Magical Protection in a High Magic Setting?

[NichG]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[Sigreid]

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]

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]

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.

Or they'll just grab a random scapegoat.

[gbaji]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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."

[icefractal]

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

In 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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."

That's one way to nip it in the bid.

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.

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?

[King of Nowhere]

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]

- 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.

[gbaji]

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]

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]

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.