Paladin --> Blackguard, need to hide alignment

[Yogibear41]

So say I have a Paladin who has fallen and become a Blackguard, but said Blackguard wants to continue to adventure with and group with his old neutral/good buddies (who include other paladins/clerics of a different good deity) Said Character needs a way to hide his alignment from them. Now I know the old standby is undetectable alignment but the blackguard cannot cast that spell himself.

Is there a way (without the help of magic items) that this character can hide his alignment. I'm looking for a feat/other permanent ability that would allow him to do it. (preferably without spending alot of class levels on something)

I know of the Veil of Cyric feat, but I'm not sure it will work in this particular instance.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

A Hat of Anonymity (MIC) gives you Nondetection, and you can get it crafted at a higher caster level (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/magicItemBasics.htm#casterLevel) for a higher DC. RAW the price is what's printed regardless of the item's caster level, but the caster level itself is not set in stone as it's determined by the creator, so whether at caster level 7th or 20th its market price is always 12,500 gp. At a caster level of 20th, the Nondetection DC is 35, so there's not much chance any Detect spells will work on you.

[Narylinn]

I know of the Veil of Cyric feat, but I'm not sure it will work in this particular instance.

Why wouldn't it work for your situation? I know it's technically specific to a campaign setting, but really, I would think most DMs would allow it in most settings, particularly one with an evil-aligned god(dess) of trickery, lies, etc.

[Yogibear41]

Why wouldn't it work for your situation? I know it's technically specific to a campaign setting, but really, I would think most DMs would allow it in most settings, particularly one with an evil-aligned god(dess) of trickery, lies, etc.

Prerequisite
Any evil alignment, cannot worship an evil god, not an outsider,


Character doesn't worship an evil god, per-see but its pretty close, character is also a native outsider with fiendish heritage so that kinda throws off that, I had actually forgotten about the not an outsider part until I looked it back up.


Also kinda weird that followers of Cyric, can't actually take this feat considering he is an evil deity too.......

[hamishspence]

The idea behind the Veil of Cyric feat is that the character is so deluded when it comes to thinking they are Good/Nonevil, that their delusion convinces reality (partly) to play along.

To genuinely worship an Evil Deity, isn't really compatible with that degree of delusion.

[mattie_p]

Outsiders in Eberron are different from outsiders in Faerûn, way different. I suspect that the feat is intended to forbid a Tanari from taking it, for example. Native outsiders in Eberron are frequently shown to play against their type.

With all the heretics in Eberron it's kinda surprising there's nothing similar, I seem to recall a priest of the silver flame that was evil. I'll check my books tonight.

[Telonius]

Mask of Gentility (Exemplars of Evil) and Mind Mask (Secrets of Sarlona) are feats that will let you detect as Neutral. (Mind mask has no prereqs). This will probably be good enough for most purposes; the rest of your party is more likely to be detecting Evil than detecting Good, so it's a decent shot that you'll stay hidden for a while.

[Sagetim]

There's the Oots standby of using a thin sheet of lead to block detection, for mundane stopping power. Or maybe it's a thick sheet of lead? In any case, detection spells tend to have a caveat of being stopped by x amount of material, which seems loosely based on it's density.

Which makes me wonder if a full suit of Full Plate or Mountain Plate would be enough to stop detection spells. Along the lines of 'would all the parts be thick enough?'. That said, it might be a bit awkward to never be able to take your armor off around the other paladin(s) or what have you, but Detect Evil is also something they have to Do, not something that's on all the time as some kind of Evil-vision.

You could always ask them to respect your privacy and right to decision making. The whole 'I have free will' kind of thing. Of course, that doesn't stop them from arguing that the right to make your own decisions doesn't preclude suffering the consequences of your actions, but whatever. It's more a red herring of an argument, and if they fall for it, then you're 'good'.

Any kind of non-detection effect would be great for you. Especially if you can get the party wizard (if you have one) to cast it on you. Remember, you're allowed to lie now, so you could state that your god has warned you that an enemy of your past (or your fiendish progenitor, or whatever) is trying to hunt you down, and that you and the party are not yet ready to face it. As such, hiding you from detection as much as possible is the only way to ensure the party's safety. This may require further deceptions to keep the charade going, but in the end you may well be able to get your hands on the hat the Biffonicus mentioned.

Edit- On lying: you were a paladin, and as far as the party knows, still are a paladin. So if you lie to them, they are likely to believe your statement because 'A paladin wouldn't lie to us'. Just be careful about any lies you tell, you want them to be believable even if improbable. They cannot be outright and blatant lies, or the party will easily catch on and realize that something has gone awry with one of the party's paladins.

[ExLibrisMortis]

One level of Master of Masks also works. Wearing the Angel mask, your alignment appears LG. The Faceless mask hides alignment altogether. The assassin mask is a double bluff: it forces your alignment to display LE, but you can tell the party you're only wearing it to inflitrate a fiendish cult. It also increases your sneak attack, which is sort-of synergistic with blackguard.

[denthor]

This called roleplaying :

Does your fallen one want to become good again? If so then go to your companions and get fixed they have the spell for a reason.

