How can the group move on from believing there is a traitor in their midst when there isn’t

conflictscurse-of-strahddnd-5ewizard

My group is playing Curse of Strahd and believe there is a traitor among them when there isn't. What RaW mechanics are there for them to find out who (if anyone) is leaking secrets to the Dark Lord or other mechanics so they can move on from this self-imposed fear?

My goal is for my players to finally get rid of their suspicious and work cohesively in the final battle.

They want a way to wring the truth from one another, and I want to help them with that, RaW. There never was any traitor, it was just clever misdirection from the Dark Lord, and manipulation to turn them on one another. At the same time, I don't want to, as a DM, just tell them "Yeah, you guys are fine, no worries". I would love if they could have a way to handle this on their own.


Party composition: Illusion Wizard, Soulknife Rogue, Battle Smith Artificer, Wild Magic Barbarian, Aberrant Mind Sorcerer, and Battlemaster Fighter.

Zone of Truth is not learnable by party member. Party is at level 10 and won't get any more levels. PvP is an option. I'm the DM and they asked me for ideas (since maybe they can be forgetting some mechanic that will allow them to, in-game, trust one another again).

Best Answer

Get an NPC to cast zone of truth

The traditional solution to this problem is to cast zone of truth: the caster can confirm when someone makes their save, and then they can say things that are guaranteed not to be lies.

(This link purports to have advice for traitors evading a zone of truth, but it admits that there's really nothing you can do if they directly ask if you did the thing.)

I'm not super familiar with Curse of Strahd, but it seems like a decent chance the group could find an NPC to cast this spell.

Use enhance ability and make Insight checks

Your artificer can prepare enhance ability, giving someone advantage on their insight checks.  Just have everyone clearly declare that they're not some sort of spy and they genuinely want to destroy Strahd, and let everyone roll insight checks.

Your idea of using suggestion is a good one

I don't know what sort of time pressure your group is under, but if they can resolve their trust issues by spending a day and 100gp, that seems like a good deal to me. The detect thoughts spell seems like it would work almost as well.

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