58 réponses à ce sujet

[HoonDing]

Anybody know whether the right to a duel even after one's innocence is proven beyond any reasonable doubt, is actually part of Forgotten Realms lore? Because it seems opposite to justice and everything Tyr stands for. Or does the Church of Tyr usually provide a Champion of their own to settle the matter, like a level 30 Paladin?

Was this just an invention by Obsidian to prevent the player from losing? As I recall, KOTOR had a similar trial, and upon losing the player would actually be executed.

[Sarethus]

I can't say whether it is a law of Tyr and It could easily be a law of Neverwinter alone but your also looking at it in a slightly negative way. Try reversing the scenario, the right of combat would allow anyone to challange a ruling where they might otherwise have been rail roaded.

That being said I believe it was something Bioware made just for NWN2 because if that Law was present during NWN1 then my PC would have used it to defend Aribeth.

[lofgren]

Try reversing the scenario, the right of combat would allow anyone to challange a ruling where they might otherwise have been rail roaded.

That's the positive version of this scenario?

Yes, I'm sure it would have given much comfort to the elderly men and women and teenage girls who were railroaded in the Salem witch trials if all they had to do was defeat the toughest guy in town in mortal combat in order to avoid being pressed to death by boulders.  For great justice!

[Sarethus]

lofgren wrote...

Try reversing the scenario, the right of combat would allow anyone to challange a ruling where they might otherwise have been rail roaded.

That's the positive version of this scenario?

Yes, I'm sure it would have given much comfort to the elderly men and women and teenage girls who were railroaded in the Salem witch trials if all they had to do was defeat the toughest guy in town in mortal combat in order to avoid being pressed to death by boulders.  For great justice!

You can have someone else champion your cause. Convince the Paladin or Priest of Tyr or Ilmater to take your side.
 

[lofgren]

You can have someone else champion your cause. Convince the Paladin or Priest of Tyr or Ilmater to take your side.
 

Since this is the internet I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.

If you are, great.

If you're not, you are morally repugnant, ignorant of history, ethics, justice, decency, and civilization.

Just so we're clear: if you are a person who can afford to higher the most badass guys around to kill for you, or if you can otherwise convince said badasses to fight for you, then you are innocent of any crime.

If the other guys recruits those badasses first, you are guilty of any crime they feel like pinning on you.

And if you're the most badass guy in town, then congratulations: according to the law, you can never be guilty of any crime, as long as you are willing to kill the guy who accused you.

It's hard to imagine a more heinous system, mostly because this system does still exist in parts of the world and they tend to be hellholes.

Bonus: you can supply your own equipment in the duel, so if you're too poor to afford a +5 sword you might as well throw yourself off a bridge just to save yourself from getting decapitated for the amusement of the whole town should you ever be accused of a crime.

I know it sounds like I am overreacting, especially if you are just kidding around, but there are people out there who still believe that this crap is decent rather than despicable, and fascist, and evil, and quite possibly detrimental to our species' survival.  The belief that might makes right is as ancient as Cain and Abel and it doesn't lead anywhere except back to the stone age for humanity.

[LoA_Tristan]

I remember reading some comments elsewhere that people didn't appreciate the way you get "railroaded" (to borrow the above posts' phrase) into a trial by combat, regardless of how well you do in the trial. The trial was a super showcase for interaction-skilled PCs and quite possibly the best part of the game.


To answer the above post though, I think the trial by combat was a great piece of design, perhaps Obsidian's writers' way of reminding us that we are all animals in the end. Nature writes her own cruel justice that invades even the most civilized settings. Might doesn't make right, but it survives all disagreements. An understanding of "history, ethics, justice, decency, and civilization" concludes as much.

[lofgren]

In case you hadn't noticed, Sarethus was defending the concept of trial by combat because in addition to requiring an innocent person to defend himself against getting killed in front of a crowd of onlookers, it might also allow an innocent person to kill his accuser in order to avoid an incorrect verdict.

Such a system is not justice, and cannot be justice.  Even if an innocent person might coincidentally escape the arena alive or a guilty person die, that result could not be called justice because it was mere happenstance that in this particular instance the person who we happen to think ought to succeed won.  Trial by combat merely codifies and cermonializes injustice, no matter the verdict.

This:

Nature writes her own cruel justice that invades even the most civilized settings.

