CSI: Waterdeep

[Dirigible]

premise of the adventure (which was an RPGA tournament-style module) was that local laws prohibited the use of magic to find criminals or convict people

That's a pretty mind-numbingly stupid idea.

InterPol are called into to investigate a murder in a small town. The coinstable tell them:

"Forensics? Nope, we don't use that here. Or flashlights. Or surveillance cameras, Lordy no. In fact, you might aswell hand in your guns, clothes, evidence bags and notepads... in these parts, we use sticks and rocks to do our detective work!"

 

[Nifft]

"in these parts, we use sticks and rocks to do our detective work!"

"You have a right to Trial by Ordeal."

-- N

 

[Hypersmurf]

Perhaps you can forgive me for assuming you thought otherwise.

Oh, certainly

The initial post was humorous; subsequent ones which delved deeper into the subject were more serious

-Hyp.

 

[Hypersmurf]

"You have a right to Trial by Ordeal."

"If you do not have red-hot plowshares, they will be provided by the State."

-Hyp.

 

[enworldatemylogin]

I'm assuming he means he casts Scry some time later, when the assassin has already taken his mask off.



-Hyp.

That's precisely what I meant. In my last game a few characters had hits out on them for a stupid reason, but the assassins wore masks when out working, and presumably when contracting out, (we happened to Scry on the actual deal going on, unfortunately nobody had Teleport memorized, otherwise we'd have solved the problem right then and there).

Being that my character had the Prophecy domain from Armies of the Abyss and thus had pretty much all the detective spells you could want, we could have used all those spells, but I guess we decided to make the DM's job easy and not have to arbitrate how all the Scrying, Commune, Divination, etc would have worked out.

 

[enworldatemylogin]

I actually remember seeing this in the FAQ, because similar situations have occurred in my game. The most current FAQ has a question on p. 50 about scy spells detecting people who have polymorphed. The FAQ basically says that scry tunes into a person's identity, not their appearance. Scrying an enemy of yours who is impersonating someone else will reveal that your enemy has changed their appearance.

So, in the case of the masked killer, the spellcaster can focus in on "that guy who shot at me." I'd call this second-hand knowledge at best, so the roll would be higher. Also, in 3.5 (don't remember 3.0), if someone makes their save against your scry spell, you can't attempt to scry them again for the next 24 hours.

Of course, any assassin who succeeds at one or two jobs should use the funds for an amulet of nondetection ASAP.

I didn't think to look in the FAQ, but as you can see in my previous post, I decided playing the DM's version, (walking out each day wondering which roof top the crossbow bolt would come from), was going to keep him happier. Sometimes you have to keep the DM happy. Besides, by that time all the other character who had been part of the original contract had stopped playing or died from "normal" adventuring battles.

 

[Hypersmurf]

There's a series of books - The Fencer Trilogy - by KJ Parker.

I bought the first book on the strength of three words in the back cover blurb; the main character's occupation.

Fencer at law.

You take someone to court? You hire a lawyer, they hire a lawyer. The particulars of the dispute are formally read to the court... and then the lawyers fight to the death with swords.

And lawyers might not be cheap, but they always get paid... because for certain classes of legal action, which includes disputes over unpaid fees, the litigants must represent themselves.

You don't want a lawyer filing a personal suit against you in Perimadeia

The series isn't bad. A bit weird in places... a bit macabre in others. But that image is so damned cool

-Hyp.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

Ok, so suppose your players are hired to be investigators in some major, magical metropolitan area. What sorts of problems do you give them to solve that take into account the benefits that magic provides (either requiring them for the solution, or counteracting all the magical approaches completely).

Really good would be solid locked-room mysteries that would hold up to D&D magic -- or murders that survive divinations and speak with dead.

For example, a treasure disappears from a locked, guarded room on the interior, ground floor of a castle, with no exterior walls, no windows, and only a single door. Guards observed the door the entire time; it dod not open, and the room is airtight. The room is kept in darkness, and protected by a dimensional anchor. When opened, the treasure was gone; everything else is untouched.

[One solution could be to cast a stone tell on the room, revealing that a mage assisted by a Xorn used a passwall to tunnel in from below. Hey, I didn't say it would be a good example!]

Thanks to Hyp for the idea!

Approach it like the movie Minority Report. Divinations are like the precogs in the movie. You'll see the event happening but is the perps wear masks or some kind of disguise then you won't be able to accurately identify the perp. Better yet, say I was a magical conspirator and I wanted to get a noted merchant or noble convicted. I'd cast alter self or polymorph on either myself or an assassin to look like the person I want convicted and then go kill someone, knowing that the investigators will use divination or speak with dead. The person I was impersonating is then implicated and thrown in jail.

 

[Felon]

That's a pretty mind-numbingly stupid idea. InterPol are called into to investigate a murder in a small town. The coinstable tell them: "Forensics? Nope, we don't use that here. Or flashlights. Or surveillance cameras, Lordy no. In fact, you might aswell hand in your guns, clothes, evidence bags and notepads... in these parts, we use sticks and rocks to do our detective work!"

Perhaps they're talking about a crime in a place that's got the same view of magic that the Amish have about technology. Namely, that it's unnatural and wrong.

Sure it seems stupid. Then again, there are people today who won't allow family members to receive medicine to save their lives because it violates their beliefs. Are their beliefs mind-numblingly stupid? Draw your own conclusions.

 

[Felon]

Having watched my share of CSI, I think there are a couple of ingredients that you should bear in mind doing a campaign that emulates its style:

First of all, it's OK if the characters can use magic to come up with some easy answers. The CSI team get easy answers through basic forensics all the time, but they just lead to more questions. They either provide a seemingly impossible, paradoxical murder scenario, or conversely the answers are so misleading that the obvious, occam's-razor conclusion that they draw from those answers send the team off on a wild goose chase.

For instance, if a Commune spell reveals that Kyrellan was murdered by Kyrellan, does that mean that it was suicide, or perhaps a mirror of opposition was involved, or perhaps someone else named Kyrellan? In the case of a suicide, your challenge as a DM is to make it look like the method of death is a seemingly impossible method of killing oneself. In the latter case where the murderer is another guy named Kyrellan, you as a DM have to establish what exactly is the weight of a name per se. If I have my name legally changed to Kyrellan, then murder somebody else named Kyrellan, and then have it legally changed to something else, how will that affect a Commune? Will it offer verification based on my first name, the name it was when I commited the murder, or the name I currently have? Or all of the above? Will my alias "Felon" serve as my name if that's the only way you know me, even though that's not my real name? That could really confuse a party.

Secondly, rather than having the killer use a Ring of Nondetection or Mind Blank to ensure that the simplest, most direct methods won't work (which the party are likely to find boring if those are used constantly), the killer should ensure that the simple, direct methods will still seem to work as far as the investigators are concerned, thus throwing them off the trail.

Let's take Speak With Dead for example. The simplest countermeasure I have against that spell is to get rid of the victims head; reduce it to a state that Make Whole won't repair or just take it with me. But that'll just make the players use more sophisticated methods. Instead, I think I'd rather make that squealing noggin work for me by making its former owner believe it was murdered by somebody else. Heck, I could replace that head with the head of someone murdered in a very similar manner. Likely, the skull will provide some answers that will range from confusing to outright misleading. What are the odds that it will even occur to the players to use up one of their 2 questions per level to verify the skull's name?

Oh, and to be really tricky, go ahead and smash the skull, but not to a degree that would render a Make Whole spell ineffective. The players might just think you screwed-up and didn't cover all the bases. Once they're convinced they caught you making a mistake, watch how quickly they become overconfident and don't cover all of their bases.