Does your fallen one want to corrupt the others? Then single one out an suggest bad things until you are found out.

Straight out of the book a change in alignment you find your friends changing. You see people turn against you and others be coming helpful.

You want to hide embrace this and make them find out and come up with solutions.

[DaytimeStar]

If you can use spell in Eberron, then the 3rd level spell "Cloak of Khyber" from book "City of Stromreach" is a good hide alignments spell. Although it's on wizard list which you might not consider, but it do have a good duration for day/level. Get a wand and you're good to go.

[Bakkan]

Pick a fight with some Evil being, preferably a fiend, ideally one dealing Vile damage. Get seriously wounded. If possible, arrange it so you're actually knocked unconscious and your party has to drag you out of there. While you're recovering, talk about the experience of being struck by such pure evil. Secretly continue opening the wound so it never scars or heals properly. Your allies will be so concerned about the evil, unhealable wound that it won't occur to them until much later that you're the one pinging Evil.

[Yogibear41]

Mask of Gentility (Exemplars of Evil) and Mind Mask (Secrets of Sarlona) are feats that will let you detect as Neutral. (Mind mask has no prereqs). This will probably be good enough for most purposes; the rest of your party is more likely to be detecting Evil than detecting Good, so it's a decent shot that you'll stay hidden for a while.


Mind Mask would be great but I'm not psionic, also Mask of Gentility says spells only, with a paladin's detect evil not being a spell I'm not sure if it would work. (I asked my GM we will see what he says) Those are great suggestions though that I might be able to work in.

[Yogibear41]

You could always ask them to respect your privacy and right to decision making. The whole 'I have free will' kind of thing. Of course, that doesn't stop them from arguing that the right to make your own decisions doesn't preclude suffering the consequences of your actions, but whatever. It's more a red herring of an argument, and if they fall for it, then you're 'good'.




This called roleplaying :

Does your fallen one want to become good again? If so then go to your companions and get fixed they have the spell for a reason.
Does your fallen one want to corrupt the others? Then single one out an suggest bad things until you are found out.
Straight out of the book a change in alignment you find your friends changing. You see people turn against you and others be coming helpful.
You want to hide embrace this and make them find out and come up with solutions.

Character does not want to be good again.
Character doesn't necessarily want to turn the players evil and it perfectly fine with them staying good/neutral, he would see it as a net gain if they changed their religious beliefs to be more in line with his. (I am tempted to try and get the other paladin to follow in my footsteps though)

Hiding his alignment and doing naughty things behind the scene they are completely unaware of is half the fun. Not necessarily saying naughty things directed at them, but more like the supposed LG paladin is really torturing and sacrificing enemies and things for fun and profit in the underground beneath his castle type deal, consorting with fiends, and spreading rumors of dissension among the npc commoners to pull them away from whatever faith they may have (good/evil) and toward the faith of the blackguard to hep solidify his power base.


To oversimplify things the character will go from LG to LE and will really focus more on control and order, and less on being a random murder hobo. Evil enough to do more or less anything it takes to achieve his goal, but not evil enough to go randomly burning down and pillaging villages for the heck of it.



For the time being I am still a paladin (still low level) but my DM knows of my eventual intentions. To make a longstory short he has already let me know that the LG Cleric and the LG Paladin in the party will be more or less obligated to try and kill me or bare minimum have absolutely nothing to do with me should I be found at as a Blackguard or even just evil, either way that ends my ability to continue to play with the group.

[tiercel]

First, will the rest of the group be OK with a more... well.. frankly, player-vs-player mindset for the game? For a lot of D&D games, there is more or less an unspoken contract that, some rivalry aside, there is no substantive (or literal) backstabbing among PCs; if you go as far as, say, actively blackening the LG paladin's name, his player may consider this PvP -- never mind that you have a character going actively evil with a character in the group who is contractually obligated not to associate with evil.

If you are confident your group is fine with this, that's great -- but this is an important Step Zero!

If you are proceeding anyway:

One feat that would help - but be imperfect - would be Shape Soulmeld (Enigma Helm) from Magic of Incarnum. It gives you nondetection at DC 11+ your meldshaper level (basically, half your class level), which means it will probably be a bit spotty if your LG paladin erstwhile friend is spammy with detect evil.

Socially, you could simply not give your stooges a reason to spam detect evil on you, though if you have a full-fledged LG paladin, it's possible he might be Evil-dar-ing the Potential Bad Guys and you get caught in the area of effect. But if no one thinks to check you for evil....

The simplest solution would probably be to talk to your DM and simply ask if you can have undetectable alignment as a 1st level blackguard spell. It would be a houserule, but it should be easy to make the case that the Evil Powers That Be have a vested interest in you going undetected.

And while I don't want to ignore your "without magic items" request - for something character-critical, I can respect not wanting to lean on a prop - I would be remiss to not point out that the Core ring of mind shielding does exactly what you want (immunity from alignment detection, and more to boot) and is a relatively unobtrusive item.

But, seriously, make sure this isn't going to be a problem for the other *players* first.

[Yogibear41]

The other players don't know and hopefully never will.(unless certain things happen) I've talked about it with our DM and we have set several ground rules though.