That’s funny! but if you want to know how to solve this problem every time, even when asking one single question, just ask this question:
“If I ask the other guy which is the correct path, which path will he tell me?”
No matter who you ask, both of them will point to the WRONG path, meaning the correct one is the one they DIDN’T point to. Here is the logic.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume the correct path is the right path. When you ask that question, if the person is the truthful one, he will be honest and say the left path. Because if you ask the liar what the right path is, he will say it is the left path (which is false). Now if you ask the liar what the other guy will say the correct path is, he will lie to you and say it is the left path (which is also false, the truthful one will tell you it is the right path and not the left).
and also, using “correct path” instead of “right path” will be less confuzzling because english words can have multiple meanings and are the dumb.
My favorite take on this:
This still doesn’t accomplish the goal of knowing which door will kill you. All you’ve done is determine which guard is the liar.
I believe that’s the joke. The barbarians intelligence isn’t usually very high.
I love playing low Intelligence high Wisdom characters. Because Wisdom governs stats like Perception, Insight, and Animal Handling. So your character will notice things that the rest of the party misses, but often doesn’t have the intelligence to put the individual pieces together.
Once played a high wisdom barbarian. He would notice things like traps or clues, but I would RP it with things like “Hey, why’s that wire stretched across the path? Someone is going to trip over that…” The other players very quickly learned to pay attention whenever I asked stupid questions, because it was usually my way of announcing “I noticed something that the rest of you missed.”
I wish our DM had real-life message to telepathically convey stuff to just one person.
In my group there would be literal zero chance of the others not listening to me if I ever threw a “hmm why is that wire there”, because they would’ve heard the dm either tell me due to passive perception or had me throw a roll and then tell me. So they know it’s a trap no matter if I want to rp it. Every time I get frustrated and question it, there’s this one guy who always has the reasoning and justifying at hand why they would know to do the right thing and to be fair they kind of make sense always, but there’s zero chance he’d come up with that just by my rp line alone without knowing for a fact it’s a trap.
I think that’s the worst kind of meta gaming. They are fully blind to the meta gaming there and just do it by instinct. And when you try and question, they always have a defense ready, even if it’s so wildly specific and unlikely but you can’t really fault it because they’re not stupid, the justifications hold, it’s just that the only way they habitually generate them is because they know what I know despite they couldn’t in-game know.
Like I’ve occasionally just left the thing unsaid in-game out of frustration and just reason to DM that there’s so much going on, my focus instantly switched to another thing and I forgot because I’m not very smart. So we all know there’s a trap but now nobody has told this to the others.
What do they do? The one guy fucking always comes up with some shit like “hmmm be wary, they must’ve laid traps here, hey you with good investigation, please look around and see if there’s one in this specific place for some reason” and the rolls of course often succeed because they always choose to best one to solve that.
But from rp perspective, we’ve walked this path for a while, and this thought only came up now, that it might be trapped? Just right now when you know, outside of the game, that there’s a trap?
I call bullshit and it frustrates me so much, there’s very little chance of anything interesting ever happening in-game because we seldom miss anything or do the wrong things, because “somehow” we always happen to do the right things no matter who notices things in-game or rolls or whatever, no matter how much any of us attempt to rp it, somebody just meta games it without it being explicitly or admittedly meta gaming and gets all defensive when questioned and because they now know everything, can figure out an explanation the DM can do nothing but accept because it makes sense, now that they know to pull the right shit out their ass.
Ugh. It’s not even a big deal, our group is fun and the adventuring isn’t bad, these things don’t happen often enough for it to really affect things, but god do I hate it. This ended up being a rant, I didn’t even know how much I get frustrated with it until I just now read this back. Jesus…
That is why it is better for the barbarian to snap the wrist of the one guard, so that you can ask them a question still or you ask the first guard which way to the castle then rip his head off followed by asking the second guard if the first guard is dead. You will get the question from each guard and know which one tells the truth.
