How would you make organizations like the secret police a threat to psions, wizards, and druids?

>how would you make organizations like the secret police a threat to psions, wizards, and druids?
I guess they would be higher-level psions, wizards and druids?

Alternatively, I wouldn't be using D&D, so it wouldn't really be a big issue.

Make them psions, wizards, and mages.
Come on, guy.

Most wizards in a setting aren't super strong, mostly capable of things a bit above the level of parlor tricks. The secret police would most likely get destroyed by a real wizard, and probably should.

Aren't they all benders?

...

Yes but they don't use any anti-bender special powers, just regular bender spies and brainwashers.

What game?

Dishonored.

Pretty much this. The reason they're feared isn't because they're better wizards/shapeshifters/psychics than you. They're feared because they shut that shit down in a heart-beat and club you over the head.

Dishonored. The device he's carrying is a music-box that prevents you from casting any of your magical powers.

In settings where those who wield magic are freakishly overpowered, the only way to do this is to make such organizations run by and staffed by psions, wizards and druids.

Saner and more thought out settings may have better alternatives for muggles but dnd is shit so all you get is an obviuous and shitty solution.

They were the first to come to mind.

Literally the Azorius Guild.

Make them 100% Druids

Every animal you come across could be an informant for the secret police or worse, one of them in disguise

Every tree or rock in the whole kingdom could be under their control and you have agents who can communicate through goddamn weather patterns. I don't see how it couldn't just devolve into Paranoia-tier bullshit for players

They genetically carry a resistance to magic on top of charms they earn through training that rmeinforce that resistance.

This does not disqualify them from being magic users themselves. Nor does it mean that a magic user can do anything against attacks they don't see coming.

Also, cool masks. Because whatever.

And also hurts and confuses you. I've thought I'll be great against these guys in Dishonored 2, since I planned to refuse magic powers, but it turns out overseers don't even have music boxes in the sequel. Which makes me wonder what's the point of having overseers at all.

Task forces. Front mage and backup mage, supported by a cleric and preferably two paladins or one paladin and a ranged fighter or rogue. The specific class of two melees aren't as important as their ability to blow up the HP of the mage while the task force's own mage counterspells or otherwise shuts down the enemy.

They didn't really feature heavily, they were kind of replaced by the witches/clockwork soldiers.

Which i'm fine with, because both of those were great.

>Azorius
>Secret

If you're playing, say, DnD 3.5, and don't want them to all be casters too, give them some homebrewed bullshit, like tattoos that make them immune to all spell effects and let them dismiss all conjurations as a free action, and some kind of illuminati cube that traps the souls of any wizard who tries to teleport to their magnificent mansion. There's no build powerful enough to stop a sufficient amount of DM fiat.

Make it so there are charms or other items that counter or nullify magic and make the mid to high level agents of the organization have them, or have access to them. Also many rogues and the like trained in anti-mage tactics, like shooting arrows or slinging pots containing black pepper to prevent verbal and somatic component (too busy coughing and trying to wave the cloud of pepper away to spellcast).

Magical darkness is really good for this, especially when paired with a secret police martial artist. You'd be surprised how many spells require line of sight (Nearly all of them) and how rare it is for people to prepare a non-cantrip light spell.
Have them Shadow monk the guy's ass, take away his casting utensil, and pin before beating the shit out of him.
This is just theorycrafting, though, I could be wrong.

>The Room goes dark
>You hear a voice whisper in your ear
>"You're under arrest. Resistance will be met with violent force."

I like it.

If the city is big and wealthy enough, some enchantment that redirects all teleports in and to the city to one room kind of like immigration at airports. Nets and smoke bombs are amazing cheap answers. Anti-magic casters always make sense. Only attacking in groups that have each member spread out and coming from a different angle. Sniping from a high vantage point. Gear with anti-magic enchantments or a trinket that causes a null zone

The point being that they're a threat to supernaturals by being supernatural themselves

4 man Mage Killer squads, one of which is always a Counterspell-focused mage.
The rest are trained to subdue their target with grapples, restraints, and blows to the solar plexus, to deny the mages the somatic and verbal components of their spells (much like the CIA was trained to grabs spies by the throat, to prevent them swallowing cyanide pills upon capture).
The cities are seeded with spies whose sole job is to report unregistered magic users. Upon receiving a report, the squads are dispatched in plainclothes to locate and subdue the mage.
Once delivered to a secure location, the mage is processed, interrogated, and, depending on their power and disposition, registered, brainwashed, or executed and buried in an unmarked grave.

...

True, but they use super unconventional tactics (throwing gravel gloves around to grab people) and disciplined teamwork to take out benders much more powerful than them.

