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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 7522966" data-attributes="member: 58197">Um... you do realize that the goal of this system is not to produce 100% guilty verdicts, right? It's to sort out guilt from innocence. #1: You are not guilty of murder, so you will correctly be found innocent. However, if the magistrate has reason to suspect it, the next question will be "Did you conspire to have John Smith murdered?"#2: You are not guilty of murder, so you will correctly be found innocent. Talking smack about somebody is not a capital crime; at most, it's defamation. The violent person who did the killing is the murderer here.#3: If it was in fact an accident or self-defense, then you are not guilty of murder and will correctly be found innocent. Where it gets interesting is if it was murder, but you have convinced yourself that you were in the right. Here, ignorance of the law is a defense. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> The magistrate would likely preface the question with an explanation of what constitutes murder. But if you can't understand that explanation, you could perhaps slide out from under.#4: You are not guilty of murder, so you will correctly be found innocent. You did absolutely nothing wrong.#5: Nice trick if you can do it. But you need a 5th-level spell to wipe someone's memory, and even then it can be restored by remove curse. The only way I know of to permanently wipe memory is via Alter Memories, the 14th-level enchanter ability. But that one doesn't work retroactively. The enchanter could put a spell on you before you commit the murder, and then wipe your memory of doing the deed; but she couldn't wipe your memory of arranging to have the spell cast on you in the first place, which would open you up to a conspiracy charge.Note that there is one spell that can straight-up beat zone of truth: The 8th-level bard spell glibness, which explicitly fools truth-detection spells. (By a super-strict reading, you could argue that zone of truth prevents you from lying rather than determining your veracity, but I think the intent of the glibness spell is obvious.) So a 15th-level bard can beat the system. But a system which requires a 15th-level bard to beat it is a pretty sturdy system.The question was not "Did you kill John Smith?" It was, "Did you murder John Smith?" And you would not be compelled to answer yes in any of those cases.</blockquote>

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