Only one question allowed, they said. I don’t think it’s solvable.
It is solvable. You ask one guard at random, “Which door would the other guard have said leads to certain doom if I had asked them?”
And no matter which guard you ask, go through the door they answer with. If it was the truth teller guard, they’ll tell you which door the liar would have said, and if it’s the liar they’ll lie about which door the truth teller would have said.
So you ask them which way leads to the castle and you don’t pick the way they say.
If we’re assuming that these things are actually bound by some kind of rule stating they literally cannot lie or literally cannot tell the truth.
But you asked your one question to the one remaining guard. You gained no intel.
But the other party members haven’t
The riddle only makes sense as such with one question in total.
The trick is to ask one guard what the other guard would say is behind a particular door.
The riddle is worded vaguely and we just murdered one of the guys. I think we can lawyer another question out of them.
Start b-ballin’ with that head and see how long it takes that guard to change his tune
Jajaja no creo
JAJAJAJAJAJJAJAJAJAJJAJAJAJAJAJAJJAJAJAJJAJAJJAJAJJAJAJAJAJJ almighty
I got an unexpected laugh from Rick and Mortys take on this. His answer was “you ever fuck this guys wife?” And watched them fight to the death.
Ah man, I miss Rick and Morty before you know… everything.
They replaced the guy didn’t they?
Yes. And the show got a lot better. The voices are perfect matches and the writing is a lot less… “Eccentric” (while still being absurdist)
Agreed. The writing for the last couple seasons has been insanely good.
I think I agree.
deleted by creator
So the traditional answer here is to ask them to point at the door the other guard will say is safe.
However, I’m curious, does anyone know of any other valid solutions?
Could probably do something clever with XOR.
Is exactly one of the following statements true? You are the liar. Your door is the safe door.
“Is the guard that tells the truth standing in front of the safe door?” If they say yes, you go through their door, if they say no then you go to the other one
I did not think this was going to work. Som bitch it does. Crazy
If they say yes they can still be a liar.
Right, in which case the door they’re in front of is the safe door because they lied and said “Yes” when asked if the truth teller is in front of the safe door. And if they tell the truth and say yes, they’re still the person in front of the safe door. By asking it that way they make it so it doesn’t matter if they’re the liar or not. “Yes” means that person’s door is safe and “No” means you want the other door, no matter who you ask.
That’s wild that this works. What.
How is that a valid answer, they would both point at a different door
They will both point to the bad door.
If asking the thruthful guard, he will point to the door the liar says is safe, which would be the bad door. If asking the liar, he would consider what the thruthful guard says is safe, then reverse that answer, still ending up on the bad door.
They cancel out, so whichever guard you ask doesn’t matter.
Wouldnt they instead keep pointing like clockwork towards different doors seeing that they would have to adjust for the other guard?
The liar, knowing the truth-teller will point to the good door, points to the bad door.
The truth-teller, knowing the liar would point to the bad door, points to the bad door.
Either way, you take the one your guard doesn’t point to.
But they would have to keep adjusting since they both have to answer acco4ding to what the other one says
no because the question was which door would the other person say is safe, they both point to the not safe door
I mean, the Barbarian asked the one question and didn’t gain anything from it. Knowing which one is the liar doesn’t… help anymore.
That’s why this is a brilliantly played barbarian. They think they are clever but will still have to do things the hard way.
That’s why it’s funny.
Ah. Normally I see this with no limit on questions. You’re right. It’d only work with at least two questions.
You can ask both guards if an item is an item. “Does this cup contain fluid” would work, it doesn’t have to be a dead guy.
I’ve only heard it with one question, that’s the whole point. Otherwise you just ask a guard some trivial question (e.g. What color is the sky?) to determine which is the liar, then just ask which is the safe door.
The whole point is to get the information you need from a single question.
“What would the result be of combining the following terms with “and”: the direction of the correct door, and the color of the sky?”
Maybe I’ve only seen a fucked up version.