Makes no sense whatsoever.  Justice is a human construct.  Nature is indifferent to it.  You might as well say that nature has a favorite pizza.  The concept that justice is done when the most brutal and physically powerful amongst us deem it to be so has been at least rhetorically repudiated by most of the civilized world (although of course there is room to argue that it persists in practice, nobody except self-professed totalitarians would actually advocate such a position so starkly).  The reason is that the history of civilization reveals that such systems inevitably lead to institutionalized inequality and oppression.

Physical force is one of the most resounding shapers of human history, to be sure, but it pales in comparison to, say, small pox.  The secret history of disease that historians and biologists are only begininng to unravel already reveals that plagues and epidemics have changed the course of human history, prehistory, and even our evolution at least as much as our ability to kill one another, even if the balance has shifted somewhat since the advent of modern medicine and the atomic bomb.  By your reasoning, it would be equally "nature's justice" to stick accuser and the accused in a room with a plague victim and see which one dies first to determine guilt or innocence.

Next you will tell me that guilt or innocence can be determined by weighing a person against a duck.

Modifié par lofgren, 10 avril 2011 - 02:30 .

[lofgren]

The appeal to "nature's justice" is doubly inappropriate since the trial-by-combat is, in this case, completely human devised and executed. There is nothing "natural" (beyond the tautological sense in which all things we do are natural since we are ourselves a product of the forces of nature) about constructing an arena and establishing elaborate rules around a brutal duel.

[LoA_Tristan]

I don't think there's any need to get so worked up about this material as to accuse me of spewing nonsense or the other poor fellow of being morally repugnant & ignorant.  We must remember that we are discussing themes carried within the space of digital literature.  If someone espouses something apparently nonsensical or evil, there's probably a context within the game, or they simply don't mean something in precisely the way you interpret their words.

To clarify myself after your response, I guess it bears declaring that nature really does have a favorite pizza.  It's probably the basic cheese pizza, for which many, many wheat and tomato plants cover the earth and cows get to sit around and eat all day to make cheese.  Nature's favorite toppings are more of a regional thing.

This very thing, the all-encompassing reach of nature's preferences, its "justice" if you will, is a small theme in the NWN2 OC (which is loaded with small themes anyway) in which the natural norm intrudes into and subjugates Man's pretentions at being "civilized," fighting for others' sakes, and resisting temptation.  The trial aftermath is a great example.  It was most poignant in Nevalle's disappointment- "So... it seems this will be decided with violence," if I remember that line right.  My post was also an answer to the OP; while I don't know if it's cannon, I think Obsidian willfully made a natural form of decision-making— combat— trump a god of justice onscreen.

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

The logic behind trial-by-combat, like trial-by-ordeal or even using some sort of random augury, is that the 'god of justice' will directly intervene in the combat, and so ensure that justice will be done. It's not about 'might makes right', but rather about giving the deity a chance to settle things directly, instead of leaving it to the lawyers to figure out. It assumes divine intervention in the material world, an assumption that is perfectly appropriate for a fantasy setting.

Historically, though, the most important thing about duels is that they're over quickly, and decisively. Matters are settled one way or the other, and everyone moves on. When a city-state like Neverwinter needs unity and stability, it can't afford to let a feud fester through several years of legal proceedings.

[lofgren]

This very thing, the all-encompassing reach of nature's preferences, its "justice" if you will, is a small theme in the NWN2 OC (which is loaded with small themes anyway) in which the natural norm intrudes into and subjugates Man's pretentions at being "civilized," fighting for others' sakes, and resisting temptation.  The trial aftermath is a great example.  It was most poignant in Nevalle's disappointment- "So... it seems this will be decided with violence," if I remember that line right.  My post was also an answer to the OP; while I don't know if it's cannon, I think Obsidian willfully made a natural form of decision-making— combat— trump a god of justice onscreen.

You give the OC a hell of a lot more credit than I.

In any event I still find that there is no meaningful interpretation of the term "nature's justice" that can be applied to a state-sanctioned and organized duel which has completely artificial rules.

