How would a LE city counter these threats?

[Balor01]

So, imagine a large Free city in sort of Middle East setting. It is constatly at war with one neighbour or another. I'd ask playground to give me basic threats such a city faces and how it would counter them. I have a very short list of mine here:

Small time crime (lvl 1-3 criminals) = Most common of Guards, basically general police. (lvl 1-3)
Competent criminals = Bountyhunters. There are always adventurers around to pick those bounties.
Enemy spies = Thieves/Spy guild under protection of the city
Old dragons/common armies/Casters of lvl 14 and up = City casters. A few, perhaps only two lvl 18 wizards that actually care enough/have been paid in proper way to do this work

What am I missing? Also, take in account this is generally LE city. So slavery and a ton of laws.

thanks :)

[mythmonster2]

If there is slavery and many laws, one possibility is all but the most petty of crimes having a punishment of enslavement. Keeps a supply of slaves up, and it can net the city a fair amount of gold from selling them off. Alternatively, you could go with brutal punishments: chopping off hands for theft, maiming, crucifixion, long, drawn out torture for higher ups in thieves guilds and such. I'd expect enemy spies to be sent back to their masters in a box. Maybe a few.

[Balor01]

I have dumped chopping off limbs already out the window. It is a waste of good resources. But I will have some crimes to have punishment in form of fee. If you can not pay, you became a slave for a limited time duration.

Also ... threats please .P

[Lord Vukodlak]

Surveillance, curfews, random arrests for interrogations, punishments extended to family members etc etc. Found guilty of treason... well they execute you and sell your family into slavery.

Guards can search your house for any reason and without prior notice. Unless your nobility or rich enough that doing so could get them in serious trouble.

[Balor01]

Surveillance, curfews, random arrests for interrogations, punishments extended to family members etc etc. Found guilty of treason... well they execute you and sell your family into slavery.

Guards can search your house for any reason and without prior notice. Unless your nobility or rich enough that doing so could get them in serious trouble.

Execution is waste of resources. Now debt ...

Also what about magical ways? Gates with permanent Trueseeing? Drones with Detect Evil/Law/Chaotic/Good on them? Such stuff?

[Lord Vukodlak]

Execution is waste of resources. Now debt ... Its treason, letting them live as a slave just gives them more motive and opportunity to commit treason again for incite rebellion among the other slaves.
Besides the necromancers need bodies too, just because you execute them doesn't mean they cease being resources. Execution followed by reanimation as an undead to serve the city sounds like a fairly harsh punishment to me.


Also what about magical ways? Gates with permanent Trueseeing? Drones with Detect Evil/Law/Chaotic/Good on them? Such stuff?
Of course but that depends on the resources the government has available

[Extra Anchovies]

Surveillance, curfews, random arrests for interrogations, punishments extended to family members etc etc. Found guilty of treason... well they execute you and sell your family into slavery.

Guards can search your house for any reason and without prior notice. Unless your nobility or rich enough that doing so could get them in serious trouble.

I agree with all of this; execution should only be for high crimes, but it should definitely be there. As for slavery, maybe it could be more along the lines of indentured servitude, where it lasts for a set length. Criminal-slaves would be used for public works projects (in the case of a LE city, this would mean massive fortifications and war machines :smallbiggrin: )

Also, a system could be in place whereby if you report someone and they're convicted, your family receives a tax credit (or if one of them is enslaved due to a different crime, their sentence is reduced). Toss that in a blender with an oppressive, byzantine tax code (with fines imposed if you fill out the forms wrong) and suddenly everyone's an informant.

External threats such as war or shortage of resources would be dealt with by:
1. Rationing and curfews, implemented as long as there is a direct perceivable external threat to the city.
2. Random searches of homes and possessions, along with anything entering or leaving the city.
3. Forced conscription and/or seizure of resources. "We need a third of your grain and one of your sons. It's for the war effort. Don't you want to defend your city?"

[Dorian Gray]

I don't think a LE city would use adventurers. Adventurers have a tendency to cause matters to become unstable- it's hard to get more chaotic than "we'll just let these random people solve our problems however they want". A LE city would want control, and would want to be certain of the end result of any action. Competent criminals get employed as spies, unless they're revolutionaries- then the city rolls out the shadesteel golems.

