I suspect it's going to be coming up for me in the near future - I'm not sure what to do in this situation.

Suppose I want to cast inflict wounds on someone, calling them the blessing of 'EVILGODX', and he agrees, unaware that the blessing will cause him pain.

Should I set him to hostile? This would automatically cause him to attack, when he actually might not, ICly, and will cause the spell to fail.

On the other hand, if I do not, and I inflict wounds on him successfully, and he decides that he wants to attack me, there is now little room for him to dislike me, so I end up getting the shaft.

I suppose the best course of action would be to ask in a tell first, whether or not he would strike at me for inflicting wounds on him, at the first provocation, but it seems like that might put a bit of a damper on the ICness, and take a bit of the surprise away from the whole thing.

Your thoughts?

Unless you're planning on following up that inflict wounds spells with further hostilites, I'd say no hostile. If someone is standing still, waiting for your "blessing", they're not going to AoO you. I strongly doubt that most people would follow up with an immediate attack in any case.

If they want to kill you, they can turn you hostile. That's good enough for me.

Note that NOTHING I SAID applies to non-consensual situations. If you want to just cast Combust on someone in the street, turn them hostile first!

Sounds good -

One more thing.

Evil clerics currently are mechanically capable of casting healing spells spontaneously.

In the same vein, good clerics can inflict wounds with just as much ease.

But should we? I understand that it is not supposed to be this way, so, as an evil cleric, should I not cast Healing spells spontaneously, due to it being borderline exploitative? Or is it fine, and not something you folks will really get upset at, at least until a fix is put in place?

I don't really get upset at it. It's not really a big deal and, for all intents and purposes, puts evil guys at a disadvantage as far as usefulness is concerned, and evil guys already get the shaft from parties with those sodding Paladins!

As it stands I think it's a real chore to check if someone is infact casting a cure/inflict spantaneously or prepped from a DM perspective. If you want to limit yourself to spontaneous casting inflict rather than cure, go for it, but personally, I'm far more concerned with someone playing a Cleric well and adhering to the dogma than splitting hairs over which spells you've prepped and which you've spontaneously cast.