At will teleport and other 4th ed player fun

[Final Attack]

This is entirely based on players, and how they choose to play their game. But my players got a little silly with any at will ability they had ... I could have played heavy handed DM and just unfairly restrict their power or just shut them down. But I don't "roll" that way.

I ran a 4th ed adventure, and one of my players the Eldrin Ranger was just excessively teleporting everywhere. To what end? Well, generally being a jerk. The answer to almost any sort of bad situation that occurred he though he would be able to teleport out from.

Me, "Men crowd around the gambling table. One says a small pray with his hands clutching 2 dice."
Eldrin, "I teleport behind him and go "BOO!""
Me, "His hands go up in a fright and the dice fly over his shoulder. The man standing next to you punches you in the shoulder and says 'what are you doing!'"
Eldrin, "I punch him in the face."

~Bar brawl begins with the Eldrin severly outnumbered. As my players do ... *sigh* ... dispite all warning. Turn the fight lethal. He kills one. Gets put in jail.

Him, "Put me in jail? Well I'll just teleport through the wall."
Me, "You must be able to see where your going."
Him, "There is a window? or I wait till someone comes to feed me."
Me, "You have a bag over your head and all appendages are bound. When someone comes to feed you they only lift your bag high enough to expose your mouth. They feed you and tell you it was your last meal. You'll be hung in 2 days. Heres your new character."

Another player, the female warrior dwarf, was called a dude on meeting the 'new character'. Whe took offense and used her daily in a suprise attack against him. Critical. Something like 35 damage. Not far off being outright dead. Well ... it was 9pm and he she hadn't used it yet. It would be a shame to let it go to waste. I had 4 guards that where nearby quickly decend on her and put their halbards straight around her neck. She tried to escape with acrobatics and they killed her in the attempt.

Once again, it really comes down to how your players play and respond to the new rules. Mine ... only are only 'legally' adults, and not exactly mentally adult. Went a little crazy with all the new abilities.

Overall though everyone had a great time, and it will be something we talk about for a while to come I'm sure.

 

[TheLordWinter]

This actually really does bring up some excellent points. With the way at-will and encounter abilities function, certain things no longer quite work like they did anymore. Also the fluff on Fey step, if I remember it correctly, is that the eladrin actually slips into the Feywild briefly and reappears somewhere else in the World. Since the Feywild and the World are in many places synonymous, you can have the jail be in both places at once and thus not possible to teleport through. In addition, this theoretically means that a teleporting Eladrin might run afoul of monsters during his action and be unable to do anything but teleport on a horizontal plane. In addition, if my memory of fey step is correct, then should the ability work anywhere but the World? If you're in the Feywild, you can't very well step into the Feywild to move.

In addition, we see other strange nuances from the game based around the Powers system. Wizards, for instance, no longer ever need to fear freezing to death since they can casually generate as much fire as they wish.

Still, it sounds like a funny session even if it wasn't much of a successful test run.

 

[Xethreau]

Instead of just allowing "in between time," you could enforce the "short rest rule," where the character literally has to sit around for five min before he can get his encounter powers back.

(BTW, Fey Step is an encounter power, not at-will.)

 

[Final Attack]

This actually really does bring up some excellent points. With the way at-will and encounter abilities function, certain things no longer quite work like they did anymore. Also the fluff on Fey step, if I remember it correctly, is that the eladrin actually slips into the Feywild briefly and reappears somewhere else in the World. Since the Feywild and the World are in many places synonymous, you can have the jail be in both places at once and thus not possible to teleport through. In addition, this theoretically means that a teleporting Eladrin might run afoul of monsters during his action and be unable to do anything but teleport on a horizontal plane. In addition, if my memory of fey step is correct, then should the ability work anywhere but the World? If you're in the Feywild, you can't very well step into the Feywild to move.

In addition, we see other strange nuances from the game based around the Powers system. Wizards, for instance, no longer ever need to fear freezing to death since they can casually generate as much fire as they wish.

Still, it sounds like a funny session even if it wasn't much of a successful test run.

Could an eldrin fey step out of a grapple? Or being bound in manacles?

 

[Moon-Lancer]

I think feystep will be a bit more complicated when we see the actual rules. what we see is a one shot writeup for feystep and doesn't give us the ins and outs. If by some off chance fey step does not make itself clear in 4e, that would be very disappointing.

 

[AllisterH]

I wouldn't be surprised that MARTIAL exploits follow the same restrictions as MANOEUVERS from Tome of Battle: Bo9S and that general Teleport keyword has the added restrictions

1.To initiate a manoeuver, you must be able to move. With the exception-based design, unless a power explicitly says "you can use this even while grappled/immobile", you're screwed.