As for the bit about the pizza, I have no idea what you are talking about.  One would think that if nature's favorite pizza was a cheese and tomato sauce pizza, nature would not have consigned tomatoes entirely to the new world.  It took humans sailing across the ocean against all odds using technology developed incrementally over centuries, then bringing tomatoes back with them where they were cultivated, cows kept in a perpetual state of lactation by human handling and manipulation of their birth cycles, wheat that was selected for based on the weight of its seeds and the ease of collection and thousands of years of agricultural improvement until a resource package assembled in Iraq could become dominant everywhere from the Sahara to the edge of the Orient.  To call that process "natural" is either meaningless or wrong.

Lugaid of the Red Stripes wrote...

The logic behind
trial-by-combat, like trial-by-ordeal or even using some sort of random
augury, is that the 'god of justice' will directly intervene in the
combat, and so ensure that justice will be done. It's not about 'might
makes right', but rather about giving the deity a chance to settle
things directly, instead of leaving it to the lawyers to figure out. It
assumes divine intervention in the material world, an assumption that
is perfectly appropriate for a fantasy setting.

But not really for Dungeons and Dragons, where you have a god of justice who charges humans with championing his ideals and then a bunch of other gods who care not a whit for justice but are more than happy to poke their noses into a bloody fight.  The OP is absolutely correct that followers of a god of justice would do everything they could to prevent a duel from taking place, or else they would be failing their god.

There is a reason that Athena, goddess of justice, rebuked the eumenides and demanded that Orestes receive a trial by jury, even though he had Apollo, no slouch in the ring, on his side.

Historically,
though, the most important thing about duels is that they're over
quickly, and decisively. Matters are settled one way or the other, and
everyone moves on. When a city-state like Neverwinter needs unity and
stability, it can't afford to let a feud fester through several years of
legal proceedings.

Exactly.  Efficient.  Not just.

Modifié par lofgren, 11 avril 2011 - 06:13 .

[manageri]

Lugaid of the Red Stripes wrote...

The logic behind trial-by-combat, like trial-by-ordeal or even using some sort of random augury, is that the 'god of justice' will directly intervene in the combat

If he can intervene in combat then he can intervene in the trial (or just flipping a coin). To force your followers to friggin kill each other for you to show who's right is about as inconsistent with a good alignment as you can get, not to mention it makes no sense in the setting anyway since there's no reason why Tyr would be the only one of the gods capable of influencing such a duel.

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

Here's what wikipedia has to say.
Trial by combat was most common under Germanic law, or the same cultural that venerated Tyr, the god of single combat. Trial by combat was often used to settle accusations of treason and dishonor, where hard evidence is usually hard to come by, and will often result in violence anyway.  I.E., accusations of treason are often just a prelude to civil war or factional strife, so it's best to settle everything with a single combat before it escalates.  Remember, the litigants are feudal chieftains with their own private armies, who gained their status and property through war.  You can't just award damages and expect everyone to go along with it.  Besides, if one of your vassals turns out to be a nasty, treasonous a-hole, letting him get killled challenging your new protege is a great way to fix the problem without upsetting your other vassals.

As for the possibility of other god intervening, the whole point of having a temple of Tyr and a bunch of priests around is so that they can ensure that the trial is conducted under the auspices of Tyr, with his especial attention.  If the wrong side wins, it's Tyr's fault, not the king's.

[manageri]

Lugaid of the Red Stripes wrote...

As for the possibility of other god intervening, the whole point of having a temple of Tyr and a bunch of priests around is so that they can ensure that the trial is conducted under the auspices of Tyr, with his especial attention.

Which might be relevant if the fight actually took place in the temple and that somehow meant no other god can do anything about it.

Still waiting for an answer on why Tyr doesn't just intervene in the trial btw. If you're the god of justice and you have these options, which are you going to pick:
- make people duel to the death before you show them who's right by influencing the outcome
- just tell them who's right

There is no excuse, if Tyr actually sponsored this crap he wouldn't be good.

If the wrong side wins, it's Tyr's fault, not the king's.

And the fact the wrong side winning is even a possibility renders the whole thing useless, retarded and barbaric.

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

The idea is that the deity controls things that people can't, like the randomness and luck inherent in any combat. A legal trial, with lawyers and a judge, is wholly under human control, so there would be little room for divine intervention. Something more random could also be used, like drawing lots or reading tea leaves, as long as the process is random and the result is clear. Combat is used because the people involved all respect the courage and skill that goes into fighting; a culture that truly abhorred violence wouldn't use trial by combat.

