A Prison That Prevents Magical Escape without using AntiMagic Fields

[Draco_Lord]

So, one thing I want to do in my campaign is make a prison for my PCs, mostly because I suspect they will find themselves on the wrong side of the law at some point, and a prison break seems kind of cool.

Now, what I want to do is make one that is basically inescapable with magic. Not completely, especially if they think out side of the box, but I want to cover the obvious and basic ways. And I don't want to just use an antimagic field, just ruins the fun of anyone who is a caster.

So, I've split the spells into the schools, just to give myself a bit of a framework to look at. And I'm trying to think of easy or obvious ways to escape, and how to counter them. Any help would be great!

Abjuration

Conjuration
Teleportation: Dimension Anchor the prison, and everyone in it. I'm absolutely fine just cutting this off, teleportation is definitely something a prison would stop.

Divination

Enchantment
Charm/Dominate: Give the guards a strong resistance to mind effecting spells? I don't want them to just sweet talk a guard, magically, into giving them the keys.

Evocation
Self mending walls should cover this, don't need them just using their spells to blast a hole in the wall.

Illusion
I first thought true seeing rings on the guards, but then I thought, scanners. Have them at entrances, and have them go off if they detect illusion magic. That way they can still use invisibility, and disguises, and such, but they can't just walk out.

Necromancy

Transmutation

[Renen]

What you're looking for is
Forbiddance (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Forbiddance)

Oh, and as a bonus, give all guards some item that grants permanent Touchsight at good range. This means any illusion that falls to touch, wont work on em, including alter self and such...

Edit: I swear the PF tag wasnt there before...

[Draco_Lord]

I should mention that this is for Pathfinder, though as DM, I don't mind stealing some spells to use every so often, at least if I want an effect of some kind to use.

So Forbiddance is great!

[Rubik]

Knock everyone out with mental stat-draining poisons. For anyone immune to that, ravages. For anyone immune to both, Ego Whip. For anyone immune to all (which will almost assuredly be of the construct type), destroy them.

Or you could kill their bodies using thinaun weapons and store their souls so they can't be resurrected. Then add a Crafted Contingent Spell Revivify for when their sentence is up.

Or store them in quintessence outside of the time stream.

[Kesnit]

So, one thing I want to do in my campaign is make a prison for my PCs, mostly because I suspect they will find themselves on the wrong side of the law at some point, and a prison break seems kind of cool.

My DM started our new campaign with the PCs in prison. It was only 1 game session (the session was how to escape), but I can give you a (brief) player's viewpoint.


And I don't want to just use an antimagic field, just ruins the fun of anyone who is a caster.

As a pure caster (Cloistered Cleric 4/Warlock 1/Eldritch Disciple 5), having the entire prison be an anti-magic field did suck. On the other hand, it forced the players to think and plan, rather than just go "eh, my magic fixes everything." (I was all prepared to use Baleful Utterance on our chains. Yeah, not so much...)

The DM did say 0-level spells occasionally worked (though not on a schedule we could plan for). During the escape, the DM had some of the anti-magic field reduced so that we could act as 7th level characters. (That led to me asking her if my Saint template was in effect or not, since I would have taken it after LVL 6, making me an ECL 8 PC. The look on her face as she had to work that out was amusing.)


Conjuration
Teleportation: Dimension Anchor the prison, and everyone in it. I'm absolutely fine just cutting this off, teleportation is definitely something a prison would stop.

This is obvious. :smallsmile:


Enchantment
Charm/Dominate: Give the guards a strong resistance to mind effecting spells? I don't want them to just sweet talk a guard, magically, into giving them the keys.

I would still allow non-magical means to at least accomplish some things. One of the other PCs is built to be a Face, and has socials out the wazoo. The DM allowed him to have (over time, as part of his time in prison) talked a guard into being neutral to the PCs (as opposed to hostile) and willing to do small favors. This helped a lot towards our escape.


Illusion
I first thought true seeing rings on the guards, but then I thought, scanners. Have them at entrances, and have them go off if they detect illusion magic. That way they can still use invisibility, and disguises, and such, but they can't just walk out.

Make sure you don't have a Changling PC. (I thought of this because my PC is a Changling.) :smallsmile:

[Draco_Lord]

Um... I think the point of this post is being missed. I don't want to trap them forever. I want to build a prison that is hard to escape from, both magically and mundanely. Since Mundane is easy to look up, and I can just base it on real life prisons, I wanted some help with the magical side.

So, how can people escape a prison using the different kinds of magic, and how can I stop it from happening?



As a pure caster (Cloistered Cleric 4/Warlock 1/Eldritch Disciple 5), having the entire prison be an anti-magic field did suck. On the other hand, it forced the players to think and plan, rather than just go "eh, my magic fixes everything." (I was all prepared to use Baleful Utterance on our chains. Yeah, not so much...)

