Another thread led me to wonder about a jail in a fantasy setting. How do you keep bad guys in Jail, much more prison, in a fantasy world when many magical methods could make the jail rather a joke. So I figure the first thing is a magic free zone. Maybe each jail could be built with a small artifact that dispels magic or at least renders it ineffective. If a fighter came to the jail with his +1 sword it wouldn't be rendered a normal sword for ever after, but just while he was within the effective radius of the artifact. Likewise, potions, staves, rings, cloaks, armor would just "turn off" when they were near the jail. New spells couldn't be cast within the radius and anything that was cast nearby would just not have any effect within the radius of the artifact.
So what would a good artifact be in the jail? You wouldn't want it to be something obvious. A band of thugs might come in and just grab it and run. Not only could they sell it, their wizard friend could break everyone out of jail now that the artifact is long gone. I was thinking a stone in the floor might be a good artifact, but you would still want it concealed. Maybe a stone under a larger stone would be better. And maybe you'd want the stone in a dark closet to make it harder to find. Anyway, hiding the artifact could be great fun.
And then there is the problem of who knows what the artifact is and where it could be found. That could be the source of a great mystery too. The stones were all created a long time ago in another province and transported to each site under heavy guard. The masons that placed the stones were given some BS story about the stone and then relocated to another province where they were free to ply their craft quietly but profitably for the rest of their lives. But the masons were all guild members and they were able to communicate with one another and a few of them put the pieces of the story together. What would they do with the secret? Would they understand the consequences of letting the secret out? Would the Magistrate or Emperor have spies keeping an eye on them?
How about a band that decided they were going to break someone out of the jail? What would they do if they knew magic wouldn't work? How might they try to find out how to break the spell? Triangulation could be used along with a highly precise map to locate the artifact. That would get you to within some small distance on locating it, but if you couldn't get into the jail how would you figure out what you were looking for? Would one or two members of your band get arrested for some small mischief so you could be thrown in jail for a few days as a recon mission? What sort of tools would they take to map out the interior of the jail precisely? How would they smuggle their tools in?
Or would they just brute for it?
So, magic aside, how would you design a jail against a normal attack?
I think I would put most of it underground. And if I had stone nearby, I would want to bury lots of stone in the excavation when I built the jail to discourage digging. At least if someone was to try it, I would hope it would take enough time and make enough noise that I'd catch the poor buggers in the act.
So if the real jail is underground, I guess I'll build a guardhouse over the jail with all that good stone down there to act as a solid foundation. Now the raiders have to contend with a garrison or at least a detail of soldiers and not just a sheriff's deputy.
Is anyone intrigued enough to write a story of how the jailhouse came to be in that spot? Maybe there were some legendary bandits or other criminals that were sent there? And maybe there are stories of criminals that were never there and never existed? And maybe there are stories of robber that tried to break out and failed, or worse some powerful menace that did?
Jails serve a purpose. Historically, anything bigger than a place you hold a drunk overnight or a prisoner until the judge comes to town, tended to have a military origin, like the Bastille, Dartmoor, or Fort William, aka "The Black Hole of Calcutta." So, they'd look like a military fort or castle that you couldn't leave. They'd be far away from the border of any other countries. You might even put prisoners on cargo ships out in the harbor.
How to do it depends on what you want of course, but if I were in a low magic campaign, wizards would be gagged and probably finger cuffed and naturally deprived of material components. In a high magic environment, if I had someone too dangerous for a prison and who I couldn't execute for some reason, I'd Phantom Zone them into a demiplane.
This was touched on in a campaign that I saw last year. In the holding cells, any magical forces were absorbed into runes lining the walls to be transferred to another place. Any spell that was cast was used the spell but created no effect. The cells themselves were fortified against brute force. (While it was never directly stated, it seems that the runes possibly continually sapped residual magic from people in the cells, making rests useless and eventually turning magic users into adventurer jerky over the course of a couple of months.)
However, an innate ability to breathe fire by one of the occupants caused enough of a commotion to summon a guard who was... let's say... coerced (by a successful persuasion followed by a crit grapple) to open the cells, but the fire breath wasn't enough to damage the bars to the point that they could be forced.
The majority of the campaign required martial and charismatic handling.
I also read about a special prison that prevented magic from passing the prison boundaries, turning the place into a magical slaughterhouse between the inmates, but nobody could leave once they were inside... supposedly.