As for the "wrong" side winning, the point is that nobody really knows which side it right, if they did, they wouldn't need a trial. Faced with a dispute, the king has to settle the issue without knowing which side is wrong. However he decides the issue, he as to make sure the people will accept the decision, and not rebel. When the king is in a particularly weak position, as he is when arbitrating between key vassals, he needs to get some higher authority to make the decision for him. Again, all this is dependent upon the deity in question being a respected and effective actor in the process, once people stop believing that, then the whole thing falls apart.

[HoonDing]

I'm only arguing that if the party collected all evidence in and around Ember, there shouldn't be any trial of combat, nor the whole battle of words with Torio. The evidence combined with the appropriate testimonies was simply irrefutable.

You're just railroaded into a bossfight without much sense to it.

Not to mention, don't Clerics of Tyr have spells/powers that allow to determine if someone is lying? 

There's also the fact that for instance in Baldur's Gate 2, Torm himself judges if someone is worthy to join one of his orders of knights (using an intermediary). Is there not something similar for grave crimes, where the god of one of his exarchs judges?

Modifié par virumor, 11 avril 2011 - 09:02 .

[manageri]

Lugaid of the Red Stripes wrote...

The idea is that the deity controls things that people can't, like the randomness and luck inherent in any combat.

Or a coin toss. So why would the lawful GOOD god pick needless bloodshed instead?

Of course the fact there's a court system in place clearly tells you (and we knew anyway since deities acting directly in the world is relatively rare) that Tyr does not personally do a damn thing about all trials.

Combat is used because the people involved all respect the courage and skill that goes into fighting; a culture that truly abhorred violence wouldn't use trial by combat.

The neverwintan retards may think it's fine, but the question is would Tyr endorse it. To suggest any good deity would sponsor completely needless slaughter is absurd.

As for the "wrong" side winning, the point is that nobody really knows which side it right, if they did, they wouldn't need a trial.

And a duel does what to clarify guilt when the trial fails? Right, nothing.

Faced with a dispute, the king has to settle the issue without knowing which side is wrong. However he decides the issue, he as to make sure the people will accept the decision, and not rebel. When the king is in a particularly weak position, as he is when arbitrating between key vassals, he needs to get some higher authority to make the decision for him. Again, all this is dependent upon the deity in question being a respected and effective actor in the process, once people stop believing that, then the whole thing falls apart.

This would only make sense if:
- Tyr actually took part in every trial
- Tyr was a complete **** and was fine with needless slaughter

You've done nothing to justify either of those claims.

Modifié par manageri, 11 avril 2011 - 10:15 .

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

All I'm trying to do is explain why the trial by combat made sense in the cultures in which it was practiced, and so how it was reasonable of OEI to include it in the OC. Getting into a theological debate about Tyr is beside the point, it doesn't matter what you think Tyr should be, it only matters what the characters in the OC thought about Tyr and the efficacy of the trial by combat. Like superstitious medieval peasants, they probably believed that the guilty party would be defeated in a trial by combat, because Tyr would make it so, thus clarifying guilt. Likewise, they're probably ok with the "good" guys slaughtering the "bad" guys en masse; they wouldn't see the moral contradiction you do. Indeed, they probably think that the goods guys are good because they kill lots of bad guys, and they're overjoyed to have "good" adventurers that are willing to act as their champions, challenging bad guys and slaughtering them in duels, or at least die trying. If you want to equate being good with being non-violent, that's quite reasonable for a more modern, enlightened time, but it would be a rare opinion in a land drenched in monsters and violence. Indeed, if the Devs had turned Nasher into Gandhi instead of a medieval king/warlord, that would have seemed incongruous.

[manageri]

The OP asked whether it's an official tyrran church thing, not an official law of Newerwinter. Neverwinter having such a law wouldn't be that weird, but the church supporting it would.

You can't just define good to mean whatever you want. Good and evil have strict definitions in the FR that can be verified empirically, so that excuse really doesn't work. Nowhere did I mention non-violence, I talked about NEEDLESS killing of INNOCENT people which is a textbook example of evil in the realms and everyone knows it (the church of Tyr sure as hell does).

Even if Tyr himself was so deluded he thought the trial by combat was a great idea, people practising it would not by definition be doing a good thing and neither would Tyr in supporting it. Challenging someone into a duel just because you think they're a "bad guy" is also entirely different than a court ordering you into one to prove your case.

