So I have been giving some thought as to how local governments might structure laws around magic and it use in a standard type D&D campaign. Some of my ideas revolve around a government wanting to control enchantment and illusion magic specifically with tight reign on a few other types.
Listed out some of my ideas below.
Enchantment or illusion type magic is illegal to buy or sell without a license
Casting enchantment or illusion magic on a unwilling person would be illegal
Most cities and towns would have a public teleportation circle with city guards to record who comes and goes
Having a private teleportation circle (in a residence for example) would be illegal without a license
Summoning creatures would be illegal in general. Specific permits might be available for important organizations (such as a Wizard Order)
Licenses or permits would generally only be given to large organizations or possibly a few noble families.
The thought behind this is for players to have to role play and bargain with some of these groups in order to gain access to the magic they would like. I think it would be both realistic and a fun opportunity.
Does anyone else use local laws to add some flavor to their games? What do you think of my take on it?
Regulating teleportation is exactly what a city would do in a high-magic environment. Not just to keep track of people, but to keep track of taxable goods. By and large, I've always treated murder as murder and fraud as fraud, whether they were achieved with a crossbow or a fireball or an enchantment or a forger's kit. But summoning extraplanar creatures would definitely be a thing of its own. I feel like the consequences for that would look more like a mob with pitchforks tearing your tower down and burning you at the stake, rather than a written citation and a fine.
I assume you know your players well enough to know whether they'd like role-playing and bargaining to be allowed to use powers that they earned through monster-fighting. I'd amend the second item to say that casting ANY kind of spell on an unwilling person would be illegal. And I'd think about what a city would look like if there were a state-run monopoly on magic. Do the nobles and the large organizations keep each other in check? Is there one archmage on top using magic and politics to limit the power of any potential rivals?
I like the Code Legal from W:DH but it doesn't go far enough into how I imagine a government would handle magic. My thoughts is that anything that might affect the mind, create poison or allow extra-dimensional travel would be of particular interest to authorities.
I think Eberron has a similar rule of binding weapons. I found a wiki site for someone's campaign that had some rules similar to what I am talking about. In fact I may borrow a few.
Contraband in Sharn The following items are considered to be contraband in Breland: • Absentia (page 160) • Dragon’s blood (page 161) • Dreamlily (page 161) • Most addictive substances (DM’s discretion) • Blank pages notarized by House Sivis • Any poison that can inflict more than 1 point of Constitution damage, permanent damage to any ability, or more than 1d6 damage to any ability. Other items are not actually illegal, but are restricted. These items can only be sold to members of the royal military or the Sharn Watch. Possession of a restricted item is not illegal, but the Watch will want to know why the character has the item, and if the explanation is insufficient it may be confiscated. Restricted items include: • Any bane weapon that affects a humanoid creature type. • Any type of poison that is not actually outlawed. • Any magic item (including scrolls or wands) that reproduces the effects of any of the following spells: cloudkill, chain lightning, circle of death, cone of cold, contagion, delayed blast fireball, disintegrate, finger of death, feeblemind, fireball, flesh to stone, greater shout, horrid wilting, ice storm, imprisonment, incendiary cloud, insanity, invisibility (including greater invisibility), lightning bolt, meteor swarm, Mordenkainen’s disjunction, phantasmal killer, poison, polar ray, power word kill, soul bind, sunburst, or weird.
Also, I would think that a city watch would have issues with folk going about heavily armed. I was thinking of limiting the carry of ranged weapons and heavy weapons after dark. This is to my mind a fairly realistic view but be too much of a hindrance. I want to make city games distinctly different from wandering the wilds but there is a balance between fun versus absolute realism. Peace binding larger weapons might be a useful compromise.
In the area of my current campaign all adventurers must check in with the Governor when they enter the town limits. Adventurers not known to the governor are not allowed to carry weapons at all. It goes without saying that peasants can't carry any significant weapon at all. They may be permitted a short bow and a quarterstaff or dagger, but certainly not a long sword or crossbow. There is no second amendment in this province. If the governor says you should be disarmed, that's it. If the governor says you may carry, that's that. He generally lets all adventurers carry all the time, save the above need for an introduction. So it is important to make a good impression on the governor when you first meet him.
