Sure. Obviously not if the PC was trying to escape a super-max, heavily guarded, magical prison. But a PC that managed to escape a small jail, especially if there was luck involved? Why not?
Highly unlikely but it would depend a lot. We do not know if the character is stealthy or not. Or has access to picklocks or not. Since this is thread about clerics and worshipers... I doubt that this could be the case.
From a purely mechanical point of view, a 1st-level PC should be able to sneak past or even injure/kill a typical CR 1/8, 11 hp, AC 16 NPC guard with only a small amount of trouble (and especially if they're playing something like a stealthy rogue with sneak attack).
From a purly logical mechanical point of view, the sheriff must have deputies (guards) but the sheriff, should be the equivalent of a veteran or something more along the CR 2 or 3. Way too much for a single character of level 1 to handle.
My apologies. Was not my intention, more of an expression on your comment. It was not meant as a personal insult. Even I can be guilty of lacking imagination on some subjects sometimes.
Sure, I think that it's possible a kingdom might not have the magic involved. For starters, depending on the setting, magic may not be common; it might even be vanishingly rare. PCs are often loaded with magic, because they go kill monsters and people and take their stuff. But how much magic do NPCs have? Does each jail have one or more wizards on staff? Are they built with magical materials? Antimagic field is an 8th-level spell that lasts for an hour. Even if it had an option for casting each day for a period of time to make it permanent option--which it doesn't--you'd still need at least a 15th-level cleric or wizard to cast the spell. That's going to be prohibitively expensive to hire even once. Maybe you could justify prisons like that in your world, but every prison? Even small-town jails? Really?
Mmmm.... This is not what 5ed shows us. In 1ed or 2ed perhaps. But in 5ed where almost all classes have magical abilities (save one monk, fighters, rogues and barbs and even them have a few subclasses with magical abilities). This makes magic very common and even worse, check the history of the Realm. Have you ever checked the amount of high level casters, especially arcane? The amount is staggering. So yep, pretty much common and even a cleric can trap a lock with explosive runes for a few gold. If something other than this key enters in the key hole... BOOM. Dead is the 1st level. And this comes from a players that did this during 1ed to show the DM (It was not me) that magic can do a lot even without high level spells. So all you actually need, is a fifth level caster.
Would there be a single jail cell for all criminals, or would there be a Medium-sized cell and a Small-sized cell? And if so, why couldn't a Medium person escape from a Medium cell? If Small races are barely known in the area, or are known but aren't really trouble-makers or who have their own areas (and thus their own law enforcement), who would waste time and money creating a Small jail in a human town?
Hollywood tropes are over and done in our area. Small size cells would be a thing with any place where halflings would be present.
Are faeries common in the area? Are they bound by human laws, or if you try to put one in jail, would a more powerful fey noble come and turn you into a mouse for your audacity?[/QUOTE]
Depends on the game world. I personally do not use faeries much, the Witchlight got me on it. I really like what it did.
Right, because I, a woman, want to escape into a world where I'm considered property of my husband and wouldn't be allowed to travel, let alone learn how to use a sword or cast (heretical) spells. Riiight...
Don't see it this way. The big difference with fantasy and medieval time is that in D&D women are truly treated equally. Martial or caster, a woman is as dangerous as any males and perceived as such by everyone and every races. A dream come true. I really hate how our world acts with women. Equal work, equal pay is not a simple sentence for me. It is a way of life. But we're not here to discuss the real world are we?
You can also rephrase the above to include "man who is of a different ethnicity than the local norm," "non-heterosexual," and "any person who doesn't want to be an illiterate serf who dies of the plague."
I do not use the term man with any negative connotations. I was not aware you were a woman. And truly do not care. Your opinion is as good as mine whatever your sex, orientation or whatever else you consider yourself.
So now who's lacking an imagination? You seem to be assuming that in an incredibly fantastic world that shares absolutely no history with the real world, has magic, non-humans, and demonstrably real gods, the inhabitants will have the exact same point of view as they did in the real world.
