Summary
When we’re adventuring inDungeons & Dragons,we’re so invested in the story and all the stakes involved in it, focused on how to take the big bad down and having a blast with all the combat and more, that we often forget how illegal our actions can be - luckily it’s just a game, right?
From killing to taking whatever you want to even things that are considered war crimes, some parties can go a bit wild when trying to defeat the main villain. Hopefully, the party is doing that for the greater good, but we all know that’s not always the case.
1Murder
The Classic One
Shall we begin with the most common crime in D&D? Most combat encounters end with the party killing multiple people, which, to be fair, can be excused as self-defense, depending on how the fight started in the first place. But that’s not always the case.
The main point is that it’s rare to see a character who has a non-killing rule (like people in real life tend to have) and even rarer to see someone actually going the extra mile to take the bad guys to prison instead of killing them on the spot.
Rules as written, anytime you drop an enemy’s health to zero hit points with a melee attack, you may choose to make your attack non-lethal. NPCs can do that, too, if they don’t wish to kill the PC.
We Should Have Started With This One
The Brawl at Yawning Portal Tavern by Scott Murphy
We already mentioned the ending of most battle encounters, but even if you choose not to kill your enemy, you technically already went too far anyway - again, not counting self-defense here.
As you (hopefully) already know, beating someone out of nowhere is a crime, though in a world like D&D, it could make sense for adventurers to get a pass for invading the villain’s place and beating them. That’s really up to the setting, the situation, and the DM.
Depending on how modern the laws are in the setting, hitting someone in extremely painful ways, such as setting them on fire, would also be considered a war crime.Evil playerscan even escalate the violence to things such as torture, but hopefully, you all had a conversation about boundaries before the campaign.
3Stealing
Or Robbing Or Looting
Another obvious crime in D&D is taking something that doesn’t belong to you. Whether you’re taking something while the person is distracted, forcing them to deliver their goods, or taking from their corpse (which would be two crimes if you’re responsible for said corpse), are all bad.
And yes, even in a more medieval time period, taking stuff from a corpse could be considered a criminal act, depending on the circumstances. Luckily, it’s hard for someone to track your party down for this, right?
4Breaking And Entering
AKA Entering The Dungeon
In D&D, a dungeon can actually be many different places, including natural areas like caves, as well as houses, castles, towers, secret underground areas, and whatnot. And these places usually belong to someone - even the cave could be considered someone’s home depending on how it’s being used.
Therefore, the party’s mere uninvited entrance into said dungeon could already be considered a crime on its own, and if the villain is tied to the politics of the setting, this could be a tricky way the DM can put the players in a complicated position within the law.
5Violation Of Privacy
Yet another crime that goes unnoticed here - mainly because the party will likely commit a few others before reaching this one - is violating someone’s privacy, which is so common in D&D that it can even be how the story progresses.
It can go from entering someone’s room to reading their documents, letters, or similar, and even magical things, such as spying on them through familiars or magic or probing their minds for information.
6Vandalism
Careful With Your Fireballs
Spells withan area of effectare fun, aren’t they? You can commit the aforementioned assault crime on multiple enemies at once. However, depending on the place you’re fighting at and the spell you’re using, you’ll also damage the locations - Shatter is a great example. And this one can escalate to property damage depending on the level of destruction or even things such as arson depending on the methods.
All that said, you can cause extra problems with the law depending on the things you break along the way, whether you’re using a spell like we mentioned or just doing the basic adventurer things, like kicking doors open. Luckily for most parties, considering all that damage is so taxing for a DM, that it’s just easy to ignore all that - unless something important for the story is broken.
7Blasphemy
A Complicated One For D&D
Blasphemy is tricky when it comes to the criminality of it. Not every place would consider it a crime, and if it goes as hard as involving damage to churches or objects of worship, you can just classify it as vandalism.
Still, in a world based on medieval times that is also filled with deities, it’s only natural that the players will get on some god’s bad side, which will likely be okay if it’san evil deity.Depending on the location or what god they insult, though, this could easily be a crime in the setting.
8Impersonation
Changelings, Beware
Whether it’s through your species, your spells, or skills at forgery - which is also a crime - pretending to be someone you’re not in D&D is relatively easy. The hard part of doing so is the roleplaying that comes with it, but the action itself is simple.
This crime doesn’t stop with pretending to be someone in particular, however. Pretending to be a guard, or even someone who works at a place that you don’t, could be a crime, so even if the party is just pretending to be a group of guards at a palace could already be a crime.
9Bribery
Let’s Cover Crimes With More Crimes
Let’s say the party gets caught committing one of the crimes above (or others), and this time they can’t act innocent. Well, there’s a way they can get away with it by using another crime, and we’re not talking about murdering witnesses. No, we’re talking about bribery.
Convincing law enforcement to look the other way for a few gold pieces is something the players could be arrested for - as well as the guards if they accepted the money. Still, getting a guard to be arrested is hard, so if the bribery works, the party is probably in the clear.
10Bonus: What Could Be Considered A Crime In A Magic World?
Magic Can Be Evil
We made a few parallels to modern crimes here or crimes that are just timeless in our world. However, in a world filled with magic, there are quite a few extra things you, as a DM, could consider criminal activities. We’ll leave some here for you to consider:
