An end to scry-buff-teleport?

[A'koss]

My biggest problem with S-B-T is the impact it can have on a setting. To be able to pop in over an area, wreak all kinds of havoc, then pop out again mere seconds later... The king might be safe in his spell-proof throne room, but the rest of his kingdom is not. Not his crops, not his towns and so on.

Most small problems that LL adventurers would take care of (small humaniod incursions, etc) could easily be dealt with by HLers in a matter of minutes. Before breakfast. It makes waging wars with conventional armies far less viable, they're simply too vulnerable to these kinds of attacks. Only on a smaller, skirmish scale, where you don't have HLers on either side, it's okay. As I've always said about wars in 3e - You get your HLers win the war... then send in the army.

If you just curbed powerful divinations and long distance instaneous travel, you can reign in the majority of the damage HL beings can inflict on a setting.

You can only react to problems if you know about them and you would have to rely on conventional spy networks, informants and such (good way to employ those LL adventurers, 'eh?) for information on potential threats. That takes time. And if you actually have to cross the intervening distance between Points A & B, you're going to be much more choosey about which problems are worth your attention. You can't just take 2.5 minutes out of your morning to deal with an orc problem on the borderlands of the kingdom. Reigning in these two elements makes lower level adventurers all the more valuable. And now you'll have flying mounts becoming the travel mode of choice for HLers, and I think that is much more interesting at the end of the day...

 

[Calico_Jack73]

Getting rid of, or nerfing the 'teleport' phase would be hard to do - you do want there to be some instantaneous magical transportation available.

All you really have to do is play in the Midnight setting and your problems are solved. A setting that is cut off from the Astral Plane stomps on the "Scry-Buff-Teleport" tactic.

 

[Henry]

If you just curbed powerful divinations and long distance instaneous travel, you can reign in the majority of the damage HL beings can inflict on a setting.

You can only react to problems if you know about them and you would have to rely on conventional spy networks, informants and such (good way to employ those LL adventurers, 'eh?) for information on potential threats. That takes time. And if you actually have to cross the intervening distance between Points A & B, you're going to be much more choosey about which problems are worth your attention. You can't just take 2.5 minutes out of your morning to deal with an orc problem on the borderlands of the kingdom. Reigning in these two elements makes lower level adventurers all the more valuable. And now you'll have flying mounts becoming the travel mode of choice for HLers, and I think that is much more interesting at the end of the day...

On the downside, it cuts out a wealth of adventure opportunities by doing so, and means that adventures will follow a similar format all the time, as you said the players will be reactive all the time instead of proactive. To me, it's like saying that you can only conduct a war with rifles instead of missiles and bombs, or only using fire-and-forgets when you have smart missiles at your disposal. (By "disposal", I mean that the game used to have them, and now no longer does, effectively trying to put the toothpaste back into the tube.)

That said, it could go either way - 4E could have cut out Scrys and teleports, or reduced their effectiveness. I'm not sure which side of "fun" it falls on. How many players hate Scry/Teleport, I wonder?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

All you really have to do is play in the Midnight setting and your problems are solved. A setting that is cut off from the Astral Plane stomps on the "Scry-Buff-Teleport" tactic.

Way too metagamey. Why should the Astral Plane be required for teleportation? Breaking that through D&Disms is the wrong way to go about it, since it presumes that the D&Disms are compelling to groups (and to new groups, they certainly won't be) and that those D&Disms will never change in subsequent editions (if the Astral is removed from teleportation in 4E, Midnight either needs a new edition or suddenly it's Teleport City).

 

[RigaMortus2]

I don't think they should remove the option, but I do think Scry needs to be reworked a little bit.

 

[Stalker0]

For teleport, just make it 10+ min or an hour to cast. Done. It still lets high level adventurers cut out the wilderness trek if they want, but its nowhere near as efficient as now.

For scry, do what Arcana Evolved did. In AE, scry works like normal, except there are natural things that increase the scry DC. Being next to a large amount of iron, a large heat source, even a high disguise check can increase the scrying difficulty. And lastly, every failed attempt increases the DC (until you succeed). So if you fail to scry on someone a few times, that's it, your just not going to see him.

I really like that method.

And as for buffs, 4e's encounter model may have already taken care of much of that. If powers are more encounter based now, then there are probably fewer long term buffs, so you can't increase your power to the hilt right before a teleport.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I think the best solution goes along these ways:
1) Set a reasonable level at when Teleport or Scry becomes available. it should be a level where the campaign probably has gone through most "standard scenarioes" that wouldn't work without these spells.
2) Don't make Scry or Teleport too useful. There should be inherent limitations. Teleport doesn't need to teleport you anywhere to be useful, and it doesn't have to be 100 % instantaneous either.
I think the casting time is fine, because it is a great get-away spell this way, and I do not think that games can be hurt by that. At least your evil spellcasters have a chance of escaping certain death if the PCs arrive and overpower their defenses. But the arrival might have some drawbacks (being 1d4+1 rounds later than the teleport start, the teleported people being disoriented for a short time). The destination might be limited to certain teleport markings (another use for Arcane Mark?).

 

[Pyrex]

A circle of mithral redirects any nearby teleportation effect to it (but also helps for targeting the circle itself)

That's a really interesting idea.

*ponders*

Just how wide an area should a mithral circle protect, and just how "magnetic" should it be within that radius?

I'd expect that the radius would be a function of the amount of Mithral used and it's "magneticness" would be represented by a Spellcraft check against a DC set by the Craft check used to create the circle.

Anyone who wanted to land in the circle would subtract, say, half the DC from their percentile "on-target" roll...

 

[Henry]

Monte Cook in Arcana Unearthed incorporated the concept of "teleportation ley lines." There were certain paths criss-crossing the earth that teleports worked to. If your destination was somewhere along that path, then you were good to go. If your destination were outside of that lattice, then you had to travel there with more conventional means. So, Major cities with guardposts, etc. might have been intentionally built across a "ley line" to facilitate travel, while an evil stronghold might be intentionally built in a location remote to those lines. For fun, you can say that magical fluctuations alter the lattice; in 400 years' time, what was a strong line might have faded, forcing longer travel times. An evil stronghold might suddenly now be right on a strong ley line that just formed, causing interesting times. That's one thought.

 

[Nifft]

An idea someone else came up with, but which I'll probably be stealing for my next setting, is the idea that teleportation magic only functions at certain times of day. So you can teleport "out" at any time, but you will always appear at your destination at dawn, noon or dusk (depending on the type of magic used).

Departures aren't a problem; it's arrivals which need regulation.

Cheers, -- N