Quote Originally Posted by Skull the Troll View Post
Good and evil and law and chaos are complex subjects. They have been studied by people since the dawn of time, not since 1974 by the French. :P I get why Gygax did what he did, if you're going to have a targeted spell you need to be able to define the target. The Gygax quote above is horrifying, but actually pretty on par for how fictitious villains acted in the 70's and 80's. Look at any villain from those era's. There's zero motivation for what they do, they just twirl their mustache and tie the girl to the railroad track. People today are more nuanced, but it can be hard.

Take my favorite (mixed genre) example, would Protection from Evil help if Walter White tried to punch you? In my game it would. In another DM's maybe not. Depends on how you judge Walter White.
These are the kinds of reasons why I've been kicking around the idea of having the alignment detection and hate spells just be, essentially, "detect ally" or "detect enemy" but misnamed by the mortal spellcasters who first discovered/invented them. That does bring a few other problems though, for one it'd have to involve pretty messed up criteria for who counts as an enemy.