The thing to remember is LE=stability. Preserve the status quo, at all costs.

[hamishspence]

"State-sponsored adventurers" might be closer.

Zhentil Keep, a LE city, nonetheless has its own adventuring parties, in Forgotten Realms.

In this case, it would be taking soldiers, wizards, clerics, etc, who work for the city, putting them together, and sending them out.

[esbear42]

It would also not be out of the picture to have a taxfarming system in place.

By that I mean a system where the right to collect tax is sold to the highest bidder. The taxman will then squeze as much gold out of the population, an what they manage to get hold of above their bid is their profit.

Such a system would most likely be full of coruption, and merciless tax collectors. If you cannot prove that you have already payed your tax you will just have to pay again.

[Malroth]

Everybody entering the city is Implanted with a Necrotic Cyst cast via guards with wands paid for via the entry fee, Passing your saving throw means you are denied entry and attempting to remove it while within the city Is concidered Treason, Most of the ruling class has the Mother Cyst feat and thus knows Necrotic scrying, Necrotic bloat and Necrotic dominate.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Everybody entering the city is Implanted with a Necrotic Cyst cast via guards with wands paid for via the entry fee, Passing your saving throw means you are denied entry and attempting to remove it while within the city Is concidered Treason, Most of the ruling class has the Mother Cyst feat and thus knows Necrotic scrying, Necrotic bloat and Necrotic dominate.

Yeah that's going to drop all trade with the city to nothing. That seems to cross the line into stupid evil.

[QuidEst]

My view on the temporary slavery thing: have a jail system that "leases" prisoners to the highest bidder. You are required to maintain certain standards of health in your prisoner, but otherwise they are effectively a slave for the limited duration of their sentence. Transferring them requires paying a transferral fee to the state. Not all prisoners are leased; some are put directly into state programs. (This includes prisoners whose bids do not exceed an undisclosed "state bid", which mainly exists to encourage high bids, particularly in cases where friends might be attempting to buy out their sentence.)

The poor can make their lives easier by signing away their bodies to the state once they die in exchange for several years' worth of regular food for their family. It's a lot better for public relations if all your undead laborers have expressly signed up for it. The food is easy to supply when you have undead laborers to grow it, and one person will produce far more after they're dead than you paid them in the first place. Added bonus- providing the food can have two outcomes. Either the family is able to use the money they can save on food to advance themselves, improving the city, or they become reliant on it, and eventually the whole family is signed up, one at a time. For those who do advance themselves, allow an option to "buy back" the food, at slightly inflated prices and not unreasonable compounding interest. That way, you never have any wealthy or powerful people worried about an old agreement to sign their bodies away after death and you make a tidy profit. Plus, they can be held up as examples to all the poor on the program so they won't worry about their posthumous fate until it's too late to put up much of a fuss.

[Phelix-Mu]

A debtor's prison-type system would be interesting. Instead of corporal punishment or slavery, every transgression of [insert one of umpteen billion laws] exacts a fine of [arbitrary number, not to high, not too low, following a punishing but sustainable rubric] gold pieces.

Can't pay? Time to work off your debt! There are some options, all of which are bad, but that give a sense of "at least I get to choose my doom" to the poor sods stuck in the system (that is designed to get people stuck in it).

Why is this suitable? Because money is both a commonly accepted thing pretty much everywhere, it is abstract and therefor mechanistic (lawful), fines are easily issued and collected, and economic oppression is a damn fine form of oppression (evil). Best of all, because the fines are sustainable to anyone law abiding and callous enough to ignore the plight of those less well-off, it encourages a certain level of blase among the populace; "if he worked harder, he could pay, and wouldn't suffer so much" and "if he was more law-abiding, he wouldn't have to pay, and wouldn't suffer so much." Always nice to have a system that encourages blaming the victims of the system.

Finally, inject a system of debt-cancellation or monetary rewards for citizens who report law violations to the authorities. A bit of entrepreneurial/secret police flavor is always interesting to add, and certainly tamps down on the unhappy elements by making them fear their fellow citizens as well as the authorities.

