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Originally posted by Charles Phipps

Generally, unlike Westeros, the people of Faerun are very aware that good or bad people can win these contests since there are good and bad gods favoring each party.

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Dueling is widespread across the Realms, especially within the nobility of a realm (it’s usually discouraged or expressly forbidden ‘across borders’ because of the danger of causing family feuds that all too easily become wars between realms), and even (in the past, though some ultra-conservative zealots still cling to beliefs that dueling is fine with the deity, merely disallowed by “decadent superiors desiring to maintain their lofty ranks”) within certain priesthoods (Bhaal, Hoar, Myrkul, Shar).
Among commoners, because of the possibility of unrest (and particularly in ports, where trade could be permanently disrupted if the place acquires a ‘too dangerous to venture there’ reputation) dueling is usually illegal. This means no duels in public, not no duelling; persons having disputes go outside the city or town walls, to places where patrols from the city or town won’t see them (or meet inside private clubs [who may use such combats as entertainments for their members] or warehouses, by night) and duel there. There are even some guilds that formally specify duels as a means to settle certain disputes.
Honour is viewed very differently from place to place and race to race: an orc duel is almost always a duel to the death, by any means (there’s nothing considered “unfair,” including goading bystanders to take part), whereas a duel between elves is more often until “first blood” or “yielding” or “four touches” rather than death (although in cases of hatred, death of course often occurs). Many human duels between nobility must be conducted in the presence of royalty or a particular court official, who governs the rules of the duel and will often specify that a duelist who slays an opponent will be executed, so the duel MUST be to some lesser defeat.
To most commoners (especially farmers), dueling is viewed as vicious stupidity, a waste of life (hands that could be put to work). Brigands and thieves are to be killed or ‘run off’ (pursued out of the district, with captured thieves often being forehead-branded ‘THIEF’ and/or having hands broken so they won’t be nimble-fingered for a long, long time), but everyone else is simply beaten up to settle scores - - in other words, there aren’t duels so much as frequent fistfights.
Beowulf is quite correct in his partial listing of historical real-world reasons for dueling, and Lashan has put his finger on not just a Mulmaster example, but the general principle I use when crafting customs in the Realms for places where dueling is ‘viewed as a public sport:’ local authorities are always involved in adjudicating the duels. Again, this to make sure things don’t get out of hand and become a general street brawl that could grow into mob violence or a wider uprising of the local downtrodden (in other words, said local officials will have large and well-armed bodyguards with them who are under orders to quell violence right away with, well, violence. :} )
As an extension of Beowulf’s examples, there have been instances (in the past during the elves-vs.-dragons struggle for early Cormyr, and in Tethyr and the Vilhon region, as well as others that don’t spring to mind just now) of champions battling each other to decide something that would otherwise plunge their peoples into a war. (For such contests to truly settle matters, of course, both sides must REALLY believe in, and abide by, principles of honour.)
There are no universally-accepted standards for dueling, but usually in the Realms it’s one-on-one fighting, with adjudicators but NO ‘seconds’ (in other words, one being battles another being; both may have supporters watching, but those supporters will not be expected to fight under any circumstances). The contest will be under rules (particularly governing the ending: yeild, wounding, first blood, or death) decided by local law and enforced by the adjudicators (often a local priest, if there’s no Watch commander, garrison commander, or judge handy), or decided by the adjudicator, or agreed-upon by the two duelists in the presence of the adjudicator. In most of the Heartlands duels tend to be: one hand weapon (usually a short sword) plus a dagger, and light armor, or: daggers only, with duelists both stripped to the waist. Some sadistic clubs customarily blindfold duelists for extra fun, and others drug them to make the duel slow, with single weapon-strikes less likely to be instantly fatal. Smokepowder and any sort of missile weapon duels are almost unheard-of (and would be deemed ‘not really dueling’ by most folk of the Realms, I’d say), and yes, a public challenge (usually by the hurling down of a glove or gauntlet, complete with SHORT public oration (one ro two lines identifying the complaint and the complainer, plus perhaps an insult) is the usual manner in which formal duels (especially between nobles) are announced.
Please be aware that in most places in the Realms there’s no dishonour at all in refusing a duel from someone of different rank (i.e. youngest knight or baronet who challenges an aging duke would be sneered at by all, not just his intended foe, but if the duke WANTED to ‘teach the young puppy a lesson,’ he’d be perfectly free to do so).

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And I believe I’ll add a note or two about your dueling query, too (my Lady Hooded correctly points out my earlier dealings re. this matter): As for your example of an adventurer insulting the wealthy Cormyrean noble: the noble wouldn’t dream of dueling an “uncouth outlander,” and so there’d be no duel unless the noble REALLY wanted personal combat with the adventurer (a rare thing, because usually the noble would see no loss of personal honour in being insulted by an outlander or commoner adventurer, because “they are so uncouth that they can behave no better, eh what?” but to accept a duel against such a lowlife WOULD involve a loss of honour), OR the adventurer was himself (or herself) a Cormyrean noble. Otherwise, no duel: the adventurer would simply be shunned by nobles, and politely told by a War Wizard or herald to behave (or even apologize), or face arrest and fines, exile, the band charter being revoked or their name stricken from it - - or worse.
And yes, if a duel did occur, the norm in the Realms is: no seconds, no lasting family feud (the duel settles all, unless one participant fights unfairly), clergy DO adjudicate (and unfairness therefore results in church edict against/divine disfavour against, the cheater), and normally the challenged has the choice of weapons (I say “normally” because there are limits: missile weapon use is disallowed in duels, as are ambushes and fights between someone who can fly or turn invisible and someone who can’t, someone who can breathe underwater and someone who can’t, and someone WHO HAS or CAN CAST MAGIC and someone who doesn’t or can’t).
In the past I’ve answered queries about wizards dueling each other, but in general: magic-using folk aren’t allowed to duel non-magic-using-folk. “Trials by combat” may be local exceptions, but these are of course very special sorts of duels, not “honour-matches” at all.

