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Trial By Ordeal


bigdamnhero

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Trial By Combat is a very common fantasy trope, but historically Trial By Ordeal was actually a more common practice. Examples included walking through fire or across heated plowshares, plucking a stone or ring from a bucket of boiling water, or carrying a hot iron a set distance. The notion was that if the subject was innocent, god(s) would protect them and they would receive only minor injuries that healed quickly; if their wounds were more severe, it was seen as an indication of guilt. Psychologically, if people believed in the concept then guilty people were more likely to plead guilty rather than undergo the trial, since the punishment for failing the trial was more severe. (And you thought plea bargaining was a modern invention!)

 

So how would you simulate this in FH? There's probably an EGO Roll involved somewhere, but how would you model damage/healing from grabbing a ring from a bucket of boiling water and the like? And more importantly, in a world where god(s) really do protect the innocent, how would you reflect that?

 

This almost came up in my FH game last night. The PCs were able to talk their way around it, which is good because I had no idea how I was going to adjudicate it...

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Hmm. To me it looks as though the environmental damage is constant.

 

If you are innocent AND believe, then you engage a force field that protects you from the damage.

 

So, say the environmental damage is 3 BODY a turn. If you are innocent then the force field engages for 1 DEF. You then need to convince the relevant god that you believe. This is some kind of communication skill. You modify this -1 for every priest that believes you are guilty, -1 for every 10 lay members that believe you are guilty, +3/5/7 for every geas (variable based on difficulty) you accept from the deity, +3 for being initiated into the religion, +3 for complementary knowledge skill.

 

When you make the roll you gain +1 DEF on the force field for every 3 you make the roll by.

 

The numbers here are straight off the top of my head, but you can see the process...

 

:-)

 

Doc

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I would simulate this by having the player go through the ordeal for his character.  ;)

 

Because I am an unsympathetic god, I would roll the EGO and damage rolls out in the open, and just assign greater stakes to the damage roll.  Uh oh, you rolled a lot of damage, now your hand is impaired and you're going to be burned at the stake!  If I wanted to pretend I had sympathy and I didn't want to expose myself to the mortals, I would just roll the dice behind a screen.  If mechanics are needed I tend to simulate divine-but-not-overtly-so effects using invisible power effects, and in this case I would assign points of invisible ED to the defendant depending on his/her EGO roll and whether I felt like it.

 

You do have to be careful with this, as it might inadvertently turn everyone in the group into a low level cleric, ceaselessly begging for all sorts of divine favors and dispensations.

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Trial By Ordeal, as described above, would handled most simply by applying the appropriate environmental effect rules. If you want to emulate the concept that their guilt or innocence has an effect on the trial, modify the effect according to their level of guilt. Observers will judge the victim's guilt based on the amount of damage they appear to have suffered.

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The key is whether or not the powers that be will actually protect the guilty or not.  And how likely it is to happen (are they always paying attention?  Do they care enough to do something?  Do they require bribery or bargaining? etc).  That's a campaign setting thing, and if so, then they will or will not defend someone so that the ordeal is either only mildly harmful or not harmful at all.  How that works really doesn't matter much.

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I could easily imagine a trial by ordeal where the key is that you don't hesitate or panic, confident in the god's protection.  Thus, you complete the task without slowing down to get seriously hurt.  I could also imagine a cleric who can only heal those who do not have unconfessed sins.  

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Honestly though, in a world where one can determine guilt or innocence by casting a spell, would you need a trial by ordeal or combat?

 

Maybe.  "One" does not specify "who".  Sure, priests or wizards may exist who can cast a spell to learn someone's secrets or least know if they are lying...but how many? Enough with the time available to run an entire justice system?  How trusted are they?  And what countermeasures exist?     

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Honestly though, in a world where one can determine guilt or innocence by casting a spell, would you need a trial by ordeal or combat?

I would consider such magics akin to modern day polygraph tests, they're not always 100% foolproof and the authorities know better than to sorely rely on them for court hearings.

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Thanks for the replies, everyone. Before we get into questions of divine protection, let's start with how the different ordeals would normally cause damage. This is my first take on the matter - let me know what you think:

 

Plucking a stone from a cauldron of boiling water:

  • Character must make an EGO Roll.
  • Success means they successfully retrieve the stone from the water. The accused takes 1d6K to their hand (x1/2 for Hit Location). 
  • Fail by less than 3 => the accused sticks their hand into the water but is unable to hold onto the stone. The accused takes 1d6K to their hand (x1/2 for Hit Location) and must try again or be found guilty by default.
  • Fail by 3 or more => the accused refuses and is found guilty by default.