Concerning magic, it is against the law to possess or commit an unseemly act of influence over another's mind using magical means, whether it is a spell or device. Anyone practicing magic is liable for their acts as they would be if they stabbed someone. You may use illusions to entertain folks but should someone fall to harm it might be like using fireworks and burning down someone's shed, even by mistake. Of course, if the governor says it is OK, it is OK. He has members of his court that use magic and influence folks all the time, but he uses discretion so that folks don't know how much of that his followers are able to pull off. There are also a few characters that may be in town that have sanctions from the Counsel or Emperor to practice magic without the governor's permission or knowledge.
It is an interesting question though about whether enchanting or teleportation or some other forms of magic might be regulated. As I said, I was just thinking you must bear the responsibility for your actions, but that may not be enough when some things are concerned. For example, summoning could be fairly innocuous if things go as planned, but if they go wrong, the whole town could be zapped. Would this require notification of the authorities? Supervision?
Another question is treasure. Should players be able to bring any amount of treasure into or out of the town? This may not be something worth investigating by DMs as it may be too far down in the weeds, but it is possible for a party to "crash the economy" of a town by bringing in a pile of gold. That is something a governor would want to prevent through some degree of control. However, many DMs may not want to get down in the weeds like that. But think of the gold rush towns of the American West.
Land ownership has always been a big issue of legal control throughout most of the world throughout most of history. In feudal systems, only the sovereign owns the land and he grants title to lands to his peers. The peasants just live on the land and don't own anything, although there was a certain social contract that existed that peasants had to be clothed, fed and housed as a matter of morality. For some even minor transgressions they could be thrown off the lord's land with only the clothes on their back. In later evolutions, middle class subjects were permitted to own land. This was a big deal because it often also conferred the privilege to vote or have grievances heard by the mayor or judge. Landless individuals did not enjoy such privileges. Therefore, in situations where one could buy land, even a lot in the town, they most often would to obtain the other privileges. Therefore, keeping track of who owns land is a big deal for the government. … And then there is Taxes!
It depends heavily upon the country the players were in, but in the most restrictive country (ruled by Shen, Native Outsiders from a India/China/Japan/Korea-themed conglomeration of nations) where civil war has cost the nation nearly two hundred years of anarchy and the loss of irreplaceable treasures and many royal families being killed down to the last?
All weapons must be 'peace-bound' in times of peace. Meaning it requires a full-round action to draw your weapon or, with a DC 15 Strength Check or a DC 15 Sleight of Hand Check to work around the 'peace bindings' a single action to draw the weapon.
All poisons must be on the person or identified as belonging to a person who owns a permit from the Empress's Royal Medical School, certifying that they have permission to carry, if not use, said items. Use of such items was only for dealing with pests, or with written permission from the local law enforcement's highest ranking official to be used on a specific target or group of targets.
The use of magic to influence minds, either in a limited time or permanently, was strictly forbidden and anyone caught using magic like Friends, Charm Person or Enthrall could easily find themselves in jail, if not worse.
No raising the dead. Ever. The Dead are to be honored and to disrupt their mortal remains is not only a blasphemy but an insult to their living relatives.
No public disorder. No public drinking, fighting or vandalism. Perpetrators would be forced to perform menial labour as part of the penance and to aid and help those whom they had offended or harmed. If you want to fight somebody, declare a duel and wait for an official to oversee it.
On a more specific note, most nations had laws in place that regulated when, where and how you could teleport, what weapons were allowed to be worn openly, what spells were and were not allowed to be used, publicly or otherwise, and these generally aligned with the nature of the nations involved. The Hobgoblin nations naturally wanted to control who, what and where you entered the country and insisted on no teleportation magic, you went through the check-points like everybody else and got searched, but were perfectly fine with you having weapons, poisons and monstrous mounts so long as you had the right permits and had no criminal records. The Lizardfolk Alliance didn't give a damn about poisons, their bites were naturally venomous after all, but if you were a spellcaster you had to let them know and you had to wear a specific piece of clothing (large purple-red sash to be worn at all times) to let their people know who and what you were, and that had other social implications as well, not always negative but it did make it difficult to get close to them, while the Southern Confederacy held the right to bear arms as sacrosanct but if you so much as had arsenic to poison rats, by gum you'd better have your paperwork in triplicate and may the Stars help you if you were found with a Spellbook or Scroll containing Transmutation or Enchantment magic ...
My brain keeps jumping back to the Circles of Thedas (Dragon Age) when reading these.
