The trial is one of the worst parts of NWN2, imho. No matter how brilliantly you use dialogue checks and humiliate Torio, you're railroaded into fighting that fat lump anyway. Why even bother holding a trial if everything can get decided with a barbaric duel? Dragon Age's Landsmeet is the same silliness.
1. Change difficulty from hardcore rules to normal.
2. Put Qara in party
3. Fireball!
4. ...
5. Profit
Yeah sure, until Kelemvor appears in the game and renders the entire story superfluous.