Magical Protection in a High Magic Setting? [Archive]

NichG

2022-11-14, 04:47 PM

Often the response of a society to something they can't actually defend against in the moment is to instead make the penalties for abuse of that thing extremely draconian, make investigations involving that thing have a much higher priority, make those capable of wielding it subject to much more oversight and monitoring. Given the 4hp issue, that would most likely extend to high level people not affiliated with a government or certified organization in general, not just magic users.

Assuming the society has access to a small group of people who can deal with magical adversaries on even or superior footing, they can say 'this group is the inquisition - they are judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to activities undertaken by those known or discovered to have the ability to use magic'. It won't lead to a just society by any means, but practically speaking thats practically going to be the easiest way that a Lv1 commoner could go about trying to protect themselves from e.g. a Lv5 wizard. Of course those societies tend to be the first to burn down when a Lv15 wizard enters the scene and is pissed at the whole anti-caster discrimination thing, so it only works if the society has a monopoly on the ceiling of power.

Barring that, building settlements around natural antimagic or null magic zones could be a thing. You wouldn't necessarily want the entire settlement to be in such a zone, but you could put things like the jail, the courthouse, banks, high value businesses, etc there. If you're going to sign a contract, you go to the AMF to make sure you're not under any sorts of charm spells/etc. Where such natural resources aren't available, I could see such things being overseen by clerics of deities dedicated to e.g. justice, trade, etc - certifying no standing magical effects or curses on people before they sign anything, etc. Even if the cleric could betray that trust, the organization (and deity) backing them has a reputational incentive to keep them honest, so even if you don't have a 100% guarantee there's reason to believe that it'd more often than not be done in an honest manner.

gbaji

2022-11-14, 04:51 PM

If I have 4HP as a commoner then something that might prevent me from being killed by the magic I have no control over would be very important to me. And while, mechanically, taking half damage from a fireball won't make much difference to a merchant, being protected from Charm Person, Compelled Duel, Detect Thoughts, Friendship, Glibness, Suggestion, and other effects would make a huge difference. People in positions of political power would be even more highly motivated to protect themselves from such effects and from the people who can manifest them.

It's a matter of resource availability. We somewhat have to assume that the typical commoner isn't going to have the resources to obtain any sort of realistic protection from magical powers/influences/whatever. Um... But on the other hand, there isn't a whole lot a commoner has that would make using such magic on them worthwhile in the first place.

I would (and have) assume that magical defenses are going to scale with the wealth and capabilities of those attempting to defend themselves against magic, and that those things are going to tend to be in direct proportion to the degree to which said people may be targets of magical attacks/effects in the first place. A random commoner? Probably doesn't need to. Their odds of coming under magical attack are very near to zero. A wealthy merchant? More likely, but also has greater capability to obtain magical defenses, hire people who can protect them, etc.

And yeah, this scales all the way up to powerful political positions, who would almost certainly employ their own magic users to provide protection and/or items to help defend against magic, at the very least against mental influences.

Which is really the point of my question: How do people who can't use magic try to protect themselves from people who can use magic?

If they can afford it, they hire people to provide that protection (either directly or via some sorts of amulets of defense, whatever). If they can't, then they rely on a band of adventurers coming along to "save them" from the nefarious plots of whatever is controlling/threatening them. That's more or less where the whole "village being controlled by <insert evil thing here> and the party needs to figure it out and save them" bit comes from. I did a really spooky "children of the corn" like scenario many years ago. My players still talk about it.

The follow-up question being: Would such efforts significantly affect gameplay to the point that we should simply ignore this issue?

Nah. Not really. Again, you need to consider not just how someone can be harmed by the use of magic against them, but also how the magic user may benefit by using it that way in the first place. There's just not a lot of value for someone powerful enough to do stuff like that, to actually run around controlling/killing/whatever random commoners. What? You're going to take over their dirt farms or something?

KorvinStarmast

2022-11-14, 05:10 PM

How do people who can't use magic try to protect themselves from people who can use magic?
Torches and pitch forks.
Poison in their coffee.
Ambush.
Hire an assassin.

Mechalich

2022-11-14, 07:30 PM

This sort of thing is highly dependent upon the specific system in use in a given setting. For example, the vulnerability of high-level characters to mass attack by a low-level mob is much higher in 5e D&D versus 3.5e D&D.

The precise capabilities of the highest levels of personal power available - in an RPG context this means the highest levels likely to appear with any real frequency - versus the capabilities of societal power to match or contain those powers need to be mapped out, because the resulting contours largely dictate how society will form. If personal power greatly exceeds societal power, as it does in 3.5e D&D, the likely outcome is a society of immortal god-wizards who offer the masses exactly as much protection as their whims dictate, but never enough to allow them to actually become a threat. of the other hand, if the advantage of personal power is marginal, it's possible that casters may try to buy goodwill by providing all the protection they possibly can (especially if, by doing so, they can differentiate themselves from a non-accommodating 'bad caster' group). Alternatively, they may broadly remove themselves from society to avoid scrutiny (this was the traditional 2e AD&D solution).

Quertus

2022-11-14, 08:41 PM

In a setting where magic is common how does society react and provide protections?

In Forgotten Realms there are, as I recall, a couple of places where practitioners of magic establish local monopolies and vigorously protect their monopolies.

What I don't see a lot of are actual protections. In the real world people reacted to the perception of hostile magic by seeking various protections, notably charms.

For the sake of discussion let's say that in a RAW D&D 5e setting charms exist which allow the bearer to roll 1d20 anytime they are subjected to a magical effect. On a roll of 20 they are unaffected by the magic or take half-damage.

Alternately, let's say that in a RAW D&D 5e setting charms exist which indicate when magic is being used nearby.

What sort effect does this have on gameplay? Should we simply assume that NPCs exist for the amusement of players and that merchants are there to be swindled?

Iirc, I was told that, in (earlier editions of) the Forgotten Realms, various “gemstones” (like onyx or agate) provided various possible protections from magic (much like you describe). And the result was… nobody used them. Even at a couple of gold each, most were far too expensive for the average commoner (even in the Forgotten Realms, where the “average” commoner often had a stat block such that their lowest stat was a 13).

Irl, what protections do you have against technology? A fallout shelter? Gas mask? Bunker? Bullet-proof glass? Radar? Kevlar vest? Fire-proof walls? Home sprinkler system? Panic room? Even I only have 2 of those, and I’m considered paranoid by some.

So, afaict, the answer is, it really doesn’t have much effect on the everyday life of the Everyman.

Still, you can probably expect that “important” people carry expensive talismans that the taxes of the common folk or donations of the faithful have paid for, and con artists likely attempt to swindle the ignorant with their useless “miracle” charms.

And I guess it’s up to you whether you consider civilians to “exist for the amusement of” armies and mercenary groups, whether that’s the feel you feel the setting should have. Personally, I think that the Forgotten Realms should feel more like “at the whim of the gods and OP DMPC Mary Sue’s”, and “every random NPC peasant has better stats than you” and “idiocracy”, but I’m no Realms scholar.

Mechalich

2022-11-14, 10:11 PM

Irl, what protections do you have against technology? A fallout shelter? Gas mask? Bunker? Bullet-proof glass? Radar? Kevlar vest? Fire-proof walls? Home sprinkler system? Panic room? Even I only have 2 of those, and I’m considered paranoid by some.

The protections against technology are that technology is society dependent, which means society inevitably manages them. It may not manage them in a way the average citizen would like - ex. an autocratic state may allow the possession of firearms only by the secret police - but the state retains a monopoly on the legal use of force. However, in a universe in which personal power exceeds societal power, as it does in D&D, superhero universes, most wuxia settings, and a variety of other fantasy scenarios it is inherently impossible for the state to maintain a monopoly on the legal use of force - with the exception of states run by all-powerful god-kings and their supernaturally loyal minions in which 'the state' is functionally a single person. D&D, with its typically numerous and powerful forms of minionomancy and mind control, leans heavily toward the 'god-kings' scenario.

Telok

2022-11-15, 01:28 AM

Iirc, I was told that, in (earlier editions of) the Forgotten Realms, various “gemstones” (like onyx or agate) provided various possible protections from magic (much like you describe). And the result was… nobody used them. Even at a couple of gold each, most were far too expensive for the average commoner (even in the Forgotten Realms, where the “average” commoner often had a stat block such that their lowest stat was a 13).

AD&D DMG 1979 revised ed. p.26 "Reputed magical properties of gems".

Regardless of what qualities gems, herbs, and other substances are purported to possess .... absolutely no benefit of magical nature .... given herein merely as information for Dungeon Master use in devising special formulae .... etc., etc.

In general it the actual vsMagics depends on how well the game system & setting defines magic stuff, and how much magic is written to be used for non-murder-hobo fighting activities. This refers to all magic in the game system, not just the "i can haz spelz" adventuring bits that are mostly along the lines of 'spells, swords, shields, oh and the occasional boot or ring'.

Just a simple "this ring glows when the wearer is being affected by magic" or what's basically a magic geiger counter, has massive effects how a civilization interacts with magic. If making one requires a 9th+ level wizard, three drops of blood from a sleeping phoenix, and a point of constitution loss, then there won't be many (if any) and they'll cost an arm... literally you'll probably have to hack it off the current owner. If making one requires a recipie, 500 gp of misc. ****, a month of work by one random person, and a rare-but-can-be-gotten-by-a-professional-hunter thingy, then there's no reason someone with 1500 gp (or 3000 on an installment plan) shouldn't be able to get one short of some absolute removal of the source of special ingredient from the setting. If making one just requires a blob of cash for a suitable item to be enchanted and someone who can use any magic at all magic to spend three months working at it... well there won't be assembly lines, but it'd be a good idea for any magic school to require one from a student for graduation and any number of small scale magic using crafters will be willing for living expenses & a bit of profit.

NichG

2022-11-15, 01:31 AM

The specific source for the gem effects was 2e Volo's Guide to All Things Magical. So, bit later.

Telok

2022-11-15, 02:17 AM

The specific source for the gem effects was 2e Volo's Guide to All Things Magical. So, bit later.
'96 & FR specific it looks like? Could be. The FR bit would be why I never heard of it, never personally knew anyone in ad&d days who used that setting.

NichG

2022-11-15, 02:48 AM

'96 & FR specific it looks like? Could be. The FR bit would be why I never heard of it, never personally knew anyone in ad&d days who used that setting.

Yeah, its FR specific.

The gemstone stuff in Volo is actually really potent. Going through the list, having a thousand or so gp of gems on your person is enough to:

- Detect ethereal and invisible creatures nearby
- Reduce all spell damage by 1 point per die and gain +2 to saves vs spells
- Halve all fire damage
- Absorb 1d4 damage per stone carried from any explosions (consumable)
- Gain +1 AC versus physical projectiles
- Gain +2 to saves vs polymorph-like effects
- Negate 6 points of electricity damage per unit mass of a certain stone (consumable)
- Fully block Time Stop and similar time magic within 30ft (expensive - black sapphire)
- Deal counterattack damage to casters of magic missiles that pass within 10ft of the bearer
- Neutralize alcohol
- Fully block Magic Jar
- Ward against charm magics, unclear how effective (expensive - diamond)
- Detect falsehood (consumable, expensive - emerald)
- Casts Flame Strike in response to any magical effect being applied to the bearer (consumable, friendly fire...)
- Glow in the presence of active spellcasting within 20ft
- Protection against wyverns (ambiguous...)
- Reflect spells at the caster (requires the spell to hit the stone directly though...)
- Prevent rot up to and including magical rot like mummy rot
- Detect scrying on the holder
- Immunity to paralysis and hold spells (there are two gems that do this; one requires contact with a magic item, but permanent in effect and doesn't consume the magic item, the other just does it)
- Totally prevent fireballs and other magical flame effects within 60ft, and a 1 in 4 chance of extinguishing nonmagical fires within that range each round
- Detect residual enchantments
- Pierce layers of prismatic effects, one per stone (consumable, risky - not all stones will do and its hard to identify)
- Reduce damage from undead by 1 per die
- Partial protection from fear, insanity, etc effects (ambiguous)
- 1/3 chance of reducing magic missile damage by 1 point per missile
- Reduce damage from magic missiles by half (consumable)
- Provides a Resist Fire and Resist Cold effect once (expensive - highest quality of stone only; consumable)
- (In conjunction with a single high level spell slot cast) creates clothing that grants permanent immunity to nonmagical metal weapons
- Delay attacks from undead by 1 round
- Prevent magical darkness within 20ft
- Reduces damage from draconic breath weapons by 1d4 per die to minimum of 1 (consumable)
- Reduces damage from lightning by 1 point per die, +4 to saves vs lightning
- (In combination with holy water) defeat Wizard Lock.
- Detect active illusions
- 14% chance of re-targeting spells against the bearer
- Block scrying within 2ft
- Immunity to magical curses
- Random degree of protection against all harmful gaseous or airborne effects (consumable)
- Immunity to 'withering magics' and the Inflict X line of spells
- Detect magic on contact
- Autonomously cast six magic missiles a round for 5 rounds out of every 7, indefinitely, and on mental command by the owner within 30ft (!)

