Help with Institutional Magic Abuse

[Carpe DM]

Folks:

I'm designing a fascist society to be the bad guys for a law vs. freedom campaign. What I need is the biggest within-the-rules abuses of magic as invasion of personal privacy that this society could perpetrate on a day-to-day basis. The rules are as follows.

1. Lowest level magic possible. "Wishing" for all miscreants to explode every day is possible, but implausible.

2. Communication magic would be great. If police can call in the big guns, adventurers will have to beware. Sending would be perfect, but is a little high level. Message, similarly, but the range is quite low.

3. Divination magic would be great. I find that divinations suck at actually predicting the future in D&D; I guess that's a function of magic being a Player Character phenomenon. But if someone could figure out how to do some serious Minority Report with divinations, that would be fantastic.

4. Cheap magic items are fine, but remember that they would have to be parceled out. And RAW magic items would be preferred to self-designed ones.

5. Limited monster use. That is, if a monster can detect thoughts, and would plausibly be enslaved by these people, then it's not beyond the pale for them to dominate it and then use it permanently to read minds. Again, the more "mundane" the spell combo, the better. This should feel like "oh, of course a fascist society would do that." And not "Well, anyone could gate in a Balor and take over a country." Low-level is good.

Things I fantasize about: City Watch calling in a high-level on-duty squad to deal with powered bad guys (the PCs). Diviners permitting people to be arrested before they do anything wrong. Endemic use of truth magic.

Your help in setting up the institutions that will make this society really sick and really wrong is much appreciated.

 

[Rolzup]

Dancing Lights can be quite useful. 0 level spell, you can put a series of lights pretty high in the air. Different colors and patterns can be used to indicate what kind of opposition a patrol is facing, and a troop of elite guard with potions of Flight can get to their position pretty quickly, if you've got someone in a watch tower looking for the alarm signal. Works best at night, but should be visible even during the day.

And there's the spell from Complete Scoundrel that allows one to turn a common coin into a bugging device....

I also seem to remember a spell which turns two mirrors into a sort of walky-talky system. No idea what the source was, although it was from Wizards, and it might not have been mirrors....

 

[Wardo]

I know you said to avoid monsters, but an entire doppelganger secret police force would be pretty cool, for the combination of disguise and detect thoughts. If that doesn't sit right, a squadron of sorcerers and bards could do the same thing with disguise self, alter self, and detect thoughts.

In fact, now that I say it, an entire secret police force of bards would go a long way toward making people not trust each other (and therefore not collaborate), plus it would make the bard into a far cooler "spy" class for your campaign world. You might have people fighting over the chance to play one that's turned against his masters. Just change the bard alignment requirement from chaotic to lawful and bam! Instant flavour.

 

[Bad Paper]

Check the Insignia spells from the Player's Handbook 2. I don't have the book here, but off the top of my head I can think of the Alarm and Warding flavors. Everyone attuned to the spell carries a little trinket that alerts everyone within long range, I think, and maybe people get buffs, too. I can't remember the details, sorry, but it would be a way for, say, the sergeant to alert and buff all of his troops within range.

If it wouldn't be appropriate for city patrols, it is certainly appropriate for the center(s) of power, e.g. city hall, the temple, the police station, whatever. It suddenly puts everyone on "red alert."

I have been thinking of a campaign like this, too, and one thing that would really work well is to have at least ten per cent of the populace in the pay of the government as informers. If someone spots something amiss, or can submit choice morsels of information to the government, then they get a tidy little reward, very hush-hush.

Also to have very few of the active police be actually in uniform, to instill paranoia amongst the citizens.

Set up an unhallow spell with either discern lies or zone of truth tied to it in the interrogation building.

Every once in a while a prisoner must be "disappeared" to appease the city's pact with devilry.

 

[Carpe DM]

These are fantastic ideas. I had thought of the doppleganger secret police -- even as interrogators, those are fantastic. Among other things, what they mean is that once someone is captured, they are never trusted again, since they could have been replaced. Nice little touch of paranoia there.

The dancing lights is brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. That's going straight in. Low level, and the free control over the number of lights as well as their movement mean that they can convey important information -- number of lights = highest order spell cast; movement of lights = urgency of situation, etc. And the distance of the spell is quite good -- by aiming it straight up you ought to be able to really do the trick and raise the alarm over the city...as well as provide a nifty teleport marker for the hammer that is about to drop.

And, obviously, I'll institutionalize Speak With Dead. These people are very much all about "kill 'em now, it's easier to question the dead." That's just an evil, evil thing to do.

Another thought -- Imps as familiars for the Forensic Spellcasters. Commune for free once per week? Sign me up. Really permits institutionalized Commune, whereas the XP loss would make it too hard to use regularly otherwise.