2. There are a couple of shadowy teleport powers in the ToB. Not only do they have the above movement restrictions, they have the added restrictions of a) You must have Line of Sight and Line of Effect and b) you can only teleport your max encumberance. Again, with 4E's exception based design, unless the power/ritual explicitly says "You can teleport even across places you can not see and affect", you're screwed as simply being chained to a wall will negate the teleport.

Given Mearls work on Iron Heroes and Bo9S, there's probably a section in front of the actual powers listed where it states, the general limitations of each power/ability and unless the power itself bypasses this restriction in some way, you don't see the limitation in each rule/power/feat

 

[small pumpkin man]

Could an eldrin fey step out of a grapple? Or being bound in manacles?

Probably. Unlikely.

(or "yes", "no", for people willing to take the word of some random guy on the internet at face value)

 

[hong]

I thought fey step was per-encounter, not at-will? Anyway, the vibe for a one-shot is usually different to that for an ongoing campaign; everyone knows the characters won't be sticking around so they might as well go nuts. If the idiot players continue to be idiotic when 4E comes out, then it would be best to convince them out-of-game to stop, rather than use in-game methods to keep them on a leash.

 

[Silverwave]

Could an eldrin fey step out of a grapple? Or being bound in manacles?

No, since now grapple pins down the ennemy (taking assumption that a pinned character can't possibly use powers).


Now, about exploits... Well, I think it's in any player's blood to found exploits whatever the game is (and by exploit, I don't mean the martial powers, I mean exploit as in exploiting the rules).
But then, it's in every DM's hands to come up with a counter exploit (if I can say).

One of your player abuse of feystep ? Well, you could make situation in where the party could just not have time to take a short rest (very easy). With some clever design, one whole dungeon could be considered only 1 long encounter.
Then you could restrict it as already said : you step into the feywild, so maybe the jail door your character wants to "teleport through" (saying he have a line of sight when watching from the doors peephole, or, geez, under it (tss)) exist in the feywild too, so he can't pass through this door either. Or maybe one huge fomorian just happen to be there when he get's to the feywild while trying to feystep and the OA he would take would be too dangerous for him to try pass by him.

Then again, maybe the power is more restricted in the full description in the actual book.


Well, that said, I think it's part of the game to try to "maximise" the utility of your skills and powers and there will always be players to come with wierd ideas of power/skill/spell/whatnot use (not to say ABuse, lol). Hell, the odds are even you came with one already (or will eventually).

I think we (DMs) tend to restrict the players (I do that a lot...) while we should be more open minded and bear with the players. They're supposed to be creative (while YOUR players, Final Attack, may be only plain douche bags lol, no offense) and we should give them more opportunities (mostly "Attack of", mind you, lol) than restrictions.

But that may be just me.

 

[Dausuul]

I agree that if Fey Step is a once-per-encounter teleport with no limitations, there are problems. I can see two possible solutions offhand; a mechanically simple and balanced one that requires throwing out the standard fluff text, and a somewhat wonkier, more complex one with more verisimilitude.

The simple solution: The fluff text is lying, Fey Step has nothing to do with the Feywild, it's just a short-range teleport that requires line of sight/effect. No bamfing through walls, period. Also note that medieval dungeons were not big on windows. (I suspect this will be what is written in the actual rules, minus the bit about how the fluff text is lying.)

The complex solution: Fey Step is literally what the fluff text describes--you shift into the Feywild, move, shift back. You can go through some walls, since most buildings in the Middle World* don't exist in the Feywild, and you can use it to evade opponents who could otherwise block you or make opportunity attacks. However:

• You can't bypass any kind of natural barrier, such as a chasm or natural rock wall (since those exist in both planes).
• You can only use the ability in the Middle World or the Shadowfell (since the Astral Sea and the Elemental Tempest don't have Feywild analogues, much less the Far Realm, and it obviously does you no good to use the ability in the Feywild itself).
• You can't use it at all if you're in any kind of underground excavation (since the excavation doesn't exist in the Feywild, you'd be entombing yourself alive; this prevents escape from a typical castle dungeon).
• You can't use it to travel through the air (since stepping into the Feywild does not enable you to fly).
• Especially tricksy enemies may ambush you in the Feywild, taking advantage of the opportunity to catch you away from the rest of your party.

Either way works pretty well for me. The magical nature of eladrin is such that I could quite easily see them having a short-range teleport power; on the other hand, the literal "step into the Feywild" interpretation opens up a lot of interesting possibilities. (Of course, it also brings up the question, "If I step into the Feywild at the start of my move, how come I gotta step back at the end of it? Can't I just stay in the Feywild?")

*Middle World: The (a) 4E name for the Prime Material Plane. See "Worlds & Monsters."