King of Nowhere

2022-11-15, 06:10 AM

Given that it is very expensive to make defences against magic, my high magic campaign setting reacts twofold: concentration of force, and retaliation.
The first means that there is a strong incentive to make alliances. Adventuring groups are affiliated to powerful organizations or nations. Nations form defensive alliances. They firld armirs of golems. They create strongholds rated to withstand the assault of a lecel 20 party. All to ensure that society can face high level threats. If yor society cannot, then you have to subject yourself to a greater power that does. If society as a whole cannot do it, then there will not be a stable society.
Retaliation means society will be very dogged in the pursue of those who abuse magic - they must make examples to dissuade most potential criminals, because they lack the resources to do it on a large scale. So it doesn't matter that the guy you mind raped is mr nobody. Society will quickly deploy high level divinators to find and punish you at all costs - because if it is understood that you can do that kind of stuff and get away with it, nothing will be safe.
Society behaves towards high level criminals like a guy with a handful of bullets facing a crowd: it shouts "the first who steps out of line is dead", and hope you don't have to execute your threat too often.

It's worth noting that high magic changes the severity of crimes. Physical harm is a lot less bad because it can be healed so easily; when the party accidentally killed a civilian, they got away with paying for a resurrection spell and a refund.
while charms - that will take away people's sense of safety and make them double guess their every thought process - are a red line that must never be crossed. My wizard player decided to take enchantment as banned school because society's harsh response make it too inpractical to use in most situations.

So, the common person do not buy a cloack of resistance +1 to defend from magic. If they can afford magic, they buy stuff that's useful in their everyday life.
The common person defend from magic by funding some high level organization to protect him

KorvinStarmast

2022-11-15, 11:30 AM

However, in a universe in which personal power exceeds societal power, as it does in D&D, superhero universes, most wuxia settings, and a variety of other fantasy scenarios it is inherently impossible for the state to maintain a monopoly on the legal use of force - with the exception of states run by all-powerful god-kings and their supernaturally loyal minions in which 'the state' is functionally a single person. D&D, with its typically numerous and powerful forms of minionomancy and mind control, leans heavily toward the 'god-kings' scenario. Which is why making magic both rare and dangerous makes for an easier to implement setting and campaign, but, one can certainly go all in and let the chaos ensue: which it will. And that can be fun. :smallsmile:

Given that it is very expensive to make defences against magic, my high magic campaign setting reacts twofold: concentration of force, and retaliation.
The first means that there is a strong incentive to make alliances. Adventuring groups are affiliated to powerful organizations or nations. Nations form defensive alliances. They firld armirs of golems. They create strongholds rated to withstand the assault of a lecel 20 party. All to ensure that society can face high level threats. If yor society cannot, then you have to subject yourself to a greater power that does. If society as a whole cannot do it, then there will not be a stable society.
Retaliation means society will be very dogged in the pursue of those who abuse magic - they must make examples to dissuade most potential criminals, because they lack the resources to do it on a large scale. So it doesn't matter that the guy you mind raped is mr nobody. Society will quickly deploy high level divinators to find and punish you at all costs - because if it is understood that you can do that kind of stuff and get away with it, nothing will be safe.
Society behaves towards high level criminals like a guy with a handful of bullets facing a crowd: it shouts "the first who steps out of line is dead", and hope you don't have to execute your threat too often.

It's worth noting that high magic changes the severity of crimes. Physical harm is a lot less bad because it can be healed so easily; when the party accidentally killed a civilian, they got away with paying for a resurrection spell and a refund.
while charms - that will take away people's sense of safety and make them double guess their every thought process - are a red line that must never be crossed. My wizard player decided to take enchantment as banned school because society's harsh response make it too inpractical to use in most situations.

So, the common person do not buy a cloack of resistance +1 to defend from magic. If they can afford magic, they buy stuff that's useful in their everyday life.
The common person defend from magic by funding some high level organization to protect him This is an answer that someone can use to apply to their own campaign, well done. :smallsmile: FWIW, this part is roughly what I meant by torches and pitchforks and hire assassins

Retaliation means society will be very dogged in the pursue of those who abuse magic - they must make examples to dissuade most potential criminals, because they lack the resources to do it on a large scale. So it doesn't matter that the guy you mind raped is mr nobody. Society will quickly deploy high level divinators to find and punish you at all costs - because if it is understood that you can do that kind of stuff and get away with it, nothing will be safe.

jjordan

2022-11-15, 12:03 PM

NRSASD

2022-11-15, 12:52 PM

start with a mithral condom...

(blue) Isn’t that a plot point from Rings of Power? (/blue)

Jorren

2022-11-15, 04:45 PM

In the real world defensive measures of almost any sort has to account for the economic feasibility of a form of protection compared to the likelihood of its use.

That's why you don't see the type of defensive measures you would see in a bank or government facility in a typical retail store.

Since fantasy settings rarely care about economics, the defensive measures can be whatever you want them to be for the most part.

King of Nowhere

2022-11-15, 04:55 PM

Thank you all for the good discussion points. A few, in particular, stick with me.

Making magic rarer is mentioned, and it's a good idea that resonates with me, but it's difficult to implement in many settings, particularly D&D where almost every class has ready access to magic and where magic permeates pretty much every aspect of society. Which is why I'm specifying high-fantasy where magic is common.

that's a worldbuilding choice, and should not be too tied to the classes and what they do.
personally i dislike the idea of rare magic because, what's the point of having magic in the setting if your whole concept is "everything works just like if this didn't exhist at all"? may as well skip the whole magic thing. exploring the consequences of introducing magic and superpowered individuals into a setting is interesting.
but it's indeed a matter of tastes, so if you like a low magic world, you should not feel yourself inhibited because one of your players wants to play a wizard.

Which brings me to my tentative conclusions that, if we follow any reasonable facsimile of logic, in settings where magic is common:

-Tools which make magic less effective should likewise be common AND/OR
-Controls on the use of magic, which employ draconian punishments, should be common AND/OR
-Society should have evolved significant attitudes towards the use of magic which are probably fear-based.
-Reducing the ability of players to use all the abilities of their characters will be extremely poorly received; they're playing high-magic because they want high-magic.

I would point out a few caveats:
1) regarding draconian punishments, in a world where resurrection is possible, death penalty is just not the same thing. killing someone may well be the dumbest thing you could do. solutions depend on setting and circumstances.
In my setting, there are a couple evil nations that go for the "executed under fancy torture" stuff with the caveat that if you are resurrected you should stay the hell away from our land, or we'll execute you again. still, even they do employ fancy antimagic prisons where great care is taken to keep the prisoners alive, for when the former approach just does not work. soul binding and related stuff is considered on a level of crimes against humanity, but it is done if it's the only option left.
1b) still regarding draconian punishments, a functional society also tries to not employ them too easily, else they push people to desperation and violence. society's response should be more balanced, and related to the severity of the infractions. if your party wizard throws a fireball at an ambushing assassin and accidentally catches some civilians in the blast radius, he should get a chance to fix things. if he loses sight of the assassin and starts fireballing everywhere in a crowded area just on the hopes of scoring a lucky hit, that's a one way ticket for maximum security
2) related to this, reducing the ability of the players to use their ability may or may not be poorly received. My players accepted it without a complaint, because every restriction I placed makes sense in world. because people living into that world would see those restrictions as reasonable.
in our world we require competence tests before allowing people to use a potentially dangerous object like a car, and we place restrictions on how it can be used, and we prosecute those that violate those restrictions, and nobody complains that being forbidden from car racing while drunk inside a pedestrian area is a violation of their personal freedom. in the same way, when i told my players that they can't go around charming people into being their thralls, robbing banks while invisible, and expect to get away with it, well, it's only sensible. If your players protest that it's a restriction on their freedom as players, then it means your players are the kind that want to go around mind raping people for the lulz; in which case, i would not want to dm for them.
3) society's attitude towards magic should not be just fear. Magic is also plenty useful; you can use magic to feed the masses, heal disease, build up all kind of useful stuff. indeed, i find an attitude like the one we have towards technology to be more realistic*; sure, this thing is dangerous, but it's also very useful. we don't fear it, as long as it's properly evaluated and regulated. we do fear somebody who may misuse it.

*you may wonder, if magic has so much in common with technology, what's the point of playing with magic instead of just having a sci-fi setting. however, with magic you have a lot more freedom of what it can do and what it cannot do. using technology brings a lot more issues, but it would require a whole dissertation. anyway, my personal reason for preferring fantasy is that as a science nerd I can spot all manner of scientific inconsistencies and mistakes, and they generally ruin my enjoyment of a sci-fi story. with magic, i can accept that magic just works this way.

KorvinStarmast

2022-11-15, 05:02 PM

(blue) Isn’t that a plot point from Rings of Power? (/blue)
(blue) As I understand that plot point, it's a ring, or maybe a rooster ring, and I doubt that's going to be protective in nature (/blue) :smalleek:

(What I had in my minds eye was a very tight micromesh construction, kind of like a chainmail tube sock ... but we are getting waaaaaaaaay off topic)

gbaji

2022-11-15, 09:29 PM

Making magic rarer is mentioned, and it's a good idea that resonates with me, but it's difficult to implement in many settings, particularly D&D where almost every class has ready access to magic and where magic permeates pretty much every aspect of society. Which is why I'm specifying high-fantasy where magic is common.

I also tend to think that making magic rarer may actually make it more likely to be abused in a "how would this setting actually work?" way. If folks walking around with mind control type spells is relatively common, societies would have to come up with ways to manage them. If it's super rare, they wont. And the super rare people who have such abilities will more or less use them at whim because most people wont even know to think they might be used.

Something to think about.

In a formal setting the state establishes control of the use of magic and enforces it. If the state can't actively enforce limits on the use of magic (preventing it from being used without license) then it has to react to unlicensed magic use in a draconian fashion (since confining magic users is too expensive you have to kill their ability to use magic, which may or may not involve killing them at the same time; consider the Dresden Files setting). Giving the state the ability to actively enforce magic use (creating areas in which magic cannot be used, establishing common means of detecting the use of magic, providing ready access to anti-magic capabilities down to at least the upper-middle class level of society, and etc) significantly changes game play for some classes and can come as very rude discovery if players are not briefed ahead of time. They don't like having character abilities 'taken away' from them.

