What Magic Would Be Most Realistically Most Impactful?

[Doug McCrae]

Can't Zone of Truth by circumvented by a very 'low tech' solution - believing your own ?

"On a failed save, a creature can't speak a deliberate lie while in the radius."

All you'd need to do is convince yourself a lie was the truth, or create enough doubt in your own mind so as not to know whether it were false (and therefore not a deliberate lie, merely an opinion).

 

[Doug McCrae]

The bad guys in mystery scenarios always seem to have magic items to thwart Detect Evil, Know Alignment and the like. Presumably in D&D world the rich and powerful would all have access to such items or other magical protections.

 

[Sadras]

Can't Zone of Truth by circumvented by a very 'low tech' solution - believing your own ?

Nah, that 's airtight! And on that note, I just want to declare

I did not have sexual relations with that woman, and completely unrelated but just as equally important, I think you should know that ...there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.

 

[aramis erak]

Nah, that 's airtight! And on that note, I just want to declare

I did not have sexual relations with that woman, and completely unrelated but just as equally important, I think you should know that ...there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.

Given that Saddam's military used chem weapons on the Kurds, the second is objective truth...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Let’s not veer too much into the political.

I will, however, point out that Saddam did at one point have WMDs. At the very least, it is well-documented he used nerve gasses on Iranian forces AND on Iraqi Kurds during the Halabja Massacre. (He may not have had any left at the time of the US invasion, however.)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Zone of Truth can’t make you say something true if you don’t know it to be, AFAIK. So if the person questioned is misinformed, ZoT gets a GIGO response. I don’t know how that really works if you’re questioning someone who is delusional, but I’d tend towards the same.

But someone engaged in pathological self-deception? ZoT gets the correct answer, IMHO.