Want to create a trial, but zone of truth makes all trials simply retelling the event

[Deophaun]

Technically, from the outside looking in, with a world of high magic this would be perfectly acceptable and probably normal... but from the inside of the world you would have to be a pretty sick puppy to see this as a viable way to conduct law.

It would also mean that murder is punished with a enough community service to pay back the costs of the trial and resurrection.

Heck, I could see a kingdom where there's a yearly regicide festival: for all their grievances, the people get to kill the king once a year. King then gets resurrected and life goes on.

[~xFellWardenx~]

I find it hilarious how people have suggested 9th-level spells being used regularly in court. If you have spammable 9ths to work with, you can just ask a deity what happened or something similar. More appropriate for most games would be... Well, all the other suggestions mentioned. Except maybe "murder first, raise if innocent" but only because raising someone from the dead without penalty is also a very high-levelled effect.

[Zirconia]

Interogation proceedure in my 3.x games.

Detect magic and remove everything that shows up, note that false aura targets objects not creatures, and that if the object casts a spell effect on a person then that's still detectable. If you won't remove everything magic or let them dispell it then they just assume you're guilty of a capital crime and act accordingly.

Detect thoughts, since you always know if you made a will save this can be picked up from surface thoughts when it happens IMAO. Zone of truth.

Yeah, I was thinking something along these lines; the combo of Detect Thoughts and Zone of Truth, both low level spells, gives you pretty good information, at least for some key questions. You don't necessarily use these when some beggar steals an apple from a cart, but it would be justified for capital crimes, major felonies, etc., especially at a Mage school where you don't even have to really pay for them.

But for an example of having a trial where everybody is acting in good faith and telling the complete truth but a horrible miscarriage of justice can STILL happen, take a look at the movie "My Cousin Vinny". I recall seeing an article where one of the Supreme Court justices of the U.S. mentioned that as his favorite movie. :) Without revealing the plot, use of D&D magic could obviously lead to scenarios like that.

[Fitz10019]

The fact that you can make a save at all (and there's no way to tell if they did) completely negates the purpose of the spell. My brother, when he DMs, sometimes rules that zone of truth allows no save, but as the spell stands in the text, it's completely useless, as it only reduces the chance of people lying to you, rather than eliminates it.

It's not completely useless. Just like with a polygraph, you set a baseline. You demand a lie so you can see if the ZoT alarm is working. If it isn't you know the witness made their save. Or, another way to put it, the witness failed to comply with purposefully failing the save as instructed by the duly appointed authority. Uncooperative witness. Let the beating begin. [Must be guilty of sumthin, amIright?]

[VoxRationis]

If you demand a lie, the target can just clam up and say nothing, or tell the truth, so as to mimic the effects of being under the spell. I suppose you could use geas or dominate person, but that would invalidate their trustworthiness as a witness and the interaction between mutually contradictory effects of two different spells (one demanding the target lie, and the other forbidding it) might not work very well.

[jaydubs]

It's not completely useless. Just like with a polygraph, you set a baseline. You demand a lie so you can see if the ZoT alarm is working. If it isn't you know the witness made their save. Or, another way to put it, the witness failed to comply with purposefully failing the save as instructed by the duly appointed authority. Uncooperative witness. Let the beating begin. [Must be guilty of sumthin, amIright?]

Zone of truth doesn't have an alarm. It's just, you can't lie when you're in it if you fail the save. So it's pretty easy to pretend you failed the save, barring some other magical compulsion as mentioned by VoxRationis.

That said, ZoT is still useful in terms of a numbers game. You throw down a zone of truth for every case, with the understanding that a fraction of witnesses and defendants will still be lying. But, you've also prevented a percentage from lying as well. It's a net win, so long as you don't come to rely on it.

[eggynack]

It's not completely useless. Just like with a polygraph, you set a baseline. You demand a lie so you can see if the ZoT alarm is working. If it isn't you know the witness made their save. Or, another way to put it, the witness failed to comply with purposefully failing the save as instructed by the duly appointed authority. Uncooperative witness. Let the beating begin. [Must be guilty of sumthin, amIright?]

I'm somewhat confused by the process at work here, and I don't think it works. First, you tell the witness to purposefully fail their save. They do not, because that's the obvious premise here. You say to them, "Tell me that 2+2=5", because if they can, then they passed the save. In response, our witness says, "I cannot say that piece of information, for it is false, and I am within a zone of truth". How do you then detect that they passed their save? You can't absolutely demand a lie, because the whole point is that they can't lie, but if they can lie, then they can lie about their ability to lie. It all just seems ineffective.

[Lord of Shadows]

Do not forget that in the detailed example of a 3.x interrogation by poster Doug Lampert, the witness is already under the effects of Detect Thoughts, and presumably you wait the necessary 2 rounds before casting Zone of Truth. As Doug puts it:

Detect thoughts, since you always know if you made a will save this can be picked up from surface thoughts when it happens IMAO.

So in his campaign, it would probably work more often than not. Plus the liberal use of the "if you try to beat the system we kill you anyways" judicial procedure...