The DM did say 0-level spells occasionally worked (though not on a schedule we could plan for). During the escape, the DM had some of the anti-magic field reduced so that we could act as 7th level characters. (That led to me asking her if my Saint template was in effect or not, since I would have taken it after LVL 6, making me an ECL 8 PC. The look on her face as she had to work that out was amusing.)

This is kind of why I want to remove the easy choices for spell casters. I do like the idea of maybe limiting the spells by level. Might do something with that. But random spell cutting off is not quite my style.


I would still allow non-magical means to at least accomplish some things. One of the other PCs is built to be a Face, and has socials out the wazoo. The DM allowed him to have (over time, as part of his time in prison) talked a guard into being neutral to the PCs (as opposed to hostile) and willing to do small favors. This helped a lot towards our escape.

None magically escaping is fine. Someone who can sweet talk a guard works for me, since the guard is unlikely to just let them escape, but might look the other way for anything questionable, and that is cool. I just don't want them zapping all of them with a Charm Person, and then walking out.




Make sure you don't have a Changling PC. (I thought of this because my PC is a Changling.) :smallsmile:

Good to know, but luckily, Pathfinder, and Changlings can't change their faces, I think.

[Ilorin Lorati]

Knock everyone out with mental stat-draining poisons. For anyone immune to that, ravages. For anyone immune to both, Ego Whip. For anyone immune to all (which will almost assuredly be of the construct type), destroy them.

Or you could kill their bodies using thinaun weapons and store their souls so they can't be resurrected. Then add a Crafted Contingent Spell Revivify for when their sentence is up.

Or store them in quintessence outside of the time stream.


Wouldn't most of these turn off their consciousness during the sentence, thus more or less missing the point of the punishment?

[Vhaidara]

Good to know, but luckily, Pathfinder, and Changlings can't change their faces, I think.

3.5 and pf changelings aren't even close to the same things. 3.5 changelings are descended from doppelgangers, pf ones are hagspawn.

[LokeyITP]

Forbiddance is stupid expensive because the designers can't do math...like 1M gold worth of incense to cover a 2000sq ft home :) It's also really hard to stop the transport version of Limited/Wish.

Have you thought about environmental factors that'd make casting more difficult?

[TheIronGolem]

I would say go ahead and use antimagic fields, but have them controlled by a device that can be shut down/disabled/sabotaged. Obviously there needs to be some in-game justification for the device; perhaps the guards do occasional sweeps with Divination magic or something, so the AMF needs to come down for a time. If this is a large prison, have multiple AMF's (each with their own controller), and spread them across important sections of the prison. Cell blocks, likely ingress/egress points, etc.

This opens up a few strategies for the PC's: do they disable the AMF's and brute-force their way out with magic before the guards catch on? Wait for the sweep and try to use more subtle magic to escape while also evading the divination? Or fake out the guards by escaping by mundane means during a sweep, thus fooling them into looking for magic-based escape routes?

[Draco_Lord]

Forbiddance is stupid expensive because the designers can't do math...like 1M gold worth of incense to cover a 2000sq ft home :) It's also really hard to stop the transport version of Limited/Wish.

Have you thought about environmental factors that'd make casting more difficult?

I see, Dimensional Anchor sounds better then.

And no I haven't. That is an interesting idea, keeps people from casting too well, but if they get very lucky, I'd want the DC to be high (At least for higher level spells), then they would have a chance.

[Rubik]

A weirdstone, from Player's Guide to Faerun, costs 250,000 gp and prevents all forms of inbound teleportation, interdimensional travel, and scrying for 6 miles, without regards to LoE or LoS.

One weirdstone for the prison itself, and a sphere of weirdstones outside the prison to prevent anyone from teleporting out through those weirdstones' AoEs.

Or you could just have the prison built in a place adjacent to a huge chunk of rock on the Astral, Ethereal, and Shadow Planes, thereby preventing any sort of interdimensional travel whatsoever.

[Urpriest]

Wouldn't most of these turn off their consciousness during the sentence, thus more or less missing the point of the punishment?

Presumably the point of prisons is to remove people from being a danger society. This is a medieval culture, if they just wanted to punish someone they could just put them in the stocks and pelt them with rotten tomatoes.

[Ilorin Lorati]

Presumably the point of prisons is to remove people from being a danger society. This is a medieval culture, if they just wanted to punish someone they could just put them in the stocks and pelt them with rotten tomatoes.

The comment I replied to implied that at some point the sentence would be up. Releasing them in the exact same mental state you tucked them away into a jar in is, well, stupid. They should be conscious to undergo the punishment and (preferably) attempts at rehabilitation; putting them in stasis for X years with intent of release does nothing to actually remove the danger to society, and everything to just move it back X years.

