Scrying and Teleportation... Deus Ex Machina? ANYONE PLAYING UNDER ME STAY OUT!

[TheCrazyMuffinMan]

Forked from the "1 Constitution" thread.

I'm running a DMPC who's a member of a clergy which has Travel as a domain. Also, the head of that clergy is level 15, and capable of some powerful divination and teleportation.

7 km further out, A fellow soldier has an entire leg in the grave, as the result of extreme supernatural injuries. Since my character's head cleric sent our team on the way to the town where we are now, it stands to reason that he'd want to monitor our progress. His clerical capabilities allow him to do this from that distance. I checked casting times and possible interaction times, and this is what would end up happening, assuming the archcleric wants to work in the best interests of the allies of his lower clergymen, and not just the clerics themselves.

Step 1: Superior- Discern Location
Step 2: Superior- Greater Scrying
Step 3: Superior- Message to the DMPC, "I scryed on you guys a while ago and noticed one of your allies needed dire assistance. I'll send someone over to help out."
Step 4: "(Clr9 envoy with Travel Domain)! I need you to teleport over to the town where (my PC) is and aid his allies. He is in almost as dire a condition as one can get without being dead."
Step 5: Clr9 envoy with Travel Domain teleports to location (all Taras clerics of 5th or greater have Studied Carefully all places of Stagnetia, and Superior himself is Very Familiar with all of them.)
Step 6: Envoy restores Devin
Step 7: Envoy teleports out, and back to the temple (very familiar).
Step 8: Profit.

The whole thing would take 30 minutes to do, including preparations, social interaction and the like. If I was the Superior, I would seriously want to do this for the sake of the quest. However, it reeks of Deus Ex Machina (along with being quite the anticlimax), and I'm not sure if it's worth that. Then again, much divination is a tiny bit DXM by nature, so I'll think it over. In the meantime, any advice?

It appears it is a matter of story and drama vs. practicality and capability.

 

[Cheiromancer]

I think the problem is with the logic of the situation, myself.

Why did the high level cleric choose that particular time to cast discern location on the party? Does he do it every day? How many times a day? If he has that much spare time (and spare spell slots), why didn't he go to the town directly to deal with the problem himself?

If he has minions who can teleport all over the place, why is his team on the road at all - why didn't they get teleported directly to where they are going?

[edit]

Doesn't anyone have a scroll of restoration that is kept in case of emergency? Or the text of an incantation that a 6th level cleric has a chance of pulling off?

 

[TheCrazyMuffinMan]

I think the problem is with the logic of the situation, myself.

Why did the high level cleric choose that particular time to cast discern location on the party? Does he do it every day? How many times a day? If he has that much spare time (and spare spell slots), why didn't he go to the town directly to deal with the problem himself?

If he has minions who can teleport all over the place, why is his team on the road at all - why didn't they get teleported directly to where they are going?

1) Discern Location was 1/day for Superior. The other one is his Travel domain spell, Phase Door.
2) He is needed to administrate matters in the temple and in Sherbet, aiding them as needed. Why don't presidents fight the war?
3) The prophecy in the quest implies that six people are chosen to fulfill it, one of each alignment. CG, LG and NG are already spoken for and Supes is CG.
4) The clergy breakdown is:

L15- 1
L10 to L14- 4
L5 to 9- 10 (And 1 of them is L9)
L1 to 4- 35.

So that is 6 people who are Teleport capable.

5) He always prepares DL as his lone 8 unless he knows in advance he'll need something else.
6) The ailment happened very very recently (as of the end of the segment) so the time of this hasn't occurred yet because it hadn't become necessary.
7) Another envoy was on his way TO Sherbet and they needed to see him. Nobody in the party is Teleport capable (L3 before segment, L5 after)
8) The ailing soldier is L5.

But yes, I may have erred in previous, pre-adventure handling of this particular segment nonetheless.

 

[Felix]

It depends upon how important the PCs are. A 13th level party might receive this kind of treatment, but at 4th level they should be quite a bit more expendable.