Laws specifically against magic (even if it's just against irresponsible, dangerous, or bluntly malicious magic but not against beneficial magic) are laws specifically against magic users. Some magic users will agree that there must be social consequences for irresponsible use of magic and are fine with such laws. It only takes one who feels targeted to stir the pot, though. People find solidarity in shared plights, find strength in numbers, and find purpose in crusades.
A magic user being told not to use magic (even just specific magic) will see it as if they were an Elf being forced to speak only Common, never Elvish - something innate to their being being shackled while others enjoy full freedom. It's just the perception from a point of view, not the whole big picture, though. People are little else than their own points of view.
A possible solution is a magocracy... laws made by people with understanding and a personal stake in the practices... which magocracies have their own issues being reliant on who can actually enforce such laws... usually the most powerful (either in ability or politically), which encourages the desire for power, which encourages more drastic measures to get it.
Nothing good comes from singling people out, even when it's done out of necessity. This will be interesting to see how it all explodes, implodes, or just plodes in general.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
One of my continents in my world has resurrection and necromancy outlawed and can only be performed under the express permission of group of individuals known as The Order of the Skull. Essentially, this one settlement known as Salzspitze is the capital of that continent and the entire city is built inside a massive spire of sandstone that reaches the clouds.
The Order of the Skulls are a group of nine necromancers that oversee the laws of not only the continent but the city itself.
Inside the city walls you can have the dead raised as "servants" only to aid you in your daily tasks and workflow. The use of living humanoids as servants is completely illegal within the confines of the city. Lots of people on the continent think that resurrection being illegal unless paid for and performed by the Order of the Skull is a practice that most people would like to see abolished in favor of healing temples, etc.
Anyone caught performing or reported doing these rituals is sentenced to death if found guilty and reanimated inside the city as one of the undead servants constantly roaming the city performing the menial tasks nobody else wants to set their hands on.
There's a lot of fun laws and rules regarding the raising of the dead inside Salzspitze though. If I can find my document I'll share more information.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM/Founder for Mimics & Monstrosities, a D&D network.
So I have been giving some thought as to how local governments might structure laws around magic and it use in a standard type D&D campaign. Some of my ideas revolve around a government wanting to control enchantment and illusion magic specifically with tight reign on a few other types.
Listed out some of my ideas below.
The thought behind this is for players to have to role play and bargain with some of these groups in order to gain access to the magic they would like. I think it would be both realistic and a fun opportunity.
Does anyone else use local laws to add some flavor to their games? What do you think of my take on it?
Current Characters I am playing: Dr Konstantin van Wulf | Taegen Willowrun | Mad Magnar
Check out my homebrew: Items | Monsters | Spells | Subclasses | Feats
Regulating teleportation is exactly what a city would do in a high-magic environment. Not just to keep track of people, but to keep track of taxable goods. By and large, I've always treated murder as murder and fraud as fraud, whether they were achieved with a crossbow or a fireball or an enchantment or a forger's kit. But summoning extraplanar creatures would definitely be a thing of its own. I feel like the consequences for that would look more like a mob with pitchforks tearing your tower down and burning you at the stake, rather than a written citation and a fine.
I assume you know your players well enough to know whether they'd like role-playing and bargaining to be allowed to use powers that they earned through monster-fighting. I'd amend the second item to say that casting ANY kind of spell on an unwilling person would be illegal. And I'd think about what a city would look like if there were a state-run monopoly on magic. Do the nobles and the large organizations keep each other in check? Is there one archmage on top using magic and politics to limit the power of any potential rivals?
The Waterdeep: Dragon Heist Module actually has a hand out for the codes/laws in waterdeep, and their punishments.
Published Subclasses
I like the Code Legal from W:DH but it doesn't go far enough into how I imagine a government would handle magic. My thoughts is that anything that might affect the mind, create poison or allow extra-dimensional travel would be of particular interest to authorities.
Current Characters I am playing: Dr Konstantin van Wulf | Taegen Willowrun | Mad Magnar
Check out my homebrew: Items | Monsters | Spells | Subclasses | Feats
I think in Cormyr you need a permit to actually be able to own or carry a weapon. A adventurer permit.
I think Eberron has a similar rule of binding weapons. I found a wiki site for someone's campaign that had some rules similar to what I am talking about. In fact I may borrow a few.
http://eberronunlimited.*******.com/sharns-laws
Contraband in Sharn
The following items are considered to be contraband in Breland:
• Absentia (page 160)
• Dragon’s blood (page 161)
• Dreamlily (page 161)
• Most addictive substances (DM’s discretion)
• Blank pages notarized by House Sivis
• Any poison that can inflict more than 1 point of Constitution damage, permanent damage to any ability, or more than 1d6 damage to any ability.
