Detect Truth

From: TTrotsky <TTrotsky_at_aol.com>
Date: Tue, 26 May 1998 12:40:01 EDT


Me: > but we know for example, that you can cast Detect Truth spells on two contradictory history texts and have both register as being true.

Andrew Barton:

<<Where does this come from?>>

    Fortunate Succession p83

 << The only published spells I know of (such as the Humakti divine spell) work on spoken words at the time they are spoken.>>

    You could use Divination, though.

<<It's common ground in all the games my group runs, that detect truth spells
can only tell you whether the speaker -believes- what he is saying to be true. If any other interpretation doesn't risk blowing the entire power balance of your campaign, you players aren't as ingenious as ours are.>>

    Replace 'speaker' with 'writer' and you have one of the four explanations offered by Dara Happan Truth cultists to explain the discrepancy. FWIW the other three are:

  1. Detect Truth spells don't really work at all. (Not so popular with the cultists themselves!)
  2. One or other set of documents were written by someone seeking to confuse future generations and with access to magics which hide lies from Detect Truth spells.
  3. The documents don't really contradict each other, it just looks that way. (Cue lots of desparate attempts to justify this by playing semantics etc. with the content of the texts).

    Failing all of this, the scholars will engage in a 'Truth Contest' to find out who's right. Presumably this a sort of magical scholastic duel, which sounds a cool idea to me.

Forward the glorious Red Army!

    Trotsky


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