An end to scry-buff-teleport?

[JohnSnow]

Please can the snarky comments with your "welcome to mid-high level D&D" cracks. Thanks.

I'll admit I have different esthetic sensibilities than some people. In my campaigns, the fighter didn't survive the Tarrasque stomping on his head. He didn't "endure the full brunt of the red dragon's fiery breath."

Hit points are an abstraction. They are not merely a measure of the character's ability to endure physical injury. A character who needs to cross a river of lava might be able to survive (with some hit point loss) but he most certainly didn't SWIM it. Similarly, if a d20 Modern character puts a gun to his head and pulls the trigger, he's DEAD or dying. Period. As they say, sometimes a dagger to the eye is a dagger to the eye.

That's in my world. And, as I noted by quoting the 1st Edition Dungeon Masters Guide, it's perfectly consistent with longtime perceptions of D&D. Gygax himself called it "unreasonable" and "preposterous." I said it was "ridiculous" and I stand by that for the same reasons Gary did. I wasn't trying to bait anybody, but I can't make the "increasing physical injury capacity" opinion make sense in my head.

But play your game your way. If I have to houserule mine to get the game I want, I have no problem doing that. I'd rather not have to deliberately avoid an ambush tactic like S-B-T. People always seem to forget that the DM chooses NOT to do that BACK.

Do your PCs walk around with all those protections you mentioned up at all times? How would they feel if the BBEG dropped in on them when they were helpless or spent from a hard fight?

What's good for the goose and all that...

 

[Hussar]

It's not knowledge of mathematical character statistics. It's the fighter going "Hmm...the Terrasque stomped on my head and I'm pretty okay, still....yeah, I might be able to survive a dip in the lava!"

Wow, I've had to repeat myself in three different threads now.

HP's are abstract. The fighter never had the Terasque step on his head. We know that because he got hit and didn't die. He got smacked around, but, none of the attacks were lethal. High hit points doesn't mean that you stand with your chest out Superman style bouncing bullets from the mini-gun. It means that you are just that much luckier/faster/whatever getting out of the way of stuff that would kill you outright.

The fighter who jumps off the cliff, the fighter who walks on lava, never actually does that. We know that because he survives. You are placing the narative ahead of the mechanics. The mechanics say that he crossed the lava, or fell off the cliff and survived. It's now up to you to justify that - maybe there were cool spots in the lava, maybe he hit shrubs on the way down.

But, "I swan dive off this cliff because I have enough hp's to survive it" is about as metagaming as you can get.

Just as a question though KM. Using S-B-T against the party means TPK's most of the time. It's just too easy to kill the party. So, DM's don't use it. It's a tactical nuke, like Disjunction or Sunder. Instead of simply adding in more bandaids to fix the problem, why not fix the original issue? Scry is useful. There's nothing wrong with it. Buffing is useful, there's nothing wrong with it. Teleport is useful, there's nothing wrong with it.

The problem is in the combination. So, block the combo somehow and poof, problem solved. Now, you have all three options being used, but, the trifecta suddenly doesn't make your game turn into a strange sort of Star Trek Assassins.

 

[Ahglock]

But play your game your way. If I have to houserule mine to get the game I want, I have no problem doing that. I'd rather not have to deliberately avoid an ambush tactic like S-B-T. People always seem to forget that the DM chooses NOT to do that BACK.

Do your PCs walk around with all those protections you mentioned up at all times? How would they feel if the BBEG dropped in on them when they were helpless or spent from a hard fight?

What's good for the goose and all that...

My PCs do defend against it. Non detection items are crafted fairly early, and a permanent false vision item is fairly common with the powerful and wealthy in my world, and in this case the PCs.

I can see in some campaign the PCs not defending against it purely because there isn't a large overarching campaign its just a series of unrelated adventures. So there isn't any pissed off bad guys, they are all dead. Mr. Big isn't bemoaning how you disrupted his plans because by the time he'd be doing that he is alraedy dead and the adventure is over.

I haven't had much problem with SBT but I kept a lot of the 2e spells that dealt with it. SBT ends up being another way of saying yes I'll leap right into your trap.

In a new edition assuming these spells are in the defenses should be in as well. When it comes to spells as defenses the defense should be lower or the same level than the spell it defends against. The higher level spells can be defenses with nasty twists. Also have mundane methods of dealing with scrying and teleport.

 

[robertliguori]

Hussar and JohnSnow: Again, so? We can posit that hp represent the ability to selectively edit reality to make lethal effects into less-lethal effects, but we're not changing the fact that certain things still happen. If I make a succesful melee attack against someone, I have caused an injury (as demonstrated by the fact that injury poisons on the weapon would trigger). The tarrasque-fighting warrior avoided the brunt of the claw attack, yes, but if he got hit, he got hit.