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Westeros?

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Anyhow, unlike other settings, Detect Lies and Detect Evil and the various mind-reading spells are available. Even collectively, these mystical means may not be one-hundred percent foolproof, but they would cut down on the number of guilty parties that escape justice.

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

Ed has spoken on dueling before...

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Originally posted by Charles Phipps

A Song of Ice and Fire having dueling incorporated trial by combat as an entirely legal way to circumvent legal arbitration.

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Originally posted by Charles Phipps

That also asks how expensive and likely that someone capable of casting these spells is available and for what trials. I sincerely doubt that Detect Lies and Detect Evil would be used outside of all but the richest clients after all since not many people would be willing to shell out the dough.

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Originally posted by Charles Phipps

I'd also state that "evil" is about as valuable as a character witness.

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Detect Evil costs nothing in terms of material components. Detect Lies requires 1 GP worth of gold dust; Discern Lies costs nothing. ESP requires 1 CP; Detect Thoughts costs nothing. Speak with Dead costs nothing.

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Originally posted by Charles Phipps

To give a more charitable reading:

A Priest of Tyr has a choice of memorizing a Detect Lie spell or memorizing a Level 4 spell that might mean saving one's life.

So, yes, I'd imagine that costs quite a bit of coin for the church's coffers.

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Originally posted by Azar

Tyrrans do not strike me as a mercenary sort. If a large enough contingent of priests that serve The Maimed God is stationed in a city, they're most certainly working for a house of justice.

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Originally posted by Delnyn

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Originally posted by Azar

Tyrrans do not strike me as a mercenary sort. If a large enough contingent of priests that serve The Maimed God is stationed in a city, they're most certainly working for a house of justice.

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I agree Tyrrans are not mercenary in demeanor. Fee charging by Tyrrans is as much a not-so-subtle message to the parties involved that a Tyrran's time is valuable as a method to pay for operational costs. My educated guess is a city's contingent of Tyr's priests has an official arrangement with the government about the economics of legal services.

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Originally posted by Azar


Detect Evil costs nothing in terms of material components. Detect Lies requires 1 GP worth of gold dust; Discern Lies costs nothing. ESP requires 1 CP; Detect Thoughts costs nothing. Speak with Dead costs nothing.

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Originally posted by Charles Phipps

I imagine outside of Neverwinter that no House of Justice would employ Tyrians except as consultants, especially as the Realms as described by Ed Greenwood has the nobility generally extremely skeptical of the clergy.
Look at Waterdeep and Cormyr.
The Laws of Tyr being rarely the laws of men after all.

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Ed of the Greenwood responds (12 Jan 2005):

As I see it, Tyr is a god of justice rather than law, and so his clergy have an ongoing duty to bring about justice, both by working to continually improve the secular laws of various places in the
Realms (even when faced by rulers and enforcers who manifestly don't want such "help"), and by bringing justice to bear on individuals whom the law doesn't touch (either because they've been
granted immunity to legal punishment, or because the laws as drafted don't apply to their sly activities, even though such activities would clearly be judged "wrong" by their fellow citizens).
Criminals have always been 'one step ahead of the law,' and laws are always drafted by those in power to benefit themselves and their usual activities (in other words, to support the status quo in
which they are 'on top'). [...]
There will always be laws that are clearly unfair ("unjust," if you will), or that a being from another land (even a Tyrran hailing from another land) will disagree with. [...]
This brings us to the central problem of Tyr's faith: deciding what is "just." What Tyr decides, of course, but unless the god is going to act as an instantly-available technical support line to his
every priest and lay worshipper (which he obviously, from published Realmslore, doesn't), inevitably the priests must determine what is just. [...]
those Tyrrans who like to actively be judge, jury, and executioner (most paladins, and - - let's face it, human nature being what it is, the sort of persons
who do like to 'sit in judgement' on others are those who'll be attracted to the priesthood of Tyr,though entering the church at low ranks and dealing with superiors will teach them self-control, or
they'll not advance far) will generally be found in frontier areas, "making" justice with weapons in hand.

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• improving the laws as such
• making sure those laws are actually used
• keeping their own competence top notch
• policing the "frontiers" at least to the degree that it's not complete dog-eat-dog beyond the bow range of the nearest city patrol route
• convincing more people to see things their way, from general respect to law and order to dedicated worship
• all the common church activities - maintenance, spellcasting, training, occasional theological debates - they are still priests, after all.

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Ibid.

I also see a role for the clergy of Tyr not hitherto hinted at in published Realmslore: [...] Tyrrans are �police over other priests,� or set themselves up as such, something disputed by many other clergies to the point of open spell and physical conflict.

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Originally posted by Ayrik

Low-level divinations can be obscured or misled by low-level counter-divinations. Not to mention illusions, charms and enchantments, and all sorts of magical (or psionic, or religious, or patriotic) forms of mental reprogramming. [...] You won't get much of a confession when the accused criminal genuinely believes, thinks, and remembers no crime occurred.

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Originally posted by Ayrik

Low-level divinations can be obscured or misled by low-level counter-divinations. Not to mention illusions, charms and enchantments, and all sorts of magical (or psionic, or religious, or patriotic) forms of mental reprogramming.

"Real" truth can easily be falsified by false truths. You won't get much of a confession when the accused criminal genuinely believes, thinks, and remembers no crime occurred.

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