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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Graf" data-source="post: 2954844" data-attributes="member: 3087">Lots of different opinions here….Personally I’d go with whatever you want.A few comments:Legal systems frequently use imprecise (i.e. possibly incorrect) methods of “proving” something.Fingerprints turn up false negatives & positives regularly but they are still used in US courts of law.Polygraph tests are heavily contested and –equally- heavily used (also in the US).DNA testing is necessarily imprecise but also frequently used.The fact that Zone of truth doesn’t always work doesn’t mean they aren’t going to be regularly used.Assume to take a human commoner and bring him to a zone of truth while asking a few questions. He gives you some answers.Assume you stick him back in his cell and bring him out the next day. Ask the same questions.By the 3rd or 4th time you’ll have a pretty good chance of confirming what he knows.Is it a perfect system? No. But it’d be pretty cheap and the people who are disadvantaged (having to sit in jail for days and days) are the criminals.At the same time a person of noble birth may have a right to not go into the zone. (he doesn’t want to be exposed to a prosecutor who is under the thumb of an enemy and who could request embarrassing information or else secrets that the king doesn’t want to be revealed).At which point you have a person who ‘looks’ guilty (he’s not going into the zone) but  has good reasons (he’s been entrusted with secrets of the crown that he doesn’t want revealed) and who needs to be exonerated in some other manner.This zone of truth system also has two good points from a gameworld standpoint:It doesn’t require interpretation of third parties (unlike detect x), and its cheap (2nd level spell)And one good point from story anglesIt takes a while, so you can have lots of options for chicanery and adventure (someone tries to replace the divine caster and cast zone of lies, someone tries to provide an item or effect that grants SR, bonuses to saves, etcSince someone who remains silent when charged is presumed to be guilty you can still have that “I kept my silence for fear that my enemies would discover secrets that must be protected for the good of the kingdom”.I.e. you get to keep the drama of a trial that goes on for days without making up a complex legal system and doesn’t ignore the existence of magic.</blockquote>

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