It's also micromanagement, which can be annoying as hell, fantasy boss or not. I'd advise that the PCs be given a handler; someone who isn't an 8-step get-out-of-trouble machine but who does have some pull in the system. Keep the head priest busy with other concerns, of which I'm sure he'd have a lot of.

 

[TheCrazyMuffinMan]

It depends upon how important the PCs are. A 13th level party might receive this kind of treatment, but at 4th level they should be quite a bit more expendable.

It's also micromanagement, which can be annoying as hell, fantasy boss or not. I'd advise that the PCs be given a handler; someone who isn't an 8-step get-out-of-trouble machine but who does have some pull in the system. Keep the head priest busy with other concerns, of which I'm sure he'd have a lot of.

He does have a lot of other concerns. One mitigating factor of this (but not too mitigating) is the gravity of the prophecy that drives the quest, but it doesn't trump the others. It just commands a lot of consideration.

A less anticlimatic alternative is for the bedeviled soldier to receive palliative care until a Clr7 or so can be found who isn't preoccupied. Keep in mind that the kingdom where we are now and a kingdom to the north are warring, have been for a while, and they have run out of restoration scrolls for the day. Both towns are actually rather spent on war resources, and it's more of a race to see who can outlast the other. We just pushed the outcome a lot further in the current town's direction, so things will be better soon.

 

[Felix]

2) He is needed to administrate matters in the temple and in Sherbet, aiding them as needed. Why don't presidents fight the war?

Aside from the administrative tasks that should keep a president busy, there's another answer.

Presidents and heads of organizations should spend quite a bit of their talent on leadership and diplomacy skills. They're good at climbing organizational ladders, not necessarily battlefield tactics. So presidents, or head priests, won't always fight the wars; as much as they have advisors for administrative stuff, they'll have professionals who know their way around a War Room.

[EDIT]
If you read Order of the Stick, you'll remember that Shojo only had levels in Expert. Because high level Clerics will be the most powerful characters in religious organization, the solution is to make the presence of characters with Cleric levels rather rare. This way you can have Expert "High Priests" who don't have the deus ex machina powers of a 15th-level Cleric. This is usually the way I work things.

 

[Wolfwood2]

7 km further out, A fellow soldier has an entire leg in the grave, as the result of extreme supernatural injuries. Since my character's head cleric sent our team on the way to the town where we are now, it stands to reason that he'd want to monitor our progress. His clerical capabilities allow him to do this from that distance. I checked casting times and possible interaction times, and this is what would end up happening, assuming the archcleric wants to work in the best interests of the allies of his lower clergymen, and not just the clerics themselves.

Step 1: Superior- Discern Location
Step 2: Superior- Greater Scrying
Step 3: Superior- Message to the DMPC, "I scryed on you guys a while ago and noticed one of your allies needed dire assistance. I'll send someone over to help out."
Step 4: "(Clr9 envoy with Travel Domain)! I need you to teleport over to the town where (my PC) is and aid his allies. He is in almost as dire a condition as one can get without being dead."
Step 5: Clr9 envoy with Travel Domain teleports to location (all Taras clerics of 5th or greater have Studied Carefully all places of Stagnetia, and Superior himself is Very Familiar with all of them.)
Step 6: Envoy restores Devin
Step 7: Envoy teleports out, and back to the temple (very familiar).
Step 8: Profit.

The whole thing would take 30 minutes to do, including preparations, social interaction and the like. If I was the Superior, I would seriously want to do this for the sake of the quest. However, it reeks of Deus Ex Machina (along with being quite the anticlimax), and I'm not sure if it's worth that. Then again, much divination is a tiny bit DXM by nature, so I'll think it over. In the meantime, any advice?

1. Is he really casting Discern Location on the party every day? That's a very high level spell, and he's the only one in the Church who could use it. Surely there are a long list of other people that the Church needs located. The same goes for Greater Scrying. What useful information is head cleric hoping to gain from devoting these two powerful spells to the party every day?

