Swearing an oath of future action while in the ZoT is a strongly Lawful act, requiring that the one so swearing truly believe they will do as they are swearing. Most neutral creatures will find mustering the commitment to actually make such an oath in the ZoT at least a little taxing. Neutral creatures are very likely to change their minds regarding the oath if any new information is revealed or if the oath proves either more or less inconvenient than they expected. Even a lawful creature, however, may break the oath if sufficient new information is obtained, though doing so would be a Chaotic act.Ī Neutral creature has agreed to the oath, but doesn't have the strong introspective skills regarding law/chaos that are necessary to actually predict ones future actions in this manner, though they may well think they have those skills. A Lawful creature making an oath in the ZoT will not break that oath unless external forces act upon it. In general, in the absence of external forces, a lawful creature will continue unchanged indefinitely. The following is the alignment-based adjudication I generally use for this, which has worked across a variety of ethical/jurisprudential system implementations.Ī lawful creature is strongly bound by its will, and does not lightly change its mind. In order to break the oath, then, they must violate what was previously in accordance with their will- the oath is exactly as binding as any other fully-committed decision they make. In either case, though, they will only be able to swear it if they mean it at the time. In my campaigns I rule this to be a function of alignment. ![]() Some creatures take the oaths they swear under coercion seriously, while others don't. I deal with it in the following simplistic way: ![]() This is a classic problem called Kavka's toxin puzzle. There is no supernatural agency ensuring future action needs to be compliant with present intent. A non-commital answer is the best he can hope for and likely indicates a tendency toward keeping the secret. So, the interrogator can only ferret out active duplicity. He can only deal with the prisoner's self-knowledge and intent. Even a statement of "No" here holds no more meaning, since it is based on intent, and the interrogator has no way of knowing how rigidly the prisoner's mind will treat such a promise. If he phrases it as "Will you change your mind?", the best he can hope for is "I don't know", based on the current stated intent. If he asks a follow up of, "Do you intend to change your mind?", the only rational answer is "No." If you honestly don't intend to now, you don't intend to change your mind later. The best the interrogator can hope for when asking, "Do you intend to reveal this secret?" is:Ī) "Yes", meaning that the creature fully intends to reveal the secret and thus cannot be released.ī) "No", indicating that the creature does not have the current intent of revealing the secret. The pledge is immaterial, though, it's just a formal re-iteration of intent. Now while the interrogator is asking about intent, the Dungeonmaster is actually treating it as a pledge, as if the act of stating the promise aloud has more meaning than intent. However, if asked that morning, I obviously believed I would mow the lawn. However, when afternoon comes around, I can decide the grass is too wet, my muscles too sore, or simply that I'd rather watch a movie and do it tomorrow. When I wake up in the morning, I can honestly intend to go out and mow the lawn this afternoon. Intent is changeable based on circumstance. The questioner is asking a person to give a truthful statement about intent. TLDR: Zone of Truth doesn't bind people to keep their promises, it merely verifies their intent to keep the letter of their promise (not necessarily the spirit) at the moment they make it. On the gripping hand, if they've said they're not going to "tell the authorities", they're still free to write a letter to them or tell some 3rd party to tell them, whether they're seeing the future or just truthfully reporting their intentions. On the other hand, if any of the prisoners can see the future then that would be somewhat more binding (to the extent that the future is fixed): on the path they've seen the future take, they won't tell the authorities. They're not planning to tell the authorities, but if they're recaptured and tortured for information. As far as the prisoners know at that time, they won't tell any authorities about the party. The spell merely makes those affected tell the truth as they know it. ![]() Such a creature can be evasive in its answers as long it remains within the boundaries of the truth. An affected creature is aware of the spell and can thus avoid answering questions to which it would normally respond with a lie. ![]() On a failed save, a creature can't speak a deliberate lie while in the radius.
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