As for the Insignia spells, I'm making a mistake somewhere -- I checked PH2, didn't find them. Thoughts?

Carpe

 

[XO]

Another Ingredient...

Mix in some Midnight and watch the Dancing Lights (sparks) fly...

 

[nittanytbone]

Think about speeding for a minute: The government can't possibly watch all cars all the time, but people still slow down when they see a sign that says "Targeted Enforcement Area," "Speed Monitered by Aircraft," or other such warning. By watching just a few cars, and making an example of even fewer, a large deterrent effect is created.

The Secret Police example above works on this principle: The government (via a Shape Changed bard) can't really be watching all the time, but you can't know when it is.

I would tailor my operations around this principle. Scry on people randomly. Occasionally let the Secret Police bust someone, publicly, as an example. Use Detect Magic or Detect Poison or Detect Good/Chaos to shake people down -- at random -- in the market for contraband (items... or ethics/morals!). Use Message to target people in the crowd at random to eavesdrop (it sends and receives), or make it mandatory for people to whisper prayers to themselves at regular intervals (so you never know who is whispering to the Police). Brand people with Arcane Marks. Use Disguise Self to hide enforcers.

Mundane measures like forcing people to have identification (even if its just a simple bronze token or something -- which can be Locate Object-ed...), forbidding the carrying of large amounts of foreign currency, controlling access to and from the city, charging exorbiant taxes, taking hostages, and so on are also effective at keeping the people down.

I would just set a X% chance that the PCs get busted if they're in a public place and don't take extraordinary precautions, then figure out how it happened. The point is that the gov't is unpredictable in its enforcement, thus ensuring a deterrent effect far stronger than the actual active force might indicate.

 

[Three_Haligonians]

In my homebrew, I have a very similar place set up.

Things I have thought of include:

- Constant guard patrols: Always in large, well-equipped groups. If there are lots of them about, they don't need magic to call for backup; a signal whistle would do. Perhaps one guard per patrol has access to a horn? Maybe, at various locations, there could even be an alarm station with a large bell, or gong. If you do need magic, Complete Arcane has the sending stone magic item; 1/day you can cast sending to the carrier of the other stone.

- Upper hand by law: Make sure the "state" has the advantage over would-be troublemakers (the PCs). Make carrying weapons without a permit illegal. Or the use of magic, or gathering in groups more than 5 (or less, if you really want to make an obstacle for the players). Of course, the authorities don't abide by the same law - making the party out-numbered and out-gunned.

- Remove due process: There are two really big preconceptions from modern-day law that most people just assume exist. One is habius corpus; the "state" needs some kind of evidence that you could be guilty before they can detain you for a crime. The other is the presumption of innocence. Take those away and you can really generate the "fascist" feel. You could have the guards arrest the PCs for "looking suspicious" - perhaps on route from point A to point B they could be detained and searched - even with detect magic or other divination spells. Maybe even have an item of theirs confiscated.

That last bit is tricky though, sometimes a player may take that as a sign of confrontation and decide to retaliate - which could quickly derail the game. That kind of thing is a judgement call for the DM who knows the players.

Anyway, I hope this helps a little

J from Three Haligonians

 

[Bad Paper]

As for the Insignia spells, I'm making a mistake somewhere -- I checked PH2, didn't find them.

oh, whoops, Races of Destiny. That's a good urban book anyway. And I *do* have a copy of that here. Page 166

The spells are:
Insignia of Alarm Bar2 Cle2 Pal2
Insignia of Blessing Cle3 Pal3
Insignia of Healing Bar3 Cle3
Insignia of Warding Cle3 Pal3

They are a Long range spread, centered on the caster. All wearers of a special 10gp insignia get a mental ping (Alarm), or ping plus bless (Blessing), or ping plus cure light wounds (Healing), or ping plus divine protection (Warding).

 

[the_mighty_agrippa]

You don't have to catch anyone in the act to instill the right amount of fear - just round up a few likely and high-profile suspects. People will get the message damn quickly about speaking out of turn if they believe snooping magics are prevalent.

Message, Animal Messenger, Whispering Wind allow for quiet communications between field agents and spies
Unseen Servant and humonculi can perform tasks for you (especially the Eberron ones)
Clairaudience/Clairvoyance allow for targeting of specific folks
Charm, Eagle's Splendor, Ventriloquism & Glibness let you spread lies and misinformation quickly
Calm Emotions and Scare are good for breaking up protests (Fireball is better)
Shatter is overlooked. A warlock with the Shatter invocation could effectively kill a business as an object lesson very quickly
Zone of Truth helps interrogations immensely.
Detect Secret Doors keeps people from hiding contraband or people from the law.
Locate Oject helps in raids