you know if there is an aberration, celestial, elemental, fey, fiend, or undead within 30 feet of you, as well as where the creature is located. Similarly, you know if there is a place or object within 30 feet of you that has been magically consecrated or desecrated.
The spell can penetrate most barriers, but it is blocked by 1 foot of stone, 1 inch of common metal, a thin sheet of lead, or 3 feet of wood or dirt.
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
Alignment, oh, alignment. A system as old as D&D itself, maybe older, I don’t know, I’m not a historian. In terms of spell nomenclature, in 5e terms, “Evil and Good” translates to “extra planar entities related to locations typically associated with evil and good alignments”. Less catchy, I know, but more accurate. That’s what you get with Detect Evil and Good: a planar compass pointing to aberrations ,celestials, fey, fiends, and undead within 30 feet of you.
Unlike magic, extraplanar creatures aren’t ubiquitous. This is why Detect Magic is such a ubiquitous spell while cleric’s struggle to find value in maintaining the repetitive ritual casting of Detect Evil and Good. It only really matters when you need to find a hidden extra planar entity, and you can’t ever really know when there will be one hidden around you. Detect Magic finds anything magical, and tells you a bit about it. Detect Good and Evil simply points to creatures if they’re near you and lets you know what their type is. Chances are, you can figure out the devil trying to kill you is in fact a devil. You don’t really need this effect.
Even as a ritual, I don’t think you need to prepare Detect Evil and Good at the majority of tables. If you’re specifically going into a crypt to fight undead, sure, keep it up to find the hidden crypt breakers that will pop out of tombs and try to eat you. Fey tend to like Invisibility and other obfuscation magic, so against them specifically maybe consider this. Beyond that, in environments with varied enemy types, it’ll just be a way to slow the game down and not really get meaningful information. It's something that costs very little, but is usually worth even less.
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