Other items are not actually illegal, but are restricted. These items can only be sold to members of the royal military or the Sharn Watch. Possession of a restricted item is not illegal, but the Watch will want to know why the character has the item, and if the explanation is insufficient it may be confiscated.
Restricted items include:
• Any bane weapon that affects a humanoid creature type.
• Any type of poison that is not actually outlawed.
• Any magic item (including scrolls or wands) that reproduces the effects of any of the following spells: cloudkill, chain lightning, circle of death, cone of cold, contagion, delayed blast fireball, disintegrate, finger of death, feeblemind, fireball, flesh to stone, greater shout, horrid wilting, ice storm, imprisonment, incendiary cloud, insanity, invisibility (including greater invisibility), lightning bolt, meteor swarm, Mordenkainen’s disjunction, phantasmal killer, poison, polar ray, power word kill, soul bind, sunburst, or weird.
Current Characters I am playing: Dr Konstantin van Wulf | Taegen Willowrun | Mad Magnar
Check out my homebrew: Items | Monsters | Spells | Subclasses | Feats
Also, I would think that a city watch would have issues with folk going about heavily armed. I was thinking of limiting the carry of ranged weapons and heavy weapons after dark. This is to my mind a fairly realistic view but be too much of a hindrance. I want to make city games distinctly different from wandering the wilds but there is a balance between fun versus absolute realism. Peace binding larger weapons might be a useful compromise.
Current Characters I am playing: Dr Konstantin van Wulf | Taegen Willowrun | Mad Magnar
Check out my homebrew: Items | Monsters | Spells | Subclasses | Feats
In the area of my current campaign all adventurers must check in with the Governor when they enter the town limits. Adventurers not known to the governor are not allowed to carry weapons at all. It goes without saying that peasants can't carry any significant weapon at all. They may be permitted a short bow and a quarterstaff or dagger, but certainly not a long sword or crossbow. There is no second amendment in this province. If the governor says you should be disarmed, that's it. If the governor says you may carry, that's that. He generally lets all adventurers carry all the time, save the above need for an introduction. So it is important to make a good impression on the governor when you first meet him.
Concerning magic, it is against the law to possess or commit an unseemly act of influence over another's mind using magical means, whether it is a spell or device. Anyone practicing magic is liable for their acts as they would be if they stabbed someone. You may use illusions to entertain folks but should someone fall to harm it might be like using fireworks and burning down someone's shed, even by mistake. Of course, if the governor says it is OK, it is OK. He has members of his court that use magic and influence folks all the time, but he uses discretion so that folks don't know how much of that his followers are able to pull off. There are also a few characters that may be in town that have sanctions from the Counsel or Emperor to practice magic without the governor's permission or knowledge.
It is an interesting question though about whether enchanting or teleportation or some other forms of magic might be regulated. As I said, I was just thinking you must bear the responsibility for your actions, but that may not be enough when some things are concerned. For example, summoning could be fairly innocuous if things go as planned, but if they go wrong, the whole town could be zapped. Would this require notification of the authorities? Supervision?
Another question is treasure. Should players be able to bring any amount of treasure into or out of the town? This may not be something worth investigating by DMs as it may be too far down in the weeds, but it is possible for a party to "crash the economy" of a town by bringing in a pile of gold. That is something a governor would want to prevent through some degree of control. However, many DMs may not want to get down in the weeds like that. But think of the gold rush towns of the American West.
Land ownership has always been a big issue of legal control throughout most of the world throughout most of history. In feudal systems, only the sovereign owns the land and he grants title to lands to his peers. The peasants just live on the land and don't own anything, although there was a certain social contract that existed that peasants had to be clothed, fed and housed as a matter of morality. For some even minor transgressions they could be thrown off the lord's land with only the clothes on their back. In later evolutions, middle class subjects were permitted to own land. This was a big deal because it often also conferred the privilege to vote or have grievances heard by the mayor or judge. Landless individuals did not enjoy such privileges. Therefore, in situations where one could buy land, even a lot in the town, they most often would to obtain the other privileges. Therefore, keeping track of who owns land is a big deal for the government. … And then there is Taxes!
In the homebrewed campaign?
