D&D 5E What would a 'real' D&D society look like?

Actually I had been thinking of a follow-up post along these exact lines: "what does an effective prison look like in a D&D world?" :)

In my campaign they look just like normal prisons. But if a prisoner is believed to have magical abilities that allow him to escape, they may just have him executed instead.

I have a group of witch-pirates in my campaign setting that go a little bit further. If a person has commited a great crime, they are tortured, killed, then raised as undead, and imprisoned in little cages dangling above the harbor. They remain imprisoned as undead till the end of time, or until they fall apart, what ever comes sooner.
 

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Absolutely. As I mentioned in the original post I'm interested in the implications of the full set of rules, not just the magic.

Are you making the assumption that all people in this world use Player Character rules? Including the associated plot-protection from aspects of a medieval-level life that simply wouldn't be fun to play through, and thus weren't incorporated into the rules?

The claim that "all wounds disappear overnight" for example is one opinion about what hit points represent, out of several. There have been enough, not-particularly-productive discussions on that front before.
 

Celebrim

Legend
Actually I had been thinking of a follow-up post along these exact lines: "what does an effective prison look like in a D&D world?" :)

The original posters question was so broad and so dependent on the individual DM's assumptions regarding the availability of magic that I hesitate to try to answer it. But I can answer your question.

It looks a lot like a medieval or ancient world prison and nothing like a modern prison. PC's would find it extremely easy to break out of modern prisons, and virtually impossible to break out of medieval or ancient prisons. The big difference, is a modern prison is designed to be minimally comfortable and convenient to the prisoner, where as in the ancient world they didn't have the money to bother with elaborate systems for containing prisoners so they used techniques that were simple but brutally effective.

Some things about ancient prisons:

a) Prisoners were generally kept in near total darkness. Light was expensive, and you couldn't waste it on prisoners. Total darkness means almost no line of sight and difficulty scrying.
b) Dangerous prisoners (young men, for example) were generally immobilized when confined using stocks, pillories, and cangues. Immobilized prisoners are generally unable to cast spells that have components or otherwise use abilities to save themselves. Immobilized prisoners can't overcome guards with their bare hands as always happens in the movies or with PC's confined but left with mobility. And it's fairly easy to design stocks and the like which can immobilize something of less than demigod strength.
c) High security was implemented by the simple method of making the room a closed pit, with access only from a trapdoor above. Generally speaking, this requires magic to break out of.
d) Most ancient legal systems relied on a presumption of guilt, and didn't really care about your rights unless you were an upper class 'citizen'. Foreigners or commoners had basically no rights, and if they were threatening in any way but for some reason you weren't going to execute them, it wasn't unusual to take the precaution of maiming the prisoner. Are you afraid the prisoner might be a wizard? Snip his tongue out of his mouth, gouge his eyes out, and cut off his hands. Let's see how dangerous the wizard is without the ability to use any spell components, read a spell book, or target anything that requires line of sight to the target. In D&D, this is an even more reasonable approach, because worse come to worse and you need to apologize, you could also procure magic to restore the lost body parts.
e) Keeping prisoners is expensive and in a subsistence society you'd never confine a prisoner for long. Most long term confinement had to do with economic crimes like bankruptcy or being a political threat but not having committed an actual crime. In many cases even then, confinement by way of slavery was better than keeping someone inactive and not contributing economically, so really only nobles who you couldn't enslave had any sort of confinement to a prison system. The people so confined weren't necessarily 'dangerous' in the sense of a felon, and tended to be on good behavior in hopes of winning their freedom. The vast majority of actual criminal acts were punishable by death, because society had no extra resources to devote to keeping a person alive if they were a threat to the health and prosperity of the society.
f) One thing that is true, is that the more ancient the D&D society, the more it would tend to accumulate an inheritance of magical solutions to common problems. Really ancient and wealthy D&D societies can confine even high level magic using nobles successfully in moderate comfort because some time in the past some archmage will have constructed prison cells or shackles or whatever for that purpose because he either ruled the land himself, or else owed a favor to whomever did.

In general, even a very poor and primitive society can confine high level PCs effectively once it gets the upper hand on them. Without outside help, PC's are only likely to escape from an enslavement situation where they are allowed tools to perform labor and given limited mobility. In that case, they can easily overcome the sort of guards that can be hired to watch them, and then leverage their magic to defeat foes just like this was some sort of dungeon (and in fact, that might be the idea). But if actually incarcerated by a society that isn't playing by the rules of drama, keeping them constrained is fairly easy.
 

Oofta

Legend
Supporter
Are you making the assumption that all people in this world use Player Character rules? Including the associated plot-protection from aspects of a medieval-level life that simply wouldn't be fun to play through, and thus weren't incorporated into the rules?

The claim that "all wounds disappear overnight" for example is one opinion about what hit points represent, out of several. There have been enough, not-particularly-productive discussions on that front before.

Healing rules in D&D use action-movie logic. The hero gets shot? Well it's just a flesh wound. Bind it up, take some meds or a shot of something alcoholic and grimace the first time or two to remind people it hurts. After that, it's completely healed except you have to wear the bloody bandage for the next few scenes.

It also depends on what hit points represent. If you don't assume action-movie logic at all, then hit points don't represent much in the way of actual physical damage because real wounds can be pretty incapacitating.

But if it bothers you, look up the optional rules in the DMG for longer healing and lasting wounds.
 

