[RPG] How to you lie and keep secrets from a telepathic Mind-Reader

dnd-5e

Our villain is a telepath and mind-reader that my players wish to be able to lie to and prevent from learning their plans. The villain is homebrew and essentially has an ability that is innately and permanently activated for all creatures around him. He can read what everyone is thinking at that moment, detect lies, and communicate telepathically.

Mind Reader: you can read the thoughts of any creature within 20 feet of you, with at least 4 Intelligence, that speaks a language you understand, and is not protected by a thick barrier. You hear their thoughts as if they were talking aloud, so you can determine that invisible creatures are around you, and eventually locate them. Their thoughts do not interfere with your regular listening skills, and are not affected by loud noises either. You hear both distinctly and separately.

How can these PCs lie to the villain, and keep the villain from learning their plans by reading their thoughts? I came up with 2:

  • Mind Blank – one willing creature you touch is immune any effect that would read its thoughts,

  • Ring of Mind Shielding – you are immune to magic that allows other creatures to read your thoughts

Other spells, like Nondetection or Private Sanctum shield you against Divination spells, which this Telepathy ability is not. Class features, like the level 17 Rogue's Soul of Deceit [SCAG], are not really applicable.

However, this essentially means that either our Bard is going to have to learn Mind Blank, or they need to go find a bunch of these rings. This isn't necessarily bad, but the Bard isn't the most reliable player, and scavenging for 6× the same item that permanently protects you seems boring.

Are there other options to do this? Preferably consumables that they can hire people to craft for them, like potions or scrolls (that can be activated by anyone), or an item that protects the entire group simultaneously?

Best Answer

Your players have a great many options, given that you are open to homebrew material:

  • They should seek out a Couatl, and undertake a quest to receive it's shielded mind trait
  • They could ally themselves with a Flumph and stay very very close to them, so as to benefit from their telepathic shroud. Perhaps, if any of their group is psionic, they could learn to manifest such a shroud themselves.
  • They could acquire the aid of a rakshasa, and willingly invoke its curse upon themselves, filling their every thought with horrible images and dreams, and thus discouraging the use of telepathy against them.
  • They could start a weekly poker game with an androsphinx and his consort, and so acquire a measure of their inscrutability.

(Basically, any time you're going 'I wanna do a thing/provide my players an opportunity to become able to do a thing' and it's not easily done via spells/magic items, check out the monster manual. Most monster traits are presented in such a way as to make it fictionally reasonable for players to gain access to that trait via some sort of interaction with the monster, be that murdering it and harvesting parts of its corpse or training under it for an extended time period or performing quests for some divine patron or eldritch being or another)

Additionally, in previous editions spell research rules existed, and the ones from AD&D 2e are pretty consistent with the 5e ethos. For some reason (probably game balance-- spell creation in D&D has always been hugely difficult for GMs to properly adjudicate) 5e lacks spell creation rules, but you could certainly import or modify ones from elsewhere. A spell similar to 3.5's False Vision, which has no 5e counterpart yet is not particularly problematic would be a reasonable addition.

I have added False Vision as a 4th level illusion spell with the ritual tag for a wizard in 5e before. I had it require concentration, last up to 24 hours, and require an action to alter the image viewed. I also added a 6th level version that took an hour to cast and didn't require concentration on a round as long as the caster used no movement that round. I changed the material component to a focus component for each. Both worked fine.

Alternatively, a variant on one of the spells that protects or disguises against detection spells could be a decent starting place; they almost do what you want as-is, it would seem.

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