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

I think its obvious that the challenger in the duel was not innocent, nor would his killing be unnecessary. The basic idea of trail by combat is that the deity in charge would not allow the innocent to be killed during the combat, that they would miraculously manage to kill the villain that brought the false charge against them.

[manageri]

Which is why you're allowed to have a champion fight for you...oh wait, there'd be no need for that if Tyr actually interfered every time.

Why is it so hard to admit it was a bull**** thing invented by Obsidian for the purpose of allowing the PC to lose the trial without a game over, seriously?

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

Because it was a half-decent bit of game design. It's a pivotal moment for the PC's development, defining the PC's relationship to Neverwinter and Nasher. It also makes sense for the quasi-medieval setting, and helps demonstrate how a knight actually operates within the court. The OC in general does a poor job handling alignment, and this could certainly be raised as an example of that, but it fits with the whole high-fantasy-with-some-moral-ambiguity tone of the OC. Trial by combat may not seem particularly just to modern people, but it did seem just to the ancient Norse that Neverwinter is patterned off of, and including the trial-by-combat helps immerse the player in that different kind of culture, just the same as finding magic swords and fighting monsters.

[manageri]

I didn't argue it was bad for gameplay or that it's something medieval retards wouldn't do. I argued it clearly does not work the way you imagined where the innocent party never gets skewered, and therefore doesn't make any sense as something sponsored by a deity of justice who isn't a moronic peasant. Just because some ancient cultures had such a rite does not mean it makes any sense in this setting as something endorsed by Tyr (it would as something the neverwintan morons came up with all by themselves).

[Sarethus]

lofgren wrote...

You can have someone else champion your cause. Convince the Paladin or Priest of Tyr or Ilmater to take your side.
 

Since this is the internet I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.

If you are, great.

If you're not, you are morally repugnant, ignorant of history, ethics, justice, decency, and civilization.

Just so we're clear: if you are a person who can afford to higher the most badass guys around to kill for you, or if you can otherwise convince said badasses to fight for you, then you are innocent of any crime.

If the other guys recruits those badasses first, you are guilty of any crime they feel like pinning on you.

And if you're the most badass guy in town, then congratulations: according to the law, you can never be guilty of any crime, as long as you are willing to kill the guy who accused you.

It's hard to imagine a more heinous system, mostly because this system does still exist in parts of the world and they tend to be hellholes.

Bonus: you can supply your own equipment in the duel, so if you're too poor to afford a +5 sword you might as well throw yourself off a bridge just to save yourself from getting decapitated for the amusement of the whole town should you ever be accused of a crime.

I know it sounds like I am overreacting, especially if you are just kidding around, but there are people out there who still believe that this crap is decent rather than despicable, and fascist, and evil, and quite possibly detrimental to our species' survival.  The belief that might makes right is as ancient as Cain and Abel and it doesn't lead anywhere except back to the stone age for humanity.

Gee go overboard much?

NWN2 is a game set in a fictional world.

In that world I support a number of things that I would not necessarily do in Real Life. In one playthrough I sided with the thieves and killed a witness that could testify against them, I'd be far more worried about that then worrying about trial legalities if this game had any bearing in real life. I also killed a number of people such as the Mossfields when they were wounded and dying and cackled evily about it. Not going to happen in RL.

Also as Lugaid of the Red Stripes wrote, in this setting Trial by Combat is appropiate as it is sanctioned by the Church of Tyr, the God of Justice. There is an expectation/belief by most people that the God of Justice will intervene in some way to tilt the reasults in the innocent parties favor. While other most likely evil dieties could intervene, the honest fact is that would really draw Tyr's attention (An evil diety, interfering in a Trial held by his followers of what I presume to be blessed ground etc) 

Also one thing to keep in mind that Tyr's main portfolio is Justice, not Law. While he may be a Lawful Good Diety, his main concern is Justice. 

As far as the Trial goes it does seem to be in NWN2 a part of Tyr's laws not necessarily Nasher's:

Torio:- "Can Lord Nasher do that, Reverend Judge? Can he put himself above our god Tyr in this matter?"

Oleff:- "We call upon Tyr to help us settle this matter. Tyr's judgment shall come forth - through blade and strength, through balance... and resolve."

[Sarethus]

sorry, double post.

Modifié par Sarethus, 13 avril 2011 - 09:19 .