In the course of explaining the source of my opinion I have made a factual assertion regarding 4e powers: that they are largely intended to be used in-combat rather than out-of-combat. I don't think anyone has contested this assertion
Attack powers are primarily intended to be used in combat. That's not their exclusive function - eg the following example of using an attack power to manipulate the fiction in a skill challenge.
the eladrin was a Marcher Baron, Lord Distan. (The PCs and players recognised that name, as someone who had kicked the hags out of their former home 20-odd years ago, leading them to taking up residence in their Tower instead.)
He invited them back to his home, where it quickly became clear that he didn't really want their company, but rather wanted them to help him with a problem - he was expecting a visit in a few days from his Duke overlord, but his special apple grove was not fruiting as it normally would.
This was an adaptation to 4e mechanics and backstory of the scenario "The Demon of the Red Grove" in Robin Laws's HeroWars Narrator's Book. The reason for the trees in the grove not fruiting is that a demon, long bound there, has recently been awoken but remains trapped within the grove, and hence is cursing the trees. Mechanically, this was resolved as a skill challenge. First the PCs had to endure the demon's three cries of "Go Away!" (group checks, with failing PCs taking psychic damage - the sorcerer, who is also a multi-class bard, was the most flamboyant here, spending his Rhythm of Disorientation encounter power to open up the use of Diplomacy for the check, which in the fiction was him singing a song of apples blossoming in the summer).
Utility powers can be combat-oriented (eg Wrath of the Gods is a damage buff) or non-combat oriented (eg Disguise Self, Ambassador Imp) or useful in either sort of context (eg Arcane Gate, Mighty Sprint).
My example of bypassing the example encounter was not referring to short-range teleportation, which merely moves the encounter.
I don't think that second clause is true at all, either in general or in this case. Who knows what is beyond this room? And the lightning pillars are hardly going to move just to follow the PCs.
Also, the NPC is not free to be picked up as per the details of
@Manbearcat's example.
In which case you free the NPC before stepping back through the Arcange Gate or the portal (either of which can be open for long enough), or before teleporting out using a warlock power. With a move action economy (as per the example) a single wizard can standard, move (and so get two success) and minor to hold the gate open. A friend can come and help if necessary.
The claim has been made that teleportation rituals in particular, and rituals in general, may be more flexible than I knew. I'm interested in learning more about this possibility, so I asked follow-up questions about it.
Do you have a page cite for the rules for modifying rituals? If they are open-ended enough to permit modification on the fly that does indeed make them more able to replicate the strategic options available in other editions (although casting time is still an issue).
When you're talking about "srategic" teleportation then in 4e you're talking about leveraging the non-combat aspects of the resolution system. Skill and rituals are the premier player-side resources for these (with powers and action points as secondary resources); and the skill check and skill chalenge framework are the primary resolution modes.
My staring point here has always been p 42 of the DMG:
If a character tries an action that might fail, use a check to resolve it. To do that, you need to know what kind of check it is and what the DC is.
Attacks: If the action is essentially an attack, use an attack roll. . . . Use an opposed check for anything that
involves a contest between two creatures.
Other Checks: If the action is related to a skill (Acrobatics and Athletics cover a lot of the stunts characters
try in combat), use that check. If it is not an obvious skill or attack roll, use an ability check.
When it comes to magical phenomena, Arcana comes to the fore, but also Religion for divine magic and presumably Nature for primal magic although that last one has never come up in my actual play. I remember reading accounts online of the use of Arcana to manipulate magical phenomena before I started playing 4e in January 2009. The first example of something along those lines that I remember from play was in what I would guess to be our fourth session, when the player of the paladin had his PC speak a prayer to help fight against an undead creature, which I resolved as a Religion check to grant combat advantage.
There are many published example of using the Arcana skill to modify and manipulate magical effects (see eg skill challenge examples and trap/hazar examples in a range of sources, starting with the 4e DMG). The 4e Rules Compendium, p 136, has these example of improvisation with the Arcana skill:
* Change the visible or audible qualities of one’s magical powers when using them (moderate DC)
* Control a phenomenon by manipulating its magical energy (hard DC)
And for thinking about how rituals fit into this, there's also (on p 78 of the DMG) an example of framing the use of a Speak with Dead ritual as a skill challenge - because the corpse "refuses to be compelled by the power of the ritual", thereby signalling the relationship between fictional situation and mechanical framework.