It depends heavily upon the country the players were in, but in the most restrictive country (ruled by Shen, Native Outsiders from a India/China/Japan/Korea-themed conglomeration of nations) where civil war has cost the nation nearly two hundred years of anarchy and the loss of irreplaceable treasures and many royal families being killed down to the last?
All weapons must be 'peace-bound' in times of peace. Meaning it requires a full-round action to draw your weapon or, with a DC 15 Strength Check or a DC 15 Sleight of Hand Check to work around the 'peace bindings' a single action to draw the weapon.
All poisons must be on the person or identified as belonging to a person who owns a permit from the Empress's Royal Medical School, certifying that they have permission to carry, if not use, said items. Use of such items was only for dealing with pests, or with written permission from the local law enforcement's highest ranking official to be used on a specific target or group of targets.
The use of magic to influence minds, either in a limited time or permanently, was strictly forbidden and anyone caught using magic like Friends, Charm Person or Enthrall could easily find themselves in jail, if not worse.
No raising the dead. Ever. The Dead are to be honored and to disrupt their mortal remains is not only a blasphemy but an insult to their living relatives.
No public disorder. No public drinking, fighting or vandalism. Perpetrators would be forced to perform menial labour as part of the penance and to aid and help those whom they had offended or harmed. If you want to fight somebody, declare a duel and wait for an official to oversee it.
On a more specific note, most nations had laws in place that regulated when, where and how you could teleport, what weapons were allowed to be worn openly, what spells were and were not allowed to be used, publicly or otherwise, and these generally aligned with the nature of the nations involved. The Hobgoblin nations naturally wanted to control who, what and where you entered the country and insisted on no teleportation magic, you went through the check-points like everybody else and got searched, but were perfectly fine with you having weapons, poisons and monstrous mounts so long as you had the right permits and had no criminal records. The Lizardfolk Alliance didn't give a damn about poisons, their bites were naturally venomous after all, but if you were a spellcaster you had to let them know and you had to wear a specific piece of clothing (large purple-red sash to be worn at all times) to let their people know who and what you were, and that had other social implications as well, not always negative but it did make it difficult to get close to them, while the Southern Confederacy held the right to bear arms as sacrosanct but if you so much as had arsenic to poison rats, by gum you'd better have your paperwork in triplicate and may the Stars help you if you were found with a Spellbook or Scroll containing Transmutation or Enchantment magic ...
My brain keeps jumping back to the Circles of Thedas (Dragon Age) when reading these.
Laws specifically against magic (even if it's just against irresponsible, dangerous, or bluntly malicious magic but not against beneficial magic) are laws specifically against magic users. Some magic users will agree that there must be social consequences for irresponsible use of magic and are fine with such laws. It only takes one who feels targeted to stir the pot, though. People find solidarity in shared plights, find strength in numbers, and find purpose in crusades.
A magic user being told not to use magic (even just specific magic) will see it as if they were an Elf being forced to speak only Common, never Elvish - something innate to their being being shackled while others enjoy full freedom. It's just the perception from a point of view, not the whole big picture, though. People are little else than their own points of view.
A possible solution is a magocracy... laws made by people with understanding and a personal stake in the practices... which magocracies have their own issues being reliant on who can actually enforce such laws... usually the most powerful (either in ability or politically), which encourages the desire for power, which encourages more drastic measures to get it.
Nothing good comes from singling people out, even when it's done out of necessity. This will be interesting to see how it all explodes, implodes, or just plodes in general.
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.
One of my continents in my world has resurrection and necromancy outlawed and can only be performed under the express permission of group of individuals known as The Order of the Skull. Essentially, this one settlement known as Salzspitze is the capital of that continent and the entire city is built inside a massive spire of sandstone that reaches the clouds.
The Order of the Skulls are a group of nine necromancers that oversee the laws of not only the continent but the city itself.
Inside the city walls you can have the dead raised as "servants" only to aid you in your daily tasks and workflow. The use of living humanoids as servants is completely illegal within the confines of the city. Lots of people on the continent think that resurrection being illegal unless paid for and performed by the Order of the Skull is a practice that most people would like to see abolished in favor of healing temples, etc.
Anyone caught performing or reported doing these rituals is sentenced to death if found guilty and reanimated inside the city as one of the undead servants constantly roaming the city performing the menial tasks nobody else wants to set their hands on.
There's a lot of fun laws and rules regarding the raising of the dead inside Salzspitze though. If I can find my document I'll share more information.
DM/Founder for Mimics & Monstrosities, a D&D network.
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