Laws in your campaign

[Celebrim]

My 3.5 pirate campaign has dueling laws. Basically, if you are challenged to a duel, and you accept, then a city official can make it lawful. Both parties must agree to strict dueling laws, and may both appoint a wizard to make sure that no magic is used to cheat. They both use regulation swords, and no armor. When one of them dies, it is not considered murder, because there was a city official to approve it.

Much the same thing is true in my campaign as well.

Indeed, the law goes even further in many places, for there are situations where you can legally resolve domestic disputes in this manner as a sort of trial by combat where the accused party can't legally refuse. For example, in my campaign an unscrupulous noble with a grudge against a PC hired a team of con artists that consists of a honey-trap and a professional duelist that pretends to be the honey-traps husband. When the PC was drugged and propositioned by the honey-trap, the duelist then discovered them together (as planned) and challenged the PC to a duel of honor that the PC couldn't refuse.

There were several outs of this trap.

1) The PC's could have showed in court that couple wasn't actually legally married.
2) The PC's could have showed in court that the entire sequence was planned, meaning that the 'husband' can't find fault with a man for doing what he encouraged his own 'wife' to do and it's his own fault he's justly dishonored. (Indeed, since the court has seen this guy before with the same complaints, the court was already suspicious and highly sympathetic to any evidence of a plot, had the PC's presented it.)
3) As the accused party, the PC had the right to set the terms of the duel. The PC chose to fight with weapons that the professional duelist was not proficient in, causing him to back out of the con. This is what the PC's actually did, although this amounted to some legal wrangling because initially the con artist had tricked the PC naïve second (another PC) into accepting terms favorable to the con artist, and they had to get the court to reject that on the grounds that at the time, the second PC hadn't actually been appointed to act as a second for the first PC.
4) The PC could have just fought and won the duel, although the PC probably couldn't have done this without revealing himself to be a sorcerer which would have possibly got him killed as a mortal fiend unless additional diplomacy protected him (probably the party cleric or similar high social status PC staking her reputation on the PC's behalf, "let any evil he do be my responsibility" sort of thing) since sorcerers as I mentioned aren't treated as free people but rather monsters in the form of people.

Of course, in an epic act of diplomacy, probably well beyond the PC's then level, I also would have allowed the PC's to overturn the laws of kingdom as unjust, sexist, barbaric, etc. and thereby causing legal duels to fall into disrepute. Or they could have written satires and songs mocking the professional duelist, forcing him to slink away in disgrace unable to ply his trade locally. Or they could have assassinated the duelist prior to the duel (they considered it, but figured it would be hard to get away with it, since suspicion would naturally fall on them).

But the main point is that there are scenarios that depend on the weird quasi-medieval laws that are in force.

Someone mentioned summoning. Summoned creatures are willing servants, and not slaves in my game world. They don't come along unless they want to, and while they are generally into doing violence, they'll balk on rare occasion. You can't for example summon a celestial dog to kill something obviously not evil like an innocent orphan child, and if you actually did manage to trick the dog the powers of god would be less than happy with you and you should expect retribution. (Incidentally, it occurs to me that you could summon a celestial dog to resolve the question, "Can the paladin kill this?") Similarly, you can't summon a fiendish creature to get it to further good ends. This isn't generally a big restriction, as you can always find something that will go along with any plan you might have. Summoning in my game is less a hook that forces a creature to serve you, as it putting out a classified ad promising opportunity to commit relatively consequence free violence to their enemies (or similarly attractive proposition). This is why summoned creatures arriving knowing who the summoner wants them to attack.

However, this brings us back to that word I used earlier - 'diablerie'. Summoning anything with the evil descriptor, is an 'evil' descriptor spell, and is considered a type of 'witchcraft'. If you are caught, it's the crime of diablerie and punishable by death in most municipalities (by immolation, preferably with you alive at the start of it) and self-defense is not an excuse.

 

[Imaculata]

In my campaign, an npc crew member of the players got himself challenged to a duel by a nobleman. He figured he could easily take on the noble, and did not realize that this noble had enjoyed a life time of dueling lessons. So the players had to find a way to either nullify the duel, cheat at the duel, or simply win. Its something that happened historically all the time, where nobles would constantly challenge people to a duel and abuse their expertise at sword fighting, or take each other out. And sometimes also force a situation on purpose where they could call for a duel.

The players investigated the dueling laws, and discovered that their npc crew member was allowed to appoint someone else to fight on his behalf. Of course, his challenger was also allowed to do the same. The players figured that one of them could probably take on the nobleman in a fight, but they didn't take into account that the nobleman could also appoint a far better swordsman, just like them. And of course the nobleman ended up appointing the greatest fencing teacher in town to fight for him, -something he could not refuse. They still managed to come out of it victorious, thanks to them cheating like heck. But as long as you don't get caught, it's all good.