Level
2nd
Casting Time
1 Action
Range/Area
60 ft.
(15 ft. )
Components
V, S
Duration
10 Minutes
School
Enchantment
Attack/Save
CHA Save
Damage/Effect
Control
You create a magical zone that guards against deception in a 15-foot-radius Sphere centered on a point within range. Until the spell ends, a creature that enters the spell’s area for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there makes a Charisma saving throw. On a failed save, a creature can’t speak a deliberate lie while in the radius. You know whether a creature succeeds or fails on this save.
An affected creature is aware of the spell and can avoid answering questions to which it would normally respond with a lie. Such a creature can be evasive yet must be truthful.
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Posted Sep 4, 2024More like "Zone of the Absence of Lies."
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Posted Jan 20, 2025You can never just ask your question; the creature most often must be restrained and threatened with it's life or pain in order to get it to be "forced" to talk.
The creature can always say "I refuse to answer ANY of your questions."
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Posted Jan 27, 2025The best use of this spell is not preventing lies. The best use of this spell is confirming the truth.
A character can voluntarily fail a saving throw, and in a Zone of Truth you know if someone failed. A person who wants to be honest with you can voluntarily fail a save and then tell you information that you can confirm is 100% truthful to the best of the speaker's knowledge.
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Posted Feb 21, 2025This is a very fair use of the spell, I like giving it to powerful NPCs as well.
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Posted Mar 18, 2025I have found in campaigns I play, this is sort of used in the equivalent of a court system, because this would be incredible in that circumstance. Problem is that's an NPC use of a spell, rather than players. It can still be useful on occasion, if a creature is being very evasive of a question, there is a suspicion that they are hiding something. This does work way better with sort of "Yes/No" questions rather than open-ended ones because of that.
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Posted Apr 12, 2025tbf even with it being an NPC spell you can simply have your party's ZoTer cast it on the other side's ZoTer and have both confirm that yes they are being fully truthful.
I would imagine in a court room having two people with ZoT to keep the other side fully truthful as well as confirm to there side that there being truthful would be an easy thing to do if you have the magic around.
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Posted May 28, 2025What happens if a PC lies in the zone?
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Posted Jun 2, 2025There's nothing in this spell that says anything about affecting player characters differently from anyone else. (Pretty much no spell has anything like that.)
So, if a PC enters the zone or starts its turn there, they have to make the saving throw; if they fail, they can't lie in the zone.