I'm not really understanding the first sentence. If the state can't actively enforce limits on use of magic, then how on earth can they use "draconian fashion" to punish those who break the rules (or whatever)? You have to realize that all state power ultimately rests in its ability to enforce its rules. It either has the power to impose draconian punishments on those who break the rules, or it does not. If it does, then it can enforce the rules (and may even be able to avoid having to use those draconian methods most of the time). If it does not, then it may attempt draconian measures, but those will tend to be ineffective, often inconsistently applied (some punished harshly, others getting away with anything), and more likely to be used by the existing powerful magical forces (who can manipulate those imposing the "justice") to prevent up and coming competition than anything resembling true justice.

That little side issue aside, you are more or less correct though. Just be aware that this always requires that the "state" (whatever form that takes), must have sufficient magical power to enforce its rules. Period. You can't, as a GM, just declare "these are the rules for magic", without also establishing a very real system in place by real powers in the game that enforce those rules somehow. Doesn't matter what those are, but they must exist if you have these sorts of rules at all (unless you really do want them to be quite obviously just unenforced nonsense that no serious practitioner of magic takes seriously).

The "state" in this case needs to have absolute power to detect, track down, and imprison/punish anyone who steps out of line. And make sure (as you say) that the players know this and maybe even fear it a bit. Again, assuming that this is a world where such amount of magical enforcement and rules exists.

Informal protections, the torches and pitchforks option, is more a sort of large scale aversion and shunning for the most part. But even that can have significant consequences where PCs are denied access to resources (shops, inns, even towns and cities) and incur significant social penalties (mere suspicion to outright shunning) in interactions unless they have a compensatory factor in play (e.g. I'm a magic-user, yes, but I'm a member of the order of XXXXX and here's my uniform/signet-ring/brand/tattoo/union-card to prove it).

Not bad ideas. But be careful of the "rules for thee, none for me" situation. If this is the method magic abuse may be punished, then it can be an issue due to the PCs potentially having a much harder time of it (assuming reputation and reaction by NPCs matter to them), than the evil bad guys who aren't going to care about this one bit.

Having said that, I'm more a fan of a somewhat in between method. Not so much "the state", but that certain powerful parties and organizations exist which take it on themselves to manage magic (at least in their areas of influence). Wizard guilds and religious organizations may work together to enforce some common rules on their various practitioners, just as a mater of courtesy and ease of interaction. I tend to like this more than "the king has the most powerful wizards in the land" sorts of things.

And of course, no matter what method you use, the potential for corruption in any system can make for fun adventure scenarios.

Which brings me to my tentative conclusions that, if we follow any reasonable facsimile of logic, in settings where magic is common:

-Tools which make magic less effective should likewise be common AND/OR
-Controls on the use of magic, which employ draconian punishments, should be common AND/OR
-Society should have evolved significant attitudes towards the use of magic which are probably fear-based.
-Reducing the ability of players to use all the abilities of their characters will be extremely poorly received; they're playing high-magic because they want high-magic.

Don't directly disagree with any of that. I would point out that magic can be "common", even if only a small percentage of the total population uses it. Certainly common enough to requires some sorts of standards and rules to be put in place, even if it's just "don't mess with the people in my town" sort of things.

Just making sure that when we talk about attitudes towards magic being "fear-based" that's not necessarily how the general population feels or wants others to feel about magic. Most average people in most settings just aren't thinking about magic on any given day. They're doing their normal average every day jobs. These rules can be in effect, but still only directly apply to a very small (like .1%) of the population or less, but still also have a known and noticeable effect on the world itself.

You don't need a world chock full of people wandering down the street tossing spells around like they're just juggling balls for these concepts to be needed and useful IMO.

I'm fine with weighting the scales so that players tend to succeed, but it bothers me when we slap high-magic onto a setting and don't consider how that changes things. I'm not arguing in favor of a Tippyverse, but I do think there should be a reasonable middle ground. It's entirely a me issue, of course. I'm not arguing that anyone should be forced to change how they play.

Absolutely agree. I also think that a lot of this can be abstracted in the background. Unless the players are specifically getting involved in such things, they can often be left vague and undefined. And I'd certainly not use it as a cudgel to make players not use the magic items/spells written on their character sheets (cause that's not fair). It's enough that they have just an idea that really abusing people with magic could have some dire consequences. Be prepared to hit PCs with whatever you have put in your game world, but that should really be rare IMO (unless they are just being magical murderhobos or something).

NichG

2022-11-15, 09:48 PM

I'm not really understanding the first sentence. If the state can't actively enforce limits on use of magic, then how on earth can they use "draconian fashion" to punish those who break the rules (or whatever)? You have to realize that all state power ultimately rests in its ability to enforce its rules. It either has the power to impose draconian punishments on those who break the rules, or it does not. If it does, then it can enforce the rules (and may even be able to avoid having to use those draconian methods most of the time). If it does not, then it may attempt draconian measures, but those will tend to be ineffective, often inconsistently applied (some punished harshly, others getting away with anything), and more likely to be used by the existing powerful magical forces (who can manipulate those imposing the "justice") to prevent up and coming competition than anything resembling true justice.

It's the difference between making a crime impossible to commit versus punishing it when the crime is uncovered.

The state might not be able to give every citizen a counter-charm that will prevent them from being mind controlled, because there are a lot of citizens and only a few people capable of making those counter charms. But the state could still send that small group to utterly crush a mind controller once their activities have been discovered.

Mechalich

2022-11-15, 11:05 PM

The state might not be able to give every citizen a counter-charm that will prevent them from being mind controlled, because there are a lot of citizens and only a few people capable of making those counter charms. But the state could still send that small group to utterly crush a mind controller once their activities have been discovered.

Maybe...it depends on the information resources available to the state. Extremely harsh punishments have their limitations as a tool of state power, especially once they reach the state where lesser crimes carry the same punishment as extremely serious crimes, as this tends to lead to large numbers of people with 'nothing to lose,' which is extremely destabilizing.

In general, a state with fewer magical resources than rogue individuals is not going to have the information resources to control those individuals. Now, this changes if there are multiple forms of magic in question, as in D&D. For example, a theocratic state could conceivably ban all use of arcane magic and rely on divine magic to make up the difference. This is extremely common in settings where there's a 'good magic' and a 'bad magic' - for example in Star Wars or the Wheel of Time - and the natural result is that the 'good magic' people spend a huge portion of their resources trying to contain the 'bad magic' people.

One thing this does lead to is states making affiliation a crime. For example, if a setting has some kind of evil blood magic that's run by the blood cult, then the state is likely to make just being a member of the Blood Cult illegal (and in extreme cases punishable by death) even if the person in question hasn't actually done any blood magic or anything criminal at all. This is especially likely if being a blood mage carries some kind of visible sign that ordinary people can detect. For example, in Exalted, exalts display auras and extremely recognizable marks on their foreheads if they use their powers a bunch - and the Dragon-Blooded Empire that considered all of them threats very reasonably simply declared that anyone displaying such a mark under any circumstance was subject to an immediate kill-on-sight response.

NichG

2022-11-15, 11:26 PM

Maybe...it depends on the information resources available to the state. Extremely harsh punishments have their limitations as a tool of state power, especially once they reach the state where lesser crimes carry the same punishment as extremely serious crimes, as this tends to lead to large numbers of people with 'nothing to lose,' which is extremely destabilizing.

In general, a state with fewer magical resources than rogue individuals is not going to have the information resources to control those individuals. Now, this changes if there are multiple forms of magic in question, as in D&D. For example, a theocratic state could conceivably ban all use of arcane magic and rely on divine magic to make up the difference. This is extremely common in settings where there's a 'good magic' and a 'bad magic' - for example in Star Wars or the Wheel of Time - and the natural result is that the 'good magic' people spend a huge portion of their resources trying to contain the 'bad magic' people.

I'm talking about a state that has, say, 100 Lv10 characters in service to it but a population of 5 million, of which maybe 50000 are casters of some form or another, of whom maybe 50 are engaged in criminal acts, and of whom maybe 49500 are lower than Lv10.

You can't make 5 million people immune to magic with the resources of 100 high level enforcers. You can't defeat a coalition of the 400 independent high level casters with the 100 loyalists. But you could absolutely crush the 50 casters engaged in criminal acts, most of whom would be less than Lv10. What you'd be aiming for is the logic of 'don't bring a gun to a burglary, because having a lethal weapon on your person during a minor crime bumps it up to a major one'.

Someone steals a loaf of bread, they get a fine or a day in the stocks if they can't pay. Someone steals a loaf of bread using Mage Hand and they have their spellcasting materials confiscated and destroyed and go to jail for five years. Someone steals a loaf of bread using Dominate Person and they're exiled on pain of execution.

Mechalich

2022-11-16, 01:20 AM

I'm talking about a state that has, say, 100 Lv10 characters in service to it but a population of 5 million, of which maybe 50000 are casters of some form or another, of whom maybe 50 are engaged in criminal acts, and of whom maybe 49500 are lower than Lv10.

You can't make 5 million people immune to magic with the resources of 100 high level enforcers. You can't defeat a coalition of the 400 independent high level casters with the 100 loyalists. But you could absolutely crush the 50 casters engaged in criminal acts, most of whom would be less than Lv10. What you'd be aiming for is the logic of 'don't bring a gun to a burglary, because having a lethal weapon on your person during a minor crime bumps it up to a major one'.

Someone steals a loaf of bread, they get a fine or a day in the stocks if they can't pay. Someone steals a loaf of bread using Mage Hand and they have their spellcasting materials confiscated and destroyed and go to jail for five years. Someone steals a loaf of bread using Dominate Person and they're exiled on pain of execution.

Yes, but you have to actually catch the magic using criminals in the act for that to work, which is why I said it depends on the information resources available. Notably, crimes conducted using magic are generally significantly more difficult to detect than conventional ones. Proving someone abused mind control is not simple. Also, those enforcers are going to be expensive, especially since they'll probably insist on operating with overwhelming force when deployed (like actual SWAT units do). You'd need a huge investigate apparatus in order to make this work.

Now, there are ways to do this. The easy one is the Dragon Age route. Acceptable mages belong to the Circles and owe service to the state in perpetuity with a third-party monitoring force watching them constantly, and unacceptable mages can be killed on sight. Doing this essentially co-opts all casters as state resources. Now, this is highly likely, over time, to turn the state into a magocracy (especially in the absence of some sort of Dragon Age style, 'mages can go insane at any time' bit of grimdark) with casters holding functionally all positions of importance in the bureaucracy and a huge amount of corruption, but this is generally considered acceptable. In fact, in most human societies this was broadly assumed to be how things worked even in the absence of any actual powers.

NichG

2022-11-16, 01:34 AM

Yes, but you have to actually catch the magic using criminals in the act for that to work, which is why I said it depends on the information resources available. Notably, crimes conducted using magic are generally significantly more difficult to detect than conventional ones. Proving someone abused mind control is not simple. Also, those enforcers are going to be expensive, especially since they'll probably insist on operating with overwhelming force when deployed (like actual SWAT units do). You'd need a huge investigate apparatus in order to make this work.

The main point is that you don't need an apparatus proportional to the size of the society, and you don't have to prevent every (or any) crimes, or even catch every crime. You just have to make it so that those cases which are caught are punished to the extent that for the most part, casters aren't going to find it a worthwhile proposition to try to become local tyrants. Similarly, you don't need to police or constrain every single caster - they can have full freedom to self-license and whatnot, but the consequence of that is that the hammer comes down hard if they're even tangentially involved in something. So it becomes on them to mitigate their risks by being more careful than the average person might be about what they get involved with - exploiting an intentional chilling effect.

Yes, you will still have magecrime. But you already had roguecrime and fightercrime and so on presumably. What you won't have is open, overt, repeated magecrime.

