Banning Fly, Improved Invisibility, Dimension Door, and Teleport

[wildstarsreach]

I'm DMing the Savage Tide adventure path, and have banned the party arcanist from taking Fly, Improved Invisibility, Dimension Door, and Teleport.

As others have said, these are iconic or signature spells in which the module designers had accounted for. Fly only works for 1/min a level, Imp Invis 1 rd a level, d door is an escape spell and Teleport has some limitations, weight and additional people based on level.

Why? In my opinion, those spells spoil the game by killing the drama of challenges like cliffs, raging rivers, stealth, and long-distance travel.

Why does it kill high adventure. Part of the adventure is to overcome them and if the PC uses all his spells in this support capacity, he is less effective in a combat capacity.

Where's the fun when the party can just pop away from the enemy, rest and rearm, and return at their leisure? The cliche of a flying, Improved Invis wizard is just that: a boring cliche. So in my continuity of Greyhawk, those four spells haven't been researched*.

You must do what you think is right but I find your reasoning not sufficient for banning these spells. But it is your game. I disagree with the implimentation of such draconian rules or bans.

What I'm wondering now, however, is if my denying those spells will break the game. D&D assumes that certain magic or abilities are available. Is the lack of those spells a sure-fire recipe for PC death? Or can a party survive without them?

-z

A lack of these spells could spell PC death but doesn't necessarily mean so.

* regular Invisibility, swift Fly (1 rd duration), Jump, spiderclimb, shapechange spells that grant wings, and so on are all still available. I suppose this reveals that my beef is with those specific spells, not the party's ability to enact their effects.

No it won't break your game but I think that it will increase the likelyhood that some of your PC's will get killed more often. This is where your game may become a problem. But if your players are happy and your game works, then so be it, I just disagree with the ban.

 

[Christian]

If you hate Wizards and Sorcerers that much, just ban the classes. Sheesh.

 

[werk]

I've always thought that banning things means the DM doesn't know how to manage them, or doesn't have the ability to manage them.

It's easy enough to create encounters where where certain spells will be ineffective rather than situations where certain spells will 'ruin' the encounter.

Know your adventure, know your characters, know your players. If you have those covered, you have all the tools necessary to manage your game without banning anything.

Basically, banning is a lazy fix.

 

[Nail]

...except when it comes to banning Wraithstrike.

 

[el-remmen]

Basically, banning is a lazy fix.

I don't think he was asking for a moral or behavioral judgment of what he proposes, but rather the mechanical consequences of the proposition.

 

[igavskoga]

Honestly I'm a bit surprised.

I find the implication that the arcane casters would somehow be completely crippled and broken without these specific spells to be completely absurd. As is the implication that the player is now somehow short changed with their loss as if there aren't 800 other spells they can take, some of which do similar things. I've actually had arcane players thank me for getting rid of some of those spells as they then feel like they are freed to take up things more to their liking.

Not that this is representative of the population at large, but now that I think about it since 3.0 came out in the many games I've run and played in, not a single caster has taken pretty much any of those spells. It may help that neither I, nor the DM's I play with, require them in any form at any time.

Encounters which REQUIRE a single answer to complete, whether its fly, teleport, or craft(widget) is bad design, pure and simple.

Classes which rely heavily on a smattering of abilities picked out of hundreds is, likewise, fundamentally flawed.

I'm also a bit surprised that the reaction to this kind of change is to label the DM incompetent or tyrannical - as if it were somehow inconceivable that some DMs and players may just not like those spells (or whatever else they may or may not choose to alter).

Changes like this may take a little bit of care and thought, may require slightly different methods by both DM and player but D&D is not hard coded, is not written in stone, nor does it exist in a vacuum.

Personally, I've made changes like this before to 3.x as well as earlier editions. With a little thought and slightly different perspective you won't even really notice that they are gone. I'm going to assume your group is, or will be, fine with it. If not there's no point in doing it. I'm also going to assume that you have, or will, put the little extra thinking and tinkering into what you're running that these (or any) changes will require.

