AD&D Magic Item Spotlight: Ring of Truth

Today’s episode looks at the Ring of Truth, a magic item that makes lies impossible to miss but also strips the wearer of their ability to lie. It’s a blessing and a curse, and at the table it often sparks rules questions. I’ll share what it does, how to use it as a DM, and a story where I had to step in when a player tried to get too clever with it.

#ADnD #RingOfTruth #MagicItems

Episode Transcript

(00:18):
Hey, welcome back to the podcastEvil Dungeon Masters AD and D
Universe Podcast. I'm your host, Evil Dungeon
Master Vince. It is Monday, so it's time for a
new podcast. Hopefully you're doing well out
there. I know I am.
Things are going well. Trying to plan some more videos
for the YouTube channel. It's going to take a little bit
of time to do that, but today we're going to focus on AD and

(00:40):
D. So ask the DM at theevaldm.com
is my e-mail address. Theevaldm.com is my website
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(01:01):
up today since last week, so those are the $2.00 level and
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It's basically me planning for the adventure, for basic fantasy
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(01:24):
get something back just to get apeek of how I do things.
Anyway, today we're going to look at a magical item, because
we haven't looked in a magic item in a little bit, or at
least a minute. Ring of Truth Page 93 An
Unearthed Arcana This Ring of Truth There's little doubt that
wearing a ring of this nature isa mixed blessing.

(01:45):
While any lie told to the weareris detectable as such by him or
her, by the same token he or sheis unable to tell any sort of
falsehood. Any attempt to lie results in
speaking the literal truth, but in turn the wearer is able to
discern the last prevocation on the part of another.

(02:06):
In fact, the voice of the liar rises to a falsetto due to the
power of the ring. If the wearer of the ring
encounters some magical some magic which enables falsehoods
to otherwise be spoken without detection, such as someone under
the effects of an undetectable lie spell or a filter of
gilness, gilness, gilness. Excuse me, no lie is noticed,

(02:30):
but the ring wearer will not hear the voice of the person, so
no word whether or not he or sheis trying to listen to.
So it really is an interesting magical item that I know it's.
So basically to sum it up, any lie told is kind of detectable.

(02:53):
The wearer cannot really lie, but there's ways around it
because I had a story that involves that.
I had a player that got his hands on this ring of truth one
time in a in a long city based campaign that I had.

(03:13):
His idea was simple, put the ring on every MPC that he
thought was a threat and asking are you working against us?
And now if the MPC said no, he figured the ring of protection
would protect him from this deception.
The problem is, it's not. It's not really how the ring
works, and it doesn't compel someone to tell the truth.

(03:36):
It just makes lies more obvious.A smart MPC could still say
something technically true and twist the words, avoiding the
question. For example, when he
interrogated A suspect spy that he thought was going to try to
kill them, the MPC answered I serve faithfully, meaning his
real master, not the player's employer.

(03:58):
Now the ring really didn't detect it because it wasn't
really technically a lie, it wasjust a lie that was different
than what they want answer they wanted.
The player argued that since thevoice didn't change, it meant
the spy was pretty much innocent.
So stepping in and putting my, you know, adjudication hat on

(04:21):
the ring, I had to make a ruling.
The ring doesn't reveal the whole truth, it only catches
falsehoods. So that one ruling forced the
players to start thinking about wording and context and who they
could really trust. Instead of being a broken lie
detector, the ring of truth turned into a role play tool.
The spy plot kept moving forwardand the players had to deal with

(04:43):
the fact that even the truth canbe misleading.
So as you can see, there are ways to get around how this ring
works and I had to make a rulingbased upon that situation with
the players and how they were using it.
This little magical item definitely could be pretty

(05:04):
useful in the campaign when it comes to, I guess, playing
around and how you want to determine things.
I had AI remember another time Ihad a player in one of my older
campaigns way back when I was probably early 2000s, and I had
a player that always when it became to like magical items,

(05:27):
they were just like screw it. And they just started using it
because they didn't know. He learned his lesson
eventually, but this magical item was the ring of truth.
He didn't have the ability to identify it, so he just put it
on. He tried the usuals of jumping
around and you know, saying fireball, things like that, you
know, just to see what the ring would do and the ring did

(05:49):
nothing. So at that point maybe he
thought it was just a fancy ringand he would wear it because it
looked cool and everything. I kind of did some roles to see
if his character would think it was cool based on his
background. Let him roll percentile and I
said because he wanted to know if he thought his character

(06:10):
would think it was cool looking.I was just like, well, that's
really up to you as your character.
I described it as a fancy ring of gold and it had maybe like a
little studded gem on it and hadsome, you know, maybe little
leaf designs on it and everything.
And it looked kind of cool. And I said, well, does your