KorvinStarmast

2022-11-16, 08:55 AM

It's the difference between making a crime impossible to commit versus punishing it when the crime is uncovered. Like speeding or tax fraud. :smallsmile:

The state might not be able to give every citizen a counter-charm that will prevent them from being mind controlled, because there are a lot of citizens and only a few people capable of making those counter charms. But the state could still send that small group to utterly crush a mind controller once their activities have been discovered. They could even create special investigative units to try and find the practitioners and take them down (kind of like the narco squad in a metropolitan police department).

GloatingSwine

2022-11-16, 11:52 AM

Simple, either the witch hunters kill them before they get good enough at it to stop them or you yoke them to the service of the state.

NichG

2022-11-16, 12:34 PM

I do agree with MechaLich that trying to yoke all (powerful) casters to the service of the state is likely to lead to either corrupt magocracy or open rebellion. A draft like that is just putting a lot of people you've wronged in one place together and then relying on them to provide an important function for you that you can't provide for yourself...

gbaji

2022-11-16, 05:00 PM

In a formal setting the state establishes control of the use of magic and enforces it. If the state can't actively enforce limits on use of magic (preventing it from being used without license) then it has to react to unlicensed magic use in a draconian fashion (since confining magic users is too expensive you have to kill their ability to use magic, which may or may not involve killing them at the same time; consider the Dresden Files setting).

You can't make 5 million people immune to magic with the resources of 100 high level enforcers. You can't defeat a coalition of the 400 independent high level casters with the 100 loyalists. But you could absolutely crush the 50 casters engaged in criminal acts, most of whom would be less than Lv10. What you'd be aiming for is the logic of 'don't bring a gun to a burglary, because having a lethal weapon on your person during a minor crime bumps it up to a major one'.

Someone steals a loaf of bread, they get a fine or a day in the stocks if they can't pay. Someone steals a loaf of bread using Mage Hand and they have their spellcasting materials confiscated and destroyed and go to jail for five years. Someone steals a loaf of bread using Dominate Person and they're exiled on pain of execution.

Ok. That explains the misunderstanding I had. I read jjordan's post and didn't at all get the idea of "the state somehow magically makes the entire population immune to harmful magic" from the first bolded statement. And the follow up just seemed to me to be the normal "this is how you enforce magical crimes" methodology. Didn't at all get that "actively enforce limits on use of magic" meant "hand out amulets to every commoner in the land to make them immune". I took "enforce limits on the use of magic" to mean "enforce" in the normal law enforcement way: You discover crimes, investigate them, track down the perpetrator, and the capture, try, and punish them. Just with magical crimes.

So yeah, was confused by the whole "if the state can't do this, then it must do <exactly what I thought he was saying the state should do in the first part>".

Uh. Yeah. I'd be hesitant to even consider a game world with that much extreme controls on magic and ability to prevent magic from harming a pretty huge population. It's not just practical. If "the state" could proactively prevent magical harm to every single citizen in the first place, then surely everyone in the setting with even moderate personal resources could be even more protected (and what exactly does that even mean?). You'd be essentially making magic useless because everyone you'd ever try to use it against would be protected because "the state" is handing anti-magic amulets out like candy or something.

I suppose you could use certain anti-magic zones or something, set up in cities to prevent such things. That's somewhat doable, but extremely problematic, if you consider the "cost" to protect every Inn, public square, palace, and farmers market in the kingdom from such things and then extrapolate that into the ability of any "bad guys" the PCs are going to face having the same ability. You're still left almost having to make these sorts of anti-magic effects rare and expensive and only accessible to the most powerful/wealthy in order to make the game actually "work" (and allow magic powers/spells/whatever to be useful at all in the setting).

I still heavily lean towards some sort of "regulation after the fact" method. Again. Just introducing the ability to eliminate magic as a threat in a game setting can warp things in ways you may not consider fully when first implementing it. I'd go with "block magic with magic", and then try to build up reasonable systems for doing this in a way that makes the game setting work well.

As an interesting anecdotal aside on handling magic power ranges in a game setting, the setting I run was actually mostly inherited from a previous GM. It's a fairly magic heavy world, but somewhere along the line he had introduced this one empire in which the entire population does not use magic. It's just forbidden. He based it on a blend of Feudal Japan (with other asian like influences), complete with samurai class, ninjas, etc. Very cool, and I didn't want to just erase it, but it presented a very basic problem in the form of "how on earth could this empire have not been wiped out by its magic using neighbors ages ago"? I "bent" the description a bit to just say that they didn't cast active spells, but didn't consider ritual magic and enchantment as "magic". They were already described as ancestor worshippers, so I pushed them heavily into a shamanic focus, where nearly everyone does things like summon friendly ancestor spirits, who (because they were also part of the same culture) are super friendly and just kinda hang out and protect them. They don't consider such summoning "magic" at all. Just honoring their ancestors ritually. And if such friendly spirits helped protect their homes and businesses and would have the ability to detect mental influences on their worldly descendants (but also can't directly cast spells, cause they didn't have them when alive), it still created some protection and balance.

I added in some artificing by their skilled blacksmiths to make special enchanted armor and weapons (mostly used by their Samurai class), with some interesting abilities. No active spell casting, but enchantments that would make them pretty powerful on the battlefield. Toss in some mystical attunement of certain items to ancestral spirits to give additional combat bonuses when fighting on behalf of family, clan, or empire, and it brought them up to a level where they could compete with the surrounding world and actual exist as a viable civilization and culture.

Having done that bit of balancing, it naturally lead me to examining similar spirit powers by "outcasts" to their society based on animal spirits instead of ancestors. So the ninja clans worshipped friendly animals, again not directly casting spells either, but being imbued with aspects of their clan's favored animal spirit type when necessary (Ok. I totally cribbed this from the otherwise cringeworthy Electra film, sue me). That lead to thinking about imbuing items with elemental spirits in the same way as well. So a whole bunch of "alternative" magical uses that aren't really "standard" (but still more or less allowed in the rules with some slight modifications) arose from simply considering how one culture would handle magic differently than others, in a magic heavy world, while still being viable.

Oh. And this lead to an incredibly ridiculously fun adventure that I just had to run. Complete with malevolent spirit from an ancient time where some did use sorcery, floating around possessing successive generations of unknowing descendants and causing havoc (and perhaps seeking a bride or two in the process, cause... reasons). Added in a "good" heretic shaman who used different forms of spirits than just ancestors, which in turn would use actual magic spells (but he didn't cast any directly because his heresy could only go so far), and his band of street gang buddies, tracking down this evil spirit and the party helping out. There may have been some "special tea" that they drank that made them feel really good and provide a slight boost to abilities (and protection from fear). Bad guys lieutenants had weapons imbued with elemental abilities (and of course, had to show them off), as well as a cast of ninja gang guys on his side as well. Yes. It was a total rip off of Big Trouble in Little China. And it went off spectacularly.

All more or less deriving from me just sitting down one night and thinking "how could this culture actually exist in this setting". Not sure how this fits into a broader "how do you handle high magic power settings", but it does touch on the idea that you can balance out factors, without having to make them equal and opposite all the time, and sometimes come up with really cool ideas in the process.

NichG

2022-11-16, 05:15 PM

Uh. Yeah. I'd be hesitant to even consider a game world with that much extreme controls on magic and ability to prevent magic from harming a pretty huge population. It's not just practical. If "the state" could proactively prevent magical harm to every single citizen in the first place, then surely everyone in the setting with even moderate personal resources could be even more protected (and what exactly does that even mean?). You'd be essentially making magic useless because everyone you'd ever try to use it against would be protected because "the state" is handing anti-magic amulets out like candy or something.

I suppose you could use certain anti-magic zones or something, set up in cities to prevent such things. That's somewhat doable, but extremely problematic, if you consider the "cost" to protect every Inn, public square, palace, and farmers market in the kingdom from such things and then extrapolate that into the ability of any "bad guys" the PCs are going to face having the same ability. You're still left almost having to make these sorts of anti-magic effects rare and expensive and only accessible to the most powerful/wealthy in order to make the game actually "work" (and allow magic powers/spells/whatever to be useful at all in the setting).

I mean, it can make for a good tower defense sort of setting. Maybe there's a way to make 'blessing generators' which give blanket immunity against harmful magics of 4th level or lower to everyone and everything within say a 1 mile radius, but the generators are somewhat fragile and not so cheap that cities can afford to have more than two or three of them - maybe they're even specific unique grants by the gods of the setting and are literally irreplaceable. Those make for juicy targets for hostile actors to try to sneak in and sabotage in advance of an attack, and if there are multiple such targets in a given location then there's the nice 'how do we defend them all?' question that means that even if the PCs as a group are stronger than the members of the hostile force they can't be everywhere at once.

Similarly, if the bad guys have those sorts of relics as well, it creates secondary objectives for the PCs to attack first before any big throwdown at the end, which is nice as well.

gbaji

2022-11-16, 06:01 PM

I mean, it can make for a good tower defense sort of setting. Maybe there's a way to make 'blessing generators' which give blanket immunity against harmful magics of 4th level or lower to everyone and everything within say a 1 mile radius, but the generators are somewhat fragile and not so cheap that cities can afford to have more than two or three of them - maybe they're even specific unique grants by the gods of the setting and are literally irreplaceable. Those make for juicy targets for hostile actors to try to sneak in and sabotage in advance of an attack, and if there are multiple such targets in a given location then there's the nice 'how do we defend them all?' question that means that even if the PCs as a group are stronger than the members of the hostile force they can't be everywhere at once.

Similarly, if the bad guys have those sorts of relics as well, it creates secondary objectives for the PCs to attack first before any big throwdown at the end, which is nice as well.

Yeah. I'd still put those into the "rare magical artifact" type category (perhaps a relic from a long lost age, with only a few still in existence). And certainly, you could propose a city setting around one of these things, protecting it's people from evil magic or something, along with the threat of what may happen if it were to be destroyed hanging over them. if it's too common and reproduceable, then you have to rationalize why every powerful bad guy doesn't have one (and possibly even more powerful versions as well).

Honestly though, I also put things like this in the trope (I created) called "Ancient thing written five minutes ago". It's where the characters arrive on the scene to discover some ancient society/city/whatever, that's been around for ages, but has some incredible weakness that, if exploited will cause complete collapse. And, of course, through the course of the story this is exactly what happens, and our heroes have to deal with the aftermath. This works great in a film/book setting, or the course of a story arc in a TV series, but no one ever seems to ask the obvious question: "How on earth did this society/whatever survive for all that time *before* the heroes showed up". This just happened to be the first time anyone tried to blow up the power source for Hollow Earth? Or questioned the power structure based on super powers (but also apparently hereditary) via terrigen mist on the moon? Or someone with bad motives (or just bad ideas in general) was strong enough to win in single combat to become Wakanda's king, with apparently absolute unchecked power (despite there being a council of tribal leaders which one would assume would have adopted such restrictions centuries ago for just this reason).

There's a silly long list of such things in popular fantasy. Writers love to put them into stories because it makes for great drama. The heroes are thrust right into the middle of this big horrible thing. But again, how did that "thing" survive long enough to even get to "now" in the first place? The writers just count on the readers/viewers enjoying the drama and moving on. And I suppose that's good enough for most people. But if you are going to at least attempt to make your game setting make sense, you will want to avoid such things whenever possible. If the PCs arrive and some cataclysmic thing happens right then, it pretty much has to be something unique that could only have happened right then (perhaps *because* of something the PCs did, that no one else could possibly have done before). If it just happens coincidentally, for the purpose of drama, then it's bad writing. Unless, of course, that random happening is super rare, not something that could have happened before and is maybe the reason the PCs are there in the first place. There are a few exceptions, but if what's happening not only could have happened before, but honestly *should* have, but only just now happens? Bad writing. And bad setting.

Always try to consider what would make for stable sustainable things in your game world, if you expect those things to last (or have lasted) for any length of time. And yeah, this can apply very directly to the use and effect of powerful magic in a game world setting. You have to be very careful how you introduce some things, or you'll be eternally rationalizing why they aren't being used for more normal civic purposes, or nefarious ones. Or your players constantly trying to use such things in ways you just didn't think of.

