D&D 5E How to run a criminal organization in a City with 8th level spells?

So in my campaign, the party works for a city with access to very high level magics. 8th level spells are not out of question when necessary. The only caveat is while revivification is possible, other raise dead magics are not. Further, the city has very good security, and a lot of licence to use it. Aka, there is no "legal protections" that would hinder them in the pursuit of their investigation.

I want to have a criminal organization that has thwarted city security for years, but obviously such an organization will need to be extraordinary to realistically evade the high level magics of such a place. Even basic scrying, zone of truth, and speak with dead can cause extreme issues with evasion.

I'm asking for the community's help with tactics and resources that can be used for this criminal organization. You can assume the organization also has access to high level magics, monsters, and various magic items...within reason. For example, one member with a helm of mind blank or something might be reasonable, but its not going to be where every member has access to such a device.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciate.

Using a puppet master type villain might be a good way to go about things. The crimes are carried out by innocent civilians that have been dominated. This way the true perpetrators never have to get their hands dirty themselves so they can't be identified by witnesses. The victims will not know anything about the plan themselves so magical interrogation will not work. All they know is they dropped off the loot in a remote location, where it is then picked up by another dominated victim soon after.

Casting the dominate spells can be done from out of sight, or perhaps they are left in hidden glyphs for people to stumble into.

So this gives a situation where no single spell will solve the case right away, but it's still possible to solve the case by putting in the work to investigate.

Speak with dead is useful for getting information from deceased witnesses, but is worthless for getting information from members of the organization as "the corpse is under no compulsion to offer a truthful answer if you are hostile to it or it recognizes you as an enemy". The organization can't just kill witnesses to silence them, but it's not that hard to get rid of a body, animate the body, or break the jaw off of a corpse - and whichever method they use can become a calling card for the organization.

Scrying is a spell that only lasts 10 minutes, so you're very limited in keeping someone under surveilance with it. Just setting up a custom of spending a random amount of time hanging out before starting a secret meeting would make it hard to catch the secret exchange of information. It can be defeated with an amulet of proof against detection and location, which is an uncommon item that should cost around 500gp. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me in regular-level magic games that the top guys in a clandestine organization would all have these, like the way high level fighters usually have a magic weapon. Exactly how common they are obviously depends on your world, and they might be illegal to possess in your city - though that wouldn't stop someone from having one hidden, and only wearing it when they're about to talk about secret topics. Also while it's not really in the standard rules, I would assume that areas warded against scrying are possible and not that uncommon in the world. It's not like every house is going to have a 'no crystal balls closet, but I'd expect nobles to have somewhere in their private sanctum warded against it scrying.

There's still a decent amount of information that one can gather from scrying against these precautions. You can see that a low level thug is talking to someone who's got on an amulet, you just can't see the wearer. You can observe that someone you think is suspicious went to this noble's private sanctum, even if you can' see what went on there. And of course you can send a physical spy into a warded room to hear what's going on or physically follow a guy with an amulet. But it does mean that scrying isn't an 'auto win' for the enforcers of order, it's a lot closer to being able to secretly put a wire on someone for a short time that can have its signal blocked.

Zone of Truth is less useful than people give it credit for, someone can always truthfully say "I refuse to answer that" or "I don't want to tell you that". And if the higher ups don't let the low level guys know much, then they don't have much to be unable to lie about. "The man in the mask told me to carry this closed box to the warehouse and give it to whoever said 'salad shooters'" doesn't tell you what was in the box or who got it.

AS suggested above, a nebula organization is less likely to be discovered, or at least identified in its entirety. The criminal organization may have to "prune" some of its branches for time to time.

Otherwise, as a 3rd level spell nondetection is a relatively accessible (but expensive) spell to ward an agent against divination.

A ring of mind shielding is an uncommon magic item, perhaps common enough for all influential members of the organization to possess.

Is the pocket dimension created by Rope Trick in the same plane as where it's entered from? If not, its a relatively easy way to escape scrying and other magical effects limited to the same plane of existence as the caster.

