Tony Vargas
Legend
Medieval societies weren't shy about executions, certainly. Fantasy societies like those implied by D&D, might be much more modern in their sensibilities - they've also had many generations to get used to magical pointy-eared folk and their tricks.A good society places some value on the life of a thinking creature. All else being equal, life is preferable to death, unless there's some sort of mitigating circumstance. If you think a criminal is likely to re-offend, then killing might be the lesser of two evils (above letting them kill someone else in the future).
Only if there's no less extreme way to prevent that teleportation. Anyone might escape from custody, and you could take more and more stringent measures to prevent that. If the teleportation were an at-will ability that let the Eladrin reach any place he knew well enough, with little risk, and no way to block or prevent it, then it might be an issue. Teleport spell-like abilities came pretty close to that in older eds, so that'd've been an understandable mistake. The Eladrin's, ability, though, was short-range, and could only take him somewhere he could see, he couldn't even teleport into mid-air. All the jailer had to do was drop them in a windowless cell or even just thoroughly bind & blindfold him.If you know that someone can teleport, then that's a huge mitigating circumstance. You have to re-evaluate all of the probabilities associated with your actions, because the chance that this person will escape and re-offend, if you don't kill them, increases significantly.
But it could be an interesting point depending on how common they are and how well-known. If they're just another race, every jail will have such simple 'accommodations' for them - if they're rare, but notorious, all your better jails will, and some might have special enchanted cold-iron chains. But if they're rare & mysterious, then they will just get away, a lot, giving them an air of mystery, almost like they were otherworldy visitors from another plane or something. And, it would say something about how serious the facilities are (and . A local constable who mostly just tosses drunks in a spare stable the night, and vaguely keeps an eye on them, probably wouldn't be able to be certain of securing anyone competent and determined to escape, for instance - and if he also hates fey, then 'detain this eladrin' might just be a death-sentence. A Château d'If, OTOH, would have oubliettes and lead-lined cells and enchanted cold-iron chains and the like to keep even the most mystically talented individuals incarcerated for their full terms.
That is, in a world where you want to think through the consequences of every racial and class ability and spell and monster and magic item that might be out there... In a world where an entry in the rulebook doesn't make something common knowledge, OTOH, such implications can often be downplayed, if the thing in question is deemed sufficiently uncommon, for instance.
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