As for other ideas:

- Inquisition! Truth-finding magic and maybe even some cult/religious front could give added weight to official measures to enforce order/conformity. Cult of state for the win! This would be a sensible alternative to relying on adventurers; problem crops up, then dispatch a deputized inquisitor with the proper class loadout for the task at hand (with sensible amounts of mind rape and psi reformation to make sure the inquisitor is perfectly loyal and customized to the task at hand).

- Geas-slavery: people aren't enslaved in the traditional sense, but bound to certain tasks by geas-like magic that compels them to do x or y. X or Y are more undesirable based on the severity of the crime.

- Lifeforce-slavery: Similar to the debt system above, except that the fines exacted are from your remaining lifespan. Powerful divinations determine the remaining lifespan of everyone in the city. Time is deducted for transgressions, added for good behavior (like reporting on your fellows). Rather seriously ripped off from a certain movie that I never actually saw....:smallcool:

- Eugenics: As an additional curtailment of free-will, people are selectively bred, sterilized, married, and otherwise chosen by powers that be for success or failure in life, either based on actual traits or (to be especially evil) based on nothing at all. All for the good of the state, no doubt.

[Curbstomp]

Threats:

Invasion
Countered with mass conscription (even of PC's) and full scale warfare.

Betrayal by second in command
Perhaps the leader has a clone, a body double, or perhaps the leader loses and the PC's must fight to restore the rightful heir.

Freedom Fighters (especially with your setup).
Countered with brutal repression. Random searches and seizures. Enslaving of whole families if a member is suspected of being a freedom fighter. Execution of innocent civilians and blaming the Freedom Fighters.

Crops blighted by CE or NE Blighter(s) trying to take control of the region.
Hire adventurers to stop the problem and begin seizing grain shipments from their neighbors.

[yoshi67]

Small time crime (lvl 1-3 criminals) = Most common of Guards, basically general police. (lvl 1-3)
Competent criminals = Bountyhunters. There are always adventurers around to pick those bounties.
Enemy spies = Thieves/Spy guild under protection of the city
Old dragons/common armies/Casters of lvl 14 and up = City casters.

All the ideas are simple and generic, but make the most sense and are the easiest to set up. Most of the LE cities I've seen created had a pretty large bounty system. Why pay for extra guards for the few dangerous "criminals" when you can outsource it to mercenaries or even citizens. Another thing I always like is a crazy law or system. Think any dystopia from a book or movie that is pretty stable but has one weird law or event. Hunger Games has the hunger games, Death Race has a race for freedom (to the death), The Purge has a night of anarchy, others have a walled-off section for poor or criminals, etc. Something to keep the populace under control and entertained. Even something like gladiator fights for convicts. It's not necessary but adds another dimension to a LE city.

[Lord Vukodlak]

- Geas-slavery: people aren't enslaved in the traditional sense, but bound to certain tasks by geas-like magic that compels them to do x or y. X or Y are more undesirable based on the severity of the crime.
Here's a great task for a Geas slave. You are sentenced to guard.... the prison. Rescuing your comrades from prison is much harder when they're compelled to be among the guards.

[Vaz]

It makes them Undead.

All the work people of all classes do goes towards purchasing becoming a Necropolitan.

Those who are earn enpugh must go into some form of training which will ensure they are second level (fluffed as strengthening them up to survive the transformation). Those who commit crimes are tortured and executed in a ceremony to the gods, and lose the right to become a Necropolitan as well as that of their family should it be a really bad crime, and are instead animated.

Powerful Casters can become Liches. Using spellsharing to teach and research new spells this provides the hardened core of the city to protect against high level threats). These provide a power behind the Living Throne.

[Brookshw]

Back to the idea of executing slavery as being a waste of resources I'll take a page from darksun where sending them to work in massively inhospitable areas (mining obsidian) can be the equivalent of a death sentence but leaves them productive, albeit until they likely die. Also you can dangle the carrot to keep them working "after you've mined you're quota for x number of days years you're free), albeit likely horribly crippled.

Higher level threats are a bit trickier without knowing the campaigns optimization level.

Thrallherd, noble family of vampires could fit in at various levels depending on the transgression.

Go for drachonic measures, whole family suffers for the crime, advocate big brother is watching as much as possible.