Illegal Magic

My players are planning on heading to a major city in a country that is known to have banned all magic
>how would fellow fa/tg/uys run a place like this?
>smaller towns surrounding the area?
my party consists of a palidan, Druid, fighter, and rogue and I'm thinking about whether or not they'll condemn holy magic

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ALL PUBLIC MAGIC IS BANNED.
THE PENALTY IS DEATH.

Why is the magic banned? D&D isn't a setting where casting spells inherently corrupts your soul or has a chance of summoning a bazillion demons if you fuck up. And frankly it's too damn useful.

So the most obvious reason why magic would be banned and the ban could actually be enforced is if it's religious or ideological in nature, and enforcers are either full of holy magic, psions or can reliably disable magic (and if your whole town is within an anti-magic field, a ban might be a waste of time anyways).

Maybe send an inquisitor to the smaller towns surrounding the capital to live like the lord of the town and make sure they don't cast spells under his nose /spoiler/they do/spoiler/

>D&D isn't a setting where casting spells inherently corrupts your soul or has a chance of summoning a bazillion demons if you fuck up. And frankly it's too damn useful.

Hey dipshit, D&D isn't a setting at all, it's a rules system.

they can't use an anti magic field if all magic is banned
lol

Depends. 'holy' magic isn't really magic as much as it is divine providence. It's more about channeling your gods power and gifts against your enemies or using it to aid your allies.

That's why Clerics don't remember their spells but pray for aid and why Paladins have to follow the tenets of their god since they are avatars of their will.

I'd say that it's all depending on what you'd personally consider magic. I'd say that a druid and paladin would be fine and thus would be unabated. Make it like the Holy City in Claymore where non-humans were totally untolerated but there's factions within the city that realise magic users have their merits and they can't rely on knights to do everything.

Maybe magic is banned because of some dipshit who DID summon a ton of demons or tried to become a lich, and then all magic got associated with that evil asshole

>D&D isn't a setting where casting spells inherently corrupts your soul or has a chance of summoning a bazillion demons if you fuck up

>he says, ignoring the fact that the book of Elder Evils includes a creature by the name of Father Llymic who was brought into the world specifically because of high level mages fucking around with planes-travelling magic

>it's too damn useful

Which is precisely WHY it would be banned by a city, in a setting where magic has no inherent cost/benefit system.

It really depends on why magic has been banned. If the factions in power have religious backing, they'll probably be alright with holy magic but want to burn Druids at the stake. If it's all magic, then I'm not sure how you'd go about it.

Personally I'd ripoff Novigrad from The Witcher 3: groups of purpose-trained mage hunters scour the city and surrounding area for magic users where an underground resistance movement of mages tries to fight back/escape the city etc.

I had a "magic academy" that press ganged all magic users into their service or else executed them. They were also a pyramid scheme that roped in magicless suckers with promises of teaching them magic, then had them break some legs to rank up from initiate to student and gain minor and generally useless magic scrolls and item. They never did learn to use real magic on their own though. It was the monopoly on magic users that allowed the academy to leverage sheer numbers against the magicians they were persecuting.

But WHY would a religious sect want to ban magic other than holy other than "arrrrgh in a racist asshole" said by an elf

They're afraid of Wizards becoming too powerful and being without 'moral guidance'/the control of the church, so they seek to ban arcane magic. Wizards have no sense of right and wrong, after all.

How the hell does banning magic make anyone racist.

Same reason any group with an arbitrary label for themselves wants to keep people not in their group from having the things they enjoy, because it threatens to legitimize their sense of self importance and uniqueness.

> Literally everyone knows of an obscure elder evil that hasn't been seen in millennia.
Unless you're an insane old ones cultist (i.e. probably not running a city) or a very high level researcher at some magic academy/ temple, you probably don't know about what is basically C'thulhu.

A much more believable reason to ban magic would be cultural/religious. The locals believe that their cultural hero/messiah was slain by a wizard or something. The details are probably pretty murky and no-one knows anything specific, but horrific details add up over the centuries.

hide your cards in a purse or envelope hidden on your person

no windmill slams

if anyone asks say it's yu-gi-oh

And D&D rule system presumes a very high magic society. In fact, it simply doesn't work without that presumption.

dnd rule system also presumes that the adventure takes place in a linear, single-path-constricted dungeon and MUST have a dragon at the end (hence the name)

whats your point scrublet

Explain yourself :^)

Therefore every single game has to be exactly the same? Why can't this just be another challenge to overcome? Maybe the town is ran by a very careful green dragon who is resistant to non magical attacks

>threatens to legitimize
threatens to delegitimize*

>and the D&D rule system presumes a very high magic society

WRONG! :D On almost every account.

Take your wiz-kid faggotry somewhere else bucko. Aside from wizards and spellcasters having enormous restrictions in earlier editions of D&D, and the potential to flub almost every spell.

Every single edition of D&D, except for 4th edition, explicitly leaves the level of magic the setting takes place in up to the DM/group.

So you're utterly and objectively wrong.

>Wizards have no sense of right and wrong, after all.
where ever did you get such a strange idea from my good fellow?

It really doesn't. At worst you could say 3.5 and 4e are sort of predicated on it, but even then a lot of it is autists taking suggestions about Greyhawk and FR for absolute eternal gospel (reminder that the wealth tables aren't actual rules, as they aren't in the srd, they are fluff).

How does this city defend itself? A single wraith could kill everything in it.

Without heavy homebrewing or delving into animu sword magicks, your party is dependent on magical items and magical effects to survive.

Yeah you could totally use 3.5 to run an intrigue campaign in a city with an all martial party, but the published rules aren't very supportive of that by default unless your idea of fun campaign is rolling Diplomacy/ Bluff all day.

>your party is dependent on magical items and magical effects to survive.
A lot less than it was in 2E and half of the expectations of AD&D were that the world was low magic.
>but muh DR
As someone who started with a group of AD&D grogs as a kid, I spit at your fucking baby DR. It used to be "have those pluses or die"

Holy Water, turnable by a relatively low level cleric.

Also despite what 3.5 may have given as an impression, not all enchantments have to come out of a magic factory.

IWD and BG actually had a lot of nice items that have backstories implying they literally just became magical items due to dramatic events. This was true to how a lot of AD&D magic items came about.

long time ago there was a country run by mages there magi.wikia.com/wiki/Magnostadt

where non mages were treated worse than palestinians in israel - but at some point a bunch of angry paladins showed up starting the War that lasted for generations it was during that time that anti mage laws were implemented
in the end paladins won and all magic users were put to the sword but the laws persisted as did the hatred towards magic and those who wield it

local people deeply believe that any unnatural powers not granted directly from a benevolent deity are a sign of corruption and that any mage wants to dominate the world with armies of deamons just like magisters of old once did

from their point of view killing mages and magic sympathisers is simply necessary for survival - and since it has been going on for some time now they have become exceedingly efficient at it.

They banned magic? HAHAHAHA TIME TO MASSACRE SOME MUGGLES!