6 players, 5 hours, 4th edition

[Nikolai II]

You don't think the ability for an entire race to teleport 25 feet is powerful?

Besides combat, there are things like Eladrin armies being able to teleport across (short) rivers and that sort of thing. Certain players can easily reach ledges and other obstacles that they might not have relatively easily.

Of course, 3E parties can do this, albeit at a higher level, and they generally have to spend resources to do it.

I'm not too worried about it, but I'm curious about the general ramifications outside of combat an ability like this might have.

Gragh!

My post got eaten by evil sprites.

To sum it up: NPCs use different rules these days - maybe only Heroic classes get Fey Step and not everyone. Or maybe it is a racial feat picked for the experience because it was the coolest one?

And about squares: I think they picked squares instead of feet for movement, to save DMs bother from those noticing that diagonals of 5' squares are more than 5' long, so the "one for diagonals" rule is clearly not workable and needs to be houseruled.

(One of my DMs has used the "one for diagonals" for about a year now - it's good for maneuverability )

 

[occam]

When I play dnd, I think in feet, and I'm sure I'll keep using feet in 4e. But I think it's nice to use squares in the rules so that metric people have just as easy hard a time.

FIFY.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Actually if that was the case, I would be very tempted to allow my Eladrin player when outside of combat to simply teleport around when walking, especially if he was a cocky-Bard/Rogue type.

Think about, *sees Tiefling girl* "hello, th..." *teleports* "ere" *puts arm around the Tiefling* "How are you?" *teleports away as Tiefling tries to throw her horns in her face* "wow... okay I get the message, sheesh!"

This is exactly what I expect and hope to see players doing.

I don't see how the ability becomes overly powerful outside of combat. If you can walk 6 squares, the only big deal with teleporting 5 squares is that you don't have to cross the intervening space. Perhaps I'm wrong, but my assumption is that the demo character sheets have a simplified summary of the power listed for the games played at the con. I expect a more detailed description will be in the PHB and might have a few limitations attached such as "line of sight" or something.

I will applaud when the party uses this ability to "step" across the 20 foot (4 square) chasm with a rope to throw back to the rest of the party, rather than spending way too much time figuring out how to get the first person across.

 

[Pinotage]

We also know from the play test that their probably won't be as much elaborate pre combat bluffing (in the playtest I know of there was none). Another source of complexity reduced.

That's a very good point. In most 3e games I've played in, planning and buffing before an encounter took almost as much time as the encounter itself. It looks like 4e will make not only buffing easier, but leave planning more general rather than going into specifics. That'll save a lot of time.

Pinotage

 

[LEHaskell]

This is exactly what I expect and hope to see players doing.

I don't see how the ability becomes overly powerful outside of combat. If you can walk 6 squares, the only big deal with teleporting 5 squares is that you don't have to cross the intervening space. Perhaps I'm wrong, but my assumption is that the demo character sheets have a simplified summary of the power listed for the games played at the con. I expect a more detailed description will be in the PHB and might have a few limitations attached such as "line of sight" or something.

I will applaud when the party uses this ability to "step" across the 20 foot (4 square) chasm with a rope to throw back to the rest of the party, rather than spending way too much time figuring out how to get the first person across.

Add to that: it's an ENCOUNTER power. It's not like the eladrin will be popping in and out of melee the whole time -- he can only do it once every five minutes, at most. Seraph's image of the flirtatious eladrin is almost right: he can saddle up to his paramour, get cheeky and then when she swings at him *pop* twenty feet to the right. But he can't pop there and back.

Actually, this makes it an interesting encounter ability: you can use it to get out of trouble (wizard surrounded by melee guys? *pop*); or you can use it to get into trouble (rogue pops into flank position on BBEG -- and in the process becomes the new front line).

 

[Ourph]

I don't see how the ability becomes overly powerful outside of combat. If you can walk 6 squares, the only big deal with teleporting 5 squares is that you don't have to cross the intervening space.

To paraphrase Scott Adams, "if I had the ability to teleport my neighbors would all be living on milk crate furniture, and that's only after I had all the milk crates I could ever possibly use for the rest of my life".

