[RPG] How many things can Detect Evil and Good detect at once

alignmentdnd-5espells

Detect Evil and Good states:

you know if there is an aberration, (etc.) within 30 feet of you, as well as where the creature is located

It says "an" and "the," which are both singular pronouns.

But what if there's more than one such creature? Do you detect them all? Just one? If just one, which one?

Best Answer

The presence of singular pronouns might seem to indicate that you would only detect one however I would argue that you detect all in the area. This has been the case in previous editions and there is no guidance as to which evil/good you would detect if there are multiple (which one might expect if you only detect one, something along the lines of "if multiple sources of evil are present the source with the highest level is detected").