Skip to content

Do any of you find the spell Know Alignment useful?

20884322088432 Member Posts: 229
in Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition
I am just wondering because I find Detect Evil to be pointless, any ideas?

Comments

  • ElysianEchoesElysianEchoes Member Posts: 475
    Only if I'm roleplaying a paranoid paladin. Or just curious of an NPC's alignment from a lore perspective.

    I suppose it could be a poor man's infravision if it's dark, since everything glows a different color.
  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,367
    It's a role-playing spell that does nothing in any infinity-engine game. For whatever reason, the devs gave it no usefulness whatsoever...
  • ChroniclerChronicler Member Posts: 1,391
    It basically accomplishes the same thing you'd get with Detect Evil, but it offers a save, meaning for the most part it'll be useless against anybody important.
  • lunarlunar Member Posts: 3,460
    Finding if one is neutral or good has little benefit. Finding who is evil, can be useful in certain situations, but detect evil does that job better, it offers better range and no save.

    In paladin stronghold quest, a guardian comes to take the girl the pc is given to protect. Sometimes he is an evil impostor that will slay the girl later. But paladins have innate detect evil ability so it is simple to not fall for that trick.
  • ZaxaresZaxares Member Posts: 1,325
    Paladins are supposed to be able to detect evil at will; the best uses I've seen for this are generally in custom adventures/mods where the writer has put in paladin-specific dialogue where they sense the NPC's evil aura, generally exposing frauds or villains early on. One example of this in the Infinity Engine games was in Icewind Dale, where you come across a bunch of monks in a dungeon, but if you have a paladin in your party, they detect evil among the supposedly "pacifistic" monks and alert you to the monks' true nature.
  • ilduderinoilduderino Member Posts: 773
    It would have been cool to have some memorised and use them before letting someone join the party, otherwise alignment may initially stay secret

    It always felt silly to let someone join, check their stats, see they were evil and then boot them. Realistically you would probably only find this out overtime bar the obvious (Ajantis, Dorn etc)
  • sarevok57sarevok57 Member Posts: 5,975
    the paladin's detect evil actually used to be kind of useful back in the day

    in the vanilla BGs, if you use detect evil, it would detect any evil creatures in the entire area, so then you would have an idea of how many where left, now in the EEs as of..... 2.x i believe they changed it so its only a radius now ( making it virtually pointless )

    although, some NPCs if you don't know if they are evil or not you can use either spell to check them out, this is useful for power gamers who like squeezing every bit of XP and items they can without losing REP, so if you find an evil NPC chances are that you won't lose REP for taking them out

    but beyond that, yeah pretty pointless spell(s)
  • gorgonzolagorgonzola Member Posts: 3,864
    ElysianEchoes wrote: »
    I suppose it could be a poor man's infravision if it's dark, since everything glows a different color.

    LOL, an almost completely not useful spell can be a substitute of the real completely not useful one... :D
  • VirrenVirren Member Posts: 16
    I used it once when I wanted to confirm my suspicion on an NPC's alignment in Trademeet. And that was because I had Cernd and he had it memorised. So why not.
  • JoenSoJoenSo Member Posts: 910
    sarevok57 wrote: »
    the paladin's detect evil actually used to be kind of useful back in the day

    in the vanilla BGs, if you use detect evil, it would detect any evil creatures in the entire area, so then you would have an idea of how many where left, now in the EEs as of..... 2.x i believe they changed it so its only a radius now ( making it virtually pointless )

    I never understood why they did this. I cried out like a sad wookiee the first time I realized the change. It was just fun to see that somewhere in the area, there were more monsters, or an evil dude named Jeff or something. And then you'd start looking for Jeff to discover just why he was evil.
  • gorgonzolagorgonzola Member Posts: 3,864
    edited September 2019
    it can be also useful for a person that does not use modding tools to look into the game files and don't get the information in other ways (internet) to figure out, spamming it and then reloading, the alignment of the enemies, not just if they are evil.
    it can be important if the player plans to use weapons like the equalizer, that give bonus damage towards certain alignments, and want to equip it only when the bonus is enough high to compensate the effectiveness of other alternate weapon choices.

    now that we all have access to the net and there is plenty of information on the forums or elsewhere it is not so important, but i remember that when i begun to play, no net, guides and forums for me at that time, i did it for few powerful enemies.

    but it is one of the spells that i NEVER memorize, it is more then 15 years that i don't cast it any more.
Sign In or Register to comment.

2024 Overhaul Games, a division of Beamdog. © 2024 Hasbro, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Baldur's Gate, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Forgotten Realms, Baldur's Gate, Wizards of the Coast and their logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries, and are used with permission. Hasbro and its logo are trademarks of Hasbro, Inc. and are used with permission. © 1998 BioWare Corp. All Rights Reserved. BioWare, the BioWare Infinity Engine and the BioWare logo are trademarks of Bioware Corp. Black Isle Studios and the Black Isle Studios logo are trademarks of Interplay Entertainment Corp. Atari and the Atari logo are trademarks owned by Atari Interactive, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.