Likewise, if this warrior were to later be immersed in lava, he would survive for a few rounds. Now, one can come up with a contrivance to explain how this can be that involves changing the way the world works (or shunting functionality given from hit points to various defensive attributes). Or, one can note that as the hero has more hit points than a T-51B main battle tank, and that there are no real-world and very few fictional people who have more hit points than a T-51B MBT, one's perceptions of what the hero can do should shift. A character with 300+ hp can swim in lava according to the standard D&D rules, full-stop. If you find this unreasonable, you find either the D&D rules for lava, hit points, or high-level characters all unreasonable. This is not a problem; however, to tie things back to the original thread topic, introducing effects that are automatically lethal to everyone and within the realm of the PCs to engineer will cause problems in play as every smart PC and their brother starts throwing Transmute Rock to Lava at otherwise-invulnerable enemies.

 

[Hussar]

The problem is, you've decided that the player is immersed in lava. You've dictated the outcome of the event before rolling the dice. That's not what happens. Someone who gets immersed in lava dies. The high level fighter simply cannot immerse himself in lava without performing a coup de gras on himself. Instead, the fighter steps lightly and quickly over the crust of the lava and gets to the other side of the lava river.

That's what the dice have said has happened.

Look at it this way. If I'm using a greataxe, my maximum damage is 36 points (ignoring Str and other bonuses for the moment. So, I walk up to Opponent A and crit and roll max damage. 36 points. Opponent A has 12 hp. I lop off his head in a spray of Quentin Terantino blood splatter. Fantastic.

Later, I engage Opponent B, roll the crit and max damage. Again, this is absolutely the best I can hit something. Unfortunately for me, Opponent B has 200 hp. Now, my absolute best hit leaves a big bruise, some dented armor and maybe a trickle of blood.

At no point do I get to determine the outcome of my action before the dice are rolled and, even after the dice are rolled, the outcome depends more on the target than on me. It doesn't matter that I rolled exactly the same rolls for both attacks. Identical actions on my part resulted in completely different effects.

I'm not saying that swimming in lava is lethal. I'm saying that, at a certain level, swimming in lava doesn't exist as an option for you. ((cue Matrix theme music))

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

This is starting to get out of hand but I just have to point this out

Lava or magma deals 2d6 points of damage per round of exposure, except in the case of total immersion (such as when a character falls into the crater of an active volcano), which deals 20d6 points of damage per round.

Damage from magma continues for 1d3 rounds after exposure ceases, but this additional damage is only half of that dealt during actual contact (that is, 1d6 or 10d6 points per round).

An immunity or resistance to fire serves as an immunity to lava or magma. However, a creature immune to fire might still drown if completely immersed in lava.

It's actually Hussar and JohnSnow who are altering the effect based on their perceptions of what seems more realistic to them. Quite clearly total immersion in lava is exactly that total immersion, if that seems too out there for your versimilitude fine. But explicitly the damage is a result of being submerged in lava and IS survivable for characters with high enough hit points.

 

[WizarDru]

I'm not saying that swimming in lava is lethal. I'm saying that, at a certain level, swimming in lava doesn't exist as an option for you.

Well, that's your interpretation, sure. Hit points are an abstraction, after all. But I think here you're conflating your personal sense of what is acceptable suspension of disbelief and assuming the rules back that up. If I read correctly, you are saying that swimming in lava is lethal...and since the rules say that your character doesn't automatically die from doing it, that you clearly aren't really swimming in lava, because that's crazy-talk...so when you make your save or take a small amount of damage, it's because you never actually touched the lava or found a cool spot or what have you. The 3.x PHB doesn't really make that kind of distinction (while the AD&D book may, I haven't played that game in nearly 20 years, so it doesn't really resonate with me).

Hit points mean two things in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one.

To wit: it's perfectly valid for you to assume the second definition...but others may choose to use the former. Some folks will choose that Conan is just skilled at side-stepping a sword, turning a killing blow into a grazing one. Others may feel that Conan simply has toughened his body through rigorous combat to become impervious to pain and hardened to damage. Both are valid interpetations, afaict. This is why, in fact, we have things like poisons that do CON damage to kill you, instead of hit points. It avoids the abstraction of hit points entirely.

 

[Rel]

There is a suppliment that is coming out soon that will vastly simplify this lava issue. It's compatible with all editions of D&D including 4th.

 

[Henry]

This is why, in fact, we have things like poisons that do CON damage to kill you, instead of hit points. It avoids the abstraction of hit points entirely.

This is why I think that hazards in general should do CON damage, myself. Falling? CON. Lava? CON. Rock slide? CON. Steamroller or Robo-tree-cutter driven by a Goblin? Hit points. After all, if poison is supposed to screw up your immune system and resilience to bounce back from injury, then how much more would a 100 foot fall, or having your legs immersed in lava do the same thing?

 

[lukelightning]

This is why I think that hazards in general should do CON damage, myself.

So a zombie falling off a 100 foot cliff is unharmed?

As for lava, realistically speaking (yeah, big mistake!) lava is virtually as dense as stone. Sure, it's a liquid, but it is still stone, so falling into a lava pool wouldn't mean you sink to the bottom; you'd still be resting on the surface, sinking in only a small amount.

Of course you'd probably also be bursting into flames....