NichG

2022-11-16, 07:10 PM

Yeah. I'd still put those into the "rare magical artifact" type category (perhaps a relic from a long lost age, with only a few still in existence). And certainly, you could propose a city setting around one of these things, protecting it's people from evil magic or something, along with the threat of what may happen if it were to be destroyed hanging over them. if it's too common and reproduceable, then you have to rationalize why every powerful bad guy doesn't have one (and possibly even more powerful versions as well).

Honestly though, I also put things like this in the trope (I created) called "Ancient thing written five minutes ago". It's where the characters arrive on the scene to discover some ancient society/city/whatever, that's been around for ages, but has some incredible weakness that, if exploited will cause complete collapse. And, of course, through the course of the story this is exactly what happens, and our heroes have to deal with the aftermath. This works great in a film/book setting, or the course of a story arc in a TV series, but no one ever seems to ask the obvious question: "How on earth did this society/whatever survive for all that time *before* the heroes showed up". This just happened to be the first time anyone tried to blow up the power source for Hollow Earth? Or questioned the power structure based on super powers (but also apparently hereditary) via terrigen mist on the moon? Or someone with bad motives (or just bad ideas in general) was strong enough to win in single combat to become Wakanda's king, with apparently absolute unchecked power (despite there being a council of tribal leaders which one would assume would have adopted such restrictions centuries ago for just this reason).

There's a silly long list of such things in popular fantasy. Writers love to put them into stories because it makes for great drama. The heroes are thrust right into the middle of this big horrible thing. But again, how did that "thing" survive long enough to even get to "now" in the first place? The writers just count on the readers/viewers enjoying the drama and moving on. And I suppose that's good enough for most people. But if you are going to at least attempt to make your game setting make sense, you will want to avoid such things whenever possible. If the PCs arrive and some cataclysmic thing happens right then, it pretty much has to be something unique that could only have happened right then (perhaps *because* of something the PCs did, that no one else could possibly have done before). If it just happens coincidentally, for the purpose of drama, then it's bad writing. Unless, of course, that random happening is super rare, not something that could have happened before and is maybe the reason the PCs are there in the first place. There are a few exceptions, but if what's happening not only could have happened before, but honestly *should* have, but only just now happens? Bad writing. And bad setting.

Always try to consider what would make for stable sustainable things in your game world, if you expect those things to last (or have lasted) for any length of time. And yeah, this can apply very directly to the use and effect of powerful magic in a game world setting. You have to be very careful how you introduce some things, or you'll be eternally rationalizing why they aren't being used for more normal civic purposes, or nefarious ones. Or your players constantly trying to use such things in ways you just didn't think of.

Eh, I think this is unnecessarily overstated here. For example, nothing wrong with every powerful bad guy having one of these things, every major city having one to three of these things, having them be replaceable - but it takes a year, for example - and it being absolutely standard military practice in the setting to send a crew to try to sabotage them. Cities will have lost their protections in the past. Kingdoms will have had to deal with their enemies carting one along with them to protect their troops. It's no different than there being an airbase or power plant or something that's a high value, expensive strategic target. Yes those things get targeted. No, its not the end of the world and 'never again will we centralize power generation for a region!' when they do. They're neither useless due to vulnerability nor totally sacrosanct, but they are big levers.

Dynamic equilibrium rather than status quo world.

gbaji

2022-11-16, 07:25 PM

Sure. It works if it's a replaceable (but expensive) thing.

I still tend to think in terms of scale and cost though. If it takes a year for the local city to replace one of these things that inhibits 4th level and lower magic over a say 1 mile radius, how much time/cost would it take for the bad guy to have one that stops all magic at all levels within 200 feet? Or just in one room?

If the campaign is focused more on "grand scale" stuff, where the focus is on protecting whole cities from invasion or something, that can work as a setting. But if you're at all trying to do some more ground level, smaller scale, stuff, it might not work so well.

Also makes one wonder how anyone learns magic if everyone is living in an anti-magic field. Have to think about that as well. Do there exist means to block the block? So the local wizards guild can have areas protected from the effect so that their newbies can actually practice their spell casting? Or do we assume that this all happens "outside" the effect? Where exactly is the local magic guild headquarters then? And what if it's the target? And how do we allow them to use magic to help protect us, while still being protected from enemy stuff?

Does this effect also inhibit divine magic? Can we have temples located within, or will the priests find that they can't get or use spells there? Lots of things to consider with something like this.

NichG

2022-11-16, 08:04 PM

Sure. It works if it's a replaceable (but expensive) thing.

I still tend to think in terms of scale and cost though. If it takes a year for the local city to replace one of these things that inhibits 4th level and lower magic over a say 1 mile radius, how much time/cost would it take for the bad guy to have one that stops all magic at all levels within 200 feet? Or just in one room?

But then, so what? There's now a thing on the field somewhere that you can smash to gain a big strategic advantage, sounds good to me. Just don't make it the sort of thing that can be e.g. entombed in rock and totally inaccessible and still work - it needs a priest to pray at it daily and sacrifice a cow to it or whatever.

Also makes one wonder how anyone learns magic if everyone is living in an anti-magic field.

What I said originally was 'something that prevents harmful magic from affecting targets within a mile radius'. Not 'every settlement in the world is blanketed in a permanent antimagic field'. You want to learn magic, you focus on not casting harmful spells on the citizenry to do so. Or you do cast the harmful spells, and they just fail to have an effect but the spell still goes off or it doesn't and you learn that way. Or if you absolutely need to make harmful effects stick on things to learn, you go on a field trip and cast magic missile at squirrels in the countryside. Or you go study at a town that doesn't have one of these things.

Think 'everyone in the city is constantly under the effects of a Globe of Invulnerability', not 'magic doesn't work'.

Sigreid

2022-11-16, 09:54 PM

I'd expect the common folk to have a variety of rituals and charms to protect themselves, just like in the real world. And just like in the real world I'd expect them to do little more than make you feel better/less helpless.

Slipjig

2022-11-17, 11:59 AM

Sigreid

2022-11-17, 03:38 PM

One of the primary roles of any government is to protect it's smallfolk. Even if the ruler doesn't care about them as people, it absolutely cares if their farms are burned or the shops are robbed so often that they shut down, because burned farms and closed shops pay no taxes. So if farms and shops exist, there has to be some mechanism in place that prevents everybody who can cast a first-level spell from robbing them blind.

A magic criminal may be able to get away with things IF they maintain a low profile. There are enough divination options out there that if a criminal upsets important enough people, it will become REALLY hard for a criminal to maintain their anonymity. D&D magic in core is mostly based around combat and dungeon-crawling. But if magic law enforcement exists, they'll have some form of magical forensics or CSI that will have non-core spells specifically for identifying and tracking magical criminals.

This really depends. Most areas that aren't major cities in major kingdoms aren't going to the resources to have CSI Toril on hand. I figure that's a good bit of why adventurer is a lucrative job.

That said, anyone who goes around breaking major laws and customs is eventually going to make a mistake/be spotted/be ratted out for the reward or just plain cause enough trouble for the wrong person to be dealt with. The best defense a peasant farmer has against the malice of a 20th level wizard is that it's unlikely the farmer has anything to be worth the trouble. The next line of defense is his family and neighbors who want revenge or to just not be next.

NichG

2022-11-17, 03:54 PM

When proper investigation becomes difficult, that's more likely to lead to people just not bothering to investigate properly rather than to lead to people no longer enforcing the law. So if it really is impossible to really cleanly identify whether a given caster is culpable for a specific thing you're likely to see a switch to 'casters need to prove their own innocence' sorts of rules, for better or worse.

Sigreid

2022-11-17, 03:58 PM

gbaji

2022-11-17, 07:36 PM

But then, so what? There's now a thing on the field somewhere that you can smash to gain a big strategic advantage, sounds good to me. Just don't make it the sort of thing that can be e.g. entombed in rock and totally inaccessible and still work - it needs a priest to pray at it daily and sacrifice a cow to it or whatever.

That's exactly where I was going with the whole "you'd have to rationalize why it wouldn't be used for..." bit. Why wouldn't every moderately powerful bad guy have something like this in the basement of his lair? Only a complete idiot would put it out in a field, or on their front doorstep, right? It would be in a sealed room, behind a wall, or whatever. We're already assuming that the large scale ones generate effects that go through walls (else folks in buildings with walls wouldn't be protected), so how do you rationalize away the bad guy not putting it somewhere that the PCs just can't get to easily, but which will create a massively difficult obstacle for them anytime they want to actually take said bad guy(s) out?

Even if it requires maintenance, it's pretty easy to lay out a defensive lair/castle/dungeon/whatever such that you can't possibly gain physical access to the device generating the anti-magic field without having first fought your way through it.

These are the sorts of side effects you have to consider if you introduce such things into a game setting. I'm not saying it's not doable, but that you need to be prepared for some logical side effects as a result. Or you can ignore them, but then players like me will constantly be looking at you somewhat askance wondering "er. why didn't the bad guys do this very obvious thing, or that one, or <insert 15 other ways to use magic like this if it exists in the game>".

Admittedly, I tend to over obsess on world building details. I like to make my worlds feel "real", and if I introduce something into that world, I think very very carefully about what the ramifications of it will/would be.

What I said originally was 'something that prevents harmful magic from affecting targets within a mile radius'. Not 'every settlement in the world is blanketed in a permanent antimagic field'. You want to learn magic, you focus on not casting harmful spells on the citizenry to do so. Or you do cast the harmful spells, and they just fail to have an effect but the spell still goes off or it doesn't and you learn that way. Or if you absolutely need to make harmful effects stick on things to learn, you go on a field trip and cast magic missile at squirrels in the countryside. Or you go study at a town that doesn't have one of these things.

Ah. Ok. But how do we, from a metamagical perspective, distinguish "harmful" spells from the rest? How does that work? Is it a function of that form of magic entirely, or just an implementation specific detail? Can devices like this be "tuned" to different types of magic? Depending on the answer to those questions, we could be right back to "bad guys can use this to great effect". Heck. By making it a "type" specific effect, it actually becomes more problematic. If it can be set to one "type" (harmful spells), why not to other types? Why not have a bad guy who tunes it just to the types of magic his enemies are likely to use, while leaving his unaffected? Your attempt to prevent abuse by doing this can actually result it in being even more abused.

And even if somehow this is a hard function of magic itself, and only "harmful" spells can be prevented via any sort of anti-magic effect as a fundamental fact of the rules of magic itself, we're still left with "what qualifies as a harmful spell"? For evocation type spells that's pretty easy. But what about transformation or illusion magic? Both could have legitimate useful (commercial even) purposes, but I can think of a ton of ways that the more basic utility type spells could be used to commit crimes. Is "passwall" a harmful spell? But it could be used to tunnel magically into someone's vault and steal from them (and close up behind itself, leaving no trace).

I'm somewhat picturing a whole series of Asimov style "how to make robots kill people without breaking the rules" scenarios here. Oh. And don't at all think I'm saying that's a bad thing. Could be incredibly fun to run a series of "who/how dunit" adventures based on this one concept alone.

Think 'everyone in the city is constantly under the effects of a Globe of Invulnerability', not 'magic doesn't work'.

Which prevents only a very small number of direct violent crimes (assault basically). I suppose it would prevent direct mind control, but what about more subtle forms (there are a zillion ways clever use of illusion magic can be used to manipulate people).

That's also not the same as protecting people from just harmful magic too. So someone falls from a ladder while working on a local construction project in town, is badly injured, near death, a healer steps up to heal them and... opps. They can't cast a heal spell on them. I'm reasonably certain that the average citizen in a city is far more often likely to have useful spells cast on them than harmful ones. Healing is just the most obvious, but enhancement spells might be used by tradesmen or workers to assist with normal tasks (bulls strength for construction, cats grace on circus performers maybe, owls wisdom while a political leader is trying to come up with the best plan for solving some problem, etc).

