Buff, Scry, Teleport... A problem or not?

[Jeremy]

I find myself agreeing with nharwell. What in the spell descriptions is making people think that one can Teleport to 'wherever the subject of my Scry spell is'? And if being able to see the person whose vicinity you want to travel to is sufficient, why would you even need to use Scry? "I want to teleport to a spot directly in front of Bonan the Barbarian." There you go!

The Scry spell doesn't say anything about being able to see the details of the area the subject is in ...

"Familiarity: Very familiar is a place where you have been very often and where you feel at home. Studied carefully is a place you know well, either because you've been there often or you have used other means (such as scrying) to study the place."

 

[Christian]

"Familiarity: Very familiar is a place where you have been very often and where you feel at home. Studied carefully is a place you know well, either because you've been there often or you have used other means (such as scrying) to study the place."

Yes, I read that. And there are 'scrying'-type spells (eg. the Clairvoyance spell) that would let you study a place. But I don't see that the spell titled Scrying is one of those methods. It doesn't say anything about scrying a location, only a creature ...

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Disregard -- someone else beat me too it.

 

[Metalsmith]

I don't think it should be disallowed in game terms, but there are things you can do to combat it.

1.) Make it highly illegal. It is murder, plain and simple. No self defense case here.

2.) Start to give the PC's a bad rep when they do it. Have town people run away from them, have children scream in terror whenever they are seen. It will probably make some of them rethink their actions.

3.) Start to do it to the PC's, but instead of the bad guys being the ones doing it, have teams of lawful characters empowered by the ruling authority to take out these terrors to society ( the pcs ). See how the PC's feel when they have to kill the good guys because of their evil acts.

4.) Start shifting the PC's alignment to chaotic.

Sillyness! All of your points flow from the first one, the silly point of making it illegal to kill "Bad Guys". I suppose you make the Palidin try to arrest the demon who lives in the forest and eats farmers.

You are also forgetting the obvious trump.
1. Scry, Buff, Teleport. Hello "Bad Guy" for your crimes we will take you to justice! If you surrender now and you will live to see trial. "Bad Guy" resists, "Bad Guy" Dies. Hey, it was self defense he wouldn't come quietly. I'm not Lying, go ahead and cast detect lie. If He comes quietly, he's going to have to stand up to detect Lie other Divination Magics.

2. Bad Rep!? only among the other "Bad Guys" will you get a bad rep. Children will love you, you stopped the "Bad Guy" who was hurting their Mommies n Daddies.

3. Only if you make Killing "Bad Guys" illegal. But wouldn't the Justice team be better off going after the "Bad Guys" in the first place. If it's an evil law, like slavery laws, "Good Guys" wouldn't be following law anyway. "Lawfull Good Guys" wouldn't be trying terribly hard to enforce them either. "Lawful Evil Guys" deserve whats comming to them.

4. Chaotic!?! All of that suff requires some carefull planning. It's not the kind of stuff you decide to do one day. "Yawn, that was a nice Dinner, Let's go kill the "Fred Bad Guy".

Metalsmith

 

[Sagiro]

I don't have my books handy, but if memory serves there is a simple solution to most cases of the Buff-Scry-Teleport problem.

IIRC, there is a 5th level arcane spell in Tome and Blood called "Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum." It renders some huge area (I think a 30' cube per level) immune to scrying for 24 hours. At 9th level, that's an area 90' on a side and 30' high. Cast it centered on your campsite each night and rest easy.

Seems like this spell was tailor-made precisely to counter the rampant scry-fests that games might otherwise become. At high levels, a single 5th-level spell per day is easily worth the peace of mind.

If I'm misremembering the spell, I'm sure someone will correct me.

-Sagiro

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

In most of my campaigns (played or DM's) we've added a bit of 'Brustian' nausea to the aftermath of a teleport. Surprise becomes a lot less effective when your mages and clerics are puking their guts out.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

In my experience, most of the issues involving scry/teleport are based around a less than rigorous application of the spell's parameters. Not being precise about how much weight can be carried, allowing people to hop out of a portable hole in one round, allowing people to call a few minutes of watching an area to be considered "studying" the area, allowing the druid to cast the scry and the mage to cast the teleport as if both had seen the area, etc.