Education did a lot to improve the ignorant ways of mankind. Unfortunately, uneducated means that the error of the real world are doomed to happened in a society where education is so scarce. The game assumes that all adventurers are special in that regard as they all know how to read and write (often more than one language) but that is not so with the vast majority of the people. Even guards might not know how to read. Like problems, like solution as Darwin would say.
"That many forget." Or, that people may have deliberately chosen not to include because reality often sucks, or that people have decided "hey, this is society is actually mostly Lawful Good, so they aren't going to have such horrible prisons, and any horrible, corrupt sheriffs will be removed from office by Lawful Good superiors." I don't want to get into real-world politics, but I think we can all agree that in the medieval and renaissance periods there weren't any societies that were D&D-style Lawful Good.
I wish it were so easy. Remember that a constable's words were more highly valued than the word of a peasant (or free man/woman) and less so than even the lowliest noble. If the constable says he killed the poor sod in self defense, it will be more than enough proof for the lord.
(No, a Lawful Good society doesn't mean all inhabitants are LG. But it does mean that there's enough LG inhabitants that evil, corrupt people wouldn't be able to get away with evil acts for long.)
Not necessarily. Again, applying modern thinking to a fantasy medieval/renaissance world is not really working. But at least the gods can intervene in someways and clerics can be quite useful if enough people complaint against someone.
(And no, many people don't use alignment. I don't. But many people do.)
And I do. So what's your point?
At least until you rise as an undead and get your revenge...
Not everyone has the will to do so.
(Also, speak with dead requires a mouth; it doesn't say anything about a tongue.)
But requires the body/head to be relatively intact.
What sort of secret rolls? For things you should be rolling in the game, like attack rolls, Perception checks, and saves? Because if so, you're sounding like you cheat (by picking a pre-rolled number) to make sure that combats go the way you want them to instead of sometimes going awry because the enemy rolled badly. If this is actually the case, I'm pretty sure that everyone in my group would be ready to kick you out. If you're not rolling for attacks, skills, and saves, then what are these secret rolls?
Mainly perception/insight/investigation rolls that the characters are not aware of. Especially when the passive score is too low to my taste. So I do a secret active check. I take the first roll, write what it was used for at what time and go on. If it is a success, it is a success. If it is a failure, the characters are not even aware that they failed. At the end of the session, the sheet where the rolls are is given to the players. Sometimes, no rolls were used. Sometimes, a few were. The rolls are not taken arbitrarily as you implied. They are taken in order and this is to avoid the famous a roll? Why? I/We check too! If the roll is a success they will know immediately. A fail and they're none the wiser but the players will not go into "search" mode because a roll was made. And again, they do see everything at the end of the session.
But you know what? My combats are almost always really hard as well. I generally balance for "difficult" or "deadly" encounters, often several in a row (since I see no point in spending time stating up easy encounters that are over in a less than a round), and no, the PCs don't usually rest between each of them. But I don't cheat, and sometimes the enemies roll badly and screw up. Just yesterday, one of the warlocks enemies abound'ed one monster and it attacked one of the other monsters (I rolled randomly to determine the target; fortunately, there were exactly ten participants in the battle, making it easy). Because these monsters weren't allies to each other (they were undead who rose at the same place but beyond that had no loyalty to each other), I decided to give the second monster a Wis check to see how it would react. I rolled a 1 for it, and decided that it would attack the first monster. It only did a point or two of damage, but it used up the second monster's turn, thus giving the PCs a very necessary brief break from taking more damage.
Save for the rolls I told you about, everything is rolled in the opened. Absolutely everything. The secret rolls were introduced to avoid slowing the game because a "roll" was made. This speed up play by a lot and players accepted to try it at the beginning of third edition and they would not go back. It really speed up play. You might want to try it. But show the rolls and what they were used for at the end of a session. My players really appreciate this. They know I do not fudge. Ever.