This sort of thing becomes much more problematic than it seems at first, if you actually drill down into the specifics of how exactly it works. Honestly? I'd avoid trying something like this. I mean, as something that exists in one area as an oddball thing, maybe. Could be interesting. As a commonly used tool in the world? Probably not.

This really depends. Most areas that aren't major cities in major kingdoms aren't going to the resources to have CSI Toril on hand. I figure that's a good bit of why adventurer is a lucrative job.

That said, anyone who goes around breaking major laws and customs is eventually going to make a mistake/be spotted/be ratted out for the reward or just plain cause enough trouble for the wrong person to be dealt with. The best defense a peasant farmer has against the malice of a 20th level wizard is that it's unlikely the farmer has anything to be worth the trouble. The next line of defense is his family and neighbors who want revenge or to just not be next.

Yeah. I tend to lean heavily in this direction. If there's a reasonable level of civilization in an area to deal with in the first place, they're going to have come up with things for spell casters to do that are lucrative for the spell caster. So most aren't goin to be running around the countryside using their magic to mess with people's heads or steal their stuff, or whatever. They're going to be employed out of the local casters guild by various public or private customers to engage in various projects/work/whatever, using their magic.

And to the degree that magic will be used for crime (and it certainly will), those same employers will also have hired and retained their own magic users to investigate such things. And for things that fall into the cracks, there are (as you pointed out) adventuring parties, bounty hunters, etc to do the jobs. That's really all that's needed to deal with the most run of the mill magic criminals out there. And frankly, the more powerful ones likely would find ways to work around any sort of defenses anyway. Those are the really tough guys that you send your top people after, hire powerful adventurers to deal with, etc.

I think the mere fact that in most world settings, most people do actually want to live relatively safe, productive, and happy lives tends to also push magic use in the direction of "there's a lot more good spell casters than evil". And I think that in most settings and in most cases, this will tend to work itself out without having to introduce some other grand solution to the problem. Of course, that still leaves us plenty of edge cases from the more regular (local thieves guild will certainly have some casters working with them, and they'll be protected from the local investigators somewhat), to the more exotic (super powerful bad guy running through town using his magic to do "bad guy stuff", for some other grand evil scheme). All of those are things that produce excellent PC play opportunities too, so it's all good IMO.

NichG

2022-11-17, 07:58 PM

That's exactly where I was going with the whole "you'd have to rationalize why it wouldn't be used for..." bit. Why wouldn't every moderately powerful bad guy have something like this in the basement of his lair? Only a complete idiot would put it out in a field, or on their front doorstep, right? It would be in a sealed room, behind a wall, or whatever. We're already assuming that the large scale ones generate effects that go through walls (else folks in buildings with walls wouldn't be protected), so how do you rationalize away the bad guy not putting it somewhere that the PCs just can't get to easily, but which will create a massively difficult obstacle for them anytime they want to actually take said bad guy(s) out?

Even if it requires maintenance, it's pretty easy to lay out a defensive lair/castle/dungeon/whatever such that you can't possibly gain physical access to the device generating the anti-magic field without having first fought your way through it.

I'm not seeing the problem. If anything, this is great - now you have to do an infiltration thing before you can go big and loud. If the maintenance requirements are big enough scale, it can't be too inaccessible - people have to get the cow in through the door of the lair or whatever. Seems like interesting gameplay, gives rogues and warriors something extra to do, and casters can still use beneficial and buff effects while under the effect, as well as higher-than-4th-level spells. It also neatly blocks scry & die as a thing against really high profile targets.

If each deity gets 3 of these to hand out setting wide and it takes them a year to replace one, its not like every random Lv7 crime lord or lieutenant of the demon lord or whatever will have them. They'll be a significant strategic resource that has to be taken seriously. Emergent gameplay go!

Ah. Ok. But how do we, from a metamagical perspective, distinguish "harmful" spells from the rest? How does that work? Is it a function of that form of magic entirely, or just an implementation specific detail? Can devices like this be "tuned" to different types of magic? Depending on the answer to those questions, we could be right back to "bad guys can use this to great effect". Heck. By making it a "type" specific effect, it actually becomes more problematic. If it can be set to one "type" (harmful spells), why not to other types? Why not have a bad guy who tunes it just to the types of magic his enemies are likely to use, while leaving his unaffected? Your attempt to prevent abuse by doing this can actually result it in being even more abused.

Harmful/harmless is already a thing in the rules - if the spell allows a saving throw, people can choose whether to make the save. If people choose to make the save, its harmful. Add to that anything that would cause damage and you cover almost all cases.

Which prevents only a very small number of direct violent crimes (assault basically). I suppose it would prevent direct mind control, but what about more subtle forms (there are a zillion ways clever use of illusion magic can be used to manipulate people).

That's already quite a lot though. Perfect is not good anyhow. Story about a criminal who seems to be using magic to commit crimes in a blessed zone, and people have to figure out how they're doing it? Sounds great!

gbaji

2022-11-17, 10:08 PM

I'm not seeing the problem. If anything, this is great - now you have to do an infiltration thing before you can go big and loud. If the maintenance requirements are big enough scale, it can't be too inaccessible - people have to get the cow in through the door of the lair or whatever. Seems like interesting gameplay, gives rogues and warriors something extra to do, and casters can still use beneficial and buff effects while under the effect, as well as higher-than-4th-level spells. It also neatly blocks scry & die as a thing against really high profile targets.

Sure. I'm not sure if this falls well into the concept of a "high magic setting", but yeah, that absolutely works. I'd also suggest that anyone capable of scry and die tactics with any chance against a high power target will not be stopped by the "5th level or higher" restriction.

But yeah. I get that. Makes the first part of the encounter all about buff spells on melee types instead of blasting with spells. I can get behind that.

Harmful/harmless is already a thing in the rules - if the spell allows a saving throw, people can choose whether to make the save. If people choose to make the save, its harmful. Add to that anything that would cause damage and you cover almost all cases.

Yup. Again though, given the huge number of ways that magic can be used to cheat, steal, etc, I'm not sure how much real value there is in only protecting folks in the area from spells that allow a saving throw or do direct damage. Again, it becomes a world balance thing. If we make the cost of these things high enough to make it so that only the rare powerful bad guys might have them, we'd have to question the value for a city to maintain one for the somewhat minimal actual protection it would offer.

I'm betting that vastly more commoners in most settings are harmed by daggers and fists on the streets than by magic missiles or lightning bolts. A crossbow bolt to the gut during a robber is far more likely than threat of direct magic damage ever will be. I mean, it's protection and that's better than nothing, but wouldn't that city's resources be better spent hiring investigators and guards and whatnot to actually patrol the streets and protect people from all crimes?

Again, I kinda see this as something that might be a neat idea to put in one spot in a "ancient relic that just happens to be here, and has been for ages and has this interesting magical effect, so we make use of it" way. Makes that city unique and with special rules for things, but doesn't cause potential problems for the rest of the setting. I'm just hesitant to have this be something that is replaceable and buildable. Not totally against it, mind you, just really really hesitant.

That's already quite a lot though. Perfect is not good anyhow. Story about a criminal who seems to be using magic to commit crimes in a blessed zone, and people have to figure out how they're doing it? Sounds great!

Yeah. That part I think is great. Although, you can run stuff like this without needing the anti-magic/protection thingie either. I'd assume that most spell casters using magic to commit crimes wouldn't just walk up to people, point a magic missile wand at them and demand money or something. That seems pretty pedestrian. Most crimes (at least by anyone a bit more sophisticated) would involve more clever uses of magic to steal/kill/whatever deliberately planned to be in ways that are difficult to detect, and thus make it more difficult for them to get caught.

One is absolutely not required for the other to exist. And yeah, I agree, that this is a lot of fun and can force players to think a bit out of the box in terms of different ways that spells can be used to achieve effects that are not always super obvious.

Mechalich

2022-11-18, 01:46 AM

Yeah. That part I think is great. Although, you can run stuff like this without needing the anti-magic/protection thingie either. I'd assume that most spell casters using magic to commit crimes wouldn't just walk up to people, point a magic missile wand at them and demand money or something. That seems pretty pedestrian. Most crimes (at least by anyone a bit more sophisticated) would involve more clever uses of magic to steal/kill/whatever deliberately planned to be in ways that are difficult to detect, and thus make it more difficult for them to get caught.

There are basically three major venues for magical crime that are very difficult to trace: mind control, minionomancy, and illusions. Mind control is, if subtle, extremely hard to catch. Ex. a spell like Suggestion can be 'I suggest you sell me that horse for X gp' where X if 10% of what the horse is worth. Illusions, likewise, allow for all sorts of subtle crime. Ex. if you steal something but replace it with a Silent image of said object, it might go days without being noticed. And of course, minionomancy allows you to have plausibly deniable agents - who in many cases will cease to exist once the crime has been committed - conduct crimes on your behalf.

In general, it is quite possible to produce a magic-based crime that is impossible to detect without magic use by the other side. This is especially true in settings which don't have magical items and the only way to initiate an effect is to have a magic user actually do it. The Wheel of Time (which does have items, but they are rare, often have unknown effects, and almost entirely in the possession of magic users) has a number of good examples of this, including several cases of the villainous Forsaken subtly mind-controlling their way to control of a kingdom.

Satinavian

2022-11-18, 02:02 AM

There are basically three major venues for magical crime that are very difficult to trace: mind control, minionomancy, and illusions. Mind control is, if subtle, extremely hard to catch. Ex. a spell like Suggestion can be 'I suggest you sell me that horse for X gp' where X if 10% of what the horse is worth. Illusions, likewise, allow for all sorts of subtle crime. Ex. if you steal something but replace it with a Silent image of said object, it might go days without being noticed. And of course, minionomancy allows you to have plausibly deniable agents - who in many cases will cease to exist once the crime has been committed - conduct crimes on your behalf.

One option would be to introduce easy and widespread forensic spells that can find traces of expired magic, classify it and maybe even compare it to potential casters.

I mean, many not D&D magic systems have this in one way or another and it certainly influences the setting heavily if magical crime can be properly investigated way later, as soon as someone cares enough.
It is also completely irrelevant for combat balancing and thus easy to introduce.

Storm_Of_Snow

2022-11-20, 07:57 AM

In my view, a lot of protection will be inherited - someone's great^n-grandparent got hold of, say, a magical amulet that protected them, as a result they prospered, on their death they passed that amulet down to their children, who as a result prospered some more, invested in another piece of protective magic and so on.

So the higher up the social ladder you are, the more protection you'll have available to you - an upcoming merchant who just struck a lucky deal and made a fortune might buy a ring of protection and get a mage to put some basic wards on their new manor house to reduce the risk of their competitors retaliating, while the royal family would have pretty much everything you could imagine, and their own court mage (or even a group if the realm is rich enough).

The general citizenary wouldn't have any such protection, but they're not as likely to be a target of such things.

King of Nowhere

2022-11-20, 08:33 AM

One option would be to introduce easy and widespread forensic spells that can find traces of expired magic, classify it and maybe even compare it to potential casters.

I mean, many not D&D magic systems have this in one way or another and it certainly influences the setting heavily if magical crime can be properly investigated way later, as soon as someone cares enough.
It is also completely irrelevant for combat balancing and thus easy to introduce.

there's plenty of divination spells that can do something similar.
and while the casters that can use those spells - the higher level ones, at least - will be rare, it's not like in our own world there are that many people capable of running a dna test. we reserve that stuff for the bigger crimes, and we manage quite well.

In my view, a lot of protection will be inherited - someone's great^n-grandparent got hold of, say, a magical amulet that protected them, as a result they prospered, on their death they passed that amulet down to their children, who as a result prospered some more, invested in another piece of protective magic and so on.