The ability of a PC race to teleport once every 5 minutes seems like a pretty world-changing addition to the game to me. Even if the ability is limited to line of sight it eliminates the danger from a vast array of situations that DMs have used to challenge players in the past. Fall in the river? No need to make a Swim check, just teleport to shore. Locked in a prison cell? No need to pick the lock, just teleport outside the bars. Fail your balance check? No need to take falling damage, just teleport back onto the ledge. And that doesn't even scratch the surface of all the fiendish out-of-combat uses devious players would likely find for this ability.

I'm not saying it's game breaking within the context of 4e, but it definitely implies a vastly different "challenge-scape" than most people coming from 3e or earlier editions are accustomed to in D&D.

 

[hong]

The ability of a PC race to teleport once every 5 minutes seems like a pretty world-changing addition to the game to me. Even if the ability is limited to line of sight it eliminates the danger from a vast array of situations that DMs have used to challenge players in the past. Fall in the river? No need to make a Swim check, just teleport to shore. Locked in a prison cell? No need to pick the lock, just teleport outside the bars. Fail your balance check? No need to take falling damage, just teleport back onto the ledge. And that doesn't even scratch the surface of all the fiendish out-of-combat uses devious players would likely find for this ability.

And that's why it's awesome. It's a ready-made way to showcase the beautiful inhumanity of the fey, without breaking the game. Devious players can always be taken offstage and pelted with dice.

 

[Mephistopheles]

And that's why it's awesome. It's a ready-made way to showcase the beautiful inhumanity of the fey, without breaking the game.

I agree that it does that, but whether or not it breaks the game depends on the setting.

Devious players can always be taken offstage and pelted with dice.

As much as I enjoy dishing out a good dicing I'd be more interested in seeing the default setting WotC will present with 4E being one that has a society that acknowledges and has adapted to account for the existence of these abilities. If eladrin are sufficiently rare then no explanation is needed as non-fey societies probably haven't had enough exposure to them to have reacted to their abilities. If eladrin are not rare amongst non-fey societies (and I guess having them as a player race implies that they are somewhat common in the default setting) then some interesting differences from our societies as we know them would have developed to counter the havoc such an ability could wreak.

Settings in previous editions have generally ignored a lot of the ramifications magic would have on society so it's probably no deal breaker if they don't step up in 4E. Still, it would be nice to see a setting that was built so that when a player asks "If eladrin can teleport every few minutes why hasn't X happened?" and the DM has a ready answer without having had to sit down and think it out before the game or come up with something contrived on the spot.

 

[hong]

I agree that it does that, but whether or not it breaks the game depends on the setting.

Actually, whether or not it breaks the game depends on the group in question.

Settings in previous editions have generally ignored a lot of the ramifications magic would have on society so it's probably no deal breaker if they don't step up in 4E. Still, it would be nice to see a setting that was built so that when a player asks "If eladrin can teleport every few minutes why hasn't X happened?" and the DM has a ready answer without having had to sit down and think it out before the game or come up with something contrived on the spot.

The answer is that it might have happened, but it happened offstage so nobody noticed.

 

[Ourph]

The answer is that it might have happened, but it happened offstage so nobody noticed.

That's only a good answer as long as nobody actually notices. If X is described as being present by an adventure the DM is running, or by the fluff in a setting book or just in an offhand way by the DM because he hasn't thought about the ramifications of the rules in regard to X, then the issue is no longer offstage, it's onstage... in its underwear... and it can't remember its lines.

Obviously, according to the 2nd Law of Hong, the answer is to simply not worry about it. If noticing X is a problem, just resolve not to notice X and play the game. But the problem with that solution is that, for some groups, noticing (and possibly exploiting) stuff like X is part of playing the game.

The answer to that is simple enough too, I guess. Just play a game that's more supportive of simulationist play. However, IME, there is a significant part of the D&D playing community who likes games where noticing X is part of the fun of the game. I'm surprised, given their ability to please these folks in the past, that WotC may* be so blithely writing off this contingent of fans as "too difficult to please" in the design philosophy of the new edition.

*Please notice that I used the term MAY here. No need for anyone to remind me that I haven't seen the actual rulebooks. I'm fully aware of that, thanks.