EDIT: There was no explanation how the runes were made or how the magic shield kept magic within. Once read, the runes in the former situation led to the possibility of a Lower Planes collaboration, but it was never directly stated. No explanation was ever made regarding the magic shield that kept magic within it. Complete explanations should not be necessary... just enough to get the players to turn their focus toward certain things. It is possible to have divine-intervened magics that dampen magic and strengthen jails against physical methods of escaping... possibly less effective against good adventurers using peaceful magics. The possibilities are boundless.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
As a little more straightforward approach, why wouldn't the jailers take a prisoner's equipment? Magic rings, cloaks, etc don't need to be nullified if they don't have them. As for spells; if magic is common in this world (as opposed to a low magic setting), then the jailers should know enough to bind the mouth/hands of any magic users to hinder the somatic/verbal components to their spells (material should speak for itself, obvs those would be taken as well).
As for breaking into a prison, maybe the walls are magically reinforced? Teleportation inside is possible, but difficult. Maybe it takes a higher level spell slot than usual that the wizard only has 1 of, or maybe teleporting into that specific prison requires a valuable extra spell component like an emerald worth at least 500 gp. That way you can't just bamf in and out at your leisure, since you'll likely only have the resources to get *in*. Then once you're in you'll need to find some other way to get out, requiring further planning or improvisation.
I'd say it also depends on what the town/city/metropolis is expecting to hold in the jail or prison.
I'm reminded of the movie Support Your Local Sheriff where the jail doesn't even have bars for the first prisoner.
A small town where the worst that can happen is a drunk sleeping his stupor off, may only have a bunk bed in a lockable room, where a metropolis might have magical wards, antimagic zones, fireproof rooms, etc.
So the way I see it is the people who run these towns are powerful people. Basically, whoever is in charge is going to be much stronger than whoever is inside of it. And if a prisoner would be too strong they would be taken to another jail/prison where that warden was more powerful than they are. In essence, if someone is in jail, they will never be the strongest one in there. It's similar to real life. When you're in prison, you have no clothes or weapons, but the guards have guns, tasers, batons, pellet grenades (or whatever they're called).
Well, I thought it was understood that they wouldn't jail persons that were carrying arms of any kind, and this includes rings, staves, etc. When I brought that up, I was speaking about visitors magical possessions would not work once they came in.
I guess your idea of a low magic setting is different from mine too. I was thinking low magic was an environment where magic was very rare. You make it sound as if low magic is a setting where magic is forbidden. If that the general consensus about low magic?
Another fellow commented that folks should be weaker than the guards. Yes, I agree, and eliminating magic altering the balance is part of that equation. But the real problem is if the prisoner has a powerful ally that wants him out. How would jails and prisons be made to prevent this sort of event? Of course, there is always a bigger bully somewhere so any jail can be foiled. The question is what would be the "basic" approach?
Another fellow commented that folks should be weaker than the guards. Yes, I agree, and eliminating magic altering the balance is part of that equation. But the real problem is if the prisoner has a powerful ally that wants him out. How would jails and prisons be made to prevent this sort of event? Of course, there is always a bigger bully somewhere so any jail can be foiled. The question is what would be the "basic" approach?
So, in that situation, you can also think about real life as well. What would happen if 10 people with guns stormed a prison to break someone out? If you're talking BIG GUNS, like someone with a tank coming through to break out a prisoner, well the tank will be seen from very far away and taken care of way before the prison.
Result A: The 10 people storming are taken out by the indoor firepower as they try to get through the barriers.
Result B: They actually break the person out, and a national manhunt is set off!
While Result A ends with a TPK, that sucks, but they should be aware of the risks lol and then Result B which is unlikely, but not impossible, it actually makes for some great potential storylines. The character basically has to create a new identity and can't go in places where people would know his face, his name and a drawing with his likeness with a MASSIVE reward would be put in every tavern and corner! Then you have bounty hunters who are used to tracking down and finding these types of criminals and bringing them back.
Imagine a beholder bounty hunter that did his research for his target. He finds all aliases, he starts with his hometown, reaches out to family, hears about anyone that has ever been known to travel with the person, finds their family. Then if they every return or meet up with anyone from their past, OR even go into a town they have already been before, the beholder would always have a reason to be there. I say beholder because they were the most intelligent monster I could come up with right now lol but it could easily be a humanoid. My point is, even if they break out of prison, they are likely not going to stay free and, if taken back alive, will likely be taken to a more maximum security prison.
If you're visiting a prison, the guards still would take any weapons or magic items in case you were planning to try anything. That's standard security.
The hard part would be smuggling in the weapons/magic items past that security. Prisons should be designed to have every way in and out tightly controlled. The players would have to either subvert that control, or find a new way in. Once they get in, let them keep their weapons/magic items; they earned them.
