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<blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 9480562" data-attributes="member: 6801228">Sure, but that's no better than them refusing to be subjected to magic in the first place. It doesn't tell you anything, you are just guessing.&quot;What is your name?&quot; &quot;You can call me Timothy.&quot; &quot;What is your name?&quot; &quot;I said it was Timothy, why are you still asking?&quot; &quot;What is your name?&quot; Now, you might interpret the second line as not being the Truth. but you get the point. And again, just because you have lived in paranoia for the last few decades and are currently reading a list of things that can be done to circumvent the spell (meaning you are thinking about them in terms of circumventing the spell) does not mean that your average player is going to catch this. Which inevitably leads to &quot;But we put them under a zone of truth and they were still lying to us?!&quot; which leads to even more extreme measures, which also still have a chance of failure and it is just an arms race.Yeah, they do, which brings us back to the arms race. Eventually you are going to end up having ever NPC strip-searched and subjected to magical interrogation... to sweep the floors of your house. Now, if you are playing a strictly medieval culture in your game, where peasants are little more than human-trash to the ruling powers, you might be able to get away with that. Play in anyway that vaguely resembles treating them like people, and you won't have a staff.And do you think that somehow prevents it from happening, or from making the players even more paranoid? Especially with the stated goal of Gotcha DMing and turning everything into a potential life or death challenge?No, it isn't realistic.Sure, if you are playing in a political intrigue campaign where you are literally engaging in spycraft, then that is one thing. IF you are playing in a game where you are local lords who sally forth to slay the troll that started terrorizing a village and to recover the bones of a great hero stolen by a reclusive necromancer... less likely that they are sending assassins against you or even have an intelligence agency at all. And most games of DnD are not political spycraft games. I've only run one game like that, ever, and it was a &quot;here former war heroes, go investigate why zombies are spilling out of our enemy nation, that seems bad.&quot; So no real spycraft going on</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Chaosmancer, post: 9480562, member: 6801228"] Sure, but that's no better than them refusing to be subjected to magic in the first place. It doesn't tell you anything, you are just guessing. "What is your name?" "You can call me Timothy." "What is your name?" "I said it was Timothy, why are you still asking?" "What is your name?" Now, you might interpret the second line as not being the Truth. but you get the point. And again, just because you have lived in paranoia for the last few decades and are currently reading a list of things that can be done to circumvent the spell (meaning you are thinking about them in terms of circumventing the spell) does not mean that your average player is going to catch this. Which inevitably leads to "But we put them under a zone of truth and they were still lying to us?!" which leads to even more extreme measures, which also still have a chance of failure and it is just an arms race. Yeah, they do, which brings us back to the arms race. Eventually you are going to end up having ever NPC strip-searched and subjected to magical interrogation... to sweep the floors of your house. Now, if you are playing a strictly medieval culture in your game, where peasants are little more than human-trash to the ruling powers, you might be able to get away with that. Play in anyway that vaguely resembles treating them like people, and you won't have a staff. And do you think that somehow prevents it from happening, or from making the players even more paranoid? Especially with the stated goal of Gotcha DMing and turning everything into a potential life or death challenge? No, it isn't realistic. Sure, if you are playing in a political intrigue campaign where you are literally engaging in spycraft, then that is one thing. IF you are playing in a game where you are local lords who sally forth to slay the troll that started terrorizing a village and to recover the bones of a great hero stolen by a reclusive necromancer... less likely that they are sending assassins against you or even have an intelligence agency at all. And most games of DnD are not political spycraft games. I've only run one game like that, ever, and it was a "here former war heroes, go investigate why zombies are spilling out of our enemy nation, that seems bad." So no real spycraft going on [/QUOTE]

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