D&D General Crime and Punishment in a Less Magical World

[Micah Sweet]

In one of my campaigns, the dominant polity had a no-magic policy, but they also had a terrifying Cadre of magic-using Inquisitors to enforce the law. The PCs definitely had to tread carefully, but there weren't a lot of inquisitors, and they mostly relied on citizen informants.

 

[Krachek]

The OP hide another question : What if the authorities have the answer to catch all these invisible, teleporting and cloning vilains?

 

[Baron Opal II]

How do governments catch and punish magical criminals if they do not have access to magic themselves?

Witch-finders

These are people who are educated in enough spell casting techniques that, while they don't have the talent for spell casting, they can disrupt cast performed in front of them. They have pouches of salted flour or talcum powder to throw into the air to find invisible people. They have folk charms for protection (which may or may not function). Some of them may even have a special ritualized brand or scar that protects them from all magic, for good or ill.

Part of the lore of magic are limitations. In stories and games, there are limits to how much magic a person can do per day, be it utilizing a personal reservoir of mana or favors from bound entities. Their lives are hidden somewhere, or their patron can be convinced to withdraw their grace from the miscreant.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I wouldn't allow full casters in a low magic D&D world. I'd drop all casters to half casters, with no further balance adjustments for them, or only allow half casters.

Being a caster in a low magic world is like running a modern RPG and one character is the Flash. The world is simply not equipped to handle the game breaking effects that the player can do. Think about how much chaos a 3rd level wizard could do in our world with Invisibility, Detect Thoughts, etc.

 

[Oofta]

I wouldn't allow full casters in a low magic D&D world. I'd drop all casters to half casters, with no further balance adjustments for them, or only allow half casters.

Being a caster in a low magic world is like running a modern RPG and one character is the Flash. The world is simply not equipped to handle the game breaking effects that the player can do. Think about how much chaos a 3rd level wizard could do in our world with Invisibility, Detect Thoughts, etc.

Depends on how low the magic level is. Some people might think that anything with less magic than The Forgotten Realms qualifies. But I agree. If magic is unknown except for PCs, D&D as written with full casters probably isn't the best game to be running.

On the other hand, even wizards have to sleep sometime. They have to eat. Even at higher levels they're vulnerable to attack if you're willing to throw enough soldiers at them. Escape by teleportation is tougher to counter if there is no access to spells like Private Sanctum or Hallow to counter it, but most governments will have ways to seize assets.

A wizard in the real world? That's what snipers are for.

 

[Starfox]

Wizards are likely to form guilds to exchange spells, to regulate the sale of magic items and services, and so on. If any wizard goes violently criminal, this obviously makes all wizards suspect. So any wizard guild would need to enforce order among wizards, even non-members. In the long term, such a guild would not tolerate non-guild wizards. Wizardry requires education, and education can be regulated and students can be listed and either recruited or made outlaws. So far so [lawful] good.

But then we have sorcerers...

Edit: With fewer wizards, any particular wizard is freer to do crime - but by compensation they will have fewer resources. Fewer wands, fewer spellbooks to steal, no organized market for spell components.