Another thread led me to wonder about a jail in a fantasy setting. How do you keep bad guys in Jail, much more prison, in a fantasy world when many magical methods could make the jail rather a joke. So I figure the first thing is a magic free zone. Maybe each jail could be built with a small artifact that dispels magic or at least renders it ineffective. If a fighter came to the jail with his +1 sword it wouldn't be rendered a normal sword for ever after, but just while he was within the effective radius of the artifact. Likewise, potions, staves, rings, cloaks, armor would just "turn off" when they were near the jail. New spells couldn't be cast within the radius and anything that was cast nearby would just not have any effect within the radius of the artifact.
So what would a good artifact be in the jail? You wouldn't want it to be something obvious. A band of thugs might come in and just grab it and run. Not only could they sell it, their wizard friend could break everyone out of jail now that the artifact is long gone. I was thinking a stone in the floor might be a good artifact, but you would still want it concealed. Maybe a stone under a larger stone would be better. And maybe you'd want the stone in a dark closet to make it harder to find. Anyway, hiding the artifact could be great fun.
And then there is the problem of who knows what the artifact is and where it could be found. That could be the source of a great mystery too. The stones were all created a long time ago in another province and transported to each site under heavy guard. The masons that placed the stones were given some BS story about the stone and then relocated to another province where they were free to ply their craft quietly but profitably for the rest of their lives. But the masons were all guild members and they were able to communicate with one another and a few of them put the pieces of the story together. What would they do with the secret? Would they understand the consequences of letting the secret out? Would the Magistrate or Emperor have spies keeping an eye on them?
How about a band that decided they were going to break someone out of the jail? What would they do if they knew magic wouldn't work? How might they try to find out how to break the spell? Triangulation could be used along with a highly precise map to locate the artifact. That would get you to within some small distance on locating it, but if you couldn't get into the jail how would you figure out what you were looking for? Would one or two members of your band get arrested for some small mischief so you could be thrown in jail for a few days as a recon mission? What sort of tools would they take to map out the interior of the jail precisely? How would they smuggle their tools in?
Or would they just brute for it?
So, magic aside, how would you design a jail against a normal attack?
I think I would put most of it underground. And if I had stone nearby, I would want to bury lots of stone in the excavation when I built the jail to discourage digging. At least if someone was to try it, I would hope it would take enough time and make enough noise that I'd catch the poor buggers in the act.
So if the real jail is underground, I guess I'll build a guardhouse over the jail with all that good stone down there to act as a solid foundation. Now the raiders have to contend with a garrison or at least a detail of soldiers and not just a sheriff's deputy.
Is anyone intrigued enough to write a story of how the jailhouse came to be in that spot? Maybe there were some legendary bandits or other criminals that were sent there? And maybe there are stories of criminals that were never there and never existed? And maybe there are stories of robber that tried to break out and failed, or worse some powerful menace that did?
I think this is very interesting and insightful, I've been trying to make a jail for a while now and this is marvelous
Jails serve a purpose. Historically, anything bigger than a place you hold a drunk overnight or a prisoner until the judge comes to town, tended to have a military origin, like the Bastille, Dartmoor, or Fort William, aka "The Black Hole of Calcutta." So, they'd look like a military fort or castle that you couldn't leave. They'd be far away from the border of any other countries. You might even put prisoners on cargo ships out in the harbor.
How to do it depends on what you want of course, but if I were in a low magic campaign, wizards would be gagged and probably finger cuffed and naturally deprived of material components. In a high magic environment, if I had someone too dangerous for a prison and who I couldn't execute for some reason, I'd Phantom Zone them into a demiplane.
This was touched on in a campaign that I saw last year. In the holding cells, any magical forces were absorbed into runes lining the walls to be transferred to another place. Any spell that was cast was used the spell but created no effect. The cells themselves were fortified against brute force. (While it was never directly stated, it seems that the runes possibly continually sapped residual magic from people in the cells, making rests useless and eventually turning magic users into adventurer jerky over the course of a couple of months.)
However, an innate ability to breathe fire by one of the occupants caused enough of a commotion to summon a guard who was... let's say... coerced (by a successful persuasion followed by a crit grapple) to open the cells, but the fire breath wasn't enough to damage the bars to the point that they could be forced.
The majority of the campaign required martial and charismatic handling.
I also read about a special prison that prevented magic from passing the prison boundaries, turning the place into a magical slaughterhouse between the inmates, but nobody could leave once they were inside... supposedly.
