D&D4: Most Unique and Interesting Powers.

Saelorn said:

A good society places some value on the life of a thinking creature. All else being equal, life is preferable to death, unless there's some sort of mitigating circumstance. If you think a criminal is likely to re-offend, then killing might be the lesser of two evils (above letting them kill someone else in the future).

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Medieval societies weren't shy about executions, certainly. Fantasy societies like those implied by D&D, might be much more modern in their sensibilities - they've also had many generations to get used to magical pointy-eared folk and their tricks.

If you know that someone can teleport, then that's a huge mitigating circumstance. You have to re-evaluate all of the probabilities associated with your actions, because the chance that this person will escape and re-offend, if you don't kill them, increases significantly.

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Only if there's no less extreme way to prevent that teleportation. Anyone might escape from custody, and you could take more and more stringent measures to prevent that. If the teleportation were an at-will ability that let the Eladrin reach any place he knew well enough, with little risk, and no way to block or prevent it, then it might be an issue. Teleport spell-like abilities came pretty close to that in older eds, so that'd've been an understandable mistake. The Eladrin's, ability, though, was short-range, and could only take him somewhere he could see, he couldn't even teleport into mid-air. All the jailer had to do was drop them in a windowless cell or even just thoroughly bind & blindfold him.
But it could be an interesting point depending on how common they are and how well-known. If they're just another race, every jail will have such simple 'accommodations' for them - if they're rare, but notorious, all your better jails will, and some might have special enchanted cold-iron chains. But if they're rare & mysterious, then they will just get away, a lot, giving them an air of mystery, almost like they were otherworldy visitors from another plane or something. And, it would say something about how serious the facilities are (and . A local constable who mostly just tosses drunks in a spare stable the night, and vaguely keeps an eye on them, probably wouldn't be able to be certain of securing anyone competent and determined to escape, for instance - and if he also hates fey, then 'detain this eladrin' might just be a death-sentence. A Château d'If, OTOH, would have oubliettes and lead-lined cells and enchanted cold-iron chains and the like to keep even the most mystically talented individuals incarcerated for their full terms.

That is, in a world where you want to think through the consequences of every racial and class ability and spell and monster and magic item that might be out there... In a world where an entry in the rulebook doesn't make something common knowledge, OTOH, such implications can often be downplayed, if the thing in question is deemed sufficiently uncommon, for instance.

I have had the privilege of visiting quite a few European castles. Every donjon cell I've visited has had at least one window- the one in the door the guard uses to check the cell.

Yes, many of those had shutters, but how much time does the prisoner need to use the power? Once that shutter is opened, he's out. Now, out of the cell doesn't mean the escape is complete, but it's a solid start. The question becomes whether the prison's construction and guard procedures are such that even that start is easily thwarted, or if it is as good as complete.

And how many successful escapes need occur before "capture" orders become "kill on sight"?

Assuming the prisoners don't reveal the power's LoS requirement, who is the bright mind who figures it out? If they do, do they implement eyeless masks? Or enucleation?

Given that every version of D&D ever has had a problem with spell casting generally and teleportation specifically being ridiculous, I've always assumed everyone's game had some sort of block teleportation McGuffin, whether that was lead walls, or putting it in a gold ring, or some other convoluted scheme.

In the excellent Zeitgeist adventure path, they'd use a lockable collar with gold thread. Bam!

If that doesn't work it's really easy - you use one of those confessional style screens on the door so its not possible to see through.

Assuming the prisoners don't reveal the power's LoS requirement, who is the bright mind who figures it out? If they do, do they implement eyeless masks? Or enucleation?

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Does everyone in your game murder wizards and clerics on capture as well?

The_Furious_Puffin said:

Given that every version of D&D ever has had a problem with spell casting generally and teleportation specifically being ridiculous, I've always assumed everyone's game had some sort of block teleportation McGuffin, whether that was lead walls, or putting it in a gold ring, or some other convoluted scheme.

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I usually assume that spellcasters are rare enough that nobody outside of adventurers or nobility have ever seen magic, and most people have no reason to assume that someone is a wizard unless they go around advertising it.