(06:31):
character think that's cool? And he was like, I guess maybe.
So I said just for a percentile,there you go. 50% chance of, you
know, above 50, yes, 50 and below no.
So he rolled and he rolled up 70something.
I don't remember the exact number.
It was a higher number. So Mike, then your character
thinks it's cool. He puts it, you know, he keeps

(06:52):
it on his ring, except when you look on it on your hand, you're
like, yeah, this is bad ass. So his character walked around
with his ring. Now, he didn't know what the
ring did and at this point didn't even care.
And it kind of sat there on him.And since the ring really
doesn't do much as far as other than, you know, protecting the

(07:18):
lies and everything, sorry, revealing lies, I just let it
sit there on his finger until itcame to the time when he was
speaking to a king. They were in a situation where
they were talking to an evil king and they were somewhat

(07:39):
captured. And he wanted some answers.
And, you know, they were talkingas NPC's.
I'm sorry. They were talking out of
character to each other, saying that they were going to lie.
So this is when I remembered, you know, the ring is still
there. Aha.
He always were because he thought it was cool.
Well, I did roll a chance to seeif maybe the guards would take

(08:02):
it away as part of, you know, taking equipment away.
But they didn't. I did a fair roll.
I always do that when it comes to guards and stuff like that.
When people get captured in the campaign, I rolled to see if the
guards would notice certain things like all that ring, he's
on his hand. Maybe that's magical.
Let's take it off of him. No, they didn't care.

(08:22):
So he goes before the king and you know, the King's questioning
him and they, they all agreed tolie.
And I sent him a little side message on a piece of paper as
he's lying. And I'm saying, guess what?
The ring that is now on your hand is forcing you to tell the

(08:43):
truth. Well, any time you say something
that is false is making you literally speak in a weird tone.
Now your character doesn't know it's the ring doing this.
You just know that when you're telling your lie or falsehood,
you are. Your voice is cracking, it's

(09:04):
getting higher, it doesn't soundbelievable, and it doesn't
matter what you do. Clear your throat, stop for a
moment and refocus. Every time you talk about
something that is not the truth,you have some really noticeable
tick about it. And the player went, you know, I
could see it on his face as he read the note.
And he went, I could hear him say son of a, but he was cool.

(09:28):
He played it off and played the whole thing.
And everyone in the group said, what's the matter with you?
Why are you talking like that? And he's like, I don't know.
And he played it off just like you would see one of those TV
shows when someone's, you know, under a magic spell or, you
know, maybe it's one of those fantasy shows, there's something
weird happening or whatever. And his voice was cracking and
stuff like that 'cause he couldn't really tell a lie.

(09:53):
So he started figuring out, well, maybe I could tell half
truths. So I said, OK, so instead of
telling the exactly what the king wanted to hear, he kind of
twisted it around in different ways so that what he was saying
was what the king wanted to hear, but it really wasn't the

(10:14):
the whole truth. So his voice still somewhat
cracked based on what he was saying.
Sometimes it would come out normal.
I would definitely rule on on depending on how he was saying
it. And you don't have to be a
perfect role player in these situations.
You just tell me what you want to say to the king out of
character as well, and then we'll determine from there how

(10:36):
this works. And I just thought it was
interesting that he played alongwith it.
And then they got thrown in jailuntil the king could figure out
what he wanted to do with them. And they would question him like
the group was questioning him. Why did you know?
Why'd you tell him all that stuff?
And what's wrong with you? Why is your voice?
And he's just like, I don't know.
I don't know what's wrong with me.

(10:57):
And he was playing it off reallywell until I had him do some
kind of like roles to remember that he had the ring on his hand
and it. It took a little while, but he
eventually figured out that the ring on his hand was the reason
why he was unable to continue tolie.

(11:20):
Now, once he figured this out and took the ring off of his
finger, he realized that the power of him because he tried to
lie and stuff like that after that and everything was fine.
So he realized it was a ring that was doing this.
So he got it identified as the ring of truth and, and he kind
of the magic user told him exactly what the ring was able

(11:42):
to do. And from there, that's when they
started using it in different ways for the ring's power.
But it was an interesting episode episode.
It was an interesting game that we had played.
And I, I had a lot of fun with that scene with him role-playing
and you know, he was sometimes role play raising his voice up
or something as he was telling the truth, quote UN quote.

(12:05):
So it was a fun time. So there's different ways you
can use this ring and hopefully you out there have some ideas
for me. Let me know what you think in
the comments about this. I'm interested to hear.
It's an unarthered counter, page93, bottom right.
It's about 1000 experience points for this ring.
So I don't know, I think it's a cool item.

(12:26):
Well, with that said, I think I'm going to head out.
Don't forget to check out youtube.com evildm or head over
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Anything can help out. With that said, I'm going to
head out. Keep it original, keep it all.
Let's go. Goodnight and God bless.