EDIT: There was no explanation how the runes were made or how the magic shield kept magic within. Once read, the runes in the former situation led to the possibility of a Lower Planes collaboration, but it was never directly stated. No explanation was ever made regarding the magic shield that kept magic within it. Complete explanations should not be necessary... just enough to get the players to turn their focus toward certain things. It is possible to have divine-intervened magics that dampen magic and strengthen jails against physical methods of escaping... possibly less effective against good adventurers using peaceful magics. The possibilities are boundless.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
As a little more straightforward approach, why wouldn't the jailers take a prisoner's equipment? Magic rings, cloaks, etc don't need to be nullified if they don't have them. As for spells; if magic is common in this world (as opposed to a low magic setting), then the jailers should know enough to bind the mouth/hands of any magic users to hinder the somatic/verbal components to their spells (material should speak for itself, obvs those would be taken as well).
As for breaking into a prison, maybe the walls are magically reinforced? Teleportation inside is possible, but difficult. Maybe it takes a higher level spell slot than usual that the wizard only has 1 of, or maybe teleporting into that specific prison requires a valuable extra spell component like an emerald worth at least 500 gp. That way you can't just bamf in and out at your leisure, since you'll likely only have the resources to get *in*. Then once you're in you'll need to find some other way to get out, requiring further planning or improvisation.
I'd say it also depends on what the town/city/metropolis is expecting to hold in the jail or prison.
I'm reminded of the movie Support Your Local Sheriff where the jail doesn't even have bars for the first prisoner.
A small town where the worst that can happen is a drunk sleeping his stupor off, may only have a bunk bed in a lockable room, where a metropolis might have magical wards, antimagic zones, fireproof rooms, etc.
More Interesting Lock Picking Rules
So the way I see it is the people who run these towns are powerful people. Basically, whoever is in charge is going to be much stronger than whoever is inside of it. And if a prisoner would be too strong they would be taken to another jail/prison where that warden was more powerful than they are. In essence, if someone is in jail, they will never be the strongest one in there. It's similar to real life. When you're in prison, you have no clothes or weapons, but the guards have guns, tasers, batons, pellet grenades (or whatever they're called).
Published Subclasses
Well, I thought it was understood that they wouldn't jail persons that were carrying arms of any kind, and this includes rings, staves, etc. When I brought that up, I was speaking about visitors magical possessions would not work once they came in.
I guess your idea of a low magic setting is different from mine too. I was thinking low magic was an environment where magic was very rare. You make it sound as if low magic is a setting where magic is forbidden. If that the general consensus about low magic?
Another fellow commented that folks should be weaker than the guards. Yes, I agree, and eliminating magic altering the balance is part of that equation. But the real problem is if the prisoner has a powerful ally that wants him out. How would jails and prisons be made to prevent this sort of event? Of course, there is always a bigger bully somewhere so any jail can be foiled. The question is what would be the "basic" approach?
So, in that situation, you can also think about real life as well. What would happen if 10 people with guns stormed a prison to break someone out? If you're talking BIG GUNS, like someone with a tank coming through to break out a prisoner, well the tank will be seen from very far away and taken care of way before the prison.
While Result A ends with a TPK, that sucks, but they should be aware of the risks lol and then Result B which is unlikely, but not impossible, it actually makes for some great potential storylines. The character basically has to create a new identity and can't go in places where people would know his face, his name and a drawing with his likeness with a MASSIVE reward would be put in every tavern and corner! Then you have bounty hunters who are used to tracking down and finding these types of criminals and bringing them back.
Imagine a beholder bounty hunter that did his research for his target. He finds all aliases, he starts with his hometown, reaches out to family, hears about anyone that has ever been known to travel with the person, finds their family. Then if they every return or meet up with anyone from their past, OR even go into a town they have already been before, the beholder would always have a reason to be there. I say beholder because they were the most intelligent monster I could come up with right now lol but it could easily be a humanoid. My point is, even if they break out of prison, they are likely not going to stay free and, if taken back alive, will likely be taken to a more maximum security prison.
Published Subclasses
If you're visiting a prison, the guards still would take any weapons or magic items in case you were planning to try anything. That's standard security.
The hard part would be smuggling in the weapons/magic items past that security. Prisons should be designed to have every way in and out tightly controlled. The players would have to either subvert that control, or find a new way in. Once they get in, let them keep their weapons/magic items; they earned them.
Again, I think it depends on what the prison was built for.
There could be a prison for just one immensely powerful prisoner
or for a group of superpowered ones
or have open air access
More Interesting Lock Picking Rules
I love the Kung Fu Panda reference LOL
Published Subclasses