A backstory must be plausible and doable from the character's perspective. Outlandish achievements will just be met a stern no. Both from me and the other players.
"Escaping from jail," where the jail is in a small town, or a larger city with particularly inept or easily-bribable guards,
especially when the character has special abilities, is completely plausible, doable, not at all outlandish, and is a thing that actual real-world people do fairly frequently. Unless you have already established that
every single jail in your setting is guarded by much higher-level NPCs and magic, of course.
At this point, I'd like to see what you consider an acceptable background.
1) Priest, Archmage, Wizards, Warpriests and so many others in various other books (all official 5ed) and even in some other books. You know that the spells in the stat block can be changed don't you?
Gosh, I had no idea!
Now compare that number to the number of non-casters there, and take into consideration that non-casters are going to outnumber casters in most settings by a
lot.
2) Define high level? 5th level? Only an explosive runes is necessary and 200 gold from the treasury of a baron for one cell/prison where you might have suspicion that a person can either lock pick or casts spell is more than enough.
200 gp
plus expenses. Are you assuming that the spellcaster is working for free?
Apparently the Adventurer's League has an actual formula for determining how much it costs to have an NPC cast a spell for you (in AL games): (Level)^2×10+(Consumed Materials×2)+(Non-consumed Materials×0.1) Using this as a guide, and assuming that Level means spell level, not caster level, and keeping in mind that high school math was a long time ago... that's 490gp, which is
significantly higher. And that's assuming you're having
glyph of warding set to either
explosive runes or a spell that requires no costly components.
Of course, you can just handwave this and say it only costs 200gp worth of rare incense and powdered diamond and the caster works for free, even though that's quite implausible. And that the resultant explosion won't take out the walls of the jail (freeing the other prisoners), or kill people it's not supposed to kill (the
explosive runes is a 20-foot
radius sphere)
including other guards who are within that range and prisoners who
haven't been sentenced to death. And if you set it to a spell-glyph and a non-damaging spell, like
hold person or
sleep. Most of those have a duration of a minute, so the guards would have a fairly low chance of even realizing that you've been affected (are you going to hire a guard to do nothing but watch the cell of a common prisoner who is only just technically 1st level, on the off chance that they try to escape but get zapped by the
glyph?). And then the spell is gone and your
second attempt won't be impeded.
But if that's the case, why not handwave the "implausibility" of someone escaping from a podunk jail?
And yes, in comparison to the vast majority of NPCs, 5th level is quite high. I'm guessing there's a chance you play a lot in the Realms, where high-level NPCs are a silver piece a dozen, but that's not the case in most other settings.
No I am not truly using modern mind set. Just logic.
Heck, If I were a sexist macho and saw an angry woman blast a dragon with a mere flick of her fingers, you can bet your shirt that I would treat her with all respect and deference any man or whatever male is due. And with magic, you never know who can really use it. Danger level in fantasy is high and people are usually quite polite unless complete morons. In a world where someone can kill you just for the way you look at him/her, you quickly learn the value of politeness and a bit of etiquette.
Yeah, I hate to say it, but you really don't understand how sexism works. Unless you're trying to say that there's sexism in your games (because medieval mindset)
unless a woman can "prove" she's scary-powerful? Uh-huh. That mindset doesn't work in the real world (if it did, then there would be no displays of bigotry in places where concealed carry permits are a thing). It's not going to work in a game world either.
If you have a world where there's no sexism, or no widespread, endemic sexism (or racism, or homophobia, or classism, or whatever type of bigotry you want), then it's a world that doesn't have a medieval mindset.
This is one of the defining thing in my games. Observers are often surprised at how polite even potential foes are. You simply do not know how powerful the one in front of you is and how this person will react to a slight or perceived sligth.
Earlier you wrote "Also, what would he the point of playing medieval fantasy or even Renaissance fantasy and using modern world point of view?" This is
not a medieval fantasy or renaissance mindset at all. It's not even a
modern mindset. So you answered your own question.
You know that in medieval times, women were much more respected than in the Renaissance?
I am going to laugh hysterically for a few minutes now.
You have a
very strange idea of what "respect" means.
Were we not talking about a corrupted official? I doubt that a corrupted official is lawful good...
Who would be out of a job in a LG society.
The goal is to keep things rolling.
Here are two examples that happened in the current campaigns (I have two)
Players made an enemy of a powerful mage (read here, higher than they are).
That mage uses Arcane Eye to spy on the players. The passive perception of the best player is too low to notice the Arcane Eye on the spot (darkness, darkvision, so passive perception is at -5). So the players are unaware of the Arcane Eye. As they move, so does the eye.
Now what would happen if I asked a player to roll a perception check (and in these case I would call for the best skill to roll or would use the position of the players).
Did the PCs ask to look around for stuff? No? Then that's where passive Per comes into play. If it's not high enough, then oh well.
But let's say you want them to at least have a chance to notice the
eye, since after all, action is better than inaction. So you pick the PC that makes the most sense to spot it and have them roll. The one with the highest passive Per. The one who is built for spotting things. The one who's been paranoid about being spied on. Something like that.
You will get a: "I wanna check too" but no one is aware. No one. But if you deny a roll, you might get a wave of protest for nothing and thus slow down the game.
Oddly, I
never get a wave of protest when I say "no, just them."
And this still doesn't explain why you preroll. Why not roll right there and then?
Second example
Now in a game, if the GM asks the player to roll perception; this will put the player into paranoia mode and thus the party. Not so in my games.
In my experience, players are
always expecting something to happen. The other option is expecting that
nothing will happen, and nobody wants to play in those games.
And again, you can roll for the PC right then. It doesn't change the fact that most players don't like other people rolling
for them, though, but at least we can trust that you are
actually rolling and not just going along for the ride and hoping that you'll allow them to notice the whatever it is that's there to be noticed.
Strangely, the most recent player never even asked to see the sheet. He knows me enough to know that I would not cheat and he wants to keep everything a surprise. My other players use the sheet as a hint of what might have happened while they were unaware...
At our Friday Night Dungeons, a few people are surprised by the method just as you are. Once they see it in action, all doubts are thrown to wind. Try it. It works quite well.
Have you aware of the Geek Social Fallacies? I have to wonder if that player just figured that he had better go along because otherwise he wouldn't be allowed to play.
