D&D 5E Zone of truth 5e: Justice system revolution!

[77IM]

...or possibly even in one's imagination. Answering a different question is after all one of the standard techniques for beating a polygraph in real life.

I think this is what succeeding on the saving throw is supposed to represent: do you have the mental fortitude to "game the system" and say what you want? Or do you buckle and blurt out the truth?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I think this is what succeeding on the saving throw is supposed to represent: do you have the mental fortitude to "game the system" and say what you want? Or do you buckle and blurt out the truth?

If this were AD&D I'd agree with you. Saving throws in 5E though... aside from the mechanics, I have no idea what they're supposed to represent. They usually don't require you to do any of the things I'd associate with successfully employing a counterstrategy, e.g. a successful Dex save vs red dragon breath does not involve or cost movement or even your reaction, nor leave you prone.

In this specific instance, the saving throw vs ZoT does not require you to answer in true-but-ambiguous ways, like "Yes" to the "wrong" question. You can straight-up lie and say, "I shot the sheriff and his deputy and no that dress doesn't make you look fat", and the spell won't stop you. If you fail the save you'd have to be more clever, e.g. "I wasn't there when the sheriff and his deputy were brutally murdered by an unknown assailant; that dress is all right but I really like the way this other dress matches your hair."

Making the saving throw means you don't have to be clever, you can just brute-force it.

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[The Crimson Binome]

It happens not infrequently on the internet that one knows someone will misunderstand one's words, and yet does not pause to enlighten them about their mistake, because one simply does not care enough about the person who is wrong.

Sure, but the cleric has ten minutes to try and get information out of you, with the threat of death hanging over your head. That's a significant amount of time in which to ask the questions they want answered, and to do so with many different phrasings in order to bypass any evasions you set up, especially given that they can ask whether you are being evasive. If you go silent, or if you look like you're choosing your words carefully, they can just kill you.

There's no such thing as a perfect legal system, but this spell gives you the tools to get very close. Weaseling your way through an entire ten-minute interrogation would be an unbelievable feat, whether or not it's technically possible. Of course, the administrators may also become overconfident in their infallibility, and not apply full rigour to their interrogation; that's mostly down to the availability of clerical spellcasters in government, and whether casting a spell for interrogation ever becomes routine enough of a task for them to get bored with it.

There are other workarounds, yes. Legitimate insanity, of the variety where you hear voices, might give you more freedom to choose which questions you want to answer. Of course, if anyone suspects that, they can just kill you. If they determine you're under some magical effect, then they can take the appropriate countermeasures to end that. It should go without saying that any non-sanctioned spellcasting within a court setting would be grounds for death.

The spell is less useful for adventuring clerics, in the field (or dungeon), who may not be trained in proper interrogation techniques. If you choose to play that out at the table, it might be possible to fool an NPC, or even for an NPC to fool a player who isn't paying attention. Or the DM could always say that the spell simply doesn't work as well as it is described, for whatever reasons, because they don't want to accept the implications of inflicting cheap veritaserum on a Lawful society.

 

[77IM]

If this were AD&D I'd agree with you. Saving throws in 5E though... aside from the mechanics, I have no idea what they're supposed to represent. They usually don't require you to do any of the things I'd associate with successfully employing a counterstrategy, e.g. a successful Dex save vs red dragon breath does not involve or cost movement or even your reaction, nor leave you prone.

In this specific instance, the saving throw vs ZoT does not require you to answer in true-but-ambiguous ways, like "Yes" to the "wrong" question. You can straight-up lie and say, "I shot the sheriff and his deputy and no that dress doesn't make you look fat", and the spell won't stop you. If you fail the save you'd have to be more clever, e.g. "I wasn't there when the sheriff and his deputy were brutally murdered by an unknown assailant; that dress is all right but I really like the way this other dress matches your hair."

Making the saving throw means you don't have to be clever, you can just brute-force it.

Well, you can role-play it that way, sure. That's a very literal interpretation. The rules don't require you to do otherwise.

But, when someone casts a spell in your games, does their hand glow with a magic light? Are there pretty sparkles? Is it clearly visibly magical, or is it all very subtle and direct and by-the-rules?

I think either way can work. I think the rules are written in a very direct, literal way because it makes them easier to process.

In this particular case, I prefer to assume that the rules abstraction subsumes all mental trickery and interrogation resistance and stuff like that. For example, if you know you are going under zone of truth and arrange to have a confederate secretly ask you questions to answer, I'd give you advantage on your saving throws.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I disagree with this. Looking back at the past and applying our current standards and knowledge often leads to some confusion.

To use the example of the ancient Greeks, torture was used (on slaves, foreigners) as the only true method of getting proper testimony (see, inter alia, Demosthenes). While the testimony of a free citizen may or may not be truthful, the testimony of others (ahem) could only be trusted if it was elicited through torture- in a certain sense, torture was the proof of the reliability (like drawing the truth out of an object). While this might seem inconceivable to us now, it is because we don't have the same mindset. In other words, torture wasn't used to elicit confessions, but to establish trustworthiness.

I'm just using this particular example because this thread has a number of assumptions about past legal systems that aren't quite correct. Many legal systems, for example, had the concept of the guilt of the object- a concept that continued our own common law until somewhat recently in historical terms (you can look up the history of the deodand, a word that Gygax appropriated for the DMG!). Of course, the root concept that an object has guilt seems bizarre to us; but has its roots in the Roman law (and before).

In short, using our current beliefs and trying to reason back to what we think a legal system was like in the past is usually incorrect; let alone when we are discussing a fantasy world with spells, dragons, and ESP.