As far as sacred cows go, yeah you're killing a few. Big deal. As far as practicality goes - I've been in and run a couple of campaigns over the years that featured almost no magical aid whatsoever (in the form of magic items by group consensus, and in the form of divine and arcane magic by player choice) and consistently ran more than the suggested encounter frequency and sometimes significantly higher the suggested encounter CR. Mostly just for the heck of it and to see how long we could last. We got as high as the mid-teens at one point if I remember correctly.

It still felt like D&D. With creative players and DM's just about anything is possible.

 

[Mort]

I'm DMing the Savage Tide adventure path, and have banned the party arcanist from taking Fly, Improved Invisibility, Dimension Door, and Teleport.

Why? In my opinion, those spells spoil the game by killing the drama of challenges like cliffs, raging rivers, stealth, and long-distance travel.

Where's the fun when the party can just pop away from the enemy, rest and rearm, and return at their leisure? The cliche of a flying, Improved Invis wizard is just that: a boring cliche. So in my continuity of Greyhawk, those four spells haven't been researched*.

What I'm wondering now, however, is if my denying those spells will break the game. D&D assumes that certain magic or abilities are available. Is the lack of those spells a sure-fire recipe for PC death? Or can a party survive without them?

-z


* regular Invisibility, swift Fly (1 rd duration), Jump, spiderclimb, shapechange spells that grant wings, and so on are all still available. I suppose this reveals that my beef is with those specific spells, not the party's ability to enact their effects.

In addition to what everyone else hase said - consider this:

the Dungeon adventure paths are designed to be challenging, really really challenging, and they assume PC's will use anything at their disposal to overcome obstacles.
If you limit the arcane caster - certain other things will likely have to be changed. The problem is you likely won't know what they are untill the party gets there. Very minor spoiler but I'll still hide it [sblock] much of the later adventures occur in a far off land where the party has little to no support [/sblock] depriving the party of something like teleport (to go home and recoup) may hamper them in a way the designers did not intend, and provide for an even greater challenge than already intended. That said, your changes are minor and unlikey to have a huge impact (but you never know, so make sure to plan ahead by seeing if/where the writers may have expected a solution your players can't do - unlikely but their published modules, it happens).

Then again, if you have a resourceful group, maybe they like it that way (though then you have to deal with similar effects from non-arcane casters which just makes the arcane casters arbitrarily feel less useful).

Also personally, I find teleport a horrible spell - the chance of something going wrong is just too high. Improved invisibility is ok but pretty high level and very short duration, making it hard to use for anything but combat. Diminsion door is primarily an escape spell - not a movement spell. And fly, well personally I just like 3 dimensions sometimes, but really it's not that big a deal.

 

[Joker]

I felt almost the same way about those spells at the OT did, but instead of outright banning them (as was my original intention) I just changed them. Some slightly, some more drastically.

Dimension Door- The same except the caster can opt to ignore the daze effect if he only travels up to close range.

Teleport- Traveling goes through the Ethereal instead of the Astral and instead of instant travel you travel at 1 round per ten miles (up to 10 miles per level). You can travel further than 10 miles per level but that incurs a Fortitude save to avoid disintigration. 1% chance per ten miles above max to suffer the effect. DC=Teleport DC if it had one. Effects same as disintigrate.

Fly- 1 round per level, swift action.

Improved Invisible- Will save or have all your clothes be teleported to a random location. If you fail, you also believe that you are truly invisible,

 

[pallandrome]

Bah. This is why I almost always run homebrews. If I don't want a party Teleporting out of the evil sanctum, then I have the place laid over with Dimensional Anchors. Except for the summoning circle of course, which rewards a crafty mage who realizes that the spot would, by it's very nature, HAVE to allow dimensional travel. Want to have a death defying battle on a rickety wooden bridge? Dead Magic Zone solves all problems.

Frikkin prepackaged adventures...I like them, they serve their place, but I rarely ever use them.

 

[werk]

I don't think he was asking for a moral or behavioral judgment of what he proposes, but rather the mechanical consequences of the proposition.

I believe I answered his question.

What I'm wondering now, however, is if my denying those spells will break the game.

No...and neither will allowing them. DMs break the game, or rather, allow it to be broken.