Here are three actual play examples of this sort of thing, one involving magical phenomena and strategic teleportation as a reult of a skill challenge, one illustrating manipulation of an Arcane Gate via skill check and resource expenditure, and the third illustrating maniuplation of a ritual via Arcana check to get a desired result:
In the previous session, the sorcerer PC had been
amassing chaos energy to try to infuse it into himself and/or items. This worked - he imbued himself with the Gift of Flame and also transmuted a jewelled horn the party was carrying into a Fire Horn. (Mechanically, this was resolved as an Arcana-based skill challenge while the rest of the party fought off the mooncalves who had been attracted by the chaotic forces.)
He also realised that, as well as the chaos energy leaking from the body of the dead dragon Calastryx (on which he was standing) and leaking from a nearby portal to the Elemental Chaos, there was elemental chaos flowing south from the mountains to the north. And as he stood in his chaotic vortex on the body of Calastryx, the apparent distance between him and the mountains closed, and he could sense the chaos leaching up from the underdark. And he could see a plateau surrounded by a ring of mountains, where an army of hobgoblins was encamped next to a temple to Torog cut into the mountainside - prompting the thought that the chaos energy was escaping because Torog had dug too deep into the world.
Now the PCs have for many levels been fighting against the hobgoblins, and the players have been planning to try and raid the army to the north, and so they decided to step through the vortex and cover the distance immediately, rather than have to spend a week or more climbing up through the mountains. They were a little concerned about arriving in the middle of the army - having only two or three healing surges across the whole party and two or three party members already being bloodied - and the player of the chaos sorcerer was getting ready to make more Arcana checks to try to shift the destination of his distance-spanning vortex.
But the wizard PC decided to use his Sceptre of Erathis (= 3 parts, so far, of the Rod of 7 Parts) to try and master the chaos - which )after a successful Religion check) resulted in the focus of the vortex shifting, to an ancient Nerathi stair at the bottom of the plateau, and at the base of a waterfall. (One property of the sceptre is its tendency to point out lost Nerathi paths and ruins.) So the PCs stepped through the vortex
<snip presently unnecessary details>
Their planning was "Dunkirk and then Normandy" - the paladin fell back through the Arcane Gate, so the whole party was on the safe side of the river, and the fighter was brought back to consciousness. But the player of the invoker was worried about the salamander archers - he and the sorcerer are limited to range 10 attacks, and he didn't think the PC ranger could handle a long-range archery duel against the two on his own. So he unilaterally reconfigured the "Normandy" part of the plan: he permanently expended his Ritual Candle in order to shift the location of his already-cast Arcane Gate to another point within range, namely on the "safe" rock on the far side of the lava pool, so that the PCs could go through and lock down the salamander archers in melee. (Success was adjudicated using an Arcana check; the fictional logic was that the character sucked all the power out of the candle in order to use his knowledge of the Linked Portal ritual to close and reopen his Arcane Gate.)
<snip material that explains how the PCs ended up in combat with an Aspect of Vecna atop a floating earthmote, and also explains the background to the Eye of Vecna being implanted in the invoker PC's imp and hence Vecna having taken a degree of control over said imp>
before Vecna's turn could come around again, the cleric-ranger stunned him with a reasonably newly acquired daily power. To add insult to injury, the chaos sorcerer rolled a 1, pushing Vecna 1 square. Vecna failed his save and went tumbling 100' to the ledges below the earthmote. Then something (I guess one of the demons?) hit the paladin and pushed him over the edge. At which point an Acrobatics roll was requested, to "do a Gandalf" (from the Two Towers film) and fall down on top of Vecna. The roll was successful, and the paladin dealt damage to Vecna with a successful basic attack, as well as taking damage himself for the fall.
While the other PCs cleaned up uptop, the paladin successfully solo-ed the now-bloodied Aspect, but (at the behest of the invoker) only knocked it unconscious (and then used his Marshal of Letherna daily utility to prevent any regeneration that might let it come back to consciousness). The invoker then came down and used an Undead Ward ritual, with the Aspect as a focus, to try and sever the connection between Vecna and his Eye. This was successful (between stats, feats and Sage of Ages the character has bonuses of around +40 to most of his ritual checks), so the imp came back to life, still powered up by the Eye but no longer subject to Vecna's influence. (But therefore once again able to send information to Levistus. When I chided the player for his PC not sticking the liberated eye in his own socket, his reply was that Malstaph (the PC) is not foolish enough to think that he's a god.)
There are no specific rules that cover these sorts of things beyond the general rules for "actions the rules don't cover", skill checks and skill challenges as I've sketched out above. This is why some of us posting in thie thread (eg
@Manbearcat, me) regard 4e as a highly-flexible fiction-first enging, especially outside of combat. It is able to be such a thing partly because it has a very standard resolution system (skill checks, skill challenges) and very straightforward resource suites (powers, hp/healing surges, gp) that allow costs and impacts to be easily assessed and applied.
