An end to scry-buff-teleport?

[Nifft]

How many times did S-B-T actually show up in your games?

IMC, even with the restrictions I put in place, it showed up almost immediately after teleport. It's just too good a tactic to ignore.

And it went both ways. The PCs teleported into the evil temple; the BBEGs teleported to the PCs' hideout with all the demons they could summon. It got a bit boring. Now everyone goes around with a mind blank up so the window is less open, but I'm sure there's a way around that too.

I won't be sad to see this tactic go.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Hussar]

Lots of things don't show up all the time but are problematic when they do.

How often did you see aerial combat in your games? I almost never did. Yet, I can look at D&D's aerial combat rules and see pretty clearly that there has to be a better way to do it.

How often did you have ship to ship combat in your games? I had quite a bit but, that's because I ran a naval based campaign - something of an outlier to start with. Didn't take long to realize that the Arms and Equipment Guide rules for vehicle combat are worth a pot of piss when dealing with ships.

Heck, there's all sorts of things that I haven't personally seen in my games. Does that mean that everything that doesn't crop up should never be changed? Couldn't it possibly be that changing elements might make them more likely to be used? If we had decent ship to ship combat rules, or rules for small scale battlefields (say up to 50 combatants), we would likely see them in the game.

"It's not a problem since it doesn't come up" is not a reason not to fix something that should be fixed.

 

[ruleslawyer]

Besides, it does come up; I had to deal with some variation of teleporting-surprise-attack on a near constant basis once my 2e game hit 14th level and PCs got teleport without error. Then came the sudden retcon to "everyone [or where] worth attacking has a defense against teleport." And so on. It got to the point where combats were endless series of near-instantaneous surgical strikes rather than involving any real subterfuge, investigation, or even having to wade through the second-in-commands to get to the top-shelf villains. Now, of course, one can design around this, but I really believe that one shouldn't need to. It cuts down on adventure design options; it doesn't broaden them IME.

Note that one of the big problems with SBT is that anyone who doesn't have mind blank or the like is much, MUCH less powerful as an enemy that someone who does, meaning that it's the same attack or the same defense, all the time. The PCs were able to take on great wyrm dragons and the like, in part because they didn't have weirdstones or mind blank; the problem is slightly lessened in 3e relative to 2e, since now practically everyone can have mind blank via items, but it's still the single-boring-defense problem.

 

[Fieari]

The way I solved the problem was by making teleport no longer something I, as a DM, needed to disable, but rather to make teleporting REQUIRED for the game. In a sense, I still had a "dungeon", but the rooms were each a continent away, and the connections weren't hallways, they were clues. Minions to be interrogated. Foreign coins popping up in strange places. That sort of thing. My players were restricted not by location, but by <i>knowledge</i>, and occasionally fear, when I would make it clear that a particular group was prepared against them. Rarely was dimensional lock needed. Once or twice I used lead.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

How many times did S-B-T actually show up in your games?

After the party wizard learned Greater Teleport, all the time. And why not? It's a brilliantly useful tactic; it just gives the DM ulcers and turns the game into five-minute forays out of warded lairs.

 

[Hussar]

Now, of course, one can design around this, but I really believe that one shouldn't need to. It cuts down on adventure design options; it doesn't broaden them IME.

This is an excellent point that bears repeating.

S-B-T is something that either needs to be worked around (limiting adventure design) or it has to be wholly embraced (as Fieri points out) which is also design limiting.

I agree with the idea that high level adventures should be different from low level. That's fine. But, does that mean that every high level adventure should rely on the same elements?

 

[FourthBear]

There's a parallel in the way I feel about S-B-T to the way I feel about Save or Die. Both can be fine as interesting, defining characteristics of particular scenarios, enemies, artifacts and such. But by putting them on the list of common high level PC, NPC and monster abilities, they aren't special conditions or situations. They become every day tactical choices that lead to the high level D&D game changing away from the kind of fantasy I'd prefer to see. In a full campaign, the idea of a teleportation based "dungeon" sounds great. Having darn near every adventure past 13th level become a series of teleports, teleport based ambushes, and having to often "teleport-proof" locations, bleah. It's like Star Trek and all those planets and situations with convenient atmospheres and energy fields that interfere with the transporter. It feels like frequent contrivances to get around techno-magical abilities that short circuit numerous types of encounters and exploration.

 

[olshanski]

It's like PCs deliberately taking a 200 foot fall or going swimming in lava because they technically, by the RAW, have the hit point reserve to survive. At that point, they're metagaming a loophole in the game rules. In my opinion, it's the same with this spell combo.

Clearly the physics of the D&D world are not the same as the physics of the real world.
When a 100 foot fall is not fatal on a consistent basis for a sizable amount of the population, then it is entirely resonable for characters in that world to willingly jump off of 100 foot tall cliffs.

When the absolute worst injury that you can suffer and still live can be completely healed with about 5 days of bedrest, then horrible injuries are not as crippling as they are in the real world. In the real world, a sword impaled through a leg would easily take a 2 months or more to heal, and might be permanently crippling... the the world of D&D, no sword wound is going to take more than a few days to heal.

If your characters are playing as if they exist in the physics of the real world, then those characters are meta-gaming, and not playing true to the world of their experience, the world of D&D.

A 15th level fighter that refuses to jump down a 100 foot tall cliff is metagaming as much as the character that attempts to mine saltpeter and sulpher to make gunpowder.

 

[Hussar]

If your characters are playing as if they exist in the physics of the real world, then those characters are meta-gaming, and not playing true to the world of their experience, the world of D&D.

That's a valid point of view. And it's shared by some. But, there are a number of gamers who think that the game mechanics actually don't describe the physics of the game world, any more than Hollywood movies do. They are convenient shortcuts for the game, not a treatise on simulation of reality.

You can take it too far really. The rules contain nothing about needing sleep. Do we then take it to mean that no person in a D&D world ever sleeps? That no D&D person ever gets lice? That I can eat iron rations 3 times a day forever and never die, despite things like scurvy? Where do you stop? At what point do you say, "The rules of the game describe only game mechanics, not the physics of the world"?

To be truly a simulation of reality, RPG books would have to be considerably thicker. IMHO.

 

[Treebore]

The way I solved the problem was by making teleport no longer something I, as a DM, needed to disable, but rather to make teleporting REQUIRED for the game. In a sense, I still had a "dungeon", but the rooms were each a continent away, and the connections weren't hallways, they were clues. Minions to be interrogated. Foreign coins popping up in strange places. That sort of thing. My players were restricted not by location, but by <i>knowledge</i>, and occasionally fear, when I would make it clear that a particular group was prepared against them. Rarely was dimensional lock needed. Once or twice I used lead.

Thats a exellent strategy. High level "dungeon creators" would definitely do something like that.