>OP posts pick of non-D&D
>"guess I should complain about D&D

>OP posts D&D classes
>"quick, divert attention to the pic"

Do what Ivan the terrible did but give them orthodox priest powers

A minority report style secret police, I call mine the Seer Intelligence Agency.

NKVD was competent and good at their job.

The magic, psionics, and powers of the common folk are all evocation type deals, maybe some conjuration or at Worst, necromancy.

Middle-class ascension from the peasantry into bureaucracy and management positions requires being branded with an anti-magic effect, rune, tattoo, or otherwise severing your connection to magic in a way that sharpens either your Body (aug strength, speed, dexterity, senses, instincts. Dodge bullets, evade explosives, break undead and summons) or Mind (Hyper cognition, intellectual boosts, perceptiveness, memory, insights) or Spirit (undeath, with caveats like Lich with Phylactery in the Phylactery Bank in case you go rogue, Vampire with daylight restrictions obviously but enchanted or otherwise controlled.)

Your upper tiers, elites, and enforcement are Illusionists, Enchanters, Telepaths, and Keepers of the Faith. People with powers and abilities that are all about control.
>But user, how do the stay in control? Aren't there low-blood shitstains with magic too?
Specific magic designed to make them Useful but not able to Rebel in the context of the mindfuckery used to keep them in line. Upper class folks either have long traditions of perfecting their specialization of mindfuckery to keep the peasants in line or else body-switch with heirs or new bodies they happen to like that decade and have simply been in power so long that they've maneuvered to continue to have that power or pass it to their successors.

Your secret police are the people who make all the power at your subjects' fingertips meaningless if they try to raise it against you because they can no longer raise that hand in the first place.

Suddenly Shadowcasting is the preferred police magic of choice?

Imagine it like a flashbang
But dark
And longer lasting

>druids

Why would we need to secretly police Druids?

Your elite and enforcers are all indoctrinated into a cult-like following worshipping your highest official, king, crown, etc as a part of their pantheon. Some of them parade about in public as an honor guard so that people know who they are and what they're about and that there Is in fact someone keeping an eye on them, but their actual field agents are mostly plainclothes, probably even have regular jobs among the commoners to keep an eye out.

You can't trust plant hobos. They might turn everyone vegan

...I run those three magic types in my non-D&D game...

Cheka/NKVD/KGB were the only way their society didn't undergo any internal coup, acting as a violent counter to the power of the military and the party, by carrying on the tradition of Russian secret police and ramping it up. Things didn't last long enough for the Gestapo to reach an equivalent importance in their society, and they had far less of a historical precedent. Basically the primary difference is how the people of the time viewed them: Gestapo were just less important and less worrying to most people.

Shooting your own men as they run towards you isn't as hard as shooting fleeing "criminals" to be fair.

They might upset our wealthy fur and trapping traders.

They might take poorly to plans to develop the cityscape out into the northern woods they like to gather in.

They might be prolifferating illegal or controlled substances.

They could be providing transportation and safety to enemies of the state.

Take your pick. Classes like that are a Means, not a Motive.

>My super special secret police are completely immune to all spell effects, can get rid of all conjurations for free, and can trap your soul if you try to get away!
>What do you mean you aren't having fun getting instaganked by my Mary Sue Orginization?

Never GM.

why corvo, as the lord protector, allow devices that can be used to nullify his powers to protect emily?

Consider the Wyld Hunt in Exalted. They don't have the powers the Solars do, but they're very good at rooting them out, getting enough force there to take them down and taking any precautions they can against Essence abilities.

The Wyld Hunt, much like most of the realm, is a massive paper tiger though.

Owing mostly to the fact that Exalted wants the Realm to be the most powerful empire in the world and yet fails to give them even a single relevant military victory.

Out number them 3 or 4 to 1, that focus fire one Target at a time. The element of suprise is always a good plan. 12 crossbow bolts coming out of nowhere can really cramp a wizards still. Magic items to help hide their presence.

Blackmail and/or brainwash the most powerful of your targets and make them fight their own kind.

Nah, barrier troops didn't do anything that fancy unless you were part of a penal battalion. They only served to stop thieves and cowards. Many soldiers thought they should have been used sooner.

Give them their own ranks of psions, wizards, and druids

Druids is easy. Just beat their asses. For wizards and psions some kind of anti-magic or blanks like in 40k who are immune to the warp and used to kill psykers.

The 4 blocking detachments of the 62nd Army totalled 650 men. They were expected to enforce a "no retreat" order on an army of 56,000 men. How do you do that?