Tony Vargas

Legend
One of the assumptions many people make is in applying modern, first-world logic to a fantasy setting. One of the biggest impediments to fishermen having Shape Water is that there's no-one who can actually train them, or if there is, why would they? Why would that person train this fisherman?
Well, if we're going to look at it from a pre-modern perspective, probably because he is a fisherman and he's training his son to be one. That includes handling a boat, making nets, reading the weather, spotting shoals, knowing the tides - and in a fantasy world, the hypothetical D&D type in question anyway, could include casting Shape Water.

Figuring that casting is an academic skill acquired at some institution of higher learning is very modern, first-world logic ... ;)

D&D Wizards /are/ all 'book learning' of course, but Harry Potter aside, that's not an entirely modern take on wizardry, it also echos the Hermetic tradition, which was secretive, master-apprentice training. Classic D&D, in which those spellbooks were always magically encrypted/decrypted and jealously guarded, of course, hit that trope a little harder.
 

To me there are other things to consider.

As an example, in my current campaign the world I have created has ZERO crypts or cemeteries. In a world where the dead can be raised or animated without too much trouble why would anyone bury bodies in the ground? Instead in my campaign world the dead are anointed per local custom and their body burned to nothing in a pyre. No one would ever want to risk all the potential dangers associated with burying bodies or laying them in a crypt.

I also feel that large armies would not be that common. It would, to me at least, make sense for cities to hire and pay for Adventuring parties to act as Special Forces type units. Th idea of arming thousands of peasants gathered in a local levy and marching off to war sounds insane to me. One moderate level character of just about any class is going to inflict truly horrific losses on that army before being taken down, assuming the army even wins.
 

Healing rules in D&D use action-movie logic. The hero gets shot? Well it's just a flesh wound. Bind it up, take some meds or a shot of something alcoholic and grimace the first time or two to remind people it hurts. After that, it's completely healed except you have to wear the bloody bandage for the next few scenes.

It also depends on what hit points represent. If you don't assume action-movie logic at all, then hit points don't represent much in the way of actual physical damage because real wounds can be pretty incapacitating.

But if it bothers you, look up the optional rules in the DMG for longer healing and lasting wounds.

I have always wanted to imagine that if you wanted to do ultra realistic combat then hit point loss is not wounds at all. It is you getting tired or bruised on battle. Real wounds, actually bleeding injuries that make it unable to act or concentrate, and over time will cause you to die. That to me would be Constitution damage. But using that either requires you to let people take con damage once they are out of hitpoints, and con damage cannot be healed by a simple cure wounds, and/or take con damage when someone lands a crit, which represents someone not grazing your arm with the short sword but actually driving it straight into your gut tip first to the hilt. This would make combat MUCH more lethal, but it would explain how you automatically gain all your "hitpoints" back after a long rest.
 

Oofta

Legend
Supporter
I have always wanted to imagine that if you wanted to do ultra realistic combat then hit point loss is not wounds at all. It is you getting tired or bruised on battle. Real wounds, actually bleeding injuries that make it unable to act or concentrate, and over time will cause you to die. That to me would be Constitution damage. But using that either requires you to let people take con damage once they are out of hitpoints, and con damage cannot be healed by a simple cure wounds, and/or take con damage when someone lands a crit, which represents someone not grazing your arm with the short sword but actually driving it straight into your gut tip first to the hilt. This would make combat MUCH more lethal, but it would explain how you automatically gain all your "hitpoints" back after a long rest.

I agree. Then there comes the question of "how much complexity do I want in my game".

I balance it out a little bit by using the alternate rules where a long rest is several days or even a week. It takes a while to totally recuperate from the bruises/fatigue that HP represent.
 

Oofta

Legend
Supporter
To me there are other things to consider.

As an example, in my current campaign the world I have created has ZERO crypts or cemeteries. In a world where the dead can be raised or animated without too much trouble why would anyone bury bodies in the ground? Instead in my campaign world the dead are anointed per local custom and their body burned to nothing in a pyre. No one would ever want to risk all the potential dangers associated with burying bodies or laying them in a crypt.

I also feel that large armies would not be that common. It would, to me at least, make sense for cities to hire and pay for Adventuring parties to act as Special Forces type units. Th idea of arming thousands of peasants gathered in a local levy and marching off to war sounds insane to me. One moderate level character of just about any class is going to inflict truly horrific losses on that army before being taken down, assuming the army even wins.

An armored knight historically was very difficult to take down, but it did happen. Grapple, pin, stab, bludgeon. Repeat as necessary. I think you're underestimating what a very large number of determined opponents could accomplish.

You're also assuming that higher class levels are common. that's going to vary a lot depending on the campaign setting.

Yes, high level wizards could be devastating for a short period of time. But everyone sleeps (or trances) sometime.
 

An armored knight historically was very difficult to take down, but it did happen. Grapple, pin, stab, bludgeon. Repeat as necessary. I think you're underestimating what a very large number of determined opponents could accomplish.

You're also assuming that higher class levels are common. that's going to vary a lot depending on the campaign setting.

Yes, high level wizards could be devastating for a short period of time. But everyone sleeps (or trances) sometime.


Take a small army of 200 men, its no world conqueror but its enough in the medieval era for one small kingdom to send out to raid harass another. It is foot soldiers, some archers, and maybe half a dozen knights acting as leaders.

That army either marching during the day or worse encamped at night gets attacked by your average party of 5th level adventurers. The rogue cuts down with ease any sentries, the fighter or barbarian will easily crush anyone that is not one of the knights and odds are he can take on a couple of them. The cleric/druid depending on type can dish out damage or disrupt attempts to organize and the wizard/sorcerer wrecks havoc for the first minute or two.

Then the whole party melts away and that army is demoralized and down 15-30 soldiers, possibly more with little to no chance of actually inflicting harm on that party.

The question just becomes which is more expensive. The army of 200 or the 5th level party.
 

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