Most people that could cast the spells required would either be intelligent enough to remember past examples or wise enough to realize how bad an idea it is.

[Rubik]

The comment I replied to implied that at some point the sentence would be up. Releasing them in the exact same mental state you tucked them away into a jar in is, well, stupid. They should be conscious to undergo the punishment and (preferably) attempts at rehabilitation - putting them in stasis for X years with intent of release does nothing to actually remove the danger to society, and everything to just move it back X years.

Most people that could cast the spells required would either be intelligent enough to remember past examples or wise enough to realize how bad an idea it is.Most people in fantasy fiction are pretty stupid, especially in a world where virtually no one is educated beyond what is needed for a trade (as is the case in most campaign settings).

At least it's not like the Harry Potter books. Throwing even nonviolent criminals into years of torture that drive them insane and turn them into raving psychopaths? Yeah, that'll really reduce crime.

[Unbodied]

This is kind of why I want to remove the easy choices for spell casters. I do like the idea of maybe limiting the spells by level. Might do something with that. But random spell cutting off is not quite my style.There are psionic shackles that can be made of varying degrees of quality. The best ones don't let you manifest powers at all while the crappy ones only limit how much PP you can spend per round. Simply translate it to spell slot size and you're gold.

Psionic Restraints

Aura strong psychokinesis; ML 16th

Slot wrists; Price see below; Weight 1 lb.

DESCRIPTION

Each of the various psionic restraints is an iron cuff that cunningly locks around the wrist (DC 27 Disable Device check). The cuff limits the total number of power points a psionic creature wearing it can use in 1 round (regardless of the creature’s total power point reserve), or completely damps the ability to use psionics. All types of psionic restraints prevent the free manifesting of powers.

Restraint Type Allowed Power Points/Round Market Price Lesser 5 1,000 gp Average 3 6,000 gp Greater 1 12,000 gp Damping 0 24,000 gp

[Segev]

How high-level is this dungeon? By which I mean, what level prisoners is it expecting to hold?

Anti-magic field is a sixth level spell; if you're dealing with 11th-level casters as prisoners, AMF becomes a reasonable and expected spell to use. Just recall that it's only got a 10 ft. radius, so it shouldn't be EVERYWHERE.

It should be on the "mage cells," which are perforce smaller than 10 ft. in radius and are surrounded by extra physical security measures to make it hard to provide magical aid. They should also be placed in choke points to help contain mages who are trying to break in or out but aren't just teleporting.

Teleport is a 5th-level spell. You'll want to regularly cast dimensional anchor on any mages, period, however, because benign transposition is a 1st-level spell and could conceivably get a wizard or sorcerer out by swapping with his familiar. You can help further thwart teleport by having your security force thoroughly investigate a high-level prisoner's home base and deliberately fouling it, followed by constructing a replica within the prison bounds. This will cause a likelihood of a mishap which causes him to teleport right back in to prison, should he circumvent the dimensional anchor and the AMF around his own cell.

You aren't going to use dimension lock unless you have 15th level spellcasters or higher; that's the one which allows you to lock down areas rather than individuals.

Store items taken from prisoners in an AMF'd vault, as well. You do not want them to be able to use recall effects to recover their spellbooks or other key items.

Enervation, too, is a 4th-level spell. If you're containing casters of 9th level or higher, you should have multiple casters on staff able to cast it. Use it liberally on your higher-level prisoners to keep them too low level to use their higher-level effects.

[Ilorin Lorati]

Most people in fantasy fiction are pretty stupid, especially in a world where virtually no one is educated beyond what is needed for a trade (as is the case in most campaign settings).

Most people in fantasy fiction aren't using a ruleset where high intelligence and wisdom are a codified requirement for most spellcasting. Harry Potter, to follow up on your example, requires neither - simply training and genetic aptitude.

Sure, I suppose all your casters could be sorcerers, bards or oracles, but I doubt too many of them would have interest in helping build a prison.

[TheIronGolem]

Can't believe I overlooked this one: Bestow Curse. A permanent -6 to your spellcasting ability score will cramp the style of any would-be escaping caster.

Come to think of it, if I were running a prison in D&D and had access to that spell, I'd be putting each prisoner (or maybe just the most dangerous ones, if budget is a factor) through a schedule of curses, so that they all wound up with -6 to every ability score - much easier to keep prisoners when they're rendered physically weak and mentally dull.

Maybe even add an extra custom curse along the lines of Belkar's where they get violently ill if they go outside designated areas.

[Urpriest]

Or you could just have the prison built in a place adjacent to a huge chunk of rock on the Astral, Ethereal, and Shadow Planes, thereby preventing any sort of interdimensional travel whatsoever.