There are several options how to handle this.

1) Mighty magic is available on both sides, arcane and divine (use trickster/thief/death/assassin/greed-deities' clerics).
As this is mostly on the NPC side (both for the goodies and the baddies), don't go too strict by the rules.
Let them have some special magic spells / items, especially for these purposes, be inventive (the bad guys would be!), do not only go by the book(s) (so would the bad guys...).
Kinda arcane Hallow-spell which guards a complete area; tin-foiled rooms (or hats! ); ....

2) Corruption is everywhere.
Let the criminals have some spies/agents/whatever in the right positions, if necessary with the right device / or under a spell.

If the city has access to high-level magics, we can assume the criminals do too, right? Several spells, such as Mordenkainen's private sanctum, create divination-proof zones. Also, an amulet of proof against detection and location is only uncommon -- costing 101-500 gp. That's totally doable for a mid-level crime boss. Spells like programmed illusion and hallucinatory terrain may be able to fool certain scrying effects.

A "cell" structure in which the true identity of the upper level criminals is unknown is also pretty feasible with spells like sending and even animal messenger for inter-cell communication.

I'm a mastermind criminal and I know the city has access to all kinds of divination magic. Perrrrfect. Excuse me while I pause to steeple my fingers. Ahhhh...

The pitfall of spells like detect thoughts and zone of truth is that the casters of such spells have a proclivity to take the information as truth. I will use that to my advantage.

I will lie not only to the city officials, but my own minions. They think they work for somebody else (one of my annoying rivals). When they are inevitably caught and interrogated, my master plan(s) will be set into motion. Through these deceptions I will set the city guards upon my rivals (where I have also planted incriminating evidence) in support of these lies.

I will become super rich, not through theft (how petty), but through domination of the city market and the ruthless removal of my rivals. I will be a merchant prince and use my growing influence and wealth to bend the city to my will.

Also, I will invest in some sending stones so I can have buyer/seller agents around the world checking on prices of imports and exports in "realtime" and take advantage of the ever moving market value of goods.

Who really rules the city, the one on the throne or the one with all of the gold?

#EvilDMingSince1978

[MENTION=5889]Stalker0[/MENTION] My thoughts were perfectly stated by [MENTION=6976536]OverlordOcelot[/MENTION]. I'd just add three things.

First, having the entire organization wear masks or a homebrew common magic item cowl of face hiding in public really curtails scrying. I wouldn't permit "that masked man we saw yesterday" as a "particular creature" for scrying.

Second, a mask or illusion magic can fool the senses of a dead person when speak with dead is a threat. The dead person reports what they saw, believes it's true, but they've been fooled.

Third, there's considerable grey area with zone of truth, but it requires clever criminals who anticipate the threat of zone of truth early on. Duping others into unwittingly doing your dirty work, such as slipping poison into the chef's spice rack, can evade all but the most rigorous line of questioning during a zone of truth.

There's also psychological tactics you can employ, such as charming/memory-modifying/plain-old-manipulating a creature to believe they committed a crime, so when they say "yes I did" under zone of truth, that registers as truth because they believe it. A magical fall guy, if you will.

And furthermore, in a seedy criminal underworld focused game, take a page from great mystery/noir authors: everyone has secrets to hide, but refusing a zone of truth or even trying to mislead/misrepresent the truth under one isn't a crime. Unless the police are gestapo, "I refuse to submit to this spell" shouldn't result in the NPC being manacled and taken away. And if you have players forcibly casting zone of truth in an urban context, there should be secrets that come out which have nothing to do with their case, which could make enemies of powerful NPCs. Similarly, cagey criminals know this, and may attempt to mislead sympathetic sorts into believing their line of questioning is about to reveal a secret love in a monastic order or some other falsehood. They may also attempt to mislead investigators into going after a suspect who is actually innocent of the crime in question, but has other naughtiness in their background and the power to eliminate someone pressing on the matter.