So the higher up the social ladder you are, the more protection you'll have available to you - an upcoming merchant who just struck a lucky deal and made a fortune might buy a ring of protection and get a mage to put some basic wards on their new manor house to reduce the risk of their competitors retaliating, while the royal family would have pretty much everything you could imagine, and their own court mage (or even a group if the realm is rich enough).

The general citizenary wouldn't have any such protection, but they're not as likely to be a target of such things.

this is problematic in a world where killing a creature and taking all their loot is a normal modus operandi. it's too easy to break the chain by taking away all the protective items somebody has.
by the way, how would a magical protection amulet help somebody to prosper? it's like saying that your grandfather got ahold of a military grade helmet, and as a result he was able to make more money as an accountant. so he bought a flak jacket and passed it, along with the helmet, to your father, who proceeded to be a better baker for it...
unless your society is really so violent that being accosted by magical criminals is commonplace, in which case I don't see how the society can keep functioning in the first place

Sigreid

2022-11-20, 06:30 PM

icefractal

2022-11-20, 08:59 PM

since confining magic users is too expensive you have to kill their ability to use magic, which may or may not involve killing them at the same time; consider the Dresden Files settingIn a high-magic setting, you have other options.

For example, Sepia Snake Sigil is a convenient way to keep any kind of dangerous prisoner on ice. Combine it with some kind of dream magic if you want rehabilitation or punishment during their sentence (as by default they'd just be asleep). Or if you have access to strong magic, just keep them in stasis the whole time and then Programmed Amnesia to retroactively provide the desired prison experience when they're released.

A lot of this discussion seems to be intended to prevent players from using their powers to abuse the NPCs of the world. I'd suggest a much more effective way of doing that would be to say "This isn't the kind of campaign I want to run. Please don't do this kind of garbage."While that may be a reason for some, I'm more interested in how the NPCs of the world have managed to survive each-other up to the start of the game. It's not that there's a problem with PCs using their abilities against NPCs, it's that they're (usually) not the first people in the setting to possess such abilities, so the question of if / how everyone was handling such threats arises.

Which also means that the setting's level curve is crucial to this discussion. In a world where everyone gets levels over time and you end up with 15th level bouncers at pubs, any and all magic is something society at large needs to worry about and potentially has the tools to handle. If most people never get past 4th level, and 9th+ is the domain of a rare few, then you'd expect robust responses to 1st-2nd level spells, the elites having 3rd-4th level protection but most people don't, and 5th+ level spells are an out-of-context problem in most places.

Satinavian

2022-11-21, 03:43 AM

there's plenty of divination spells that can do something similar.
and while the casters that can use those spells - the higher level ones, at least - will be rare, it's not like in our own world there are that many people capable of running a dna test. we reserve that stuff for the bigger crimes, and we manage quite well.That is why i said "introduce", "easy" and "widespread". It needs to be a low level answer that enough NPCs can do to be feasible to be applied in nearly every suspected case. High level NPCs can get involved if the suspicion is confirmed and stuff escalates.

If magical crime could only be investigated if high level casters are bothered to do so and those are very rare and busy with other stuff, that is not enough for prevention and safety.

NichG

2022-11-21, 04:40 AM

I still think in general there's some unrealistic standards going on here for how good something has to be in order to be sufficient or acceptable.

Someone goes around using Charm Person to defraud shopkeepers. Non-magical investigator: "Do you have a record of what you have in your shop and what you sold and for how much? Okay, these prices look a lot lower than when you sold similar things to other people, do you remember who bought them from you? Okay, we now have a description, lets round up people who look like that. Oh, and lets station guards in plainclothes in the high value shops in town and keep an eye out for any weird interactions."

Is it foolproof? No. Is it going to catch the person if they Charm Person and then skip town? No. Is it going to prevent students from the magic academy from running roughshod over local shopkeepers? Yeah probably.

Someone goes around using Charm Person to trick people into signing draconian contracts. Non-magical investigator: "Well, the name of the other party is literally on this contract, so lets go and check them out." Want to make it hard to make it stick? Make it so no contracts above a certain value or time commitment are legally binding unless signed with a witness with both parties under a Detect Magic - might mean you need to travel to the nearest town if you're out in the boonies, but for a marriage or buying a house or things like that its not a huge ask.

Could a clever criminal set up intermediaries so the Charm isn't traced back to them but they still get paid off? Sure! Is it going to prevent any random mage from wandering into a small village and setting themselves up as Mayor? Not immediately perhaps, but eventually - yeah probably.

Someone goes around using Knock to break into bank vaults? Non-magical investigator: "No sounds of tool marks on the mechanisms of the vault and people nearby reported a loud noise around the time. But forget about that, lets look for someone suddenly spending a windfall outside of their normal means. Lets check with shopkeepers to see if any of them got one of the twenty special reverse-mark coins banks keep in their vault but out of circulation and see if we can get a lead on who spent them." etc...

Like, even this is more competent and according to proper process and evidence than most medieval justice likely was... More realistic would probably be something like 'Something went missing and no one knows how? Search peoples' houses and if anyone has anything that looks magical but isn't specifically one of the few professional casters, just use them as a scapegoat."

gbaji

2022-11-21, 03:01 PM

unless your society is really so violent that being accosted by magical criminals is commonplace, in which case I don't see how the society can keep functioning in the first place

Yeah. This is where I keep going back to. There's a "bang for buck" issue here. Most people are going to be far more concerned about mundane forms of crime than magical ones (unless, of course, such things are just so common somehow). They're not going to spend a ton of effort protecting against magical theft for the same reason I don't have a security system designed to stop a Mission Impossible style break in. Er... They can just do that. And what? Steal my comic book collection?

The more powerful the magic, the less likely it's going to be worth using it to steal someone's backstock or something. And yeah, I suspect that less powerful and more common magic would be more easily detected using traditional means. So your average local living in an area, maybe owning or working in a small shop somewhere isn't going to need much. And if magic is more common, then the "common" folks should have some too, right?

While that may be a reason for some, I'm more interested in how the NPCs of the world have managed to survive each-other up to the start of the game. It's not that there's a problem with PCs using their abilities against NPCs, it's that they're (usually) not the first people in the setting to possess such abilities, so the question of if / how everyone was handling such threats arises.

Yeah. I think that's important and valuable. PCs often run roughshod on typical commoners and local merchants and whatnot while in the course of whatever adventure they are on. They're also the exception, since (we assume anyway) they tend to have motivations beyond just "I'm taking this for myself". Someone powerful enough to do the kinds of things a PC party can do aren't typically hanging around a city running scams or something. They could, but that's probably not a great use of their talents in pretty much the same way the PCs typically only do stuff like this as a means to achieve some larger adventure purpose.

It is a great thing to keep in mind as a GM as adventure hooks though. You can have something like this happen, have investigations lead to realizing that "hey. No one's going to spend these kinds of resources just breaking into a local baker's shop. There must be something else going on here", and that leads to <insert grand scheme evil plot here>.

And yeah, you can absolutely also include various methods for NPC law enforcement to investigate and detect such things, just to keep the PCs honest (a bit anyway). It's one thing to use magic or other abilities to engage in illegal stuff in some random town you're traveling through to collect some key clue/whatever. It's something else entirely if it's the town the PCs live in and have to presumably be nice to the folks in charge there. Making it clear to the players that, yeah, when you do stuff like this the NPCs do realize what happened, and can track you down if you give them enough time to do so, puts a bit of a kibosh on abuses. It can also force the PCs to create relationships with local rulers and/or law enforcement types, just to allow them to act as "private investigators" to some degree, which can also be used as a GM to generate adventures, and give the PCs some degree of legitimacy (at least locally). And also give them a bit of cover for when they occasionally have to go a bit extra-legal in the course of some adventure.

Another interesting approach is to take a page out of the old Thieves World series. Sure. There's some poor neighborhoods in town, and sure they don't have a lot and could be easily victimized by powerful people. And sure, the local "law enforcement" doesn't care much about protecting them. But living amongst those poor downtrodden people are the occasional pretty powerful magic folks, who actually like their friends and neighbors, and normally keep a low profile, but heaven help you if you happen to rob or hurt someone they call a friend.

King of Nowhere

2022-11-21, 03:04 PM

A lot of this discussion seems to be intended to prevent players from using their powers to abuse the NPCs of the world. I'd suggest a much more effective way of doing that would be to say "This isn't the kind of campaign I want to run. Please don't do this kind of garbage."

While that may be a reason for some, I'm more interested in how the NPCs of the world have managed to survive each-other up to the start of the game. It's not that there's a problem with PCs using their abilities against NPCs, it's that they're (usually) not the first people in the setting to possess such abilities, so the question of if / how everyone was handling such threats arises.

in addition to that, society also protects the pcs - maybe not relevant at high level, but at low level it explains perfectly why the (higher level) villain does not just destroy the pcs: he's got to worry about policing too. it's a much better reason than "he just didn't think it was worth the effort".

Also, I would say in general "just please roll with it and don't ask questions" is something you want to use as little as possible. ok, every once in a while you'll need it because you can't think of everything, but using it too often destroys the credibility of your world. a fatasy world relies on make-believe, but it has to be consistent to its own internal logic.

by the way, having a campaign world capable of interacting meaningfully with the party makes for a meaningful campaing world. if the nations have resources that can rival or surpass the party, then talking and negotiating with npcs makes sense. if society has no capacity to deal with high level threats, why bother listening to the king? why is there even a king in the first place? what's the purpose of npcs if they can't do anything meaningful?

Slipjig

2022-11-21, 03:17 PM

This really depends. Most areas that aren't major cities in major kingdoms aren't going to the resources to have CSI Toril on hand. I figure that's a good bit of why adventurer is a lucrative job.

That said, anyone who goes around breaking major laws and customs is eventually going to make a mistake/be spotted/be ratted out for the reward or just plain cause enough trouble for the wrong person to be dealt with. The best defense a peasant farmer has against the malice of a 20th level wizard is that it's unlikely the farmer has anything to be worth the trouble. The next line of defense is his family and neighbors who want revenge or to just not be next.

I'd argue that somebody who is running around using their magic to rob defenseless peasants probably stops getting XP for it NLT level 3. The peasant is unlikely to have anything that's of interest to the 20th Level Wizard. Though if he DOES have something of interest (say, a baby who fell out of the sky and landed in his field), it's probably also of interest to Fey and Kings and Fiends, so the peasant should probably be excited to have someone as relatively benign as an archmage take it off his hands ASAP.

KorvinStarmast

2022-11-21, 04:02 PM

King of Nowhere

2022-11-21, 07:24 PM

If one gets away from assuming that the default attitude of anyone in that world is 'murderhobo' as soon as they get access to magic, maybe that isn't an issue in day to day life.

How do you build your worlds and settings?

one does not assume that the default attitude of anyone with access to magic is murderhobo. magic - or generally high level - murderhobos are never an issue in day to day life.
still, you don't need to have one such accident in day to day life. you only have to have one such accident once, to end your life - and that of everyone around you.

even one single high level murderhobo is capable of incredible levels of destruction if society does not have enough resources to deal with that.

it's just like in our world most people don't have guns, and most of those who have guns are not murderhobos, but even a single murderhobo with a gun is an enormous problem, and society must be able to deal with it. if everyone with a gun could get away with stuff - even if they are only a tiny tiny minority in the population - society would collapse.
now, dealing with a murderhobo with a gun is easy. high level magic is a lot harder.
still, a society that does not have defences against high level magic - at least enough of a defence that the magic criminal will consider it not worth the risk - is not a society. a single mid level wizard dominating the king can devastate a whole kingdom. and then move to the next one.
I can envision a feudal-like society where every guy with some levels and the inclination can walk into a village and set himself up as the boss of the surrounding area. only to be dethroned and replaced by the next tyrant who comes along. a place of anarchy at the mercy of whoever has the most levels.

in short, just because something is rare it doesn't mean it's irrelevant.
you may also notice that wars and invasions are rare things that "aren't an issue in day to day life"; earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, famines, epidemics, none of that is an issue in day to day life. And yet, our society - pretty much any society across history - spend a lot of resources on contingencies to deal with those events.