I just noticed this. This part doesn't work, places on the Astral don't correspond directly to places on the Prime.

[Rubik]

Can't believe I overlooked this one: Bestow Curse. A permanent -6 to your spellcasting ability score will cramp the style of any would-be escaping caster.

Come to think of it, if I were running a prison in D&D and had access to that spell, I'd be putting each prisoner (or maybe just the most dangerous ones, if budget is a factor) through a schedule of curses, so that they all wound up with -6 to every ability score - much easier to keep prisoners when they're rendered physically weak and mentally dull.

Maybe even add an extra custom curse along the lines of Belkar's where they get violently ill if they go outside designated areas.Don't forget to Bestow Curse for a 50% chance of losing one's actions each round. Bestow Curse to lower saves. Invisible, Irresistable, Permanencied Stinking Cloud effect to sicken everyone to reduce their actions by half.

Keep status effects on the prisoners at all times via resetting magical traps installed everywhere.

Entangle to reduce speed and increase spell failure chances.

Keep them at 0 hp to enforce the staggered condition.

Blind them to destroy their ability to target anything outside of themselves.

Keep prisoners both deaf and mute to further neuter their spellcasting and prevent them from communicating with other prisoners (also, see the blinded condition to ruin communication via sign language).

Exhausted to reduce their speed and physical stats even more.

Frightened to reduce saves and attack rolls.

Nauseated to reduce prisoners to a single move action per turn (reduced further via entangling and Bestow Curse).

Shaken and sickened to reduce their ability to resist any spells you cast on them.

That's assuming you want them to suffer their punishment, rather than just be out of the way.

If you want to be cruel, something like Eternity of Torture could do.

[Draco_Lord]

Some of you people are mean, but giving me some excellent ideas on how to keep the prisoners in place. A choker that applies curses, dimensional anchor, and a bunch of other effects should keep them in line.

[Segev]

Some of you people are mean, but giving me some excellent ideas on how to keep the prisoners in place. A choker that applies curses, dimensional anchor, and a bunch of other effects should keep them in line.

I find extremely narrow corridors keep them in line, too. Hard to stray from it then!

[Sayt]

Nobody seems to have mentioned Teleportation Trap! If you try to Teleport into or out of a specified area without a password or exculpatory condition, your teleportation is redirected to a target area within that zone. You get a will save to not teleport.

Combine two with overlapping areas, and a spell clock casting Anticipate Teleportation on a zombie in the middle of the target area who's chained down. Naughty wizards who try to teleport inside prison get sent to trapped in teleport space, depending on how a DM adjudicates the stack of will saves generated by the Teleport traps procing off each other.

[marphod]

Throwing even nonviolent criminals into years of torture that drive them insane and turn them into raving psychopaths? Yeah, that'll really reduce crime.

So you know, you just described the US prison system.

(and people wonder why we have such high recidivism rates.)

[Jack_Simth]

Feeblemind (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/f/feeblemind) any casters (and as a targetted spell, you know whether or not it works, and can simply keep the presumably-defeated caster unconscious until it does). No casting for you!

Everyone else can be trapped mundanely.

If custom magic items are on the table, just get a widget of Dominate Person (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/d/dominate-person). Call it a "Prisoner's Mask" or something. Cursed item, for as long as it's worn, the wearer is under a permanent Dominate Person, keyed to a specific crown (multiple masks get keyed to the same crown). Anyone with a mask on must obey whoever is wearing the crown. If the crown is not worn, then the masks are still cursed, but have no effect. There's a one-round changing of the guard as the crown gets handed off to the next guy on shift, where there's a brief window where a person can actually act freely. The masks are still cursed, and range is irrelevant, so you're going to need to be ready with a plan for that one round, as simply teleporting away or some such has you teleporting right back shortly thereafter. Well, unless you end up somewhere that Dominate Person doesn't work....

[Andion Isurand]

Can't believe I overlooked this one: Bestow Curse. A permanent -6 to your spellcasting ability score will cramp the style of any would-be escaping caster.

Come to think of it, if I were running a prison in D&D and had access to that spell, I'd be putting each prisoner (or maybe just the most dangerous ones, if budget is a factor) through a schedule of curses, so that they all wound up with -6 to every ability score - much easier to keep prisoners when they're rendered physically weak and mentally dull.

Maybe even add an extra custom curse along the lines of Belkar's where they get violently ill if they go outside designated areas.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=12840375&postcount=19

Bestow Greater Curse for D&D 3.5 can produce the following, among others, and might be applicable ideas...


The target cannot cast spells, use spell-like abilities, or activate spell completion or spell trigger items.
The target loses a class ability, such as spellcasting, sneak attack damage, or barbarian rage. If this class ability is a prerequiste for other abilites or feats, the target loses the use of those feats as well.