Finally, I've never seen anyone cast zone of truth on the original priest who made the zone of truth. So, corruption, blackmail, or leverage could work on the priest. And a priest could suffer a lapse of judgment for personal reasons (e.g. protecting a family member or member of the laity).

Hiya!

Two things come to mind.

ONE: Every "made man/woman has to take a dip in The Black Pool". Those that survive, have a permanent selection of resistances/wards on them (non-detect, mind blanking type stuff), those that don't, well, aren't alive to talk about it. Now this can be done in one of two ways...

--One A: It's magic, Jim. Yup...magic pool. Maybe it was where the Goddess of Secrets was actually birthed or something. If this pool was ever found by the "good guys", they would either destroy it or use it for themselves. Either way gives a potentially cool 'end goal' for the storyline.

--One B: The Black Pool is just a deep, say, 30', "well" with an underwater entrance. The potential "made men/women" get a heavy chain with a padlock tied around their feet. They have to escape before they drown. Thing is...they are meant to drown. See...the entire organization is actually run by dopplegangers. The victims are tossed into the well, sink to the bottom, and are taken away by dopplegangers/whatever waiting down there while a new doppleganger assumes the role of the "newly made man/woman" and surfaces. Of course, the water is some kind of ink, or maybe a series of 'flat' Darkness spells down to 20' depth, or whatever. Point is...everyone "in the know" in the organization is actually a doppleganger. Toss on some choice magic items for specific tasks and you have a hard to catch organization.

TWO: Don't use magic. Oh, sure, the good guys use it, but the bad guys specifically don't. They maintain their control via the old fashioned method: preying on greed, lust, pride, ambition, etc that people have...especially people in positions of power. When Jackie the Scar is captured and questioned via ESP or whatever, he reviles (obviously or subtly) that he knows the questioner has been having an illicit affair with his bosses wife/husband...and it would be 'wise' to remember that when reporting. "Uh...no sir. Sorry...Jackie here is telling the truth, he wasn't anywhere near the docks last night". You may have to make certain rulings on how some spells work (e.g., if the good guys get wise to this and so use two ESP'ers...or even secretly use a third to scan the minds of those using the ESP on the suspect...etc), so that this sort of "one-on-one" thing works.

I suppose you could do it a third way...just have the criminal gangs be complete and utterly psychotic, and only related in the sense they are all criminal acivities. Like, to the point where they do stuff because they want to...not because of any single over-riding goal; think Heath Ledgers Joker, for example. Oh, sure, the good guys may find out that it was Melvin Fishpot that was behind the poisoning of the entire Young Boys Choir because he was picked on when he was being raised in the churches orphanage...but that isn't going to stop Magz "Lady Death" Masterson from carrying out her gruesome kidnapping/assassinations next month. This could all eventually tie into some uber-reason that, even if the good guys know, there is jack poop they can do about it (ie, "We figured it out, sir. The person responsible for the increase in these psycho's terrorizing the city for the last year. Yeah. We know who it is. It's Titivilus. Yes. THAT Titivilus...the Arch-Devil of Lies, who works for Dispater. I think he's a bit out of our jurisdiction...you know, being on the Second Layer of the Nine Hells and all".

^_^

Paul L. Ming

In addition to the excellent suggestions above, I'll just throw in that in my campaign world not all magic is available to the PCs. NPCs create new spells and rituals, some of which may have a cost that PCs are unwilling to pay.

For example, some of the member of the guild get tattoos that effectively allow them to alter self at will. The tattoos are created from the life blood of the person they can transform into. Or they use a special poison that not only kills the intended target but also destroys their soul. People killed this way regularly rise a uncontrolled zombies or other undead.

Or the evil NPCs simply have access to arcane rituals they don't share with anyone else. The authorities don't understand how it works, it seems to work differently than any known spell.

Limit scrying to a person's real name. A gangster may go by Jimmy the Nose but his real name is James Johnson, which he will never reveal. Finding the real name of a high level boss could be it's own side-quest.

Some of these may not work for every campaign because I have a strict "no evil PC" rule.