I've noticed an oddness about how DE works in *Torment*. Certain creatures who are automatically hostile to me (e.g. Curst guards in the Curst Underground) will not show up as Evil on DE, even when the caster is in melee range of them. But, at least sometimes, they will start showing up as Evil after they begin attacking.

Is this what's happening? The game is changing their alignment from N to E because they struck me? It's strange, since I would have expected that their intention to attack (reflected by the fact that they're hostile) would be caused by their E alignment, rather than their alignment shifting only after that intention had been acted on.

On the other hand, *Torment* has a weird idea of alignment, as evidenced by its giving the protagonist points toward Evil for defending himself against murderous thugs in the Hive and the Buried City. But that's a separate issue, really.


Update: I'm mostly convinced that there's a bug. I just did a careful test where I had Grace cast this and, while it was active, allow one of the automatically-hostile Curst prison guards to hit her several times. They never flashed Evil. But, as I ran her in circles around some of the other guards in the same place (who were also automatically hostile to my party), they started showing up as Evil (but not right away, not as soon as she was in melee range, but only after she'd been in close proximity for some time).

It's almost as though there's a random chance of the spell working or not, or that there's only a **chance** of their alignment being displayed when in range (which seems to be cumulative, i.e. the longer you're around that character, the higher the chance it'll show up?). Very confusing. Anyone know what's the deal?


Another update: yeah, it's almost certainly bugged. I've been reloading a game and replaying a specific situation to test this, and am getting insane results. For example, a guard shifting from N to E and back to N, all while she's within DE range, with DE still active, and all without any attacks having been made on either side. This is the same guard who, on a previous reload of the same situation, never showed up as E even after killing Grace.

Either it's bugged, or there's something very strange about how it's supposed to work, which I'm not getting.

Interesting, I have never noticed this behavior. Thanks for sharing.

I've made a discovery: Grace's LoS matters. DE will never trigger detection on an Evil character when Grace cannot see that character (e.g. Grace is facing the other way). She only can DE within a narrow cone, roughly her front quarter.

Even now that I know this, however, DE isn't behaving very consistently. I was testing it in the Curst tavern and sometimes, when she was standing still, facing the room, someone would be flashing, then stop flashing for a while, while the person next to him was still flashing. Nothing else changed; Grace was standing still with DE active the whole time.

So, as I concluded earlier, either it's bugged, or it's rolling dice.