There are way too many ways to play around "magic immune" people as a caster. It's only an advantage for as long as it takes a wizard or psychic to realise that is their deal, and if your inquisition is renown for being magic immune that just means that the first stop on everyone's train is going to be:
- Digging pit traps with magic.
- Digging pit traps with magic and then conjuring a floor over them.
- Levitating extremely heavy objects directly above them.
- Detonating bombs and freezing them in time the split second before they detonate.
- Blanketing the area in mundane poison gas and making yourself immune to it with magic.
- Mind controlling thousands of people to constantly subtly spend their free time searching for any sign that someone might be in their organisation and reporting back to you so you can explode them in their sleep.

Secret police *always* either need their own casters or tacit backing from a cabal of casters, or else not only they, but the entire state they exist within will be destroyed inside of a century. They only need to fuck up once, and then a wizard knows they exist and every single individual in their organisation has their days numbered.

By making them Psions, Wizards, and Druids

Anti-magic is fucking retarded and serves no purpose

By having an order of monks dedicated to THE LAW to make liberal use of diamond soul as well as their traversal manuevering powers

Pretty much the ONLY thing Monks do well is defy magic with their high universal saves, built in SR, abilities that negate area control and terrain penalties, and their ability to inflict status effects that are resisted with Fortitude

House rule that their Spell Resistance makes said monks a blind spot in any scrying or divination and you can even make them a thread to a higher level mage when in groups.

Run them like the talons from Malazan's. Train up your assassins, sprinkle in a few weak mages with relevant talents, and then give ever one of them access to a fuckton of magical items, summoned demons, and alchemical conditions while having the full authority to pull in pretty much any troops in the area they want. They might still have trouble with the highest high mages, but it than that, you're golden

Through fear. Obviously if all the 56,000 men decided to flee simultaneously they'd been unable to stop all of them retreating.

They're well funded by the Merchant Guilds which run the government.
Meaning they got any of the fun shit you can think of which would help get rid of uppity mages.

I like the idea of using psions to control wizards. Wizard's mind is his greatest asset, and a good psion can just turn that off at his will.
Druids and other faith types get atheists latched on and debate them until they give up in frustration :D

I don't know what kind of magic users you're using, but the biggest display mine can do is slight teleportation and possibly a personal time slow.

>>In 1E have Fighters exist
>>In 2E have Ed Greenwoods marty stu bullshit that instagibs anyone that doesnt bow to his characters
>>In 3rdE die a slow painful death and hope a Wizard isnt in charge of your afterlife as well
>>In 4th span taunt until he runs out of mana while using your hourly Magic immunity power since the games AI doesnt stop spamming attacks on the first character it aggros
>>In 5th...Bards?

And those three magic types are so strong that others are not capable of dealing with them?

Only DnD is enough of a clusterfuck to have that many types of "magic" instead of one unified thing that actually makes SENSE.

So far in this thread the consensus seems to be Shadowmonks, and I agree with this

>High movement
>Evasion
>Stunning Strike
>Stillness of Mind
>Incredible Stealth

So to get Evasion and SoM they'd need to be level 7. If we bump this up to level 8, a human can get 3 feats. Skulker works well with the Shadowmonk theme, Mage Slayer is an obvious must-have for anti-magic secret police, and Resilient (Wisdom) means they have proficiency in all the important saving throws, although if you wanted them to be a lower level you could swap strength for wisdom. Stillness of Mind means if they do get charmed or frightened, they can end that with an action.

As far as homebrew go, I'd also give them the Devil's Sight warlock evocation, if only so they can see through their own darkness, and I'd say their deflect missiles works on Magic attacks rather than mundane missiles - they "slap" magic missiles to disrupt them rather than snatch arrows out of the air.

Other good options would be a high Charisma paladin at level 7 (dat aura of protection) or other wizards with lots of counterspelling.

Was going to post this more or less; your secret police control people through fear.

Once you realise anyone can be an informant, once you realise that anything can be bugged, you have to treat everyone as an informant and everything you say could be heard by somebody. It's tiring shit, drives a wedge between you and the people you ought to be able to trust, and it gets worse the longer it goes on. An oppressive culture where you don't see the secret police running about, but you feel their presence and influence in every other aspect of life. The citizens are the long arm of your secret police, enforcing the order.

Same goes for casters - if it gets to the point where you have to go and bring the fuckers in, go all out of course. But good, law abiding citizens (or those that are keen to make sure they're ssen as such) aren't going to want to associate with trouble-making casters. There'll be nowhere for them to stay, nobody will sell them goods, and everyone is going to be whispering about them. Eventually the troublesome people will leave, and things can get back to something approaching normal. When the actual goon squads show up to clobber people, things have probably got out of hand.

Anima inquisitors.

The Dai Li used those stone hands to shut down the benders this tacit can be used vs wizards 100%.
People tend to forget that spells need stuff to work.
Fireball for example (To use D&D5e) Needs
V S M.
So a gag, a zone of silence or handcuffs can be enough to stop them casting it.
I can't find any that don't have a S(Somatic) needed im sure there are some.