Scrying is cast upon a person, not an area. Concentration must be maintained on the person, IMO. This precludes good studying of the area. I'd allow "viewed once" but no better.

As for the portable hole trick (which IIRC is the tactic used in Wulf's SH), I'd rule that the portable hole is similar to a large sheet of silk, and must be laid out totally smooth to open into the extradimensional space. This should take several rounds, and multiple people. Ever try to totally straighten out a ten foot circular cloth? It's practically impossible by yourself.

Unfortunately Detect Scrying doesn't help much... it has a 24hr duration, which is great, but you get a round of "hey, I'm being scryed" then *pop* the buffed up guys appear.

Remember that Scry takes an hour to cast. PC's don't have an exact measure of time available to them most of the time, so I would make them wait on casting any real short term spells until after the scry is totally cast. That gives the Scry Detector several rounds to prep. Maybe even just teleport away.

 

[Metalsmith]

Yes, I read that. And there are 'scrying'-type spells (eg. the Clairvoyance spell) that would let you study a place. But I don't see that the spell titled Scrying is one of those methods. It doesn't say anything about scrying a location, only a creature ...

Greeeaaaat! But still wrong

Scry only allowing you watch a person and what he says makes it wortless. In your Campaign the 4th level Scry spell is regulated to just checking to see if people are alive and what they are saying.
Using the same wrong-headed reasoning, Clairvoyance only lets you see a Place, and not people in it. One more step further in your obsurdity, you only see the place, not objects or people in it. Bare empty rooms, Fantastic!

So now you can "Scry" on people, but not places and places but not people, and never the twain shall meet.

Also makes the 8th Level Screen spell worthless. According to you, why allow you to disguise an area if you can't see the area anyway?

Now we're up to 3 worthless spells, thanks.

Which spell lets you scry on both a person and an place?

Metalsmith

 

[ruleslawyer]

One rather pedantic clarification as to Jeremy's PHB quote: The actual italicization is as follows.

Familiarity: "Very familiar" is a place where you have been very often and where you feel at home. "Studied carefully" is a place you know well, either because you've been there often or you have used other means (such as scrying) to study the place.

That use of italics strongly implies that the text is referring to the actual scrying spell, rather than "scrying-type" spells like clairvoyance/clairaudience.

That aside, nharwell's interpretation is a nice rules-lawyering take on limiting the b-s-t tactic. Under his interpretation, effective use of the tactic would require expenditure of a 7th-level spell and 100 xp (vision) to actually get the BBEG's location before teleporting in and ruining his day. My tendency, though, is to think that the designers intended the opposite: that the scrying spell also discloses some details, however spotty, of the scried being's location. After all, the spell creates a sensor "near" the scried being, which might show enough of the surroundings to use teleport without error, in any case.

Under my interpretation, we're back to house rules, sadly. It's worth noting that 2e (well, 2e FR material, anyway) was rife with spells and items that prevented or hindered teleportation. One might wish to reinstate those spells and items for 3e use. Another less obvious and frustrating counter-tactic is to use the opposed Scry check rules found on Andy Collins's website at www.andycollins.net .

To answer the original poster's "poll": Yes, I do think the b-s-t tactic is problematic. IMC, everyone ends up running around with nondetection spells and items, and more powerful individuals have serious anti-teleport protection on their homes. But yes, it does come off somewhat contrived. D&D has this problem in general, though; the designers are good at limiting combat spells, but not so good with utility spells (look at poly other, for pity's sake!). Scrying and teleportation, IMHO, are two of the biggest problem areas (the third being easy resurrection). They aren't problematic in the sense of ruining the balance between PCs and NPCs, but rather in the sense of providing serious spoilers to campaigns that DMs are intending to resemble LotR more than JLA or The Authority.

 

[Christian]

Familiarity: "Very familiar" is a place where you have been very often and where you feel at home. "Studied carefully" is a place you know well, either because you've been there often or you have used other means (such as scrying) to study the place.

I raise my white flag in surrender. My PHB is twenty miles away, and (of course) the italicization does not appear in the SRD. Clearly, the scrying spell can show details of the surrounding area.

Cool. New ways to arrange a TPK!