That assumes the other guy holds to his principles in the face of death. If I were the dm, the act of tearing the other guy’s head off and then threatening to do the same to the other one unless granted another question would at least grant advantage on an intimidation check
I’ve always seen it as outside of their control. It’s not that the lying guard chooses to lie, it’s that they’re incapable of not lying.
I mean, he could still lie. He’d just have to afford one more question
Alternate solution:
Is there an actual plot to Mimi, or is she just a complete chaos goblin?
Simply goblin
Ask either guard: “If I asked the other guard which door led to the castle, what would they say?” The answer is always the door that leads to instant death; enter the other door.
The third guard stabs people who ask tricky questions.
Then, rip both of them in half and knock down the safe door so that everyone after you immediately knows the safe route
If you rip them both in half, then two of your party are cursed to be the next two truth/lie guards. Roll for unintended consequences.
Time to rip the table, the DM, and everyone’s minifigs in half. It’s rippening time.
[sings]: I’d like to rip the world in half / for perfect disharmonyyyy!
I’m a fan of the revised Little Mermaid song: https://youtube.com/watch?v=fcbazH6aE2g
“So, you’re telling me I could have just greater restoration’d the guards rather than killing them? My god isn’t going to like this.”
The guard replies “I don’t know for sure”.
For years, I had my own headcanon for the Labyrinth movie. In the scene, the young Sarah correctly solves the riddle, passes through the correct door, says “This is a piece of cake!” and then she immediately falls down a pit of doom. This confused me, because she got the answer right. So I reasoned that the guards were both liars, and because they both participated in explaining the rules, they were lying about the rules.
It was only a few years ago that I read in an interview that the Labyrinth (or Jareth) dropped her down the hole because she said it was a piece of cake. It was her arrogance that set her back, not that she got the riddle wrong.
But now it still bothers me that the liar, whichever one he is, helps explain the rules of the scenario. If he always lies, then she can’t trust that either of them ever tells the truth. The rules have to be described separately, like on a sign or by a disinterested third party. Or you could phrase it differently, like “One of us will answer your question truthfully, and one of us will answer your question dishonestly.” That way you avoid saying that they always lie, and specify that the lie will only be in response to the one question.
Fuck, I’ve had too much coffee. How the fuck did I get up on this soapbox? Why are you still reading? Go do something productive.
Go do something productive.
No.
But they gained no information on which door to choose ='(
The Barbarian got what they wanted, which is to have an excuse to rip another head off.
Barb could simply kill Death-itself if choice was certain death room.
Opening the certain death door reveals a guy in a dark robe with a scythe: “Hey, what’s up?”
PLEASE BE QUICK ABOUT IT, I HAVE A LOT OF WORK TO GET TO.
“Uhh… Wrong door, sorry.”
This puzzle is always presented as difficult, but why not just ask a known? If your eyes are brown just ask “Are my eyes brown?” You’d immediately know which one lies or tells the truth.
E: I missed the limit of one question.
Knowing who lies and who tells the truth doesn’t tell you which door leads to the prize and which to death.
Then you still don’t know which door is the correct one, you’ve just learned which guard tells the truth and you’ve used up your one question. The trick is to ask which door the other guard would tell you is the correct one and then go through the other door. If you’ve asked the lying guard, they’ll lie about what the honest one would say and point you towards the wrong door. If you asked the honest one, they’ll truthfully tell you what the lying guard would say and also point you towards the wrong door
Because there are two doors and only one question. If you ask a known question unrelated to the door you find out who the liar is but lose your opportunity to ask them which is the correct door.
The difficulty comes from only being able to ask one question. It’s very easy to figure out the liar, but it’s much more difficult to figure out the liar and the correct door in the same question
In fact, the lying guard is a red herring. You get one question, and need one piece of info: the door. The canonical question doesn’t tell you which guard lies, nor do you care to find out.
This doesn’t help the party decide which door to go through at all
Do you think it would suck to be one of the bottom heads? 🤔