2. You're assuming that he chooses to Greater Scry on the particular character who got drained and that he's going to be able to successfully diagnose that the character requires a Restoration spell from viewing him. Big assumptions. If the PCs know what time of day he scrys and make an effort to show him a written message, 'Hey we need a Restoration spell', then at least that's player action causing things to happen.

3. That said, the only real difficulty I see is that the Clr 9 is teleporting twice in one day, yet the Travel Domain is only going to give him one Teleport per day. I suppose he could use a scroll or wait until the next day to teleport back, but a scroll of teleport is pretty expensive, and waiting a day means that a very powerful cleric is tied up for an entire day instead of 30 minutes. Maybe he could Wind Walk back instead?

4. I think it's a mistake to be having a 15th level cleric spend so much time looking over the shoulders of a much lower level party. (I assume they're much lower level if they can't manage a Restoration themselves.) It just doesn't seem like good adventure design.

 

[TheCrazyMuffinMan]

1. Is he really casting Discern Location on the party every day? That's a very high level spell, and he's the only one in the Church who could use it. Surely there are a long list of other people that the Church needs located. The same goes for Greater Scrying. What useful information is head cleric hoping to gain from devoting these two powerful spells to the party every day?

2. You're assuming that he chooses to Greater Scry on the particular character who got drained and that he's going to be able to successfully diagnose that the character requires a Restoration spell from viewing him. Big assumptions. If the PCs know what time of day he scrys and make an effort to show him a written message, 'Hey we need a Restoration spell', then at least that's player action causing things to happen.

3. That said, the only real difficulty I see is that the Clr 9 is teleporting twice in one day, yet the Travel Domain is only going to give him one Teleport per day. I suppose he could use a scroll or wait until the next day to teleport back, but a scroll of teleport is pretty expensive, and waiting a day means that a very powerful cleric is tied up for an entire day instead of 30 minutes. Maybe he could Wind Walk back instead?

4. I think it's a mistake to be having a 15th level cleric spend so much time looking over the shoulders of a much lower level party. (I assume they're much lower level if they can't manage a Restoration themselves.) It just doesn't seem like good adventure design.

You bring up good points. Let me address them as I have others, because there are other context elements I failed to mention initially:

1) This is a one time event, the first time this has happened, and sure to be the only time (as it's a special case). Many of his DL uses are for other clerics and other people on sortie. Superior is on good personal terms with the head cleric in that kingdom.

2) He's greater scrying on his lackey (me) that's on sortie, about a couple of hours later. By extension, he's also seeing that lackey's allies, what they're trying to do, and someone hacking, coughing and in a hell of a shape. Again, one time event, specific, and used as needed for any of his away clergy, in dire situations, with spell quality being dependent on situation.

3) You're right, regarding domain spells. Wind Walk would be the right way to do it, and this would mean that a Clr11 envoy is in order, not a Clr9. My error there, sorry about that.

4) He's spending a maximum of 30 minutes, one time, tending to our party in this manner, because our location is important to the prophecy. He wouldn't do this often, and he won't have to. We're already L5, that aids things significantly.

This whole thing, and the thread it forked from, has been great for allowing me to learn the finer points of DMing. Thanks every one of you.

 

[Cheiromancer]

If you are going to intervene in the situation (by means of a DMNPC or otherwise), do the absolute minimum necessary. Using an 8th level spell, two 5th level spells and a 4th level spell is overkill if a 4th level spell is all that is needed.

Have a mad alchemist with an experimental elixir (maybe with a weird side effect). Or have the 6th level cleric receive an inspiration for a 3rd level spell that transfers the drain to a willing recipient instead of curing it completely. Or a have a civilian who might be willing to part with a scroll for a price. (he collects old books, and one of them contains writing which turns out to be equivalent to a scroll).

Whatever it is, it should require a decision or commitment on the part of the PCs. But it should leave them with the feeling that they contributed to the solution of the problem.

 

[Quartz]

I think this sort of thing is cool if the party have been told to expect it. For instance, in the second Dungeon adventure with the dragon Flame, he tells the PCs he'll be scrying them.