 

Walking 3 yards carrying a red-hot iron: handled as above. Failing the EGO Roll means the character drops the iron before completing the distance and must try again or be found guilty by default.

 

Walking 3 yards over red-hot ploughshares: handled as above, except damage is to the feet. Failing the EGO Roll means the character steps off the course before completing the distance and must try again or be found guilty by default.

 

Does 1d6K feel like too much? Not enough?

 

Interestingly, in most cases guilt or innocence was determined not by whether or not the accused was burned/injured, but by the severity of the wounds and whether or not they became infected. Not sure how best to model that part...

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You do have to be careful with this, as it might inadvertently turn everyone in the group into a low level cleric, ceaselessly begging for all sorts of divine favors and dispensations.

Good point, and one I sometimes struggle with, especially in games without rigid class systems (ie FH). The assumption behind trial by combat was that God would protect the innocent layperson, not just the clergy. And all mythologies I'm familiar with include examples of the gods answering/helping heroes who were not priests per se.

 

The key is whether or not the powers that be will actually protect the guilty or not.  And how likely it is to happen (are they always paying attention?  Do they care enough to do something?  Do they require bribery or bargaining? etc).  That's a campaign setting thing, and if so, then they will or will not defend someone so that the ordeal is either only mildly harmful or not harmful at all.  How that works really doesn't matter much.

Right - AFICT it was mainly practiced in Christian Europe, where the assumption is God cares and will intervene. Different religions may have different assumptions/realities. For that matter, what if the accused and the Court are of different religions? Is a worshiper of Thor even eligible to undergo trial by ordeal in a country that worships Zeus?

 

But it's also an interesting philosophical question as to whether or not the practice is 100% reliable or not. When I use trial by combat in my games, I don't just say the innocent party automatically triumphs...

 

And does the character's piety factor in? Does god(s) care about protecting the innocent? Or just the faithful?

 

I could easily imagine a trial by ordeal where the key is that you don't hesitate or panic, confident in the god's protection.  Thus, you complete the task without slowing down to get seriously hurt.

That does make sense; that's supposedly the key to walking across hot coals. I think the EGO Roll can reflect that, with maybe a bonus or penalty depending on whether the accused is actually guilty or not?

 

Honestly though, in a world where one can determine guilt or innocence by casting a spell, would you need a trial by ordeal or combat?

Fair point. Such spells don't exist (or at least not reliably) in this particular campaign world. OTOH if trial by ordeal works, then it effectively is such a spell.

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I admit, I've never considered creating a world in which Trial By Combat or Trial By Ordeal actually worked as advertised.

 

I tend to assume that just because a world has real gods and real magic doesn't keep people from concocting and believing superstitious nonsense. Even in the face of real gods (or at least their clerics) and spellcasters who *know* it's superstitious nonsense, and might even say so.

 

Hm. I must consider this further.

 

Dean Shomshak

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I tend to assume that just because a world has real gods and real magic doesn't keep people from concocting and believing superstitious nonsense. Even in the face of real gods (or at least their clerics) and spellcasters who *know* it's superstitious nonsense, and might even say so.

weapons.jpg

 

"Damn it, Jim. This is Pon Farr, not a Sunday school picnic discussion with your church elders."

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Case in point: In the Dragonlance series of books the Kingpriest of Istar declared all evil inclined thoughts to be punishable by death, so he sent mages to randomly scan the minds of citizens of the city and enact "justice" accordingly. One mage read the mind of a small boy being slapped by his mother for a misdeed and the boy's mind was filled with anger toward his mother. The mage was taken aback by this and was debating whether or not he should act on this but stopped when he reread the child's again. The incident was forgotten and the boy was filled with love of his mother who had stuck him mere minutes before.

 

Now the previous thought was enough to warrant a death sentence for the boy and according to his ruler's laws, the boy should die... Yet the 'mind crime' was easily dismissed as the whims of the heart, something the Kingpriest will ignore anyway as the intent which existed at the time was more important than the end result.

 

The mage made an instant choice: he fled the city of Istar as fast as he can before the end.

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