KorvinStarmast

2022-11-21, 07:50 PM

- pretty much any society across history - spend a lot of resources on contingencies to deal with those events. No. You are applying a modern anachronism to 'history.' D&D is not an emulation of modern society. Far from it. As to hurricanes, and tornados, all you can do if one hits is mitigate the damage. Prepare all you want, you can't stop it. You can stop a murderhobo. (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25635258&postcount=6)

gbaji

2022-11-21, 08:04 PM

still, a society that does not have defences against high level magic - at least enough of a defence that the magic criminal will consider it not worth the risk - is not a society. a single mid level wizard dominating the king can devastate a whole kingdom. and then move to the next one.

This should be somewhat self correcting though. If mid level wizards are common enough that one may stroll into a small kingdom and dominate the king to take control, then they should be common enough that the king of a small kingdom already has a handful of them on the payroll to prevent just that from happening (some of which may be significantly more than just "mid level"). Plus a handful of priests from the various temples in town to assist/advise him on his council, and otherwise have multiple layers to ensure that it's just not that easy to manipulate things significantly (just in case the wizards get it into their heads to control the king via magic themselves or something). It's not like kings haven't had to deal with multiple opposing factions of advisors for all of history already, so adding in some who may use magic isn't that onerous of an idea, and if that also happens to make it that much more difficult for an outsider to act, then things just "work".

I can envision a feudal-like society where every guy with some levels and the inclination can walk into a village and set himself up as the boss of the surrounding area. only to be dethroned and replaced by the next tyrant who comes along. a place of anarchy at the mercy of whoever has the most levels.

Sure. In out of the way, smallish towns or city states or something, this might be something that happens. Again though, let's extend that process for a thousand years or so. At some point, someone gains enough magical upper hand to retain rulership over that town/city/whatever, and establishes a long running dynasty or something, with rules for succession and how to protect it. Whomever is in charge *today* would be the result of that process, and be a tough nut to crack for any random traveling magic user.

In a world like this, most locations would already be firmly controlled by someone who already had access to sufficient magical power and resources to hold it. There would certainly be the rare occasional situations where power has dwindled for some reasons (or it's really just some podunk town), and now allows for some outside power to take over. But those would be the exception and not the rule, and would IMO be sources of conflict and adventuring in such a game setting in the first place. One of the more amusing storylines to do in a setting like this is to make some outside guy think "hey, that king could be controlled by me", only to discover, much to his chagrin (and perhaps fatally) that in fact the king *is* easily controlled, and there's been a secret order of wizards that's been hanging out in town controlling things behind the scenes for the last few centuries or so, and they're perfectly able to squash anyone who comes along thinking that the king they are controlling could be controlled by someone else instead.

Where there is a vacuum of power, it will be filled. For a setting to work, you have to assume that if someone were in a position to be easily manipulated then they already are. Just because it's not obvious from outside doesn't mean that's not the case.

in short, just because something is rare it doesn't mean it's irrelevant.
you may also notice that wars and invasions are rare things that "aren't an issue in day to day life"; earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, famines, epidemics, none of that is an issue in day to day life. And yet, our society - pretty much any society across history - spend a lot of resources on contingencies to deal with those events.

Sure. Again though, those are the areas of interest for playing out adventure scenarios. There are always going to be conflicts going on, and this just presents another type of conflict to be had. Most of the world though, will have "settled" somewhat.

cucchulainnn

2022-11-21, 09:44 PM

Going back to the 1980s I've always played it as that is how cursed items are made. You go to a local wizard and have a magic item made for you. Ring, sword what ever. As part of the security you add to the enchantment a trigger that turns your beneficial magic item into cursed one if it say, stolen, used against you whatever. Now naturally not everyone can afford this extra enchantment which is why cursed items are not as common as you would think.

I got the idea from a book someone gave me. It included a lot of what it claimed to be protection spells etched into items From Iceland dating to the middleages. If memory servers the vast majority of the engravings said something like. "to the person that steals this from me I put a curse on your head to always miss your shot when hunting for food."

Mechalich

2022-11-21, 10:42 PM

Sure. In out of the way, smallish towns or city states or something, this might be something that happens. Again though, let's extend that process for a thousand years or so. At some point, someone gains enough magical upper hand to retain rulership over that town/city/whatever, and establishes a long running dynasty or something, with rules for succession and how to protect it. Whomever is in charge *today* would be the result of that process, and be a tough nut to crack for any random traveling magic user.

In a high magic setting you don't even need a succession setup, the high-powered person just keeps ruling, because in a high magic setting mortality is for chumps.

In a world like this, most locations would already be firmly controlled by someone who already had access to sufficient magical power and resources to hold it. There would certainly be the rare occasional situations where power has dwindled for some reasons (or it's really just some podunk town), and now allows for some outside power to take over.

God-kings tend to be prone to weird obsessions, and that's usually how turnover happens in this kind of scenario. The local ruler gets distracted for a while (which might be measured in centuries) and may expend a huge quantity of resources on something completely orthogonal to maintaining their power or even weaken themselves by expending their energy on something unnecessary that leaves them vulnerable. In cultivator series, this often happens when the head of a sect goes into seclusion in an attempt to elevate their power, possible for generations, and then fails the tribulation and is massively weakened and/or killed outright as a consequence, leaving a hole in the overall power structure.

It's worth noting that a lot, and I do mean a lot, of fantasy series unfold in the immediate aftermath of some kind of power vacuum opening up or have the opening of the power vacuum as the inciting incident (this happens even in much low power settings, House of the Dragon just spent a season of television carefully structuring the opening of just such a power vacuum). 'The King is Dead. Fight!' is one of the classic beginnings for an epic. The tricky part, for TTRPG setting purposes, is that there's a very strong tendency not to structure the setting such that it only works for adventure stories during a narrow window of in-universe time, with even settings that were initially built this way - ex. Dragonlance, in which the setting was originally intended to operate only during a single fairly short war - quickly expanding to centuries wide timescales. This creates a tension between the tendency of the setting to reach an equilibrium balance of power state between the various god-kings and the desire for maximum playability. The Forgotten Realms, which is chock full of god-kings who have decided to leave approximately 90% of the continent in chaos because reasons is a notable example of how this can break setting verisimilitude.

Telok

2022-11-21, 11:59 PM

If one gets away from assuming that the default attitude of anyone in that world is 'murderhobo' as soon as they get access to magic, maybe that isn't an issue in day to day life.

How do you build your worlds and settings?

Amazingly having guns and avoiding lunatic hit point inflation (or avoiding hp completely) tends to do the trick. In my experience it's not the damage/chaos output that tends to make a murderhobo, but the insulation from consequences.

Modern D&D defaults to protecting mid level characters from consequences in a number of ways. Hit points, no lasting penalties, acessible immunity to many threats (flying vs ground bound or extreme ac vs npc guards), resource resets overnight, easy fast travel & hiding out (for some characters), requiring all fights to be winnable and mostly trivially so, not having coherent world building & promoting faux dark ages (example - people assuming the 'king' isn't themselves a caster and can't defend themselves), carrying all your real value with you in the from of magic items & spell components, etc., etc. Stuff like that. There's no consequences in the default game for the types of activity that trends into murderhoboism.

Its not just D&D, but D&D is a sort of shining example of it. Just adding or correcting common ranged weapons to be sufficently lethal makes a big difference. As does characters having useful mechanical ties to the setting in ways that allow for lasting and meaningful social consequences for their actions. Of course in any system the GM can make everything up or go around trying to find 3rd party stuff that they need to implement such things, but it's not native to the D&D system any more (and in my experience not native in many long time primary-D&D gamers any more either).

Building depth into my DtD40k7e setting I've found that divination magic has to be the most common and frequent type as they're required for navigating spelljammers through the warp and inter-sphere FTL communications. Meaning every government & organization has an interest in identifying and training lots of people in divinations. Then too, it's a setting where tech and magic are frequently mixed as well as being on relatively equal footing. Invisibility and charm spells are less impressive when the response to those are flamethrowers, reliable truth drugs, and "reward: wanted dead not alive" news reports you can't outrun.

King of Nowhere

2022-11-22, 02:44 PM

In a high magic setting you don't even need a succession setup, the high-powered person just keeps ruling, because in a high magic setting mortality is for chumps.

yes, this is a very real possibility for a setting.
it depends on how tight is their grip on society, how likely they are to be overturned by another god king or group of adventurers, and how easy it would be to set up contingencies to be resurrected for that time when inevitably someone bests you in combat.
the resulting setting is very grimdark, though; a bunch of immortal tyrants rule the world, and there isn't ever much hope of doing anything about it. if one is permanently killed, he's just replaced by a different one.
it is also possible that society, or some societies, managed to avoid that scenario.

in my campaign setting I put a strong limitation on immortality because I didn't want to have to deal with multiple such people who had millennia to gather power and become a lot stronger than anyone else had a chance to be.

KorvinStarmast

2022-11-22, 04:10 PM

Amazingly having guns and avoiding lunatic hit point inflation (or avoiding hp completely) tends to do the trick. In my experience it's not the damage/chaos output that tends to make a murderhobo, but the insulation from consequences
I remember original Traveller's combat being quite lethal, and our decisions to engage were very conservative and wary.

Quertus

2022-11-22, 07:49 PM

This should be somewhat self correcting though. If mid level wizards are common enough that one may stroll into a small kingdom and dominate the king to take control, then they should be common enough that the king of a small kingdom already has a handful of them on the payroll to prevent just that from happening (some of which may be significantly more than just "mid level")..

Plenty of “modern” countries (and corporations) have failed to have adequate anti-hacker security on staff; why would fantasy kingdoms be wiser in this regard?

in my campaign setting I put a strong limitation on immortality because I didn't want to have to deal with multiple such people who had millennia to gather power and become a lot stronger than anyone else had a chance to be.

Why is multiple powerhouse leaders something you don’t want to deal with? I don’t get the anti-appeal.

Mechalich

2022-11-22, 08:47 PM

Why is multiple powerhouse leaders something you don’t want to deal with? I don’t get the anti-appeal.

A world ruled by immortal high-powered god-kings is fundamentally static while stories of epic heroism are about change. Therefore, the sort of world that naturally results from a high-magic scenario (especially is factors like minionomancy and divination allow for wide-range power projection) is one that is antithetical to the sort of storytelling most games want to engage in. The operative example is Dark Sun - the initial campaign setting posited a world ruled by god-kings who could never be challenged and then TSR immediately blew that up.

Now, static worlds are actually quite useful for stories in forms other than epic heroism. In fact, a largely static world often facilitates tinkering around at the margins dealing with issues on a local or personal scale. For example, the classic wandering samurai or samurai revenge plot takes place during the Edo Period of Japanese history which was incredibly stable because the Tokugawa Shogunate was large, in-charge and not to be messed with.

The initial focus on D&D was actually quite bent towards the static setting. There were powerful kingdoms, often ruled by nominal god-kings (in Mystara, fairly openly, in Greyhawk, somewhat less so) and characters were just expected to dungeon crawl and solve local problems long enough to get rich and famous, hit level 10 or so, and then probably semi-retire. This changed because of the Dragonlance Chronicles, which was D&D's first big epic quest to save the world and also way, way more popular than anything else associated with D&D to that point. The result was ever more epic world saving quests, Dragonlance and FR kept replaying the hits every few years, and a distinct need to keep worlds dynamic in order to facilitate that.