Drug addicted asshole knights that can generate anti-magic fields and specifically trained to beat the shit out of spellcasters.

The issue is that supernatural people in Avatar are still incredibly common. Bending isn't all that special.

Pseudo-weebs are just as bad as ironic weebs.

Being a Druid isn't as simple as becoming a Janitor or Labourer.
Having your "secret" police be 100% Druids brings a lot of problems of its own.

Depends on the setting.

>There's no build powerful enough to stop a sufficient amount of DM fiat.

Never GM and if you are a GM, feel free to neck yourself.
What you said amounts to Primary School playtime shenanigans where you say "Nuh uh, I'm not it because I had my infinity shield+n active which stops me from being it"

Meta-magic can remove the somatic component, no?

The fact is any decent setting has low level dominated by the mundane (non-magic focused) classes and the high levels dominated by the supernatural classes.
Pardon my DnD but a level 20 Wizard should be a monster to face, if you face one which should be rare.
But in the low levels Mr. Bookworm over their is getting his shit pushed in by anyone trained to swing a sword.

By making them secret.
An unseen Assassin is just as deadly, if not more so, to a Wizard as it is to a Fighter.
Unless you mean they are hunting down those classes in which case the players should high-tail it to a decent nation that isn't at a massive disadvantage on the battlefield due to alienating a lot of powerful people and organisations (not to mention gods).

Name 2 settings where someone can just become a Druid out of the blue AND have no restrictions or duties laid upon them.

user, you are literally talking about a game of make believe.
What's more, an arbitrated game of make believe with a designated guy who controls the literal entire world.

>The fact is any decent setting has low level dominated by the mundane (non-magic focused) classes and the high levels dominated by the supernatural classes.

Unless of course the magic guys don't suck at low levels and the martial guys are just as terrifying at high levels as the magic guys.

well, in dungeons and dragons you just take a druid level, and in havens and hearth you live on the edge of a settlement, outside the walls, training your unarmed skill and punching bears while wearing antlers on your head like a crazy person. Nobody will disagree with you when you assert that you are the druid and offer them this bear carcass in exchange for trinkets.

I miss that guy. I shouldn't have stopped playing him.

With machine guns senpai

In that case then my Wizard Psion or Druid isn't affected by the secret police and I heal whatever damage is inflicted on me instantly.
What's wrong?
It's just a game of make believe, why do we need set rules?

I wouldn't argue against such a system, wouldn't make much sense to me but it would definitely stand out amongst other RPGs.

Yeah but you still have duties as a Druid and I think you are restricted in what you can use material-wise.
I haven't played DnD in ages.

>what's more, it's an arbitrated game with a designated guy who controls the entire world
This tends to break up arguments like the one you are trying. It's why one guy was appointed in the first place.
If you don't like it, you are free to try a GMless game like one of those super freeform games or kingdom death.

>Meta-magic
How many people are going to take "Subtle Spell" as one of their 4 picks. I would be most people take
Distant , Empowered, Extended and Heightened

Quickened, Twinned, and Heightened are like the 3 most common. So far, in the 7 5e games where people have played Sorc, I'm the only one who's taken Subtle.

Go wyld hunt on them.
Send specially trained knights/monks that may or may not have similar powers or weaker versions thereof or being heavily reliant on ancient (or "high tech") equipment and compensate with insane Astartes-esque training and numbers.
Also tactics, giving your gestapo specialized weapons and tactics is the way I usually go.

The role of the GM when using a pre-existing game system is to create a story and arbitrate the rules if there are any misunderstandings.
Even the GM must follow the systems rules, if he doesn't then he should make his own system and advertise as such to players who are interested.

He controls the flow of the story and has last say on misunderstood rules.
The referee at a football match can't suddenly allow tackles because "he is the arbitrator".

Common sense tends to break up arguments like the one you are trying. :^)

The point is they can famalam.
I agree with your picks but "Subtle Spell" (thanks for reminding me of its name) is still an option to choose.

>I wouldn't argue against such a system, wouldn't make much sense to me but it would definitely stand out amongst other RPGs.

Honestly makes as much sense as anything else. After all, magic is 100% fictional. It can be just as powerful or weak as the writer wants.

They use an alchemical gas that forces the air out of your lungs.

Its not a poison, so immunity doesnt save you. It silences you so you cant cast spells, and even if you habe silent spellcasting you have a couple turns at most before you pass out.

A prepared high level mage will be able to deal with it, but its a tool that can easily shut down 90% of spellcasters, and its nonlethal so a 'gas first, ask question later' policy is justifiable.

hell just a alchemy device that messes with air in general