Quote Originally Posted by hamishspence View Post
And afflictions/ravages in the water supply falls foul of the "do not kill non-combatants" principle in Exalted Deeds. As well as a long-standing tradition that it is possible to be evil without committing crimes worthy of a death sentence.
To be fair here, the BoED specifically states that the material is intended to be used in a campaign where villains are really evil: BoVD-style evil. Run of the mill "evil mayor" scenarios are completely inappropriate situations to be whipping out ravages and Sacred damage abilities.

Spoiler
Show
Now, if the "evil mayor" has a temple to the gods of Depravity in his basement and disembowels babies in exchange for the power to cover the lands in a plague of demonic locusts, and the townspeople engage in blood orgies by night and etch paeans to Orcus into their own flesh (and maybe supply some of the babies), and that's just the start? Yeah, then it might be time for some BoED stuff. As a bonus, I imagine that Detect Evil would function pretty well there too.