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Per the description:

If you die while wearing the ring, your soul enters it, unless it already houses a soul. You can remain in the ring or depart for the afterlife. As long as your soul is in the ring, you can telepathically communicate with any creature wearing it. A wearer can’t prevent this telepathic communication.

Our party has found a such a ring that already has a soul in it. And he is quite the chatterbox.

Only the wearer can hear, but the soul is known to talk late into the night, yell when the wearer is trying to concentrate, and tell bad jokes at the wrong time. And frankly, we're fed up with it.

Per the description, the soul can choose to leave, but is there a way to make it leave?

It the description of the Sword of Vengeance, it calls out:

You can break the curse in the usual ways. Alternatively, casting banishment on the sword forces the vengeful spirit to leave it. The sword then becomes a +1 weapon with no other properties.

But there is no such clause for the ring. Are we stuck with Murray forever?

MivaScott
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  • You can just not wear the ring. As long as Murray is in there the "catches your soul" part doesn't work anyway so all you have is a pretty gold ring and bad jokes. However you can just not properly wear it for the meantime – Hobbamok Jan 23 '20 at 13:03
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    @Hobbamok An occupied Ring of Mind-Shielding is still pretty useful for the "mind-shielding" part. That's probably more useful than it catching your soul if you die. – Ettina Kitten Dec 07 '20 at 13:52

1 Answers1

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There's a game mechanic that provides some chance of getting the soul out of the ring, but not by forcing it.

A way according to RAW for the soul to leave the ring is if it chooses to.

The ring's description states that the soul inside it

can remain in the ring or depart for the afterlife.

Therefore you could attempt a Persuasion check or a Deception check for convincing or tricking the soul into departing. In fact, (as suggested by NibblyPig) you could even try an Intimidation check, for example, threatening to bury the ring somewhere where it will have no one to talk to, or doing bad to someone or something it cares about, etc., or (suggested by Hobbamok), even threatening to destroy the ring (if you can convince the soul that it is possible for you to do so).

As another variation of this approach (also suggested by Hobbamok): you could take inspiration from this answer to offer the soul a chance to be resurrected upon its leaving the ring (a promise that you may or may not actually follow through with), and this could involve a Persuasion and/or Deception check (based on whether your promise is sincere or bogus).

Whichever of these approaches you take, the GM should set a DC on the checks, and allow one or more of your party members to make one or more attempts. Typically the GM would adjust the DC up or down based on how clever or how convincing your "story" sounds for persuading or tricking or intimidating the soul into departing. You at least should be provided a roll or two.

I don't know of anything else in RAW that would allow you to manipulate the soul out of the ring.

The ring's description does not say it is cursed, and its features are unlike a typical curse in that the soul is not imprisoned in the ring against its will; the soul can leave if it wants to. So there is not strong support for applying curse-removal methods to your case.

Hopefully you have a high Charisma character with proficiency in Persuasion and a cleric to bless his or her effort in talking the soul into departing.

Valley Lad
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