The_Furious_Puffin said:

Does everyone in your game murder wizards and clerics on capture as well?

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In most of the games in which I have participated, as player or DM, few prisoners of any kind get taken. In D&D, spellcasters that do usually get stripped, gagged and bound, since that covers their dependence on the most common of the various components. This is done because there is almost always someone in the group familiar with the mechanics of spellcasting, and that particular vulnerability. And all traditional D&D spellcasters in all societies have that same issue.

But with Fey Step*, that guarantee of familiarity isn't there. It is one race's power, and unless they reveal it and/or someone figures it out, it will be feared and misunderstood. That will lead to overreaction.

To out it differently, imagine if only one race had wizards and clerics. Unless and until their dependence on spellcasting components became known, their foes probably would kill them at any opportunity. Look back at RW human history at the treatment of those deemed invested with magical abilities: across time, in most cultures, any suspected witch not your ally was killed if captured.









* which never came up in our game

In most of the games in which I have participated, as player or DM, few prisoners of any kind get taken.

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To clarify, I'm not saying that "They will know us by our trail of dead", but rather that those who were granted mercy and/or surrendered were usually released. Often naked.





Of course, we DID leave a rather impressive trail of dead...

The_Furious_Puffin said:

Given that every version of D&D ever has had a problem with spell casting generally and teleportation specifically being ridiculous, I've always assumed everyone's game had some sort of block teleportation McGuffin, whether that was lead walls, or putting it in a gold ring, or some other convoluted scheme.

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Spellcasting could always be stopped by binding & gagging, (except for 3e with enough metamagic). But 'at will' spell-like abilities had no components ('at will' not in the sense you could do them every round, though you usually could, but 'at will' in the sense that it was just an act of will), and couldn't be stopped. There weren't a lot of at-will teleporters besides Demons & Devils, though, and who minded killing instead of capturing them?

Teleportation was one of the things 4e got a good handle on. Rituals let you teleport long distances, but needed a circle on the receiving end, so scry/buff/teleport was dead on arrival. Powers that let you teleport were much shorter range and required LoS, just not LoE, which does come up now and then. Similar case with flying, no invisible/flying wizards raining destruction, but some cute powers incorporating flight, like the Warlock's Shadow Form.

Saelorn said:

I usually assume that spellcasters are rare enough that nobody outside of adventurers or nobility have ever seen magic, and most people have no reason to assume that someone is a wizard unless they go around advertising it.

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That clarifies things a bit, for me. 4E is certainly not good if this is the world style you want; to be honest, I don't think any version of D&D does it well. Perhaps you could frig it with 2e or 3.x, but I never tried because I had switched to using HârnMaster, C&S or DragonQuest (the RPG, not the boardgame) long since for low fantasy stuff - they work far better, IMO. Also made a nice counterpoint to RuneQuest, where literally everybody uses magic in some form or another. Bit like 4E, really

Balesir said:

That clarifies things a bit, for me. 4E is certainly not good if this is the world style you want; to be honest, I don't think any version of D&D does it well. Perhaps you could frig it with 2e or 3.x, but I never tried

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D&D isn't ideal for a world where magic is terribly rare and unexpected - but it does work just as long as PCs are among those few with magic. In fact, it makes the PCs with magic that much more effective and important, because most potential enemies (and virtually all bystanders and potential victims) are unprepared for their abilities. Which, maybe, stretches 'does work' in a certain direction. And, 3.x and 4e don't assume that PC classes are universal. 3.5 assumes class/level is universal, but has low-impact NPC classes, so there's no reason a lower-magic would couldn't have had a population with (virtually) no other PC-class casters and few Adepts - but lack of magic items could be an issue. 4e didn't even assume classes are universal, so NPCs were whatever the DM makes of them, as low-magic as the world required, and you could've even extend low/no- magic to the PCs themselves, and still have a functional party - 4e assumed magic items, but you could opt out of them, substituting inherent bonuses.

5e doesn't have NPC classes, yet, and the NPCs it does have in the MM do tend to have spells off corresponding PC class lists, but there's no reason they'd have to - and, magic items aren't assumed.