As for the thread topic; it depends on your campaign. I would never make the legal process a big part of any D&D campaign for the same reason I don't have a detailed reasoning for actuaries and tax accounting and bathroom usage; it's not that much fun. To the extent that it does matter, I would either use the Zone of Truth as a "one-off," or, if I was truly motivated, maybe create a country in the fantasy world where they had an advanced judicial system (that was properly punitive!) employing it, probably a theocracy. YMMV.

Right -- people were assumed to be guilty and then tortured to confirm it. Hence the 'torture was used to make someone willing to confess to being guilty." That people believed this to be proper justice done doesn't really change the gist of my point. Finding out that your justice system is badly broken and that people can and often do lie under torture would completely break those legal systems, no? The question then is, which wins -- the system that found guilty people "correctly" all the time or the magic that says you now have to build a completely different legal system that's totally dependent on those religious guys casting magic and telling you what the truth is? Could go either way, but, politics being politics, it seems like you're going to have a very, very powerful clergy essentially in charge of your justice system and laws the latter way.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Right -- people were assumed to be guilty and then tortured to confirm it. Hence the 'torture was used to make someone willing to confess to being guilty." That people believed this to be proper justice done doesn't really change the gist of my point. Finding out that your justice system is badly broken and that people can and often do lie under torture would completely break those legal systems, no? The question then is, which wins -- the system that found guilty people "correctly" all the time or the magic that says you now have to build a completely different legal system that's totally dependent on those religious guys casting magic and telling you what the truth is? Could go either way, but, politics being politics, it seems like you're going to have a very, very powerful clergy essentially in charge of your justice system and laws the latter way.

Honestly I think the Sorcerer's Apprentice posted the best system: assume guilty until proven innocent, but those of sufficient social standing can call for a Zone of Truth trial to try to prove their innocence. (Use the "creature knows when it's affected" trick plus "cleric stands within the zone" trick to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the zone is working; then the accused gets to speak freely to try to persuade the judge(s) of his innocence.)

Not only does this have the benefit of being a sane legal system, it is also one which is likely to involve the PCs in interesting and heroic ways.

For example, a commoner begs the paladin, Sir Caneghem, for the Rite of Truth to prove his innocence in a murder trial--the mayor's daughter has disappeared. Zone of Truth is employed, but the magistrate flatly declares witchcraft and ignores it, declares the accused guilty anyway. PCs suspect corruption and may start to investigate. If they need a nudge, maybe there's an assassination attempt. Eventually they discover that the victim is alive and well and part of a dark cult.

Obviously you can lay these hooks without ZoT, but they feel a little bit more natural to my imagination with ZoT rights than without it. After all it's not like the peasant can offer them monsters to slay or treasure to steal.

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[lowkey13]

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[Irda Ranger]

I noticed it awhile ago. To me, the best use of this spell would not be for interrogations, it would be for negotiations.

Yup. Merchants would use them all the time. It would be especially helpful with verifying documents. "To the best of your knowledge, are all the representations you have made in this contract as to the validity and quality of your wares correct and complete?" or even more simply "Are you withholding any information you think I would want to know?"

each side brings in two clerics, and all of them cast overlapping zones of truth.

Criminal trials could work the same way. Instead of (or in addition to) the defendant having a right to legal representation, they get their own cleric to cast a Zone of Truth to verify that the prosecution's cleric being honest. Presumably clerics of gods of Justice would consider this activity a religious obligation (just as real world priests take confession and visit the sick and imprisoned).

Evasive answers also don't have to be tolerated. You can limit the answers to "Yes" and "No", or rephrase your questions until "Yes" and "No" are valid answers. Failure to answer questions unambiguously could be considered presumptions of guilt.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Well, no. That wasn't what I was saying.

To use the example I specifically employed, a witness who was not a citizen would have been tortured to ensure the veracity of their testimony. Regardless of whether or not they were the accused. So if a slave or foreigner was to testify, that testimony would only be (in our terms) admissible if it was produced under torture. Torture was much more ingrained in the system than most people can imagine- not just what we would consider criminal matters, but civil ones as well.

That was the point I was trying to drive across- we all make errors when we import our modern thoughts back in time. You see this with television shows, for example, that presuppose that the purpose then of torture was simply to elicit a confession after rounding up "the usual suspects." But that wasn't the case for them, at all. They believed that (for lack of better phrasing) the truth could only be extracted from the body. Many of these concepts are foreign to us- such as objects that have intent (or are tainted with illegality) or that the law would literally rise from the soil (something we still see with the concept of lex loci delicti, or applying the law of the place where the wrong was committed).*

It's very difficult to understand these different conceptions, and most errors occur when we try to use our current conceptions and reason back. Which is why it is easy for us to say some things seem silly, but it wasn't silly to them (and, I am quite sure, 500 years from now, people will think things that we do are quite silly are misguided).

Anyway, it's a fantasy world. Design what you want. But IME, D&D games that bog down in excess legalism suffer both because they don't do it right, but mostly because that's just not fun. There's a reason we don't play Advocates and Actuaries, after all.

*If you are genuinely curious about some of this, OWH's On the Common Law (a series of collected lectures) is kind of fun, and really readable, except that he does occasionally assume a knowledge of Greek and Latin.

Wow. Mind blown. I need to track down some of these accounts and use them to weird my game a little more. ("Truth is stranger than fiction" is not just an aphorism, it's a dare!) Thanks for posting!

 

[lowkey13]

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